Optimism is Cowardice

Facing facts squarely in the face. Emphasis added.

Greg Johnson:

Despite the impediments, however, I am fundamentally optimistic about our movement.

Spengler:

Faced as we are with this destiny, there is only one world-outlook that is worthy of us, that which has already been mentioned as the Choice of Achilles -- better a short life, full of deeds and glory, than a long life without content. Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every nation, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. The march of time cannot be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or clever renunciation. Only dreamers believe there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.

Yockey:

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?

I will rephrase Spengler and Yockey: Unwarranted optimism is cowardice and stupidity – a form of moral cowardice and self-serving stupidity.

At the current time, optimism is completely, utterly, unwarranted.

Facts: Der Movement is an unmitigated failure, Whites are celebrating their own demise, HBD hero Rushton is accused by a fellow HBDer (Dutton) as being a race-mixing adulterer and cherry picker of data.

The Man on White Horse Syndrome is another permutation of the moral cowardice of optimism.  Unable to face harsh reality, activists descend into a bright fantasy land in which Reagan or Putin or Trump is going to be their God Emperor and Savior.  There is always some deus ex machina that is going to save us from our predicament, with little or no effort on our part: fairy tales for weak-minded people.

Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

 The best lack all conviction, while the worst

 Are full of passionate intensity.

Finally:

 And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Death of the West and the (Self) Destruction of the White Race

That’s reality.  Face it.  

Spengler:

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.

I differ from Spengler, as I’ve written a number of times, in the assumption of definitive inevitability in his description.  Inevitability in human affairs is a myth, a self-perpetuating myth: once you accept something as inevitable then it becomes in fact inevitable.  

Even at this late hour, we have a choice.  Even now, there is a slim hope of redemption.  That is not cowardly optimism: I see the chance, the hope, as slim, the great likelihood of utter failure, the maw of the abyss beckons.  But 99% certainty is not 100%.  If racial activists wake up, destroy the Old Movement, spurn and mock and reject the quota queens, eschew affirmative action, turn their backs on fossilized dogma and blind faith, and build a New Movement with competent leadership, that slim chance can be leveraged.  

But if we continue on the current path, we are doomed, and any optimism to the contrary is cowardice, and, truth be told, self-serving, rent-seeking behavior as well when expressed by those who personally benefit from the current state of affairs. Treason to race and civilization in exchange for the thirty pieces of silver deposited in the tin cup.

Starbuck’s Moral Cowardice

The Moby Dick character, not the coffee company named after him (who are, ironically enough, also moral cowards).

I have always considered chapter 123 of Moby Dick to be of the most pivotal points of the story, in which Starbuck must make a choice between being authentically moral by his own standards (here I make no judgment of whether or not I see Ahab’s quest as right or wrong, the point is Starbuck very clearly considered it both practically wrong as well as immoral and “ungodly” – blasphemous even) or being a moral coward.  He chose the latter.

Read this.

…outside Ahab’s door, Starbuck sees a loaded musket, and debates openly whether he shouldn’t simply shoot the captain and take over command of the ship. Although Starbuck knows that to kill is evil, he wonders whether it is not ethically preferable to kill Ahab and save the rest of the crew from certain doom. But, at the last moment, Starbuck lowers the “death tube” of the musket and puts it back—he does not have the heart, or the mind, to kill Ahab…

…he reasons about his possible murder of Ahab and mutiny in morals terms—weighing the life of one man versus the lives of many. Yet within that moral reasoning is also a question of conviction or willingness to act boldly, and Starbuck's moralizing ultimately comes to be connected with a lack of will, a lack of exactly that over-riding sense of self….

Also read this.

I make an analogy between the moral cowardice of Starbuck and that of racialist activists who know that Der Movement and its “leaders” are failing not only those activists, but the entire White race and its civilization, but who do nothing.  It’s easier, you see, to just “go along and get along,” appease the quota queens, and maybe get “rewarded” with a metaphorical (or literal?) pat on the head, praise for a comment, perhaps even an invitation to write a post or attend a meeting.  The moral weaklings do not have the strength of character (or just, perhaps, a lack of self-interested dissimulation) evidenced by the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes – to state the truth even if it is unpopular or makes those in power uncomfortable.  Now, here I talk about those activists who have enough sense to realize that decades of endless failure is a problem, who recognize one wasted opportunity after another, who understand the enormity of “movement” uselessness and ineptness, and recognize the rent-seeking behavior of the useless panhandling “leadership.”  True, a fraction of activists are so dim and/or deluded they do not realize this, and for those people we talk of cognitive deficiency, not a lack of moral courage. But for those who know better, and anyone (sane) with a triple digit IQ should really know better, then this is a deficit of character, not of intelligence or sanity.

It’s just too comfortable to engage in hobbyism, to be conformist, to fit in with the crowd, to make believe black is white and wrong is right, than to stand up, speak out, hold the failures accountable, and demand that the cause is what is sacred, not the personality cults and not the nutty dogmas folks feel obligated to pay lip service to so as to “fit in.”

It will be interesting, for example, to see the reaction to the horrific and disgusting revelations about Rushton.  Assuming for the moment that the evidence against him is solid - and it has been discussed at the pro-HBD TOO blog of all places - then this is a betrayal of the first order, not only a complete moral collapse on Rushton's part, but utter racial hypocrisy, as well as confirmation about all I've been saying about the mendacious perfidy and pseudoscientific lies of the anti-White HBD political movement. Will any of Rushton's buddies among Der Movement's leadership admit they were wrong about him and his work?  Will they denounce him and his behavior?  Will they distance themselves from the HBD scam, which as I have long discussed here, is based on a foundation of lies that go far beyond Rushton?  Or will they "circle the wagons," and at most mumble something about being "disappointed" and move on, move on there's nothing to see here?

There are many Starbucks in Der Movement.  And they’ll all go down with the racial ship, just as Starbuck and the crew went down with the Pequod.  And, unfortunately, the rest of us will go down as well, since we are all passengers on the same ship of race and civilization.

Moral cowardice has costs, and we will all pay in the end.