Travelogue: The Imperial Capital
One of the strange things about living near the Imperial Capital is you tend not to notice it very much, at least not directly. Everyone knows about the traffic around the area and everyone knows it is the Imperial Capital. Washington, for most people around here, is a thing you navigate around, not a place you go to for business or pleasure. It exists in the same way it exists for people all over the country. It is the symbol of the empire, but not a real place with a reason to exist, other than government.
It is a real city with people living in it. I was reminded of this as I made my way through residential neighborhoods to the Ritz-Carlton, where the conference is being held. As is true of all ruling class areas now, Washington is gentrifying, which is a polite way of saying ethnic-cleansing. Slowly, block by block, the underclass blacks are being shipped out to surrounding areas so they can be replaced with hipsters working for government and the array of think tanks that support the government.
The gentrified areas are quite nice, actually. Sitting in traffic, I saw all the things you see in the nice parts of an America city. There are lots of young childless women. At every intersection is a guy with a beard out for a jog or toting a bike. There are funky eateries and bars with outdoor seating. All of it is mixed in with old houses and old apartment houses that have been renovated enough to warrant a high rent. These days, hipstervilles have young people on scooters dodging traffic.
The Imperial Capital still has its rough areas. I passed through a neighborhood that is probably overrepresented in the crime stats. You can tell you are in a bad neighborhood when you see bars on the second and third floor windows. It’s not that the blacks fear Spider-Man will break into their apartment. Those bars are there to keep the residents from falling out. There was a time, not long ago, when a regular news item was someone falling out of a slum window. Bars solved that problem…
My reason for being in the Imperial Capital is to attend the National Conservatism conference, organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation. This is an group organized by Israeli Zionist Yoram Hazony and some other people brought in for decoration. The stated purpose is to define nationalism for Americans, but the real purpose is to whip up pro-Israel fervor among white Americans. Five minutes in the room and that is amusingly obvious. Bar mitzvahs are less Jewish.
The organizers and most of the attendees would deny this, of course. That is one reason I am here. In dissident circles, there is a debate about what motivates these so-called conservatives. The anti-Semites argue it is part of the master plan executed by Big Nose™ to undermine the Occident. Others say these people are just acting on greed, as being a punching bag for the Left pays well. Still others think these people are not terribly bright, but truly convinced they are involved in a great project.
So far, and I have been here for only an evening, all three are right to some degree. For example, the conference opened with a sermon from someone calling himself David Brog, who was the Executive Director of Christians United for Israel. I call his speech a sermon, as it sounded like something you would hear from a highly animated Protestant minister in another age. Instead of throwing the devil out of the room, however, he demanded that anyone with a hint of racism in their heart leave the room.
For purely aesthetic reasons, I briefly considered making a theatrical exit when he went on his tirade, but I had been drinking for a while and did not trust my judgement. Instead, I scanned the room for reactions. One older guy at my table was deep in prayer. A swarthy young guy, who works for the DOJ, seemed a bit puzzled. A nice Jewish lady from AEI was giddy with excitement. That pretty much describes the room. Some were puzzled by the sermon, while others were in some form of ecstasy.
I would imagine some portion of the puzzled were just as insulted as I was hearing this loon rant and rave about racism. While I am not a racist, I don’t think being one is the worst thing. It’s probably down there with being gay or wearing shorts in winter, as far as character flaws. Even allowing for the cuck’s need to grovel on these issues, his fanaticism was not contrived. Even after all that has happened, these idiots still don’t get it. To be a conservative now is to be a moron…
I drank with a person calling himself Jamie Weinstein, who is both a minor celebrity and some sort of organizer of salons in the city. He talked about all the famous people he has had to his place over the years. He lives in the Ritz-Carlton, so doing whatever it is he does must pay well. That’s something you get used to in the Imperial Capital. You will often run into people living very nice lives, but no obvious source of income. He says he has a podcast and deals in real estate, but neither seemed all that important to him…
The phrase “intelligence community” gets used often in the mass media, but most people just assume it means intelligence services. In reality, the intelligence gathering is done in the social scene, while the processing of it is done by the services. This came home to me when an old acquaintance turned up in the restroom. I had spotted him earlier, but it has been thirty years, so I was not sure if my memory was correct. He looked like a guy I used to know, who worked for a foreign government.
He must have spotted me so he tracked me down on my way to the toilet. He seemed happy to see me and I was happy to know my memory was correct. I asked him what he was up to and why he was at the event. He no longer has an official role with his government, but it was obvious to me that he remains a member of the community, which is why he was at the event. That’s how the spy game works. It is lots of people taking notes in social settings, passing them on to their government…
As far as the conference thus far, imagine if the comment section of Breitbart was a real place and you were sentenced to live in that place. It’s like a cult meeting, where everyone thinks it is 1985. The intent is clear. They hope to reanimate the corpse of Buckley conservatism, by riding the coattails of Trump. From a purely cynical perspective, it is not a bad strategy. Most whites cannot bear to think about the future, so turning their alienation into nostalgia, then monetizing it, is a nice grift….
One final note. Everyone I spoke with at the event talked about themselves as if they were dissidents, dodging the search lights of the man. It’s really weird hearing people talk about how dangerous it is to be a civic nationalist. The event has been highly publicized and is held at a swanky venue in the Imperial Capital. Yet, they really think they are living as underground heretics. They seem to relish this status. Instead of being horrified that their very mild dissent is anathematized, they think it makes them hip and edgy.
In a way, I feel sorry for these people. They are in this room for the same reason I see dissidents at our events. In their daily lives, they are surrounded by radicals who would like to murder the rest of us. In this room they get to let their hair down and be themselves, around people like themselves. For many of them, this is a rare chance to feel like they are not alone. The utter pointlessness of the enterprise goes unnoticed, because it is swamped by the basic desire for fellowship and community…
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