The first thing you notice about the Toronto airport is the garbage on the floors of the terminal. I’m using Air Canada for this trip, so it means connecting through Toronto on the way out and Montreal on the way back. I got off by flight from Lagos, went through a maze to arrive at the end of terminal. The other flights are to Asia, so the terminal has the feel of the British Empire. That would be the dirty, squalid part of the empire. I feel as it I should be wearing a pith helmet and khaki shorts.

That explains the trash on the floors. The terminal is full of Sikhs, Chinese and various South and East Asians. Canada has a lot of Sikhs. Those are the swarthy looking guys who wear the interesting headgear. I think the name for it is Dastar, which comes from Persian, suggesting the people under the headgear also come Persia. That part of the word does not interest me, so I will not bother looking into it. What matters here is those guys were all over the terminal, as passengers and employees.

Why Canada imported so many Sikhs is a mystery, but the lunacy of western ruling classes should be considered a feature at this point. Most likely, the usual suspects were behind the idea of importing Sikhs into Canada for the usual reasons. This has given Canada a criminal element that it would otherwise lack, so there’s that. Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa is one of the nation’s most notorious criminals. Since his journey to a Canadian prison came via America, they can blame America for it.

Anyway, the garbage on the floor of the terminal is probably due to the Asian population. I saw several Chinamen toss litter on the floor. Another East Asian, probably Chinese as well, ate something with chopsticks and then left the remains on the floor of where he ate them. Sikhs, of course, like all south Asians, are dirty people. In Lagos, you see them littering all the time. They seem to think the ground will magically clean up after them. Maybe they just don’t care, as back home they live in filth….

Travel in the modern age is the worst part of traveling. All of us are now tethered to our work by e-mail, mobile and text. That means a vital part of travel is making sure you have access to the internet. Of course, the intensely on-line start to come unraveled when disconnected from their favorite platform. Young people, of course, may as well have their mobile embedded into their skulls. They are glued to the things. The result is the airport is a life and death struggle for access to charging ports…

While I was watching chickens and goats scurry about the terminal, an elderly Chinese man approached me. In not so good English, he explained that he was taking a survey about how people enjoyed their time in Canada. Apparently, this is something sponsored by the government. Perhaps the fact that I was sitting in what looked like a rail station during the British Raj should be their focus. Maybe if Canadian cities were full of Canadians, there would be no need for such surveys…

On the plane, a big black women immediately broke open her picnic basket. This is something you notice when you travel. Black women love eating on planes. They bring massive amounts of food and spend the fight eating from various baskets and bags they pull out the entire flight. This woman was eating soup as a first course, which was a nice touch. I fell asleep, but as we approached Denmark, I noticed she was grazing on what looked like my cat’s dry food. I guess that’s the kibble course…

A funny thing I spotted on my last trip to Copenhagen is that the Danes cannot control their body temperature. As soon as the temps fall before the mid-70’s, they break out the winter gear. It is about 15 degrees Celsius, which I roughly 60 degrees American, a beautiful fall day by our standards. All over the city I see locals bundled up like is the dead of winter. Clearly, they are not cold blooded, as there are no sunning rocks, so I’m guessing they just like winter. It is an odd customer nonetheless.

At the airport, I hire a car from a place that is new to me. Sixt is a rental company that operates in Europe. The clerk is black, West African, but she speaks English like native Danes, so she probably grew up in the country. She needs constant supervision, another thing I have noticed about vibrancy in the Nordic countries. Maybe the point of their open borders policy is to give their people a hobby. Rather than the normal, boring efficiency that comes natural to them, they are punching things up with diversity.

In my trips to this part of the world, that’s what has always jumped out to me. America has been multi-racial since the beginning. We have evolved our systems to accommodate the decedents of slaves. That made it easier for us to integrate the recent waves of brown people for over the horizon. Our retail and administrative systems were built to be operated by morons. That’s not the case in this part of the world and it really shows…

I’m staying one night in Copenhagen to get rested up, then I’m off for a day trip along the Swedish coast into Norway. I rented what appears to be q child’s toy. It is a Renault Scenic, which is about the size of a Prius. It’s diesel and manual transmission. I was less than enthusiastic, but putting around Copenhagen, I see the utility of having a tiny little car. Dodging the damned bicycles is a great challenge. On foot, it is a hassle, but in a car, it is maddening. Driving is like the old arcade game Frogger.

I got lost, of course, as the hotel is tucked away in a residential neighborhood outside of the airport. What has always struck me about the residential areas of Nordic countries is the sublime pleasantness. Even the working-class areas have the community feel to them that you only see in the tonier neighborhoods of America. Seeing white people, quietly walking the streets, commuting on bikes and shopping at local stores in an urban area is quite jarring when you come from Lagos on the Chesapeake…

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The structure of this conference is a bit unusual, in that they have a normal room for speakers to give standard speeches. The afternoon, however, is broken up into smaller rooms where three or four famous people will address a topic. Each person gives a ten minute address and then they talk among themselves for a bit. Finally they take questions from the audience. These are held in smaller rooms, so everyone has a chance to ask their question if they like. I attended the session on immigration.

There was someone calling himself Mike Gonzalez, who gave a short history lesson on the origins of racial identities used by the government. He launched into a critique of the Frankfurt School, which had all the guys with yarmulkes nervous. They were talking into their watches, probably thinking they had a live one. Trouble was averted when Gonzalez changed the topic and got to his main idea, which is to remove the race and ethnicity questions from the census entirely. It would just be a simple counting of people.

This is so obviously insane that I suspect the Frankfurt School stuff was some sort of diversion, so the audience would not think his main idea was so wacky. His claim is that by dropping the race and ethnicity questions, set-asides and affirmative action will be impossible to administer, so they will be dropped. Once the benefits of racial categorization diminish, according to his theory, people especially non-whites, will stop identifying primarily by the tribe. We’ll all become Americans.

This has always been the habit of Buckley-style conservatism. Instead of addressing Progressive morality head on, they find an economic or legal remedy to achieve a conservative goal, without confronting left-wing morality. This approach never works, but old habits die hard. Then there is the fact that we would have no way of debating immigration, as we would have no way of knowing the demographic makeup of the country or the individual states…

Another speaker was a women calling herself Luma Simms, claiming to be an immigrant from Iraq. She gave a new age talk on something she calls “rootedness” which is the opposite of alienation. Her basic argument is that immigrants should not be made to assimilate, as the modern American culture lacks rootedness. These newcomers should not be forced to join the consumer race. That’s not a term she used, but it is what she was driving at. She reminded me of a very loud Marianne Williamson.

Mx. Simms provided the most entertaining exchange during the round table discussion part of the show. She said something along the lines of “Immigrants don’t come to America to be absorbed into the culture.” Amy Wax replied, “Then why are you here?” Surprisingly, Mx. Simms was unprepared for the question, but she recovered after a moment and went on a ramble about some hippy sounding stuff. She struck me as someone with a lot of dream catchers in her home and lots of scented candles…

During the Q&A, a few people asked about what can be done to address the flood of migrants and the speakers offered some suggestions. Finally, someone asked, “Since the track record on conservative solutions to immigration is not very good, we have to assume all of these ideas will fail. What is plan B?” The whole room erupted and even the speakers had to laugh. Amy Wax and Scott McConnell are both black pilled on the issue and said we are doomed. The other two had no answer…

Socializing with people here during breaks, there are two groups in attendance. There are normal people much closer to the dissident right than conservatism, but they have just not made the journey over the river. The other camp is the think tank people, media and government functionaries. Washington is a company town and that means there is a social scene. These conferences are a part of that scene. They use these events to network and maintain connections to others in the scene.

For example, at dinner on Monday night, I was seated next a woman who told me she works at AEI. I started grilling her on why she was attending a conference on nationalism, when she works for a notorious neocon outfit. She treated me like I was country rube who did not fully understand the complexity of the issue. The fact is, like a lot of people at this thing, she is here to mingle with friends. Keeping up appearances is an important aspect to the culture of the ruling elite. Instead of court, they have conferences.

That said, I was a bit surprised by the number of these people, who are quietly black pilled on what comes next for America. That sense of being oppressed dissidents makes a lot of sense in this context. These are people who probably came to Washington with the best of intentions, then saw it was a corrupt city full of people interested only in how much they can loot from the system. In other words, from the inside they see that reform is impossible, so whatever comes next will be from the outside…

I have been thinking about why Hazony made such a big deal out of rejecting people like Peter Brimelow, Jared Taylor and Patrick Casey. One reason is he needs to rope in the Christian Zionists, which is why David Brog is involved in this project. Brog is a fanatical anti-white crusader. I heard more than a few people mention that his outbursts about racism were unnecessary and unpleasant. Having a volatile crank like that in the same room as Taylor or Brimelow would be a disaster.

Of course, this event is a sales pitch of sorts. The people from the think tanks and government agencies will report back to their respective home planets and talk to their colleagues about what they saw. If the lizard people I’ve been mingling with the last two days are satisfied that Hazony is not a danger, he can expect support from the community, as well as the donor community. This conference is part of the vetting process for Hazony and his team.

The sales pitch being made is a classic one in politics. The first part is a critique of conservatism, which everyone agrees has failed. Then the question becomes what will replace it as the dance partner of Progressivism. The pitch Hazony is making is that the choice is between his Hebrew nationalism and white nationalism. It’s the same argument Martin Luther King made in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. The choice on offer is this thing you don’t like or something much worse…

This event has been a white pill for me. I could have done without the civic nationalist bromides and the hooting about racism, but the fact is the window is swinging our way inside the Imperial Capital. That’s not to say these people are going to start reading me or showing up at dissident events. It’s that they have taken the first step in this direction, which is recognizing the threat on their Right is legitimate. They are worried about us, as they know their kids are more interested in us than in them.

Support the media that supports you. While all of us toiling in the fields of dissident media are motivated by a sense of duty, having a place to sleep and food on the table still requires money. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. Or, you can send money to me at: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. I now have a PayPal setup for those who prefer that method to donate. Thank you for your support!

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…

Support the media that supports you. While all of us toiling in the fields of dissident media are motivated by a sense of duty, having a place to sleep and food on the table still requires money. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. Or, you can send money to me at: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. I now have a PayPal setup for those who prefer that method to donate. Thank you for your support!

Saturday is the long day of the conference. It starts at nine and runs through five, then there is a banquet with a speaker. This year Taylor went with a youth movement for the speakers. Patrick Casey started things off with a talk about his group and what they are doing. Young people are terrible public speakers, because they are inexperienced, and nervous, but Casey delivered a nice professional talk that did not try to do too much.

That’s the key with public speaking. You’re not Cicero or Patrick Henry so don’t try too hard. Make your points, respect the audience and play within yourself. Casey delivered a nice professional speech that covered the material. It suggests he is growing into his role as a leader of his group. There’s nothing wrong with youthful energy, which AIM has in plenty, but there needs to be a steady hand guiding that youthful energy.

It occurred to me, while interacting with the AIM guys, that the biggest challenge they will face is maintaining discipline in the organization. Bring together a bunch of bright young guys and they will come up with a million new ideas. Not all of them will be great ideas, which where guys like Casey need to step in and impose some discipline, in order to keep the groups on the same page and out of dangerous waters.

The trouble, young guys will buck and not want to take direction from the home office on what they are doing locally. Casey is going to have make belonging to his brand so valuable that the local chapters will never consider breaking off on their own, which was an issue with the Identity Europa organization. Casey is a bright guy getting good advice, so they will unriddle it, but it will be a challenge for them in the near term…

John Derbyshire, who gave a talk on his idea of an arctic alliance. It’s a stock talk he has given before in various ways, but with so many new people showing up at these things, it is important they hear the source material for many of the ideas they have found persuasive. His talk was a good counter to the Casey talk, as Derb is more on the philosophy and theory end, while Casey is a retail organizer.

Political theory and meta-politics are important, but they are useless without a retail arm implementing those ideas. At the same time, organizing to gain political power is just barbarism, unless it is toward some larger goal. Power is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. America has rotten elites and they need to be replaced, but their rotten ideas have to be defeated as well. Giving the audience a taste of bother ends of that political teeter-totter was a good way to open the show…

The afternoon session shifted gears a bit. Jared always has at least one speaker discuss events in Europe, which is a great way to add some perspective. As Americans, we often fail to notice what’s happening in the broader world. That’s mostly because our media is all propaganda at this point, but we have always been a provincial people. We have a big country with plenty to keep us busy. Still what’s happening in with regards to the big issues of this age is just as important as what is happening here.

John Morgan from Counter-Currents gave a great talk on Hungary. He is an American, but he spends most of his life in Europe. Oddly, what is happening in Eastern Europe probably has more salience for dissidents than much of what is happening here. In Hungary, they are wrestling with the problems of globalism, nationalism and migration and radical democracy. In a sense, the great fight between globalism and nationalism is being fought in these former Soviet Bloc nations, so it should have our attention…

The dinner speaker was James Allsup, who has a hug YouTube following. I’ve been to a lot of events for all sorts of things and I can count on one hand the number of time I paid attention to a dinner speech. By that stage, I’m tired and ready for a nap. The Allsup speech was great and had my attention throughout. He’s only 23, but handles himself like a veteran on stage. Unlike Nick Fuentes, it seems perfectly natural. I really enjoyed listening to his talk and he is going to be a big star ion this scene for years to come…

Generational politics is a little annoying, because the supposed differences in generations are usually meaningless. Since the middle of the last century, it is mostly a way to keep whites bickering with one another, rather than defending their interests as a group. Something that is different with the next generation though is total comfort with all media. The Millennials grew up consuming product, but the Zoomers have grown up producing product. It’s second nature for them.

I think that may be why we are seeing so many you YouTube stars with a lever of sophistication in their product that seems impossible. Allsup has done a million video and interview by the time he is 23. This young girl calling herself “Soph” is probably a sign of things to come. Producing content is as natural to her as breathing, because she grew up doing it. She’s also consuming content at a rate never seen, so she has internalized ideas it used to years to grasp. The Zoomers are going to be different…

It used to be that countries routinely issued visas to people entering for business or tourism without too much hassle. It was what civilized countries did. On the other hand, the less civilized discouraged visitors. Albania was famous for operating like a hermit colony during the Cold War. Saudi Arabia is known for being unfriendly to visitors, even their fellow Muslims. The rule of thumb was that the openness to tourism was a proxy for the degree of order and civility in the society.

Today, America is now routinely rejecting people from Western countries because of their politics. Greg Johnson’s Canadian video guy was detained by U.S. customs at the airport and then deported, because he was coming to AmRen. He was told he violated the terms of his visa, because he intended to interview people at the event. It is complete nonsense, but they don’t need a reason to reject someone. He was also made persona non grata for five years. This is where we are now in America…

There was a lovely couple from Wisconsin in attendance and we chatted at length about what we need to do and where we want this thing to go. It is a common conversation I have with people new to this stuff and I don’t always have the best answers. I think I may have stumbled upon one this weekend. I said, “The best thing you can do for the cause is bring two of your friends next year.” That really is the right answer, when you step back and look at it. It is our version of “think globally, act locally.”

Everyone has a role to play, but the most important role is for everyone in dissident politics to get creative on red-pilling their friends and family. That means getting together to talk about what works and what does not work. If everyone at AmRen could convert one friend by next year, the event is sold out in weeks, not months. If that keeps happening the thing will not be held in a forest, but on the Capital Mall. In all matters, it is numbers that matter. First we get the numbers, then everything else is possible…

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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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My journey home started at the Helsinki airport. I drove from Turku to catch a noon flight, so I left several hours for the usual nonsense at the airport. I had plenty of time as the process of going through security and passport control was fast and efficient. It’s not like the Finns take a bunch of shortcuts. It’s just that the Finns are smart and sensible, so the people staffing the various posts at the airport are smarter than you’re going to find at an American airport. There is a lightness to it that you don’t see in America.

I had read Ed Dutton’s latest book on the flight over and it occurred to me that a good example of his thesis is the airport comparison. The very basic argument he is making is that the West is getting dumber due to selection pressure working against the traits we associate with general intelligence. As a result, the West is getting less capable. If this process is not arrested, collapse is inevitable. We will not have enough smart people to run the systems of the West, so we will retreat into less complex societies.

The Helsinki airport runs like other airports, but it is run by a people with an average IQ over 100. The Baltimore airport, in contrast, uses the same systems, but it is run by people with an 85-IQ. Now, in fairness, the typical Finn is not working security at their airport, so the average IQ of the staff is certainly below the national average. On the other hand, the management layer at the Helsinki airport is probably a full SD smarter than what you’ll find at a typical American airport, with lots of diversity hires at every level.

In other words, the Helsinki airport is like 1950’s America when all of the important positions were manned by people from the majority population and that majority population was smarter than today. Meanwhile, the BWI airport is future America, maybe not too distant future America, where the important positions are staffed by a hodgepodge of whoever washed up here, managed by a significantly dumber white population, with the help of loads of diversity. The future of the West is the TSA on a bad day…

Leaving Russia by train, you pass through a town called Vyborg. It is an old city, probably founded in the 11th century, but no one knows. It has changed hands many times over the centuries. The Finns, Swedes and Russians have taken turns controlling it. Today it belongs to the Russians and is a craphole. The population has rocket high drug and alcohol abuse, along with the social dysfunction to go with it. The point is the same problems ailing the West are showing up in even the remote parts of the world…

On the train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, a Finnish passenger pointed out the window at an old dilapidated building just outside the city. He said, “That’s where they held Finns who were being sent to Siberia.” By “they” he meant the Bolsheviks. You get the sense that there remains a strong underlying suspicion and hatred of the Russians….

Watching Russian TV, I saw ads for Kazakhstan. They were hilarious. It was like Borat was hired by their chamber of commerce to create the ads…

Riding the train between Finland and Russia, you get to see the border control of both counties in close comparison. The Finns are professional and clearly trained to evaluate each passenger based on their experience. The Russians are just following a procedure, without putting a ton of thought into it. More important, the Russians operate under much tighter rules. Their superiors don’t trust them to do too much thinking on their own, so they have a rule for every condition. Low trust societies need lots of rules…

The collapse of the Russian collusion myth was hilarious, but the aftermath concealed the real damage that has been done. The Europeans follow the lead of the American media, which means they now have the Russian collusion virus. I saw this show on the BBC, which is supposedly about how the Russians secretly influence European elections through control of dissident politics. It’s every bit as nuts as the Russian collusion nonsense and every bit as damaging to the political culture of the continent…

The scars of socialism can still be seen outside Saint Petersburg. The run down housing blocks and abandoned concrete buildings are a reminder of the failure of greatest and most monstrous social engineering experiments in history. Mixed in with those ugly reminders of the past, there are new housing blocks that look like they are built by people, rather than prison guards. There are even housing tracts that are rather stylish, like an eastern version of an American suburb. Russia is still poor, but it is getting better…

I had the pleasure of spending time with Ed Dutton. He is even more eccentric in real life than you see in his video. He is also razor sharp and very witty. He translated a Finnish speech for me in real time, which was like having Rowan Atkinson explain a speech by elves to the denizens of Middle Earth. Of course, we both had been drinking, so that certainly had something to do with it. You learn a lot about an Englishmen after he has had a few drinks. We are very lucky to have Ed Dutton on our team…

The one thing Europeans struggle understanding is what it is like to live in a city like Baltimore. I was chatting with some people, trying to explain to them how Baltimore can have a crime rate 200 times higher than Finland. They were baffled as to why blacks shoot one another over sneakers. I felt like Rutger Hauer at the end of Blade Runner. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Patrol cars on fire off the shoulder of North Avenue. I watched hoppers glitter in the dark near the Hampsterdam Gate…..”

I’ve always been skeptical of the global white nationalist movement, for the simple reason that what ultimately has defined the West is competition between people. The Chinese are smart, smarter than Europeans, but they could not make the great leap out of the Malthusian trap that happened in Europe. The reason is the Han came to dominate their region long ago, so they put their smarts to work concentrating their domain. The Europeans used their smarts competing against one another to dominate Europe.

You see the residue of the competition everywhere you go in Europe, even in the Nordic countries, which are very close ethnically and culturally. There can be cooperation on a range of interests, but ultimately, that cooperation has to be based on ethnic nationalism, not racial solidarity. The Finns have to want to keep their own lands, before they can cooperate with Italians, who want not keep their own lands. Europeans need to love themselves again, before they can come together to defend Europe…

The morning of the conference, the weather in Turku was perfect for a nice long walk around the city. It’s still winter, but the signs of spring are appearing, so in the morning it is cold, but too cold. I was waiting for the secret message telling me where the secret meeting would be held in the afternoon. I had decoded the message from the previous day, which gave me the location of the dead drop, so I had a few hours to kill. My first stop was the big old Lutheran church, that was a few blocks from where I staying.

Turku Cathedral was originally a catholic cathedral of Finland, but today it is the Mother Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. It is the central church of the Lutheran Archdiocese of Turku. It was originally built out of wood in the late 13th century, but was expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries, using stone and brick as the construction material. In person, it is impressive mostly due to its age. It was not hard to imagine people walking to mass 500 years ago on the same spot I standing.

The cathedral is located next to the river that runs through the city. There is a little park there where you sit and watch joggers and bikers on the path along the river. In the early morning, it is very peaceful. As I walked along the path, I suddenly remembered how much I miss being on the water. It has been a few years since I’ve done any fishing, so I made to myself to pick up that hobby again. That is one of the great benefits of travel. It gives you time to think about what is important and remember to get back to doing that.

After a walk along the river, I took a hike up the big hill that overlooks the whole city, on top of which is an old anti-aircraft gun from the Second World War. There’s also a bunker that looks like it is functional. a short walk down the hill is the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum. It appears to be a replica of what I think is a original village. During normal hours, they have actors playing the various roles of villagers from the period. It’s like an open air, interactive museum, along with a craft museum and the requisite gift shops.

From there I walked to the art museum, which was closed, but alongside of it was an open air food market. On the street leading up to the museum, which is on a hill, is a bust of Lenin. The Finnish Bolsheviks were a nasty lot, ready to see out their brothers to a foreign power, all in the name of a madhouse dogma. The Finns experience with the communists is a good reminder that there is no dealing with lunatics. There are simply some people who are born to be traitors to their own side…

Having retrieved the location for the secret meeting from the dead drop, I headed off from the hotel a little before the start, as it was a short walk from home base. Of course, I took a circuitous route, doubling back a few times to make sure I was not being followed. Upon reaching the location, I immediately saw someone I knew. We exchanged the appropriate greetings, which of course is the secret handshake. The cloak and dagger aspect these things is serious business, but there’s nothing that says you can’t have some fun with it.

All of these security protocols are due entirely to the fact that even in Finland, lunatics from Antifa are allowed to roam the streets causing mayhem. In fact, it is fair to say they are the unofficial secret police of the global managerial state. They are allowed to commit crimes, intimidate people and harass businesses. The government could shut them down tomorrow, but they don’t, which is an endorsement of Antifa by the state. That’s where things are in the West. We’re ruled by gangsters that employ thugs…

Inside the event, I was struck by the professionalism of the organizers. They really have their act together in Finland. The event kicked off with a recorded video from Jared Taylor, who was supposed to be at the event. He is usually quite sunny, but he was still a bit angry over what has happened to him. I really can’t blame him. When our enemies do these things, it is intended to be an insult, a humiliation. There’s nothing wrong with getting mad in response, even if it will change nothing. We are human.

Most of the attendees were young, 20’s and 30’s, with some graybeards sprinkled into the mix. There was a good number of people in their 40’s and 50’s too, so it made for a lively crowd, but not too lively. Most were people who worked in companies and were comfortable in a professional setting. The event had the feel of a corporate retreat. Once again, it was a reminder of why our rulers fear us so much. If not for the thugs, this event could fill a large venue with the sorts of people that keep society functioning.

Millennial Woes filled in for Taylor and gave a nice talk about the usual things. I think if I were to list one complaint about these events it’s that the speakers tend to spend too much time rattling off the list of crimes committed by out rulers. If you are at one of these events, you know why you’re at the event. Being the rude obnoxious American, I eventually spoke up during the question and answer period, making the point that these events need practical stuff about organizing, rather than the listing of complaints.

Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for a Ukrainian group that calls itself the National Corps, gave a talk that lasted longer than it should. That and she sounded a lot like the IRA thirty years ago. Kevin McDonald was on hand and gave the sort of speech you would see at the Mencken Club, except for some commendatory on the Jews. He really hated the fact that I recalled the headline of John Derbyshire’s review of Culture of Critique. He’s still sore about that, I guess. I don’t think he likes me very much.

The best talk was given by Mark Collett. In all honestly, I liked his speech because he repeated many of the things I write here on a regular basis. I don’t know if he reads me or not, but he made a point I have been making for years. That is, no authentic alternative movement is going to succeeded by being negative. Positive identity has staying power and it naturally attracts people to it. A movement that is nothing but a laundry list of grievances only attracts misfits and trouble makers. That cannot be said enough…

I did have readers and listeners there at the event. Some of them recognized my voice and came over to say hello. It’s not false modesty. I just struggle with the fact that lots of people read these posts and now lots of people listen to me. It’s an odd thing to hear someone say they recognized my voice or tell me they are a fan. It’s even stranger when it happens seven time zones from home. That said, it’s always good reminder that there is serious stuff going on here and I always need to keep that in mind…

The event was over around seven, so we adjourned to a nearby pub to drink beer and socialize. The Finnish police were on high alert, as the local lunatics were threatening to cause mayhem. I’m not sure what happened, but we were told to leave one bar and then another. I noticed someone, who looked like Ted Kaczynski just after they pulled him the cabin, following us around, screaming like a lunatic. My guess is he was the one getting the bars to throw us out. We managed to have a good time nonetheless.

The lesson I’ve drawn from attending events in the US and Europe is that dissident politics is woefully short on organizers. We really need to get better at organizing locally, building real life communities and working out how to get together without alerting the crazies. That means were have to stop thinking of ourselves as concerned citizens. Like it or not, we live in a lawless age where the rulers will lie, cheat and steal to undermine dissent. That means we have to stop trying to play by the rules when organizing and conspiring.

Dissident politics will have to be radical politics. That’s the real awakening this week. We are the new Jacobins. If this thing is to succeed where prior movements have failed, it is going to have start with that understanding. That means operating like radicals, rather than the local rotary club. It means throwing sand in the gears, making sure that the wheels of society don’t turn smoothly. That’s going to be hard for many to accept and it will be harder to sell, butt hat is the only way forward, if white identity politics is going the thrive…

My train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki was scheduled to leave at 6:40 AM, which meant a very early start. Given the insanity of Russian traffic, I assigned the same amount of time to get to the train station as it took to get from the train station. Figuring everything would be in Russian, I also had 30 minutes of getting lost time, so I was leaving the hotel at 5:15. That meant I’d get a chance to see the city at the most quiet hours. It’s another good way to get a sense of a place you’re visiting for the first time.

Stepping out of the hotel, I saw the streets were totally empty, so I was thinking maybe I had overestimated the problems of Russian driving. The hotel called a cab and it was there in few minutes. The cabbie was right out of central casting. Skinny, twitchy, leather jacket that was popular in the 70’s. Of course, he was smoking. Russians don’t smoke as much as the Chinese, but it is close.  It’s not just the older people. Young Russians seem to love smoking. I guess vaping has not caught on with them yet.

Anyway, we head off and a few blocks into what I think will be a quick trip, we almost hit another taxi. Both slam on the brakes. My cabbie mutters something that I just assumed was an epithet appropriate to the moment. Then he leaps from the taxi and starts screaming at the other cabbie, who had leaped from his taxi. I was suddenly feeling like I was in one of those YouTube videos of Russian drivers. I thought they were going to go at it in the empty street, the way the two of them were screaming and pointing.

In a few minutes, one made the universal hand gesture signifying he was done with the other guy. That got the universal gesture for “you mad?” from the other cabbie. My taxi driver got back in and said something I just guessed meant “That guy is a fucking asshole” so I nodded and he seemed satisfied with the response. He then took off like the cops were coming and we had something close to a carnival ride to the station. He made two Russian U-turns, which they love, but got me to the station on time…

The Russian train station was another fine example of Hollywood tropes about the Soviet Union proving to be hilariously true. For starters, it is a dump. Second, the guards are old and fat and about as energetic as basset hounds. You have to go through security, which meant putting my bags on a conveyor belt about three feet long. It looked like a small x-ray machine you see at the airport, but the person manning it was asleep, so who knows if it even works. Then I walked through a metal detector, which did not work.

I know it did not work as I had a pocket full of Russian coins, some Euros, my phone, wallet and passport. The fat lazy Russian guard stopped me and pointed at what looked like the little basket you would normally put all your metal stuff before walking through the metal detector. I put my phone in it. I then picked it up and he waved me over to a waiting area. There were no lights on the metal detector and I did not hear it beep a single time in the 30 minutes waiting in the station. Old weird Russia is real…

Perhaps it is the residue of the Cold War and half a life of propaganda about Russians, but I had a strange sense of relief leaving Russia. Once the final customs check was done around Vyborg, I realized I had been pretty tense all morning. Part of it was the lack of sleep, for sure, but the strangeness of Russia had something to do with it too. There’s an unpredictable inefficiency to Russia that keeps you on edge. Throw in the fact that they use a different alphabet and it is like being on another planet at times.

It’s probably the closest any of us can come to understanding how it is like for Somalis in the West. In Russia, I did not understand anything. I can noodle my way through writing in Latin and Germanic rooted languages. It’s not precise, but close enough to feel some comfort and familiarity. Cyrillic is hopeless, so being in Russia is like being an illiterate, who does speak the local tongue. That’s not a bad description of life for most migrants, but especially the East Africans our rulers enjoy dumping into your neighborhood…

Back in Helsinki, my choice was to grab a train to the airport or take a taxi. My next leg was to rent a car and drive to the city of Turku. Since I had no idea where the car rental area was, I grabbed a taxi and sure enough, the driver was Somali. He was a younger guy, probably in his mid-20’s. His English was not great, but it was good enough. As with the Nigerian taxi driver the other day, I quickly found myself slamming in the reality of an 80-something IQ. He was struggling with the basics of his duties.

On the trip to the airport, he kept asking me questions about America. Some of his “cousins” live in Minnesota. He was hoping to immigrate to America, but his cousins tell him Minnesota is colder than Finland, so he was thinking Miami. He wanted to know what type of free housing they have in Miami. His free apartment in Espoo is too small. I’m guessing he was in some sort of public housing that was not exactly free, but then again, I would not be surprised if the Finns provide free housing to their conquerors.

As I was listening to him, the thought of maybe grabbing the wheel and smashing the both of us into oncoming traffic came to mind. I would be making a sacrifice for the good of my people, but that would mean my life was only worth one Somali. Perhaps if we were in a bus full of his cousins, it would make sense. Instead, I told him that Miami was very expensive and the Cubans were extremely racist. The racism stuff seemed to alarm him, suggesting they learn that stuff as soon as they set foot in the West.

That is something we Americans don’t fully appreciate. The rest of the world studies us, as America is the empire. Those of us in the dissident right understand that we are no more important to the imperial ruling class than a Somali herdsman, but those Somalis don’t understand this. To them, we really do look alike. As far as he was concerned, I was an ambassador from the Imperial Capital. My bet is my taxi driver asked every American he met about the places he sees on snap chat.

That is the other thing I learned from him. They love snap chat. All Somalis use snap chat to stay in touch with each other all over the world. This is something Steve Sailer observed back during the Merkel’s Millions crisis. The internet and social media apps that allow morons to get on-line has brought the fringe closer to the core, in terms of them knowing about us. These people see what we have and they want it, so they do what they must to get here. Social media is turning out to be a doomsday machine…

I picked up a nice Volvo at the airport and headed out to Turku. Once you get outside of Helsinki, you’re suddenly in what looks like New Hampshire or Vermont. The E18 is like an American state highway or the rural part of an interstate. The countryside is very nice, if you are the sort that likes driving the countryside. I was reminded of my many trips through New England in winter. I miss those drives as I love winter and I love the New England countryside in late winter. It’s peaceful, beautiful and clean….

My very first impression of Torku is it looked like Chapel Hill North Carolina, a quaint college town. After a few blocks, that gave way to thoughts of Newark New Jersey, as it got dirty and grimy, with lots of people standing around for no reason. There were more blacks than I saw anywhere in Finland, plus some North Africans. My hotel turned out to be a lot like where I stayed in Newark last year. Torku is not Newark and it is no overrun with Africans or even close to it. It’s still white, just downscale from Helsinki.

After checking in, I was in need of sleep, but I did a walk around anyway, figuring that would put in me in the right frame of mind for a long nap. If I had to guess, it is smaller cities like Torku where resistance to multiculturalism is growing. Not only are there more strangers here, they are more obvious. In big Cloud People cities like Helsinki, they use the cost of living as a barrier between themselves and multiculturalism. That does not work as well in small towns and rural areas. The natives see the truth every day.

After my nap, having a beer at a pub I found, I fell into conversation with a couple of Finns who were late-30’s, maybe early-40’s. They were nice and apparently educated. They knew the dissident terrain surprising well, as they became somewhat enthusiastic about the topic of immigration. Of course, alcohol loosens the tongue by removing inhibition, which is dangerous with the Finns. They drink like Japanese businessmen. That made for an interesting few hours of talk from people holding a lot in every day.

There is an awakening here, like everywhere in the West. That’s the term you hear in Europe among dissidents and nationalist. In America, we use red-pill to describe the feeling when your eyes open to this reality. For Europeans, it is more like they are waking up from a long dream, between when the lights went out in Europe a century ago and the Million Muslim invasion welcomed by Angela Merkel. For a tiny country like Finland to take in over 100,000 violent morons from over the horizon was a giant clanging alarm.

Standing on the platform at the Helsinki train station, a fellow walked up to me and asked in Finnish, “Tämä on junan Pieksämäelle?” I replied in English, “No, this is the train to Saint Petersburg.” He sat on the bench next to me, placing his newspaper between us. In a few minutes, he got up and left his newspaper behind. When my train arrived, I picked up the paper and boarded the train. Thus began my journey to the land of my ancestors, with the remaining instructions for my short stay in Saint Petersburg…

Being an American, I am unfamiliar with riding the rails. The closest we come to that, outside of train enthusiasts, is taking the subway in the local city. Not all American cities have subways, so many Americans never experience train travel at all. I’ve been in a lot of cities with subways, so I’m a bit of an outlier, but this sort of train travel is still foreign to me. The train station in Helsinki is like everything else in the city. It is clean, simple and extremely efficient. I was able to find my train by myself like a big boy.

I booked a first class car from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg, mostly because of the WiFi, but also because I don’t care for the riffraff. Now that I am an international man of travel, I now take pride in looking down on the little people. OK. I really just wanted the WiFi. I read somewhere that if you wanted to make sure you had good service the whole way, spend the extra euros on the better ticket. That and you get food services and a charging outlet, which is essential these days. For 65 extra Euros, it is a bargain for a three hour trip.

The first class car has a double row of seats on one side of the car and a single row on the other side. The seats face one another over a table. I selected one of the single seats facing to the back of the train. A middle aged gentlemen, slim, European cut suit, but of the quality one would see from an upper level civil servant, maybe a staffer for a political appointee, got on the car and sat right across from me. The car was empty at the time and only a handful of riders boarded, so his choice was unusual.

The result was I was going to spend three plus hours facing off with a fellow, who looked like Chris Cooper from the Bourne Identity. The possibility that I was either having a flash back to another part of my life or perhaps going to have to kill this man in a life and death struggle on a high speed train occurred to me. I was good either way, but then I remembered I had dosed off while watching that movie last night. He did look remarkably like the guy from the movie, but I’m not a sleeper agent in a CIA program…

A little over a century ago, April of 1917 to be exact, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin got off the train in Petrograd from Finland to change the world. Today I got off at the same station under less auspicious conditions.  Of course, Lenin’s trip was more dramatic, as he left Switzerland for the Baltics, then crossed over into Sweden. From Sweden, he and his traveling party, all revolutionaries, traveled by sleigh to Finland. The party broke up into groups of two and three, so they could make it across in the dark and avoid detection…

The Finnish countryside this time of year is all pine trees and snow. In breaks of pines there are stands of white birch. The uniformity of the trees and the various paths and roads cut into them suggests this area is carefully forested. We passed many small farms on the way. Some had the idyllic look one wants to believe is rural live, while others were abandoned shacks. Watching the scene roll by, I could not help but wonder what the Russians were thinking when they decided to invade Finland in the dead of winter…

To expedite travel between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, customs is handled on the train as you make the trip. Unlike the airport, you just get on the train and the process of inspecting your documents is done by custom agents as you travel. Once you get to the border, Russian border agents repeat the process. They are just like the version you see in movies. It was two women, not bad looking, with scanners for reading your visa and looking up your ticket information, to make sure you are you.

They were quick with the Finns, but they took a strong interest in me. They looked carefully at each page of my passport, then both of them checked to make sure I was the guy in the passport photo. I suppose not many Americans turn up on the train to Saint Petersburg. Talking to my new traveling companion, I learned the train is mostly used by Finnish businessmen. They use Russia for cheap labor, especially high tech labor, in the same way American firms use India or China…

If you are old enough to remember the Cold War, the train station and surrounding area looks like a scene from an old spy movie. It’s actually quite remarkable, for reasons that are hard to explain. It looks like a movie scene, but it is a working, functioning city with people going about their daily lives. I guess I did not know what to expect from the city, but it was quite astonishing to me. It reminded me of my first trip to Boston as a kid. It looked like the pictures, but was also a real place, not just a movie set.

At the front of the train station, I got a cab. The weirdest thing of the trip was the cabbie looked just like my grandfather looked when I was boy. My grandfather has been dead for a long time, but this guy was his doppelganger from decades ago. He was a man in his 60’s and he had the same face and build. He also had the same crystal blue eyes, which was his most striking feature. There was a ton of traffic and plenty of crazy Russian drivers, so I had time to think about the odds of what I was seeing.

This is good time to mention that all of those YouTube videos of crazy Russian drivers are all true and plus some. Anyone who has been to what we used to call the third world knows that insane driving is a feature of these places. Russian is obviously not third world and Saint Petersburg is a mostly modern city. Russians are just crazy drivers. On the trip to the hotel, we saw three wrecks and too many outlandish acts to count. The really crazy thing is they have an otherworldly respect for pedestrians.

After checking in, I did not waste time getting to see the city. I was at the Renaissance, which is just west of Nevsky Prospect. It’s a great hotel and a great place to see all of the normal tourist stuff. I walked the Neva River west toward the docks. It was a beautiful day, so the locals were out in big numbers, walking along both sides of the river. There were also tons of Chinese tourists, so it felt like a weekend afternoon. The sheer beauty of the buildings you pass by is quite remarkable. It’s like being in a postcard.

I’m not the most sentimental guy, but as I was walking along the river, I was feeling a bit emotional. I suppose being reminded of my grandfather must have brought to mind memories I’d long forgotten. Family lore is always a bit dodgy, but I know that side came from Saint Petersburg. I kept thinking what it must have been like for then, all those years in America, remembering what they left behind. They were poor, so it was not like they left the good life, but they did cut themselves off from who they were as people…

Since it has come up in prior posts, Russian women can be quite beautiful, but they can also be ridiculously trampy, at both ends of the scale. On the high end are the glamour whores, who always dress to the nines and love wearing garish sunglasses. They have a look on their face like they are bored and disappointed. On the other end are the type who look like they would be at home in a West Virginia trailer park. They dress like strippers and probably smell like bar soap. They have that bored look on their face too.

There is another type that was the majority, from what I could tell. They are plain and pleasant, thin in their youth. They sort of remind me of country girls. I started talking with a women in her early 30’s, I’m guessing. She had good English, so we could chat without using hand signals. She was visiting her mother, as she lived in England. Her mother looked like she pushed school children into her cottage oven. That’s the thing about Russian women. Father time is never very kind to them…

I walked down to the Dom Knigi, which is a tourist area for having lunch and buying cheap souvenirs. Everywhere you look, there are sellers hawking Russian dolls and lacquer boxes. I guess people like that stuff, but I can think of a dozen better things to sell to tourists looking for a memento. There is one good thing there and it is the Savior on Spilled Blood church. It’s not big, but it is an impressive church both inside and outside. If you are into old churches, it’s worth the walk and the 350 rubles for the tour.

From there I visited the the State Hermitage Museum, which is a collection of buildings that includes the museum founded by Catherine the Great and the Winter Palace of Peter the Great. It is simply impossible to accurately describe how I felt walking across the massive plaza toward it. Maybe is the vastness of the plaza or just the sheer enormity of the building itself, but I felt like an ant walking toward it. It’s one of those things that you just cannot appreciate until you walk up to it in real life.

Like every other tourist, I took a million pics of the place as I walked up to it. I even took some shots of the silly Cinderella carriages they use for giving tourists rides around the city. Unlike the ones you see in American cities, these are modeled after the Grand Coronation Carriage. When you walk into the complex, the enormity of it gives way, as you are suddenly in a relatively small courtyard. It really does give the full effect of what it must have been like for the royals. This was their shelter from their people….

Maybe it was a carryover from the unfortunate bout of sentimentality I experienced earlier in the day, but walking back I suddenly understood why the people revolted against the Tsar. Nicholas II, like all of the aristocratic families of Europe, was no longer the leader of a people. He was just a guy in charge of an empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of England and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the three principle monarchs at the start of the Great War, we all cousins. The Tsar’s mother was Danish.

If you were living in Saint Petersburg at the dawn of the 20th century, the royal family and the system that supported them was as foreign to you as space aliens. Instead of the trappings and symbols being a tangible representation of the people’s shared reality, they were symbols of a system that allowed strangers to rule over people they did not know and would never know. The massive walls of the palace and the guards who protected those walls, were a daily reminder that you were ruled by strangers.

That’s how it is with revolutions. The people in charge, at some point, take a turn where they no longer see themselves as an extension of the people over whom they rule. They begin to see themselves as different and separate. They start to turn the rituals and ceremonies of the people’s shared reality into a psychological barrier, reminding the people on the other side that they are not inside. That’s when they start building walls and exclusive retreats. The Hermitage was a tangible representation of this reality.

It’s why the revolutionary can have no empathy for the people on the other side of those walls. The rebel may have some sympathy for the people he must dispatch and some sympathy for the people who must do it. There can be no empathy, though, as when the revolution comes, the people on either side of those walls no longer know one another as people. You cannot have empathy for strangers who hold you in contempt. Those on the other side are defined by your hatred for them.

Walking back from the Hermitage, not only did I understand that the Tsar got what he deserved, I understood why the Bolsheviks were so quick to do it. A revolution that seeks to preserve the past is not a revolution. It is a restoration. It’s like trying to fix up an old house. A proper revolution must always end with the utter destruction of the old order, the symbols of that order and the people who control it. Revolutions are a sacrament in blood, bring forth something new and washing away that the old order.

Something I noticed in Denmark last year is that things in this part of the world seem to start later than in the US. I walked around Copenhagen in the early morning and did not see many people. It was a work day, so I should have seen commuters and people headed to trains and buses. Here in Finland, the taxi ride to the ferry was remarkable for the lack of traffic. I think I saw one car and a truck. In America, at least on the East Coast, traffic jams start at 6:30 AM. Most people are in the office by 8:30 AM.

I wonder if it is not the warping effect of New York. Whenever I have spent time on the West Coast of America, I’ve noticed that the day starts earlier and ends earlier. It’s like they are still on NY time. I have business associates in Los Angeles and I get e-mail from them at 9:00 AM my time, which means 6:00 AM their time. The secret handshake society I will be attending, at an undisclosed location, will start after lunch. The one in Denmark last year started at 2:00 PM and ran until 7:00 PM…

The ferry over to Estonia is a pretty cool thing, but another great example of things you can have or you can have diversity. The cars getting onto the ferry line up and go through an orderly process of driving onto the ferry. In America, the vibrant would be smashing into one another and getting into fights while going through the check-in, so that would mean an army of storm troopers to police the process. That would require commuters to line up hours in advance, which would mean a many hours long boarding process.

In Finland, the drivers get to the terminal an hour in advance and drive right through a quick check-in process. They drive onto the ferry and then head to the decks. The rest of us walked over a gangway to what is very much like a cruise ship. I was booked into the business section, which had a nice breakfast buffet, drinks, excellent WiFi and a staff to police the tables. I got a little work done, answered e-mails and spent the last hour reading a book while enjoying my second cup of coffee. The coffee was excellent…

My first impression of Tallinn, as I disembarked, was that it was dirty. Maybe it was the aftermath of winter, but the streets were caked with what looked like cinders. Where you get off the ferry is probably the least welcoming place, as it looks like a freight terminal that is under construction. In fact, most of Tallinn is under construction. Every other building is wrapped in plastic and the streets are torn up everywhere. This is not the best time for tourism, so maybe that’s why it seemed so grimy, but that was my first impression.

My second impression was that it stinks, stinks of diesel exhaust. It seems they have found a way to power everything with diesel, including bicycles and pets. When I walked out of the tunnel from the ferry to land, I was engulfed in a cloud of diesel exhaust from a passing truck. I’m surprised the EU permits it, but maybe they look the other way for the former communist countries. Maybe the Estonians just cheat. Either way, it reminded me of what it was like in America in the 80’s when city buses were like crop dusters…

Rather than follow the crowd to Old Town, I went the other direction and walked a dozen blocks to the east, then another dozen blocks or so south. If you look at a map, the tourist area is to the west, so I figured the real Tallinn was to the east. Given the history and layout of the city, my guess is the east is mostly built in the 20th century, but a lot of it dates to previous centuries. Estonia was a battle ground fought over by Danes, Russians, Germans, Swedes and Poles for most of its history, so it is tough to know.

For example, I walked past an apartment building, probably built in the middle of the last century. It was the drab concrete style popular with communists. Next to it was a cool looking old wood structure that would look at home on Cape Cod. Upon closer inspection, I saw it had undergone a recent renovation, so maybe it was old, but maybe it was just made to look like it dates to the 19th century. You can’t trust anything now. Even in a place like Estonia, everything is becoming a reproduction of a long gone culture of a foreign people.

If you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Soviets, walking around this part of Tallinn is a good way to do it. You see the old buildings and dilapidated old houses. It’s not a slum, but it has that aesthetic the Soviets were so famous for back during the Cold War. Lots of concrete and gray paint. The materialism of the Bolsheviks was really just the total lack of spiritual beauty. They were ugly people and that ugliness was made manifest their building and city planning. They were vulgar and depraved.

The other thing I noticed, or at least I think I noticed, is that Estonia is a country without an identity, other than a long list of historical grievances. The building and repairing is a rush to join the global economy, but it is not being done by the locals. They are just bystanders, as global interests invest in Tallinn. The Estonians working in the city could be Poles or Germans or space aliens, as far as the investors are concerned. Estonia is rushing to become a part of the consumer race…

Old Town Tallinn is a nice tourist trap. It is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe, so if you are a history buff, I highly recommend seeing it. You get a real sense of what urban life was like in the Middle Ages. One warning. You will walk a lot and do a lot of walking up hill on cobblestone streets and uneven walks. There’s also the fact it is laid out like a medieval city, which means the streets make no sense. I needed three tries to find the Nevsky Cathedral. I was pretty tired after a day of walking the city….

What do you do when you have no cell service, the fraud alert has shut down your credit cards, you have no cash and you’re in a strange foreign city? Well, let me explain. The people at my cell carrier said I would have no problem using my GSM phone in these counties. I would have to pay a fee to their partner here in Europe. This actually worked in Ireland, but it did not work in Denmark. I tried everything and finally got a burner in case I needed to make a call. I did not need it, but it was insurance.

In Finland, I was getting texts and e-mail over the cellular network, so I figured I was OK, as I never make calls anymore, just text and e-mail. In Estonia, I realized I had no cell service at all. I was not worried until I tried to buy something and all three credit cards were declined. To make matters worse, I had no cash of any type with me, as I planned to just charge everything. That meant I had no money and no way to call the credit card company to get the issue resolved. I was suddenly thinking about life in Estonia.

I found the tourist center, which will always have good free WiFi these days. I then downloaded Skype and setup a new account. I then called American Express using their toll free number, so I did not need credit on Skype. They turned my card back on and I used it to charge up the Skype account. Since Estonia has decent public WiFi, I figured that would get me through any more problems until I returned to a land in which the banks have greater trust. My next stop is Mother Russia, so…

As far as Tallinn, my guess is it serves Sweden and Finland as something like what Tijuana used to serve adventurous Americans. It’s a place to go to get crazy drunk and do things you don’t talk about upon your return. That’s just a hunch, but the way it is setup strikes me as that sort of thing. There’s a big open court in the middle of Old Town surrounded by cafes and bars. During the day, people shop and eat. In the evening, the crowd changes over and it becomes giant party with midgets and donkeys…

European butter and cheese is the greatest thing ever to an American. That’s because we have weird laws about dairy products to prevent small companies from competing with giant food corporations. Our dairy is not terrible, but it relatively flavorless compared to the European options. I have no opinion about which way is better, but I know I really love the taste of European dairy. I have probably consumed a pound of butter so far. Finnish egg butter is a nutty idea, but it is great spread over a freshly baked roll…

I visited the Nevsky Cathedral, which appears to be a working facility. They have signs up asking for donations. I walked in and the smell of incense brought back some memories, but the babushkas praying into front to the icons really brought back memories of the old women I remember as a boy. A church full of old women, though, is not a church. It is a museum. Does the shared culture collapse and then the churches follow, or is it that the churches fail and then the shared reality of the people follows? It’s a good question…

Men in Europe really like tight clothes. They really like suit jackets that are what Americas would see as a size too small. Even the portly guys have tight jackets and pants. The difference between Americans and Europeans is that the worst sin for a Euro is to be seen as boring, while the worst sin for an American is to be a phony. This shows up in men’s styles. European men look like they spent hours getting ready to go out, while American men want to look like they live in a house with no mirrors or hot water…

I saw three blacks in Tallinn. They were standing in front a restaurant called “Tabula Rasa.” On the street was a sign for the Final Four, the college men’s basketball tournament in America. I was overwhelmed by the urge to take a picture, but years of living in Lagos has trained me to avoid doing stuff like that. Still, after seeing the glory of Nevsky Cathedral, the whiff of incense still in my nostrils, I could not help but wonder if the man upstairs was gently reminding me that he is keeping an eye on me…

On my trips to this part of the world, I’ve noticed that women here are what we in America would call high maintenance. The men seem to put a lot of effort into doting on their women, while the women act like they deserve it plus more. In Copenhagen, I saw men pushing a cart in which their date would ride. Contrary to the Viking image, men in this part of the world seem almost henpecked. Given what we see with their politics, it’s clear that the culture veered into matriarchy at some point and politics followed.

Even if this is just a superficial affectation, it is interesting because of what we think caused the variety of eye colors, hair textures and hair colors in Northern European people. The most common explanation is that there was an imbalance between the sexes, as the males needed to engage in high risk activity like hunting large animals and fishing cold waters. The result was more girls than boys, which gave an edge to women with unusual eye and hair color, as far as the sexual marketplace.

A trait that offers an edge in terms of attracting a mate, especially for women in a world short of eligible men, is going to spread quickly. It would follow that women would be the pursuers, while the men could be indifferent. If things are the reverse today, then it suggests something important changed over the last many generations. Perhaps enough cads were killed off in wars to turn the tables, giving the doting males an edge. That would have changed the dynamic among women, making them high maintenance…

I am planning to take the train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, so it meant taking the ferry back over the Gulf of Finland. I went to the taxi stand and to my surprise there was a black taxi driver. It turns out that there are at least two Nigerians in Helsinki, the cabbie and his mother. He took a call and I noted that he had a Muslim name. His Finnish was awful and his English something close to nonsense, so I would assume he grew up speaking his people’s native tongue. I had to program my destination into his GPS.

Of course, the reason for all of this is he was probably sporting an 80-IQ. I had practiced a handful of Finnish phrases, in case I needed to tell a Finnish speaker what I wanted. He did not understand what I said. He just pointed at his tablet and made the writing sign with his hand, so I got the idea. I entered the address and we were off, but he got lost in the port area somehow, so I had to help him get on the road. The GPS allows him to drive a taxi, which is a great example of how we make it easy for the stupid to survive.

When we finally got to my hotel, he became confused about how to enter or even how to get to the front gate. Finally, I yelled stop enough ways for him to get the idea. He was trying really hard to to do his job and for that I could not help but respect him, but he clearly lacked the intelligence to do it. He handed me the credit card machine, assuming I could work it, which led me to assume he could not, so I charged my taxi fare and walked the last block to the hotel. I had been driven by an unfrozen caveman.

I actually felt bad for him. Unlike our rulers, I get why second and third generation migrants become extremely hostile to the native populations. The first generation have enough on the ball to leave their native lands looking for a better life. It’s not enough to compete at a middling level in the West, but enough to compete at the bottom, which is a several steps up from what they can do back home. Being on welfare in the West is better than the good life in Nigeria, so migrating makes perfect sense to the first generation.

One way to think of the great replacement is to think of it as an effort to bring the bottom up, by importing a slightly better underclass. The little brown guys running leaf blowers in America and the migrants driving cabs in Europe are an upgrade to the native working classes, who the rulers see as too demanding and too lazy. The trouble is, the layer between the rulers and the lower classes is the middle class and they are the people paying the price for the ruler’s great demographic experiment.

What this is revealing is something that has been true for a long time, but the middle-class has been blind to it. That is, the ruling elites of the West are post-national and largely define themselves in opposition to the great middle-classes of the West. The more the middle balks at immigration, the more excited the managerial class gets for multiculturalism and mass migration. That’s because the louder the native complain, the more intense the managerial class sense of identity. They truly hate us…