Nietzsche explains why black men are leaving Kamala Harris

About half of comic book villains are Nietzschean. They disdain how superheroes support democracy and defend the weak. In their view they are the ubermensch, not Superman, and their respect for laws, rights and the welfare of people who struggle is misguided.

Among the more interesting Nietzschean villains is Bonsai. He was a samurai who put his soul in a bonsai tree so that he would cease to age after the death of Saigo Takamori, the last samurai (an actual historical figure who was quite interesting and had a Sabaton song made for him). He has spent over a hundred years obtaining enough political influence and underworld connections to control the Japanese prime minister and move Japan towards a more isolationist and traditional culture.

In his final fight with the Marvel Hero, Bonsai said, “He [Saigo Takamori] died fighting against the modernization of our country. A transition he knew would lead to mediocrity and cowardice.”

And he had a point. Democratic capitalism leads to a kind of peace and prosperity that does weaken people. When democratic societies degenerate, they even laud weakness as a virtue.

Now, Bonsai is a terrible person. He is a sexist, racist xenophobic samurai who thinks that his class should be able to execute peasants if they are sufficiently disrespectful. He wanted to make war with Korea when Korea was weak. He would marry off his daughter to some fat, old, corrupt politician in order to secure an alliance. He is like an exaggerated version of everything a liberal republican detests about monarchy.

But he is also brave and strong, and he loves beauty. Of course, his love of beauty is limited to Japanese (and, grudgingly, some Chinese) art. However, he deeply respects and appreciates that tradition. Perhaps because he limits himself to Japanese aesthetics, he can better appreciate the depths of that unique tradition.

In some ways, he is like a feudal Asian Solzhenitsyn. When the great Russian writer spoke at Harvard, he was much more critical of liberal democratic capitalism than many anti-communists were expecting. Solzhenitsyn hated Communism, but he admitted that Communism inspired bravery. He felt that the citizens in liberal Democratic capitalism just weren’t brave enough.*

Kamala Harris manifested modern weakness when she mentioned that she was middle class and worked part-time at McDonald’s. Kamala Harris comes from an upper-middle-class family that didn’t have to struggle to make ends meet. But weakness is so honored among the left that she had to pretend to be poorer than she was.

I must mention, she was likely selected as VP because she was a threefer. She is an Asian, a black, and a woman. Though Trump could have articulated it better, he was right to notice that everybody referred to her as Indian before she wanted to become President. Then she switched her identity to black.

For those of you who don’t know, Kamala Harris’s mother is fully Indian, while her father is a half-white, half-black Jamaican. She was raised almost entirely by her Indian mother in an upper-middle-class home that did not have to worry about how high their insurance bill or their mortgage was. She was what I consider the comfortable middle class.

Indians have a good record in the United States as being middle class or moving up to the middle class very quickly. Blacks, for reasons that we won’t get into in this essay, often have a record of staying poor. Because of this, blacks are seen as weak victims in the leftist imagination.

As per usual, Dr. Bastiat told a story that explained everything. He was speaking with a secular New York Jewish woman, and she said to him (I paraphrase slightly), "I don't see why people judge blacks so harshly for their bad behavior. They have been through so much." Dr. Bastiat responded that her parents went through the holocaust and became model American citizens.

Though a Jew, that particular lady captured what Nietzsche hated about the Christian elevation of the weak and downtrodden. The strong showing compassion to the weak was belittling. It could also be a way for the elite to secure their power as leaders of the weak.

Nietzsche understood that the people shown such 'compassion' would develop "ressentiment." Ressentiment is similar to resentment, but it comes from a deeper part of human psychology and is more powerful than mere resentment. It is the idea that the weak will begin to resent the strong, even if they are nice to them, out of a sense of inferiority. In simpler terms, people hate it when others make them feel weak, and they develop deep negative emotions towards the people who make them feel that way.

For example, blacks venerate Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and the Tuskegee Airmen because they are strong. Native Americans honor their chiefs because they are brave. Even peacemakers like Martin Luther King and the Paiute medicine man Wovoka had masculine traits: integrity under social pressure and speaking honestly, even when inconvenient. Perhaps more importantly, MLK and Father Wovoka asked their respective groups to be strong, even if they didn't ask them to be violent.**

In the books and TV I consume, there is a pattern of poor blacks and poor Native Americans making fun of lefty wine-drinking, affluent suburban white women — with a sharpness that surprised me. Even lefty black and native writers wrote about these ladies with bitterness in their language. Now, poor folks making fun of rich folks is a tale as old as time. It is the same with diverse populations noticing the differences they have with other populations and finding their differences humorous. I don't mind jokes about Chinese eating weird things and white women loving pumpkin spice as long as it is done in a well-meaning way. But, even if those affluent lefty white women were a bit silly and drank stupidly expensive wine, they were basically compassionate people who wanted the betterment of the poorest sections of society. So why the resentment (or ressentiment) against them?

While it may not be moral, I empathize with the ressentiment felt by poor groups towards such white ladies. I felt it myself quite acutely at one point in my life. At a friend's house, I cut my hand while preparing food. It bled a worrisome amount and I had to compress my bleeding hand above my heart for what seemed an interminably amount of time before it stopped. My friend's wife was the personification of female compassion and wanted to drive me to the hospital immediately. I responded to her in an unfairly harsh voice that I was perfectly fine. Of course I should have been nicer to her, and I make no excuse for myself, but like most men, I hate feeling weak. Also, to my friend's wife's credit, she was decently and sensibly compassionate without being condescending unlike a good many affluent lefty ladies.

What is Kamala Harris's message to poor blacks? "You are poor and can't help yourselves, so vote for me. I am weak like you, and my family struggled like yours does." This is condescending pity that is also inauthentic because Kamala Harris doesn't have the experience of being a poor black person. She can't even fake it like Obama can. Obama's message to blacks in 2008 was, "Vote for me and I'll prove that blacks aren't inferior because a black man will be President." It was a vote of optimism as well as a vote for "hope and change."

As my fellow Ricochet member put it:

The last company at which I was employed made much ado about the “diversity” in the law department because we had several black female lawyers. The two highest-ranking of those black female lawyers were the daughter of a professor at an Ivy League university, and the daughter of a medical doctor. They both grew up in “middle-class” Connecticut suburbs. One of the outside lawyers I often hired for contract work for the company was a white man who grew up in poverty in the hills of Appalachia. I (a white man) was the child of a consulting engineer who became a professor and grew up in the “middle-class” suburbs of California and Florida. So my own background experience had more in common with those black female lawyers than I did with the white man who grew up in poverty-stricken Appalachia.

The idea that being a quarter black raised by an Indian Mom automatically lets you relate to poor blacks is so absurd that I would like to think that it needs no refuting. Sadly, we do not live in sensible times.

Trump's message to poor blacks is the masculine opposite of Kamala's: "I want you to get a job and make money. Like the poor whites in the Rust Belt, you have been screwed over by a corrupt globalist elite. But I will fight them so you can be strong and prosperous."

Additionally, Trump constantly emphasizes strength. He wants the military to be strong. He wants American manufacturing to be strong. He wants our borders to be strong — and so on. While Trump is not exactly Lincolnian in his speech, I believe that he is sincere in his message. Moreover, he owns up to being rich, privileged and really good at making money. He is authentic, even if not authentically polite.

Trump wants black Americans to be like the 716 blank tank battalion who drove back the Nazis; or like Jesse Owens, who could not stop winning. Kamala wants blacks to feel like poor, weak victims so they will always vote for their government benefactors. Think of how the left quite literally made George Floyd into a religious figure. It is no accident that they promoted a weak man who died largely because of his self-destructive tendencies.

Kamala herself is an embodiment of weakness. She rose up through the Democratic ranks by appealing to her weakness as a woman, as a middle-class person, and, most importantly, as a black victim of American racism. Why is it anyone’s surprise that people who make weakness into a virtue are having trouble attracting men?

*And then Captain America punched him in his stupid savage-steppe jaw. In a dream I had. On the morning of the Fourth of July. With Eagles outside my bedroom window...

** Yes I am aware that in MLK's later years, he foolishly flirted with more militant black nationalism. I am referring to his earlier years when he emphasized the endurance necessary for nonviolence.