Return of Kings, that burning internet dumpster fire of pickup artistry and Trumpian bigotry, has decided to go all grade-school on us this week, posting an essay that is basically an adult, alt-right version of the classic “what I did on my summer vacation” essay assignment.
Like a lot of Americans, whether they’re in 6th grade or in their sixties, RoK contributor Michael Sebastian went to the beach.
And there he saw … a lot of people who weren’t white. In a post with the somber title, “A Summer Beach Trip Shows How Badly America Has Declined” Sebastian reports his dire findings:
The most obvious change is that there has been a dramatic change in the level of diversity. When I was a teenager, the beach was nearly 100% white. The diversity, such as it was, consisted of a handful of blacks. Whites still comprised about two-thirds of the beach goers, but now there were also lots of Hispanics along with smaller numbers of Muslims, Asians, and Indians. Of course, there continued to be a small number of black families.
I can only assume that Sebastian, the author of a self-published book titled Staying Married in a Degenerate Age, showed up at the beach with a little notebook in which to record the presumed ethnicity of all the other beachgoers.
The Hispanics were notable because it was very apparent that they were poor. Many of the families did not have bathing suits—they were in the ocean in their street clothes. It was especially awkward for the women as a blouse and long skirt are less than ideal beachwear. While I am certain there were poor families in the beach in my youth, I don’t recall anyone so poor that they could not purchase a bathing suit.
Maybe Trump will build you a wall around the beach.
The Muslims were also an interesting addition. I noticed several women walking along the beach covered head to ankle in dark clothing walking on the beach in 95-degree heat.
At this point I’m pretty sure that Sebastian is just making things up. How many beaches in America boast such a perfect cross-section of All the People the Readers of Return of Kings Hate?
Sebastian never tells us what beach he allegedly went to, only that he lives in a “large city.” I also live in a large city, one in which white people are a minority. But even in the relatively less-segregated neighborhood that I live in, where most of the people you see out and around are likely to be people of color, I don’t normally see a crowd quite this rainbow-hued.
Sebastian goes on to complain about tattooed women, another Return of Kings bugbear, before informing us that some of the people on this Beach of Terror were on the drugs. Because Sebastian can totally tell.
Extreme diversity and abundant tattoos are one thing, but there is nothing that indicates spiritual bankruptcy like drug abuse. The most disturbing thing that I witnessed was the high number of people who were strung out on something. Everyone that I saw looked like they were intoxicated by something other than alcohol or pot. All of them were young. All of them were white.
Oh, no, not the white people!
I saw one young woman slowly rotating in circles with her hands on her temples in the middle of the day. There were small groups of people who seemed to have no awareness of their surroundings.
To be fair, I sometimes rotate in circles in the middle of the day. It’s fun. You should try it!
Adding insult to imaginary injury, Sebastian reports that while driving his family back home from the beach one night,
a car in the right lane suddenly swerved into my lane almost crashing into our car. My wife glanced over to find out what was happening with the driver. It turned out that it was a middle aged woman who was snapping a selfie as she was going through the tunnel—no doubt to post on Facebook.
This was followed, I imagine, by monkeys flying out of Sebastian’s butt.
Sebastian ends his little screed by comparing present-day America to — yes, you guessed it — the Roman empire in its final days.
With the exception of diversity, which is a weapon used by the elite to divide, conquer, and rule the population, each of the things I saw on my beach vacation indicated that the foundation of America is rotting. Ancient Rome became great because of the vigor and austerity of its people. Once Romans lost their founding virtue, the Empire collapsed. …
Barring some sort of great upheaval, it is likely that the US is headed for the same fate that befell Rome.
WORST. VACATION. EVER.
Unlike Michael Sebastian, of course, who was fully taking them in. Oh, maybe not the sound of the waves breaking or the warmth of the sun or the feel of the sand under his feet or variety of the seashells or the refreshingness of any breeze or the calls and antics of any seabirds. But all the details of how the people around him were Doing It Wrong. I’m glad he managed to make the most of his trip.
Seriously, though, feeling like people are minutely observing you is one of the best ways to ruin a trip to the beach (or, well, anywhere really). Obviously you are in public view and people will see what you do, but maintaining an illusion that no-one’s paying any attention to you (even while you people-watch yourself) is important for enjoyment (well, unless you’re an exhibitionist, I guess!) So I hope no-one saw him staring at them.
There’s a beach a short walk from my house, and I went down there not that long after I moved there, in the late autumn, shortly before it got dark, and went and stood just in front of the water and drank everything in for ages. I was having a great time, just feeling really peaceful, but when I got to the path that leads away from the beach there was a woman who said she’d waited for me because she was worried I was going to commit suicide. I don’t blame her because if that’s what she honestly thought then checking I was ok was a nice thing to do. But it did have the unfortunate consequence that now I feel like I can’t stand still at that beach too long or someone will come to the same conclusion again, which makes it rather less relaxing than it might be. (Not that that’s the same as being silently criticised for being the wrong ethnicity or disposable income level for beachgoing, of course.)
The obsession with the Roman Empire and the alt-right is ridiculous. Its like the low hanging fruit of history and these morons love to cherry pick. The parallels between it and the US are cute but paper thin because the social-historical circumstances of 300 CE and 2016 are drastically different. Try harder guys.
http://images3.static-bluray.com/movies/covers/10455_front.jpg
Funny that he should compare modern America to ancient Rome because ancient Rome was also full of old men constantly kvetching about the decline of modern society.
@JennyWren
The idea of “lost vigor” being the chief factor in the dissolution of the Roman Empire as a unified political unit* stems from Edward Gibbon’s seminal work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Essentially he proposed that the Empire’s transition to a Christian state sapped the martial prowess of the empire, which left them unable to confront the pressures of ‘barbarian’ migrations, and forced them to allow the ‘barbarians’ in to the empire to do all the fighting.
It’s an artifact of it’s period – a warning to the 18th Century English: Be careful being too Christian with the barbarians, and especially don’t allow them to assimilate, or the Empire is in peril of ‘falling’.
Of course historians of the period (now dubbed “Late Antiquity” by Peter Brown) have outlined multiple other causes from the economic collapse theories of Henri Pirenne to the modern ‘it never fell, it just changed*’ of Peter Heather.
*it never really “fell” in any sense, it just became a lot of different, smaller states – a process that had started long before the classical end point of 452 CE (the deposition of Romulus Augustus). Heck, the empire, which we call the Byzantine Empire, but was called the “Empire of the Romans” by its citizens lasted another 1000 years
Comparing Ancient Rome to the USA is nothing new, Gore Vidal practically made a career out of it.
Had no idea it was such a faux pas to go to the beach wearing street clothes. I assume I should be serving time in the Atlantic City jail for taking my shoes and socks off, rolling my pant legs up, and walking in the shallow water while earning less than 30k/yr?
Well, that attitude was at the expense of women, so maybe he’d be okay with it?
I mean, the whole attitude was “women are beneath us MIGHTY MEN, we shouldn’t want to have sex with them unless it’s to make babies. So, if we want fun sex, let’s just fuck each other!”
I was doing some reading on Roman sexuality recently–don’t ask–and one thing I did find very interesting was that being too obviously in love with your wife was considered effeminate, and a big negative for a man’s reputation.
Perhaps the RoK people would approve of that.
But damn, yes, this does sound like an interesting beach. I’m reminded of a bizarre conversation I had online some time back with a woman who was very concerned about how she had stood on a street corner in London waiting for her husband for fifteen minutes, and fewer of the passers-by had blue eyes than she thought appropriate.
It was like, lady, the racism aside, the thought of you examining passing strangers closely enough to determine eye color does not make this anecdote seem healthy.
It’s kind of sad that these guys can never just have fun. Every activity they participate in turns into an opportunity for a bitter and doom and gloom filled rant. It’s not like I’ve never passed judgement on strangers before, but this seems to be the only thing they ever do. This guy can’t enjoy the water or help his kid build a sandcastle. For the PUA, sex is never fun. They spend the whole time adding and subtracting dominance points so they know who won the encounter. The MGTOW wants a cool car not because it’s aesthetically pleasing or fun to drive but because it’s money and status not spent on women. The ramblings of MRA and gamergate YouTubers can’t possibly be entertaining or enjoyable to watch or produce, they’re merely an exercise in circle jerking over each others grievances.
It must be exhausting constantly looking for things to be angry about.
I bet the comments at RoK or AVFM never go off topic and into discussions of pets, hobbies, yummy food, and pop culture the way they do around here. It’s probably wall to wall anger and hate.
Sigh. This whole “totally happened exactly like this!!!” screed rather nicely illustrates why I have a strict policy of disregarding any text that contains a comparison to Ancient Romans or the phrase “Rome fell because [something the author has been complaining about for the past two pages]“.
Can’t these people actually read a history book before trying to use history to further their own ideology?
@Verily Baroque
No. Because history never, ever, actually agrees with them. One feature common to conservatives of every stripe is a truly staggering ignorance of history, sociology, economics, and every related field.
@ rick
Ugh. So true. Interesting, in a way, too, because as our understanding of Late Antiquity deepens and changes, so has the “USA=Rome” metaphor
It used to be the Classical interpretation of “the Dark Ages” brought on by the barbarians at the gates that drove the comparison for the right.
America was order, reason, knowledge – in short: Civilization. It’s enemies were anything but. The Right was all that stood between the darkness the commies and liberals will bring after “the FALL OF ‘MURICA (as we see it)” – a fear tactic that worked up voters and activists for decades. Do anything to avoid the Fall of America, keep the Empire going forever.
The modern interpretation is different, we know there was no “fall”, just a gradual transformation into a new political system as populations outside the old Imperial core were slowly assimilated into the Empire, driving it in different directions.
So now the Right sees the “Fall” as a cleansing, something that HAS to happen, something that is GOING to happen. Allowing a Stilicho, or an Obama, to sit on the throne proves the rotten and degenerate nature of the Empire. It has changed into something else – no longer “Roman” or “American”. Allowing diverse political voices is creating a new American political homogeneity that is slowly transforming the system away from their white Judeo-Christian cis-America. Just like you know, what happened to the actual Roman Empire.
But now that inevitability can be staunched by a “Fall” and their STEM survival skills (and gout-resistant seagull-fed wills!). They see the Empire as rotten and degenerate, no longer something that must be maintained against the Huns, but one co-opted by them. So it must fall, and out of the ashes born the Charlemagnes (or whatever flavor or warlord they favor) of the Alt-Right.
@ PI and Podkayne Lives
I think the Romans were also somewhat like the Greeks, in that they believed that women enjoyed sex much more than men (I believe the legend with Tiresias was ten times as much) and many of them appear to have found the disparity mildly gross and distracting (there’s a kylix of a couple having sex and the man is telling her to hold still, for example: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/drinking-cup-kylix-with-erotic-scene-153752). Having sex with another man allowed you to relax and enjoy some intimacy without having your partner constantly losing their mind with pleasure, as they saw it.
Oh dear, I think Michael Sebastien is showing symptoms of Early-Onset Cantankerousness.
Welp. I guess it’s time to load up Crusader Kings 2 again. There’s a new expansion (even after all this time, it amazes me!) focusing on the transmission of plagues and other nastiness that were so influential in the period but are rarely ever covered by games or Great-Person histories.
I’m playing a game focusing on the Abyssinian kingdom around the 800s, and, eeesh, am I in trouble. Only have a single heir, unmarried, and the old Abyssinian Empire is fractured into warring states. Meanwhile to the north, the Nubians are getting eaten by the Abbassid Sultanate to the north – that’s our de jure territory! Already had a war with the Arwadid Sultanate across the Strait of Mandeb – fortunately they had a civil uprising shortly after they declared that war, so we cleaned up fast, but… eesh. We are in for a rocky road.
I should post pictures! Hopefully if we’re conquered I’ll be able to continue. Eep.
@Sebastian
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/djco.gif
Like, just take a day not to worry and hate things so much, man. All that anger is gonna shorten your lifespan. Besides, empires fall and rise all the time. It’s not like you’re gonna die, because you’re “collapse of America” doesn’t involve anything other than white people becoming the minority or gone altogether, which is, like, whatever man.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/life-goes-on-lebowski.gif
Someone find that quote about Socrates or someone complaining about people complaining about the youth of today or just plan complaining about the youth of today, please. Paste it all up in there. It was, like, “Damn kids with their stones and chisels–in MY day, we had to write down our information in mud and bake it,” or some shit like that. IDK.
I’m fairly well versed in manosphere nonsense, but
here he is basically saying that diversity = spiritual bankruptcy?
My imagination is well trained in migtowracistlogik, but this one I just can’t get my head around…
Plz explain?
I thought the Roman Empire collapsed because of the overextension necessitated by the Marian Reforms, plus germs, plus bros killing each other for power every couple of weeks, plus the Ottomans. Silly me, overcomplicating things. It was obviously because people were having too much fun, in the sex way.
Stray observation: People who advocate societal austerity never expect to lead austere lives themselves. In fact, they find the idea of denying themselves pleasure just as preposterous as the idea of other people living a shade more enjoyably than a Trappist Monk. This is what I’ve always hated about moralists of all stripes (except Thackeray): ultimately, all their wailing and gnashing of teeth over moral decay boils down to one very simple desire: a world where everyone lives less well than they do. For God and Country, of course.
Yeah, Lone Galt, I’m pretty sure they’re saying that being willing to live in the presence of people who aren’t like you is the equivalent of being a soulless ghoul. Er, sorry, the modern term is “globalist” I think. No pride in your heritage, no pride in your nation, drugged-up hippy-dippy airhead. That sort of thing. I think that’s how they see it.
(So, yeah, it’s gloriously wrong, and wrong-headed.)
What the fuck is his problem with poor people at the beach? When I was a kid in a working class family, we couldn’t afford fancy holidays, but a day trip to the seaside was within our reach. Should we have been restricted to a blue collar beach, in case our class was infectious?
@ Lone Galtian Bootstrapper
Spiritual = Christian
Christian = White
Diverse = Non-white
Spiritual != Diverse
It’s basic math!
@Scildfreja
A fellow Paradox player! *waves* I’m waiting with bated breath the next expansion to EUIV, which is coming out in three and a half weeks (October 11th). Hope you have a good campaign once you have your expansion.
Sorry for the OT, everyone else.
@feartheminotaur
Excellent, I like my bigotry in simple equasions.
I think my main ‘problem’ is that I’ve always equated spirituality with good-person-ness and love-stuff. Silly old me…
Oh, and re the whole Christian thing: Due to the nature of war-n-stuff, refugees (to my European country) come in ‘waves’, sometimes from country A, sometimes from country B. Of course the major influx we have now is Syrians, but another group I noticed are Ethiopian/East African Christians, one of the most fascinating denominations to me, as it is (one of the?) only church that developed without the influence of Rome (oh hai Rome).
Anyway, to the casual racist they look all muslim & eek, but on a closer look they wear big wooden crosses, all white on the weekend, and have a fondness for carrying around icon-like portraits of Jesus/The Virgin Mary on the train. I love imagining the cognitive dissonance this might give to the Christian = White crowd…
@Lone Galtian Bootstrapper: I love your name! Anyway, I can also imagine how they’d trip over themselves when they find out that Jesus and Mary were not White Christians but Jewish (probably with swarthy skin, dark hair and dark eyes)
@Scildfreja: If being tolerant of other cultures makes me a soulless ghoul (in the altright’s eyes), I’ll proudly own that! As for soulless, I’m a ginger anyway so I’m used to the “having no soul” taunts…and ghoul? Well, duh, I’m the resident necromancer