AmRen Journal I
In order to get to American Renaissance, I have to rent a car and drive about an hour west to the secret location in the forest. It’s not a terrible drive, so I don’t mind it, but I have come to hate dealing with car rental places. For some reason, the Nashville car rental counters are staffed by the worst people they can find. This time I was served by a black guy named Abdul with a strange accent that I could not place.
Abdul had a very bad attitude, but the sort of thing that you see from a sub-Saharan government worker. He carried on like I was disturbing him. He also stopped doing what needed doing every few minutes to stare at women walking past. The weird thing is the whole thing could be automated at this point. Most of it is, but they still have guys like Abdul working the counter for some reason.
The car was not where it was supposed to be, so with the help of guys who looked like extras from a documentary on Hernán Cortés I found the car. It turns out that Abdul is not good with his letters, so he transposed some of them on the paperwork. I get why many Americans are not troubled by machines taking over these jobs. The machines are more polite and make fewer mistakes…
I took a detour to see the Parthenon, which is a weird landmark in Nashville that I have never seen, despite being here many times. It’s a fun park and I highly recommend it if you are ever in Nashville and want a nice relaxing afternoon. It’s still weird to have a copy of the Parthenon in an Appalachian city, but it is quintessentially American. The answer to “why build a Parthenon in Nashville” is “why not build one?”
The rental car is Hyundai of some sort. It has all of the usual electronics, plus the collision avoidance stuff. Man is that annoying. Every truck that passed too close set of the buzzer. At some point, the car decided I needed to take a break and started beeping, suggesting I pull over for coffee. No kidding. I politely told the car to go screw, but it kept making that suggestion every ten minutes.
I think one reason the word seems like it is going mad, is that it is increasingly becoming idiot proof or at least trying to be idiot proof. Our cars now treat us like children. To a normal person able to navigate the world without help, this is awful. To the dummies, it is manna from heaven, I’m guessing. Still, I’d like to get my hands on the engineer who came up with the idea for the car to recommend coffee breaks…
The first time I attended American Renaissance, I was surprised by the quality of the people, which was most due to my ignorance. It was more like an academic conference than a political event. The point was the attendees were educated, professional and representative of the sort that keep the wheels of this society turning, which was what I found so striking about my first time here.
This time, I’m struck by the youth. I’m 53 so I’m probably a bit more aware of the age in the room these day, but correcting for that, the room is much younger this year. There is a new generation coming into focus here and that is encouraging. Interestingly, there were some father and son attendees. In some cases, it is the father bringing the son along and in others the son bringing the father. That’s another one of those green shoots.
There are more women here than in the past. That’s probably a good thing, but I’m not going to carve that into stone just yet. The Yoko Ono problem is a universal that transcends time and place. Still, the women I met here last night all seem level headed. Now that Heartiste is in internet gaol, I feel I have to pick up the slack on the wammin issue, so consider this my contribution to the cause. Speedy return Heartiste…
In years past, the socializing has been about the journey to this side of the great divide, with people trading stories about when they were red pilled. This year, at least so far, the talk is all about how to get more people to our side. It’s anecdotal, but it fits in with what I see elsewhere, so maybe there is a trend here. My first guess is that the number of people with their eyes wide open has reached a point where it is no longer seen as unusual…
One last note before I head off to the morning sessions. Coming in yesterday I bumped into Jared Taylor and his fiancée having a walk around the grounds. We chatted for fifteen minutes or so. They wanted to know if I have had any trouble traveling in Europe. I think Jared is still pissed about his banning, which is understandable. It’s not so much the banning, but the slimy way it was done. He expects better from his adversaries.
The fact is though, we are being treated like dangerous revolutionaries for simply wanting what people have taken for granted since the dawn of human settlement. We’re not going to get better adversaries. We’re stuck with the shabby, ruthless and vulgar people who take pleasure in harassing normal people. We have to adjust to that. If we’re going to be treated like revolutionizes, then we best start acting like them…
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