September 1, 2020 - 3:00pm
My Greatest Generation grandfather spent his latter years fulminating about the creep of American slang and table manners into British norms. What he was really fulminating about, though, was the decline of Britain in favour of America. As the British Empire disintegrated, American hegemony went from strength to strength — not through direct colonisation, but by exporting American products, lifestyles and worldviews.
The internet, and social media in particular, has accelerated that export by collapsing any feeling of distance between events and debates either side of the Atlantic. Since its inception, though, America has shifted from exporting leisurewear and processed food to exporting a crisis of confidence among its elites over its own entitlement to global hegemony.
From this side of the pond, it’s grimly ironic to watch America using its one-way cultural loudhailer to broadcast its internal elite disagreements over whether America should be entitled to possession of a one-way cultural loudhailer. But what if the lion’s share of that disagreement is driven not by insuperable ideological differences so much as personal relationships, and personal beef?
Take, for example, the blue-tick dogpile over the weekend on conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, who recently resigned from his New York Magazine column. The feeling is of a New York media bubble that’s expelled an irritant and is now publicly closing ranks, through the medium of uncharitable attacks on Sullivan’s new venture.
Or take the other brouhaha to make it across the pond over the Bank Holiday: the promotion by American public radio station NPR of a 2019 book arguing for looting as a positive, radical act. A brief dig reveals that the book’s author, Vicky Osterweil, is married (with suitably radical disavowals of anything so stodgy and conventional as marriage) to Sophie Lewis, whose 2019 book Full Surrogacy Now argues for abolition of the family in the name of feminist progress.
Leaving aside the irony of a male/female married couple (Osterweil is a trans woman) agitating for the dissolution of the nuclear family (traditional core unit: male/female married couples), the sense is there once again of a revolution that in truth mostly preoccupies a fairly small and rarefied group of people. But the preoccupations of that small group, magnified through the funfair mirrors of social media, are percolating out to become The Discourse for much of the English-speaking world.
Perhaps it was ever thus, and cultural transformations will always involve an ideological vanguard playing out personal relationships through the medium of ‘the cause’. But there’s little sense right now that America’s revolutionary elite has much interest in the grotesque shadow cast worldwide by its internal politics.
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SubscribeI think that this paragraph reaches at an important point. I am especially drawn to the analysis of the Peter Turchin, and his secular cycles. One of the most important variables in that model is the problem of elite over-production. That is, there are too many elites chasing too few sinecures, and so they must conflict with other factions in order to secure those positions for themselves and their allies.
I believe this is the dynamic we see in modern America, and by extension in the UK. The “woke” are not working class heroes standing up for the little guy. They are elite in origin, and aiming to achieve elite positions in their hoped-for new order. Frequently they are dysgenic, unattractive (just look at their mugshots!) and low-IQ, which makes it hard for them to fight to maintain their elite status in a conventional way by having a successful career and stable marriage. This violence is then their best chance at maintaining elite status.
This is important to understand because it sheds light on how we should respond to them. These are not idealists fighting for a beautiful dream they sincerely believe in. They are cynical and greedy, trying to use violence, and the threat of violence, to make themselves richer. That is not a behaviour that should be rewarded with sympathy and appeasement. They should be treated as nothing more than the grafting criminals that they are.
Yes! This a million times over. I once heard it said that conservatives have the best-looking women, and by God, it’s so true!
Wokedom is an ideology of the ugly and stupid. The BLM riots and cancel culture have merely exposed their inner ugliness.
If you want a good old-fashioned laugh, search for “#PortlandMugshots” on that there Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?…
They look like characters from that cantina on Tatooine.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi
Kinda look like ‘See what crack does to you’
Most radicals/terrorists look to be ‘people who cant get laid’. Top and bottom its all sexual frustration..
Yes, now you mention it, the mugshots of the few that are charged do reveal them to extraordinarily unattractive for the most part. And it goes without saying that they are the low IQ. very low indeed. This reinforces my lived experience that today’s working classes – certainly those that work – are often more intelligent and better informed than the middle classes.
They don’t just look unattractive but odd. Weird. Startled eyes. The kind you would avoid talking to on a bus.
If you believe David Ike, it’s because they’re all 7 foot tall reptiles in disguise.
I’m beginning to lean his way on that. What with the evidence on the interweb anall.
Low IQ perhaps but often cunning as a cunning thing with lots of money behind them. Money provided by often very clever people who are also cunning enough that unlike the original cunning things, they very cunningly stay hidden.
In short they’re all a bunch of cun
Ning things.
I see what you did there.
“They are elite in origin, and aiming to achieve elite positions in their hoped-for new order. Frequently they are dysgenic, unattractive (just look at their mugshots!) and low-IQ, which makes it hard for them to fight to maintain their elite status in a conventional way by having a successful career and stable marriage. This violence is then their best chance at maintaining elite status.”
Who are these people you’re referring to? I’m genuinely trying to understand your point.
The BLM-Antifa terrorists. You can see some mugshots here: https://twitter.com/search?…
I suppose your use of the Americanism “Greatest Generation” serves as evidence of your thesis of US cultural dominance.
“conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan”
I don’t understand why Sullivan continues to claim to be “conservative,” and why others go along with it. He is not conservative, but a fairly standard progressive liberal. Voted for John Kerry, voted for Obama twice, voting for Biden, supports homosexual so-called “marriage” (by Supreme Court fiat re-defining what marriage is as an institution), supports socialized medicine, supports abortion, supports “aggressive action against climate change,” etc., etc. There is nothing remotely “conservative” – never mind “right wing” – about Andrew Sullivan.
As woke culture becomes increasingly deranged, many people are abandoning its theories. As such the deserters are labelled right-wing extremists. It’s a bullying tactic that seems to have massively backfired.
Yes, but the problem with Sullivan being labelled “conservative” goes back to long before the term “woke” even became common parlance or the Left got so deranged as it is now. He may look relatively “conservative” compared to the mainstream Left today, but that’s like saying the SRs were “conservative” compared to the Bolsheviks.
He’s conservative in so far as he is influenced by Michael Oakeshott’s philosophy and a selective adoption of Roman Catholic tenets. He, and I, would argue that if you’re given the choice between a faux-Conservative like Trump and a moderate Democrat alternative, it’s better to hold your nose and vote for the other guy whether you support everything he says or not”the lesser of two evils.
Also, there is nothing intrinsically left-wing about believing in climate change or intrinsically right-wing about opposing it.
Well said, Dennis. The term “conservative” has been hopelessly devalued lately. The other obvious case, if we are talking about Commonwealth journos working in the American media, is my compatriot David Frum. He actually really was a conservative commentator at one time, and a very good one, but he doesn’t remotely resemble a conservative anymore. Trump Derangement Syndrome has made him sell out totally to the Dems, but he was marching away from conservatism for years before Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. I had a friend who was an Ontario socialist who complained that James Laxer, one of the founders of the radical Waffle group within the NDP, Canada’s major socialist party, was one of those all too common cases of someone who starts on the left and spends most of his career moving to the right. Now it seems that we are seeing the opposite happening with distressing frequency.
In terms of people going right having started left etc.. It seems from here in UK that in a two party state that in professing to support the one, you have to wear the badge and despise the other.
Given that more people didn’t vote for Trump than the other candidate, the need to destroy the other to keep power seems to also require combat with those that didn’t vote for Trump.
We have the same nonsense here. But given the situation, why don’t we just fight it out with sticks, every five years, winner takes all fashion? It would be more honest and no one would need to pretend to serve the public at all even after the fight during the next term.
I read Andrew Sullivan every week, his farewell article didn’t suggest a resignation to me, as you claim here.
You could also have mentioned the recent confected cultural war in the UK over the Last Night of the Proms, when we saw a massive outbreak of wokeism on the Right, during which many blueticks managed to make themselves feel offended.
Is turning? Turned into a petty squabble. It has been that way a long time. The hysterics help distract the masses from the economic decline so the same “elite” can remain in charge.
I really don’t get this right and left business. I regularly scream ‘hang ‘im’ after a real waste of space murderer is sentenced. But I want to preserve universal health care.
I’d like the council to fix our roads and collect the bins while wanting superb social services.
Does modern social housing not create a profit for the builder? So why would I object to him taking his profit?
Question. What party should I support and which should I spend my spare time destroying?
Perspective, perspective……Much needed – thanks so much for that, Mary.
For all the distractions and weirdness of it all, those are minorities on display for something that is very important, the ongoing war for power. The American Right paints the identity warriors as the face and soul of liberalism while the Left stupidly goes along with the image the Right paints instead of doing their job as the vanguard of the middle and working class.
Don’t underestimate the seriousness of this though. The Right Wing war on libs is an ancient war that was last called the Culture Wars but was the war between science and religion before that. It was much of the American Civil War as well. You can trace this war for power back to Socrates’s conviction for impiety and even before that. Robert Reich made the point that you seemingly two groups in America. One that is good at winning elections but bad at governing. One is bad at winning elections but good at governing. To me this is a conflict between brutal Darwinian strategies provided by nature and the human strategies that can support civilization. Civilization creates the economic, technological and moral powers. Darwinian strategies only provide the power that comes from the power to kill but those that use Darwinian strategies will endlessly try to control the powers created by civilization. That is the conflict today and those that follow Darwinian strategies don’t care how much hey damage human civilization and law. For humanity to have a future, those that depend on civilization for survival must wrest the powers of civilization from the wolves that just want power for their own benefit. It is far more than a petty squabble. It is about the future of humanity as an animal or as something more.
Piffle. (I was going to make some serious points, but the Darwin crap made me question the will to live.)