A line on the Dark Enlightenment reddit inspired this post. Someone asked where NRx outposts went and mentioned me going off to help my local community in the opioid crisis. I never stopped writing and will have something more for you besides working this site with the Myth of the 20th century guys. I jumped feet first into helping people recover from the opioid crisis. What I learned helped me push the message you consistently read here to engage in your community and start making connections, mapping power and procedural mechanisms and gaining influence in your community.

The opioid users are far worse off than even I expected. Trump voters are the people who still have their life together but directly have one of these opioid types in their life. The opioid users are the out of sight poor. The ideas, programs, segments I wanted to do were near impossible until after my reverend co-pilots and I could triage a newcomer and get them to be out of the hurricane. Once they moved from the every hour is a struggle point, then we could talk to them about mental and physical things to do as well as what they would go through at different stages each week while recovering. All the root causes are things our crowd knows: broken homes, poverty, atomized life, secular, etc. The saddest line was the oft repeated line at the end of many first nights was “I felt so alone”.

Some stories I heard would make me angry, some were mind-blowing for pain, and others were wild. They have a theory why the US Army is in Afghanistan, “Someone’s gotta guard those poppy fields”. Some people just love to lie. You figure out which lies are worth pointing out versus letting go. People slam mixes of meth and heroin so they get the heroin feelgood sensation but don’t zonk out. Mena was right. There are people who use simply out of boredom. The failure in our system is not cleaning them up via rehab but the period when they first get back out there and have zero social circle outside of drug people. We have a broken society, not a broken system. It is so easy to fall back into using because it is their entire social network. Some nights working with them were frustrating but when a person would get it and the message would click, it was worth it.

I discovered, and you will too if you engage, that many people do not care. We say atomized society. Do we fully grasp what that means? No. I had organizations reject me and others just kind of shrug. Your town hands out narcan for free on awareness nights, maybe it is a problem! I was lucky to find two reverends who cared. They were great partners and have become friends. Even then, after 20 months, the broader church group stopped supporting it. This created a nice scene where I got to chew out one Boomer reverend who never did anything and asked him if he thought this might be why no one goes to his church. I had a little anger at being left out to dry many weeks with no one to support me juggling a handful of addicts for two hours.

You think cops care? Ha! A woman wants to leave the heroin flophouse. You have her ready to go to a shelter or a motel. You then have her tell the cop they will identify and explain the movements and set up of the heroin dealer in your town. Cop says, “Shucks I gotta build a case”. You then laugh and point to person number two who says, “I bought from that guy and second everything she said”. Cop says, “Shucks, we cannot quite make a move”. Then the woman concocts a story of sexual assault at the flophouse and BOOM, the cop springs into action and there is a cot and warm meal for her at the sheriff’s office if she files a report. Drug dealer is not touched but uhhh, the system got her to a safe spot, right? Keep in mind, this is all months after the same cop saying they wanted information on dealers and to help people integrate into regular life again.

You get out there, engage and you will learn a lot. Learning where the state, the county and the city has decision making power (as well as where these points meet) was important. The same dozen or so people are on every board or council and care about their towns. You may learn there is not a single shelter in your county if you are a man (women’s shelters are everywhere). You may find $20,000 is easy to raise for a project that you kick in some of the money and can frame it as aligned with an organization’s interests but is secretly what you want.

One of my consistent messages is to show up at the county GOP or other local organizations when they have board meetings open to the public. No one goes. You show up with a couple friends, and suddenly, you are a target for them as a warm body. Many of these orgs have no one under 40 showing up at their meetings. They are getting very nervous that there is no one to hand off duties to. David Hines (sic?) who always dumps on the right for not organizing like the left does not quite get it that the young lefties have orgs ready to get them moving and money pouring in like a waterfall. These young lefties are always dancing to the tune of the central power, not their community, but what the central power wants to see done in their community.

The right has no central power. It likely will not in the near future. No one is coming to save you. Do not just tweet it but believe it. You are going to have to save yourself. You must be the barbarian horde you want to be per our Bronze Age friend. You have to start by being a rock. Build outward. Fix yourself and move out from there. Don’t just say Muh Mannerbund, live it. Form one and be there for your bros and treat all men of our ingroup or potential members like a friend in need.

I recently gave an e-friend some some e-grief because he had a student that wanted to play edgy in class. This white kid is a proto-edgelord. My friend was waffling on supporting him because it might affect his working relationship with a teacher. Where’s the mannerbund protection for that proto-brah? Few of us can be the lone, dissident voice. It is always easier to take an edgy step when you know you have back up. I encouraged my e-friend to help this young edgelord for the MANNERBUND because I am helping one of my son’s friends. Good kid, plays a sport with my son, and is always talking to us before practice. Always leaves his mom behind and comes to chat with us.

Why? How bad is it for this kid? Dad is non-existent and he has two moms now. I would joke with him and my son three times a week, and then one day my son told me how this kid hates his step mom and doesn’t understand why his mom is the way she is now. Kid isn’t even ten. I decided then to make sure to talk to him as a bro every single practice, ask him small questions, laugh at his terrible kid jokes and give him positive feedback when he did well like I do with my kid. Coach knew too because the kid cried after one practice waiting for his second mom and told him what was up. Mannerbund. He has a female teacher therefore the men he consistently sees in life are coach and me, so for five hours a week his coach and I are going to stop and listen to him, encourage him and smile.

I’m not typing this to get a pat on the back. I’m typing this to say that had I not sat in a room with addicts and been completely in over my head some nights with the things they told me, I would not have even thought about helping that little kid. It is just one kid. Wouldn’t have seen the value in it had I not seen how one person listening to an addict made them see the next week, month and year.

All men know a truth that women do not, and that is that the universe does not care about you. If you find people who do, you are blessed. You are not going to build a crew if you never get off your ass so get out there. You are going to miss so many opportunities to make a difference and have influence if you forever wait for the perfect shot. You guys lift, read and are the profile of potential leaders that our decayed society yearns for. Not every leader is Charlemagne, some just founded small towns, but they did it. Stop clicking like and get out there.

On to the links. Because there will be no link post next Friday, I will post ten links this week.

Deep Blue State Rejects Affirmative Action – By an incredibly small margin, deep blue Washington rejected applying affirmative action with regards to public institution admissions or hiring. The coalition was spearheaded by Asians, and sliced off that piece of the dominant left wing in Washington to add to the 40-45% of the state that is right wing. If Asians were locked out of the left, this could be an avenue to power for them.

Forty-seven years of butterfly counting – A great profile of one academics’ long journey documenting butterflies in California. It was an enjoyable read for the man’s life and dedication to his science. The sudden drop off in butterflies is not confirmed as linked to pesticides but it is a really strong correlation.

China Confident About Hong Kong – The Chinese have been muted in their response to the HK protests. This is not fear. It is confidence in the long game and how it plays into their hands.

1989 Is Dead – Interview on how the hopes and dreams of 1989 and the fall of communism are dead. The rising challenge to the liberal order and system has a ground zero in Central Europe thanks to figures like Orban, but this is just another marker in the pushback from multiple angles on the neoliberal world order.

The Dark Side Of The ’60s – The liberal world order has challengers and some of the rationale is from the glossed over dark side to what happened in the West. The destruction of families is one that Boomers and the system in general do not want to face. Talk to any drug counselor or probation officer and those broken homes that Boomers created or never formed homes that single moms chose to create are at the heart of the trauma and depression that heroin users seek to escape.

Anti-natalists, new form of narcissism – There is a rising spirit of anti-natalism. This is now being discussed despite sub-replacement TFR across the West and most of Asia for a generation. It is mentioned now joyfully due to climate change and because people found a way to make it about themselves.

Academic lies, his popsci book becomes a hit – We have linked before to analysis that shows studies were falsified that became the rationale for massive policy changes. No one is saying they would force sleep on us, but this post skewers a book about sleep. Some of the sources in the book are opposite of how the book uses them.

Where Woke Politics Ends – Andrew Sullivan has been going after some far left pieces of the system recently. He decries this woke black academic demanding a totalitarian disparate impact correction bureaucracy but his statement is that it is not liberal. He has not caught on that they do not care if it is not liberal or allows freedom. All that matters is power and exercising it for the aggrieved resentful parties.

Why Vote – It is an anti-voting column from a British perspective. It is not an essay saying democracy is a sham from our angle, but it does reflect that fewer are buying this crap. This is more the ‘let’s just fix problems’ spiel. Unfortunately, the core fundamental differences between sides have come down to one group of natives hoping to preserve their nation vs the other group of natives who don’t reproduce or have a future collecting vassals who do reproduce to use in conflict with the other natives.

Dark Money Made a Difference in 2018 – The Democrats got into the dark money game in 2018 to the tune of $140 million to help make their historic GOTV happen. No one shedding tears or whining about it. The 2018 GOTV was historic as it was the highest midterm turnout in 100 years. The Democrats in many areas experienced +90% of their ’16 turnout in a midterm. Reaction to Trump was part of it, Mueller was part of it, media hysteria played a major part and big money of course was part of it.