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.
It’s really silly that they’re projecting their petty modern day whinges back onto historical events.
Especially as everyone knows the Roman Empire collapsed because they started squeezing the end credits of movies and letting the continuity announcers talk over them.
@Podkayne Lives
It’s especially funny to me that some of the most notable Romans accused of it are some of the most notable period.
Pompey the Great with Julia (the daughter of Caesar)*
Julius Caesar with Cleopatra
Marc Anthony with Cleopatra
Bonus points for being gross in modern eyes because it was an arranged marriage to a man older than her father, gross in the time period because they so obviously fell in love.
@Alan:
Not until now, but thanks for sharing!
@Violet – thank you 🙂
Then this video will truly make their brains explode all over the place.
Arabic Christian chants (very pretty). Enjoy 🙂
@Lone Galtian Bootstrapper: Thank you, it is very pretty and soothing to easily jangled nerves. (Unless said nerves belong to white supremacist bigots)
WWTH:
This is one of the first things I noticed when I made the choice to peruse the stinky RoK and AVfM bogs. Christ alive! There is never any thing but them Constantly. Fucking. Whining!
Yes, I have come to understand that being a lowly “beta” subject of the MRA/MGTOW/PUA/Jackass Empire must be excruciating at best, but this day-to-day griping and moaning and groaning about every rasshole thing that just happens not to cater to your wishes and desires? Really?
Not to engage in tl;dr’ing too much but I always remember thinking when I first stumbled onto this site that Ok, these guys don’t seem as harsh as over at Rage (mind you, I absolutely love NineDeuce) and they appear to be genuinely welcoming. I noticed that even when the topics were very serious, you guys always seemed to find time outside of the main discussion to actually, you know, have fun* and share about everyday life experiences – like Normal. Fucking. People.
Those asshats devote all their time to anger, spite and hate. I mean, seriously, who writes a lengthy “biographical” schaufreunde** screed sticking it to their own mother? Who devotes their “superior” observational powers to figuring out which “slut” has a “thousand cock stare”? Or, “objectively” deducing from the size of a feeeeeemale’s hoop earrings that she’s really into butt stuff?
Christ alive! Those guys are something rasshole else!
I think I will stop here.
I feel a headache coming on and with a head as big as mine, it’s no fun atall.
*Yes, I think you folks are hilarious!!
** I don’t know if I got that spelling right.
@Big Head
Please allow me to be a know-it-all teacher for a bit?
It’s schadenfreude. Made up of Schaden + Freude = harm/misfortune + joy i.e. joy in other ppl’s misfortune.
@Big Head: Aw shucks! Glad you enjoy our conversations…we’re happy to have you with us. As for the headache: need some extra strength Tylenol?
@Ben:
Awwww. I was going to post that link.
@feartheminotaur:
I really like that analysis. Thank you. It’s interesting to watch the reception of Rome by various groups. It almost seems like a Rohrschach blot.
I suspect the alt-Right find the prospect of a collapse far more comforting than anything else. If society had problems that needed hard work and reform, then they would have to pitch in and work hard; but if everything is going to collapse whatever they do, then they can feel absolved of social responsibility.
@Scildfreja:
I am not in the least bit surprised that you play Crusader Kings 2. You are probably not surprised that I do too.
I recently finished a Poland game in which I ended up running a vast Polish-Lithuanian-Danish-German-Italian-Lotharingian-Russian superstate, and trying desperately to prevent it from devolving into almost constant civil war. Fortunately there were no MRAs bemoaning it and complaining about collapse.
Extreme diversity? As opposed to regular diversity? Where’s the demarcation line between acceptable and extreme? How does one quantify diversity? The extent of the majority/(*gasp*)plurality? The percentage of the smallest minority? And show your work
@Alan
Just let me listen to the Morse music, dammit!
@Big Head
Luckily for these guys, life offers endless opportunities for disappointment.
They’ll never run out of material.
@ Axe
If that’s Inspector Morse you know that in the opening music they tell you ‘whodunnit’ in Morse Code? (that really annoyed Morse fans who knew Morse code)
Also that Jag didn’t work so some poor bloke had to push it into shot every time.
Morse trivia: off
@Alan Robertshaw
Since you know a lot about Morse, I’m sure that you know what Morse’s first name is? I believe it was only mentioned once in the TV series and it was a plot point in one of the original novels. 🙂
@Alan
Yep
How distinctly singular was that car that they couldn’t just get/make a new one? Or was the brutal, menial labor less expensive? Not cool, ITV, not cool at all…
ETA
@Monzach
Well, they made a show with his forename as the title…
These guys must only be able to have wives because they never actually engage them in conversation. He must just appear a bland cardboard cut-out who has nothing to say except to ask what’s for dinner. If she got to know him, she’d be rethinking carrying forth his genes.
@Axecalibur
Well that’s egg on my face and no mistake. 🙁
Since I’m an Eastern European who lives in NYC and likes to go to Cony Island sometimes, am I part of the noble master race or am I a degenerate barbarian threatening to destroy western civilization by going out for a swim? I want to know I stand with these clowns.
@Ouroborous, clearly you a degenerate barbarian. Unless you believe the things they do. Then you’re not. (I’ve sorta noticed that their qualifications for “noble manlyman” are pretty porous)
@EJ, Monzach, I have CK2 and Stellaris and EUIV, and would love to get HOI4 as well. Paradox is by far my favourite publisher. Colossal Order and Cities: Skylines! Love it to bits. (I own but don’t have EUIV installed right now, ’cause my goodness the learning curve seems steep on that one. I’m sure it isn’t bad, but I really don’t have the time to sink into it. At the same time, I’d love love love to do a haudenausanee game, or to do a pagan kingdom in CK2 and import it into EUIV… then to HOI4… that would be a blast!)
If I survive as the Abyssinian Empire in this one (I reformed almost all of the kingdom now!) and get through to 1452, I’ll import into EUIV. Hopefully that happens! I am not a great player, though, and those Abbasids to the north of me are suuuper powerful right now. I’m sorta hoping I can reclaim all of the old Kingdom, then take the Somalian peninsula, and perhaps the south of Arabia. That way I could possibly get the trade routes to India and use that money to build a strong defense against the Abbasids to the north. The current (780 CE) Abbasid Sultan is sympathetic to Christians, so I sent a diplomat up there to make nice-nice. That, plus my mountainous terrain and decent heavy-infantry army, plus the Byzantines to their north, ought to buy me the time I need…
Such a good game, is great.
@Ouroboros
Yes
Also, how old is this muffuga that Coney Island was 100% white when he was a teenager?
@ Axe
Mk2 Jaguar. Beautiful vehicles. Like driving around in the lounge of a posh club. Hideously expensive though when they’re in good nick. But like a lot of classic premier cars you can buy non runners quite cheap.
(In my roadie days All Saints wanted to arrive on stage at the Brits in a Rolls Royce. The producers managed to buy one for a few grand. We had to push that onto the stage too.)
@Scildfreja
I do hope that you will install EUIV on your computer soon. It’s a lot of fun and I’d actually say that the learning curve is a lot lower than CKII’s, though that might just be due to the fact that I have 1,200 hours logged into the game over a little less than two years.
Your current realm sounds really interesting, too! Good luck with your endeavours. I’m currently playing EUIV as the Timurids and I’m trying to reform into the Mughals in order to get easy access to the riches of India and from there on to China and…maybe Europe one day. Of course that’s on the condition that I can work it before the next expansion comes out.
@Axe, who knows? Frankly I’ve heard MRAs younger than I am that pine for the ‘golden days’ of their youth, as if they weren’t still in them. They all had blinders on as a child (we all do) and only remember their childhoods through the haze of optimism and full nights of sleep. The beaches could’ve been as diverse as they are today, for all we know – he won’t remember anything but his friends and family, and I’m willing to bet that they were all white. He assembles his memories to suit his current desires.
(Lots of interesting reasons for that phenomenon, too! The brain goes through huge physiological changes during puberty. Not just changes in hormones, though those are obvious and intense. No, the neurons actually undergo a sort of “great migration”, moving around into new configurations that eventually settle into their adult structures. It’s why the teenage years are so chaotic and formative, and why it’s so much harder for an adult to undergo drastic personality changes. The neurons are (largely, not completely) fixed after around 25 years old, so the only way to make personalty changes after that point is through dendrite growth, which is a very different process.
Ramble ramble!)
OT rant incoming:
CW: discussion around rape
Can we talk for a moment about the armed protestors at Brock Turner’s house? These nerf-herders have taken this situation where for once the whole damn nation was largely in agreement that rapists get off easily and they’ve turned the conversation into “poor Brock.” I mean, shit, everyone laughed at the letter from his dad about how sad it is that he can’t enjoy his damn ribeye steaks anymore, but now some macho vigilantes who feel the need to strut around and show off all their cocky feathers with their tough-guy assault weapons have actually made the damn country go, “hey, you’re not being fair to the poor rapist!”
We’re not talking about the victim anymore.
We’re not talking about the judge anymore.
We’re not talking about the light sentence anymore.
We’re just talking about how unfair this is to Brock Turner.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s horrible that people are standing outside his home armed to the teeth and calling it a peaceful protest. But that’s their right as citizens with (I assume) the proper licenses. I don’t agree with those laws but that doesn’t change the fact that they exist. And the conversation should not be focused on sympathy for this awful human being.
@Monzach, sounds fun! I’m sorta doing the same from the south – there’s a major trade corridor through the Red Sea. I’m not a merchant republic so don’t do the trade ship thing, but there are some points to the north in the old Kingdom of Nubia (Currently held by the Abbasids) where the ships make regular port. There are also some other ports in the southern Arabian peninsula that would be easier to grab, as they are held by other Sultans. The only issue is that they could call the Abbasids into a Holy War on me if I push too hard, so, well. Trouble!
I’m sure I’ll get EUIV installed at some point soon. It’s not that hard, it’s just very *different* from CK2. CK2 isn’t about nations at all, it’s about dynasties. It’s a very personal game, where politics are dominated as much by personal vendettas and subterfuge as they are by strategy. Case in point, I’m considering sending an assassin after the Abbasid Emir. If he weren’t sympathetic to Christianity I’d *certainly* be doing so. He has many heirs and his death will likely trigger a succession crisis. I’ve also considered sending some money to some of the faction leaders in his empire, in hopes that it’ll help them buy mercenaries and raise up against the throne. CK2 is very, very much a Game of Thrones sort of a game. EUIV is a very different beast!
Eeeeesh. Kupo, I hadn’t heard. That’s terrible. Fh. I mean, I’m with them with their anger for his light sentence, but you don’t show up with guns!