No Nation Without Identity

We really are two Americas, and any hope of bridging the two sides fades further by the day, with each new headline.

How does this translate into two separate nation?

In his Substack

Highly Respected

, Scott Greer explains how politics have emerged as the one hard dividing line in America today, to the point it’s created two mass ethnic groups:

In some ways, Red American and Blue American are new ethnic groups. The Red-Blue dynamic determines the values, culture, behaviors, and how these people see themselves. It’s not quite what we would expect from traditional ethnic groups. There’s not a difference in language or ancestry here. It’s just a matter of politics. But in modern America, that’s sufficient to create new tribes.

Greer’s essay is titled, “Political Affiliation Ethnogenesis.” The term “ethnogenesis” refers to the process of creating an ethnic identity. Many scholars, including our friend Dr. Nicole Williams, argue that nationhood is impossible without a core ethnicity, and an ethnicity cannot exist unless a people first undergo ethnogenesis. I tend to agree with this, but even if you don’t, it’s true, without a doubt, that a nation cannot exist without a well-defined group of people to center it around. It’s why a lot of people, myself included, further argue that America isn’t a nation, because we have no core ethnicity, and any attempt to establish one is ferociously resisted.

It’s worth noting that the only group in America who underwent ethnogenesis are Blacks. They could, theoretically, comprise a nation of their own. At the same time, they’d resist any perfectly reasonable remedies for their grievances, such as having their own autonomous zone, because they believe they have a claim to the entire country or because having a place of their own is segregation (as if it wouldn’t be for everyone else).

Greer says the ethnogenesis is being driven primarily from the Right:

The desire for Republican voters to be a tribe common to conservative thinking. One can see this in how conservatives discuss Democrats. Democrats are not spoken about as merely another party. They are spoken about as an enemy group that has not changed in nearly 200 years of existence. The way “Democrat” is spoken is almost like the way a Croat would speak of a Serb. It’s an ancestral enemy responsible for slavery, the Confederacy, segregation, and many other things the current Democratic Party bears little relation to. But that doesn’t dissuade the likes of Dinesh D’Souza. They still see the antebellum planter in Pramila Jayapal.

Conservatives will sometimes even use “Democrat” when they mean “black.” Ted Cruz provided a famous example when he claimed Democrats commit the majority of crime in America. He didn’t mean white liberals. Republicans also love to point out how crime-ridden “Democrat-controlled” cities are. Liberals claim these are racist dog whistles, but conservatives don’t actually pick them up. Many of them genuinely think the problem is Democrats. If you told them it’s actually blacks, they would vigorously deny that and say they just need Republicans in charge.

When conservatives still discussed “National Divorce” (RIP to that idea) they did not imagine America splitting off along the lines of region, race, or anything else. The division was between Red States and Blue States. Some even got more creative in their maps, giving away Democratic areas in red states to Blue America and Republican areas in blue states to Red America. The cause for the separation was political differences, not racial conflict or regional animosity. It entirely boiled down to party affiliation. This underscores conservatives ethnic view of party differences.

Most of these examples are culled from conservative rhetoric. Democrats are less wedded to their party identity, at least from a heritage standpoint.. Democrats prefer to not acknowledge the white men who founded their party. Jefferson-Jackson Dinners are no longer politically correct. They no longer honor Woodrow Wilson and many other Democratic luminaries. They’re not even that thrilled with FDR anymore. Being a Democrat does not assign an ancestry to its adherents. It’s just a party that advances its constituents’ current interests. The “Dems R The Real Racist” rolls off them because they’re happy to condemn Andrew Jackson, southern Democrats, and any others who run afoul of political correctness. It doesn’t change what they are about today.

This is all a long way of saying that Republicans view Democrats as entirely different people, as though they were from a different country. They might be right.

Nor does it mean that the Left is any less undergoing an ethnogenesis. Though Greer says that party isn’t as quite integral to their identity, ideology most certainly is:

Political affiliation is deeply important in America. It’s why movie studios and pundits commonly imagine a civil war breaking out along these lines.

Tribalism is endemic to human experience. In America, there are many group identities from which to glom on to. Right now, political identity is the most prone to drive conflict rather than race or class. The last elections showed a racially depolarizing America (at least at the ballot box). Republicans still stand as the white party while Democrats stand as the “white suck” party. But each party is increasingly diverse, and geared toward various demographics. Republicans now win over a sizable number of Hispanics while Democrats win over a majority of college-educated whites. The visions of a united non-white coalition turning against white America isn’t happening–not yet, at least. What’s happening is a different form of tribalism.

While the Right is more party-centric in its identity, the Left has fully exploited the tribalistic tendencies of humans to create an Us-Versus-Whites mentality in their camp. What came first doesn’t really matter. The Right clearly sees itself as the “Real America,” while the Left sees itself as “Inclusive America,” despite indulging in tribalism that eventually drives us all apart. We really are two Americas, and any hope of bridging the two sides fades further by the day, with each new headline.

What does this mean for the future? I can only imagine what it means as far as how the Fourth Turning plays out. When the civil war/revolution comes (yes, it’ll come, sorry), we’ll likely break down along “Left-Right,” “Blue-Red” lines. That’s just how we’re divided. Anyone who isn’t a strict partisan will be forced to choose. There’s no neutrality possible in a civil conflict. How people will choose in such a atomized, diversified, mixed population, I don’t know. It may not even follow any noticeable patterns; it may all be individually determined. What matters is that everyone will eventually fall into two camps, one representing the outgoing status quo, the other the nascent status quo.

It’s worth speculating whether this form of ethnogenesis is even sustainable. Samuel Huntington pointed out how identities are, by and large, constructs. But some identities are also ascribed, while others derived. The former often relates to things a person cannot change about oneself - ethnicity and race come foremost to mind - while the latter refers to things a person can change - culture and nation, for two. The ethnogenesis Greer describes is entirely derived - a person can change their politics, whether they end up doing so or not. As you might imagine, derived identities are a lot weaker than ascribed identities.

Consider the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. The “Soviet” and “Yugoslav” identities were entirely political, rooted in communist ideology. It was held together entirely through force, and when the communist experiment failed, everyone reverted to their pre-communist identities, some of which might’ve been derived, but many of which were ascribed. The former Soviet Union separated into Russians, Chechens, Estonians, Latvians, and Ukrainians, to name a few, while the former Yugoslavia balkanized into Albanians, Croats, Macedonians, and Serbs, to name a few. The lesson: the more something needs to be held together by political force, the less durable it is.

By contrast, France has a culturally-defined identity. At the same time, France is undergoing an existential identity crisis, one I’ve discussed at length on more than one occasion. Cultural identities are only as strong as people want them to be. A big problem throughout the West is that nobody seems to want to defend or even reinforce their culture, willingly allowing it to be whittled down and, eventually, conquered, by outsiders who bring with them ascribed cultures, or at least those willing to strengthen them.

This brings us back to America. In almost two-and-a-half centuries, we’ve gone through a range of nationalities - ethnic, racial, cultural, and now civic. In their own way, each form of nationalism has failed, probably because the U.S. never was a nation, lacking much of the ingredients necessary for nationhood, like ethnogenesis.

Another reason for failure is because the U.S. has done just about everything possible to make nationalism impossible. As America attempted to atone for its racial history, grappled with a diversifying population, and globalization, it found civic nationalism to be a means of unifying the populace, while also decreasing friction among the different groups. Unfortunately, civic nationalism doesn’t work when the definition of what being an “American” is so open-ended. We’ve now reached the logical conclusion of that civic nationalist framework.

All that’s left to happen is for the country to balkanize, as did the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. As Greer says, we’re probably not splitting off along geographic, preexisting ethnic, or racial lines. In fact, we’re probably going to split off in a way which makes little sense to us now. Right now, we’re splitting off in terms in terms of lifestyles, but it’s only after the events of the Fourth Turning have concluded that we see how it’s all going to break down, or if it’s going to break down at all.

I’m not bullish on the prospects of national divorce, but I also believe some sort of fracturing will occur. There are very few examples of history where it doesn’t happen. Even after the American Civil War, which maintained the union antebellum, many Americans moved further out west or left the country altogether. After the Patriots won the colonies their independence, many Loyalists who supported Britain either went back home or left for Canada.

Whatever the case may be, America won’t be the same country after the end of the Fourth Turning, for better and for worse. It could become a more attractive place to live, but I find this unlikely, even as I believe the second half of the 21st century will be much kinder to the U.S. than the first half. This means some people will just outright end up leaving, since there’s nowhere west to expand outwards towards any long, and the prime candidates to do so are recent immigrants or anyone who never truly assimilated into American culture.

But most will choose to remain, refusing to cede ground to the other side. Their only prospect for survival is to pick a side. Without dictating who emerges victorious, what will these two sides look like in the end?

Greer makes the interesting observation that both sides are dominated by Whites. After all, they remain the largest share of the population. The difference is that the Blue “ethnic” has the larger share of college-educated Whites. The Blues are still more racially diverse, but they’re unified primarily by anti-White sentiment. This means that if they do defeat or separate from the Reds, they’re going to have to come to some sort of agreement on how the racial pecking order will be established. Liberals like to believe that they’re going to establish a multiracial utopia where all groups share equal amounts of power in a democratic system, but such a system is without precedent in history.

Furthermore, we already know, from the real world, how it really works out in practice. That example? America. We live in a society that forswears any sort of racial pecking order, but we all know one exists, especially on the Left. Whites are the heavy-lifters, but “people of color”, especially Blacks, are superior to them. The reason for the seeming racial harmony on the Left is due to the fact they have Whites as a caricature and those to their right on the political spectrum to channel their animus towards. If ever the right-wing coalition is defeated, some sort of new power structure will need to be established. From what we’ve seen so far, Whites may think they’ll manage being in subservient role, but if they think they’re going to be treated as equals, they’re likely in for a rude awakening - just look at South Africa. None of the non-Whites groups are going to want to play second fiddle to anyone, either.

This is all speculative, ultimately, and I try to avoid looking too far ahead into the future. We need to see how the Fourth Turning ends first before we can speak more definitively about what a potentially divided America looks like. What I’m sure of now is that there’s no bridging of the gap. The divide keeps growing and I’ll be shocked if anything, including an external threat, can bring us together. It’d need to be something truly existential that shocks everyone, especially liberals, into thinking more conventionally. I’m an open-minded guy, but I have no idea what that could be.

We’ll close this section with something that’s got social media buzzing:

Source

Love Is Blind is a show on Netflix. I don’t watch it, so I don’t know exactly how it all went down. If so, however, I think this show demonstrates a profound change that’s taken place in our society over the last several years, one I think we’re all aware of, but one which many are still in denial about: Ideology has become the top consideration in our relationships with one another. This is a very, very, bad thing.

I think I’ve made a solid case that ideology makes for very weak social binds. If you don’t believe me, consider what happened in Love Is Blind - despite two people caring deeply for one another, the woman decides that ideological differences are enough to torpedo the relationship. Certainly, we should be with people who share our values. Ideology isn’t the same thing as values, however. One’s stance on Black Lives Matter, a political movement, is a matter of ideology. Whether criminals should be punished at all is a value. What someone thinks of the COVID vaccine is an opinion. Whether people should be forced against their will to partake in something they’re not comfortable with is a value.

I’ll simplify this all by saying that ideology unravels social bonds. We’re seeing that happen in real time. Whether it’s Colombia, France, Russia, or wherever, any society riven by deep ideological differences never ends up in a nice place. In fact, the outcome is downright horrific.

The thing is, we have to get there first for everyone to realize what a bad choice we made. It’ll be too late by then, but for there to be no bloodletting also means we’ve likely acceded to the demands of the other side.

That, too, is unthinkable.

Proto-Factionalism

At the end of last month, AtlasIntel released a poll surveying Americans on a variety of topics. One question concerned President Trump’s approval rating. As you imagine, it was starkly divided: 50.3-49.7% approval-disapproval. Maybe good news for Trump, but not something you’d want to see if you’re concerned about the country’s overall well-being.

Demographically, here’s how the results broke down:

Source

There are a number of interesting trends seen here. First, the 30-to-44 age group is most dissatisfied with Trump’s performance, by a wide margin. Some of this may be due to education - this is the Millennial generation, and they are the most-educated (read: credentialed) generation ever, and the Trump-Musk team is taking an axe to the very ecosystem meant to benefit the college-degreed.

Some of this may be due to the fact Millennials are the most liberal generation we’ve ever had. Still some of this might be due to the simple fact that Millennials are now in their prime earning years. With the oldest of the cohort now 44 and the youngest 29, there’s not much runway left to be able to achieve the livelihood they were brought up to establish for themselves by now. The last thing they want to see is a guy trying to upend the system entirely. Everyone wants change until it actually happens, it seems.

By comparison, Zoomers sentiments towards Trump are consistent with the overall approval rating, while also decisively in favor of Trump. Some of this might be driven by the well-documented male-female political divide, where young males overwhelmingly support Trump. But it could also be that young Americans just grew up in a country drastically different from Millennials, who in turn grew up in a country that Xers at least mostly recognized. Meanwhile, older generations tend to be more conservative to start, so it’s no surprise they’re more satisfied with Trump’s performance than not.

Whatever the case may be, there’s tremendous discontent among Millennials, whereas Zoomers track along with older Americans. Millennials are in that “gray zone” where they’re too young to affect revolution, yet they’re still young enough and plentiful in numbers enough to become a political driving force for years to come. I wouldn’t take their dissatisfaction with Trump to mean they’re going to shift far back to the left, but I do take it to mean the Millennials will become more conservative in the sense they’re going to be even less resistant to change. How that shapes out ideologically, I’m open to theories. It’s worth remembering the 2008 election, the one which brought Barack Obama to power, was the first election Millennials hit critical mass as a voting bloc. As they age, they could become reactionaries, pining for the good ol’ days of the liberal world order.

Zoomers are going to be interesting to watch. Ideologically, I don’t know how they’re going to shift, either. However, as the youngest generation, they’re still the radicals, and we’re in a strange moment where the conservatives are the revolutionaries. If I were a right-wing political operative, I’d focus my efforts on trying to further establish Zoomers as a right-wing bastion. The events of the Fourth Turning could even further entrench this subtle rightward lean. Or it may shift them away. It’s still early in the game.

The other interesting finding from this poll is Trump’s support among Hispanics: it’s stronger than that of any other racial group, even Whites. This proves that efforts to court the Hispanic vote are finally beginning to pay off. The question is: are they shifting permanently right? Or are they a swing vote? More important, why has Trump been so successful with this group, despite his supposed racism, especially towards those from south of the border?

I can’t even begin to offer explanations right now, except to say that Hispanics aren’t the monolith Democrats have stereotyped them as. I’ve never accepted the premise that Hispanics are “natural conservatives” - mainly because it hasn’t meant a whole lot politically - but what definitely seems to be happening is that a larger number of Hispanics are increasingly identifying predominantly as Americans, henceforth they support the most nationalistic president we’ve had in generations. At least, that’s my hope. I don’t get that this is entirely a transactional matter, since we’ve now entered a deeply ideological age.

Lastly, lower-income Americans are more likely to support Trump, while higher-income Americans, those making $100,000 or more annually, are less likely to do so. This tells me that, economically, the realignment is complete. Trump has captured the middle, working, and maybe even lower-classes, while the establishment leftist regime has the support of the upper classes. This is another topic worth its own essay, but I’ve explained before that the reason why there’s such a glaring disconnect in how the economy appears to be performing versus reports from the field is that those with assets, property, and high net worth are doing better than ever, while those without don’t get to enjoy the benefits of this economy. This rift between the ownership class and the “peasantry,” “yeomanry,” whatever you want to call them, is a feature common in the lead-up to nearly all revolutions in history.

The results of this poll are a glimpse into the future, of what the two factions, or ethnics, as Scott Greer puts it, will look like, once the hard line is drawn into the sand. Racially, they’re both buoyed by Whites and Hispanics. It’s not Whites vs. Non-Whites, it’s Whites vs. Those Who Hate Whites, again, as Greer put it. The Blues have more education and more wealth, while the Reds are the ones who do the dirty, thankless work of keeping civilization humming along. Finally, at least for now, Millennials represent the vanguard of the Blues. Whether the 30-to-44 age group can start an uprising remains to be seen, but if they did, it’d be unprecedented in history.

One thing to remember is that by the time the two sides become well-defined enough that everyone can identify them, we’ll all be at least a few years older. As we age, further shifts will occur. Once more, we’re not at the end, it’s just that we can see it from here.

David Betz Makes The Rounds

On the heels of his breakout interview with Louise Perry of

Maiden Mother Matriarch

, Dr. David Betz has become a most wanted man in intellectual circles, following up with additional interviews on other outlets. He’s not the first to predict civil war in the West in the first half of the 21st century, but he does prove that you need credentialed figures with access to mainstream audiences in order to get such dreary messages across. Love it or hate, that’s reality. Deal with it.

Here’s an interview he did with former Reform UK politician Nick Buckley:

Here’s the latest interview he did, this one with The New Culture Forum:

I’m sure there are many more to follow. I don’t know if Dr. Betz can help steer us away from civil war - I think everyone knows where I stand on that - but the more people become alert to its likelihood, the more people will prepare themselves for the eventuality. That’s the best we can hope for.

One thing I failed to mention in my own essay on Betz’ game-changing interview is the paper he wrote two years ago titled Civil War Comes to the West.¹ It’s a must-read, the foundation for everything he expresses in the aforementioned interviews. I found these sections most relevant to what we discussed here today:

What this reflects above all is the considerable irrelevance of Britishness as an aspect of the pre-political loyalty of significant fraction of two of the largest minorities in Britain. Who wants to fight whom and over what? The answer in this case to this good strategic question has very little to do with the nominal nationality of the people who have observably already begun to fight.

And:

To conclude this section, it can be said that a generation ago all Western countries could still be described as to a large degree cohesive nations, each with a greater or lesser sense of common identity and heritage. By contrast, all now are incohesive political entities, jigsaw puzzles of competing identity-based tribes, living in large part in virtually segregated ‘communities’ competing over diminishing societal resources increasingly obviously and violently. Moreover, their economies are mired in a structural malaise leading, inevitably in the view of several knowledgeable observers to systemic collapse.[xv]

We’re going to return to this essay time and again. For now, I’ll just say that a belief in America, even as an idea, is the only thing keeping this entire thing from collapsing violently. Unfortunately, ideas don’t hold up very well against tribalism, strong identities, and the propensity for violence.

Over to you. What’s your reaction Scott Greer’s essay? Is America bifurcating into two ethnic groups? What does this suggest about America’s future? Is nationhood a possibility for either group? What do you think these two ethnicities will look like, in the end?

Discuss it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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1. In the opening paragraph, Dr. Betz explains this is the first of two essays. I cannot find the second part anywhere. If someone else has come upon it, I would appreciate you sharing it with me.