New Orleans is America

A guest post by George Bagby

This is a guest post by a dear friend and mentor of mine George Bagby. I’ve spoken with him often on my show, and he offer a unique perspective on current events that I hope you’ll enjoy. Please check out his YouTube or Telegram ( This is a personal favorite of mine). I’d also recommend a book he recently republished on reconstruction which you can find here.

---

1/16/24

                New Orleans is famous as the “most European,” most interesting, and also one of the most dysfunctional cities in the United States. It deserves all of these attributions and more, including the most beautiful city and the most murderous city. In 2022, New Orleans had the most homicides per capita in the United States, and was #8 between Uruapan and Juraez, Mexico, in the top ten most murderous cities in the Western Hemisphere. This does not and should not worry the tourists. Almost all of that blood is the local black folks killing each other, and the police use the only resources remaining to protect the tourist areas. Locals live in terror amid the anarchy of their neighborhoods, and fear of the criminal gangs is a common topic of conversation.

                I have driven all hours of the day and night in the Big Easy for almost one year as an Uber driver and have witnessed one murder. One morning around 10 AM, I had picked up a ride on Elysian Fields, and drove down St. Claude beside the trendy Bywater neighborhood. We heard sirens and saw several people gesticulating on the sidewalk. As we slowed, we saw a black man rolling in his own blood on the sidewalk. The police were pulling up behind us.

                My tourist passengers often ask me about the crime. I do not tell them stories about what I have witnessed, but I tell them what the locals tell me. The poor are usually trapped. Some manage to escape to more functional cities like Houston, and they share the story of their good fortune with strangers like me. Others, especially the elderly, are trapped, unhappy, and terrorized by the underclass that rules their streets. The refrain is consistent among these people: they feel betrayed by the city government.

                I have amused myself many times by convincing hooded black passengers of the virtues of monarchy. All of them already believe in personal government because it is the only force or influence they have any experience with. The indirect government of bureaucracies is the province of the middle-class office workers. I like to muse on the Super Bowl victory of Drew Brees and his subsequent reign as the king of Mardi Gras that season. I say that Brees could have been hoisted upon the shields by his lieutenants and led a coup into city hall to kick out the criminals who fleece the city. Every local is thrilled by the dream and wishes for the dictatorship of the benevolent quarterback. What is more interesting is the universal opinion, even by a recent passenger who liked to preface everything by saying, “as a woman of color,” the city government is a grotesque and transparent fraud.

                The focus of the conversation is usually the city’s mayor: LaToya “Da Dastroya” Cantrell. Cantrell moved to the city from California after marrying into a politically active family, but has become infamous here for alleged special favors to donors, the imposition of vaccine passports on all public spaces, luxury travel at public expense, failed audits and resultant sanctions on the city’s credit, and revelations of adultery with her bodyguard while her husband was dying. An effort to recall the mayor failed in 2023, yet this was blamed on the lack of a serious contender to replace her. Cantrell, like the now imprisoned Mayor “Chocolate City” Ray Nagin, spends increasing amounts of time travelling around the world to “promote the city.” She was recently in Bangkok while the city’s pumps were broken, sinkholes swallowed cars, and gangs of criminals drove four-wheelers through the traffic on Canal Street. I’ve never encountered a vocal supporter of this creature, but the dysfunction of the city government is deep. The newspaper complains that the city is unable to fill its own ranks with employees, and this is most evident with the police department, which is barely operating at half strength. Vice parades on major thoroughfares every night, and I witness the police passing the prostitutes with their breasts and bottoms bared. Nothing is done. I witnessed a man stomped on the asphalt by three black hoodlums and made a report to the police. No arrests were made in spite of several eyewitnesses. A smiling matron in a flashing ad on the Superdome proclaims, “I’m a cop, and a mother, too!” Girl ain’t doin neither job well. Keira Knightley seems to be the actress in fatigues and makeup for the Marine Corps ad out by the airport. We know this problem extends across the country, but here it seems acute, and the all-American failures of New Orleans focus the mind.

                New Orleans is America: it is a worthy place terrorized by degenerates and crumbling under the leadership of criminals. Our enemies see this and might celebrate it, knowing that our tolerance of wickedness dooms us to decline and irrelevance. The patriot, the lover of his fatherland, wants what is best for this place, and the problems are so glaring that it requires no imagination to find better policy. What we lack is will. Our people perish for lack of leadership.

As things stand, the executives of this country reward criminality while they punish the righteous. This is the inverse of the ruler described in Romans 13. Meanwhile, they are treacherous to our people abroad. “Da Dastroya” merely amuses herself in Bangkok. Our leaders burn hundreds of billions while their own people suffer. They invite the vagabonds and deadbeats of the world into our cities in order to subsidize their comfort in our hotels and restaurants while our own pensioners and poor struggle to survive and take on extra part-time jobs. They send weapons to assist the slaughter of distant peoples and occasionally level the towns of nations their own citizens cannot discover on a map. The peoples of the world grow frustrated with this psychopathic and megalomaniacal behavior, and form international associations and financial systems in order to avoid and isolate us. The incompetence and delusions of our leaders lowers the quality of life for our children with every day it is tolerated.

Americans have developed a lamentable habit of fleeing the degeneracy. I count myself in this number, having moved from the inner city to a rural home. Our illegitimate rulers work against our constructive efforts in the cities, and perhaps we could rescue functionality were it not for the prohibition on free associations, which cripples the cohesion of business and non-profits alike. Yet now, the armed ethnics on four wheelers and dirtbikes invade the leafy suburbs and the contented exiles will face the challenge of our times. Homeless encampments sprout like mushrooms in public spaces, eating the dead fabric of our society and spewing filth and needles like spores. There is no escaping the consequences of generational cowardice and the American religion of “kindness.” The middle classes that fled New Orleans dysfunction a generation ago face it again. They will confront it or they will be consumed by it. The future belongs to the disagreeable; to the intolerant.

Here in Louisiana, the country people openly denigrate and curse the great city. Friends of mine fantasize about the next Katrina with hope that the residents of New Orleans will be forced to flee the state. Antisocial, of course, but understandable. The powers enrich themselves and leave. The law is not enforced, or it is perverted through cowardice, greed, or licentiousness. Only a fool of a policeman would attempt to arrest a prostitute exposing herself on the street or confronting the armed gangs doing burnouts on major streets. Indeed, when the police cruiser shows up to a “shutdown,” where the Challengers and Mustangs drag race or circle the intersections, burning rubber, the cruisers are attacked by the mobs. The situation seems beyond repair to some, and the desire for justice is shifted into a conviction that the guilt extends to the people of the city so tolerant of anarchy. No one hates New Orleans more than Louisianans, and few are more quick to compare the city to Sodom with the hope that the city with share the Biblical punishment. This frustration stems from the long-term lack of a courageous executive, and it is the failure of Coriolanus, who should have maintained his loyalty. The people of New Orleans are terrorized. They merit liberation from their tormenters. The city, like America itself, is worth saving. The righteous and the fair must agree on a constructive solution to the intolerable, despicable crimes that beset our homeland. Many solutions lie in the executive role. The good people of America will welcome the rule of a Caesar.

The role of a Caesar, according to Spengler, lies in the renewal of a declining civilization. Like Rome, we find our institutions dysfunctional, we find factions risking the general welfare for private obsessions and personal gain. We see fanatics subverting the public good. A Caesar figure would tell the Americans, as Trump did, that the machinery of government had been perverted to enrich special interests, and that this injustice that had impoverished and exploited the citizens ends with firm and just rule. Americans will realize a break with the previous regime, which has been like the rule of Oedipus without any of his virtues. Like Oedipus, the previous regime has made unforgivable assaults on its own authority and identity, and must pay a dreadful price for these sins. Yarvin proposes the RAGE policy, retiring all government employees, but a Caesar would punish and thereby gain credibility and glory. An American Caesar must justify himself with American formulas and slogans, but he will reverse the rhetorical tone of our rulers to wield the sword against the wicked and the traitors. The “general welfare” will justify the punishment of the exploiters, not the subsidy of the slothful. The general welfare of America means the liberation of her peoples from those who terrorize and exploit them. The commerce clause will justify the anti-trust breakup of the multi-national corporations that centralize capital and authority in distant cities and even abroad, depriving Americans of opportunities to run businesses, own property, or even appeal to authorities instead of bureaucrats. “For ourselves and our posterity” will justify the re-shoring of industry, a new regime of strict punishment for the corruption of children, and an explicitly pro-marriage, pro-family, and pro-natal policy for the future of our people. Like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, an American Caesar has the means to power by using Hamilton’s loose construction for Jeffersonian ends. This is how the Constitution has always worked, and the Jeffersonians lost in 1865.

Needless to say, law enforcement and foreign policy must be the centerpiece of a Caesarian regime. Foreign meddling and subsidies must stop. There is no money for it, and special interests divorced from the cares and knowledge of the American people are hijacking hundreds of billions in foreign aid and weapons for private purposes abroad. The exploiters must be charged with treason against the  American people, and this should include the masterminds in State and Defense who are responsible for the many disasters and atrocious waste of blood and treasure we have witnessed abroad. No general or under-secretary will so easily shore up bad policy once they have seen the capital punishment due to traitors meted out to their colleagues. The military must be brought home to immediately fortify the border and assist in deporting the millions of felons who broke the boundaries of our law by their presence in our land. Justice would mean the repayment of all benefits given to these parasites of the body politic, but we may be content with deportation.

Caesar is mean. That is why he is popular. Americans have projected “meanness,” that unforgivable sin against the religion of kindness, that touching faith of the subverted Christians, the liberals, and the dying. Hussein and Qaddafi were “mean,” so far as most Americans could articulate, and that is why they had to die. The reshoring and ownership of “mean” leadership is the catharsis after the tragedy of decades of failed, feminized government. The criminals have been released out of prison, the lunatic asylums have been closed, drug use has been subsidized, degenerates have been celebrated, the misunderstood Elbridge Cleavers have been worshipped, and the befuddled refugees have been installed into the Roosevelt Hotel with endless food vouchers. The time for harsh realities has returned. The natural justice of the harsh realities appeals to all of the right people and will reduce the enemies of America into sputtering and irrational rage. After all, the harsh arrests, prosecution, and punishment of drag queens that dare approach a library with a children’s section and any librarian who dares to shelve a book meant to corrupt children violates the religion of those enraged. The protesters and propagandists for subversion, be it racial, sexual, or otherwise, should be censored, deplatformed, fired, and prosecuted as dangers to the general welfare just as patriotic Americans have been persecuted for their own challenges to the previous regime of traitors. Caesar will use weapons against all enemies: foreign and domestic. He will savor the angry tears of the wicked, and his courage will renew the courage of the righteous. He will stand for safe streets, the liberty of the lawful, the encouragement of homes, families, faith, and small property. His rhetoric must be built on the positive vision of the lives of the American peoples, which is why the hero will encourage the remembrance of heroism and the multiplicity of American stories.

Just as the productive people of New Orleans would feel relief as the streets are cleared of criminals and needle-strewn encampments, so the worthy citizens of America will celebrate the renewal of justice in the land. Just as the people of New Orleans would celebrate the return of the money “Da Datroya” wasted in her luxury abroad, so Americans would realize the justice of the end of foreign aid and the endless wars abroad. The sunset of the global empire, combined with the reshoring of the vital industries, will require a long view that transcends what we have grown used to from our distracted and self-aggrandizing gerontocracy, forever focused on the next election. No matter what a leader may do, our country will suffer. Our quality and expectancy of life will decline. The deferred responsibilities from decades of “niceness” and debt will result in deprivation. The piper will be paid. The delusional notions of living beyond the limitations of nations or winning the game of history, ala Fukuyama, will extract a toll. Yet, courage and justice demand righteous leadership with the will to enforce the law with conviction and an unapologetic love for America and her peoples.

Accepting decline, fragmentation, and anarchy is cowardice, but we must understand the despair behind the passivity. We hear fears of civil war, which is understandable because the factions in our public life are irreconcilable and without possibility of compromise. We cannot form our children into marriageable men and women who desire families and sponsor sexual degeneracy. We will have one or the other. We cannot have safe streets and coddle criminals. We cannot aid the poor and tolerate homeless squatters. We cannot depend on cheap Chinese everything and provide worthy employment that healthy families require. We understand the despair of the present is rooted in the persecution of the traitors and psychopathic criminals who misrule us. Anyone who objects, including the leftists who protest apparent American-sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide, are called fascists and prosecuted for “hate crimes.” The catharsis of the courageous leader willing to grasp the sword of government, promote the interests of the lawful backbone of the American peoples and to punish her enemies is a consummation devoutly to be wished. We shall have a true governor, or we will sit impassively as America dies among the whores and fentanyl in the gutter, killed with a “kindness” which is a fate worse than mere death.