Jonah Goldberg writes today that present-day schools teach plenty about diversity and racism, which is why so many parents are skeptical about the whole uproar over structural racism and critical race theory. "When proponents of critical race theory say they are merely proposing a belated corrective to the way American history has been framed, many parents don’t buy it, having seen what their children are taught now."
Maybe, maybe not. But then he finishes with this:
The current battle over critical race theory is a wonderful gift to the Republicans in the short term. The GOP would much rather win back suburban white parents with culture-war issues, now that it has no credibility on fiscal matters. But in the long run, this could be disastrous for the party and the country, because the last thing anyone needs is another culture war.
"Another" culture war? Hell, this precise one has been ongoing since the seventies. It just gets a little more publicity from time to time.
More generally, there's a funny thing about the culture wars that a lot of people seem to have forgotten. It's absolutely conventional wisdom, but for that reason it gets little attention these days and I wonder if a lot of people, especially young people, don't even know about it anymore.
It's this: human beings are primates, and primates are both tribal and hierarchical. We are comfortable with pecking orders, and even if we're not at the top we feel less stressed knowing exactly where we fit in and what's expected of us. We can fight this, since our brains can overcome our instincts, but the instincts are still there.
The flip side of this is that all of us, both those at the top and those at the bottom, feel continual stress if the hierarchy is constantly changing and we're unsure of our status and how we're expected to act. This has been the case for the past 50 years, and over time it has driven both liberals and conservatives into a sort of stress-driven madness. This is why it often seems like things are getting worse even though they're actually getting better. That's what continual stress does.
None of this means we should stop our efforts to gain racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual equality. We need to do it regardless of the cost. Still, we don't have a bunch of separate "culture war issues" that one side or the other locks onto now and again. It's all one thing and it's been a 50-year war so far. And in a country like ours, which is even more dedicated to hierarchies than most of our peers, 50 years of this stuff is enough to drive us all into low-grade hysteria.
This is a generational issue, and it won't fully go away until (a) we get close to equality and (b) the last generation that's been scarred by hierarchy changes finally dies off. At best, that's probably 20 years for the former and 30 or 40 for the latter. In other words, hierarchy-induced madness will continue to consume us for another half century or so.
This was all well understood and discussed routinely a few decades ago. Today it isn't, either because it feels like 2+2=4 or because we've collectively decided to pretend that other forces are at work. And other forces are at work! Still, at the very deepest level, it's our primate minds that have driven us into a fever of resentment and constant tension. And it ain't over yet.
It's not really discussed because until Trump few people were willing to say they were against equality. Conservatives can either get over it and deal with the reality or the people who can deal with it will keep trying to smash them down so they stop enabling the group who IS openly against equality stop hurting people.
Note: specifically referring to conservatives here in terms of mindset.
When Obama said this was the best time to be born, he was right. Worldwide, poverty is down, health is up. But it didn't feel that way to the person in their 50's who's factory was becoming more efficient, i.e. he was being laid off. He didn't see a way to give his children a better life. It didn't feel that way to the parents watching their kids move away to find work because the mine was closing down. Work that was good enough for them, their parents and grandparents was being lost to their children. Now that's prime fodder for the culture wars. People are despondent and then you give them someone to blame--which can not be corporations or wealthy mine owners.
The problem with a party built on grievances is that if they fixed the problems, their voters won't have anything be be upset about. So that party must block all efforts to help people while throwing money at ways to charge windmills.
The same thing happened at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Lots of farmers couldn't see a way to give their children a better life, and had to watch as their kids moved away to find work. Work that had been good enough for farmers to support a family of 6, 7, 8+ suddenly became lost to their children who went to work in the brand new factories. But even as the family farm died in favor of the factory, the 50+ year old farmer still had it better in the early 1900s: lifespans were lengthening, new inventions made daily tasks of just staying alive easier/less dangerous, etc.
The same thing will happen as the Information Age continues onward. Lots of kids of computer programmers and researchers and whatnot in this era will be unable to compete against information workers in lower-paid countries. The 50+ information worker in this country will lament that their child needs to develop completely new skills in a field we barely can conceive of now in order to "make it" as information jobs outsource and dry up here. But that information worker and their kids will also (probably) enjoy the benefit of new medical cures for diseases that are big problems right now... (probably) have access to even better amusements and bodies of knowledge than we have right now... and (hopefully) have a better life than the middle class does today.
Assuming of course, the Republicans (and their Democratic enablers) don't succeed at trying and failing to roll back the march of progress.
*But even as the family farm died in favor of the factory, the 50+ year old farmer still had it better in the early 1900s than their counterparts in the early 1800s:
Or everybody is replaced by robots so 1 new job is created for every 1000 lost.
Or the skills required are simply those that the average person can't learn because they are so demanding.
Genetic engineering may raise the average IQ to say 140 and also give a lower floor of say 115. So the average person won't be average anymore.
As long as there are races there will be racism.
And so the progress toward awareness that race is a social construct, one which can be redefined if we as a society choose is that much more welcome.
As long as there is Atticus, there will be banal comments.
Sigh. For about the nine billionth time, race is not a scientific concept, full stop. That must have been some 'college' you say you graduated from.
Scientific" is a slippery term. The fact is that we use the term "race" when referring to Homo Sapiens in the same context that we use "breed" when referring to other animals, as a distinct physical type not reproductively separated from the rest of the species. "Caucasian" is every bit as empirically valid as "Holstein" or "Rottweiler".
Race is a valid concept, though largely arbitrary, and it is nonsense to claim that there is no such thing as race. Any genetically reproducible color variant of birds or other species can be called a "race". But race is not used in valid ways to designate human variants. For example it is absurd to say that someone with 1/8 African genes and 7/8 Caucasian genes belongs to the Black or African Race. There is no single African race anyway, there are many distinguishable genetic lines, apparently more such lines in Africa than in the rest of the world. The current view is that non-African variants originated in one migration event, so they may have descended from a single actual African line or race.
Crossbreeds are crossbreeds, whether human or other animal. A dog that is one-eighth Labrador and seven-eighths German Shepherd is neither Labrador nor German Shepherd, it's a cross-breed. A person with one-eighth Negro and seven-eighths Caucasian ancestry is neither Negro nor Caucasian, they're a crossbreed (used to be referred to as "mulatto", but that term has dropped out of favor). "Even one drop" and similar rules are just foolishness, like most discourse surrounding race.
That's kinda right; where it goes wrong is that those 'breeds' are _arbitrarily_ assigned categories. Moreover, they're assigned in a non-scientific way with no real consistency.
Race, like sex at birth, is observed, not assigned.
Hi, racism, inventing reasons to exist.
Jonah should know better than anyone about how the GOP message machine works. They just need CRT for one election cycle, that's it. Then they will move on to whatever is the next hyped outrage.
They hit the jackpot with CRT and "wokeness" for sure though. There's not a single person I know what hasn't had it up to here with some young blowhard making a big stink out of nothing. It is causing far more rifts along generational lines than racial ones.
Jonah Goldberg is the Semen-crusted Blue GAP Dress of journalists.
^^
RIP Lucienne's BFF Linda Tripp
Mourn ye til I join ye
You're wrong. Even back in the 1950's there was a culture war--Ike represented Middle American good old boy cultural values, Adlai was a high faluting egghead, pinko, divorced man, etc. etc.
I grant you that the civil rights movement heated things up. And the culture war has been going on since before 1950 and Joe McCarthy--maybe Bacon's Rebellion?
It's been burning at least since Petrarch, if not all the way back to the Stoics.
Don't make me drag out the Socrates quote. Even if he was satirizing it, if enough people didn't feel that way he wouldn't have needed to.
In 1896 it was William Jennings Bryant and Grover Cleveland fighting the culture war, except it was in many ways a replay of Jefferson arguing with Hamilton.
yeah and Stevenson's 1956 campaign was one of the most subtly racist campaigns in the last 100 years. It set things well up for 58 though. Many racists in the south and north were pleased. My guess JFK's 64 would have not been much different.
I'd put it that it's alway been the Quakers vs the Cavaliers. And the Quakers are winning.
You mean Bobby Kennedy's McCarthy??? Civil Rights loving Bobby who was good buddies with Joe???? I mean, guys lets be honest. Read some history. JFK was not a fan of federalism when it came to civil rights or federal courts(though he legally institutional by law, supported their decisions by the constitution, something little Donny never understood). Without the 63 hit job, the 64 civil right bill never would have been.
"Adams who can write, or Jackson who can fight."
I would not trust anything Goldberg writes. I do think the mythology of the South is over taught as evidenced by so many reactions but I will be the first one to confess that I’m not that familiar with curricula in Virginia where I am. I did read this past week how they teach in Texas the economic suffering of former slave holders in schools which really sounds like a topic for a dissertation. And I also know first hand that when I went to college in Tulsa absolutely none of the Tulsans in school had ever heard of the Tulsa race riot and I had to edify them including how it was the New York Time headline three days in a row. Of course this begs the question on Goldberg- how familiar is he with race riots, Indian massacres or LDS massacres in U.S history.
State history frameworks are not far to seek.
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/frameworks/history_socialscience_framewks/2008/2008_final/framewks_va-us_history.pdf
That’s actually really good.
What I like to do when I check out curriculum materials for high school history is check for keywords using the search function or in the index. Stonewall shouldn't just refer to Jackson. Zoot Suit Riots. Eugenics. Turing. Hemings. Palmer Raids. I always check the section on Reconstruction and look for LGBTQ references and check for notable African American activists (Baldwin, Malcolm X). A few spot checks can tell you what's omitted, and that can tell you a lot.
I did like it when Goldberg commented on Rudy Giuliani: "He is going on TV every night like an escaped monkey from a cocaine study".
You can't talk about the Indian massacres without talking about "Indians" that did massacres themselves. That is what amazed me when reading the Columbian Exchange". While you had assholes like Cortez or de Soto, the Indians mostly lost because of disease and genetics. By the late 1700's the war was simply done. Yet they kept on fighting. Washington literally wanted to offer citizenship for national support. But they kept on fighting..............sometimes you as they used to say: "when in Rome, act like the Romans".
The.vast majority of of death brought to the native peoples was brought by European guns and money.
Aside from some basic 'no, they didn't get along' what use is there to point that out? Europeans were busy killing each other, too. So what?
Wouldn’t an image of a chimp been closer to home as it were?
So it's really the Chimps vs the Bonobos. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Democracy relies on more evolved humans to succeed. And sometimes it happens quickly, despite our shared primitive roots, or whatever terms you want to use to describe the evolution of consciousness. Gay rights being the great example and I'd guess the one that most of us would agree was the biggest surprise. Before the late 60s there was no gay rights "movement" to speak of. Yet less than fifteen years after the start of it, in 1982, here in Wisconsin, we'd adopted a statewide gay rights bill re housing and employment. Progress in legislatures and courts since then has been incremental, but steady. Say it's a fight that's not over yet, but it's night and day since the late 20th century, and it all happened quickly considering the evolutionary hurdle was sexuality. How did they do it so fast? And if that kind of quantum leap in a culture's evolution can happen so quickly in one area, there's no reason it can't happen otherwise. This is more neoliberal nonsense, the expectation that cultural change must, by the dictums of phylogeny, be incremental and by god slow.
They did it so fast because the stock image of a gay person is a rich white guy.
The stock image of a gay person is an overly tall skinny white/black/brown guy in drag, I think. Delightful, of course, all of them. Hmm. Maybe you're right.
It happened so fast because once we successfully severed the relationship between sex and reproduction via drugs and surgery, sex became an irresistible marketing opportunity for late capitalism, which proceeded to turn human sexuality from a means of binding men and women together to produce stable families into a profitable exhibition of sterile solipsism. It’s no coincidence that porn and prostitution became normalized as “sex work” during the same period. But there’s no money in resolving racial tensions. Quite the opposite.
"human beings are primates, and primates are both tribal and hierarchical"
The hierarchical stress thing makes perfect sense, but I do think Kevin kind of looks passed the elephant in the room... tribal stress. That more than anything I think is the fire under the kettle during this era of willingly relinquishing power to other tribes.
Has the hierarchy really changed all that much? Really? Maybe the lensing, the ornamentation and baubles, the manner with which we view and express the hierarchy, and the base model trims trotted out have all changed, but it's still the same beast.
The anxiety and pressure we feel today are the machinations of those at the top fighting to keep the status quo. Back in the day a village burning and forcible pressing into service was the way. Then the squeezing of the pocketbooks. The squeezing of labor. On and on till today we get reality bought, packaged, and sold via algorithm.
Hierarchy hasn't changed, not because we haven't learned to change, but because We haven't changed. We are still the same species we were roughly 100,000 years ago. Deal with it, my fellow apes.
beings are primates, and primates are both tribal and hierarchical. We are comfortable with pecking orders, and even if we're not at the top we feel less stressed knowing exactly where we fit in and what's expected of us.
I'm pretty sure that this is the same kind of pop-anthropology that the whole 'alpha male' thing was -- it sounds good and lets self-help people write best-selling tomes but has no sustained connection with reality. When on earth has human society *ever* had a truly settled and stable hierarchy? For that matter, are primate societies really that settled?
I'm pretty sure you didn't understand Kevin's point. He never said human society has *ever* had a truly settled and stable hierarchy. He never said primate societies are really that settled.
What Kevin is saying is the humans and other primates are hard-wired to *seek* tribes and hierarchies and derive comfort from them. What Kevin is saying is that humans and other primates experience anxiety when the tribal and/or hierarchical order is changed.
No, I understood exactly what Kevin was saying. The point I was making was that I don't think we're actually evolved in this way and that this is the same kind of pop anthro fad that the 'alpha male' stuff was (among other things, how would we have evolved to seek stable tribes and hierarchies if they've never existed?)
And if the stable tribes and hierarchies have never really existed (and buying the pop-anthro for a moment), haven't all humans always been scarred? What's different now?
We are in a time of a power struggle in a way that we were not during, say the 1930's and 1940's. The power structure was much more settled then, as well as being more unjust. So, less anxiety.
At the moment, we are very closely divided - there can be a big impact that turns on just a few tens of thousands of votes (a minuscule fraction) and this produces primate anxiety.
By the way Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir describes both of these different scenarios as they played out for the baboon troop he was a member of.
We are in a time of a power struggle in a way that we were not during, say the 1930's and 1940's.
That’s in the running for stupidest remark I have ever seen on the internet. The 30s and 40s were a lot of things but hierarchically stable was not one of them.
Tl;dr: Hehhhehhhhehhhh. Wow.
"When on earth has human society *ever* had a truly settled and stable hierarchy?" That's easy; before the invention of agriculture. Pre-agricultural societies continued to exist well into this century, and both contemporary anthropological studies and archaeological/paleontological studies affirm that such societies could maintain stable social orders and stable settled hierarchies for many millennia. Agriculture enabled political structures much bigger and more elaborate than was necessary or even possible for a band of hunter/gatherers, but those bigger, more elaborate structures and the hierarchies associated with them are less stable than the simple hunter/gatherer structure.
Probably the oldest existing human hierarchy is the Roman Catholic Church, which appears to be about 1,600 years old. In my books that's "settled and stable".
Pre-agricultural societies continued to exist well into this century, and both contemporary anthropological studies and archaeological/paleontological studies affirm that such societies could maintain stable social orders and stable settled hierarchies for many millennia
Wait, the evidence for the long-term stability of pre-agricultural societies is the existence of some pre-agricultural societies that survived long-term? How about including all the pre-agricultural societies that *didn't* survive long-term? Does that change the conclusion?
And, also, no. I seriously doubt that hunter/gatherer society was particularly stable hierarchically within the groups and it certainly wasn't *between* groups.
Also, if to find an example you have to go back thousands of years, I think my point stands quite nicely, thanks.
Probably the oldest existing human hierarchy is the Roman Catholic Church, which appears to be about 1,600 years old. In my books that's "settled and stable".
I missed this one in my first response. So, just to check, you think the Catholic Church hierarchy has been stable during:
-- the breakoff of England from the Church under Henry VIII
-- the sundry eras that had multiple popes claiming to be the one true Pope?
-- the various times Popes have been assassinated?
-- the time the Pope exhumed his predecessor and put him on trial posthumously?
-- the time the Pope died leading an army against the Roman Senate?
etc. etc.
I mean, really.
Arguments over who gets to occupy a particular position in the hierarchy are not evidence that the hierarchy itself is unstable. Destabilizing the hierarchy would call for e.g. challenging the authority of the Pope, not just fighting over who gets to be Pope.
The War of the Roses did not destabilize the then-existing English hierarchy; it was simply a contest for who got to occupy the top slot.
& Harambe shall lead us.
Return to monke. Cecil also awaits us.
Well, I mean, I don't see anything today as "culture war madness."
If we are using the term "culture war" as some sort of catch all then fine, I can go with that.
But as Billie Eilish's apology and arguments over removing statues of Civil War traitors happened in the same year, I don't see what's "mad" about it.
Because the US is not France, we always have to define ourselves in a way the French do not. Its not surprising that we have issues that other countries which actually share a culture don't have. We have benefits they don't have as well.
French leaders are worried about Wokeness and CRT. Macron decried the influence of “certain social-science theories entirely imported from the United States.” Minister for Higher Education promised an investigation into academics “looking at everything through the prism of wanting to fracture and divide.”
It is illegal in France to collect data based on race and for many, the country's national identify rejects diversity and multiculturalism, instead focusing on fundamental rights and core values like equality and liberty. Macron refuses to use the term "multiculturalism" to describe the country he governs. As he put it, referring to his plans: “It’s not a multiculturalism,” he said. “It’s a policy of recognition in a universalist framework.”
"Animal X exhibits behavior Y. Humans share a trait with animal X. Therefore behavior Y is an essential lens for viewing human behavior."
This fallacy is nothing more than rooting around the animal kingdom for a convenient comparison to support views you already hold. Jordan Peterson settled on lobsters for some unfathomable reason. Many people insist on chimps, because like us, they can be real bastards. Gorillas are pretty rarely chosen, I'll grant Kevin that, mostly because their social groups don't really seem to resemble human ones very much. Hippies will trot out the bonobo. And so on.
There are many problems with this type of reasoning. For one, the behavior of the animal in question is usually barely understood beyond the shallowest of details (there are STILL people insisting on analogizing from "alpha wolves"). For another, the behaviors are always chosen in isolation - we're just like chimps because we're both primates, therefore humans must love hierarchy, huh? So it'd be crazy to imagine that the vast gulf in vocal behavior between humans and all other primates mightn't be accompanied by other behavioral differences? (And whatever you do, don't smile at a human - everyone knows humans think showing your teeth is a threat.)
On the other hand, the closest behavioral comparison we have for human vocal learning and production is in songbirds and parrots (almost certainly convergent evolution), but you generally don't see people chiding us to be mindful of the universal human tendency to create nests out of sticks and reeds, or to hide our children in other people's houses for them to raise with their own.
Yes, we are a type of ape. But there are several types of apes, and we diverge from every one of them in really important behavioral and physiological ways.
So seriously - if you think humans are tribal and hierarchical, just say that. Lots of people think so, and I'd probably agree, somewhat. There's no need to muddy the waters with useless appeals to nature. Animal behavior is fascinating, but you really need to be careful drawing sloppy analogies. Similarities are interesting and can be suggestive, but there are usually just as many differences.
100% agree.
I rather think that humans are quite used to fluid and changing hierarchies. Think about how many hierarchies people encounter, merge with, and then exit in the space of a single day -- by driving, by being with family, by being with co-workers, at a sporting event, etc. We're remarkably good at handling all of that chaos in our heads without normally freaking out.
Oh, yeah. Remember when Sociobiology was a thing? Puppeteers were cowards and Kzinti were warlike because of their physical evolution? Gaaah. In case anyone didn't get the reference, it's also my opinion of sf writer Larry Niven.
One of the neat things about fiction is that you can write it any way you want. The Kzinti may be as unrealistic as the Outsider hyperdrive (although it's worth remembering that the Kzinti are a product of genetic engineering, not natural evolution) but they make for a good story. In any case, if you're looking for really questionable sociobiology in the Niven universe, I think the Pak are the worst example.
I read once that ascribing human behavior to things said to be baked into our DNA can prove anything - and it's opposite.
Changing hierarchies and the difficulty of finding your place in them is just one aspect of the overall phenomenon that Alvin Toffler called future shock, and it's been going on at least since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites were suffering from future shock. The abolition of slavery drastically rearranged hierarchies in the US, especially in the former slave states. Women's rights, including women's votes, disrupted hierarchies all across the Western World (just to make it worse, women's rights arrived peace meal, not as a single package, which meant that the status of women in the hierarchy changed over and over and over).
There are myriads of other examples, but they all boil down to one thing; there is a limit to the pace of change people can handle, and some people have higher limits than others. Those with a low tolerance for change are called "conservatives"; those with a very high tolerance are called "radicals".
Future shock, and hierarchy changes, are NOT going to go away. Instead, they are going to get worse and more rapid, and the conservatives are going to find themselves in the position of a man on the seashore demanding that the tide not come in.
"None of this means we should stop our efforts to gain racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual equality. "
But one of the foci of the culture war these days is just what "equality" means. Some say that any disparity in outcomes is attributable to racism. Other thing the proper place to strive for equality is at the level of opportunities, not outcomes. In fact, this may be the most fundamental issue in the whole storm over "critical race theory." (Scare quotes because the term is used by different people to mean different things, often by the same person in different circumstances as well.)
I'm not sure that I buy the genetic love for hierarchy theory- in this issue I am reminded of an awesome essay that I once read by Alan Wolfe that persuasively argued that much of American history can be interpreted as a longstanding war between aristocratic and egalitarian impulses.
The basic issue is that when people become powerful they tend to entrench their power, and there is constant conflict between the entrenchers and everyone else. The United States is arguably the first country to explicitly reject a fundamentally aristocratic structure in our founding documents, and a lot of our history has been about figuring out if and how we can make that work.
As the old socialists used to say, this is a "tribal" effing world baby.
"Culture War" is probably a bad term. It shows the middle eastern influence of "duelism" on European civilization compared to "shades of grey" which were the pre-christian indoeuropean tribal way, which was interestingly, not far off the pre-Columbian Exchange Americas(maybe a topic Kevin could create a discussion on, as its importance is vastly misunderstood and its meaning, in one word "huge"). Basically you have 2 main political parties trying to sheep herd different tribes into a coalition. This has been going on since the 19th century. All politics is a coalition and they change. The fact Democrats struggle tells me their coalition lacks coverage and purpose. Republicans, lacks national appeal is due to its single issue duck tape, but it helps down stream, a paradox. Things change. Take west central ohio. It used to lean Democratic from the Civil War until WWI. However, its majority of women who inhabited that region were Republican and when suffrage went through against the Democratic party's wishes(and this is exactly more than anything else Democrats including FDR himself, were not big fans on suffrage) Republicans took control downstream of many of those counties politics in the area. Industry never recovered like before the GD, instead consolidating around the big 5(6 if you count Stub) in Ohio, more Democrats left the area. Now its the most Republican part of the State at about 65%-80%.
Things will change again guys. Different societal events will change culture wars into different coalitions. My view is the Black Caucus will eventually walk out on the Democrats like some of the south did in 1948 as the party's way too huge right now and reached a limit in its voting reach. Dem bosses need to pick winners and losers. They must start campaigning "land coverage" more and boosting transfers into these "land coverage" areas. I would argue Democratic decay since the 1970's in those areas is as much the lack of direct fiscal transfers issues than anything else, why they feed the suburbs free lunches. The Biden plan may start testing this theory as the Democrats 4 trillion in new spending focuses heavily on "rural" infrastructure. The Republicans have the contradictions in their base which are because its too narrow single issue voters. Which means when one string breaks, the party falls apart. Jimmy Carter type of liberals who think social issues should be decided by the states not by courts, have been "weird" Republican vote for 40 years. Not exactly loved by the populists or conservatives, they to their credit are a singe issues voting bloc that have made Democrats winning elections in Tennessee to Arkansas...........tough. But what if the Democrats made a deal to go back to being "traditional Democrats" with economic federalism to social anti-federalism??? It would completely change the culture wars nationally. Like rubberbands snapping, realignment would happen. The 1960's Republican party was so desperate, they finally finance bourbon Democrat Martin against new deal supporting racist, Hill. The results were rocked the political machines of both parties.
Speaking as an anthropology professor, the whole "humans are innately hierarchical" is not true. We have tendencies that way, but some societies existed without hierarchy or power, in the same way that some primate societies depend on cooperation and peace-making. The non-hierarchical societies have values that stress egalitarianism but the trade-off is a shockingly high murder rate, since a murder (manslaughter or homicide) can occur every 2 to 4 years, but the per capita rate is much higher than ours. Primarily this is because they lack societal controls that can be called upon to intervene before violence escalates.
Societies with strict hierarchies may or may not provide for the common good. Egalitarian societies do better that way. The key factor is control of resources and whether or not surplus resources can be built up, leading to a ranked society where a few distribute resources to the many, holding back resources for their own use.
It's far more complicated than this picture presents, and the picture that Mr. Drum relies upon, but for now, the context in which we live is dependent on hierarchy, power structures that are controlled by elites who have access to wealth, power and status. The political structure can either work in favor of the elites, or can, with effort, assist the lower classes to have some wealth and status.
Culture -- ideas, values, and norms -- can ameliorate or emphasize our weak, innate tendencies.
I blame the Agricultural Revolution.
Thanks for your interesting perspective. “It's far more complicated …” Reminds me of a quote from the psychologist I most admire: “People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human beings, and that is what I have lived with, you know, in my career all of my life, is the complexity of human beings.” - Daniel Kahneman
I view the obsession with "Critical Race Theory" as kind of a win for the left, long term.
Yes, yes, I know short term it has fired up the Trump backlasherie and given them something to feel self-satisfied about. "Critical" and "Theory" sound like something that happens at school, and we all know School Is Bad. And of course "Race" hardly needs mentioning. Only Liberals Think America Has Any Problem With Race™. I get it.
But actually the main point of "Critical Race Theory" is in fact not terribly dissimilar from what the Trumpies have been carping for years. "I'M certainly not a racist though I realize there might be some discrimination out there." (Yes, I know many Trumpies are far to the right of even this pronouncement, but if you underestimate how much Trumpies care mostly about their own innocence and proclaiming such, you need to meet more Trumpies.) As I understand it, the main message of CRT is that individual racism doesn't really matter that much. What really matters are the kinds of rules that prevents Blacks as a group from advancing economically along with everyone else, like redlining etc. In a weird way, this message of CRT is closer to what Republicans have been saying for years than many realize. It lets individuals off the hook, while blaming "the system". So I sorta say, let them talk about it all they want.
You think that in 50 years we won't care about hierarchical stresses, because no one will remember inequality? LO-f**king L
But, does she mean literally?
Trump's former bodyguard is the one who really knows where the bodies are buried: Ex-Trump Org executive,
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-bodyguard-bodies-are-burried/
Keith Schiller: the Luca Brasi of our times.
It's. the guy actually named Calamari.
Even better.
Anyone heard from Schiller recently, though?
"It's this: human beings are primates, and primates are both tribal and hierarchical. We are comfortable with pecking orders, and even if we're not at the top we feel less stressed knowing exactly where we fit in and what's expected of us."
For an aspect of this, consider Trump supporters. Their leader Trump - the president of the United States and leader of the free world - told them that he had knowledge that the election was stolen. And he says it over and over angrily and he hasn't stopped yet. So when the man at the top of the hierarchy tells you this, you really, really want to believe it. The alternative is that he is telling you a massive lie over and over, and that is too much to process.
Trump masterfully took advantage of the faith that so many people want to place in their president. They should be able to see through Trump - Americans are supposed to see through politicians when they lie to us. But people are not used to dealing with a narcissist sociopath in their everyday lives. They don't realize that Trump operates by a different set of rules. For a sociopath, whatever they see as in their interest becomes like the truth in their minds, and they can manipulate others to believe it too. This is what they do. What a terrible situation it has been that this man managed to con his way into the office of the presidency. I wonder how many books will be written exploring all of this including the damage he has done.
The myth of homo economicus diligently evaluating data and making rational choices based on objective self-interest is one of many evils inflicted on society by economists. Unfortunately, it gave birth to the rational choice theory of voter behavior which continues to bedevil liberal politics, with their heavy emphasis on "policies".
I don't pretend to know how to break the death spiral into which American democracy has been drawn, but relying on evidence and logic to persuade Trump Republicans they are in the wrong is definitely not part of it.
Hey there's your 'race divide' or 'breed difference' right there; I've known more than a few people who have taken rational choice theory to heart, and act (and a lot of times breed with each other.) So it's not that homo economicus doesn't exist; it's that they are a distinct 'race' existing amongst us. And it's unnerving that we can't tell them from the rest of us ...
A gift to republicans? Evil people don’t need gifts. They are evil and they act on those impulses regardless of what others do or say. It’s silly for the media to pretend that republicans are responding to some sort of extremist lefty agenda. They are simply expressing their hatred for everyone else.
All of this is the result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Background Briefing with Ian Masters interview, June 1, 2021 - interview
Steven Levitsky, a Professor of Government at Harvard University and author with Daniel Ziblatt of How Democracies Die
(My EMPHASIS)
"The Republican party represents the demographic group, the social and cultural group, that founded and dominated this nation for two centuries. White Christian men, in effect. And the loss not only of the electoral majority, the electoral dominance of white Christians in this country, but also the social status, the dominant social status of white Christians, which if you go back even half a century, when I was a kid, white Protestants really filled every top position in every social, political, cultural, economic hierarchy in the country. In over 50 years that's changed dramatically. That is deeply threatening. And that is fundamentally what I think is polarizing our country. There are very few societies - I CAN'T NAME A SINGLE DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD - that has undergone a transition in which a dominant ethnic group loses its majority and loses its dominant status. That's a major, major transformation and I think that ultimately that's what's fueling [it], exacerbated by social media, but if you want to get at the root causes, it's that transition."
"The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
WRONG!
The 1965 Act is the most consequential legislation signed by Lyndon Johnson. Not Civil Rights, not Medicare. While it removed quotas - a good thing - it also had provisions that led to mass immigration over the last 50 years.
I went to school a million years ago in the 80s, but while it was a pretty good suburban school and generally pretty modern/forward-thinking, the view of Reconstruction we were taught was heavily, embarrassingly influenced by the Dunning school.
I assume it's gotten better since then. I doubt they're teaching anything close to CRT or anything that would be particularly objectionable to most parents. They were pretty reluctant to invite controversy, and I don't think that has changed much.
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Kevin, the thin veil over your ghoulish anticipation of our unwoke parents’ and grandparents’ deaths is not doing its duty. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you hated your own (white) people, their culture, and the history of country they built.
But you can afford your contempt, I suppose. Since you have no children, you have no real stake in the future of America. All you have are your charts and graphs and your postmodern utopian dreams. It won’t really matter to you that those dreams will only lead to the same ruin all utopias come to.