Sunday, July 25, 2010

Life on the Blue Line


Sometimes, the LA Times does good reporting. In early June, the LAT did just such a job. In the June 9 story on the Blue Line and the people who ride it, the LAT showed the "vibrant, multicultural future" in store for the White Majority. As always, read the whole thing. That vibrant, multicultural future though, looks a lot like hell for most of the country. Who never got a vote on replacing the mostly middle class, mostly White society (America in 1940 was 89% White, 10% Black, and 1% everything else) with the folks pictured on the Blue Line.

As America's middle class shrinks into the working and even underclass, this sets up a conflict that will not go away, and promises to shape American politics for a generation. Middle and working class Whites now have a series of concrete examples of what the future holds for them. No longer are they a frog slowly boiled in water — the gas is turned up to full heat.



Americans love their cars. Not only do cars give Americans freedom to live where they want, freedom to live where they want gives social peace. The standard story of the Civil Rights Movement is a triumphant call to moral clarity and White Guilt by oratorical genius Rev. Martin Luther King. Yet other men, equally as gifted, as Dr. King, failed miserably in moving the White majority out of support for Jim Crow Segregation. What happened? The cynical (but correct answer) was post-War prosperity bringing the automobile and suburban housing, far away from Blacks, allowed White America the leisure to stop doing (Segregation, Jim Crow) what it found distasteful and most of all, unnecessary. Since the suburbs were lily-White. An America not cheek and jowl with homeless folks, urination, folks pushing massive amounts of recyclables (see the picture to one side), selling pirated goods, or, as the comments to the story indicate, folks openly masturbating, was one quite willing to let Blacks (Hispanics were not a major presence in America until much later than the Civil Rights Movement) rule themselves.

Now, the hard-won social peace and political, cultural, and economic arrangements that bought America time is coming crashing down. Whites no longer feel guilty but afraid. As Hotair points out, Obama's new National Ocean Council will ban ALL off-shore oil drilling, and regulate all economic activity in the waters, and hundreds of miles inland. Energy prices, as Obama promised before the election will skyrocket (click the link to see Obama himself on video promise this). The effect will be to force those White middle and working class people still working into commutes akin to the Blue Line. While a horrible job market pushes middle aged folks to live with their parents as they scrap in the "Craigslist economy."

This is not a recipe for social peace. No one got a vote on turning America into Mexico Norte. No one voted on permanently reducing most Middle/Working class Americans incomes by job losses, continued issuance of H1-B visas (over one million were issued this year in the midst of a miserable economy), continued immigration, legal and illegal, and ever increasing racial quotas for jobs that exclude Whites. The just concluded Dodd bill has hundreds of racial quotas excluding Whites, as does ObamaCare.

All of this would be problematic, if times were good, and Whites lived the previously separate and exclusive lives they have lived for several generations. A person on the West Side of LA, could avoid interaction with poor non-Whites (other than tipping the waiters and busboys at the various restaurants, or car valets at parking places), with ease. Los Angeles, despite its many immigrants and containing the second largest concentration of Mexicans outside of Mexico City, remains in practice, a very segregated city. Parts of Venice, Santa Monica, Playa Del Rey, Marina Del Rey, are very White and segregated indeed. Not by law but by class and wealth. In other suburbs, the levels of segregation are less strong, due to less wealth required to live there, but still present. Parts of the San Fernando Valley are still pretty White and homogeneous, as are parts of Pasadena, and far-flung outposts such as Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead and Manhattan Beach.

Moving people out of their cars (because energy prices sky-rocket) on cheap public transportation is a recipe for "punishing" White people for terrible, bad things done by other White people, long dead. It is bound to be resented and already, the comments about the LAT story are revealing:



I used to commute to DTLA on the Blue Line even when I moved to Los Alamitos.  The last time I was on the Blue Line was one that left LA around 6:30. I had my nose in my book the entire time so it only came to my attention when I got up to get off the train, the guy in the next aisle was...well...err...getting off.  God knows how long he had been at it...
The next day, I found the OCTA 701 bus from Huntington Beach to DTLA. And I never look back.

There are so many more strange "regulars" on that train and the occasional one-timer.  They can be annoying, especially the ones that stink.  But most of the time I am just entertained.  You cannot imagine how BIZARRE some of these people are, it is AMAZING.  And then there are the "normal" ones that talk about their jail time and parole officers with ease or drop the "N' bomb every other word or cuss at high volumes while announcing their intention to kick someone's butt the next time they see them.

The one mention of sheriffs shows just how often you're likely to see their presence on the blue line. These kinds of activities, ubiquitous on the Blue Line, take place with impunity because riders know security there is practically nil. And, when L.A. Metro says they need to raise fares, they should first renovate Blue Lone stations to collect fares. That alone would cut down on a lot of the unlawful, uncivilized activities on the line. I know what I'm talking about as a FORMER Blue Line rider.


The story starts off with a compelling lead:

In a place dominated by freeways and the automobile's numbing isolation, the 22-mile light-rail line — the oldest in L.A. County, marking 20 years of service this summer — is a rolling improvisational theater where a cast of thousands acts out a daily drama that is by turns poignant, sad, hysterical and inexplicable. Whoa! Did a guy just get up from his seat and urinate before stumbling off the train?

Yes, folks, he did.

Five bucks gets you a day pass to one of the most unpredictable shows in town.

In South Los Angeles, the Blue Line's doors open and a wiry homeless man lugging a bedroll collides with a very large woman as they step aboard. He is white, she is black and both explode into expletives.

"That's three times I've been assaulted in the last hour by a black person!" the man roars.

"Just because you're white ... you got a lot of nerve!" the woman shouts.

"I'm calling the sheriff!" the man howls. "You're going to jail! In handcuffs!"


Rules are everywhere, but never enforced:

The disembodied voice telling riders what they cannot do on the Blue Line is a constant companion. Signs galore warn of prohibitions under Section 640 of the Penal Code, subject to a $250 fine: No entry without valid fare. No littering. No smoking. No spitting or chewing gum. No skateboarding. No loud or rowdy activity. No in-line skating. No playing of sound equipment. No eating or drinking.


Why? Because enforcing the rules, against a largely non-Working, non-Middle Class, non-White set of patrons, will bring screams of "racism" and likely, violence. The LA County Sheriffs avoid the Blue Line for a reason — because it requires extensive resources and charges of racism, political abuse, and grief that the Sheriff's Dept. just does not want to endure. White, Middle and Working class people are self-policing. While not imbued of any special moral insights, this population commits crimes including petty ones such as playing sound equipment, or eating, or urination, or fare jumping, at far lower rates than poor and Working class Latinos (mostly Mexicans) and Blacks. Having seen the subways used by the White professional class in DC, I can attest it is very clean, no drinking and eating rules vigorously enforced, and populated almost entirely by people working in the Federal government, often the military. The subway systems of Beijing, are of course, spotless and filled with well-behaved people. Despite the less than fastidious bathing routine of your average Beijinger. Hong Kong's subway system is jammed, filled with people, but never with gang members menacing the public (they do this in other more discreet ways, Hong Kong is filled with gangs), or public urination, or hawking pirated goods (which are found elsewhere in abundance) or anything else so anti-social. Hong Kong not being known to its iron clad commitment to the rule of law and fussy moral nature, it is still a place filled with people of almost all the same ethnic background, who go to work every day and then go back home. Filled with crime and corruption, its subway system is safe and clean despite millions using it each day.

Pirated goods are found everywhere (along with hawking of water and food)

No need to walk the streets of downtown's Fashion District looking for pirated DVDs. On the Blue Line, the pirates come to you. The going rate is one DVD for $5, three for $10 and seven for $20.
"You got 'Iron Man 2'?" a passenger asks a young man moving through the train with a backpack weighed down with DVDs.

"Naw, I'm all sold out," he answers. "But I'll be getting some more later on today. You gonna be riding later?"

[Editor's emphasis]"Iron Man 2" opened in theaters later that week.

"A lot of these guys sell you stuff, and you can hear people laughing and babies crying in the background," says Arlene Valdez, a passenger who buys only from a trusted source: a man with a jet black ponytail who says his name is Joe. He carries a portable DVD player to assuage skeptics.

"His quality is best," Valdez says, buying "Astro Boy" for her son.


The joys of Three Card Monte are found:

On the other end of the platform, two men are talking and exchanging money. One is older, with gray stubble and a jaunty zebra-stripe hat. The other is younger and clean-shaven. He's wearing a brown work shirt embroidered with the name Paul.

The pair get on the next train to L.A — but not together. The Hat takes a seat, places a folded newspaper on his lap and pulls out three twist-off bottle caps. He places a nut under one of the caps and the game begins.

"Who's got 20?" The Hat says, his delicate fingers rotating the bottle caps as though they were in a centrifuge. "You can't win unless you make a bet."

Paul is willing and eager — as he is the next day on a different train.

He wins, he loses, he wins again. Eventually other gamblers jump in. Around and around the bottle caps go; where the nut is only The Hat knows.

"If I lose a dollar, I don't holler!" he shouts. "If I lose, I never cry the blues!"

They've taken over a corner of the train car. A dozen gamblers are hollering, laughing, egging each other on. Jacksons are flying. Paul isn't playing anymore. At each stop he pokes his head out the door and scans the platform.

"You want a chance to get even?" The Hat asks a man who has lost a wad. "Don't be scared! A scared man don't win!"


Los Angeles of course, has always had its rough places. Though Big Joe Turner, and Nat Cole played at places on Central Avenue, it was always rough. But the roughness stayed there, and had limits. It was also avoidable. LA's record of "only" two riots would have been far higher had the freeway system and private autos not allowed the mostly White majority to avoid the rough places.

Now, Whites in the US face the real prospect of being crowded out. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Whites will slip into the minority in California in 2016. This would be problematic if the non-Whites were all rich or at least middle class, because naturally they would exclude Whites from as many opportunities as they could. Human nature being what it is. Hispanics (read: Mexicans) are significantly younger than Whites, median age for Hispanics being 28, while for Whites it is 44, in the state of California. Hispanics have kids in their teens, regardless of marriage, or "affordable family formation" or any other factor. Whites have them if at all, in their mid to late thirties, at the very end of the fertility window. The Hispanic strategy seems a winning one, since sheer numbers can force demographic concessions, i.e. privileged take on resources, transfer from Whites, and pushing Whites out of more and more spaces in government, in culture, and in the economy. While this will eventually kill the transfer payments, it is a problem for later generations. It can go on for some time.

However, the kicker is that few Whites now have the money to pull up roots and move to Whitopia. Defined by Black author Richard Benjamin as a White Utopia, with few non-Whites, and a solid middle class lifestyle. Widespread Mexican immigration and the coming collapse of Mexico into some Zeta-led narcostate (promising to send millions more to the US) mixed with a collapsed and abused (by government piling on costs and regulations) economy promises a White revolt. Particularly when issues abound: a Black President and Attorney General dismissing the case against the New Black Panthers. The study from Princeton showing the relative SAT scores for Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians needed for admission into top ranked colleges, being 1100, 1230, 1410, and 1550 respectively have fueled resentment. As has the revelation that activities like 4H and Future Farmers of America and ROTC doom any admission chances. The Shirley Sherrod incident sent chills up White America's spine (more on that in a later post). Job losses and wage declines mount under America's First Black President, who seems disinclined to do anything about it but lecture White America for its original sin of racism.

But it is in transportation that America's former Middle class, now moving downwards into working class, finds itself humiliated, distressed, and antagonized. White America would prefer not to think about race. It would prefer not to contemplate being a minority, and being both discriminated against and being helpless, lacking even numbers. It would prefer not to find its traditional culture replaced by that of Mexico, largely. It would prefer not to think about being locked out of business, culture, and politics by a White skin and lack of Spanish.

The Blue Line, the future of America, puts all that into unavoidable contemplation. Forcing White America to think about all these things. Unsurprisingly, White America has found that it does not like them at all. This does not mean that former Middle Class White Americans will join the Klan. They find the very idea of racial supremacy disgusting, and indeed would certainly admit that on average, Blacks have advantages over Whites. White fans don't find an 80% Black NBA or a 70% Black NFL to be the product of racism against Whites, but rather natural performance differences. The best, most dominant athletes in the NFL are unsurprisingly Black. White fans like it that way, figuring the best athletes give them the best chance for their team winning. The same is even more true in the NBA. If anything, most American Whites would argue for a natural Black athletic (in speed/size/strength events anyway) advantage and domination.

But the White majority finds itself shedding any vestige of White guilt. This is healthy. The people who did very bad things, including the Whites who according to news accounts, murdered Ms. Sherrod's father in 1957 and were never prosecuted, are now mostly long dead or in their dotage. The Whites alive today had nothing to do with it, and resent eternal punishment for the sins of people mostly not related to them, long dead. Balanced against this are notorious episodes of Blacks who killed Whites, and were never punished. OJ Simpson being the best known example. White guilt depended on a "virtuous" and "innocent victim" of "blameless" folks being constantly oppressed. Human nature being what it is, those were long odds to begin with.

The question is not one of morality, of good and evil, victims and oppressors, but sound policy, social peace, the path to prosperity, and for Whites, maintaining their increasingly thin edge of demographic dominance no matter what, for the alternative will be very, very painful.

Not many people want to play "Epic Beard Man" on an Oakland Bus ride that never ends:



The video has an astonishing 718K views, note that Google requires validation of age to view the video because of language. Most Whites are not as ... scrappy as the Epic Beard Man, who is six foot six, a former Marine, and was arrested for ... fighting at the Oakland Coliseum during a Raiders game.

But now, the downsized economy, ending a long, 60 year run of post-war prosperity, along with various punitive measures, unbridled immigration, most of it gallingly illegal, and special privileges for non-Whites coupled with special burdens on Whites, leaves White voters with no alternative to think about it.

The first, and most likely step, will be a White voter revolt. Not caring about being called racist, instead caring about avoiding the Blue Line and that Oakland bus ride that never ends. Few people want to spend all their time fighting. I would not.

This step is likely to fail. Obama shows no appetite, nor do Democrats, for trimming the sails and pulling a Clinton "End of Welfare as We Know It" routine. Lame duck sessions granting amnesty, citizenship, Cap and Trade, soaring energy prices, and Executive Action by the President will double-down on the goals of making America a White-minority nation as quickly as possible. For the pleasure of "getting Whitey" (which is understandable among Blacks and even Hispanics), and political gain by Democrats seeking a permanent majority. White voters would concede that folks like Shirley Sherrod would indeed, have good reason to hate them, and Hispanics are unlikely to like or want to become White culturally or in any other fashion.

But being liked or morality or anything else along those lines are not likely to dominant an Angry White population that sees an Executive Branch and lame duck Democrats giving them the Bird. Physical safety (avoiding that Oakland bus ride) is likely to be the primary concern.

What is likely to happen is raising of the stakes. If all those Mexicans are brought into the US and made instant citizens, well that too can be reversed. As the Eighteenth Amendment was by the Twentieth. Ending Prohibition and the Noble Experiment. Other means, too are likely to be tried, including private security firms, unencumbered by public safety regulations, doing their part to discourage those from inhabiting spaces "belonging" to the middle class. This is common in South Africa, and South America. Action on the State level, is quite likely, including open defiance of the US President, and perhaps even the Supreme Court. This could include State border patrols, State-run imprisonment for illegal immigration (likely in labor camps) and more as the federal government simply refuses to enforce immigration law. Obama's Aunt Zeituni, illegally in the US, receiving Welfare, is likely to be a large political issue and one that further enrages and focuses the White Majority, itself on hard times. States are likely to be polarized as Dem-led non-White majority states, and "Red" interior states where Whites are the Majority.

There will be little appetite for compromise. Steve Sailer believes that Blacks and American Indians deserve and should have preferential treatment, but no one else, along the lines of the Jim Webb column in the Wall Street Journal. He makes a decent case, but the willingness of a White population being made rapidly into a minority, and one discriminated against in very visible forms, from buses in Oakland to the highest avenues of power in Washington, is probably going to be zero.

Affluent, powerful Whites of course have no worries about being a minority. Their lives are set, indeed even better without competition and possible downfall by ambitious White folks from "boring" flyover states. Young White women, being enamored of Princes, Princesses, aristocracy and nobility of all kinds (just read the vampire novels which invariably have a complex social structure modeled on feudal nobility) naturally support the affluent Whites who view everything in moral terms and threats to their own power. Every other White group, however, has an immediate goal: avoid the Blue Line. Avoid the Oakland Bus system.

In furtherance of that goal, White guilt is pretty much dead. And the only question is how much power and control can ordinary Whites grab to the exclusion of everyone else. Morality, and pretty much everything else, does not come into play. While it might seem the current system of White Guilt, "Racism" accusations, affirmative action, penalties against Whites, and special privileges (to break numerous minor laws with relative impunity by non-Whites in daily life) is stable and enduring, the fundamentals are not reassuring.

Because no one wants to ride the Blue Line if they don't have to ride it. Increasingly, Whites are asking why they need to ride it at all.

21 comments:

sestamibi said...

No they don't have to ride it. They just have to pay for it.

Great to have you back, Whiskey. Hope your updates will be much more frequent.

Carolyn said...

Whiskey - excellent post. Thank you very much. BTW, I enjoy your posts on "Nikki Finke". I'd reply to them as well - except for some reason NF no longer allows my posts to go through. Hmm, and I didn't even use the "N" or the "F" word. I sure hope the same doesn't happen to you.

An Unmarried man said...

Ah yes I love it when media coverage glamorizes an otherwise ridiculously "unglamorous" facet of daily urban life.

Actually I take the Red Line about 3 days a week (akin to the Blue except underground) because I elect to. Maybe it's because I'm Mexican and my tolerance level is greater, but I "enjoy" consorting with masses of swarthy and sweaty people.

The MTA has been raising fares steadily the past few years and it's reached the point now where it actually is minutely cheaper for me to drive but driving is boring and just as dehumanizing.

dienw said...

I noticed that as the black punk started striding up to the front of the bus to confront the Bearded Man a Black punkette can be heard egging on the black thug.

DR said...

Talking about world subways, ironically the subway in Mexico City seems safer and cleaner than Chicago (and I assume LA)

Whiskey said...

Due to family medical problems my posting was put on hold. Thanks for coming back all.

I've heard that the Mexico City subway is safer and cleaner than the Blue Line, that does not surprise me. Diversity according to Robert Putnam does not just increase distrust across racial lines, but within them as well.

Carolyn -- moderation is weird and iffy. Finke has a bunch of lesser folks that seem very thin-skinned about criticism of say, certain "stars" or what have you. Suggestions that stars don't put butts in seats backed up by data seem to rub non-Finke moderators the wrong way. A number of my posts have not gone through.

Anonymous said...

Keep writing, Whiskey. Post more often.

peterike said...

Well observed, as always.

One comment for now. While I agree that "white guilt" is starting to abate -- only just starting -- I don't see any white politican on the horizon willing to actually state the case in blunt racial terms.

The state-lackey media still has the ability to ruin careers with charges of racism. Until they can clearly no longer do so, politicians -- I'm talking about Republicans only, of course -- will be very reluctant to confront reality.

Broccoli said...

Blue Line may be America's future but it's New York City's past. What you guys need is a Giuliani.

Giuliani had proven that these things can be cleaned up, and that was back in the time when the charge of racism carried more weight.

*** ******** said...

yeah, hipsters slumming on their parents money through a liberal arts degree come away with a story to tell. having to take your kid to school via such transportation is a lot less glamorous.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be caught dead on the blue line. The red line seems to be a bit better. I have seen a fair number of white people on the red line. I have also seen a sheriff check tickets on the red line. I'm sure this is only because the red line goes white people go, Hollywood and Downtown.

Eventually even the red line will look like the blue line as whites continue to escape California in droves.

Kinuachdrach said...

Whiskey -- I hope that those family medical problems had a satisfactory outcome. Great to see you posting again!

Let's not forget -- the Blue Line and almost every other form of public transportation will stop running the day the subsidies are cut off. And government just ran out of money.

Politicians are going to have to start cutting. If they treat the Blue Line the same way they have treated everything else, the politicians will stop running trains to save on power & maintenance, but keep the full unionized staff. Still, the Blue Line as a means of transportation will be over.

You are right that the attitudes to charges of racism are changing. That insult has been used too often against the innocent -- and is fast becoming yesterday's news in a declining economy.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back.
A real tour de force of a post. I'm from Cleveland and can tell you that things there have been much worse for much longer - the smaller the city, the harder it is to fashion an exclusive enclave. Even the outer suburbs there are now starting to see the Wave, as loud brown folks with minimal respect for social norms show up in stores, schools and nieghborhoods.

dienw said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"No one voted on permanently reducing most Middle/Working class Americans incomes by job losses, continued issuance of H1-B visas (over one million were issued this year in the midst of a miserable economy), continued immigration, legal and illegal, and ever increasing racial quotas for jobs that exclude Whites."

Yes they did. Anyone who ever voted Democrat voted for this.

dienw said...

Let's not forget -- the Blue Line and almost every other form of public transportation will stop running the day the subsidies are cut off. And government just ran out of money.

Before you start licking your chops at the prospect of all those at the fag end of the Darwinian/HBD stick getting nailed to the wall, I suggest you take a minute to realize that the same will apply to all public transportation except that which the elite needs; and then, I recommend you think a little more and ponder what is going to happen to those roads over which you commute: does the elite need you?

How do you not know that the elites need those little brown people more than you to provide their house and grounds services?

Like the American female, the elites have no use for an uppity over educated labor force: According to this Circular of Information, "inculcating knowledge" teaches workers to be able to "perceive and calculate their grievances," thus making them "more redoubtable foes" in labor struggles.... "Such an enabling is bound to retard the growth of industry," continues the Circular. There is nothing ambiguous about that statement at all, and the writer is correct, of course.

Sixteen years later (1888), we can trace the growth in this attitude from the much more candid language in the Report of the Senate Committee on Education. Its gigantic bulk might be summarized in this single sentence taken from page 1,382:

We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.
(John Taylor Gatto)
.

Anonymous said...

You may be right that "white guilt" per se has mostly abated, but there is still a great deal of political correctness and timidity on the part of whites which doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. It seems like a bit of a paradox, actually. As whites start to understand the truth and are bullied more by NAMs, they become more afraid of speaking out. As whites suffer more under the thumb of the race-hustler industry, they're more afraid to speak out. Whatever revolt takes place will necessarily be a 'silent majority' - whites who talk anonymously on the internet or only among trusted friends. But a silent majority cannot really accomplish much, especially when its desires cannot be explicitly stated. Notice how the people who participate in "implicitly white" activities like SWPL or the Tea Parties are the most adamant about how non-racist they are. The Tea Party people are an embarrassment the way they grovel at the feet of any black person who shows up.

White identity politics isn't coming any time soon, and it's already too late anyway.

sestamibi said...

Anon 6:44 PM

I don't know about that. Sen. Jim Webb's (otherwise a total sleazeball) article in the WSJ the other day just might be the first shot across the PC bow.

demosophist said...

For what it's worth, Lipset said white Americans were fed up with white guilt back in the 1990s and that this was bound to come to a head. But it's such a point of political survival for Democrats (who, ironically, originally opposed black suffrage) that it may become trench warfare.

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