A reader left a trenchant comment on my Sky King post that deserves to be showcased here.
My dad and I talked about this guy for about 3 hours yesterday. I don’t think there’s anything more emblematic of the plight of the western man in the 21st century than what Rich did.
When we hear about suicides in the MSM, I couldn’t have given a shit about Anthony Bourdain or Kate Spade (world-famous boomer multimillionaires living in high rises who have had children) but when I heard about this story, it struck me deeply. Another thing insulting about the way the MSM portrays this story is that they portray it as a news story of mental health and airport security when it’s so much deeper than that. They’re blissfully unaware and ignorant of the deeply profound and tragic story of manhood and the modern age that fell right into their lap. Or did they just choose to ignore it?
Ed.: They chose to ignore it. The mainstream press are willing bag men for the international corporatist elite who want to turn us all into tech serfs.
In the modern age, we have all our premordial desires taken care of (food available anywhere, limitless pornography, social media, tinder, etc), but at the end of the day, tradition, fraternity, and the nuclear family are not venerated in the ethos of the modern west, and thus, modern man is left with a feeling of perpetual emptiness that can’t be filled. Not only that, but hierarchical structures based on meritocracy in the modern age are hard and rare to come by, so you’re perpetually this cog in a corporate machine, being milked for all you’re worth without any share of the bigger pot, making money for old men who are higher than you in the corporate dominance hierarchy, where the only means of breaking free from it is indentured servitude by a means of a university education, which, most of the time, is worthless once you get out. It’s impossible with a minimum wage job with no chance of climbing the ladder to get a house (that isn’t in the suburbs and surrounded with boomers), to raise children, to fulfill a man’s dream of ultimate meaning and responsibility.
We have this guy subsisting on minimum wage, joking around with the ATC, knowing he was loved, apologizing if he ruined their day, not wanting to hurt anyone, and taking to the skies to break free from the chains of 21st century life. He stole a $36 million aircraft complete GTA style, did a barrel roll and loopty loop Star Fox style. He soared to the skies like Icarus and paid for the cost of freedom with his life.
He’s a folk hero of the modern world. And the reason he’s venerated as such and it strikes us in such a way is because of the fact that there’s a bit of Rich In all of us.
Indeed there is. And that’s all you need to know to understand the constant chorus of straight, white, Christian male bashing from Leftist politicians, corporate advertising drones, and the #FakeNews media. They have systematically created a world where the innate potential of young white men has been stifled for four generations now. Sky King provided a sobering reminder of what happens when one of us goes off the reservation. Nothing terrifies the globalist elite more.
Our unelected rulers’ only solace is that so far, second-class citizens who’ve broken the conditioning have flamed out in spectacular but strategically ineffective theatrics. Imagine if the next Rich Russell played it smart and did something constructive. That scenario is nightmare fuel for our elites.
Why have previous attempts been ineffective? What ingredients were missing?
We need more elitist nightmare fuel in the world.
I hope plenty of young men of euro-ethnic descent hear the full recording of Rich. The enemies of the people (media) showed their hand by deliberately not playing that portion of the tapes.
Serious, intelligent, well-organized leadership is sorely lacking. See: Charlottesville.
So far, most of the Right's leadership consists of CivNat Boomers and Gen Xers without enough skin in the game. Most Ys like Rich are too bewildered from the shock of waking up in Clown World, and too many Millennials openly embrace the poz.
For serious leadership, I suspect we'll have to wait for Gen Z to come of age.
You are likely right about waiting on Gen Z. I had hoped to see some of my fellow Y’s who have their life far more out together than my own to step up but it’s been crickets, bugged out eyes, and Y’s like me trying to pick up the pieces and scramble something together.
It was easier for me to be a leader when I was single. Now between work, school and young kids, it’s tough trying to get some men from the pariish together to discuss ways to limit our parish getting taxed by the bishop (to deprive the bishops financing) or how to appeal to our state attorney general to do a grand jury here, etc etc.
Agreed. And I live in a country that's so workoholic that the civil society is stagnating.
The biggest problem is see is no one has skin in the game presently and that accounts for the divisions.
One possible solution is to create very informal groups like D&D gamers, shooters, musicians etc. Keep it very small 3-5 and the slowly find like minded people via word of mouth answer social media.
TL;DR create cell like structures that are aimed at fostering masculine buddy solidarity
xavier
Wake up, preform duties as cog, go to bed, repeat until death.
Thus, the nihilist asks, "Why wait?"
Much of modern life is spent smothering that perfectly reasonable question in alcohol, drugs, and other distractions because it has no answer.
It is only a shame that Rich couldn't find a different answer besides "Nothing", and he left a family behind because of it.
Gen Y really needs to face reality and find a way through it. We're the last generation before everything was thrown away. We should know better than this.
JD
Funny you should mention find a way through it. I'm currently reading a really great book on the Sacred Heart as I'm going through i'm wondering how to tie it to masculine fellowship and Christ the king. I suppose it'so to find a purpose that isn'the solophistic
xavier
"Gen Y really needs to face reality and find a way through it. We're the last generation before everything was thrown away. We should know better than this."
Finding a way through is even more difficult for many than facing the reality of Weimerica. I have Gen Y friends who developed mental and emotional disorders or had existing conditions worsened when they were forced to confront the contradictions between the future their elders promised them and the reality of Clown World. Some have admitted that they need to be medicated, or self-medicated with alcohol and pot, just to function. I'm not talking about Tumblrinas who fish for sympathy with posts about being too sad to go outside. I mean guys who sometimes lie in a state of psychological paralysis for days at a time. Forget typing!
None of these guys was the class pothead. They were practicing Christians, and some have spouses/families. Their substance abuse problems only developed over the last decade or so. Ask yourself what's happened in the past ten years.
This is the bitter fruit of the seeds the Boomers sowed. One Gen Y friend told me how he cherished watching Star Trek TOS reruns with his dad. He just wanted to live in a world where everybody got along and respected each other as made in God's image. He grew up expecting that shiny future to appear around the corner any day. He's slowly coming to accept that it will never happen, but the truth has devastated him. We all agree he's no longer the man he was just a few years ago.
Lest anyone be tempted to laugh at people for being so deeply disenchanted that we're not in for a Star Trek future, try to imagine what it was like growing up in a generational version of the Truman Show. Gen Y were conditioned with learned helplessness. We were never encouraged to take initiative or ask the big questions. The Boomers assured us they'd take care of everything. Our lives were all mapped out, and the future was bright. All we had to do was follow the same road map our parents used, and by age 30 we'd be enjoying a middle class lifestyle in a post-racial world with Mars colonies and flying cars.
Rich Russell shows all the symptoms. It's fair to speculate that he thought he'd be a pilot or run his own business. But instead of living easy in the middle class, he found himself on the cusp of becoming a 30 year-old baggage handler working for scale.
Rich understood the problem. He was simply never given the tools to fix it. The old Boomer wisdom: Work hard, do a good job and get promoted, follow your heart and the money will follow, just didn't work.
He didn't know what to do, but he knew he had to do *something*. Now here we are.
I fear there are many men like Rich who desperately need to take action, have no idea what to do, and will act nonetheless.
“Rich understood the problem. He was simply never given the tools to fix it. The old Boomer wisdom: Work hard, do a good job and get promoted, follow your heart and the money will follow, just didn't work.”
When Infigured it out at the age of 20, I was shocked into inaction for about 8 years before finally realizing I just had to move forward anyway I could and except my life was going to be less than my father and grandfather’s. To realize everything I had been taught about life was an out right lie was a maddening experience.
As to Y’s needing drugs to deal with life, I am reminded of the lyrics from Offspring’s The Kids Aren’t Alright (1998).
I was quite nearly like that myself, so I do understand it. The worst part of facing it and somehow getting beyond it is dealing with those still trapped there. I do get it.
I'm not sure if making it to 30 has ever been considered an achievement like it has for Y. Those not in jail or dead are far different than they were a decade ago, without exception.
All Ys that I meet are in three camps.
The first are those that got past it. Where I live they are rare, but they usually are well balanced people either starting, or looking to start, families. They're usually very skeptical of Boomer world and practical.
The second are those playing pretend and living like they're still teenagers. These are the SJW-adjacent manchildren who still think they're fighting The Man and that thirty is the new thirteen. These ones get worse and worse with age, but they lack the self-awareness to realize their lives are in freefall. I'm not sure they'll ever realize it without divine intervention.
The last are the ones you're talking about. These are the ones on the border of joining the former camp or falling into soul-crushing despair or even death. These are the ones I truly do have empathy for, because I know where they're at. The Boomers set them up to fail after completely and repeatedly dismantling their lives as they grew up and reached adult age. They're trapped and have no idea how to get out of it.
It's a hard thing to describe to other generations, because it's quite a unique situation.
The thing with Millennials is that they're trapped in a fantasy world entirely built on lies. But it's never been any different for them. Gen X have always mistrusted Boomers and were always skeptical. Gen Z has never had anything to lose and have always lived in decline. It's black and white for them.
Gen Y has never had such a straightforward relationship to reality as the other younger generations. Childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, were like living in three different time periods in history all with various moods, rules, expectations, and "truths". Some are still not even aware of how they got to their fourth period in life and why it's so off-kilter and hard to understand. If you break it down, their lives are far more turbulent than they've even realized.
People like to imagine what it's like when Gen X gets older or Gen Z takes over, but I wonder what Y is going to do when they reach middle-age. Those still alive by that point are almost uniformly going to be in the first camp, and they're not going to be happy about what happened to those that didn't make it.
@Durandel: That's the definitive Gen Y "deer in headlights" reaction. Glad you made it out.
@JD: I have an old issue of Mad Magazine from ca. 1990 that predicted widespread insanity in people who'd been exposed to Nickelodeon as children. I found that joke chilling as a kid because it made sense. Now fully understand why, because it turned out to be prophetic.
"Childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, were like living in three different time periods in history all with various moods, rules, expectations, and 'truths'."
I liken the experience to spending your childhood in the USA, moving to Mexico for high school, and being shot from a cannon into North Korea after college.
"Childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, were like living in three different time periods in history all with various moods, rules, expectations, and 'truths'."
@JD – excellent way of describing it.
My analogy would be of being a passenger on an airplane that is nose diving towards the ground, in slow motion, while you are strangely in real time.
JD
This a very insight observation.I think we'really getting an 8nkling of what Gen York is about to do. The Lord is going to use them as a hammer for a Sodom and Gomorrah smack down. Just today, there are reports that Asia Argento one of the leading figures of the #me-too has supposedly sexually assaulted a minor boy and paid him off.
Looks like between me too's implosion, the Philadelphia grand jury findings and the the gatekeeper lunacy, Gen y will be the Lord's scourge to right the cries that have cried out to heaven and restore a sense of grounded reality because they've suffered the most as the sandwich generation.
I won't be surprised that Gen y will spearhead a return to stricter morals, a stronger proprietary and grounded seriousness. I bet they'll even bring back the Inquisition and index if only to guard themselves and their kids from the insanity they had to live through and cost their generation much. Far from being a lost generation, they'll be a return aux sources generation.
xavier
The lyrics to the song '45' by Shinedown, a band whose members are on the border as either very young Gen X or very old Gen Y:
"Send away for a priceless gift
One not subtle, one not on the list
Send away for a perfect world
One not simply, so absurd
In these times of doing what you're told
Keep these feelings, no one knows
What ever happened to the young man's heart?
Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apart
And I'm staring down the barrel of a 45,
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45
Send a message to the unborn child
Keep your eyes open for a while
In a box high up on the shelf, left for you, no one else
There's a piece of a puzzle known as life
Wrapped in guilt, sealed up tight
What ever happened to the young man's heart?
Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apart
And I'm staring down the barrel of a 45,
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45
Everyone's pointing their fingers
Always condemning me
And nobody knows what I believe
I believe!
And I'm staring down the barrel of a 45,
Swimming through the ashes of another life
No real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45
And I'm staring down the barrel of a 45,
And I'm swimming through the ashes of another life
There is no real reason to accept the way things have changed
Staring down the barrel of a 45, 45"
The rock bands of the 90s, all cyncical Gen Xers, tried to warn us but we stupid kids just enjoyed the edgy music and got blindsided by reality anyways.
"The rock bands of the 90s, all cyncical Gen Xers, tried to warn us but we stupid kids just enjoyed the edgy music and got blindsided by reality anyways."
Yep. These accounts of Gen Y paralysis and Peter Pan-ism are explanations, not excuses.
I never got into Shinedown. I’ll have to listen to .45 to see why or maybe I just missed on hearing them.
I mentioned Offspring’s The Kids Aren’t All Right based on what Brian said above. You see the same warning:
"The Kids Aren't Alright"
When we were young the future was so bright
The old neighborhood was so alive
And every kid on the whole damn street
Was gonna make it big and not be beat
Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn
The kids are grown up but their lives are worn
How can one little street
Swallow so many lives?
Chances thrown
Nothing's free
Longing for what used to be
Still it's hard
Hard to see
Fragile lives, shattered dreams
Jamie had a chance, well she really did
Instead she dropped out and had a couple of kids
Mark still lives at home 'cause he's got no job
He just plays guitar and smokes a lot of pot
Jay committed suicide
Brandon OD'd and died
What the hell is going on
The cruelest dream, reality
Chances thrown
Nothing's free
Longing for what used to be
Still it's hard
Hard to see
Fragile lives, shattered dreams
Not a fan of the Offspring, but whoever wrote those lyrics saw the decline firsthand.
Being susceptible to Gen Y nostalgia, I like to keep tabs on the neighborhood where I grew up. It was a housing development built for GIs returning from WWII on the east side of a mid-sized Midwestern city. Picture wide streets lined with silver maples and little Cape Cod houses with decently big yards. By the 80s, a pretty broad range of lower middle to upper middle-class families were buying starter homes there. We lived next door to an auto mechanic and across the street from a white collar engineer. Every family had two kids minimum. We all played Nintendo at each others' houses, rode bikes together, and had backyard camp-outs on summer nights. It didn't matter if your buddy's dad drove a Beemer while your dad drove a Chevy. The neighborhood was 99% white, but nobody found that noteworthy.
The engineers, the mechanics, and most of the kids are gone now. Employees at title loan outfits now rent houses that honest working folks used to own. Backyards where we used to cook and camp out are now surrounded by privacy fences plastered with 'PREMISES UNDER SURVEILLANCE' signs. A few years ago, a bank robber, a gangster, and a murderer living on my old street all got arrested within a few months of each other. Even the trees are dying.