How did the schism open up over the race vs. class divide?
It was the class side siding more with Trump than Hillary on economics, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Since Trump won, the class-oriented Dems can say "I toldja so" about the impotence of identity politics, and the importance of class. When the race baiters snap back about the class Dems being crypto-Trump supporters, both sides have exchanged fire.
Because they're a crumbling empire rather than an inchoate insurgency, there's a positive feedback loop between the two warring factions, which will split them farther and farther apart.
How could this be re-created over gender identity politics vs. class?
See this earlier post about the common ground that the populist nationalist movement shares with the Jill Stein and Bernie crowd regarding family formation. The old GOP framed family formation in natalist terms, where having children is a moral good per se and ought to be pursued to make the world a more moral and good place.
The populist take, from the Jill and Bernie people, is materialist -- forming a family is one of those normal things that normal people do, so if a majority are not, then either a majority are abnormal or there are other obstacles in their path. These are shaky income prospects and shifting residence patterns for fertile-aged women and their husbands, as they hunt for good-paying stable jobs in what feels like a wild goose chase.
In this video (at 7:15), Emma Vigeland from The Young Turks: Politics discusses this topic with her interview subject, a working-class black woman from suburban Cleveland. Vigeland takes it for granted that getting married and starting a family is a desirable thing, but feels financially uncertain and therefore hesitant to get started right away in her early 20s. She's clearly from an affluent family herself, so it hits on the theme of downward class mobility. Gen X-ers and Millennials may not want to admit it, but delaying marriage and having small or no families is yet another sign of their downward mobility.
The old GOP stance was the extremist conclusion -- that more and more young people are abnormal, as shown by their lack of interest in forming a family. This personalized and moralized their childlessness, as though it were a deliberate statement or a decision, rather than a situation they'd rather not find themselves in.
Trump, with Ivanka's help, is making this issue a materialist one again, seeking to make childcare more affordable so that young people can do what they want to do, which is get married and start having children. It's just one of those normal things everyone wants to get around to doing, not some higher good.
There is a waiting schism among Democrat women between those who are anti-natalists -- morally indignant at the idea of family formation being a good thing -- and normal women who want to start a family when they're able to afford it. We can help to ignite the war between them like we have with the race vs. class war.
The more the Trump movement discusses -- in a neutral, non-moralistic tone -- family formation as something that most normal people want to get around to, and are only putting it off because they're in an uncertain economic situation, the more we will force Democrat women to reveal which side they're on, and then go to war against each other.
The class-oriented ones will say, "Y'know, I hate to admit that Trump is right about anything, but he has a point." That will provoke the feminists into denouncing the normal ones for "judging" women who don't want a husband and/or children. The response by normals: "No, we don't mean those women are, like, morally bad or anything -- but shrinking family formation is a bad sign of economic stagnation." Oh, so you're one of those "economics is everything" women who doesn't care if she gets turned into a baby factory by her husband? "Excuse me? 'Gets turned into?' What if I want the children myself?" You see! -- she admits to internalizing patriarchal norms!
The end result is the SJWs waging a crusade to shame their fellow Democrats for having normal priorities, whether it's wanting to bring back good-paying jobs or make family formation affordable for all people and not just the rich. Normal people will resent being shamed for having normal priorities, which causes the SJWs to splinter off from the coalition, into their own purity cult, all hermetic and misanthropic.
It wasn't too long ago that Republican activists tried to shame Democrats and Independents as abnormal for not wanting to live under a Christian Zionist theocracy. Now the shoe is on the other foot, with Democrats becoming the party of alienating cultural extremists.
Hopefully Trump and Ivanka will start bringing up the topic again, but why wait? We can start sowing the seeds of discord with memes directed at normal women, from feminazi women. It's hardly a false flag when this is truly what they already believe, in substance and in tone. Put something like this over a picture of Elena Kagan looking maximally smug.
Dear faux-feminist women:
Starting a family is one of your life goals?
Seriously, baby factory much?
Your internalized misogyny is disgusting.
And, btw, makes you look weak and pathetic.
Sincerely,
The real independent women
This could ignite all sorts of other wars between feminazis and normal Democrat women, ones that would be hard to ignite purely on class grounds.
ReplyDeleteSlutting it up vs. getting married and having kids
Politicizing sex toys and lesbianism vs. who the hell cares and let's get around to family formation?
Partial birth abortion ban vs. terminate whatever you feel like.
Normalizing and celebrating pornography vs. wanting to shut it down.
The SJWs like Laci Green would take the alienating extremist positions on all these topics, while a normal woman like Emma Vigeland would push back against them.
Normally these differences would be kept hidden. But in the context of a war between gender ID politics and class, they would come right to the surface. Now that they're at war, it will be high time for the airing of grievances.
We need the normal Democrats to win the war against degeneracy, and it won't be long until they start to open up to joining forces with us, strategically, on closing down the hardcore porno industry, and on framing promiscuity as a bad sign of economic stagnation and of rootless residence-hopping in search of good jobs.
Once the class-oriented Dems start talking about promiscuity, as opposed to settling down with a husband and starting a family, as a negative side effect of today's stagnant economy and downward mobility, it's all over for the feminazis who want to lionize promiscuous women per se.
Laci Green made a complete fool of herself with her recent video about the "Trumpocalypse," judging from the comments. A Canadian YouTube personality uploaded a parody video in response to Laci's where she says that Laci will have to pick a gender and get a job now in the Trump Era - one of the funniest things I've heard lately.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of just making America "normal" again, apart from "great," seems to resonate with many people, even if someone as controversial as Richard Spencer has to say it. I'd like to see this whole culture of feminism, promiscuity and broken sexuality restigmatized like it deserves.
This is a FANTASTIC post. The SJW's (and Jews) have fought mightily, for at least 40 years, to marginalize getting married and having kids. But they've never succeeded because in the end, wanting to get married and have kids is normal.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly how the argument should be presented too. Marriage and children are normal, good things that society should encourage. If people aren't getting married and having kids, there's a problem. What can we do to fix it?
Forgive me, but I would like to say one word in defense of the 90's social conservatives. Well, two words. First, the more ideological nature of 1990's social conservatism was partly a generational thing. The Boomers enjoyed so much prosperity that for them, having kids (or not) really was a lifestyle choice. In the 1970's and 1980's pretty everyone could afford to have kids. No one was juggling white-collar temp jobs or underemployed at age 33.
So Boomers who decided not to have kids really were making a choice. Some of them couldn't. Others were too hedonistic. And a LOT of Boomers chose not to have kids -- a jaw-dropping 20% of Boomer women are childless. One in five! (Historically, the rate of childlessness at ages 50 and over was around 7%) I agree that times have changed and women who are delaying marriage and childbirth today aren't in the same economic position as Boomers, and that the arguments that were valid in the 90's are no longer valid today. But back in the day an attractive Boomer woman with an MBA and a Porsche who was childless at 38 really was making a choice.
Second, when the Boomer gestalt was at its peak in the 1970's and early 1980's, the predecessors of today's SJW's ruthlessly attacked and condemned the social conservatives. Religion was a primitive superstition; marriage and families were "evolving" away from the traditional and rigid form of a husband, wife and kids toward a more modern, informal arrangement that is better suited the needs of today's parents. You don't always find your soulmate the first time, after all! Parents who are unhappy should get divorced because if they are unhappy, they can't give the kids their best, etc. Promiscuity is natural and normal, the sex drive is instinctive and you can't fool mother nature. The leaders who speak out against things like divorce and promiscuity are just superstitious, or repressed weirdos who secretly want to get laid and party, etc.
When I was growing up in the 1970's and 1980's, these were the messages that were constantly pounded into me by the Boomers. I parroted them back unthinkingly. But when my parents got divorced, and as I grew older, I realized that the social conservatives were right about pretty much everything. Thank goodness guys like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Dr. James Dobson were speaking out against divorce and promiscuity -- they were right! Everyone mocked them, made fun of them and condemned them -- but what they were saying was true. Divorce is horrible. Promiscuity is very damaging. Children should be sheltered and kept innocent for as long as is safely possible.
And as I've gotten older (I'm 45), I've become more disdainful of the Boomers. Normally you acquire more sympathy for your elders as you get older. You see how difficult life can be, you make your own mistakes, and you become more forgiving of your parents' failings. Not so in my case. I've become more contemptuous. The truth is, it's easy to stay married. You just care for your spouse, make a commitment, and put the kids first -- it's not hard. The Boomers, despite their entire industry of marriage counselors, retreat weekends, "date nights," etc., couldn't manage to do that because they are freaking weak. The social conservatives were right about that too. They were right about pretty much everything.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the world has changed. I recognize that. Millennials are in a completely different position. They aren't refraining from having kids because they are selfish, or on some kind of crazy feminist ideological grounds, they are waiting because the economy stinks. Agnostic is 110% on the money with his strategy. Just don't be too hard on the social conservatives of yesterday. Even though we cannot use their same strategies or arguments any more, guys like Dr. James Dobson were heroes who were the only ones keeping the flame of traditional values alive during a very dark era.
Adjusted for inflation, married couples with kids under 18 have had a median household income 2x of the national median for way longer than Millennials have been alive. There are real obstacles to family formation, but they are more logistical. Mom and Dad didn't have to do nearly as much as recently as the 1990s, but post-internet era, a lot of Millennials see how much sheer work both parents but particularly mom have now and that's a big part of the delay.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Millennial, technically, and I got married and had kids and stay home with them. All the nice 25-45yo women I know look worn out and often overweight from lack of sleep and constant living out of the car to shuttle the kids everywhere. Yes, even homeschoolers. This, more than earning money, is where we're reaping the low-trust whirlwind and stifling family formation.
Equally important is pushing against the libertardian wing of the GOP is assisting in making family formation unaffordable. I've been seeing a lot of things like this, shitlibs are fearful of a real conservative program for women.
ReplyDeletehttp://archive.is/NaelZ
Libertarians have especially done their share of destroying the American family by promoting atomistic individualism, deracination, unlimited immigration, union-busting, deindustrialization, "free trade," their version of feminist degeneracy and sterility (following Ayn Rand's example), pornography, broken sexuality and god knows what else.
ReplyDeleteFor a long time libertarians straddled the border between the "right" and "wrong" sides of history because of their eclecticism; but now they have fallen definitely on the "wrong" side.
We need to reform our current degenerate system of sex education as part of making marriage and family formation normal again. Stop this nonsense of telling girls how to masturbate, how to use contraceptives and how to avoid STD’s when they engage in casual sex with hookups and boyfriends. Instead emphasize the marital and procreative aspects of female sexuality, how women have such a narrow window in their early twenties to bear healthy babies, and how girls damage themselves for stable marriages with their premarital sexual adventures.
ReplyDeleteAlso stop the supporting nonsense about normalizing broken sexuality like homosexuality and transgenderism. Women have no business befriending gay men or experimenting with lesbian sex and relationships.
Women seem to have trouble maintaining psychological stability when they lack husbands and their own children to focus on so that they don’t have to dwell in the inner hell of their own minds. Ceterbis paribus, married moms in their 30’s tend to have their acts together better on average that single, sterile women of the same age. The Normal America we want to rebuild in the Trump Era should make it a priority to steer girls away from feminism and sexual hedonism, and back towards the direction that works with woman’s nature.
The libertarian idea of replacing all bounds of nation, community, etc. with the individual's profit motive is a major part of what got us into this mess. Before 1980 the wealthy felt a sense of responsibility to the country as a whole, now most of them so no problem with downsizing, outsourcing or importing slave labor to boost their profit margin.
ReplyDeletehttp://exiledonline.com/reagan%E2%80%99s-cheshire-snarl/
"We need to reform our current degenerate system of sex education as part of making marriage and family formation normal again."
ReplyDeleteThat's more of an effect than a cause. When the focus returns to achieving the normal milestones of development (getting a job, getting married, having kids, etc.), rather than endless striving, the rest of the bad stuff vanishes from view. No more promiscuity or hedonism to occupy your time while you're busy status-striving.
If the economy doesn't allow people to afford family formation until 30, that's too much time for young people's horniness to get the better of them.
That also shifts the burden of sex ed and health class in middle/high school onto preparing them for their 20s. If they got married in their early 20s, you'd only have to prepare them to ride out their teens.
Sex ed is already too politicized in the culture war, that intensifying the fight there would be counter-productive. Other than emphasizing the STD risk from promiscuity and unnatural acts -- just repeat the stats about oral cancer and cunnilingus, and that'll scare them straight.
As long as the laws against men continue to give them no incentives for forming families, Few if any families will be formed. Feminist laws need to be repealed and rescinded full stop. Otherwise, all talk of "it's the economy stupid" is just putting a Band-Aid on a major ripped flesh wound.
ReplyDeleteWhining about feminist marriage laws has gotten you so far, so far, why not keep at it?
ReplyDeletePeople don't get married and have children because the legal system provides the proper incentives -- pretty sure people have been pair-bonding and making babies since forever, with or without a legal system to guide them.
But in times of lowering standards of living, they have always put off marriage and had fewer kids. Also with or without legal systems. It's a natural adaptive response of the organism to their material environment.
In general, it has been a complete and utter failure for conservatives to advocate social engineering through the legal system -- only to mass-produce Redpilled Conservadad Man, rather than Feminist Ally Man.
Just provide the proper natural material environment for people, and they'll thrive naturally and do what they were intended to do.
"Adjusted for inflation, married couples with kids under 18 have had a median household income 2x of the national median for way longer than Millennials have been alive."
ReplyDeleteBut that doesn't address *when* in the lifespan the parents are able to afford buying a house, feeding hungry mouths, etc.
And households with kids under 18 are those headed by people in their prime earning years -- so comparing to the national household income is misleading.
You are right that parents over-estimate how expensive it is because they're caught in the status-striving mindset, where they need to pay for tutors and semesters abroad and only organic avocado sandwiches for lunch etc.
I don't think Millennials are that concerned about these luxury symbols as much as Gen X and late Boomer super-parents are, though. Millennials seem much more acutely focused on just making ends meet while raising a family, not replicating the overly pampered upbringing that their own parents (late Boomers) provided them with.
The homeschoolers spending 3-5 hours a day in the car driving to co-ops and activities are not interested in organic avocado sandwiches.
DeleteMy point is that married people with kids have been earning more than the national median for a long time, before it was dominated by single-person households (which is recent and new), so money was never the issue, as such. The difference now is that there's a lot more TIME required of both parents just for basics. And this wasn't the case pre-internet. And so both men and women delay marriage until they can't have "too many" kids. Some people still try to shuffle 5+ kids around (I know a few of those) and again, everyone involved is worn out and depleted looking, not vigorous and refreshed.
Parents didn't use to look brokedown at 2 or 3 or 4 kids, and Millennials see that something big has changed. My husband and I are not super parents, we're considered bad parents by some for reasons beyond the scope of this blog comment (I stay home and have household help, to wildly simplify), but we are still as brokedown as any Tiger Mom because the basics are brutal too, when you don't have the entire community bought-in to to the "children are our future" project.
The relationship between delayed marriage / smaller families and declining standard of living (and vice versa) goes back centuries. See the demographic history of England, where there's the most data.
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with the internet.
Those people had servants, which the lack of and resultant belief in mom doing it all is an American special.
DeleteAs I've said numerous times on this blog, I know more than a few women in their 20s who want to do the child raising/stay at home mom thing but they've been convinced it's too expensive. So they'd rather work a $12 an hour job being an event coordinator or $10.50 an hour working as a barista. I see very few women wanting to go down the status seeking route. It's enough to fill up New York City but hey, that's just a couple million women overall. That would mean there are dozens of millions of fertile women who aren't going down the rootless cosmopolitan route and with that, would not be opposed to raising 2 or 3 kids.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a lot closer than we think, it just needs the right nudge. As Trump is talking about reforming the tax code, he needs to put in something about making families more affordable. Ivanka has talked about this before so if they follow through on this, it might be enough to push hundreds of thousands of prospective families over the edge to start thinking that having kids is not as unaffordable as they think.
"Thank goodness guys like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Dr. James Dobson were speaking out against divorce and promiscuity "
ReplyDeleteBut a lot of Silent Gen/Boomer figures never talked about economic or safety net issues. Their ire should've been directed as much at economic elites selling out the middle class and blue collars as it was at degenerates. In fact, the cognitive elite strata of Silents and Boomers conveniently shifted from hippie-dippie defiance of cultural norms in the late 60's and 70's to yuppie defiance of noblesse oblige in the 80's and beyond. "Muh kids" became the narcissistic battle cry. The Boomers oversaw much legislation designed to protect their kids (second-hand smoke hysteria, draconian anti-crime policies etc.) but never really cared about doing or legislating things that benefited the community at the expense of the individual. Lower tier/later born Boomers, Gen X-ers, and early Millennials have had to deal with the double whammy of debased cultural norms (that only the most privileged, restrained, and intelligent don't succumb to) and a financial/political elite that has made finding reliable good jobs very difficult.
The right-wing elite has failed big time over the last 40 years, in terms of insisting on condemning vulnerable people who in a healthier era wouldn't have faced so many temptations related to drugs, sex, gambling, etc. And duh, they let us down big time in not fighting to protect American workers. Late Silent Charles Murray says that even white people have begun to experience a crisis in which only the cognitive elite make good choices. To which I'd say, the Me Gen has done an abysmal job of protecting opportunities for a dignified life. What kind of dickhead does nothing to economically safeguard the middle class (let alone the working class), while at the same time not understanding why middle to lower tier people are demoralized and self-destructive? We've got to give people more reasons to fight the good fight. Not condescend to them.
Feryl,
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but again, you have to cut them some slack, for two reasons. First, Robertson, Dobson et al came up in a time of vast prosperity. For most of their formative years, the economy -- and the economic fortunes of regular people -- was on an ever-upward trajectory. That still colors their thinking. A lot of those guys are like 80 years old today. In 1986, they were 50! As older people it was hard for them to see what was happening, or relate to it.
Second, the sexual revolution happened really fast. In 1963 you had kids going steady and exchanging fraternity and sorority pins before getting engaged, by 1968 you had the draft riots and the Summer of Love, and by 1973 you had key parties and the Jonestown Temple. In just 10 years morals were completely transformed. The changes in the economy have happened a lot more slowly. If you are an economically successful social conservative, born in the 1930's. it's hard for you to understand what is going on. Also, by the 1970's things like the union movement had swung way, way too far to the left. The GM situation really was unconscionable -- it still is. The unions took down a lot of American industries because they stupidly refused to accept the fact that Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, and China had rebuilt from WWII and were now able to compete with us on teh global market.
Grr, the recount crap is getting started. One of Clinton's own lawyers said that a margin of 10,000 votes or more has never been surmounted in a Pres. recount. Trump won by at least that in the 3 states being contested (Wisconsin, Michigan, PA). So far, the WI recount hasn't been finalized while nothing has been filed in MI or PA. Keep in mind two things: Most importantly, the highly improbable overturning of the results in any combo of two of the states would not be enough to bring Trump's EC below 270 (PA and MI are worth 36 when combined; Trump's total is 306). Second, MI already went through a recount of sorts (that's why the state results weren't finalized for several weeks). It's possible that MI will reject another recount since MI didn't uncover any irregularities in the first place and also, MI uses paper ballots anyway thus claims of hacked E-voting are irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a last ditch attempt to further harass, distract, disrupt, etc. the incoming Trump administration. They've got about 50 days left to pull crap before Trump is sworn in as America's new sheriff. Even getting anywhere near a reversal of the results in three states would risk enraging both sides (the SJWs and corrupt elites already are panicking, but trying to rob Trump of the Pres. would of course unsettle Trump supporters). Furthermore, as we saw in 2000, even changing the results in just 1 state is difficult no matter the fact that the outcome in that state was dubious.
Joe- I'm well aware of how 70's excesses have been used to pare away every last remnant of (private) worker protections. It wasn't just the unions who screwed up, though. The business and design leadership of these companies were often just as interested in cocaine as they were in making a quality product. The aforementioned foreign competitors had several advantages: China has no worker dignity or eco protections, thus enabling them to churn out crap fast and cheap. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan have a ferocious industrial work-ethic and mindset that not even the 1970's were able to stop. Blaming unions is a cop-out; people at all levels failed during that period.
ReplyDeleteThe 70's were in many ways a terrible decade for the Anglosphere. Young American Boomers were much poorer conventional workers than Silents or G.I.s (insubordination, hedonism, narcissism, rejecting gender roles, etc.). Many of them (especially the powerful 1945-1954 early cohort) avowedly rejected the notion that they would do as their fathers and mothers did. By the time they grew up (more or less) in the 80's, American industries had taken a serious beating. It didn't help that many elite Boomers were becoming vultures to boot, following in the footsteps of elite sociopath Silents.
I do agree about the Silent generation being clueless about economic issues. They are the most financially spoiled generation in history. Every step of the way, people have looked out for them and rewarded their choices. They do seem pre-occupied with cultural issues; why wouldn't they be? Good wages, pensions, Herculean efforts to soothe their egos in old age, etc. Contrast that with those born after the mid 1950's, who are acutely aware of inequality and striving issues (not that their own behavior has necessarily stopped these bad trends).
The much lamented inablility to touch the third rail of elder entitlements will diminish as Boomers (who often criticize other Boomers) and Gen X-ers (who don't feel entitled) will balk at spoiling elders born after 1944. Also, elder Boomers and Gen X-ers will be more likely to remain with and rely on their on their families, a change from the G.I. and Silent tendency to establish living arrangements distinct from younger generations.
It is expensive, and Trump's tax plan is actually seriously awesome if interpreted as he apparently intended it. There's a fake debunking going around I am greatly hoping to rebut with the real data showing how natalist Trump's tax plan is this weekend.
ReplyDelete