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.
btw, idk what imaginary city this guy is in but iirc in Chicago in 1912, white people drowned via stoning a black teen for swimming too close to the “white beach”, and cops refused to do anything, starting a riot that killed more black folks than white. J/s
Ninja’ed by Chiomara, Megalibrarygirl, and others.
My own $0.02, for what it’s worth:
I’m not the best-educated type in the world (a high-school diploma and not much else), so I do a lot of lurking and not a lot of typing. I’ve learned quite a bit from my Internet surfing/lurking–but most of it’s along the lines of “learn from people who aren’t out to con you” or “there’s a whole process involved in figuring out if such-and-such a source is credible”. As for actual details–names, dates, specific concepts–I come up short.
A search engine like Google comes into its own, IMHO, when I already sort-of know what I want to know more about. Most of the time, I don’t have any more of a clue than “oh, I don’t know, sociology stuff”. I have a vague idea and that’s about it. On a site like this, however, I can take in what smarter/better-educated people have to say. Then I can narrow my query down to something like “education levels and classism” (read: the barriers a working-class jerk like me faces when trying for a college education). I can also open my horizons when it comes to things I know absolutely nothing about. (Too many examples to list, sadly.)
TL;DR version: I’m learning while I’m lurking, and it really does help. If I’m quiet, it’s mainly because I think I’m not smart enough to add to the conversation.
That’s pretty broad. I think what you may want is a college textbook on international relations. Unfortunately I don’t have any offhand to recommend. One of the most important revelations in IR, though, is the fact that countries almost always act on internal pressures rather than external ones. We pretend that countries are in some kind of dialogue with one another, but this is true – when it is true – only indirectly. Internal pressure is always the #1 influence. This is even the case for something like war: you defend yourself from an invader because the population wants you to, not because other countries want you to or expect you to. Internal pressure usually originates in “the population” in modern Western society, but it can be restricted to only the national elites, and this was the case for most of history.
The Communist Manifesto is pretty dense, and probably not the first bit of political theory to try out. I would go for Hobbes and Locke first, then maybe Rousseau. They wrote the foundations of Western political theory. Later writers like Marx had read them and referenced them, and when you get to people like Nietzsche and Marx it helps to understand those references when they are made. You can go back farther than Hobbes, all the way to Aristotle, but I don’t think the cost/benefit of understanding contemporary politics is worth it.
A good grounding in history starting ~1500 is a must. If you haven’t studied history, I would recommend that you find a good modern world history textbook.
I understand being reluctant to comment, but as long as you’re respectful and don’t double-down if people point out an issue with something you’ve said, there’s no reason to hold back on commenting because you don’t know a lot about the topic. In fact, we can probably point you in the right direction and you will probably teach us something.
Semi relevant :How Third Century China saw Rome
Are we absolutely certain Sebastian *is* married to a real live human woman? I mean, he writes for ROK…could be that he just made up the married thing.
Okay, so off-topic, but it’s really wonderful, so I had to share.
I just went to my first ever Pagan Pride festival.
It wasn’t too grand, mostly just some vendor booths in a small wooded glen at the fairgrounds, but it was so fun! I did lots of walking (didn’t hatch any Pokemon Go eggs though! D:< )
I got an MLP tarot reading mat (that has a pocket I can tuck my cards into!), a hand-made tarot bag with an AMAZING Judgement needlepoint done on it, and a pewter pendant of Hephaestus. (That same booth had little plush Basteses [Basti?] and Anubises. They also were selling some AWESOME tarot cards, but the pendant was like 12 bucks, sooooo…)
There was a guy singing on stage, and he sang a song called "No Shame in Being a Hufflepuff", and there were lots of awesome dogs there (ONE HAD A DYED RAINBOW TAIL AND IT WAS SO CUTE), and even though we did ALL THAT WALKING, my legs didn't hurt one bit (my feet, on the other hand, are not happy)! Though, my wallet is now crying. No more fun money for me for quite some time. : P
I also did a Walmart run, and got some poster tac, so I now have things on my walls, and I got some Monster High dolls on clearance, as well as some Monster High vinyl toys (For a dollar each!), and I went to Big Lots for a bookshelf, but they didn’t have the one I wanted, or the one my roommates wanted, so we just bought some snacks, and I bought my calendar for next year and a cheap hanger for it.
All in all, today was awesome, and I wanted to share.
Tomorrow, we’re doing grocery shopping and laundry.
You know, adult stuff. : P
@ msexceptiontotherule: as you said, he writes for RoK. He could have made the whole thing up. Here’s hoping the only “wife” he has is of the inflate-a-date variety, though. I don’t want to contemplate the alternative.
@ PI: glad you had a good time. Welcome back. 🙂
@Scildfreja
I just searched on Steam (I didn’t even have na account, haha). It’s not insanely expensive, I can afford it if I really want. But Civilization V is ten little Brazil bucks, and that’s insanely tempting. Do you think it can replace it? Can we play together too? I should warn, I will probably suck.
Obs: YES, I only found out about Civilization series TODAY, because of you. My boyfriend was baffled. It apparently is one of the most popular things of all time. But… what can I say? I love technology, but I am very outdated in it. Until Civ IV came out I didn’t have a PC with broadband connection, so… yeah. Don’t laugh at me xD
@Alan
If Neil Gaiman, AKA God, said it, then it’s true.
@Rogue Angel
I have the same degree of academic education. Don’t let that shame you too much. There are several types of smartness, and not having a PhD doesn’t mean you’re dumber than someone who does. For further evidence, read Dawkins’ twitter :p
@PoM
Thank you! That gives me a direction. I got Aristotle pretty covered. Never really read Hobbes and Locke but I know the basics. I’ll actually read it now, thank you. My general world history is decent too. As far as high school subjects go, I am quite a pro, cause, you see, I am trying to get into medschool for years now. To enter medschool you have to grab all things you brush through in high school and dig, dig, dig in them. So for years of study and work I have no bachelors or anything. My knowledge evolved from “A relatively good high schooler” to “a very very very unnecessarily nerdy highschooler”. I mean how impressive is it that I know logarithms… which everyone knows… but I am diferent cause I can do like… logarithms that are kind of longer than usual and your teacher didn’t teach you cause it’s useless and a waste of time. Yey! Really impressive, it really paid off.
@PI
Your posts lately are just brimful o’ happiness. Yay for you 😀
As long as we’re already OT — and really, is Donald Trump ever OT on a site that mocks bigotry?
Court docs reveal Donald Trump’s ‘cruel’ treatment of Ivana
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/court-docs-reveal-donald-trump-cruel-treatment-ivana-article-1.2796179
@Rogue Angel
I’m learning a lot too.
Also, welcome!
@Rogue Angel:
Welcome!
Please feel free to ask things. My fields of knowledge are perhaps less useful than those of PoM and Scildfreja, but I’m always happy to discuss topics when I know something about them.
@Dalilama:
That’s an extremely cool link. Thank you.
@Chiomara:
I’m going to disagree with PoM here, which is something that I very rarely do. I don’t think you need to read Locke and Hobbes and Marx, at least not yet; I’d suggest that you read about the impact of their ideas instead. A broad overview is often more useful, because it lets you put the ideas in context and can see where they belong and are used. Once you understand the broad overview, you can begin delving deeper into specific areas that interest you.
The word for a person who self-educates is an autodidact, and while I have immense respect for autodidacts, they often suffer from not being aware of where the gaps in their knowledge are. This can lead to you (for example) knowing everything about what Hobbes said, but nothing about how people responded to Hobbes and interpreted his work, even though that’s the more important part.
With this in mind, I’ll recommend a text which my mother got for me when I was young: A History of Western Society. I own the second edition, which is in two volumes, but I see that it’s currently up to the eleventh edition.
Academic books often end up with many editions, and the secret is that every edition normally re-uses at least 95% of the previous edition’s text. The price of new copies of the later editions will be very high, but used copies can be very cheap, especially of older editions, and it doesn’t really make a difference.
@Paradoxy:
That sounds amazing. Did you make contacts who live near your new place? That sounds like it could lead to a really supportive social network.
@(((Chiomara)))
Oh wow, that’s a pretty interesting dilemma. Civ5 is very good indeed, in a very different way from the various Paradox titles. Basically it all boils down to if you want to have an arcade-y sort of experience or a micromanagement filled realistic experience. Civ5 has a longer timescale for sure, and you can sink a whole lot of time into it, but I personally prefer the Paradox games.
I know you didn’t ask for my contribution so I hope you don’t mind me giving my opinion. 🙂
On video gaming:
Civilisation games are synchronous – we all have to be online at the same time – so that could lead to scheduling difficulties. Nonetheless, if there’s demand for it then I’d be happy to play, if you’ll have me.
(As a digression, apparently Civilisation V is a very popular game among feminist-atheists. Rebecca Watson has done blog entries and videos about it, and has mentioned that Jen McCreight is apparently a terrifying grandmaster who will wreck the face of anyone foolish enough to challenge her.)
Playing a succession game of a Paradox game is asynchronous, so we wouldn’t have to be online at the same time, but also won’t have the same sense of community.
My vote is for CK2 (possibly with an import into EU4 later) because I love CK2 dearly.
@Ginormica
Ooh, NICE, thank you.
Re the Roman Empire…Didn’t it just ‘fall’ because it was simply its TIME? No empire is meant to last forever, cycles & sine waves of history and all that. Saying an empire should last forever is like saying it’s an OUTRAGE that humans die. I mean, yes, it sucks, but just like death is caused by living, empires falling is also caused by ‘time-n-stuff’. I think once you’ve lasted over a hundred years, as an empire, you’ve done quite well, and the rest is just up to CHANCE.
@EJ
Ooooh. Thaaank you. That book sounds very interesting. Kind of out of my financial possibilities at this moment, but one of the nice things about being eager of knowledge is teachers love you. And the good thing about teachers loving you is that teachers get academic books for free all the time. So I will try to see what I can do, maybe I’m lucky ^^
@Monzach
OF COURSE I don’t mind, dear, thank you.
So Paradox’ games are more realistic than CIV, you mean to say?
@EJ, uhm, again
Hahaha, wow, it’s amazing how we fall in stereotypes without noticing. How come feminists often like the same exact things that don’t even have anything to do with feminism? Crowd unconscious (is that a term in English?) is a very interesting thing.
On Civilization V, I have spent the afternoon and night on it yesterday. My computer was gladly able to run it, even though in what looks like a simplified graphics version, I guess. I mean, instead of a fog I see black hexagons, for example. But nothing that interferes with the game play, so I’m loving it. I naturally am terrible at it, and I can’t decide if I should play as if I really was a leader, doing the most for the happiness of my people, or if I should accept they are just AIs and rule with an iron fist.
I hate, hate, HATE when I have to go to war and get a little offended when some other nation no longer wants to be friends. Even in a game like this, I can’t help being emotionally invested, which is hilarious and rather telling about the nature of myself and humans in general, Ithink . Screw Bismarck, I didn’t need your open borders anyway, douche! I should have accepted the pact of secrecy against you when I had the chance. :p It’s been a lot of fun.
@ chiomara
When video games became popular a common theme in speculative literature was that the government was using ‘shoot em up’ type games to either train up or identify who would make good warriors in real life.
Maybe all these ‘civilisation’ type simulators are grooming the next generation of leaders?
Paradox games skew pretty hard towards detail and realism, yeah. Lots of long slow strategies, dynastic crises, provincial management, and so forth. The Civ games are a bit more like a board game with historical influences. Personally, I find the Paradox oeuvre a bit daunting – I’ve dabbled a little in them, but Civ is more my style for a relaxing evening’s play. (And, well, I’m most definitely too tender-hearted not to try to make make my civ as peaceful and happy as possible!)
@(((Chiomara)))
I think it’s fair to say that the Paradox style of doing games is a lot more complex and with many more variables than in the Civ series of games. It’s a bit difficult to put into words, but the world in EUIV (I’ll use it as an example since I have many more hours put into it than into any other Paradox title) seems much more alive and with more realistic interactions between the leaders. Basically, in the world of EUIV there are at least three stats between two countries that influence their interactions between one another. You have your relations, from -200 to +200, which are the easiest to check. Then there’s aggressive expansion which directly influences the relations stat and which is also completely uncapped (I once had a -600 malus to relations with Brandenburg when playing as Russia, for example)! Then there’s trust which is a bit more complicated than either of the two previous ones. Basically, trust is a more long term modifier, since it gets affected much slower than either relations or AE, both positively and negatively. And in the end another nation’s trust in your own will decide if they want to, for example, marry into your dynasty or form an alliance.
I’m sorry for the wall o’ text there, I’m a huge fan of Paradox games and enjoy telling other people about them. 😀
The one thing about EUIV that I feel I should warn you about, though, is the fact that there’s actually very little to do in the game during peacetime. There’s trading, developing your nation’s provinces and colonization if you want to do that, but the game does largely revolve around large empires duking it out in the battlefield. So if that’s not your jam, then maybe try out CKII first?
I can’t believe I didn’t think of it reading the post but I recently started listening to a new podcast called The Fall of Rome, by an actual PhD in History specializing in Late Antiquity. A good listen for those interested.
https://soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast
Pff, not me, for sure. For you to have an idea, I come to the absurd of feeling a bit bad for the killed henchmen of the bad guy in action movies. I’m like “n-no, John McCain, don’t kill him, just make him unconscious! Maybe he just had a debt to pay!”. It’s honestly a bit over the top. I wonder how would I be at a war, or as a cop. I’d be dead in 2 days.
Hehe, again, not me. Unless you want to turn the country into Canada (<3), in which case, call me up. But it's a blessing and a curse, cause MAYBE that model isn't fit for every country, especially ancient Egypt.
@Monzach and Diptych
Damn, those games do sound awesome. I think I will fool around with Civ (which seems to be kind of easier to learn) and once I get familiar with this type of game I'll move to these, probably CK. Thank you ^^
@Alan:
If it’s relevant, there’s a strong trend of nationalism within the fanbases of strategy games, where people start to strongly identify with the state and feel that its power should be preeminent over the good of its citizens (and especially over citizens of other states.) Perhaps that’s what games like that are training up?
@Chiomara:
I don’t know whether you’re in a city or how good the libraries are in Brazil, but libraries can be a good resource for finding such books.
On the subject of video games, I think Diptych describes it well: the Civilisation series are games first and foremost, which are based on history whenever it doesn’t get in the way of gameplay. The Paradox series try to be as accurate as possible to history, even if this makes the game entirely unfair and unbalanced.
On the subject of stereotypical likes and dislikes, I think it’s because humans are joined-up creatures. If someone enjoys things A, B and C then it’s probably because they have personality traits X and Y; someone else who has those traits will also enjoy A, B and C.
When I was a teenager during the second Iraq war, I had an army recruiter call and try to convince me that war was like playing Call of Duty. I was too confused and offended to respond, and just hung up.
I’m going to drop in and recommend that anyone interested in a detailed but accessible account of the fall of Rome check out Patrick Wyman’s podcast: The Fall of Rome.
The most recent episode (5) is where Dr. Wyman really starts digging into some changes in Rome’s political order that seem to have had pretty dire consequences. Most of the previous episodes have been devoted to exploring the Goth/barbarian experience and the interconnections between the Roman and barbarian worlds. It’s fascinating stuff, imo.
Edit: Well, JoeB beat me to the punch, so consider this a +1 to his recommendation.