Having written a longish letter to my friend Vick, with whom I engage in considerable philosophizing, it occurred to me that simply posting the letter would involve less effort than recasting the same thoughts as a column. Since the choice as between considerable work or going down the road to the Brew House for a craft beer, well, the beer won. Perhaps I am dissolute. I hope so. anyway, the letter:
Vick,
On domestic matters: You and I can entertain ourselves by weaving meretricious arguments to show that the Fourteenth, or any other Amendment, doesn’t mean what it obviously does, or does mean what it obviously doesn’t, or this or that, and chop logic until Aquinas would slit his wrists. (“It depends on what you mean by “is.””) None of this matters today. We live in post-legal times when law and Constitution mean whatever those with enough power want them to mean. Untoward consequences may follow.
reality: in America we see intense racial hatred in a large segment of the population, against a backdrop of sharp national decline, profound political divisions, and increasing economic angst. Fear of financial collapse. Ethnic cleansing. Desire for a strong-man leader who will set things right. Jingoism internally and military aggressiveness abroad. Breakdown of law and constitutionality. The rise of hyper-nationalistic, blood-and-soil philosophy. Vindictive prosecution of dissent. Distrust of institutions. A feeling that the country has fallen into the clutches of goofy liberals imposing nutty policies on a population to which the policies are alien and odious. Mainstreaming of sexual curiosities. Masked secret police accountable to no one. Brutal treatment of migrants calculated to instill fear. Misogyny, a belief that women should be kept in their place and make a maximum number of babies. I assume you have read Bork and Buchanan. Venezuela as Poland, Latinos as Jews. In short, Wiemar America.
The racial element is strong, a grinding hatred of anyone not white and sometimes a suspicion of those not of blue-eyed Nordic stock. Those who advocate the ignoring of law in pursuit of national purity call themselves White Nationalists and say they represent the white race, though without consulting those whom they claim to represent. Though WhyNats call themselves conservatives, they are far from being anything Reagan would recognize. I am inclined to say that White Nationalists are to normal conservatives as Pol Pot is to liberals.
Regarding immigrants, opening the borders was stupid and certainly unnecessary, though businessmen liked the cheap labor. Yet deporting people who have been years in the country, who have jobs and families and both think of themselves as and want to be Americans, seems to me cruel,. Others disagree strenuously, of course. there seem to be two political camps. First, those who view with approval secret police breaking down doors at two a.m. and thrusting screaming women into unmarked vehicles, perhaps never to see their children again. A thirst for this takes a special kind of person, almost sadistic, or so think I. Second, those who believe such behavior unconscionable.
I am irremediably of the second group, Vick. It is not a rational decision but a condition, felt but not arrived at. I cannot abide the surrounding of schools and the dragging of children of nine years off to concentration camps. It is not a choice I have made or a conclusion I have reached. It is how I am, as innate as eye color. To judge by polls and demonstrations against ICE, it is how a lot of people are.
I think the political chasm originates not in politics but in underlying character. WhyNats are powerfully hostile to races other than their own, want them gotten out of the country by any means, and have no sense of charity or decency toward them. WhyNats seem as incapable as I of being otherwise. The other group watch events with horror that makes no sense to WhyNats who see it as weakness and racial treason.
Oddly, those favoring remorseless deportation are by no means necessarily thugs or obvious deviates. I have known leaders of the movement. They have been of upper-class manners, intelligent, highly educated, courteous, Protestant, and hospitable–to any who didn’t disagree with them. Yet they are powerfully tribal, able to speak of blacks, Latinos, Moslems, and Hindus as pestilences needing removal. This was true of many of their counterparts in the Germany of the Thirties. Again, Weimar America.
Making the national divide intractable is that White Nationalists and their fellow travelers honestly believe that defending America from the tide of darker peoples is of such paramount importance as to justify any means necessary. As you say, the sentiment seems stronger in the South, but it sure isn’t limited to there.
The venom seems abstract, divorced from any practical offense experienced. How many of the deportistas you know have suffered offense at the hands of an immigrant? How many have even seen a Moslem? A Thai? Known a Mexican? Been impoverished by non-whites? Yet there is the weird, seething hatred. It is not that I disagree with it but that I am incapable of it. I have been to and lived in many Asian and Latin countries and quite liked their peoples. I know many whites, to include mathematicians, professors, writers, and journalists, who very much like the variety of, say, Southeast Asia or New York City, and find homogeneously white regions boring. I grew up in homogeneously white America and didn’t think it boring, but I was eleven, bare-footed, and BB-gunned in the South.
Further, there seems an underlying psychological divide here. I have noticed that, while by no means all conservatives are conspiracy theorists, all conspiracy theorists that I have known have been conservatives. Perils and dark shadows seem to flicker at the edges of their vision. Dangers approach, Russians, Mexicans, Chinese, all those strange-looking peoples who want to destroy America. On the other hand, I have never known a goofy conservative. yet liberals are rife with goofy ideas–DEI,open borders, sex-change surgery for children of ten. Maybe something genetic is going on.
Regarding birthright citizenship, I am no adept of conlaw, but i think it established that the Supreme Court does not change the Constitution, but interprets it. Thus if birthright citizenship is not Constitutionally mandated now, it never was. Consequently if a Mexican couple entered the country illegally in 1900, there children were illegal because their parents were, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children, and so on. Thus perhaps the greater part of sixty-three million people would be de portable which, in light of the government’s program of denaturilization, seems within their probable intention. Since non-citizens cannot vote, if the Court did as the administration wants, potentially angry Latino voters would lose the franchise for the midterms. You may see this as desirable, or not. I don’t.
In answer to your question, no, I don’t think the country is stable. In a life that has gotten longer than I ever thought it would, I have never seen anything resembling the intensity of hostility between Left and Right, between races, rich and not rich, educated against less so, coast and heartland. But race war? Who would fight whom? The Floyd riots weren’t black against white but whites against whites with blacks being almost bystanders except for undocumented shopping. The anger is still there. Who would attack whom? At present, white ICE agents attack brown Latinos and white demonstrators attack, at least rhetorically, the white ICE agents. Black, yellow, and brown show little warlike disposition.
Them’s my thoughts. Talk soon.
Rick
Is this really the same Fred Reed who once bemoaned the need to keep his third bicycle in his apartment living room because a mere bike lock hadn’t kept “the Diversity” from stealing the first two? The one who once characterized “Black Culture” as the KKK’s greatest trick: getting blacks to reject education and employment and respect for Law as “acting white”?
Like every other “Progressive” writer with a platform, the current “Fred” boils it all down to melanin. George Zimmerman, presumably, wouldn’t have minded having his head beaten into a sidewalk by a blond-haired, blue-eyed WASP.
Anyone who went to US public schools in the 1960s remembers the relentless anti-racism indoctrination therein. (This was long before “Anti-Racism” was redefined to mean “Anti-White.”)
Racism was clearly a bad idea, but it had one wonderful property: It was one of the few problems that could actually be SOLVED by ignoring it. So we did, mostly, until that son-of-a-commie-bitch pulled the stake out of its heart in 2008.
Of course there are a few aging relics who still have a visceral hatred for “them uppity ni’s.” With a third of a billion humans in stock, you can find enough of ANYTHING to make a carefully-framed photo look like “evidence” that the WaPo/NYT/Mother Jones axis is on the level. Fred 2.0 is running with it.
There’s a rising tide of younger people who read Ta-Nahisi’s and Ibram X’s crap about “all whites, and only whites” being racists, while they notice who is sucker-punching random passers-by (if the passers-by are lucky), stealing the Nike’s, and throwing the molotovs through the plate glass windows whenever The Diversity gets shot for punching out a cop.
Dave Chappelle, who has the FU money to get away with it, did a great bit — it is, or was, on YouTube, and good luck finding it — about there being “two kinds of black people: black people, and N-words… [perfect comedic pause] …and N-words gotta go.”
Very few people outside the rabid Left-o-sphere want to care what color anybody is anymore. It’s about behavior. It’s about a High Trust society being overwhelmed by those whose culture regards such trust as childlike naivete, as almost a demand to steal your bike “for your own good, to teach you a lesson about leaving stuff out in the open.” It’s about the next Irinya’s demonstrated need to worry about the muttering schizo in the seat behind her, because the goddam TV has told him Whitey “deserves it.”
The Fred I remember would have written — in fact, did write, much better than I — the same thing I’ve written here.
What the hell happened to him?
George Zimmerman probably wouldn’t have acosted a blonde, blue eyed insect for being publicly caucasian, if an insect could. I stopped reading the diatribe with the reference referenced above so I won’t comment on what I didn’t read any further than to say that it was likely as odoriferous as what I did. Fred seems as normal as your lack of reading comprehension, amongst most Americans. You should calm down, the man ain’t after you yet.
Larry, you skim til offended, then shut your eyes? Hey, saves you having to refute anything. Plus a barely coherent jab at Americans in general? Like the kids say, “Tell me you’re a Leftist without telling me you’re a Leftist!”
“How many have even seen a Moslem? A Thai? Known a Mexican?
I have.
I come from an area with copious migrant workers, Mexican and other south of the border.
While growing up, they were, by and large, trouble makers.
I spent some time in the Middle East and found the Muslims to be mostly like us. They formed families, wanted the best for their children, but did have to KowTow to the Islamic Law,
I knew a family from Thailand that ran a restaurant. Like most merchants they wished to accommodate their clientele.
The Mexicans I’ve met in the US personally (lots of them, and who knows how many indocumentados) have been well-behaved. As anybody with any sense would be who figured they’d be deported if they attracted police attention. Of course there’s that 10% in any demographic who cause 90% of the trouble. Those are the only ones on the Nightly News. Of course, 10% of 40,000,000 is a lot of trouble.
The few Muslims I’ve gotten to know seem nice enough. The trouble there is that Islam demands that Muslims convert (or kill) ALL the infidels. (Dhimmitude is a tacked-on compromise: “We don’t have to kill you RIGHT AWAY. If we make your life suck hard enough, you might convert just to get us to stop.”) The “moderate” ones feel a little guilty about not doing that, the same way a secularized Catholic feels when Grandmaw asks how often they go to Mass.
“Thus if birthright citizenship is not Constitutionally mandated now, it never was. Consequently if a Mexican couple entered the country illegally in 1900, there children were illegal because their parents were, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children, and so on.”
Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
I have made these predictions on the Unz Review, Facebook, and my other social media accounts but I have not made them here yet. Here is what I believe will happen in the next few years.
1. There will be a massive Blue Wave in 2026. Democrats will win massive majorities in the House and Senate.
2. To make sure they do win, Democrats will employ BLM and Antifa militias to “guard” polling places. They will try to restrain them from the violent activities that created the messy George Flyod riots in 2020. They don’t need anymore bad press.
3. Democrats will then launch a massive investigation into Trump’s involvement with Epstein. They have been itching for revenge ever since Bubba Clinton was humiliated in the Monica Lewinsky affair.
4. If Trump is not thrown in prison, he will be rendered a lame duck.
5. Trump will probably stage another riot similar to the January 6 insurrection, which will tarnish the MAGA brand even more.
6. In 2028. a Democrat president will be elected. He will be ultra left wing and probably African American.
7. The new president will not only undo all of Trump’s executive orders but also turn America into a Communist country.
8. Any BLM and Antifa thugs who helped the Democrats (re)gain power will be pardoned by the new president.
9. The Israeli lobby (and other foreign pests) will still control the American government.
My dad thinks otherwise. He thinks that Trump will employ the military to successfully fix the 2026 and 2028 elections so that he can put his cabal of far-right Republicans in power indefinitely.
However, I am willing to bet a trip to Disney World that my predictions will come true. I don’t think Trump will succeed. America is not as far-right as outsiders think. The press is especially working against Trump. While Trump has moved against Hispanics, I am not so sure what will happen once he moves against blacks.
The “outsiders” in Europe think “far-right” is anyone who doesn’t want Brussels mandating the curvature of store-bought bananas.
And any BLM/Antifa “guarding” the polling places would set off Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter wet dream. The actual Far-Right skinheads and the AntiFa fascists would go matter-antimatter. I don’t think there are enough crazies on either end of the spectrum to pull that off twice. I hope.
That explosion will happen anyway if the election even LOOKS as bogus as the 2020 one obviously was. Absent such bogosity, the “blue wave” won’t be but a trickle. You and your dad underestimate how fed up the non-insane 80% is with the whole Blue-Trannie brand.
And WHAT THE FUCK IS IT with you people and Teh Jooos?
4. If Trump is not thrown in prison, he will be rendered a lame duck.
Last I read the Constitution says Trump cannot be elected for a 3rd term.
I wonder if Vance can run with Trump as his VP, then, if willing, resign and Trump takes office.
Mr. Reed:
I wrote to you before but you didn’t answer me. I have not traveled outside of the United States that much. I especially have not traveled in Latin America. I heard in an article a few years ago that Muslims were trying to reach out to Hispanics for conversion to Islam. They want to turn Hispanics into another “asset ethnicity” similar to African Americans. Have you seen any sign of that? Have Latin Americans become so fed up with Trump that they are converting to Islam?
Yours truly,
Gene Su
This was signed Rick, not Vick…
Good luck , Mexican Christians don’t convert,period. I live in North Carolina, and we have a lot of Mexicans here. They are as law abiding as any other people who live here. They are hard working and I’ve haven’t had any problems with them.I’ve also worked with them, had them as neighbors,and served with them in the military. What I,’ve learned is to judge people on their merits on a person to person bases, not as a group, and to hold them responcible as such. I have met some pretty nasty scum bags from all races, countrys and political parties. To destroy a nation all you have to do is cause unnecessary division and lawlessness. Our politicians from both parties are a bunch of Contitutional lawbreakers and moral scum. None deserve our loyalty or our money. Wake up!!!
People who believe there are races, and that racial purity means anything at all, are deeply, possibly incurably, ignorant of how Homo Sapiens came to be.
A “WhyNat”, in order to qualify, has to be–apart from being sunk in his own inferiority and incapacity–oblivious of the fact that, given his mindset on race he is a fuck-blended mongrel himself.
America is a sick Capitalist Empire that has run out of gas except the variety it expels in its bullshit flatulence. It’s a dead county, irredeemable, shot, lost, with no vector but down into the deck and the end. Finally. It has taken too long, because its vile bullying of the world was unassailable. Until now. One word, as symbol and explanation: Oreshnik. We don’t have the chops anymore to run our con. Ave atque vale!
“America is a sick Capitalist Empire that has run out of gas except the variety it expels in its bullshit flatulence.”
??? The ‘gas’ it has expended has been in the form of the Welfare State, paying people to do nothing. That is not part of a Capitalist Empire.
I see ‘Fred’ has not denied being replaced by a ‘bot or a alias
The real Fred would ignore the accusation. A FredBot would ignore it a million times faster.
I guess we can presume ‘Fred’ is not Fred until shown otherwise.
I don’t think we can presume either way. All I can say with confidence is that the last few columns published under Fred’s name have a less-logical, more-Leftist “vibe” to them than they used to, and that an ImposterBot is one possible explanation. Sudden-onset dementia is another, but the writing itself is still pretty solid. Him coming out of the political closet after decades of pretending to have good sense is another, but that seems most unlikely of all.
I hope he’s OK.
Based upon what Rolf Mao said I think we can presume, until shown otherwise. ‘Fred’ is an alias.
Dear Fred:
I don’t know if you have the time to read every comment you come across. But if you read this one, I want you to answer it.
I am a Chinese American. I have been very interested in your articles on modern China. You have been lauding it as the next Great Superpower. You have visited its bustling cities, skyscrapers, bullet trains, and have come to the conclusion that it will eventually dominate world trade and gobble up its neighbors (especially Taiwan).
Twenty years ago, I would have instantly agreed with you. Today, I am no longer so sure. I have viewed many Youtube commentators that state the following:
– China’s economy has taken a big hit from its handling of COVID-19.
– China’s economy is really a Potemkin village (especially in its real estate sector with its “ghost cities”).
– China’s population is much lower than official estimates (no thanks to the “one child” policy).
– A very large percentage of China’s population might have died due to COVID-19.
– A lot of Chinese young adults are disillusioned with the current economy and society. It has become too stressful for them to manage.
– Chinese youth are now “lying flat” and “letting it rot”. They are no longer seeking jobs, are content to live on welfare, and no longer want to marry and have children.
If this is all true, then I can imagine China failing if it attempts to conquer Taiwan. I can imagine there being a youth rebellion similar to what America experienced with Vietnam. Please note that I have never been to China. What are your thoughts on this?
We will see if ‘Fred’ responds…
The title’s pairing of “epistolary excitements” with revolution is wonderfully provocative—it suggests that private letters can carry public consequences. I’d be curious to see how the article connects intimate correspondence with broader political change.
The title’s pairing of “epistolary excitements” with revolution captures how seemingly private letters can become politically explosive. It makes correspondence sound less like quiet reflection and more like a spark passed from reader to reader.
The tension between private letters and public revolution is a compelling premise—“epistolary excitements” makes political upheaval feel intimate, immediate, and surprisingly combustible.
The epistolary format makes the excitement feel intimate while hinting at something much larger than private correspondence. I especially like how the title frames letters as potential sparks for revolution rather than mere records of it.
The idea of letters as “epistolary excitements” that could spark a revolution gives the piece a wonderfully charged tension. It makes ordinary correspondence feel less like private reflection and more like a catalyst for collective change.