Mencius Moldbug reserves the right to refer to red-staters, collectively, as Amerikaners:
Like their lexical analogues, the Amerikaners are a cultural group of European stock, but their present-day traditions cannot be easily connected with any group in modern Europe. We cannot say this of the Universalist Eloi of the coasts, whose connection to the English Dissenters and their secular, liberal heirs has been continuous since day one. For example, American traditionalist or “fundamentalist” Christianity, which is nominally Protestant but seems almost Catholic next to the thoroughly Quakerized blue states, has historical roots which are quite obscure and thoroughly American.
His question is, When will the Amerikaners decide that they’ve had enough?
Sixty (60) percent of American voters call themselves “conservative.” Voting as an organized, disciplined bloc, it should be straightforward for them to defeat and destroy the remaining 40 — let’s say 20% Eloi, 20% Morlock. Moreover, if such a majority demands a comprehensive reconstruction of government, not just a cosmetic change among a few ceremonial officials who have no real executive authority, the Eloi and Morlocks can hardly resist them. Especially since the American military class is, almost by definition, Amerikaner.In retrospect, any such reconstruction would be accepted by all, of whatever caste. The Eloi will see the light, as they always do. As Osama put it: they like the strong horse. In an Amerikaner republic, Eloi will elbow each other out of the way to eat overpriced American food, wear marked-up knockoffs of American prole clothes, live in actual old American buildings, etc, etc.
Of course the Eloi already do these things. But in our New Albion, they will do them with flags, God and guns. (Possibly even Confederate flags.) And the Morlocks will be forced to deal — as they already are. (Although once the bar is reset, I suspect that less force will be required.) [...] And Sarah Palin will put together a small edition of her family’s wise old Alaska sayings, bound in red, white and blue, which fits nicely in the lapel of your blazer.
You may, or may not, be thankful that this is not going to happen. It is not going to happen because the Amerikaners are not organized enough to make it happen. Given infinite time, they will certainly get organized, which is why I say “when” rather than “if.” But time is not on the Amerikaners’ side. Their horse has been weakening for the last century.
The Amerikaners’ problem is that they’re governed by their enemies, the progressives, who have converted democratic politics into a reality show and rule through the extended civil service. The civil service is nominally responsible to the elected arms, but the latter would have to put up a terrible fight to even touch them. And progressives fight the peril of a “populist” democratic reaction with two slow, but inevitably lethal, strangulation tactics: subsidized progressive education, and Morlock voter importation.
The last quasi-successful Amerikaner reaction was the “Return to Normalcy” of the 1920s. Considering the royal ass-whupping the Amerikaners have been taking since then, “normalcy” (which, in classic Amerikaner style, is not even a word) is an awful mild description of the converse. But not even a gentle, Harding-Coolidge style restoration is a real possibility today.
The fatal flaw in the democratic mind of the Amerikaner, or “conservative,” is that he believes that his country’s political system basically works and is the best in the world. It has just gone slightly off the rails in the last few decades. But it can be set right with a minor corrective operation, ie, replacing a few ceremonial officials with good, clean-minded, child-bearing Amerikaners.
This belief system, which has no correlation with reality, is at the heart of “conservatism.” It shows no sign of going away. The fatal allure of insisting that right-wing conservatism is really the true democratic liberalism, the other having strayed, is an irresistible anglerfish lure. (The Rev. Dabney will set you straight.)
Therefore, the Amerikaners are unlikely to organize and act effectively until their electoral position has declined to the point at which a democratic restoration is not only nontrivial, but in fact impossible. At this point, USG [the US government] will have imported tens if not hundreds of millions of new Third World residents. It will be obvious that military government is the only route to any kind of American restoration. The inevitable alternative is a North America indistinguishable from the rest of the Third World.
Have you been to the Third World? The armed forces will have to act. Let’s hope they can all get it together to be on the same side.