As 2017 draws to a close along with James’ grocery stocking career, I reflect a bit on the place he calls home. Baltimore, the infamous name that when uttered to other Northeasterners has them pausing to look at you as if you have mentioned some ancient, evil deity.

"You go there? Why would you do that?"

"I have a good friend who lives there."

"But why does he stay? That’s crazy."

"What am I supposed to do? Not visit one of my best friends because he lives in a dangerous city?"

"………"

I usually fib a bit and tell them that it’s the neighborhood he grew up in as a child. Only one person I know, an old and respected friend, responded that he understood this completely.

"That’s where he grew up, why should he leave? Fuck those hood rats!"

The truth is that if James did not live there I would never go within five miles of the place. Why should I? Camden, Newark, Bridgeport, Newburgh are far closer to me for the dindu apocalypse tour. The difference is that Baltimore is larger and one of the original 'plantations' of this false territory pretending to be a country. A concept expressed in the opening monologue of Medea where the old slave woman relates how it is far worse for a powerful family when it goes down into disgrace than for a lower ranking house.

You can still see somewhat the beauty and symmetry of its 19th century heyday almost frozen in time. The old houses and hills, the monuments, and so forth. Seemingly invaded by a dangerous and cagey primitive race of beings who dominate in a brutal, ugly, stupid fashion and yet are excused by the elites of the dwindling race they represent.

It gives one a glimpse of the future to come for all cities and suburbs, unless you are the financial leviathan 180 miles to the North. The eerie tension in the air, the roving helicopters, the majority of people seemingly hiding within their homes. The majority of white pedestrians being drug addicted tattooed zombies whose disgrace is amplified to those of us with some self-respect left. Where James lives is worse than the ghetto portions of the city, not by the standards of a mostly meaningless homicide map, but because you can see this was a functioning residential area that is now under siege and occupied.

It’s a world stuck in twilight, with two thirds of its inhabitants seemingly whisked away to another dimension. I find myself increasingly disgusted not with the shit-hole areas but rather the areas that seem beautiful and filled with college kids and homeowners, like in North Baltimore. It is they who enable this. It is they who curse men like James, me and any of you reading this. It was they who pushed for the taking down of the Confederate monuments. Shrieking crusaders who would laugh at the thought of us losing the ability to feed ourselves and our families. Who would make rape jokes about us if we were locked up by the State for defending ourselves.

Meanwhile, they are being raped for real on the outside. Everyday.

Weaklings who are preyed upon by their pets and yet still attack us with a kind of diverted fury, almost resentful of those who refuse to join them in their long march into the abyss.

They do not deserve the oasis of beauty, green trees and old architecture that they inhabit. But you know what they say about an Oasis in the desert…

The outlying middle class urban and suburban areas could easily be any town USA and increasingly it shall be until something massive happens that you, me and millions of others can only guess at. Sweet meteor, economic collapse, parasitic aliens (oh wait…), who knows? It will probably happen when all of us really don't want it to or maybe generations hence. We will never know.

What is the upside of all this?

This has the potential of forcing a return of masculinity in a revived yet adapted form. As Alt-Right millennials struggle admirably to recreate what they have never known out of the wreckage of our society, James, I think, has given a good blueprint of what its main focus should be. Survival. A quiet, discipline that will harken back to a different epoch, much less an era. My sons and daughters are going to be reading Robert E. Howard, that’s all I know. The late Jonathan Bowden called for cultured thugs, men who can fight, but are cagey and streetwise. Then able to discuss literature, history, philosophy on the drop of a hat. That is what needs to be cultivated, a tree whose shadow we shall not be alive to sit in.

This Behemoth will destroy itself at some point, built upon outright lies, phantom money and pathological self-destructiveness.

On the day to day level, being aware of the danger that lurks around the corner or down the street is stimulating. Looking to the locked door of your abode realizing devils and savages are just outside in the night gives life a whole new meaning. Women of your race seem more frightened and thus feminine. Recognizing a friendly, of any tribe, becomes more an ability of true cooperation, all done with a nod and body language, rediscovering what post war easy living has almost destroyed.

Sports, mainstream news, entertainment, gossip and other distractions now easily let go and forgotten. So much wasteful consuming and nonsense, useless toys,

that collect into a pile of decadence. The decadence of slaves.

A good, old used book. A bottle of whisky and a cheap beer. A blade by the door. A youtube video or podcast made for nothing that has more truth in one minute of it than what the whole media puts out all year. A woman who smiles genuinely at you out of respect and not just some chemical reaction she does not understand. These simple things, among a plethora of other simple things, are all one needs now. These things I learned from James on top of the writing and the sparring, against a backdrop of a dying city in autumn.

Now taking an hour and a half bus ride with a painful hip into the gun wielding dindu darkness of night might be a bit much on top of all this but luckily for the 21st century Sage of Baltimore that phase is now over. We are blessed that James has shared with us all he has learned these many years. He is the big brother and mentor I never had growing up and we have the absolute abomination of Baltimore to thank also for this. A man is shaped by his environment and the more merciless it is, the more it hones him.

Thanks, brother.

Let’s be productive in 2018.

-Mescaline Franklin

Moral Minority Survival at the End of Caucasian Time Paperback

Conducting the Moral Autopsy 0f a Nation