Ever wonder why we Americans haven’t already risen up to overwhelm our so-called oligarchic bankster politico masters? Well, just as Gertrude Stein is famously said to have said about Oakland, California, “There is no there, there” — so too, it may be that for those who reside upon what Native Americans call “Turtle Island,” there is no we, here.

In that vein, you might want to read yesterday’s deeply thoughtful guest post on Dimitri Orlov’s blog. Having grown up in Idaho’s “frontier America” I cannot help but accede to this sad socio-cultural analysis that makes each selfish cowboy’s fiefdom sacrosanct and wild nature a mere resource to be exploited. “Adam,” the anonymous author, points out that the only natural evolution of this deep “frontier” sickness in the so-called “United” States is for this “nation” to fracture into its de facto disconnected regional identities.

“There will be no coherent national uprising against this final suicide. There cannot be, because there is no American nation. Real nations have wrenching, defining events like the Dreyfus Affair, the Tupac Amaru rebellion, Tahrir Square, the taking of the Winter Palace, the storming of the Bastille, the trial of the Gang of Four, the Polish Deluge. The agony and ecstasy of being a nation, of being a people, evolving through time regardless of the specifics of where the capital city is or what dynasty sits on the throne has not yet happened to the mess of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in North America.

“The process is beginning. Alaskan or Southern Californian or Cascadian or Texan are embryonic nationalities. If Washington D.C. actually tried to win the fight against Russia (let alone China) and keep its tottering financial empire intact, the effort itself would exacerbate the nascent breakup along those already visible lines. Why would an Alaskan fisherman obey a bureaucrat in D.C. when his livelihood depends on selling seafood to China? What possible situation or political figure could align the interests of a Texan and a Cascadian? The inevitable breakup of North American economic and political unity is clear to anyone with a sense of how and why nations evolve on this planet. It will be messy, lubricated by rivers of blood, and in most areas accompanied by a long dark age, but the rest of the world will breathe a sigh of relief.”

The Howling Wilderness of the Mind

September 1, 2015

guest post (“Adam”)

cluborlov

I grew up in a tiny town of less than 1500 people in western Montana. It is a land of breathtaking natural beauty, and for 18 years I lived in the same house in a form of bucolic perfection. We prided ourselves on living 100 miles from the nearest stoplight. I smile to imagine that many young villagers from all over the planet share a form of kinship enforced by the laws of small communities and big mountains.

It was my home and they were my people, but after traveling, education and 13 years of living elsewhere, I can see what a strange accident of history small town America actually is, a residue left by a frontier that has moved on and twisted inward. This is a report from a correspondent embedded for 18 years and a hundred miles behind the front lines of the American frontier.

MORE