Welcome to Appalachistan, by NC Scout

(NC Scout / American Partisan) There’s few pleasures in life like having a conversation with an old friend. An intellectual equal, an open mind, and a counterpoise juxtaposed to any position I might hold. At least in some respects. Not a mental clone, and a radically different life philosophy than the one I live, replete with a well aged Che Guevara-turned-Guy Fawkes face inked on his upper arm. A free thinker and a beer drinker, an American original, and very much a product of a harsh upbringing. In another life he could have been leading any guerrilla force with a natural charisma and matching high intelligence; an insurgency’s wet dream and a security force nightmare. A person who recognizes the false charms of the Left, dangling Liberation in place of Liberty and begging you not to realize words have meaning. He’s an example of life on the eastern side of Appalachians.

It was a discussion on what freedom in America really even means anymore and what it will take to remain that way. Because it is a realization that we are indeed not free, that the world in which we reside has visibly chosen a path for us not to live but to die upon having no further utility to the machine. They don’t want you armed, they don’t want you thinking, and most importantly they do not want you on what they claim is theirs, as inheritors of the Earth. It begets a wonderful flow of questions, uncomfortable answers, and certainly interesting observations. When authority fails, that authority resorts to force.

To those brave left wingers cheering on airstrikes on civilians…

Many of us are trained in airfield seizure. (We train others, too…imagine that)

Best of luck. You’re going to need it. https://t.co/N8WdgPx4PC

— Brushbeater Actual (@Brushbeater) August 31, 2022

A Guerrilla Movement must be reflective of the underlying culture which it seeks to preserve. I reflected upon my respect for the Afghan. In twenty years’ time, and perhaps forty, counting our exploitation of the Soviet misgivings, the West could never understand the Afghan puzzle. How can a people exist as a throwback to another time, absent the comfort we all come to know? Comfort to the Afghan serves two purposes; one, an outward showing of wealth, the other, a precursor to death. To the Afghan comfort leads to complacency, and at least in my experience, they sought simplicity. For all their failings as judged upon Western scales, they endure. Every aesthetic tells a generations-old story of what brought them to the present, and that story will carry their sons and grandsons forward generations more.

My old war rug I picked up in Kandahar. I’m reminded this morning of what we learn from our enemies through both losses and victories. pic.twitter.com/tqeYm1rOam

— Brushbeater Actual (@Brushbeater) August 31, 2022

In America a great pain has been made to dilute the role of culture. We can no longer point to any one thing that is a cultural aesthetic, the last being the neon techno artwork of the 1980s. Not since then have we produced anything that can uniquely be identified as American, rather, we point to transnational corporate emblems as symbols of American culture. To the outside world its nothing more than a symbol of exploitation and oppression. But this culture was purposefully murdered, made to be called a ‘melting pot’, a cruel type of menagerie meant to establish a ruling hegemony while forcing out the competition. The old ways of Europe, those that cannot be commercialized, must be seen as rubeish, boorish, and backwards. Things to ridicule.

To a person that lives a steady diet of throwaway capitalism; McDonalds, Starbucks, Apple products, and Walmart; the very same traits exhibited at home are apostate. How can these rubes in their rural enclaves dare continue to exist against our metropolis? Clinging to their God, Guns and religion, how dare they. And that contemptful message of apostasy has given way to shades of genocide.

The people of a place, and thus the culture therein, creates the ecology of the Guerrilla. There are those pockets of cultural resistance in America, having borne the brunt of relentless attacks on its history and cultural significance. I frequently encounter these in my travels, training them to fight. One such is the Appalachian mountain region. Years ago in a conversation Dan Morgan made the observation, as an outsider, that the southern region of Appalachia was as clannish and buttoned up as any he’d ever encountered, paralleling his experience in Afghanistan, taking the better part of a decade to begin to build that fragile trust among the local populace. I chuckled, being intimately familiar with the anatomy of local politics. Those of the unelected kind. Those that are outwardly hostile to any unfamiliar face. These are protective measures to ensure the survival of culture. If you know, you know, or so its said, and if you’re fortunate enough to have been raised in such a culture you instantly understand.

I joking use the term Appalachistan, itself an internet meme among Afghanistan vets, to parallel this reality. I semi-jokingly refer back to another blood-soaked conflict, where a mountain people stared down a first world army that sought to crush them by force. And I only say semi based on the frequent comments people make describing my resemblance to those fighters in a faraway land. Replace Islam with Christianity and you have something of a mirror to the underlying culture of the region. The Chechen example is one that I’ve referenced again and again over the years because its parallel is uncanny to the reality we now face. Seen as backwards people constantly a problem for the ruling elite of both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, they were constantly subjected to genocides, forced relocations, conscription and brutal repression. And yet, the culture endured. The people bore the brunt of time and continued on. Those troubles never ended and thus they never will; struggle makes life worth living. Comfort is the absence of struggle.

The war in Chechnya came into full bloom amid the continuing financial crisis and fallout from the fall of the Soviet Union. The central authority had failed and resorted to force as a means of maintenance of power. When governments are questioned this is universally the case. Having a large number of Chechens who were veterans of the Soviet Afghan War. They knew the failings of Operation Magistral and the tone deaf lessons going unheard in the halls of Frunze. And, at least for a time, they won. Despite the lack of airpower and armor, but well armed with the prerequisite knowledge and understanding that preservation of culture lay upon their shoulders alone. That deafness cost Russia an entire Division of armor in the span of two days.

A disproportionate number of our youth went forward during the ignoble Global War On Terror. Seduced by fools promising small sums of money, we went forth, not in support roles, mind you, but as fighters. And while the luster of those combat awards have faded, it remains an epitaph of the knowledge painfully earned, from both our successes and our failures, in the process. A knowledge to be shared. The Taliban won, and we will too when pushed. We have a culture to be preserved, yours is failing.

Don’t threaten us.