Decay, Blight and Sprawl - A Diary of Sorts
As most of you know, I recently got married. My bride moved in with me, but we have been actively looking for a much smaller town than the one I’ve lived in for the past year. We decided on a specific area of Alabama and have been visiting towns and judging what the real estate market looks like in each. And, as you can imagine, we’re looking at crime statistics and demographics. I’m a realist, and I know how the crime statistics break down. I’m not going to apologize for that.
My wife and I focused a lot of our attention on one town and made several visits. The street that had a very nice coffee shop and restaurant also had a lot of abandoned stores. We asked someone we met from a couple towns over if they thought the town was dying because stores looked to have been closed for some time. The gentlemen told us that the town has been that way for 20 years. Hmmmm.
On our next trip there, we had a list of houses that were for sale. We entered addresses into the GPS and started exploring various neighborhoods. With it being a small town, we didn’t have far to go between addresses. What we noticed was many very nice houses outnumbered by ones that looked like they could be used as the set for Sanford and Son. "What the hell is going on here?"
We decided the town was neither dying nor growing, but if we had to guess its condition in 10 years, it would be worse. That town is either going to die or someone is going to step up and "gentrify" it. Counting on a group gentrifying it, to me, means it’s going to die either way. Left alone, it will probably get worse. But if the "Left" gets involved, it won’t be a place we’d want to live either. In my experience, gentrification is almost never done by the Right. You are free to disagree in the comments, but that’s the problem.
When I talk about moving to small, local towns as a strategy to escape the murderous national Regime and their State House apparatchiks, many argue that abandoning big cities is suicide because that’s where the political power lies. But how many of you who are politically active and on the Right want to live in a big city? How many of you would be willing to get a team together to go into a crime-ridden neighborhood and do what it takes to gentrify it? I’m guessing, none. But the Left does EXACTLY that. They go into those cities, drive out the violent (poor) people they claim to champion, and seize the power that comes with being politically active in those cities. Until you’re ready to put in that kind of effort, and make that kind of sacrifice, please stop talking about what a bad idea it is to abandon cities.
I used the example of the particular small town we have ruled out to highlight the fact that that city is either going to die, or it will be saved... by the LEFT. The Right is woefully lazy and incompetent when it comes to politics in general, much less saving a small town from extinction. Make all of the excuses you want about companies moving overseas, yada yada. The fact is that the Right is not putting in the amount of work at all levels that the Left is. They’re out-hustling us. Until we get serious and band together like the Left does, small towns will continue to decay, or become new spots for weekend homes for the Left. As the president of the Mises Institute, Jeff Deist, says, "The difference between the Left and the Right is that the Left is serious."
I grew up in NJ, just outside of Philly. I moved to rural Missouri in 2006, and found my home with acreage to make my stand in this world in 2015. The situation there is untenable, too. Camden has been a wreck for decades. The town I grew up in, which is next to Camden, is getting all of the diversity it wants. I last visited there in 2019 and could barely recognize the place. I talked to my dad, who stayed right there in NJ and recently passed away, about a year ago. I told him, 'You know, I would have stayed right here, a mile from you, but the taxes, cost of living, traffic, crime, and all of the other policies that Trenton has passed over the decades has made this place into an overpriced dump'. He understood completely. His townhome had an annual property tax burden of $6.600.00. My brother, who lives a few miles from where my dad did, has a tax burden of over $7,000.00. There are no typos. My home, 2100sq ft, 75x25 workshop and 20 acres cost $135,000 and I pay $750.00 per year in taxes. It's not even a debate. If I lost my job tomorrow, I would be able to live here indefinitely.
That said, I do not know anything about the people who gentrify urban areas. They are dangerous places to move to. Being white and middle class there makes you stick out prominently. However, I wonder if now the danger in going to those places to refurbish them has grown too much, and the gentrification crews have moved to safer areas like Alabama?
The bright spot in the area in which I now live is that a lot of people who think like me are moving in, creating communities and refurbishing some of the blighted areas of town. They are religious groups, too. When I ask them what brings them here, they all say the same thing: 'Bible prophecy. End times events'. So, take that for what it is. They are an odd group, but, they are also hardworking, have large families and are not criminals. They want to keep their families safe.
The Ben Shapiros of the world, that I was foolish enough to support until I saw the cold reality of the Nov. elections, think that all we need to do in order to return this nation to some semblance of sanity is point at the people on the left and say: 'Look how crazy they are'. The problem with that thinking is that it is lazy, and even worse, cowardly. As insane as they are, they have concrete goals and plans in mind. Notice that none of the people who despise white men and women have been ejected from their positions of power? Not one. In order to take power, one must verbalize a goal and say it loudly and without apology. No aloofness. No memes. No 'owning the libs'. The Nick Fuentes types are just clownish navel gazers. In order to get serious, we need to BE serious. People gravitate to strength, which is why the left is winning. Their ideology may be a mile wide and half an inch deep, but they still hold power.
I recently left the city and I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life. My wife and I are constantly reminding ourselves on one horrendous thing or another from the bygone era of our city dwelling.
I currently live in the suburbs but I’ll be moving further into the country once I’ve accumulated enough wealth. The English countryside is actually extremely based, much like our American brothers it’s the cities that are degenerate.
I’ll regroup in a few years when I’m richer and in better standing, maybe then I’ll consider contending with the nutjob left in the cities but for right now, as long as all of the institutions are against me - including the military in which I once served - then I’m doing my own thing.
You’re a good man Pete and it’s great to hear about you and your wife finding a new spot to live, I wish you all the best on your adventure. Thanks for all the great content. It’s good to know I’m not alone no matter how often it feels that’s way in this clownworld.