[Thordaddy is one of our most loyal and prolific commenters. Most of the comments he has submitted have not appeared here, on account of his customary horrific abuse of English syntax, diction, and prosody. Most of them are simply incomprehensible. They have not therefore passed the threshold set by the criteria of our comments policy. Nevertheless, Thordaddy has some terrific insights, which over the course of years of earnest effort to understand him, I have at length come to appreciate. Thus, this post. All thanks to Thordaddy for his honest persistence. Now, if only he could school himself to write like a Christian …][Thordaddy: for the love of Christ, don’t get cocky: write like a Christian, for God’s sake. Your comments to this post will not otherwise see the light of day.][And, also: God bless you for your earnest loyal persistence.]
Self-hatred comes along with the vicious radical autonomy of modernism (that Thordaddy has so emphatically noticed to us all) as a package deal. If you are radically autonomous, then you alone are capable of fixing your own life, and so you are alone responsible for so doing. There is then no one to help you. You alone are alone at fault. Your fault is intrinsic, given along with your radical ontological autonomy, and therefore incorrigible – at least by you. Your fault is your own decision.
Naturally then you hate yourself for it (every man knows in his heart that he is responsible for himself; there is no escape whatever from this knowledge). But one cannot hate oneself and live; so your self-hatred is directed instead upon some Other, a wicked and as suspiciously odd therefore ostensibly blameworthy scapegoat, who works well enough as a halfway credible field for the projection of your own most despised characteristics. The scapegoat allows you to feel for a few moments – those of his holocaust – that you yourself are blameless in your predicaments; that it is all his fault, and that with his death, his ostracism or bewilderment, your faults likewise die; so that you are then free of responsibility, ergo of guilt, or shame, or blame – ritually pure and unimpeachable.
I.e., free. Radically autonomous.
What then is the opposite of the radical autonomy Thordaddy so rightly abhors, as the root syndrome characterizing all our troubles as peoples, and as men (whether Jewish, English, or what have you)? Is it not, at least for white men, what he calls white supremacy? Thordaddy confuses readers by throwing into his scription of “white supremacy” parentheses and capitalizations in a way that seems to signify importantly to him, but which I have never quite understood. But the feeling that I get from what he has said is that by white supremacy he means, not the proposition that whites ought by right to rule over other sorts of men solely in virtue of their whiteness (and all the virtues that whiteness involves), but rather only – a far less sweeping claim – that white men should properly apprehend the peculiar excellence to which they are of all sorts of men particularly called, and so seek it.
I take it, then, that Thordaddy would have no objection to a Persian or Ugandan or Japanese man likewise apprehending the peculiar excellence to which his own sort of man is particularly called, and so seeking it. On the contrary. So I would hope, at any rate.
I.e., I take Thordaddy not as saying that all other sorts of men than white men ought to be subordinated to white men, and ruled by them, but rather that white men ought – as any sort of men ought – to seek the peculiar excellence to which such sorts of men as they are particularly called. I take him to be saying, in other words, that all men ought to seek to instantiate in themselves and in their lives as lived the supreme ideal of such men as they happen to be. They ought to seek to be supremely, perfectly white, or black, or yellow, or whatever.
All men ought, i.e., to seek the perfections proper to their own ineluctably given natures, along all the dimensions thereof.
This hardly seems a controversial suggestion. On the contrary, it is trivially obvious. It could not be otherwise, no?
This is not at all to say that in noticing this obvious, incontrovertible moral ukase, that is given with our very being as disparate from other creatures, and therefore ipso facto worthy of being what we are, Thordaddy himself is trite or trivial. On the contrary: the most fundamental truths apply universally, so that to pick them out of the confusing welter of experience is to notice most percipiently.
Thordaddy argues then, (so far as I have been able to tell from his cryptic pronouncements) that to be a white man and to be a Christian – and, being Christian, to consider oneself a beloved son of God in one’s very essence and truest being – must be to consider oneself as specially loved and wanted by God for the completion of the beauty of his creation as just the sort of being one is: namely, forsooth, and among sundry other things, a white man (with all that being a white man entails, whatever that might be). If having made me a white man God loves me as a white man and wants me to be a white man as perfectly as I can (whatever whiteness involves – again, tace re that for the nonce), why then I ought to go ahead and try to be excellent in just the way that is proper to such white men as I. Whatever that might be.
The project of being excellent in the way natural to oneself begins of course with research intended to discover that way.
But then, in order to seek the excellence proper to my own essential nature, I must first construe it as excellent. I cannot construe it as inherently vile, or evil, for that would be to repudiate it ab initio, and so to fail – to defeat myself – as an ontological project of God’s creation.
Alas for white men seeking the perfections proper under Heaven to their own essential natures, their nature qua white men – and they themselves, therefore – have in the last few decades been almost universally abhorred, in se. Alone amongst all sorts of men, white men have lately been taught that to be simply, and only, their sort of person is to be intrinsically and incorrigibly evil; and that all other sorts of persons are intrinsically better than they are.
White men therefore cannot now get well started on the project of being excellent, qua white men. They are told rather that they should not try; that they must rather reject their whiteness absolutely (together with all that it means, whatever that might be)(including, NB, their simple manhood, their mere maleness). They are told that they ought not even to try to be the Good Guys; because, being evil white men, they just can’t be the Good Guys, as a matter of pure ontology. White men qua white men are incorrigibly the Bad Guys. Especially if they are Christians.
They can do good only insofar as they delete themselves qua what they are.
Thordaddy’s argument terminates then upon a simple proposition: It’s OK to be a white man. If that’s so, then: if you are a white man, get on with being a good one, whatever that means to you.
After all, to say that it’s OK to be a white man, and that you should then get on with it (whatever it is), is no more than to say that it is OK to be you, and that you should therefore get on to being the best you that you can be. In the last analysis, it’s rather a truism, no? How could it be otherwise? What, for the love of Christ, is the alternative?
The Orthosphere 
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Thanks for this take on Thordaddy’s notion of supremacy. I suppose he might be using the world to denote a racial telos, or ideal racial form, to which a race is (or ought to be) tending. If so, this would be the same notion the alt-right indicates with the phrase “becoming who we are.” And this does, of course, comport with the Christian worldview of the Fall and redemption.
The Left has made the phrase “White supremacy” into lexical kryptonite, but back when it was simply the name of a political policy, it denoted the policy that whites would not submit to being ruled by non-Whites. They would not submit to living in a world ordered to the telos of Blacks, or Jews, or Chinamen. And White supremacists would not submit to these things because they believed to do so would disfigure their nature and deflect them from their telos.
Thus, under this construction, a man who rejects White Supremacy accepts White Submission. There is no third option (under this construction). But it should be noted that White Supremacy entails supremacy over non-whites only where populations are mixed, since segregation avoids submission just as well as supremacy does.
And it should also be noted that this construction would seem to be confirmed by just about everything non-whites write about the agonies and indignities they suffer while living in a society ordered to the telos of Whites (or what they call Whiteness).
Great point! I suppose that is why God divided us up into peoples, tongues and nations. A little bit of diversity goes a long way within populations. Each racial group probably contains enough diversity within itself to keep it active and busy for the next ten thousand years trying to agree on things.
One other thing. What I wrote above would comprehend Thordaddy’s notion of radical autonomy and fit it in to the classical understanding of freedom. The modern idea of freedom is, as he says radical autonomy, or freedom of the will—doing as one pleases. The classical idea is that one is (or ought to be) free to realize one’s telos. Perhaps we could call this teleological autonomy. The White Supremacist would reject a radical autonomy that permitted a white person to repudiate their racial destiny, but would assert the teleological autonomy of the race. I don’t see that this view is incompatible with the recognition that individuals, and the human race in its entirety, also have a destiny or telos, and that they should be free to make their way towards that destiny.
This is a great insight. Permanent Submission to a foreign telos could not but seem unjust. This again argues for an eventual Great Sortition of peoples, so that such Submission is always temporary, as of the visitor to Rome who, out of respect for his Roman hosts, behaves for his time within their limes as they do, and in accordance with the customs and habits of the Romans living out their telos; who Submits for a time to the Supremacy of Romanitas.
The other thing that strikes me about your parsing of Submission and Supremacy is that for the first time it allows me to flesh out the concept of white privilege. That concept had always struck me as just nuts. What was all this talk of “privilege”? I was just living my life as a normal American. I was living it under the order of Americanitas, if so we may call it. As a normal American, Americanitas is to me only slightly more noticeable than the water is to the fish. Now that I think of it, the only times I have noticed it have been the times when I have returned to America from sojourns in foreign lands – even those, such as Britain, that are close cultural relatives of America – and have enjoyed a curious relaxation. It is a feeling of relief, at being home, among my own people, where I understand how everything works, and how my people normally think, and what they mean by what they say. It is a feeling of no longer worrying about the propriety of my behavior.
That feeling of comfort and ease among my own people is perhaps what is meant by “white privilege.”
For, Americanitas is fundamentally foreign to those who do not feel themselves to be truly American; and their only option while in America is to Submit to the Supremacy of Americanitas, and conform themselves uncomfortably to its ways. That Submission would naturally breed resentment, especially to those who, while not Americans, nevertheless consider themselves permanent denizens of North America, who have as much right to live there as the North Americans. Naturally they would be led to destroy Americanitas, where they could and at the margins, both by sapping its customs and observances, and by bringing into our limes millions of their connationals, so that Americanitas might be displaced as the local cultural hegemon.
Interesting.
Yeah, I’d say you’re pretty close with that statement.
Specific examples of what people mean by “white privelege” include such things as school policies structured to control behaviors white students are less likely than their minority counterparts to engage in or commit, resulting in the minority group being highly over-represented in disciplinary actions of various sorts inflicted upon them, compared to their white school mates. I posted a little write-up about it at my old blog, here:
http://dwebsters.blogspot.com/2009/09/ending-white-racism-in-americas-public.html?m=1
Same thing when it comes to the racial demographics of the prison population in the U.S. It’s not that minority criminals are criminal-criminals; it is that “white privelege” has stacked the deck against minority races, in that the laws written and enacted to control and punish criminal behavior just so happen to neatly align with typical white standards of behavior.
Since whites are less likely than blacks or Native Americans, etc., to engage in certain behaviors the law deems to be criminal, and since the laws are made by a majority white population to reflect their view of what does and what does not constitute criminal behavior, then this is yet another glaring example of “white privilege” top-to-bottom.
Another interesting twist to all of this is what effect it has on those who embrace the concept of the law recognizing no distinction between persons that we’ve been discussing in the other thread.
Kristor…
Thank you. Your words are always relevant and insightful.
To put a Dr. Charlton spin on things, “white man” is choosing self-damnation.
Yet, IF most “white men” don’t even care about self-damnation THEN the demonic powers aren’t likely to feel satisfied in their “victory.”
Insert the perpetuating self-annihilation. A literal abnegation of the self. “Its” origins, anti-racism. Ergo, the annihilation of the self starts with a hatred for one’s father, secularly-squeaking.
“white (s)upremacy” is RACISM writ large in the eyes of the anti-racist (radical autonomist). It is the mechanism by which white boy remains entrenched in a perpetuating self-annihilation SUCH THAT literal damnation becomes his mundane existence.
Still… white (S)upremacy is always his last respite.
IF…
He can learn how to articulate “it” as such.
This literally starts with recognizing the gaping difference between “white (s)upremacy” (as so relativistically ill-defined by the enemy) and white (S)upremacy (the actual ordered articulation of the phenomenon). And this recognition is triggered by a (C)apitalization and everything that this entails in regard to the English language.
Ws— wrong
WS — wrong
ws — wrong
wS — right…
It is that simple. Only the last articulation overtly falsifies “universal equality.”
I offer this up as some fleshing out of “radical autonomy” as self-annihilating made some seven years ago when the “gay marriage” debate was in “our” face.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2010/10/23/a-christian-who-almost-gets-it/#disqus_thread
Thordaddy, your theory of the homosexual nature is interesting. I’m sure there is at least some merit to it. Honestly, I have never really understood homosexuality very well. All the homosexuals I have ever known were doted on by their mothers; without exception that I can think of off hand, they had poor and minimal relationships with their fathers, if any relationship with them at all. In almost every case that I have intimate knowledge of, the mommas “ruled the roost,” so to speak, especially when it came to that particular child; not necessarily with any of their siblings (if in fact they had/have any siblings). In my view, which has been formed by my experiences and knowledge of these people, homosexuality is a psychological issue that starts with the mother. The fathers are often very much opposed to the mother’s doting on the favored child, but some of them will tolerate it to keep peace in the marriage.
I know a widow woman whose 53 year-old son still lives at home with her and is homosexual. The subject of his homosexuality came up in a conversation between us a few years back, and at some point she said to me, “My husband always used to say that I would one day regret the way I raised him, but I haven’t started regretting it yet.” As far as I know her other two children turned out pretty normal. I tell that story because it’s more or less typical of the backgrounds of the homosexuals I actually know fairly well. I have also known women (mothers) who, by all appearances, were doing their damnest to turn one of their boys into a homosexual, but the kid just didn’t take to it for whatever reason. For some women, raising a homosexual child is a kind of status thing, best I can tell.
Mr. Morris…
I have no theory per se…
What I have is a simple A=B extrapolation indicative of a fanatical belief in “universal equality.”
Homo=same=EXACT same=SELF…
From there, “we” can draw the conclusion that the homosexual is a radical “sexual autonomist.” Essentially, asexual. A self-annihilator.
Homosexuality is self-annihilation.
“Nature versus nurture” is merely the “make tricks” of a Hegelian implosion. There is no synthesis in the matters at hand.
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