WHITE AMERICA AND THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: WHY AMERICANS HAVE BECOME SHEEP.
Stockholm syndrome: psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.
britannica.com
This definition of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ is very narrow; it is also applied to many other relationships of unequal power and control, especially abusive work place and familial relations. The abuse may be physical, or psychological—the inducement of fear, guilt, shame, and alienation from all countervailing sources of emotional support. In most cases, the phenomenon of victims identifying with, and even idolizing their abusers and hating themselves, is merely a side effect of the abuser’s agenda. But it can also be a deliberate tactic of mass brainwashing.
What has that to do with white America as a whole? I suggest that ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ is an entirely appropriate diagnoses of the tragedy we see enveloping so much of our younger generations as they become more and more alienated from their cultural heritage through deliberate psychological abuse. So what abuses are these, in some ways, coddled and pampered victims subjected to? They have lived their entire lives swimming in such abuse as this:
“Go, [white man]; erase from the Indian nation, the tradition of their wrongs; make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields and through these forests, their beloved forefathers, once, in careless gaiety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Make them forget too, if you can, that in the midst of all this innocence, simplicity, and bliss – the white man came; and lo! – the animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, thoughtless joy were over; that ever since, they have been made to drink the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; their lives, their liberties, the sport of white men; their country and the graves of their fathers torn from them, in cruel succession; until, driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and through a period of two hundred years, rolled back, nation upon nation, they find themselves fugitives, vagrants and strangers in their own country…
“…were I a president of the United States, I would glory in going to the Indians, throwing myself on my knees before them, and saying to them, “Indians, friends, brothers, O! forgive my countrymen! Deeply have our forefathers wronged you; and they have forced us to continue the wrong. Reflect, brothers; it was not our fault that we were born in your country; but now, we have no other home; we have nowhere else to rest our feet. Will you not, then, permit us to remain? Can you not forgive even us, innocent as we are? If you can, O!, come to our bosoms; be, indeed, our brothers; and since there is room enough for us all, give us a home in your land, and let us be children of the same affectionate family.”
Something from today’s political rhetoric, or modern school textbook? No, from 1803 political rhetoric by one of early America’s leading political figures, William Wirt1. More significantly to my point, it was included in one of America’s earliest and most influential public school readers, the American First Class Book, of 1823. Furthermore, the above excerpt is only a sample of the racial calumny heaped on the white man in Wirt’s screed. It could, and probably does, form the pattern for two centuries of attack upon the psyche of white America. Every lawyers’ rhetorical trick of myth, exaggeration, misrepresentation, and guilt by association steeped in hypocrisy are displayed here by Mr. Wirt, the archetypal Attorney General.
Today, Black Lives Matter holds the whip, but only yesterday it was “Lo, the poor Indian” propaganda that flogged us. The philosophy and the goals of both supposedly aggrieved groups are the same — the destruction of America as it was founded, as it has prospered and grown, and as we have loved it. I find this so troubling that I included Wirt’s “Letter From an English Spy” in Pious to Progressive, but I added a rather long rebuttal to Mr. Wirt’s poisonous condemnation of his country and his countrymen. Much of it is applicable to the whole panoply of anti-white, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalistic, anti-straight, anti-male, etc. so dangerously affecting our society these days.
Lest I also be accused of misleading you, my dear reader, let me admit that I added in ‘white man’ above, as a substitute for ‘Go, Virginian’. Wirt wrote as though the mid-Atlantic and New England states were innocent of any such white man’s transgressions. President Andrew Jackson called out Wirt’s hypocrisy (though not by name) in his first Address to Congress. Nowadays, there are no exceptions to the condemnation of white men by white men; Union General and Confederate General get the same treatment.
Wirt’s goal seems to have been to forestall the growth, and political power, of the frontier, keeping it in the hands of the eastern establishment. At least that is the most charitable explanation I can credit to him. As we recall, 1803 was the year of the Louisiana Purchase, a critical turning point in American history. He came very near to accomplishing that goal some years later with his victory in the Supreme Court; the ruling famously ignored by his bitter political enemy, Andrew Jackson. Wirt’s intentions may have been laudable in so far as he opposed the spread of slavery, and championed protection of Native American rights; but, what would have been the unintended consequences? The westward progress of white/European civilization was inevitable in those days. Had Jackson bowed to the spirit of the Court’s decision, granting nation status to Indian tribes, it would almost certainly have led to civil war, and the balkanization of North America, with a series of new republics (some irrevocably committed to slavery and hostile to Native American claims), rather than new states, stretching one nation from sea to sea. But that was then, what about now? What about this “Stockholm Syndrome” thing?
It is still all about the ruthless pursuit of political power, unmanning those who might refuse to be shorn of freedom, of God given rights, and the fruit of their labor. The only help I can offer is education, and prayer for our country. I highly recommend Pious To Progressive: A Century of American Readers, and Bound For the USA: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Colonies and the Deep South.
Bill Kitchens