After the Fall

The race that could erect such buildings and gather such treasures as the Temple of the Sun possessed, and could conquer and rule a dominion of fifty days' journey from north to south, must have been a strong and in its way gifted race. It is hard to believe that it was the ancestor of those stolid and downtrodden Indians whom one sees to-day, peddling their rude wares in the marketplace of Cuzco. It is their old imperial town, but there is scarcely one among them above the rank of a labourer; and during the last three centuries few indeed have emerged from the abject condition to which the Conquest reduced them. 

The sudden fall of a whole race is an event so rare in history that one seeks for explanations. It may be that not only the royal Inca family, but nearly the whole ruling class was destroyed in war, leaving only the peasants who had already been serfs under their native sovereigns. But one is disposed to believe that the tremendous catastrophe which befell them in the destruction at once of their dynasty, their empire, and their religion by fierce conquerors, incomparably superior in energy and knowledge, completely broke not only the spirit of the nation, but the self respect of the individuals who composed it. They were already a docile and submissive people, and now under a new tyranny, far harsher than that of rulers of their own blood, they sank into hopeless apathy, and ceased even to remember what their forefathers had been.

James Bryce, South America, Observations and Impressions, 1912

White nationalist historical triumphalism (aside from being a mouthful) does not account for the reality of Western dominance--achieved by an elite exploiting a people domesticated and tamed for the purpose. With that elite given over to degeneracy and post-racialism and hostile to the people, paeans to Western Civilization and the Faustian spirit mock us.

Western elite hostility is a remarkable thing. The wealthy and powerful will never forgive us for letting them exploit us through history, it seems--indeed, it's the common man who'll answer for colonialism and slavery, for his "exploitation" of the poor brown and black, whose rough ancestors are moving in next door, thanks to that magnanimous white elite.

The mild virtues the old elite cultivated and exploited--conformity, rule-following, faithfulness--now serve only to make the common white man more easily exploited by the new trans-national order. His mild evolved nature makes it harder for him to understand he is in fact being exploited. He trusts, still.