Warsaw Journal #2

^[1]4,542 words

September 21, 2018

Reading Breitbart News online this morning. Sometimes I get depressed and I don’t want to be on either side of these political fights. The Leftists are deranged, controlling, addicted to their power, and the Right appear to be without sympathy or empathy for anyone but themselves. And yet, it is the Right’s point of view that always feels right to me. The Left literally have no logic. They literally run on feelings, “compassion,” and virtue-signaling, which they then force upon you, under penalty of law.

I have feelings, too: I feel love and loyalty for my civilization, my country, and the little corner of the world I grew up in. Especially now. In my twenties I was a Kerouac-Patriot; I crisscrossed the continent continuously. America felt like an entity to me – a giant, mysterious being. It had a heart and a soul, which I wanted to connect to, which I drew sustenance from.

Earlier, though, in college, it was European history I was infatuated with. France, Germany, Britain. Sartre, Nietzsche, and the Beatles. That seemed the best course of study, since that’s what my present society was based on. I wasn’t interested in anything else. What else was there? The history of the Arabs? The development of Japan? Other people in college got into stuff like that. I had zero interest. What I felt driven to immerse myself in was the history of the West. The Bible, the Greeks and Romans, Medieval Europe, and eventually, the early United States – and, finally, my own short stretch of time on Earth. The people I needed to know about and understand were the cultural figures of Europe. Goethe, Flaubert, and Samuel Johnson (“the Andy Warhol of his time”) – these were the people I could most relate to. I could have been them. I sort of was them.

You can always find yourself in a Shakespeare play. Or a Smiths song. I have read the Turgenev novel Fathers and Sons every decade or so, over the course of my life, and have identified with the university student son, the son’s nihilist friend, or the upper middle-class father, depending on where I was in my own life. Sure, I can read non-Westerners and have a similar understanding or relate to them in some ways. Sure, it is good for me to experience the other literatures of the world (or music or spiritual practices), but they are not my primary home. Western Civilization is my primary home. This is where I belong. This is where I find myself mirrored, and my problems and my version of the human condition: in the accumulated wisdom of my own race. All the other races already know this. They do it, too. Of course they do it. It’s obvious. And yet the television, The New York Times, and my well-meaning liberal friends on Facebook all tell me such racial centrism is evil – that I need to renounce my race, my gender, my sexual preference. I am the problem. I should be ashamed.

***

I do feel bad for my liberal friends during the Trump era. How much it would suck to not be allowed to enjoy Donald J. Trump! I love Trump. I rejoice in him. He’s hilariously funny. Super-sharp. Has brilliant political instincts. To be alive during his presidency is something I will always be deeply grateful for. One friend and I sometimes meet up for a meal at a local diner, and before we eat, we bow our heads and say a prayer for the God Emperor. Finally he has come – to destroy all the hypocrisy, the stupidity, the pomposity, the vanity of these thieves and jackasses who are our leaders. Oh, joy. Oh, God. Oh, thank you, President Trump, for risking your life to give us faith and hope again. Then, my friend and I recount Trump’s latest activities, laughing and guffawing over our food. He is killing it, we conclude before we calm down enough to eat.

Then, I look at my liberal friends: all sad, depressed, grinding their teeth, oblivious to the humor, the lightness of touch, refusing to be entertained. Lost in their self-righteous and childish ideas. But even more tragically: They miss the fun.

Look at how the world leaders are in awe of him. Putin! Another World Historical Figure, and he comes to America and stands in absolute wonder at the Trump phenomenon. Macron, that fruitcake, comes to America and can’t stop kissing, hugging, and flirting with the Great Trump. President Duda of Poland wants to build a military base and call it “Fort Trump!” Even little Kim Jong-un, the darkest and most sadistic leader on the world stage, is eventually bemused and disarmed by the generous, open-hearted, and utterly fearless God Emperor. He is like a deity among men; he is the Great Orange One.

You don’t believe me? Go watch old clips of him. He’s so fucking cool. In every context, in every medium. Of course all the fake-cool people always hate the genuinely cool person. Trump’s cool runs so smoothly and comes from such a deep and natural place, it can be described as Buddha-like. The sly humor which is present in his every word and gesture demonstrates his otherworldly superiority over the timid, cowardly toadies he is surrounded by in our nation’s capital.

Imagine what it must have been like for him, entering the White House, unprepared, with no real experience, the entire political establishment seething with hatred toward him, all of them corrupt to the bone as a result of the evil ways of their brethren. Does he crack? Does he cave? No, he laughs. He trolls. He has fun. He meets with bikers. Lol.

 

September 22, 2018

Today, it’s rainy and cold outside in Warsaw. Grey skies. Good day to sit in a café and drink hot tea.

A Polish guy at my AA meeting was doing a little impromptu performance art piece about winter in Poland: the dark sky, the cloud cover, no sun for months, and thus the dark fatalism of the Slavic soul is formed . . .

Might have lost Zofia last night. Tried to talk her into coming out. It was the last warm night that I will be here, so it seemed worth pressing her on it. She was tired after writing, she said. “Just come out and sit for thirty minutes,” I begged. “I’ll set the alarm on my phone.” She said no.

I have a couple other possibilities from Tinder, which will also probably flake. No news there. And then this interesting and attractive woman was at my AA meeting as well. She looked Polish, but when it was her turn to talk, she had an intriguing American accent that I couldn’t quite place. I wasn’t going to speak at the meeting, but since she was there, I spoke up and made some funny comments about “anger,” making people laugh – and impressing her, I hoped.

Outside, afterward, I went right up to her. My thinking was, she’s American, she’s stuck in Poland, she’s probably teaching diplomats’ kids or some such . . . so we can hang out! But no, she was Polish, she just has a great accent, a great American accent. I chatted her up a bit, anyway. She had fine features and spoke so well, and was dressed in a simple but elegant black top and jeans. Unfortunately, my attempts to chat her up failed. So I had to bail.

When I got home, I looked at Zofia’s Facebook page and saw there was a lot of political stuff – strident stuff against men. There was a picture of her at a demonstration with that cold grimace she has. So she’s a hard-core Lefty. She would have hated me eventually. But there was that glimmer. That short walk we went on, where the vibe was light and fun. I got her to smile. I got her to laugh. Maybe she doesn’t want laughter in her life.

Being an academic, she has to be on the Left, I suppose. Poor Zofia, all full of suspicion and hatred. And is there anything crueler you can do to a woman than to convince her that men are the enemy? “Your father’s evil. Your brother’s evil. Your boss is evil. And all those men trying to date you? They’re the most evil of all!” What better way to destroy a woman’s happiness?

***

News item on the Internet this morning: In their orientation package for incoming students, Cornell included a checklist to see if you are “privileged” or “oppressed.” Lol. Talk about injecting young minds with poison. Divide and conquer.

The Poles and Hungarians have the same forces working on them, too, but it’s harder to divide a country where everyone looks like each other, and where everyone has the same ten names. They’re a frickin’ family compared to “diverse” America. It’s easy to divide us. The Left might very well win in America. What will they rename us? The People’s Federation of Safe Spaces. The PFSS. Oprah will be our first President; then she’ll have an “accident” and some psychopath will take over. First order of business: Empty all white male’s bank accounts!

***

Every day I worry about publishing any of my real thoughts on any of these subjects. Yesterday, I read the Wikipedia pages on Richard Spencer and Milo, arguably the two founders of the Alt Right – a phrase they probably thought was funny and catchy. I would guess that in both their cases, they had no idea how famous they would become, and probably would have done things differently if they had. They made lots of mistakes. And so their Wikipedia pages, written by Leftists who hate them, are pure propaganda hit jobs. These are Stalin-level unpersonings. What will happen to them if the Democrats come back into power? Spencer and Milo might be best off disappearing for real – lest they get disappeared.

Milo still has an actual Website, a kind of Alt Right magazine-type thing. I don’t know if anyone looks at it. People on the Right don’t seem to. Milo was in over his head from the start. All the early Alt Right guys were. They probably assumed Trump would lose, and they would continue to represent an obscure branch of the conservative movement, and that maybe twenty years down the road they would come into their own, and end up running a big think tank or editing important webzines.

But then, Trump didn’t lose, which led them to conclude that their voices were actually “wanted” within the “conversation.” Like right now. So they tried to speak out, and the next thing they knew, they were the international poster boys for the New Nazi Racism, and of course must be destroyed before one word escapes from their mouths. Probably theirs was a worst-case scenario: They were the first, they didn’t know what the rules were, and they were, themselves, still living in a different world: the pre-Trump era, when the Right was safely neutered and nobody paid attention to it.

So yeah, don’t do what Spencer and Milo did, that’s the lesson there. Don’t be the first guy over the ramparts. On the other hand, hanging back might not work, either. You’ll be accused of something at some point, as the grinding destruction of America continues.

***

One last note on the name “Alt Right.” This designation has since been denounced and retired by the people who have followed in Milo and Spencer’s footsteps. Even if they liked the name, they couldn’t use it after Charlottesville, because of the bad optics. But my guess is, the phrase will linger. There was a point, about two or three years after “punk rock” broke in 1977, that people stopped using that phrase. “Punk” had imploded on itself, the scene had collapsed under its own contradictions, and all the trendies wanted to move on to the next thing. “Punk was dead.” But in fact “punk” was not just any pop-culture trend. It stayed. It influenced everything that happened after it. And so, after ten or fifteen years passed, people started using the term “punk rock” again. Because what else would you call it?

That will be the Alt Right. The reason it caught on in the first place was because it was the perfect word to describe that first wave of guys. They were young, they were conservative, but being educated in the “identity politics” era, they were genuinely different from previous generations of conservatives. So they were the “alternative Right,” just like there was alternative film, alternative music, and alternative everything else.

 

September 23, 2018

Walking around the Centrum area this afternoon. I’m waiting at a crosswalk, and I see this big, hulking Polish guy on a bike, making odd faces, and wiggling his bike handles in a funny way. He looks like an old college friend of mind, which happens; Poles in general all look like someone you vaguely remember from school.

I’m not sure who he’s making faces at, and then I see that he is with a girl. She is also on a bike, in front of him. They are on a date! Cute. Then I look closer and see who the girl is. It’s Zofia! Fuck! I hide behind some other people waiting at the crosswalk. Then I look again. Am I sure it’s her? The problem with these Central European ethnostates is that everyone fucking looks the same! They literally all have the same skulls. But yes, I am pretty sure it is her.

The light changes, and off they go, riding quickly away. Weird. What a small world. But the truth is these cities – Warsaw, Budapest – they are actually not as big as they sound. They feel big because the people drive like maniacs and everyone hurries around in business suits during the day, but they are nowhere near the size of the major American cities. Warsaw is probably the same size as San Antonio or Denver, if that. Still, seeing Zofia made me feel bad. So that’s why Zofia couldn’t sit with me for a half hour after her writing day; she had a date with a huge Polish dude. Who was handsome and funny, I have to admit.

The size thing would be a problem if I lived here. I am about half the size of the average Polish dude. It’s like a whole country of Varsity high school football players.

But I keep moving, because that night I have a date with Olga. We are meeting down by her apartment, at the very southern end of Warsaw’s longest subway train. They only have two subway lines, and the longest one is not very long, but still, it makes me a little nervous when I study a map and see how far away it is. To venture into the distant outskirts of Warsaw to meet a stranger named Olga: Somewhere in my psyche, a little alert light turns on.

So far, on this trip, I have seen nothing like the old Communist crap that used to go on in these countries. They’d rip you off, or invite you out and then force you to buy everyone drinks and then leave you in some far-off location if you refused (this happened to me in Yugoslavia in 1987). Or the hotel staff steals your jeans and your Swiss Army knife out of your suitcase (this also happened to me on the same trip, in Bulgaria). So I pause when I realize how far out of the city I will be, and who knows what’s down there, or who Olga is. This is a Tinder date, after all.

But I go. It takes only fifteen minutes to get there. I get out of the subway and find myself in a good, old-fashioned Communist wasteland – meaning it’s a run-down suburb: one or two massively ugly and run-down apartment buildings, a few depressing shops, and a flat, dull landscape with nothing to see in any direction.

I proceed to the café and find Olga, who did not put her age on her profile, so I’m really taking a flyer here. But she is fine. Cute, even, with her thick European lips, straight brow, and expensively coiffed hair, and so on. She’s a little saggy in the face, but that’s okay. I can have a chat with her.

We sit. We talk. Her English is pretty rough. I order a sandwich, which I am told will be on a special “bread with hole in it,” which turns out to be a bagel. This fancy-sounding sandwich – which is quite expensive by Polish standards – ends up being some melted cheese on a (sort of) bagel with lettuce and tomato. But I eat it and have an equally overpriced lemonade, but whatever. The café is nothing special. The people working there are not nice or helpful. When my sandwich falls apart, and I go to the counter and gesture toward a roll of paper towels right in front of me, they grab the paper towels away and hand me one napkin! Lol. Now this is the Communism I remember! Sour faces all around. Even the youngish girl sitting at a nearby table is noticeably drab and unattractive. This is in contrast to downtown Warsaw, where everyone is good-looking and running around and enjoying their lives. So maybe it’s not Communism, it’s just the suburbs.

Meanwhile, Olga – she is strange. We try to talk. It doesn’t go well at first. I don’t know what to talk to her about, and so I decide to tell her about the AA meeting I go to by the university. I say, “Do you know what Al-co-holics Anonymous is?” She spits up her drink and laughs out loud. She says that she, too, is in AA.

So that gets the conversation rolling. It turns out she was into the punk scene and the music scenes of Warsaw in the 1980s and ‘90s. She went to certain shows and remembers the key moments. I mention my own adventures and some of the grunge celebrities I knew. She tells me about how the Communist leaders would let the punk rock stuff happen, because it “released” the energy of the young people, so they wouldn’t cause trouble in other ways.

I take a huge dive into the unknown by telling her that I am interested in Right-wing stuff. She says she is, too. I believe her, but this also sets off another alert level in my subconscious: She is in AA, like me. She is Right-wing, like me. She was into punk, like me. She has also told me she is unemployed at the moment, which sets off my special Communist scam radar triggering system. Like, does she need money? Does she want something from me? Is she going to lure me somewhere and steal my wallet? I made her pay for her own drink, though, so she knows I’m not a total pushover.

But the conversation remains entertaining. I enjoy her company. After I finish my sandwich, we go for a walk around the neighborhood –   which, again, looks like a dystopian movie set. I think the American suburbs are ugly, but this place hurts your soul . . . Anyway, after twenty minutes, we’ve circled around and come back to the subway station. I say I’d better get going and go in for a light hug and … she won’t hug me! WTF? We just had this fun, two-hour date, and she is literally not willing to give me an actual hug. I mean, whatever, I don’t care, but how strange. I was like, “So you don’t want to give me a hug?” And she says, “I know I appear to be open, but not like that.” I’m like, whatever, okay. And then I ask if she wants to exchange information, and she says yes yes yes, she does, and quickly gets me on her Facebook. So then, I think, what is up with these people? But whatever. I don’t know. The Catholic thing? They think foreigners are sex maniacs? Doesn’t matter, I leave.

So then I get back on the subway, realizing as I do that I have been riding the M2 line exclusively until tonight. The M2 is the newest line, which is very nice and clean. But this is the M1, and it is not so nice and clean, and goes north and south into the furthest suburbs, so at 8:30, on a Saturday night, I am seeing Warsaw’s bridge and tunnel crowd, the suburban kids coming into the city to party it up. This demographic, which I hadn’t really seen before, is kind of scary and hilarious – like this girl with huge fake eyelashes, trashy lipstick, and slutty clothes; not the classically attractive Slavic faces I have been seeing everywhere, but instead a slightly misshapen, provincial face. And around her some sketchy dudes with terrible fashions, retard faces, and the possibility of imminent violence in their expressions. I’ve been living in a bubble of sorts in my little tourist circuit of “nice parks – university cafés – Old Town – hostel full of Westerners.”

I was supposed to go hang with my Texan-American friend later to watch the UT football game at his place, but when I realize I’ll have to walk all the way through the center of town, I imagine all the drunken Offensive Linemen Poles I will be encountering and decide to stay home. A good call, probably, but then later, when I hear a gang of young people singing and laughing in the park beneath my window at 1:30 AM, I feel bad for being so suspicious and paranoid.

 

September 24, 2018

Woke up yesterday thinking about Olga. I wrote a journal entry about it, and then headed toward the Centrum, to a different AA meeting than the one I normally go to, since it was Sunday. Well, out on the street there were all these bodies around: people asleep on the ground, in the subway, sprawled out leisurely in the grass in the park. These are not homeless people, these are people who got very drunk last night and decided to lay down and go to sleep, right where they were, or maybe fell and couldn’t get up. Normal people move around them without concern the next morning. They step over them. And this is, like, 10:30 in the morning, so imagine what it must have looked like at 6:00 AM. It looked like a horror movie. All these bodies everywhere.

So I went to the AA meeting – which was weirdly intense, but that happens at times – on a Sunday morning. And then I went to a nice café and got several hours of good work in, and then I jumped on the metro to check out The Soho Factory, which is some sort of arts complex across the river in the area known as Praga, which used to be poor and run-down, but has now been revitalized into some sort of fake artists’ neighborhood.

So I get there, and it’s getting dark, and I’m wandering around this complex, which looks like a congregation of trendy restaurants and artsy-looking condos. It’s late, raining, and cold, and I don’t know exactly where I am, or where the Soho Factory actually is, or what it will look like, and this woman comes walking by on the otherwise deserted walkway and I say to her, “Soho Factory?” She stops and smiles – she, in her fancy, high-tech raincoat with a hood and black skinny jeans and Vans. She comes over to where I’m standing, under an awning, and pulls her hood off, and out comes the flowing blonde locks. And her beautiful face! It’s like a TV commercial. And she’s smiling, all flush from the cold, and sparkling with youthful positivity.

She proceeds to tell me that I am at the Soho Factory. This is it – all these buildings and restaurants, and the apartment building under whose awning I am standing. So then, I start asking her questions: about the area, about herself. How does she have such good English? What does she recommend in Warsaw? Blah blah blah. And as I talk, I start thinking, “Ask her for her number!” I try not to reveal this in my face, but inside, my inner voice keeps telling me to ask her. So I blurt it out, “Can I have your number?” It’s so random, and I’m so nervous, my voice sort of cracks. But she says, “Sure!” and gets out her phone, and I dick around trying to figure out WhatsApp, which isn’t working because I’m not online, but I don’t figure that out, being so nervous. With her help, I eventually get it straight.

So I get the number. The advanced thing to do would have been to ask her to have a coffee right then. Maybe she would have brought me back to her apartment, which would have been interesting. She’s obviously an educated young woman from a prosperous family. But no, I just get the number, but that’s enough. As I walk away, I’m beaming and happy, congratulating myself on my courage.

So then I Facebook message my Texan-American friend, and he comes to meet me at another café, and we discuss my technique with the Soho Factory girl and how it went and what I should do next. I had to admit I was a bit baffled by how to proceed. He counselled, “Decide what you want to happen and design it in that direction.” I decided I wanted to marry her, or at the very least make out with her, and so I came up with a plan that was pretty much a date. I texted that to her this morning, and an hour later, she texted back that she had a boyfriend, and so on. She obviously could feel my “date” direction. She even said she thought we were going to talk about fun things to do in Warsaw. Lol. Yeah, we were, and then we were going to get married!

To be honest, this was a bit of a relief. I don’t really see myself with someone that glamorous and beautiful. She was too perfect. I see myself more with a Brittany Pettibone type – cute, but maybe a little streetwise, and also leading a Right-wing revolution that will get her killed in a shootout with authorities in some deserted industrial area in northern Sweden – not someone who at thirty owns a condo at the Soho Factory, which to be honest was totally lame and bourgeois. But she was so pretty, and so sweet, and so trusting and open. Pretty, rich girls are often like that, because the world is so nice to them. It was such fun meeting her, though. Riding the tram back to the center, with her precious phone number in hand, I was so proud of myself. I was exultant! But then it comes to nothing. But still, just the conversation about her with the Texan-American, chatting late into the night, was so nice. He is very smart about women. He is very smart about everything. He explained health care to me, which was something I’ve always wanted to know. Why do I pay so fucking much for health care? He explained it to me. And now I know.