By Wayne Allensworth
It’s been a tumultuous first month in Donald Trump’s second term as president. It’s early days, yet, but there have been some good signs …
March 2 was Texas Independence Day. I recall vividly my boyhood years when local and state pride was very strong, not yet as diluted by the homogenization of modernity, aided by air travel, mass communications, and the interstate highway system, which erodes a sense of place. Regional accents and speech patterns were more prevalent. Texas flags were much in evidence, and with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo opening, our schools held “Go Texan” days. Trail riders trekked to town on horseback, all a celebration of Texanness. The state is far less homogenous than it was then — another reason why mass immigration must be curtailed — but the spark of state pride is still there, albeit muted by comparison.
March 6 is Alamo Day, the day that the heroes who defended that old mission fell in an epic battle that forged Texan identity and, I think, reminds us that any life worth having, any goal worth seeking, any ties worth preserving, require great sacrifice. That’s one reason the stories of great struggles, long marches, and personal sacrifice resonate so deeply with the human psyche. The stories themselves are archetypal, carrying with them the virtues and patterns of behavior they impress upon us. Stories of heroes who once walked the earth are narrative reminders of what was required to build a country and what we owe to our ancestors. They were, of course, all too human, but often appear to us as demigods as we look back from an era of hapless confusion.
Maybe that state of affairs will improve. We can’t regain all of what was lost, but “Trump” as a social and cultural phenomenon might open some doors that had seemingly slammed shut once and for all. Maybe our people will still have a home after all. Maybe we won’t disappear in a chaotic postmodern morass. Our people are unapologetically showing their America First colors, and the Trump Big Tent has a place for social conservatives, for instance. The commonly held sense of what C.S. Lewis called “the Tao” — the natural law — is an essential element in any revival of American society. Its claims on us — to honor our parents, not to steal, not to murder, and all the rest—needed no further explanation. Shared assumptions and expectations, as well as a shared sense of common history, of culture and language, for instance, are requirements for a coherent polity and make what we call “politics” possible. Every nation has an ethnic core. If anything like a coherent American nation is to survive, that core must be preserved. Unhyphenated Americans are that core.
Despite all that militates against it, I hope that local, regional, and state identity among us can make a comeback, for people need a rooted sense of belonging and connectedness to one another and their home for the human personality to flourish. We are embodied beings, embedded in webs of social, family, and cultural ties and cues through which our personalities can develop, and our potential may be realized. Globalism is the antithesis of those valuable ties, breaking down “barriers,” family, religious, cultural, and even the parameters of being human itself (“transhumanism”) that are necessary and essential boundaries by which humanity thrives. Modernity’s tendency to reductionism and fragmentation, to breaking down all into parts and claiming the parts and not the whole matter most, has atomized us and unleashed social instability and personal confusion. Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere theory of human cognition has been, I think, borne out. Bureaucrats thrive on breaking down society into parts that their managerial system can manipulate, control, and mold to their liking.
More good signs: Eastern Oregonians are serious about separating from the Portland dominated coast and merging with Idaho. Other states might split and reform. The “big sort” continues. Centrifugal forces unleashed by globalism might work to our advantage as the core seeks social and political coherence. What’s more, the precipitous decline of Christianity appears to have paused, and perhaps halted, suggesting that it could reverse. The globalists and their “activist” allies have overstepped. The brakes on sexual morality have been off in this country for decades. But the headlong rush to the dissolution of the family as the most fundamental element in society might have crashed into the barrier of the Tao that is embedded in humanity’s collective unconscious. Globalism is an inhuman, indeed, an anti-human ideology and a residual sense of fundamental precepts appears to have been triggered among the constituents of the Trump Big Tent. Vice President J.D. Vance has been an eloquent and effective spokesman for the family and traditional values.
We have a long way to go. Vance’s and President Donald Trump’s telling off a haughty and ungracious Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is another sign that collectively, the real America is no longer willing to be the piggy bank for globalist projects. A Ukrainian patriot truly concerned about the fate of his people would have been willing to conclude the deal that Trump saw as a kickstart for a peace agreement. Zelensky’s meeting with Trump haters before his White House visit was telling. They don’t want the war to end, so they likely encouraged Zelensky to scuttle talks with Trump. Ideally, Zelensky would step down, call for an election, and his successor would participate in peace negotiations. I doubt Moscow will be willing to conclude a peace agreement with him. The Russians may well decide the terms of peace on the battlefield.
The idea that the globalists give a damn about Ukrainians is absurd. What, for instance, was going on in those biolabs the globalists planted on Ukrainian soil? And let’s not forget the Zelensky government’s murder-by-neglect of an American journalist who died in Ukrainian custody. When this war started, largely as a consequence of the globalists’ provocations, your observer wrote that whatever happened, we did not want the war to be seen as a victory for them. As it turns out, the globalists’ failure in Russo-Ukrainian war could be another element in globalism’s failure — another nail in its coffin. In international affairs, “America First” is a loud and clear pronouncement of a national identity. Our primary responsibilities begin and end at home.
The president paused all military aid to Ukraine after the White House clash with Zelensky. But Zelensky appears to be backtracking, saying he is ready to work for peace under Trump’s leadership. We’ll see. This war must end, but we can negotiate issues of importance to us regarding the U.S.-Russian relationship on our own. We can hope that same sense of grounded self-interest will eventually prevail regarding the Middle East as well. The Trump phenomenon has opened a door for us, giving our people a chance to regroup, renew themselves, and carry on.
Our task is to make sure that our posterity has a home.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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