The Grind and The Decline - Director's Editorial

The sheer scale of national decay

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down to catch up on the writings of Morgoth over on his Morgoth’s Review Substack. An article which was particularly interesting to me was titled “Hard Times And The White Wargus” (linked below). Morgoth, in his usual pithy fashion, expertly explored the depths of the moral, material, and financial collapse the Western world, and Britain in particular, is undergoing. The sense of crisis which most Whites seem to feel is growing almost exponentially and is most noticable when you scroll through social media or talk to a person in your daily life. But is this sense of crisis reflected in numbers? Is there a great deal of evidence for what Morgoth termed the “grinding crapness of life?”

There most certainly is. In talking about these figures and offering my interpretation of them I hope to expand on the right’s current understanding of the crisis currently unfolding in Western civilization.

Hard Times And The White Wargus

The cost of living crisis:

Most Whites are perfectly aware of the cost of living crisis, we have all been experiencing it firsthand for several years now, but we are often not aware of just how much it is costing many of our race. In the United States some 46.6% of Whites make less than $75,000 a year, and 30.9% of Whites survive on less than $50,000 a year. While in the United Kingdom the British state breaks down income ranges into “quintiles” without specific numeric values, there is still significant cause for concern. 37% of White Britons fall into the bottom two categories for income, and 58% fall into the bottom three quintiles. Incomes have not risen substantially in either country, meaning Whites in both Britain and the United States are attempting to stretch more money for less resources.

These numbers are incredibly significant when considering just one cost in daily life, that of feeding a family. Before the pandemic the average American family of four was spending $238.32 per week, or roughly $11,439.36 per year on food. Now? The average American family is spending $15,130.56 on food each year as of November 2023. This $3,691 difference is incredibly significant, and I shall expand on it more later.

In the United Kingdom the cost of food between December of 2022 and December of 2023 increased by a staggering 26%, while in the previous 10 years the price had only increased by 9%. At the same time energy prices in the United Kingdom have increased 59% between the summer of 2021 and January 2024. In the 11 years between 2010 and 2021 prices increased 36%.

Is it any wonder that in November of 2022 some 51% of Britons were worried about their ability to pay for food? Or that in August of 2023 some 64% of Britons said that they saw no evidence the United Kingdom’s government was doing anything to deal with food prices?

Some thoughts:

Something I find particularly horrifying about this cost of living crisis is the $3,691 figure in additional food spending mentioned above. 57% of Americans would are unable to pay for a 1,000 emergency from their cash reserves, so how in the world are they supposed to afford nearly $3,700 in additional grocery costs? And groceries are not the only staggering increase, it was merely the one I chose to focus on. Nationally the average rent has increased by more than $500 since 2020, and the average price for a single-bedroom apartment is now over $1,109.

What about the rapidly rising costs of the cost of school supplies, the cost of used cars, the cost of buying a home? As a 24 year old I can say that I have few hopes of owning a home in the current environment, there is no buy-in to the “American dream” for me, or anyone my age when we cannot ever hope to afford the basic building blocks of a stable family life. A study published all the way back in 2012 found that there was not a single congressional district in the entire country where a full-time minimum wage worker could afford a two-bedroom apartment. I have to imagine that now there is barely a district where a full-time minimum wage worker could afford a one-bedroom apartment. Indeed, I doubt most workers making 15 dollars an hour can afford an apartment in much of the country.

Infact, 21% of White parents said they have been unable to afford enough food for their household. 19% of White parents had trouble affording housing, and 23% of Whites were unable to cover necessary medical bills. There is no room left in the budget for tens of millions of Americans when it comes to clothes, school supplies, or getting a tire replaced.

Second and Third Jobs:

In the United States seven million Americans now work two jobs. Two million people work two full-time roles, while 5 million Americans hold a full-time role and another part-time job. These figures have a significant generational aspect to them is well, which is something I care about deeply. 46% of Zoomers (my own generation) report working two jobs (also counting side-gigs), while 37% of Millennials do the same. The rates for older Americans are as much as 70% less. 55% of young people in the United States have come to expect that they cannot expect a raise, and 51% of this same cohort expects to do worse than our parents, I certainly do in current conditions.

Similarly half of my generation lives paycheck to paycheck, a full five points more than our parents.

The situation in the United Kingdom is even worse. While 5% of Americans may be working more than one job (on the books), 16% of the British workforce, or 5.2 million people are working more than one job. A further 30% of Britons state that if costs continue to increase they will need to take on second jobs in order to make ends meet. In the midst of all of this the Tory minister Therese Coffey had the audacity to tell Britons to “work more hours” if they could not afford food or housing.

Have I ever mentioned how much I detest the Tories? I don’t care how bad Labour is, never cast your ballot for the Tories.

Feelings about the family and future:

As a result of the above statistics the youth (and others) in the Anglosphere are being worked to the bone for less reward and little in the way of material gain. In the United Kingdom 48% of young people between the ages of 16 and 25 are pessimistic about the future, and the numbers are slightly higher among young men.

In the United States 71% of Whites are pessimistic about the moral and ethical standards of the country, 64% of Whites are worried about the education system, and 40% of Americans are concerned about the institution of marriage and the family in the country. But feelings are not the only measure of decline.

In both the United Kingdom and the United States the size of families is growing smaller, people are living further away from their parents, siblings, and support networks and there is little in the way of emergency support if something goes wrong. Americans, Britons, and Whites generally were promised a future in which constant material gain would fill the spot where family once stood in our lives, and this was lie.

Feminism as a stand-in for Liberalism:

Something I find particularly interesting, and which I feel heralds the end of a generally liberal worldview among young men in the West, is the rapidly declining popularity of and tolerance for feminism.

In a poll I have trotted out many times, and am happy to keep using, the SPLC found that 62% of young right wing men (defined as men under 50 years of age) feel that feminism has done more harm than good. 52% of conservative women under 50 also feel this way. The more staggering statistic, though, is that 46% of left wing men under 50 also feel that feminism has done more than than good, contrast with just 4% of left wing men over 50 who feel this way.

At the same time the number of men who believe there is discrimination against them in American life has shot up between 2019 and 2023, from 32% to 45% among those aged 18 to 29. Young people, particularly young men, have no reason to buy into a system which has declared them surplus to requirements and therefore either unnecessary or expendible.

Happiness, ever declining:

A shattered social fabric, no economic opportunity, no chance to own anything, and a distinct lack of place in modern society. I do not think it is going to shock anyone at this point in the article that Americans and Britons are more unhappy than they have ever been. 69% of Americans are unhappy and take a dim view of the state of the nation, while in Britain the population has become less happy and more anxious since the coronovirus pandemic passed. Anxiety among British women has increased from 22% of the female population to 27%, and one in five British men report anxiety problems.

White Americans and Native Britons are increasingly poor, increasingly unhappy, increasingly dissatisfied with liberalism, and increasingly anxious and lonely.

Final thoughts:

I am reminded of Peter Hitchen’s retelling of his viewing of the film Tak Zhit Nel’zya ( “We can’t go on living like this”) while he lived in Moscow as a foreign correspondent. In 1990, less than a year before the Soviet Union finally came crumbling to the ground, Hitchens found himself surrounded by weeping and deeply traumatized Russians while sitting in the theatre, in public, watching one of the first screenings of Tak Zhit Nel’zya. Why were these people crying? Because the film was dedicated to the horridness of Soviet life. How cold, barren, empty, and poor the populace had become, and for the first time the people of the USSR were allowed to view this reality en masse and without fear of repression.

One day the people of the Anglosphere will reflect upon the destruction of our families, the mutilation of our children, the perversion of our culture, and the destruction of our wealth and we will weep when finally allowed to see and speak openly about it.

One day this regime will end, and we will rebuild.

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I hope you enjoyed the first Director’s Editorial. This little ramble is a departure from the kind of content I usually produce, that it is written from a first person perspective and peppered with my own (albeit limited) commentary.

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