I feel that it is more that there is a groundswell of people in multiple countries that are broadly patriotic and supportive of their country, who feel put upon by rules and regulations, and who feel they are being used as cogs in a system run by big business and big state. It’s underpinned by sense of powerlessness and is bawdy, social and with a tendency to dark humour.
It’s not particularly authoritarian, justice and fair treatment are important. And it’s not new – eg Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, or Soviet humour. But the Internet means that it has its own momentum making it very difficult for conventional media to constrain or direct the energy.
In many ways this groundswell is constantly looking for a home – someone to represent their point of view. Trump was there. Boris, though that’s waning. Farage. Beppe Grillo. It even backed Macron before morphing into Gilet Jaunes.
A key change is loss in faith in experts. In this it mimics the Lutherian revolution in Christianity, when ordinary people could read the words, and stopped relying on the expert clergy to dictate and interpret. (that led to the Wars of Religion, which I hope we can avoid). When everyone has access to data, experts have to show their workings, and expect to be critiqued for it, not just by their peers. Authority can no longer be claimed just because you are ‘an expert’.
True and points well taken (and quietly left out of the Article). While reading the Article, I had the nagging feeling that “Park” was subtly trying to avoid mention of the strong intellectual backbone of the movement (eg, the boys at the American Mind and Claremont Review, Roger Kimball’s New Criterion etc) and brand it with the outlier provocateurs like “Bronze Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin”. In the US, the idea is to preserve the Republic as written in the constitution as amended (Charles Kesler’s Crisis of the Two Constitutions, Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement etc) against the ongoing (and virtually complete) March Through the Institutions.
In short , the article was a bit of a superficial attempt to create doubt
“When everyone has access to data, experts have to show their workings”
The effort to silence Dr Robert Malone would indicate a fairly significant level of control, still, over what data is actually available.
Your opening paragraph is absolutely spot on. People look round their countries, don’t recognise them, and have no idea what to do about it.
Richard Aylward
2 years ago
“As Richard Hanania observed, the anti-woke culture war may poll well for the Right, but it is essentially unwinnable, since “wokeness” is written into federal anti-discrimination law. Universities and corporations are militantly race-conscious in part because they are catering to progressive students and employees, but mostly because they are shielding themselves from legal liability under Title IX and Title VII.” Huh? I have not read the source and, again, I’m not as clever as y’all but I’m not accepting this premise. Other than recent modulations that were the result of Gorsuch’s confusion on sex/gender, the de facto religion of Wokeness is anything but in keeping with at least the spirit (if not the law) of the Civil Rights Act. (See 2020 Ca vote to keep anti-discrimination Proposition). That the dispute is unwinnable does not take into account federalism in the US and local control of public education. The battle is being waged most significantly at the K-12 level. Just as likely, the battle will be lost by the Woke consuming themselves in a flurry of cancellation. But in my perpetual confusion I may have utterly missed something. That is my disclaimer and I’m sticking to it.
I feel like I should point out the woke violate Civil Rights Law all the time. Just recently they are deciding vaccines should be given out based on race. This is flagrantly illegal.
I don’t know about vaccines but that case is true when it comes to monoclonal antibodies. And I’m curious why we aren’t seeing more lawsuits. I theorize – I don’t know the demographics of the legal profession here in the US – but on the civil law side I’d wager that it leans almost as left as journalism. And liberal, non-woke journalists like Glenn Greenwald are the exception. It’s lawyers on the right that would – and have – taken up these suits. One such was in my county in Wisconsin involving a white farmer from Seymour – home of the world’s largest hamburger, BTW. (That would be a meat patty and not a citizen of Germany….) But I digress. The farmer appeared on Tucker Carlson. After that I heard little about it.
I had the same reaction to that paragraph, where the author started to lose me. The level of wokeness in this country has gone far beyond anything written in anti-discrimination laws. If he can’t see that, I’m skeptical about the rest of his analysis.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
How you moderns make everything so complex.
Right is working values. A worker is for law and order because crime is taking the sweat of his brow. Taxing society to pay for layabouts and stupid and decadent things is taking the product of their hard work and giving it to lazy wasters and entitled wasters to squander and do degenerate things with.
The left is ‘Equity’ over meritocracy and work, entitlements, criminals protected, victims left out, Immorality and degeneracy being taught to the young, patriotism being attacked, family destroyed, and the power being centered in the Wealthy and the poor, managed by the useful Idiots of the Left Intelligentsia, and all funded by the workers in the middle.
Right is morality, Left is immorality. It is all so simple.
Agree in part with your points, but isn’t it our most basic human foible to see virtue in our own worldview and vice in any other?
It may be more accurate to say that both sides seek a better world, but via radically different methods (freedom & individualism as an engine for driving all the things that make life and society good VS ‘managing’ a form of collectivism and trying to drive that large bus to utopia). The intentions of most people are good, I think there are very few who want bad outcomes for their society. But some methods of organising society — some social models — reliably produce either good or bad outcomes when taken out of the realm of academia, and played out in real life.
“It may be more accurate to say that both sides seek a better world, but via radically different methods”
Good point, when the Thugees of India killed strangers passing by, they felt this was moral, and it gave them additional strength. When the widow was required to commit Suttee and throw herself on her deceased husband’s pyre she was ‘doing the right thing’ and being a good person.
Moral relativism and situational ethics are the problem of every Liberal; – they can see all sides, as long as it is not Western Christianity morality and ethics.
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
This reminds me of The Mods versus The Rockers. At weekends they used to travel to seaside resorts and fight. You had to be one or the other, you had to say the same things, dress in the correct way even use the same type of transport.
The Mods and The Rockers were a serious problem. They were seen as extremists, although apolitical, and caused real damage, to each other and to property. Then they got old and a new generation came along.
The difference today is that you can actually see these kids misbehaving. In the past you read about it the next day when it had all blown over. So now it seems more real, more serious. But it is still a generational thing.
The mods and rockers dominate the memory of the sixties, but in reality, they only had two major clashes on successive bank holidays in 1964. The rest is all legend. This is real and ongoing and it ain’t going to stop any time soon.
They were just kids blowing off steam. This is adults and they’re rather extreme in their views. I wish the USA would collectively take a chill pill.
David Batlle
2 years ago
Politics is the art of defining your enemy. Don’t listen to what the left says about the right, listen to what the right says about the right. And vice versa.
Richard Aylward
2 years ago
This guy is some kind of editor for the US? I’ve already commented on one problem I saw with this piece but I’d say the whole thing is mostly a problem. The fight against CRT/DIE has nothing to do with past fights against the teacher’s unions. The fights is betwixt parents and concerned citizens and school boards. My state of Wisconsin was ground zero for battles against the teacher’s unions back in the days of Scott Walker. This is not that. There is much more but that’s all time allows,
MacDougald’s echoing of Caldwell and Hanania is almost spot-on. As long as we have the offspring of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — affirmative action, protected classes, disparate impact and hate crimes — the victimhood culture of the Woke will have the upper hand wherever federal funds are involved. Which is everywhere.
Forget economic policy. Brand the Democrats as the party of the Woke and build enough electoral strength to declare Reconstruction II over and repeal the CRA.
Last edited 2 years ago by William Hickey
Jordan Flower
2 years ago
To be fair, the term “fake and gay” emerged from the “dirtbag left”.
Also, democracy is fake and gay. The writings of Hoppe, Rothbard, etc are quickly growing in popularity as people begin to see how democracy always evolves into anocracies, autocracies, technocracies, oligarchies, kleptocracies—all while convincing NPCs that their vote matters.
People aren’t buying it anymore. Covid policy transferred more wealth into the ultra wealthy’s pockets quicker than any other moment in human history. Cat’s out of the bag. We know what they’re doing. And it’s not serving the interests of the people.
Democracy is cringe. Monarchy is based.
rick stubbs
2 years ago
While hardly an expert, I think this is a very good ‘take’ on the current political moment in the USA.
I feel that it is more that there is a groundswell of people in multiple countries that are broadly patriotic and supportive of their country, who feel put upon by rules and regulations, and who feel they are being used as cogs in a system run by big business and big state. It’s underpinned by sense of powerlessness and is bawdy, social and with a tendency to dark humour.
It’s not particularly authoritarian, justice and fair treatment are important. And it’s not new – eg Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, or Soviet humour. But the Internet means that it has its own momentum making it very difficult for conventional media to constrain or direct the energy.
In many ways this groundswell is constantly looking for a home – someone to represent their point of view. Trump was there. Boris, though that’s waning. Farage. Beppe Grillo. It even backed Macron before morphing into Gilet Jaunes.
A key change is loss in faith in experts. In this it mimics the Lutherian revolution in Christianity, when ordinary people could read the words, and stopped relying on the expert clergy to dictate and interpret. (that led to the Wars of Religion, which I hope we can avoid). When everyone has access to data, experts have to show their workings, and expect to be critiqued for it, not just by their peers. Authority can no longer be claimed just because you are ‘an expert’.
True and points well taken (and quietly left out of the Article). While reading the Article, I had the nagging feeling that “Park” was subtly trying to avoid mention of the strong intellectual backbone of the movement (eg, the boys at the American Mind and Claremont Review, Roger Kimball’s New Criterion etc) and brand it with the outlier provocateurs like “Bronze Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin”. In the US, the idea is to preserve the Republic as written in the constitution as amended (Charles Kesler’s Crisis of the Two Constitutions, Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement etc) against the ongoing (and virtually complete) March Through the Institutions.
In short , the article was a bit of a superficial attempt to create doubt
“When everyone has access to data, experts have to show their workings”
The effort to silence Dr Robert Malone would indicate a fairly significant level of control, still, over what data is actually available.
Your opening paragraph is absolutely spot on. People look round their countries, don’t recognise them, and have no idea what to do about it.
“As Richard Hanania observed, the anti-woke culture war may poll well for the Right, but it is essentially unwinnable, since “wokeness” is written into federal anti-discrimination law. Universities and corporations are militantly race-conscious in part because they are catering to progressive students and employees, but mostly because they are shielding themselves from legal liability under Title IX and Title VII.”
Huh? I have not read the source and, again, I’m not as clever as y’all but I’m not accepting this premise. Other than recent modulations that were the result of Gorsuch’s confusion on sex/gender, the de facto religion of Wokeness is anything but in keeping with at least the spirit (if not the law) of the Civil Rights Act. (See 2020 Ca vote to keep anti-discrimination Proposition). That the dispute is unwinnable does not take into account federalism in the US and local control of public education. The battle is being waged most significantly at the K-12 level. Just as likely, the battle will be lost by the Woke consuming themselves in a flurry of cancellation. But in my perpetual confusion I may have utterly missed something. That is my disclaimer and I’m sticking to it.
I feel like I should point out the woke violate Civil Rights Law all the time. Just recently they are deciding vaccines should be given out based on race. This is flagrantly illegal.
I don’t know about vaccines but that case is true when it comes to monoclonal antibodies. And I’m curious why we aren’t seeing more lawsuits. I theorize – I don’t know the demographics of the legal profession here in the US – but on the civil law side I’d wager that it leans almost as left as journalism. And liberal, non-woke journalists like Glenn Greenwald are the exception. It’s lawyers on the right that would – and have – taken up these suits. One such was in my county in Wisconsin involving a white farmer from Seymour – home of the world’s largest hamburger, BTW. (That would be a meat patty and not a citizen of Germany….) But I digress. The farmer appeared on Tucker Carlson. After that I heard little about it.
To be woke is by definition to be racist.
I had the same reaction to that paragraph, where the author started to lose me. The level of wokeness in this country has gone far beyond anything written in anti-discrimination laws. If he can’t see that, I’m skeptical about the rest of his analysis.
How you moderns make everything so complex.
Right is working values. A worker is for law and order because crime is taking the sweat of his brow. Taxing society to pay for layabouts and stupid and decadent things is taking the product of their hard work and giving it to lazy wasters and entitled wasters to squander and do degenerate things with.
The left is ‘Equity’ over meritocracy and work, entitlements, criminals protected, victims left out, Immorality and degeneracy being taught to the young, patriotism being attacked, family destroyed, and the power being centered in the Wealthy and the poor, managed by the useful Idiots of the Left Intelligentsia, and all funded by the workers in the middle.
Right is morality, Left is immorality. It is all so simple.
Agree in part with your points, but isn’t it our most basic human foible to see virtue in our own worldview and vice in any other?
It may be more accurate to say that both sides seek a better world, but via radically different methods (freedom & individualism as an engine for driving all the things that make life and society good VS ‘managing’ a form of collectivism and trying to drive that large bus to utopia). The intentions of most people are good, I think there are very few who want bad outcomes for their society. But some methods of organising society — some social models — reliably produce either good or bad outcomes when taken out of the realm of academia, and played out in real life.
“It may be more accurate to say that both sides seek a better world, but via radically different methods”
Good point, when the Thugees of India killed strangers passing by, they felt this was moral, and it gave them additional strength. When the widow was required to commit Suttee and throw herself on her deceased husband’s pyre she was ‘doing the right thing’ and being a good person.
Moral relativism and situational ethics are the problem of every Liberal; – they can see all sides, as long as it is not Western Christianity morality and ethics.
This reminds me of The Mods versus The Rockers. At weekends they used to travel to seaside resorts and fight. You had to be one or the other, you had to say the same things, dress in the correct way even use the same type of transport.
The Mods and The Rockers were a serious problem. They were seen as extremists, although apolitical, and caused real damage, to each other and to property. Then they got old and a new generation came along.
The difference today is that you can actually see these kids misbehaving. In the past you read about it the next day when it had all blown over. So now it seems more real, more serious. But it is still a generational thing.
The mods and rockers dominate the memory of the sixties, but in reality, they only had two major clashes on successive bank holidays in 1964. The rest is all legend. This is real and ongoing and it ain’t going to stop any time soon.
They were just kids blowing off steam. This is adults and they’re rather extreme in their views. I wish the USA would collectively take a chill pill.
Politics is the art of defining your enemy. Don’t listen to what the left says about the right, listen to what the right says about the right. And vice versa.
This guy is some kind of editor for the US? I’ve already commented on one problem I saw with this piece but I’d say the whole thing is mostly a problem. The fight against CRT/DIE has nothing to do with past fights against the teacher’s unions. The fights is betwixt parents and concerned citizens and school boards. My state of Wisconsin was ground zero for battles against the teacher’s unions back in the days of Scott Walker. This is not that. There is much more but that’s all time allows,
Skeptical?….wher yew gotte thatt spelllynge frum?
Frum sum Yan Quay spool chicken.
MacDougald’s echoing of Caldwell and Hanania is almost spot-on. As long as we have the offspring of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — affirmative action, protected classes, disparate impact and hate crimes — the victimhood culture of the Woke will have the upper hand wherever federal funds are involved. Which is everywhere.
Forget economic policy. Brand the Democrats as the party of the Woke and build enough electoral strength to declare Reconstruction II over and repeal the CRA.
To be fair, the term “fake and gay” emerged from the “dirtbag left”.
Also, democracy is fake and gay. The writings of Hoppe, Rothbard, etc are quickly growing in popularity as people begin to see how democracy always evolves into anocracies, autocracies, technocracies, oligarchies, kleptocracies—all while convincing NPCs that their vote matters.
People aren’t buying it anymore. Covid policy transferred more wealth into the ultra wealthy’s pockets quicker than any other moment in human history. Cat’s out of the bag. We know what they’re doing. And it’s not serving the interests of the people.
Democracy is cringe. Monarchy is based.
While hardly an expert, I think this is a very good ‘take’ on the current political moment in the USA.