Counter-Currents
1,242 words
As my mama always used to tell me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, Jimmy, maybe that’s because there’s nothing nice to say.”
I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for hours trying to think of something nice to say about 2021, and the only good thing I can say is that it’s almost over.
It certainly wasn’t as dramatic as 2020, but only in the sense that being told you have cancer is more dramatic than cancer’s slow, inexorable progression. This year was merely a thudding, numbing extension of everything bad from last year. It was only notable in that it marked a slow-motion continuation of everything that went wrong in 2020. Hemingway famously said that bankruptcy happens gradually, then suddenly. Last year was when the slow, generations-long decline of the United States entered the “suddenly” phase. To make it all immeasurably worse, this year the “suddenly” phase was merely extended, stretched out like saltwater taffy being pulled in slow motion for maximum mental torture. It’s like being trapped standing motionless and forced to watch as a bullet approaches you at five miles an hour.
Everything — from postal delivery to getting a doctor’s appointment to acquiring that part you need to fix your lawnmower — took longer this year.
This year marked the return of 1970s-style inflation and 1970s-style humiliating military withdrawals. The economic and demographic declines got worse. Crime got worse. The gaslighting about COVID-19 and vaccines got worse.
The mentally retarded level of political polarization got worse. There are no ties that bind the people in this country together anymore. Consumerism is all we share, and life in America in 2021 felt like one aimlessly stupid Black Friday brawl at Costco — but with everyone wearing masks.
The white male entirely disappeared from TV and print advertising. A visiting Martian, exposing himself only to the media, would assume that earthlings had killed off all the white males sometime late in 2020.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.
January 6 was when all white Americans became terrorists, despite the fact that nearly all of the white people involved in January 6 took great pains to distance themselves from the very idea that they’re white. As foolhardy as that entire incursion into the Capitol Building was, the government and media’s hysterically draconian response was even more appalling. And whatever the Capitol incursion was intended to achieve — assuming, perhaps wrongheadedly, that the perps had even bothered to think about a goal — it didn’t stop the installment of a senile, anally incontinent, remote-controlled embarrassment of a President, and one who was installed from behind barricades and barbed wire and protected by thousands of National Guard troops. This should disturb anyone who thinks, against all historical evidence, that it matters much who’s President at any given moment. But if the Trump era taught people anything, it’s that no matter whom you vote for, the government still gets elected, and the President is merely a sort of concierge meant to distract you from who’s really pulling the strings.
I’ve been trying to think of anything that improved in 2021, and I’m drawing blanks. While I allow that this may be my fault, I tend to blame 2021.
I’m not sure what else to say about 2021 except I’m glad I got out alive. Then again, I’m typing this with two days left in the year.
Everyone knows the world’s going to end one day, but no one ever seems to think it will happen during their lifetime. Perhaps 2020 represented the stabbing, 2021 was the bleeding-out, and 2022 will bring the autopsy. Maybe 2020 was when the dam broke, 2021 is when the water slowed down to a trickle, and 2022 will be when a drought is finally declared.
Like misbehaving teenagers, we’ve all been grounded and sent to our bedrooms to mope. The lockdowns have been going on for almost two solid years now, and they’ve only served to shove people further down the digital hole, where everyone grows more alienated the more “connected” they are and where we’re all developing a currently dormant case of collective PTSD that could explode given the right trigger.
A friend of mine who’s never been wrong about anything in the quarter-century I’ve known him used to insist that the forces of nature would one day intervene and compel the cultural pendulum that has lurched ever so leftward for generations to swing back the other way. Now he says he was wrong about that.
Regardless of everyone being wrong about everything, people are more stupidly confident in their ill-conceived political opinions than they ever were before. Even worse, most people seem convinced that they came up with those opinions on their own.
I realize this is all a bit of a bummer, no? Experience would tend to steer a discerning soul toward cynicism rather than optimism. It seems weak to be hopeless but foolish to be hopeful, and I’d rather be paranoid than gullible. False hope leaves me feeling empty and betrayed. I’d wish you a happy New Year, but wishful thinking has never worked for me in the past. I feel it is unethical to give people false hope. After all, things can always get worse, and life never ends well.
Then again, it’s a bit of a dick move to unnecessarily depress people. As grindingly frustrating as life can be, I would imagine that death gets boring after a while. So I’ll try to craft the remaining paragraphs so that they sound more like a homily for 2021 than a eulogy.
If my long, long life has taught me anything, it’s that it’s far easier to change oneself than it is to change the world. At the risk of being accused of committing the Sin of Individualism, I try to be realistic about what I can and cannot change, and most of what I can change involves myself. When I say there was nothing good about 2021, I’m referring to the outside world. There were some moments of great happiness in my personal life and in the lives of those I care about. And at the risk of committing the Sin of Corniness, I hope that 2021 brought some bright spots for this site’s readers. Should you accidentally stub your toe on some happiness in the New Year, I’d counsel you to savor it for all it’s worth.
The missus and I will stay home on New Year’s Eve and probably fall asleep before midnight like we did the past two years. And them some gangsters and yahoos in this little lakeside community will wake us up at midnight with a half-hour of uninterrupted “celebratory” gunfire.
At least here in the Northern Hemisphere, every year ends during its darkest days. Anyone who claims to know how next year will unfold is lying. If I know anything about what other people know, it’s that none of us knows what’s going to happen. We’ll just have to grit our teeth and walk straight into the blizzard despite the fact that we can’t see more than three feet in front of our faces, hoping that there’s something better on the other side.
For every year that I’ve been alive, springtime always follows winter, just as morning always follows night. If I don’t accidentally bump into a yeti in the midst of the long winter blizzard, maybe things will turn out okay. As foolish as it is to hope things get better, only an asshole would make things worse than they already are. My New Year’s resolution is to be a fool rather than an asshole.
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12 comments
I believe that the post-Trump Covid era differs little from most years in my relatively short life thus far. We’re back to the same old tired liberal status quo clinging to power – now no longer with a casual confidence but rather with a panicked desperation. What I’ve also learned from living in this pandemic is something that surprised me and many others: just how boring it is.
I’ll make one prediction: 2022 is the year Covid normalizes and is reduced to a common cold like all coronaviruses, as we’re already seeing with Omicron. The pandemic will end. This then leaves the System to either accept the reality or to continue a lockdown indefinitely for a disease that will no longer kill anybody. It’s that last part I’m most concerned about.
Since it will be an election year, I’m gonna guess that the udder of doom and gloom pandemic fear porn will be milked dry all the way to Election night.
I’m certainly hoping that isn’t the case and the pandemic is “officially” done by the Springtime. However, in my area, people have embraced with open arms and without question the re-installment of mask mandates for Omicron.
As much as the last two years have been insufferable, aggravating and retarded, I’m truly grateful to have a wonderful wife and two beautiful young daughters. My youngest, Madeleine, had a cyst removed from her trachea that was blocking one of her lungs in March, made a full recovery and is now walking and talking and growing like a weed. Until I had my girls, I never understood how true unconditional love felt, and it’s the most fulfilling thing in my life.
I’m also grateful to have the weekly rantings of Jim Goad. Always thought provoking and good for a few belly laughs. And had it not been for his move to CC, I wouldn’t have known this wonderful place existed. Thank you to all of the contributors and commenters that I look forward to visiting daily. Let’s hope for the best in 2022, but remain prepared for the worst.
Thanks. Glad your daughter’s doing well.
2021 has been one of the most mentally-taxing years of my life. Personified, I’d tell 2021 to go burn in hell.
Some former close “friends” and coworkers of many years revealed their true selves with verbal tirades and disturbing wishes for my life and safety when they discovered my pause at The SCIENCE™ and my desire to retain the autonomy over my health. Thankfully, I don’t have to waste any more time and energy on them. I’m also thankful that those in my family who opted-in to the juice haven’t sperged out on me and have respected my decision not to.
2020-2021 has offered me many opportunities to grow closer with some friends who’ve finally felt comfortable opening up about their fears for the white race. Because I didn’t spout BLM-loving BS like everyone else, they decided to test the waters with me about how I felt about it all. When I’ve told them their fears are valid and advocated for whites to continue existing, its like the flood gates of their years of worrying and questioning the official narratives burst wide open. Slowly, I’ve been pointing out a lot of differences while opening their eyes and minds. I’m getting closer to the point where I can share CC and AmRen with them. 2022 will likely afford that opportunity.
Becoming a close confidant for friends when it comes to our struggle has filled me with a lot of hope. That is one front I feel unquestionable positive growth on. And whenever I’ve felt doom over the current state of the world, coming here to read the articles and comments always lifts my spirits.
I don’t think wishing someone Happy New Year gives them false hope. The stars align for us when we take an active role in forcing them to move for us. The new year helps us reflect on what we’re trying to achieve and how to reorganize our energy output to get to where we need to be. “Happy New Year” is just as much a reminder to get started as it is a blessing of good fortune for someone.
Like so many here, I enjoy Jim Goad’s articles and Worst Week Yet updates. But I do worry, Mr. Goad, all that focus on negative news has got to be mentally taxing for your own psyche. You’re a talented writer that keeps us engaged and wanting more, so don’t let all the doom burn you out.
So to end this overly verbose comment, I wish a Happy New Year to all at CC and godspeed throughout 2022!
Thanks. Likewise.
You as well.
The Year That Blew
At least we’re going into 2022 with no illusions or delusions about the douchebag and douche baguette in The White House, not that any of us had any to begin with.
The fact that (supposedly) more than half of our allegedly “fellow Americans” put them there is the worst assault on “America” in its lifetime. More so than any ten Pearl Harbors or 9/11s.
Those were outsiders.
Maybe the downside of a successful democracy such as ours where few want for anything and few fear for anything relatively speaking, is that it’s bred a level of previously unforeseen consummate narcissism, reality be damned.
We’ve really turned a corner on that front. Racism, the flu, the weather- all exist for self-aggrandizement and cheap power-plays.
Erroneously claim to have American Indian blood because you covet some of that oppression those lucky stiffs enjoy, get found out, and just carry on calling people racists and spooky shitheads will continue to listen to -and vote- for you.
Claim on a black radio show that you’re such a cool happening chick that you listened to Tupac and Snoop Dogg when you were in college even though neither had recorded anything yet and then become Vice-President of The United States.
On the “gangsta rap” ticket.
“You never did think that we’d ever get together again, in America, didja?”
We shall see, Charlie Daniels.
Happy New Year to all you canny and free-thinking commenters here.
I get a kind of Breakfast Club vibe when I read the comments, a relatability that isn’t there with the guys and gals of the mass herd who’ll never venture outside the parameters of cozy hypnotic propaganda no matter how convincing the proof from dissident polemics or Rightist paeans of the restless wanderers of earth who live beyond naive beliefs in trite rearrangements of money and candidates as curatives. The rest of ’em are gonna ride this flaming shitwagon till the axle breaks and wheels fall off even after a carjacking, and still blame us. I’ve no missus nor kids and a misanthropic curmudgeon since toddlery, but the CC family and other empaths in cyberspace united in our standalone complex for the safety of white children, or Absolute Imperium Europa and all felt devotions in-between such extremes; it’s helped to pull many of us out of the muck of despair and not go the Brooks Hatlen or Tony Scott swan dive route. Always appreciated, till next year. Godspeed and good journey. Ave!
The terrors of dangerous vaccines, dangerous blacks, dangerous chinese-mexican fentanyl, continue to multiply. The good news is, we all know that as bad as it gets, sanity and common sense continue to be our exclusive property. As the cities descend into mentally ill multicultural hell, it is ordinary white people in the country who will prosper and survive.
It’s useful to divide change into reversible and irreversible change. Tax policy, interventionism, societal views on degeneracy, etc, are all reversible. A society that goes nuts with any of them can wake up one day and laugh it off.
Immigration, citizenship and voting rights, and to a lesser extent the makeup of the labor force are less reversible.
Your article Mr. Goad made me feel good in 2022! There’s something refreshing about blatant honesty, especially when my upper-middle class, highly educated family members carry on their lives with polite niceties and dangerous denial that White countries are at war.
Although isn’t the adage from mother, “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all”? But maybe that was your irony too! I’ve changed the saying to, “If you don’t have something nice to say, then think of something.”
Fortunately, I left a mentally ill Blue state in 2018 to a relatively small White community in a Red State, so I’ve escaped most of the diaper-on-faces Bolshevism. Having retired early I’ve kept myself occupied with appreciating the frequent, beautiful changing weather while musing on how I can help our folk in addition to donating money and attending conferences. Maybe 2022 will be the year a good idea comes to me.
So far my biggest joy in 2022 was joining Counter-Currents!
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