The Avoidable Demise Of Small-Town America

I recently spent a long weekend in a small town that holds at least half of my ancestral roots. Traditionally, Arcadia, Wisconsin would be considered a quintessential small farming town, although there were industries in the area prior to the day, a lumber mill included. But my visit this time, although heartwarming because of the opportunity to visit family, was, nevertheless, depressing.

I had been to Arcadia many times as a child and young adult. Every time our family met up for a reunion at the family farm, one thing was a constant. It was as if time had blessed Arcadia by preserving its generational traditions. Sure, there were new buildings and technological advances, but the town itself – the flavor of it; the culture of it, remained the same. Arcadia, Wisconsin was the heart and soul of everything America had come to represent.

The Lineage

The small-town mentality thrived in Arcadia. Neighbors helped neighbors. The farmers came together as a community to help each other plant and harvest. And, God forbid, a tragedy befell a family in that community the whole of the community turned out to help. Everyone was family in Arcadia.

My Mother came from a long line of those who both established and settled in Arcadia. Her Mother (my Grandmother) came from a household of four sisters and my Grandfather (my Mom’s Father) came from a family of five brothers. Over time, our large family came to pepper the countryside of Arcadia and the surrounding areas. It seemed as though whoever you met in the town – whether it was on a weekend night or at one of the many celebrations that made their way onto the civic calendar, somehow we were related to someone else.

But this last visit shattered that reality.

An Unholy Transformation

Instead of the plethora of German-Scandinavian-descendent families that constituted the small farm town’s traditional population, an overwhelming transformation had taken place; an unnatural transformation and one facilitated chiefly by a company that now boasts itself to be the largest furniture manufacturer in the world.

In 1970, Arcadia Furniture – a 35,000-square-foot facility with 35 employees – was locally owned and operated, specializing in cabinet commodes and the occasional table. In 1979 – just nine years later, Arcadia Furniture would merge with Ashley Furniture, a company that today boasts over 1,000 stores and centers worldwide with manufacturing and headquarter offices in places like Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and communist China. 

Needless to say, the acquisition of Arcadia Furniture by Ashley was a transformative move and I put it to you one that was not good for either Arcadia, Wisconsin, or small-town America.

Now, had this growth opportunity been left to an organic track, one can only believe that the economy in this small-town farming community would have exploded, affording wealth and prosperity – and occupational opportunities – for everyone in the area. New jobs would have been created for the descendants of those who had farmed the land, their children, and their children’s children, facilitating a natural growth in this All-American community.

How could this not be a boon for the people of Arcadia?

Well, as with just about every other woke, globalist organization, it appears Ashley went the way of cheap labor and self-righteous activism. Instead of pulling from the local labor pool, they opted to import “workers,” or so that may have been the plan.

According to several long-term local residents with historical roots in Arcadia, Ashley (as well as a global conglomerate poultry-producing company) routinely imports undocumented workers who have illegally crossed over the southern border of the United States. Ashley spends money to resettle them in this once-quiet farm town.

Now, it would be one thing if Ashley (and the poultry company) were ethically and morally re-settling families to Arcadia. It would be one thing if Ashley was sponsoring these undocumented transplants for citizenship so they could put down roots. But, as it was explained to me, the overwhelming majority of those transplanted by Ashley to Arcadia are single males, of military-eligibility age, who once delivered to Arcadia, vanish into the interior of the United States.

One would think that Ashley executives would see that their investment in transplanting these undocumented transients wasn’t realizing any return. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Again, from what was explained to me by people who live this societal deterioration each and every day, Ashley simply replaces the AWOL transients with wave after wave of the same. And the unproductive deconstruction of a once proud, vibrant, productive, and thriving community – a community that invested in and cared for one another – continues, cyclically.

The Manufactured Population Shift

To provide some context, according to the 2000 US Census, 2,400 people lived in Arcadia. The racial makeup of the city was 97.92% White and 2.08% Hispanic, Black, Native American, or Asian.

By comparison, the 2020 US Census documented that Arcadia had expanded to 3,737 people with the racial majority flipping to a make-up of 63.6% Hispanic and, 36.4% White, Native American, Black, or Asian. 

It doesn’t take a college degree to determine that the purposeful, irresponsible, immoral, unethical, and inorganic insertion of undocumented people from Mexico, Latin America, and South America by corporations like Ashley has permanently and – most likely fatally – damaged the legacy history of Arcadia, Wisconsin.

This is not an exercise of “diversity.” This was and is an exercise in cultural genocide. Ashley and the other global conglomerates who have raped this small farm town have succeeded in ending generational family history, and for what? Profit? Social justice? Fake diversity?

Those Who Gave All Would Not Approve

As I walked in the memorial park in Arcadia on my last day there – a beautiful park memorializing those who fought and died in the name of our country dating back to the US Revolutionary War (ironic that it is predominantly funded by Ashley), I read the names of native Arcadians who made the ultimate sacrifice; sacrifices made in the name of freedom, family, and community. 

Through it all, I couldn’t help but wonder what those brave men and women would think about how multi-national conglomerate corporations have placed more value in contrived “diversity”, cheap and exploited labor, and profits over generations of families who have invested their lives in the soil of the farms that make up this community. I wondered how they would react to the ongoing rape of their ancestral community.

As I left Arcadia – possibly for the last time, I felt the full weight of the fraud that is social justice diversity. The woke, globalist destroyers of the diversity fraud aren’t ingenuous. Instead, they advance their unique brand of destructive hate by destroying culture, history, and community, only to replace it all with a past devoid of history and a hopeless, grey, homogenized future.

And for what?

---

Take Back Your Mind
Think For Yourself
Support Independent Journalism