Just in time for the Saturday morning coffee on a beautiful spring day (here in the US).
Many topics covered. I did dwell on the new class war as it's also something pertinent to the Americans. Every now and then someone does come along and try to force into national conscious the decline of the white working classes, but it never goes anywhere because a) the elites clearly don't care, b) it's racist because no one cared about the decline of the black working classes (not entirely true, there was plenty of handwringing and dialogue over the catastrophic collapse of the black nuclear family in the 1980s-1990s, but at the same time no one was willing to proactively do something about it because, well, it was politically incorrect to tell poorer black people to shape up), c) the white working classes strongly voted for Trump, which is probably their greatest crime and what dooms them forever to a justifiable purgatory in the eyes of the coastal elites. The same people who demand we must dump trillions into poorer urban areas (almost all minority) are the same people who are silent when it comes to the massive opioids crisis that has swept through rural and small town America (almost all white). The poor urban minority dweller is poor because of systematic oppression. The poor rural / small town white person is poor because it's their fault.
It's true that since the late 1960s there's been a steady diminishing of the cultural expectations influencing mores and stability and, as we would expect, it's the working classes with the fewest resources who have suffered the most. It's been pointed out among the more astute that in the US in the 1950s, there was little to differentiate in habits and attitudes, and even diet and activities and clothing, between the American upper and working classes (most who called themselves middle class). The differential would be that the more affluent lived in bigger houses, but the food on the table was largely the same, and people had same expectations for manners and achievement in school. Today? The two sectors of American society live wholly different lives in just about every sense of the word. And something significantly shifted - upper and upper middle class America is deeply contemptuous of huge swathes of their own population in a way they never were in the past.
I also read the Vanity Fair article. I can see why you're skeptical that it may amount to anything more. But we're also in different times than just a few years ago. We have substack now! I will be watching this group with interest, they are already getting attention from prominent conservatives and politicians. Speaking of conservative writers, if you google Steve Sailer, the first page of google results has the ubiquitous snapshot bio from wiki, which clearly states "He is a former correspondent for UPI and a columnist for Taki's Magazine and VDARE, a website associated with white supremacy, white nationalism, and the alt-right." Oh my! Think of all the unsuspecting people looking up his name for the first time. A perfect example of unsympathetic big tech algorithm and left wing wiki editors deliberately distorting the search algorithm and the information you gain from it.
1619 is junk history. The essay on slavery and capitalism is hokum. The implication, said or otherwise, that the US was founded to protect slavery is pure bulls***. But I also acknowledge that for all of 1619's many, many flaws and falsities, America still treated black Americans really, really, really, really (emphasize really as strongly as you can) badly. The south in the US wanted to keep black Americans in slavery/perpetual third class status, the great northern majority just wanted blacks to not be there at all, even if they strongly disapproved of slavery and saw it as an affront to the moral capitalism they also deeply believed in. I am sympathetic to black Americans' deeply ambivalent relationship with the United States, its history, and even its present.
Reading your summary of British politics and the seemingly inability to change anything brought to mind a similar situation affecting British law courts in the 18th to early 19th century. Apparently laws and court proceedings were so complicated that trials lasted forever to the detriment of the people involved, and reform eventually happened (Dickens touched on this in Bleak House, I believe). Immigration reform is made impossible because there are too many laws, too many bureaucrats, and too many vested interests involved. A Gordian's knot of vanity and belief. Too human.
Re humor - being familiar with enough BBC productions over the decades one can see a pronounced shift and decline in production values. Whatever happened to the congenial humor of shows like Dad's Army? People may call me an old fogey (and I'm only 42) but I do appreciate the curbs on excesses of humor in that show, refusing to go too far mocking people, which humor ultimately does, and the ability to show both good and bad sides to everyone. Dad's Army can never be called nasty. Take Captain Mainwaring - he would certainly be a red faced gammon (and he is red faced!) in a modern production, but he's also shown as steadfastly loyal and supportive of his own men while a modern interpretation would have him cruel and vain and wildly bigoted. Speaking of which, while Ab Fab certainly had its excess moments, the show ultimately was about mocking the vanities of a vain demographics - self important London limousine liberals, which tells you it could never be made today. In the last (?) season when Saffy announces she's pregnant, Eddie is despondent at being a grandmother until she discovers the baby's father is African, and she realizes she'll have a mixed-race grandchild, the ultimate fashion accessory!
“We live in an age of dispersion, meaning that most people behave in more extreme ways than they would have a few decades back.”
This phenomenon applies more generally and often in the physical world as well as online. As food options have proliferated and exercise has become more optional, the gap between the Americans with the highest and lowest BMIs has widened dramatically. It is fashionable to argue that these gaps are caused by “food desert” communities with limited incomes and access to healthy options, but the best studies suggest that this is fundamentally a phenomenon of choice. Anywhere we see broad expansion in the available choices, we can expect greater dispersion in the outcomes we observe.
Just in time for the Saturday morning coffee on a beautiful spring day (here in the US).
Many topics covered. I did dwell on the new class war as it's also something pertinent to the Americans. Every now and then someone does come along and try to force into national conscious the decline of the white working classes, but it never goes anywhere because a) the elites clearly don't care, b) it's racist because no one cared about the decline of the black working classes (not entirely true, there was plenty of handwringing and dialogue over the catastrophic collapse of the black nuclear family in the 1980s-1990s, but at the same time no one was willing to proactively do something about it because, well, it was politically incorrect to tell poorer black people to shape up), c) the white working classes strongly voted for Trump, which is probably their greatest crime and what dooms them forever to a justifiable purgatory in the eyes of the coastal elites. The same people who demand we must dump trillions into poorer urban areas (almost all minority) are the same people who are silent when it comes to the massive opioids crisis that has swept through rural and small town America (almost all white). The poor urban minority dweller is poor because of systematic oppression. The poor rural / small town white person is poor because it's their fault.
It's true that since the late 1960s there's been a steady diminishing of the cultural expectations influencing mores and stability and, as we would expect, it's the working classes with the fewest resources who have suffered the most. It's been pointed out among the more astute that in the US in the 1950s, there was little to differentiate in habits and attitudes, and even diet and activities and clothing, between the American upper and working classes (most who called themselves middle class). The differential would be that the more affluent lived in bigger houses, but the food on the table was largely the same, and people had same expectations for manners and achievement in school. Today? The two sectors of American society live wholly different lives in just about every sense of the word. And something significantly shifted - upper and upper middle class America is deeply contemptuous of huge swathes of their own population in a way they never were in the past.
I also read the Vanity Fair article. I can see why you're skeptical that it may amount to anything more. But we're also in different times than just a few years ago. We have substack now! I will be watching this group with interest, they are already getting attention from prominent conservatives and politicians. Speaking of conservative writers, if you google Steve Sailer, the first page of google results has the ubiquitous snapshot bio from wiki, which clearly states "He is a former correspondent for UPI and a columnist for Taki's Magazine and VDARE, a website associated with white supremacy, white nationalism, and the alt-right." Oh my! Think of all the unsuspecting people looking up his name for the first time. A perfect example of unsympathetic big tech algorithm and left wing wiki editors deliberately distorting the search algorithm and the information you gain from it.
1619 is junk history. The essay on slavery and capitalism is hokum. The implication, said or otherwise, that the US was founded to protect slavery is pure bulls***. But I also acknowledge that for all of 1619's many, many flaws and falsities, America still treated black Americans really, really, really, really (emphasize really as strongly as you can) badly. The south in the US wanted to keep black Americans in slavery/perpetual third class status, the great northern majority just wanted blacks to not be there at all, even if they strongly disapproved of slavery and saw it as an affront to the moral capitalism they also deeply believed in. I am sympathetic to black Americans' deeply ambivalent relationship with the United States, its history, and even its present.
Reading your summary of British politics and the seemingly inability to change anything brought to mind a similar situation affecting British law courts in the 18th to early 19th century. Apparently laws and court proceedings were so complicated that trials lasted forever to the detriment of the people involved, and reform eventually happened (Dickens touched on this in Bleak House, I believe). Immigration reform is made impossible because there are too many laws, too many bureaucrats, and too many vested interests involved. A Gordian's knot of vanity and belief. Too human.
Re humor - being familiar with enough BBC productions over the decades one can see a pronounced shift and decline in production values. Whatever happened to the congenial humor of shows like Dad's Army? People may call me an old fogey (and I'm only 42) but I do appreciate the curbs on excesses of humor in that show, refusing to go too far mocking people, which humor ultimately does, and the ability to show both good and bad sides to everyone. Dad's Army can never be called nasty. Take Captain Mainwaring - he would certainly be a red faced gammon (and he is red faced!) in a modern production, but he's also shown as steadfastly loyal and supportive of his own men while a modern interpretation would have him cruel and vain and wildly bigoted. Speaking of which, while Ab Fab certainly had its excess moments, the show ultimately was about mocking the vanities of a vain demographics - self important London limousine liberals, which tells you it could never be made today. In the last (?) season when Saffy announces she's pregnant, Eddie is despondent at being a grandmother until she discovers the baby's father is African, and she realizes she'll have a mixed-race grandchild, the ultimate fashion accessory!
“We live in an age of dispersion, meaning that most people behave in more extreme ways than they would have a few decades back.”
This phenomenon applies more generally and often in the physical world as well as online. As food options have proliferated and exercise has become more optional, the gap between the Americans with the highest and lowest BMIs has widened dramatically. It is fashionable to argue that these gaps are caused by “food desert” communities with limited incomes and access to healthy options, but the best studies suggest that this is fundamentally a phenomenon of choice. Anywhere we see broad expansion in the available choices, we can expect greater dispersion in the outcomes we observe.
https://infovores.substack.com/p/irrational-institutions-3?s=w