2,208 words
Imagine being a 75-year-old woman and losing your life over a cup of coffee. That is reportedly what happened on May 13th at a Tim Horton’s restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. According to surveillance footage released by local law enforcement, an obese, elderly black woman named Anita Grayson was dissatisfied with some aspect of her drive-thru experience. She proceeded to waddle into the establishment, berate a teenage employee, and instigate a brawl with a white, 20-year-old female shift manager. The unfortunate outcome: an apparent stroke or heart attack that led to her demise.
I am going to analyze and comment on the video footage released by the authorities in the most judicious way possible, while freely admitting my biases. I strongly believe that if we are honest with our biases, our perspectives are more cogent than those of the charlatan who claims to have none. Simply stated, I side with the Tim Horton’s staff, with a bucket load of caveats that I will delve into. So let’s begin the analysis with a thought experiment. What if nobody involved were black?
The family of Anita Grayson describe her as a matriarchal, God-fearing Christian grandmother who cared about her community and was passionate about her faith. In your mind, picture a kind, elderly white woman, a pillar of her community and church, berating, pushing, shoving, and punching a 17 and 20-year-old at a fast food restaurant. Difficult to see in your mind, isn’t it. That’s because It simply doesn’t happen.
Several years ago, the “Karen” trope was spread online to mock middle-aged white women who voice complaints with service industry workers. Yet, to my knowledge, claims were never made that “Karens” were prone to explode with violence because of a dirty spoon. Karens, as far as I’ve seen, never throw fists or pull hair because they were overcharged for their orders. And if they ever do, does the Karen trope leave a window open for sympathy when “Karen” is put in her place? No, because white “Karens” are never sympathetic, because they are an anti-white caricature, an effigy for brown people to ridicule.
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There is a lot to unpack with this story, so let’s get to the meat of it. The video surveillance clearly shows silver haired Anita Grayson walking into the Tim Horton’s, distressed. Apparently, a customer is being served at the counter, so she meanders around to the end of an adjacent counter, eyeing someone in the preparation area or possibly at the drive-thru window. There is a somewhat drawn-out period of her pacing around the end of the counter, probably attempting to get the drive-thru teenager’s attention, and then the video cuts to the initial confrontation.
There is a certain amount of self-entitlement and narcissism that is typically on display with these types of interactions. In her mind, the entire world should stand still to address her complaint. The customers being served at the counter, and doubtlessly at the drive-thru, are of no importance. In full honesty here, I’ve found myself feeling impatient in similar circumstances. That said, in my half century of living on this earth as a virile male with healthy levels of testosterone, I’ve never felt the need to throw my fists at others over a trivial complaint about a food order. Blacks, even the elderly, do not have the impulse control to reflect on the situation and see the pettiness they’re engaging in for what it is.
Back to the video. Regrettably, there is no sound, and further it is unfortunate that the authorities cut something out to jump to the confrontation. They must surely know that such edits open the door to conspiratorial thinking. My thought is that perhaps the customer at the counter, or another customer, entered the frame for a few moments and as such there were privacy concerns so they removed a short segment. This is entirely speculation.
When the confrontation begins, we see an overweight teenager enter the frame at the end of the counter, behind the swinging counter door. Because this is a minor, details on their identity are vague. It appears to be a female to me, probably a mulatto or light skinned black girl, or maybe Hispanic, in a dark colored long sleeve pullover. I will address this person, the teenage employee as “them” because of the ambiguity.
This person is obviously attempting to calm Anita Grayson down. Until Anita Grayson escalates tensions, the employee’s hand gestures are kept low, open hands with palms facing down in a non-threatening way. Because of the lack of audio, we do not know precisely what Grayson’s complaint was. Perhaps the wrong flavor coffee? Was the lid not fitted securely? Did some of the coffee get spilled on her vehicle’s interior? She doesn’t appear to be holding a bag of food or a drink cup that she wishes replaced. We can only speculate from the video evidence that it was something amiss about the service itself that she was incensed about. Perhaps they took too long? Maybe the 17-year-old was perceived as rude or dismissive? These questions are what get to the heart of the matter.
As these events unfold, it is clear that this is a deeply personal confrontation for Anita Grayson. After all, there is an ever-growing culture of vengeance for “disrespect” or “diss” with black people. This even occurs, perhaps more intensely, between blacks within their own tribe. Usually this is associated with younger blacks, but as the entitled children of the 50s, 60s, and 70s become the grandparents of the 2020s, the dignity and decorum of older generations is no longer to be expected. Anita Grayson is becoming the rule rather than the exception, even at 75. In my judgement, there was nothing the teenager, nor the shift manager, could have done to satisfy Anita Grayson. She wanted a public spectacle, a berating of the teenager to humiliate and bully them. And for Anita Grayson, the shift manager was guilty of not “minding her own business” as Anita unleashed her fury on the minor.
At this point, it is important that I tone down my biases and direct some due criticisms toward the Tim Horton’s staff. Once the shift manager intervened, the teenager should have walked away. I suspect that the minor felt the need to defend their position, but the manager should have directed the employee to return to the drive-thru or another job duty. Once the manager had stepped into the situation, the directive should be toward de-escalation. We hear no audio, but an offering of a $20 gift card or coupon might have at least given Grayson a bit of the satisfaction she was demanding. Again, removing racial considerations from the scenario, the soundest conflict management technique in such situations is to end it as quickly as possible with the least consequences. A $20 gift card to make it go away is worth every penny.
Things unfortunately didn’t play out this way, and it is no surprise. Anita Grayson was the elder person here, dealing with a minor teen and a young white woman barely out of high school. Those shift manager jobs barely pay a dollar or two more than the other employees, and their training is minimal. Having said that, I can’t fault the white woman’s behavior the first few moments of the conflict. She puts herself between Anita Grayson and the teenager. She directs Anita Grayson to leave, pointing toward the door. Her initial hand gestures are also non-threatening, but they become more assertive as the event plays out. This is when the crucial moment occurs that leads to physical violence.
Anita Grayson turns her attention back toward the teenager and makes a move in their direction. She reaches across the counter and puts her hand in the direction of the teenager, making the teenager recoil and move backwards. The white shift manager leans in to put herself between Grayson and the employee and Grayson continues to wag her finger at the employee and force herself in their direction. At this point, the manager puts her hand out to restrain Grayson from moving any closer to the employee and Grayson, in typical ghetto fashion, looses all pretenses of being an elderly, Christian, pillar of her community and moves forward with a violent shove, pushing the white women two or three feet back, totally dismissing the manager’s attempts to de-escalate, and continues to berate the teenager. This is when the brawl ensues.
I’ll take another opportunity here to criticize the staff’s behavior, especially the shift manager. Once Grayson laid hands on her, she should have been on the phone with police, no longer engaging the customer. I’ve endured the comment sections on a lot of videos related to this matter, and again, setting aside racial considerations, I can’t imagine being a 20-year-old and getting so angry at a 75-year-old woman that I put my face within an inch of hers, but that’s exactly what she did. That one or two seconds between the shove and the punch in the face landed by Grayson, we see the manager lurch at Grayson with a facial expression that I can only equate to an overly expressive anime character, putting her screaming face within an inch of Grayson’s. This confrontation is a sad commentary on the general state of our demise as a people. Of course there have always been white women of low class, but it seems that behaving like a “lady” is no longer a concern for most women. Still, this was a reaction to an act of aggression, so I sympathize.
This is where any criticism toward the Tim Horton’s employees ends for me. The old black woman was clearly the instigator and aggressor. At the point that she was told to leave, her continued presence was trespassing. There is absolutely nothing, no complaint whatsoever, that justifies her behavior. When the manager put her hand on Grayson’s shoulder to keep her from attacking the teenage employee, she was within her rights to protect and keep her away.
Simply put, Anita Grayson’s ghetto instincts kicked in, the law of the jungle. Her elderly, infirm condition didn’t matter at that moment. She was “disrespected” and she wasn’t going to back down, even against two healthy young people. This is how black people think, purely on impulse. If you think it goes away with age, here’s proof that it doesn’t.
And then she punched her. Anita Grayson reared back and swung her fist and connected with the white woman’s face, like Tyson vs Holyfield. And then the manager reacted exactly how you would expect. Let’s face it, we’re talking about a 20-year-old making at most $15/hr, not a 40-year-old professional, so it’s no surprise that she was no longer restrained. She jumped at Grayson, swinging her fists and bringing Grayson to the ground.
What happened from there was the mayhem you would expect. From police reports, Anita Grayson latched onto the manager’s hair and wouldn’t let go. The teenage employee and another, dreadlocked black employee ran to assist the manager and pull Grayson and her apart. Reports are that Grayson ripped hair from her scalp and left a bald spot. Further reports from the authorizes claim that video evidence shows Grayson picking the hair up in the aftermath and putting it in her handbag, an obvious attempt to hide the evidence of her misdeeds.
The footage shows Grayson sitting on the floor for a few moments to collect herself, and the teenage employee again motions for her to leave, and kicks at her handbag laying on the floor. Grayson attempts to get up and manages to sit on a chair. This is where the footage ends. However, police reports say that the staff attempted to assist her with a drink of water, and called paramedics when indications were evident that Anita Grayson was becoming unresponsive.
In the aftermath of her death, the daughter of Anita Grayson rallied the ghetto out in protest, and started a GoFundMe, because of course they did. In George Floyd style, they claim that someone else is accountable for her mother’s impulsive, horrible behavior and obese health condition. They want retribution, i.e “justice.” Here is a direct quote from Tawnda (yes, I said Tawnda) Grayson:
You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalived, That is diabolical.
Unalived. (Idiocracy was prophetic)
And as expected, the Fort Wayne ghetto is out for blood. Apparently, they believe a death related to a fight, even when instigated by a clearly unhealthy and elderly person, can be classified as a homicide if the unhealthy person happens to succumb to their poor health in the process. No personal accountability at all. This is where we are, America 2026. God help us all.
Yes, this author has biases. And yes, there is blame to be had all around. And no, people shouldn’t die because they didn’t like the service they were provided. That’s why they should behave like an adult, voice their complaint, escalate it to another level of management if need be, and move on. You live by the law of the jungle, you die by it. I have no sympathy.
24 comments
I’ll bet that the manager of the store had been in that situation before and had enough. It was probably a daily occurrence, just hadn’t escalated to violence until that point. Pent up frustration and she’d had enough.
Yes. You can’t be nice when you work in these service jobs in cities within any size. That is one surprising omission in this otherwise good article. They don’t just disrupt the environment. They change our behavioral standards as well.
Play stupid games, get stupid prizes…
Great article! I have had many such confrontations with blacks, too bad she was too old, and too fat to really “chimp out.” 🙃
It should be indubitably evident by now that being forced to eat 4 pounds of fried chicken every day of your “adult” life is a form of White Supremicist bullying to the point where a gentle, 75 year old Lady of the Black persuasion can’t even punch a White person in the face without suffering a cardiac malfunction. The NAACP, SPLC, etc., should demand a full scientific study to determine if chicken, specifically fried chicken, alters the behavior patterns of Sub-Saharan people to the point where they behave like barnyard fowl.
We should also note that watermelon, grape soda, menthol cigarettes, and Colt 45 are part of the Yakubian conspiracy to keep the Wakandans down, But the fried chicken may be the deadliest.
One less terrorist sheboon walks the planet. Thanks for the feel-good article.
Gabriel: …We see an overweight teenager enter the frame at the end of the counter…Because this is a minor, details on their [sic] identity are vague. It appears to be a female to me, probably a mulatto or light skinned black girl, or maybe Hispanic… I will address this person… as “them” because of the ambiguity.
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It’s not ambiguity that has you naming this individual as more than one, the plural “them,” Gabriel. It is trendy, feminist, politically correct “neopronouns.”
Pardon the observation of a “Boomer” who was taught correct pronoun grammar usage in the fourth or fifth grade — that a singular pronoun follows a singular antecedent object. It’s a White thing. Copilot tells us:
Pronouns are words used to refer to people, such as he/him/his for men and she/her/hers for women. Politically correct usage (or ebonic “woke” usage, if you prefer) emphasizes respecting a person’s self-identified pronouns rather than assuming gender based on appearance or name. Gender-neutral pronouns, like they/them/theirs, are commonly used for individuals who do not identify strictly as male or female, or when the gender of a person is unknown.
Do you suppose that “light-skinned” old Negress “self-identified” as more than one?
Aside from the pronoun thing that jumps out at me, your story is a good one.
I kept thinking of what Ben Klassen used to ask as I read it: “Who needs niggers?”
I believe the issue here is that it isn’t clear if it’s a male or female. Not a case of proper or improper pronoun usage, or feminist pronoun propaganda, but literally a difficult to properly identify individual in a grainy pixelized video.
Connor McDowell: May 26, 2026 I believe the issue here is that it isn’t clear if it’s a male or female. Not a case of proper or improper pronoun usage, or feminist pronoun propaganda, but literally a difficult to properly identify individual in a grainy pixelized video.
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If you say so, Conner. That’s what you believe.
I did not watch the video but was only addressing the grammar in Gabriel’s text.
In the 1950s practically-all-White world in which I was raised, pronoun grammar favored the masculine, admittedly. If the gender of a subject in a sentence was singular, and either male or unknown, the pronoun “he” was used later in the sentence to describe that subject. If female, as the person appeared to Gabriel to be, then “she” — but certainly not “they.” It was a simple rule that everyone agreed on prior to the feminization of our language.
I heard a comedian make my point with a war story joke: Someone in their trench said, “here they come now!” when it was only a single enemy soldier coming toward them.
That was funny to me. You may not have gotten it. Probably a Boomer comic, eh? Why not, “here comes one now.”
Some at C-C may be interested in feminization, not only of our language, but of our society and race, as Dr. Pierce described 25 years ago, here: “Poisonous Doctrines” at nationalvanguard.org
… I often talk about the feminization of our society and the feminization of our young men, and I make it quite clear that I don’t approve of these things. This offends some women, who take what I say personally. An expression I used in one broadcast that offended several of my women listeners enough for them to send me indignant letters of protest was the phrase “college girls of both sexes.” The implication was that college girls are not to be taken more seriously than feminized college boys. At another time I stated that permitting women to vote was a terrible mistake, and again I received letters from women who indignantly told me that they vote more responsibly than many men they know. Well, I’m sure they do, but I was talking about the overall effect of women’s votes, and that has been very damaging to our society.
Of course, women as a rule take everything personally, and so I explain individually to those who protest that I do take women seriously, that I value and respect them, and that I love them — but that I also understand that despite all of the fascinating individual differences among them, all of them are profoundly different from men.
When I receive protests from lawyers and from male Christians, however, I see the individualist fallacy at work. Men should not look at the world as individualists. They should understand that it is not only natural and proper but necessary to judge other men according to the group of which they are a part. Just as people have individual characteristics, they also have collective characteristics, and to ignore the latter from fear of being considered a racist or a sexist or an anti-Semite or a homophobe is the worst sort of folly. When one is in a war one doesn’t judge the soldiers on the other side as individuals. One doesn’t hold one’s fire because the fellow in the enemy’s uniform who is charging with a rifle in his hands may really have wanted to be a conscientious objector instead of a combat infantryman. If he’s in the enemy’s uniform, one shoots at him.
We understand, of course, that not all Blacks are muggers or gang-bangers or armed robbers or HIV-infected rapists, just as we understand that not every Jew is a predator who is actively scheming to destroy our people after he has sucked us dry. When I look at a Black I may see a criminal or a welfare bum, or I may see an honest, hard-working person, but in either case I see a Black, and I understand what his race is doing to my race collectively. Even if an individual Black with whom I am dealing is friendly, intelligent, and moral, I would be a fool to expect him to join me in a campaign to put an end to what his race is doing to my race and my civilization collectively….
Will Williams:
“I did not watch the video but was only addressing the grammar in Gabriel’s text.”
How can you address the gender of someone you haven’t seen in the video?
You would be incorrect in your understanding of grammar. For instance, if I spoke this sentence:
”Yesterday I called IT tech support, they told me that I should reboot my modem”.
This would be perfectly acceptable grammar if the gender of the individual who was spoken to is unknown or irrelevant to the sentence. This was just as true in the 50s as it is today.
If someone came to my home and broke into it, and I called the police and said “someone broke into my home, and they broke my window”, this would also be perfectly within grammatically correct usage.
In this video, the gender of the individual isn’t clear and apparently hasn’t been reported.
not everything is a political conspiracy cooked up by feminists and Jews against white people
https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true
Connor McDowell: May 27, 2026 Will Williams: You would be incorrect in your understanding of grammar. For instance, if I spoke this sentence:
”Yesterday I called IT tech support, they told me that I should reboot my modem”.
This would be perfectly acceptable grammar if the gender of the individual who was spoken to is unknown or irrelevant to the sentence. This was just as true in the 50s as it is today.
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Bullshit, Conner. For one thing IT tech was unheard of in the 1950s, much less rebooting a modem. For another, how do you know that when IT tech responded to your inquiry it was an individual and not an AI robot or an algorithm? “They” is acceptable for you when you refer to IT tech. I’ve never communicated with IT tech; I won’t argue with you. I will guess, however, that you were not around in the 1950s.
If someone came to my home and broke into it, and I called the police and said “someone broke into my home, and they broke my window”, this would also be perfectly within grammatically correct usage.
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If you say so, but, still, even in 2026 the word “someone” is singular, “they” is not..
The word “someone” is an indefinite pronoun that refers to an unspecified individual. It is inherently singular because it is based on the singular word “one” This means it requires singular verb forms in standard sentences. For example: “Someone is at the door” not “someone are at the door.”
not everything is a political conspiracy cooked up by feminists and Jews against white [sic] people
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Cooked up? I don’t pretend to be a modern young grammarian; that’s you.
I do know right from wrong. I say Gabriel was wrong, and you think you and he are right. That’s OK. Others can decide. What we’ve got here is a generational issue. Case closed.
Will Williams
“Bullshit, Conner. For one thing IT tech was unheard of in the 1950s, much less rebooting a modem.”
Reading comprehension and context clues are very important skills if you want to critique other people’s writing.
I’m going to have to just make my last comment and drop this one. It isn’t worth the bandwidth.
Nobody says “thine”,“thy”, and “thou” anymore, and it isn’t a generational thing. Language evolves, and “they” as a singular when gender is unknown or irrelevant has been in common usage for centuries. My IT example was just an example. I could have just easily said “I talked to someone at city hall on the phone and they told me that the city council meeting is on Friday”. This isn’t feminism or “pronoun respecting” or misgendering. It’s purely a grammatical utility in language that evolved over time to accommodate such scenarios. So unless the idea here is that we need to go back to using Ye Olde English circa 1550, I do not see the point in all of this at all lol.
good day sir.
I have to agree with you. For some reason, it just wouldn’t sound right to say “They are an only child.”
Randy: May 29, 2026 I have to agree with you. For some reason, it just wouldn’t sound right to say “They are an only child.”
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You don’t have to. But look out: that makes two of us.
If you had time on your hands, you could literally watch “black fatigue” videos all day long. If there were equivalent white videos, the media would promote them. There aren’t any. We all know what has to happen. #StartTheCull
You can watch YouTube videos of blacks rioting in various places and getting into massive brawls with one another. If you go to the comments section, most of the comments are similar to what you would find here at CC.
Its quite astonishing isn’t it? 24/7 content is out there by the darkness destroying white civilisation. Unsurprisingly they have nothing of any value to provide polite functioning white societies.
The police should not have to even engage in dialogue with these creatures, total waste of time trying to converse in English with dindus.
A bias is a systematic error in measurement, judgment, or reasoning that is directional, for example a thermometer that usually reads two degrees too high, or often judging women to be younger then they actually are, or believing blacks to be more violent than they actually are.
A thermometer that’s frequently off by two degrees but not in any particular direction is not biased; it’s just imprecise. And believing blacks to be rude and violent to the elevated degree that they actually are is also not a bias; it’s accurate perception.
I couldn’t agree more. You never know how fast a chimpout can just pop up out of nowhere.
I used to work with a young black guy who was this unassuming nerd type who spoke and dressed properly, was polite and friendly and (not joking) would literally practice church choir songs while he worked. Then one day his supervisor Dave(who was the biggest pushover) gently scolded him for being late too many times. This little ass dude turned into fucking Black Belt Jones in a split second, getting up in his face with his balled up fist, talking a mile a minute with the whole “On my mama nigga, you don’t EVER talk to me like dat bitch” routine, etc. The foreman had to threaten him with calling the cops to get him to leave. And the funniest thing about it was he was the third black dude to get fired in about a year for the same bullshit.
Fire Walk With Lee: May 27, 2026 … a young black guy who was this unassuming nerd type who spoke and dressed properly, was polite and friendly and (not joking) would literally practice church choir songs… turned into fucking Black Belt Jones in a split second, getting up in his face with his balled up fist…
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A case for racial separation. Who needs gorillas in our midst?
Never fall for that phony church crap from a nig nog, or from a White for that matter.
“You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalived, That is diabolical.”
A lot of tech platforms are so censored these days that people can’t even say things such as “death” or “suicide” – I believe YouTube in particular is bad for this. So users have started saying things like “unalive” to bypass the filters and restrictions. I’m not so sure that’s how it’s being used here, might just be a case of good ol’ fashioned ebonics.
Actually, I hope it is, since black grammar is just to be expected at this point, but the kind of Orwellian language control that’s rapid in its proliferation due to social media influence despite being so incredibly dumb sounding is far more worrying and unprecedented.
Instead of saying “Karmelo Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf” they say “poked,” but the worst is how they substitute “pew pew” for shoot. Reminds me of Idiocracy when the narrator describes the language of the future.
”But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts. Joe was able to understand them, but when he spoke in an ordinary voice he sounded pompous and faggy to them.’
Connor: May 27, 2026 …My IT example was just an example. I could have just easily said “I talked to someone at city hall on the phone and they told me that the city council meeting is on Friday”. This isn’t … misgendering. It’s purely a grammatical utility in language that evolved over time to accommodate such scenarios…
I do not see the point in all of this at all lol.
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Laugh out loud all you want. The point, Conner, is standards. We either have them when we communicate with one another or we don’t.
I say my standards, like my cause, is masculine and aristocratic. Your pronoun choices, to me, are feminine and democratic. I suppose you’ve never looked at our cause like that. Others will.
If you had actually talked to someone (singular) at city hall, you should know by his or her voice whether that individual was a male or a female — not a they. Just like you can probably tell if the individual you were speaking to was a White or a non-White. Maybe you can’t?
I’m going to have to just make my last comment and drop this one. It isn’t worth the bandwidth.
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Sure it is, if it makes our people think.
Let’s get off the subject of feminization of pronouns for the moment and look at the larger picture of the feminization of our society and our race by reading what Dr. Pierce had to say about that nearly 30 years ago, here: “WLP90: The Feminization of America” at nationalvanguard.org
by Dr. William L. Pierce
I ALWAYS HAVE BEEN very fond of women — perhaps too much sometimes. I always have enjoyed their company greatly. I have really worshipped feminine beauty. I have admired and respected women when they have served their purpose in the life of our people, as much as I have admired and respected men who have served their purpose.
Having said this, I must tell you now that I believe that a great part of the present pathology of our society can be ascribed properly to its feminization over the past century or two, to its loss of its former masculine spirit and masculine character.
This came to mind most recently when I saw and heard the reaction to Timothy McVeigh’s statement to the court on August 14, at the time he was sentenced to die. What McVeigh said was very relevant, very pertinent. He said that the government teaches its citizens by its example. When the government breaks the law, then its citizens will not respect the law.
But the spectators almost uniformly were disappointed by this statement. They complained that they wanted to hear him say that he was sorry for what he had done, that he was sorry for the innocent victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. They weren’t even interested in hearing about the much larger issue of government lawlessness that Mr. McVeigh raised. They only wanted an apology for the suffering of individual victims. This is a feminine attitude, this focusing on personal and individual feelings rather than on the larger, impersonal context. It is a feminine attitude, despite the fact that it was expressed by grown men.
Many other people besides me have come to similar conclusions, although not all of them have wanted to come right and out and say so, because that would be the height of Political Incorrectness, the height of “insensitivity.” As far back as the 1960s some perceptive commentators were remarking on the generally unmasculine character of the young men they encountered in our universities. Male university students even then tended to be too timid; too soft; too lacking in boldness, pride, and independence; too whiny in adversity; insufficiently willing to endure hardship or to challenge obstacles.
We have always had both soft, dependent men and hard, proud men in our society, but the commentators were comparing the relative numbers of masculine and non-masculine men they saw in our universities in the 1960s with what they had seen in the 1930s and 1940s. The 1960s, of course, were a time when the whinier men were making extraordinary efforts to remain in the universities in order to avoid military service, while many of the more masculine men were off in Vietnam, but this isn’t enough to account for the change these commentators noticed.
Something written by the American historian Henry Adams back in 1913 was recently called to my attention. Adams wrote “Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for color and line and its taste for war and worship, wine and women.” Now, Henry Adams was a man who had much more than a passing interest in such matters — he was a lifelong student of these things and also was a professor of history at Harvard back in the days when the professors at that university were expected to know what they were talking about — so we ought to pay some attention to his observation of the state of affairs in America in 1913. Incidentally, he was a member of one of America’s most distinguished families. He was a great-grandson of the founding father and second President of the country, John Adams, and a grandson of the sixth President, John Quincy Adams.
Henry’s brother, Brooks Adams, had written a book 18 years earlier, in 1895, on the subject commented on by Henry. It was The Law of Civilization and Decay, and in it Brooks made an even more general observation than that stated later by Henry. Brooks saw two types of man: the type he described as spiritual man, typified by the farmer-warrior-poet-priest; and the type he called economic man, typified by the merchant and the bureaucrat. I believe that Brooks must have known a different breed of priests than those I am familiar with. He was thinking of Martin Luther and Giordano Bruno, not Billy Graham and John Paul II.
He saw spiritual man as having the leading role in the building of a civilization, with the economic men coming out of the woodwork and assuming the dominant role after the civilization had peaked and was in the process of decay. Spiritual men are those with vision and daring and a close connection to their roots, their spiritual sources. Economic men are those who know how to calculate the odds and evaluate an opportunity, but who have cut themselves loose from their spiritual roots and become cosmopolitans, to the extent that that offers an economic advantage. The spirit of adventure and the current of idealism run strong in spiritual men; economic men, on the other hand, are materialists. And Brooks was referring only to European men, to White men. He was not even considering the Jews or Chinese.
Most of us are a mixture of the two types, and it’s difficult to find examples of purely spiritual or purely economic men. Michelangelo and Charles Lindbergh tended toward the type of spiritual man. Pick almost any prominent politician today — Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich, say — and you have a good example of economic man. Which is not to say that all economic men are politicians, by any means: just that, since they are not likely to be distinguished in the arts, scholarship, or exploration, politics is where economic men are most likely to find fame. So what does this have to do with the feminization of our society and the preponderance of whiny young men at our universities today? Actually, these things are very closely interrelated. They also are related to the things which caught the attention of Henry Adams: the loss of our aesthetic sense, our warrior spirit, and our feeling for what is divine, along with our masculinity. When I say “loss,” I am using this word only in its relative sense. Our society still has masculine elements, masculine characteristics; it’s just that they are weaker now than they were 200 years ago. And 200 years ago there were some effeminate tendencies to be found; tendencies which today have become much more pronounced. It would be an error, I believe, to attribute this shift in balance solely to the machinations of feminists, homosexuals, or even Jews. They are responsible for the condition of our society today primarily in the sense that the pus in a ripe boil is to be blamed for the boil. The feminists, homosexuals and Jews characterize our society in large part today — they are symptoms of the pathology afflicting our society — but we must look deeper for the cause of our decay.
Let me repeat Henry Adams’ observation. He wrote: “Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for color and line and its taste for war and worship, wine and women.” If he were writing today, he might note that the immortal lyrics of his contemporary, Tennyson, have given way in favor to the pretentious drivel of Maya Angelou; that the Western tradition in art, which had culminated in the 19th century in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and John Constable, has been shoved aside in the 20th century by the trash-art of Picasso, Chagall, and Pollock; that the profession of arms, which was still a more or less honorable profession in the 19th century, a profession in which gentlemen and even scholars still could be found, has become at the end of the 20th century a vocation for bureaucrats and lickspittles, for men without honor or spirit; that worship, once taken seriously even by many intelligent and sophisticated men, is now the business of Christian democrats, with their egalitarian social gospel, and of vulgarians of the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker stripe, with their television congregations of superstitious, amen-shouting dimwits.
Can we properly describe this change noted by Henry Adams as the feminization of our society? Or should it be thought of as the replacement of aristocratic values by democratic values, a general vulgarization of standards and tastes? Actually, these two ways of looking at the change are related. But let me take Brooks Adams’ position now and say that the change can be attributed most fundamentally to the growing materialism in our society, to the replacement of spiritual values by economic values. What does that have to do with feminism or with democracy?
Actually, a great deal. In a very broad sense, aristocratic values are masculine values, and democratic values — egalitarian values — are feminine values. It is also true that, in a very broad sense, materialism is a feminine way of looking at the world. It is a way which puts emphasis on safety, security, and comfort, and on tangible things at the expense of intangibles. It is not concerned with concepts such as honor, and very little with beauty, tradition, and roots. It is a way with a limited horizon, with the home and hearth very much in sight, but not distant frontiers. Reverence and awe for Nature’s majesty are unknown to the materialist. As spiritual man gives way to economic man, when one historical era merges into another — as idealism gives way to materialism — society gives a freer play to the feminine spirit while it restricts the masculine spirit. Words gain over deeds; action gives way to talk. Quantity is valued over quality. All of God’s children are loved equally. Pickaninnies are considered “cute” or even “adorable.” The role of the government shifts from that of a father, who maintains an orderly and lawful environment in which men are free to strive for success as little or as much as suits them, to that of a mother, who wants to insure that all of her children will be supplied with whatever they need.
It is not just society which changes, not just government, not just public policy; individual attitudes and behavior also change. The way in which children are raised changes. Girls no longer are raised to be mothers and homemakers but rather to be self-indulgent careerists. Boys no longer are raised to be strong-willed, independent, and resourceful. That requires hardness and self-denial; it requires masculine rule during the formative years. A disciplined environment gives way to a permissive one, and so the child does not learn self-discipline. Spanking becomes a criminal offense. The child is not punished for disobedience, nor is he given the opportunity to fail and to learn from this the penalties that the real world holds for those who are not strong enough to succeed. And so boys grow up to be whiny and ineffective young men, who believe that a plausible excuse is an acceptable substitute for performance and who never can understand why the gratification they seek eludes them.
The move from masculine idealism to feminine materialism leads inevitably to hedonism, egoism, and eventually narcissism. Henry Adams also claimed that we have lost our taste for wine and women. Well, certainly not in the sense that we have become less interested in alcohol or sex. What he meant is that we have lost the keen edge of our appreciation for civilization’s refinements, for the finest and most subtle things in life: that our appetites have become grosser as they have become less disciplined. Our interest now is in alcohol for its ability to give us a momentary buzz, not in fine wine for its inherent artistry.
A similar consideration applies to the way in which our taste for women has changed. And is this not to be expected? It is the masculine spirit which appreciates woman, which appreciates feminine qualities, and as this spirit declines, our taste for women loses its edge and becomes coarser. We move from an age in which women were not only appreciated but also treasured and protected into an age in which homosexuality is open, tolerated, and increasingly common; Madonna is a celebrated symbol of American womanhood; and feminine beauty is a mere commodity, like soybeans or crude oil: an age in which parents dump their daughters into the multiracial cesspool that America’s schools and cities have become to let them fend for themselves. In an age in which materialism and feminism are ascendant, this is the only way it can be. To attempt to make it otherwise — to attempt to decommercialize sex, for example — would be a blow against the economy, against the materialist spirit. And to elevate women again to the protected status they had in a more masculine era would be fought tooth and nail by the feminists as a limitation on women’s freedom.
This subject is a little fuzzy, and I’ve been speaking qualitatively rather than quantitatively. For almost everything I’ve said, an opponent could produce a counterexample. And that’s because I’m talking about very large-scale phenomena, involving many people, many institutions, and many types of interactions. Even during periods of history which I would characterize as masculine or as dominated by the masculine spirit, one can find examples of feminine tendencies and of institutions with a feminine spirit, just as one can find masculine tendencies in our society today. For example, while I claim that our society is becoming more effeminate today, someone can attempt to counter that by noting that masculinized women are more prominent today — female lawyers, female executives, female military officers — and one can attribute that to masculine influences in our society. I would counter that by saying that when men become less masculine, women become less feminine.
Likewise, when I relate materialism and feminism, or when I say that the rise of the economic spirit is associated with a decline in masculinity, someone else can find plenty of men with no shortage of testosterone — strong, aggressive capitalists — who are epitomes of what Brooks Adams called “economic man.”
What it really amounts to is that the masculine character, like the feminine character, has many components. The component I have emphasized today is the spiritual component — and there are other components. It is a complex subject. But I still believe that we can meaningfully describe what has happened to our society and our civilization during the past couple of centuries as a decline in masculinity. I believe that such a description sheds a useful light on one aspect of what has happened to us. And I believe that Henry Adams’ comment on our society’s loss of its artistic sense and of its sense of reverence, along with its warrior spirit, is a generally true statement which has value in helping us to understand our predicament. Adams, to be sure, was a scholar of considerable depth, and he wrote a great deal of carefully reasoned material to support the one-sentence summary which I quoted. By the way, one subject with which Henry Adams — and his brother Brooks too — were familiar in this regard was the role of the Jew in undermining civilization. Henry made a number of comments about the destructive role of the Jews in the economic and cultural aspects of European civilization. His observations on this subject are perhaps best summed up by something he wrote in a letter to a friend in 1896: “The Jew,” he wrote, “has got into the soul . . . and wherever he . . . [that is, the Jew] goes, there must remain a taint in the blood forever.” How much worse that taint has become during the century since Henry Adams made that observation!…
Read more of Dr. Pierce’s observations about feminization of society and our race at the link.
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