March 10, 2017

Don't expect populism (healthcare) unless it is part of nationalism vs. globalism

Early on in the Trump campaign, I discussed how the nationalist focus would take precedence over the populist focus. That's how it unfolded during the previous incarnation of where we are now, the shift away from the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era -- from laissez-faire and open borders to closed borders and economic nationalism.

See earlier posts here and here about income tax and the minimum wage, both of which only took off during the New Deal, after the nationalist goals had been largely achieved during the Progressive Era.

The basic logic is that the government will only be able to deliver populist outcomes when there is a high level of civic cohesion, which requires a nationalist rather than globalist focus. When millions of foreigners were pouring into the country during the Gilded Age, the founding stock Americans did not want to blow taxpayer money on subsidizing their job competitors and cultural replacements. Only when the Ellis Island people were assimilated (to the degree they were) did the founding stock feel OK with using the government to provide nice things to "all Americans".

History cannot be reversed, for example going from the neo-Gilded Age back to the New Deal. It can only run through phases of a cycle. If it goes A-B-C-D, you cannot go from D "back to" C. You have to run through A and B all over again before you find yourself in C again. This is what we ought to expect regarding the rebirth of populism and nationalism. The pure populist phase comes after the nationalist phase.

Concretely, that means we should not expect much to improve in healthcare, which is more of a pure populist battle of the general public against the greedy mega-corporations that control pharmaceuticals, insurance, and hospitals.

Trump is making major gains on economic nationalism, for instance stopping the TPP dead in its tracks and threatening big companies to bring back their manufacturing jobs and plants rather than exploit cheap labor abroad. If they refuse, they side with the anti-American side of the anti vs. pro American fault-line -- putting them in league with those who want open borders even for violent gangs and terrorists.

Already without a stiff tariff being levied, many big players are moving production back to America so that they do not run afoul of the nationalist movement. They would rather have a decent profit than no profit, if sky-high profits are no longer possible because of public hatred of off-shoring and the government now willing to act strongly on behalf of such nationalist fervor.

And it's not only the senior management at big companies who are bending to the nationalist will -- Trump can threaten any Republican in Congress with their job if they side with greedy globalist corporations over the American worker and middle class. All he has to do is launch a broadside on Twitter and roll into their home district or state -- and poof, there goes their career. No Republican can take the anti-American side, when Republican voters have chosen nationalism as their primary focus, so they will gradually come around to tariffs and other measure to re-patriate manufacturing jobs.

But what is the pro vs. anti American angle to healthcare? It's not as though white Americans have pathetic healthcare for their money compared to other white Westerners because we're being taken advantage of by foreigners or foreign governments. It's an entirely domestic battle between sociopathic big corporations and isolated citizens who have no weight to throw around at the bargaining table.

The Trump administration and the Trump movement will have little success in trying to spin the healthcare battle as one between America-first vs. globalist camps. Likewise, Trump will not be able to bully Congressional Republicans very much by painting them as anti-American, in the sense of globalists callous to the needs of their countrymen, for siding with the greedy corporations rather than the people. And given that it's the corporate lobbyists who pay Congress' salaries, they have every motive to obstruct pure populism in legislation.

There are some Democrats and Independents in Congress, such as Bernie Sanders, who would align more with Trump than the Congressional Republicans would on pure populism. However the numbers are not that great, and could be off-set by defecting corporate elitist Republicans. In general, though, there is such a high degree of partisan polarization that Trump has to choose either the Democrats or the Republicans to work with, being unable to build a big coalition between the parties. And since the Democrats are sworn enemies of Trump, they will not be the side in Congress that he works with.

Trump could only get pure populist outcomes from executive orders and the federal agencies (e.g., antitrust division of Justice Dept). If it involves actual legislation in Congress, including substantial repeal and alteration of existing laws, populism will have to wait until we achieve the nationalist goals and build a greater civic cohesion. It's conceivable that on some economic matters -- tax cuts on the ill-gotten wealth of our parasitic elites -- we will get worse outcomes in the short term.

My advice is to temper expectations about matters of pure populism, and focus more on the "intersectionality" between nationalism and populism. Issues that lie along the fault-line of America-first vs. globalism is where we currently hold the leverage against the enemy.

56 comments:

  1. Good post. Wise to temper optimism with realism.

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  2. Have given this some thought and more or less agree with you. At the same time, I hope we can learn from the last cycle and avoid mistakes or what have you.

    I'd love for economic populism to be married to social conservatism. I've had the cynical attitude that while this is the stronger, larger coalition, "somebody's gotta pay the bills", i.e., pure populist/centrism tends to lack for elites.

    Anyway, to that end, I believe it is good to remind the business/striver class of Republicans who really steers the ship, the people without whom they'd have nothing politically.

    Back to your main point about too much partisanship, which you've been predicting for so long: I wish it wasn't true, but it's very true.
    I truly believe that if the brand spanking new "populists" who were Hillary supporters had to choose between universal healthcare that brought with it no deficits, but it came from President Trump or millions worse off, they'd choose others having more suffering.

    Trump believes healthcare is a right, so it is so very sad the sand that most liberals are throwing into the gears simply to try to make him less popular. Obamacare combined the worst aspects of "free markets" and socialism; if you believe in single payer, you'd welcome Trump as an ally. But these well-off, well fed types: no, no they don't.

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  3. BTW, I had a feeling a post with this theme was coming ;) Heady days, anxious days.

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  4. Final: something been on my mind, especially today, and then just saw the Drudge Report. We're due for a recession and I'm starting to feel that we are beginning to slip into one. Our town's big fair just isn't seeing quite the attendance as last year. And the news today was about some big box stores closing down some stores (which I'd welcome if it was a change in kind).

    Anyway, regardless if this is it now, or not, we should have a tempered attitude about the stock market and economy right now. Cheer the jobs numbers, but with added caution so it's not such a disappointment when the recession inevitably comes.

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  5. "the people without whom they'd have nothing politically."

    That's the good thing about polarization -- it's much less among actual citizens and voters than it is among elites and politicians. The culture wars are hottest at the top, not so much among the blue-collars.

    I remember between the election and inauguration, standing in line at Walmart and this black guy behind me says Do you believe how ridiculous it is that they're trying to call everything terrorist? Didn't know what he was talking about, wasn't wearing my Trump hat, just nodded along.

    Then he says, Well for me, it don't even matter who the President is. I'm so far down on the totem pole, it don't make no difference.

    Towards the bottom of the class pyramid, everyone hates both parties and thinks they're all crooked bloodsuckers. Towards the top of the pyramid, clear battle lines are drawn, and you have to be fervently on one side or the other.

    What it means is that if it doesn't have to go through Congress, Trump doesn't have to worry quite so much about polarization. The working and lower-middle classes who gave him the win are not so polarized, and they don't mind crossing the aisle -- otherwise he would not have flipped Pennsylvania, part of Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and damn near Minnesota.

    I'd like to see him make that a running theme -- "Folks, here we go again with partisan polarization in Congress. It's such a disgrace. Why can't they behave more like the *people*, many of whom crossed the aisle to vote for me, and without whom our stunning victory would not have been possible?"

    Drive a wedge between the elite Establishment and the citizens, and rationalize ignoring Congress whenever feasible. Doing things "for all the American people," not taking sides in the partisan battle of the do-nothing Congress.

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  6. Lib elites operate under a premise that says, "Voters punish the party of the president when things sour or are not accomplished" ergo, we can throw an absolute fit and liberals/Democrats won't be punished! Trump will!! Nothing to lose!!!

    I think this is mostly wrong because Trump is not a generic Republican and this time, the guys "so far down on the totem pole" are paying attention. If the guy on their side is being frustrated, they're not going to be happy by the vindictive eggheads.

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  7. So you don't think the lib elite is going to be very successful with keeping their marginal Democrats in the fold, the ones who actually would want Trump to be successful because of what it would mean to them personally?
    I had been wondering about that. Hard for me to tell, but also knew that nobody could match the insanity at the top (let's see how we can thwart the moderate Dem-turned-Republican who believes in healthcare as a right).

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  8. "The culture wars are hottest at the top, not so much among the blue-collars."

    I know you base this on solid evidence, looking at different U.S. states and social classes, but I think you're missing a piece of the political-scientific situation. The blue-collars are quite apathetic, which does not however mean they broadly share some blue-collar values. I notice a sense that noblesse oblige, and money talks, so people who hire lobbyists are the ones expected to really "Vote." I have never done any canvassing, but don't think many locals could understand my own proposals, because I'm not an elitist in my policy ideas. Many want elite privileges for everyone, or at least them and theirs.

    Giving up on political engagement because of strife and rancor has no net social benefit, I think, especially compared with fair debate and civic involvement. What Putnam describes so well, "Bowling Alone," was originally research about civic group participation, not bowling. He describes bowling becoming more popular overall, with bigger prize money for the pros, but fewer recreational bowling leagues. Similarly, in parallel actually, I think politics has become more of a passive, lonely hobby for most people. They do not share their opinions with their physical neighbors, or request any new laws or changes in government. Everyone is more emotionally lazy than cynical, with cynicism varying by generation more than apathy does. I identify apathy as emotional laziness, because caring is a kind of compassionate work. People can get compassion fatigue, but Ralph Nader's book Breaking Through Power has convinced me community organizing is not too difficult. If presidents who play golf a lot can organize communities, anyone healthy can at least try. The idea we can't discuss politics, argue, or even disclose our wages to co-workers is superstitious.

    -

    I used to sign petitions, until the only response I ever got was that I should write my own letters, not sign on to generic ones. My exaggerated sense of participation went
    away, because I was honestly reprimanded for naive, well-intentioned political spam. But millions of rude, politically vain strivers really believe their signature will convince institutional stakeholders to change policy. There is a kind of tragedy to hubris, not only nemesis, where humanity is publicly cheapened by pride's consequences. When people are too arrogant to really do something the right way, the wrong way is always ugly. And in politics, mistakes are very costly.

    I do attend town hall meetings, but I hear offensively trite responses to the questions, and there's nothing to do about this. When I explicitly asked how I and other young people should be involved in our society, the congressman seriously said I should be glad millenials will get to have legal marijuana. Yay, weed! (/sarcasm).

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  9. "Towards the bottom of the class pyramid, everyone hates both parties and thinks they're all crooked bloodsuckers."

    I notice some sycophancy, meaning belief that elites like Steve Jobs are wonderful philanthropists, maybe more so in the upper middle class. It's warmers towards doctors than lawyers, but reality TV is quite focused on making aspects of eliteness saliently accessible to proletarians, who wish they were elite themselves. I don't have data on this, but the false humility of lower-class strivers is really annoying.

    "Then he says, Well for me, it don't even matter who the President is. I'm so far down on the totem pole, it don't make no difference."

    That's an excuse. This is how people justify not voting or doing anything, but Bernie would have beat Hillary if he had not been held back by lazy cynics. The non-voters could have given him the nomination, if only they registered as Democrats, not with the "I'm not privileged enough" party, led by Chairperson Slacker.

    I don't know what Nader's chances were when he ran, but if people whose children's lives were at stake had protested the poor planning before the Iraq war really went bad, the military would have at least fought better, not lacking leadership and a strategic plan. I just read last week that ~97% of captains were promoted to major back then, due to a shortage of officers.

    I conclude smart people avoid the military, causing a brain drain. This might be motivated more by money and status considerations than pacifism or preference for civilian life.

    I mean that besides the top of the pyramid being corrupt, apathy lower down is also bad. I don't know how they compare in detail.

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  10. Its not so much that blue-collars avoided polarization, as that they seem to be thoroughly conservative in the modern world. The days of a liberal working-class are long gone. Bernie sanders did good with the white working-class who voted in the Democratic primaries, but how many of those guys are actually left?

    "I conclude smart people avoid the military, causing a brain drain. This might be motivated more by money and status considerations than pacifism or preference for civilian life."

    Not so much money and status, but more a sense that the military has become corrupt and decrepit. Agnostic talked about how middle-class people might avoid the military because of hearing bad stories from those who actually enlisted, or observing the kinds of people enlisting. Abu Ghraib, countless reports of sexual harassment and rape, etc. don't help matters. Theonion parodied this: "Man supports the troops, except for that asshole he went to high school with"

    ""My heart goes out to the troops, and I pray for their safe return," said Strauss, a 1998 graduate of Kirksville High School. "Except for that dick Andy Tischler. I hope the Iraqis capture him and torture his wedgie-inflicting ass.""

    http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-supports-the-troops-he-didnt-go-to-high-s-154

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  11. "Its not so much that blue-collars avoided polarization, as that they seem to be thoroughly conservative in the modern world. The days of a liberal working-class are long gone. Bernie sanders did good with the white working-class who voted in the Democratic primaries, but how many of those guys are actually left?"

    I really find blue-collars are tepid, at least around me, in CA. According to Charles Murray's convincing data, the upper classes act conservative, but preach liberal, as in, marriage for me (after age 25 or 30), hook-ups and baby daddies/ mamas for thee (and weddings, houses, good schools, and churches are too expensive for the poor to marry).

    The working-class has steadily become more liberal, including their decline in insistence on worker's rights and fair treatment, with no exceptions I notice. I don't see populism as leftist at all.

    I just last week had to endure annoying, mostly blue-collar but educated people condescendingly tell me about the wonders of the ACA (Obamacare), as if I wasn't already paying attention to politics before it was passed. I know everyone near San Freaky-psycho is weird, but I don't have other anecdotal information on what blue-collars are like. My blue-collar neighbors will probably never even consider a single civic action, not even reading free elections materials sent to all voters to know what will be on the ballot. They don't care, is what I mean.

    When you say "Thoroughly conservative," the phrase makes me think of libertarian-style "exit" from places like CA, or civil war. I think, hopefully not pedantically, that thorough conservatives cannot get along with the liberal establishment. Your standards of conservatism are...moderate.

    Sanders did not really do well with whites, that's only relatively true. Hillary did not do much worse with whites, so why not call her a working-class candidate, too? Marginal differences are significant in electoral politics, but not in general.

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  12. "...how many of those guys are actually left?"

    Working-class guys are fewer now throughout the world, not only in the U.S. Today's info-globalized economy seems maliciously anti-blue-collar, at the expense of the elites and everyone else. We would have few if any graduate students or Ph.D.'s committing suicide if technical education and apprenticeships in the trades were available and respected. When I took a community college class in a blue-collar "industrial art," most of the students had criminal records (maybe only 40%, I can't remember exactly), and some were there because they had to do college as part of their probation. I liked them, and the wonderful professors too, but something was wrong with this unethical picture- why is blue-collar work almost considered criminal in nature, as if not sitting at a desk is sin?

    I have read that factories are cutting jobs even in China. I like manufacturing, as I have commented in detail here. I worry, however, that we can't expect many people to become working class, even if they would be paid and treated well for doing working class work. Class anxiety is the issue- no one wants to take on the difficult training and stigma inherent in these many great jobs. For years now, I suppose since before my birth in the 90s, talented people have avoided maleness, because it has negative status attributes, especially in lifestyle, but also in the workplace. Maybe this is just a form of feminism. I don't know, because I'm young and naive.

    I am pretty sure there are many working-class people who could vote, because of the perennial campaigns to get evangelicals, for example, to register to vote and show up on election day. Tens of millions of people who were born and raised in America are near-complete non-participants in our nation's civic life. It's more of a vote for your favorite reality show contestant country,if even that, than a politically unified nation. I guess we should make voting mandatory, as in Australia, but restrict the franchise to those who can be bothered to read about essential issues and compare competing candidates' pledges. This does not imply intellectual elitism, only excluding the truly retarded and uncaring, not many people. I wouldn't want to tax people who admit they are not qualified to vote, and they shouldn't have to apply for humiliating exemptions either.

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  13. "Not so much money and status, but more a sense that the military has become corrupt and decrepit."

    I would think, as a millenial, that I know what sets apart my classmates who enlisted right out of high school. They would hopefully rather do blue-collar work, but it's not cool, and they like blood sport like MMA, and have been misguided to believe soldiers do much more for the nation than mechanics or bus drivers do. They see having a job as selfish, because most of their peers, millenials, are committed careerists, even if they are slackers compared to these ambitiously altruistic young men. The military has not become more corrupt than the rest of government, in my opinion, and government employment has mostly gained status, despite a big loss of trustedness.

    The big military problem is women in combat roles, and the enlistment of illegal immigrants, which are roughly equally wrong. Probably, the draft prevented anti-military rhetoric from convincing anyone back before Nixon was persuaded by a "objectivist"-influenced aide.

    I wish recruits looked through some wikileaked military documents, to see what is going on, and Gold Star Families for Peace picketed recruiting offices or bombastic Veteran's Day celebrations, the way Planned Parenthood gets protesters. It might not be strictly legal, but if they want to save mostly innocent, naive young lives, it's worth doing. I do like military people. just not them getting killed so much, for so little benefit, if any.

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  14. "
    The working-class has steadily become more liberal, including their decline in insistence on worker's rights and fair treatment, with no exceptions I notice. I don't see populism as leftist at all. "

    Not more liberal, but rather, more burned out and apathetic. I believe the white working-class has become much more conservative since the days of FDR.

    What happened? It might be tied to inequality and status-striving. Liberals may have benefited more from rising inequality and status-striving over the past 50 years. The children of FDR voters successfully transitioned into the middle class, whereas the children of Eisenhower voters didn't fare as well.

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  15. Bernie Sanders' support amongst the white working-class was over-exaggerated. In a previous post on "Face to Face", it was shown that Sanders' support broke more along lines of age rather than class. The young tended to support him regardless of class, the old were wary of him.

    I believe a lot of older voters actually agreed with Bernie's politics, they just didn't trust him personally(Boomers having had more experience with the Silent Generation than the young have had), or resented "Free education".

    "“My main concern is that the image of Bernie-supporting older poor people who’ve lost their factory jobs to trade is not supported,” Grossmann says. “I’m least supportive of the idea that there’s a population of white, older workers who lost their jobs and are now supporting Sanders. There’s very little evidence of that.”

    Similarly, Abramowitz ran a multivariate analysis to help figure out this question. Abramowitz looked at a large survey data set and asked: What forms of identity actually predict support for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton?

    “It was age, and beyond that nothing mattered. Maybe ideology mattered a little bit,” he said. Income was not a factor."

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/does-sanders-really-have-working-class-support.html

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  16. Sanders' commie ideology is a terrible fit for most older voters who disdain drastic redistribution schemes. Remember, right now there's a huge pile of wealth that Silents/early Boomers are sitting on and they have no desire to see it shrink. Also, older voters tend to believe in personal responsibility rather than an ever-widening safety net. Sanders' rhetoric about freeing Millennials from financial bondage doesn't sit well with older voters who tend to (with some narcissism) feel that their desires and needs ought to be prioritized while Millennials wait their turn.

    Early 40's births tend to be lumped in with Boomers. A lot of later Silents fought in Vietnam. When Boomers speak of their "parent's generation", it usually means those born from the early 1900's-earlier1930's. As you can imagine, early Silents sided more with G.I.s while later Silents are closer to Boomers. Wes Craven (1939) and Dennis Hopper (1936) are good examples of how the "Sixties Generation" didn't include just Boomers, who were no older than 17 when JFK was assassinated and the Sixties proper started.

    The generational continuum, IMO, has a lot to do with what decades you experienced at an impressionable age. Early Silents were shaped more by the 30's and 40's, while later Silents are more shaped by the 50's and 60's. Instead of treating everyone born in a 20-22 year block as being the same, it makes more sense to allow for gradations and the fact that every decade is unique and imparts an effect on young people that will remain with them their whole lives. The SIxties won't be dead until Silents and Boomers are dead.

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  17. Yes, good point. The media never mentions the age divide, because it is older voters who still consume media.

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  18. Still, why would some black voters show solidarity with Trump(as per Agnostic's anecdotal experience)? Anecdotal experience is usually more accurate than statistical analysis, so its something that should be given more weight. Perhaps some of the black working-class are beginning to break conservative. Remember that Hillary showed surprisingly low black turnout - this could be because of cocooning, general apathy, or because blacks are becoming alienated from the Democratic party.

    its strike me that many of these African-American working-class communities are basically conservative in outlook, but traditionally vote Democrat because of the goodies.

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  19. Apathy is liberal, to me. It's the trait of a burnt-out society, where few respect both the rulers and common people, and trust is low, so everyone goes libertine and uses democracy as an excuse for disobedience and vice. Energy goes towards sin, and then people get tired. People are not tired all at once, or spontaneously, something tires them. Plenty of whites opposed FDR's communism, despite suffering during the government-caused (insufficient regulation and bad intervention) Great Depression. (Hoover was not very different from FDR in economic policy, but FDR gets the adulation). I have studied the U.S. presidents, and think FDR was riding on his last name and the urgency of avoiding revolution as in Russia. His fireside chats seem to also take advantage of radio, like Kennedy had television and Obama had social media. These boosts always help liberals, and this effect is unstudied, I think. Easy academic points here...
    Just like Clinton, FDR followed better presidents, but got credit for their work. I would call the places with communist art, such as that by the open cannibal Diego Rivera, Delanovilles, as in Hooverville, but more importantly, few Americans can realize FDR was a war criminal. Allowing Pearl Harbor, which was expected in front-page newspaper articles before it happened, was quite evil.

    Japan could have been diplomatically warned that they may only grab the territory they absolutely need to survive, not much just for empire's sake. The League of Nations would not have failed if the U.S. had protected Russia from communist foreigners and war with Japan in 1906, and that's one war crime, not defending an ally. Russia did send warships to defend the Union from the Confederacy during the Civil War, though the czar's family then was very close to a southern governor's family. Russia was betrayed, because of isolationism and opposition to non-Protestant forms of church and government.

    By the way, Japan funded the sort of things liberals easily fall for, racial division agents sent to the U.S. to pit whites against blacks. This is documented, but we hear more about the CIA funding Japan's ruling party when the socialists there were supported by the U.S.S.R., in a classic case of cold war political warfare. The U.S. could have lost the Cold War had Japan fallen to communism, like China. The Cold War and WWII could have both been largely prevented, had FDR and Hoover been replaced by good presidents. The U.S. sold iron and allowed oil to Japan for too long, that's one war crime. Being passive in response to an expected full assault on the Hawaiian island fleet is another (and what were they there for, waiting for what?). Not listening to Japanese-Americans' concerns is a third, given that some of them were later recruited by the CIA out of interment camps, while others attempted terrorism in the U.S., which is why internment happened. One of their groups was called the Black Dragons -
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dragon_Society

    I am quite glad the Japanese economy stalled after the 80's. This could've prevented another war, really. I do try to like the Japanese though.

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  20. What does the white working-class do that is conservative? Black Lives Matter and hiring illegal immigrants to do their chores? These are what you might consider upper-middle class behaviors, but I'm not just sarcastic here. Pat Buchanan and other conservatives have very little working-class support. It is not exactly possible to be both apathetic and conservative, so there's a contradiction here. I seriously doubt that the huge rise in out-of-wedlock births, unmarried cohabitation, and decline in religiosity can be considered anything but declines in formal conservatism.

    When I try to think of any conservative white working-class things... I can't. Zero, really. They shop at Wal-mart, vacation in Mexico, watch Jewish movies and porn, and don't vote much.

    I am happily lower middle class myself, by the way. I think it's obvious I don't know many working-class people, but in CA, the white ones have mostly fled to other states. They can't afford the costs of segregated housing and living areas away from "other" groups. I do have a working-class neighborhood, but few are white here. The newest immigrants are Desi and Arab.

    By my definition, conservatives do not strive for status, because there isn't any pure status in their communities, only prestige, earned pay, hierarchy, etc. No cool rock stars or pro athletes, no hotshots or divas. Those are all liberal tropes, in corny sub-cultures. Conservatives have no sub-culture, that's one of their hallmark differences from liberals. Liberals only have sub-culture. My definitions are extreme, but applicable, at least gently.


    The children of FDR voters successfully transitioned into the middle class, whereas the children of Eisenhower voters didn't fare as well.

    Many FDR voters died in WWII, also counting the ones who would have moved to America if not for the war. The children of Eisenhower voters died in Vietnam, from drug overdoses, and warm civil war. I don't think either of them fared well. I don't weigh class heavily though. Like Peter Theil, I believe the biggest inequality in this world is between the living and the dead.

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  21. "...they just didn't trust him personally"

    I think they distrust third parties. They are very conformist, compared to Millenials, who according to recent research, care about causes and affiliation with the right values, not political parties.

    "Sanders' rhetoric about freeing Millennials from financial bondage..."

    I didn't really notice that. He never mentioned the suicide crisis caused by this slavery. He could have won the nomination with an actual pro-youth platform, including open natalism, new smaller housing developments and cars to reduce sprawl, lower taxes when people are first entering the workforce, and making financial literacy courses required in high school. He didn't want to win, strangely!


    "...older voters who tend to (with some narcissism) feel that their desires and needs ought to be prioritized while Millennials wait their turn"

    In big cities, Millenials can only afford to live there with their parents' financial support. I guess older Americans want to continue a legacy of high status. Older voters are generationally proud of things like both protesting the Vietnam War and killing Viets. Strivers don't make sense, in general.

    "The SIxties won't be dead until Silents and Boomers are dead."

    Oh, no... I can't patiently wait that long, about 20 years. But I will, I guess.

    -

    "The media never mentions the age divide, because it is older voters who still consume media."

    I thought they don't want younger people to notice the unfair generational shifts in government taxation and spending. People would wonder what the divide is about, and how things should be. People would change the status quo if they noticed the age divide more meaningfully, not just like, "oh, hey, Bernie, kids, Bernie. wow."

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  22. "...older voters who tend to (with some narcissism) feel that their desires and needs ought to be prioritized while Millennials wait their turn"

    'In big cities, Millenials can only afford to live there with their parents' financial support. I guess older Americans want to continue a legacy of high status. Older voters are generationally proud of things like both protesting the Vietnam War and killing Viets. Strivers don't make sense, in general.'


    "The media never mentions the age divide, because it is older voters who still consume media."

    "I thought they don't want younger people to notice the unfair generational shifts in government taxation and spending. People would wonder what the divide is about, and how things should be. People would change the status quo if they noticed the age divide more meaningfully, not just like, "oh, hey, Bernie, kids, Bernie. wow."

    Right now, A LOT of Boomers are squawking about medical costs/programs since they've all reached the age at which frequent medical care is necessary. Ann Coulter has spent the last week or so frequently complaining about Obamacare reform on her twitter. If we expect elite Boomers to not complain about this sort of thing, well, then we wore born yesterday. Point being, most Boomers have had it pretty easy in most respects, and when relative difficulty is encountered they of course scream bloody murder. Oblivious to what X-ers and Millennials have endured.

    I think that what the media has really hidden is the true cost of multi-culturalism/diversity/immigration. Aff. Action, Set-asides, discrimination lawsuits/HR bureaucracy, talented white guys being shafted, tax fraud, welfare use/abuse, diminished trust levels/greater corruption, etc. There really isn't a big generational component to this; we're all affected though of course younger generations have been hit much harder (Silents and Boomers didn't have to worry about foreigners stealing jobs in the 70's).

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  23. "What does the white working-class do that is conservative? Black Lives Matter and hiring illegal immigrants to do their chores? These are what you might consider upper-middle class behaviors, but I'm not just sarcastic here. Pat Buchanan and other conservatives have very little working-class support. It is not exactly possible to be both apathetic and conservative, so there's a contradiction here. I seriously doubt that the huge rise in out-of-wedlock births, unmarried cohabitation, and decline in religiosity can be considered anything but declines in formal conservatism."

    Silents and Boomers of a given social class are more culturally conservative than X-ers and Millennials of the same class on just about every measure besides race/immigration (white guilt runs deeper in those who lived in the civil rights expansion era). Older generations regretted the unrest of the 60's and 70's. Americans evidently have been moving less frequently since the mid 80's, which fits into the idea that people of all generations have chosen to play things safe since Reagan's 2nd term. Since the 80's, Silents and Boomers have decided to go the route of family and career oriented individualists who rather conveniently play the personal responsibility and small government card instead of taking it upon themselves to offer more of a hand to X-ers and Millennials.

    In practice, this libertarianism has allowed "junk" culture and cynicism to flourish in spite of Silents and Boomers professing to be horrified about excesses of Leftist culture and decadence. Beginning in the 80's, older generations often expressed horror towards Gen X culture and frequently expressed the sentiment that X-ers "deserved" what they were getting (never mind the fact that Boomers, whether by 60's activism, 70's hedonism, or post Carter careerism, destroyed communal values and made life hell for X-ers).

    When Boomers began raising their younger kids in the late 80's/90's, they often used the cop out of, "the outside world sucks, but at least I'll protect my kids as best I can". Which lets them escape accountability for WHY things started to suck (hint: Boomers mostly can't stand each other because they wish that other Boomers would accept responsibility for the world's problems).

    The good thing is that although post Boomers are more technically liberal than older people, they don't believe (as much) in having endless debates about who's responsible for the unraveling (conservative Silents and Boomers focus on 60's liberals, Leftists focus on 80's yuppies, while both sides would just as soon forget the 70's even happened').

    While Silents and especially Boomers have had constant brawls within and between their respective generations, our country's civic strength has slowly eroded, we've destroyed the financial prospects of two generations, and much of our elite class is now busy undermining the handful of populist elites taking the first tentative steps towards reclamation of Western society.

    White Millennials preferred Trump in the election. As did X-ers. A Trump type figure vowing to simplify things and re-center us is what a lot of post-Boomers have needed their whole lives, even though some may not consciously want it, to the point of voting for the Dems who've thoroughly taken the side of criminals, terrorists, invaders, and deviants. E.g, the kind of people who have been produced and enabled by the social changes that young Boomers desperately wanted.

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  24. "A LOT of Boomers are squawking about medical costs/programs since they've all reached the age at which frequent medical care is necessary."

    I attended an unpleasant town hall all about this squawking. I don't believe frequent medical care is ever necessary, but it is always profitable, and thus tempting. It was not so necessary in the past, but maybe people were healthier. I don't know.

    There was lots of hideous clapping for Boomer communism, and only about 5/500 people under age 60. This was during the workday, but more younger people would have attended if they cared to go. The "stories" from a boy who survived leukemia and a younger (early 40s now) stage four breast cancer survivor made me think there's no point in fighting cancer with chemo. It sounded like they were tortured- for her, over four years, thousands of chemotherapy treatments, >600 blood draws, hundred of prescriptions filled... and the wonders of the ACA to cap annual deductibles. I'm not sure why life prolongation is almost obligatory in these cases.

    The Boomers like that in CA, even invaders get Medicaid, and scholarships, and in-state tuition... in essence, they are as Californian as the Governor or me. The story from an "activist" pretending ye never-not-poor invader families need to choose between child care and health care was the worst, because they could always just move back to central America and Mexico, where everything is lower-priced, but not paid for by white people. I don't have any better local political options than this communism, but it's sad my district will likely stay Dem., even after the deportation of about 1/2 of "Californians." Unless other Americans move in at that point to take the emptied demographic space, the unreformed hippies here will remain vigilantly anti-Republican, just for their egos. The town hall was moved from a community center to a much larger auditorium because there are so many squawkers, and the next one will probably be fully packed, too. Like smarter liberals joke, they only really care about politics when outsiders (Republicans) are "in power," meaning, have a chance at actual power.

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  25. "Oblivious to what X-ers and Millennials have endured."

    The communists are oblivious to debt-caused suicide and financial infertility, but are quite happy overall with how things are going, compared to what we expect them to feel. It's not oblivious to be casually satisfied, like they were when many Millennials died or were injured in Iraq.

    "There really isn't a big generational component to this; we're all affected though of course younger generations have been hit much harder..."

    There are cumulative effects, such as most of today's alien invaders being here more than a decade, which was not the case in the 90's. Going to school with them is a major difference, in my experience, as opposed to only competing with them for jobs, housing, and social space. Their special "ESL" programs, not that they really try to learn English the way I did, are why some teachers were forced to retire early due to budget constraints. We do have local "parcel taxes" paying for education, so it's not the voters' fault.

    http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/08/517561046/how-americas-idea-of-illegal-immigration-doesnt-always-match-reality

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  26. "...foreigners stealing jobs in the 70's"

    Since 1964, which makes me wonder, what were the generational responses to opened-up immigration, starting in the mid-60's? Were Boomers already celebrating diversity?

    "...more culturally conservative..."

    I don't notice more conservative older people, in the S.F. Bay Area. Have they, anywhere, rolled back any of the decadence and leftism of the 60s through today? Have they elected anyone like Pat Buchanan, ever, not counting Reagan who gave invaders amnesty?

    "endless debates about who's responsible for the unraveling"

    I have only heard denial, as in, there is no unraveling.

    "we've destroyed the financial prospects of two generations"

    Those under 30 still have a chance at some success, but are, too, burdened by the national debt, invader-caused overpopulation, endless war, and miseducation, college but not training.


    "White Millennials preferred Trump in the election."
    Maybe I should like him more. So far, too slow, probably waiting for the mid-term elections for a full super-majority, with Trump-friendly legislators. That would be nice, like reversing the California legislature's makeup. It would also be a nice touch, turning the democracy back from the brink.

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  27. On the subject of healthcare repeal, I remembered that Trump and/or congressional Republicans seem to be helping Gen-X, maybe because they want them to become parents. There's a graph in the middle of the article, with a link to KFF's interactive funding graphic map.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/american-health-care-act-obamacare-cliff/518769/

    Also, the liberal but market-tolerating Princeton sociologist Paul Starr is informative about healthcare, and his website has free articles. Maybe his books are good too.

    https://www.princeton.edu/~starr/hcpubs.html

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  28. I just checked the Constitution's amendments, not that I
    like them much past the first ten, and noticed something interesting:
    https://www.aclu.org/united-states-constitution-11th-and-following-amendments

    Amendment 14

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof , are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

    So-called "anchor babies" are not meaningfully subject to U.S. jurisdiction. They act foreign, generally. I suppose a reasonable court would invalidate their "citizenship" and expel them, at least most of them.

    Clause [2.]:... "except for participation in rebellion"
    I guess rioting protesters can't vote anymore. That's surprisingly undemocratic, but makes aristocratic sense.
    Clause [3.] allows Trump to constitutionally fire all the leakers and other obstructionists in government. I think he knows this.

    A Clause [1.] "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"
    lawsuit against sanctuary cities would be great fun. "The laws" clearly includes all federal laws, under actual federalism, not anarchy, so immigration laws must be universally enforced. "life, liberty, or property" is deprived by economic and other invasion, especially property. I also think plenty of spies and foreign agents are within our borders, just doing their thang.

    bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebel­lion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrec­tion or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."
    There is a wannabe-rebellion right now, so this is relevant. I also consider sanctuary cities rebellious, so they are not entitled to payments.

    The un-liberal Constitution framing game feels good.

    "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
    Given that through wealth transfers, richer Americans are under partial servitude, and the underpaid middle and working classes are enslaved much more, I wonder what should be done here. Votes are diluted by weak election laws. And more importantly, I think, the right to vote includes the right to vote without censorship of candidates and propositions, so minority-friendly policies do abridge the American majority's voting rights. The PC excuse is "prior condition of slave-ownership," which implies a justified period of compensatory, reparatory reverse servitude.
    Many voter-approved propositions, such as 187 in CA, have been illegally overturned by activist judges. All of these "precedents" could be overturned, too, quickly.

    Trump-era legal studies, eh? Quite the source of justice.

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  29. Here's an executive decision to rescind:
    https://action.aclu.org/secure/ban-the-box

    "According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,000 people are released from prison every year – and one key element the DOJ identified to reducing recidivism rates is helping them find a job.

    There's no better place than the roughly 25% of U.S. workers who are employed by federal contractors or subcontractors. That's more than 40 million people."

    Thanks, ACLU, and LoL. I had no idea there is so much federal largess. No wonder Trump won; the figurative swamp is full of crocodiles, malaria mosquitoes, and pollution. Drain it, or boat over it... plant some new marsh grasses. And liberals say he's draining "the wetlands," as if the swamp is a good, healthy thing.

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  30. "Point being, most Boomers have had it pretty easy in most respects, and when relative difficulty is encountered they of course scream bloody murder. Oblivious to what X-ers and Millennials have endured."

    The Boomers did have to endure a lot - remember, they came of age during the crime wave, had to work more shitty jobs, were held accountable to rigorous standards(no "everybody gets a trophy"), and more likely to have been roughed up by crime or just painful experiences in general. Certainly, the Boomers have a lot of toughness and work ethic, which is one reason why they refuse to let go.

    But, that said, you're right that they don't sympathize with the younger generation. They don't understand how cocooning has placed the society in lockdown, with few opportunities to do anything.

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  31. DB, I still believe that the white working-class is overwhelmingly conservative in orientation. Trump got almost every white working-class vote in this country. As that article I posted pointed out, Bernie never really attracted the old industrial workers.

    Truth be told, the African-American working-class seems to be more socially conservative as well, though things like affirmative action were too good to pass up. This could explain Agnostic's experiences with some working-class blacks expressing sympathy for Trump voters.

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  32. "they came of age during the crime wave, had to work more shitty jobs, were held accountable to rigorous standards(no "everybody gets a trophy"), and more likely to have been roughed up by crime or just painful experiences in general"

    They participated in the crime wave, together with Silents and Gen X, but perhaps had more generational solidarity (against others) than anyone later has. Millenials are, I think, less criminal than our reputation. No credit for this though.
    Boomers trusted each other with Woodstock, and gladly dealt each other heavy drugs and bad books, until Altamont (speedway concert with 300,000 people and much violence) happened. Altamont was not a problem of known criminals being senselessly cruel; audience members assaulted the rock musicians, seemingly out of envy and rage that music with drugs is not enough to be happy.

    I think Boomers abused college as a way to avoid hard work. They were given a pass on failing the Cold War, not only in America but worldwide, and even got an earlier voting age for more power and generational amnesty on many crimes.

    A lot of Millenials' problems are caused by Boomers selfishly reacting to the problems they themselves caused, like the well-paying in income and status higher ed. bubble, which incidentally ruins and ends Millenial lives (graduate students are shockingly likely to kill themselves when their thesis isn't easy enough, because of elite overproduction, foreigner brain drain competition, and Boomers being incapable of mentorship. Then Boomers call us lazy and stupid. Boomers tend to economically kill Millenials, yet most of my generation "loves the 60's." They eat us alive, and we admire them for virtue-signalling. My sadness towards exaggerated American conservatism is not alt-right or reactionary; I'm moderately progressive myself, probably similar to Agnostic when he was my age, but I have a head start on typical political maturation because the Bay Area is such a deep blue cesspool.

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  33. "DB, I still believe that the white working-class is overwhelmingly conservative in orientation. Trump got almost every white working-class vote in this country. As that article I posted pointed out, Bernie never really attracted the old industrial workers."

    MSNBC recently showcased a West Virginia town hall where Bernie was visiting, if I understood correctly, to help the coal miners with black lung disease keep their Medicaid. Somehow, their pensions are allegedly threatened by RyanCare, but this is unbelievable. Their district or region nominated Bernie in the primaries, except that support and trust was stolen from them and him. Then they voted for Trump, which is excitingly "counterintuitive" to the MSNBC audience. Maybe this slice of the voting public is interesting sociologically.

    I bet the working-class opposes whatever elites advocate, instinctively. It's contrarian defiance, unlike conservatism where they take action and consistently succeed based on the political outcomes. I think the working-class are too unsuccessful to be conservative, pragmatically speaking. Having conservative intentions or ideas is vaguely meaningful, but not practical. Conservative orientation ironically makes me think of that congressman's "wide stance" in an airport bathroom, and how conservative is a euphemism for secretly doing that while publicly offering mild opposition. In other words, I have not noticed the working-class express that Playboy or Cosmo magazine are voyeuristic and perverted, because their own interest in celebrity culture, bombastic action movies, and Brokeback Mountain commits them to libertine beliefs.

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  34. "The Boomers did have to endure a lot - remember, they came of age during the crime wave, had to work more shitty jobs, were held accountable to rigorous standards(no "everybody gets a trophy"), and more likely to have been roughed up by crime or just painful experiences in general. Certainly, the Boomers have a lot of toughness and work ethic, which is one reason why they refuse to let go."

    Yah, that's why 80's music was great. Boomer had experienced two "heavy" decades that were both times of momentous change and times of adventure. The 80's were a decade of reflection and joy (for older and more privileged Boomers, Howard Jones' Things Can Only Get Better from '86) and a make-or-break decade for younger Boomers who were caught between hedonism and growing social/legal/financial consequences for mischief (GNR's Welcome to the Jungle). Boomer Children who weren't taught boundaries in the late 60's/early 70's, and who wouldn't have listened anyway, confronted a social climate in the 80's which had turned harshly against criminals, bums, and addicts.

    Openness to experience is a trait that peaks with 50's and early 60's births. X-ers saw what late Boomers did to themselves in the 70's and 80's and opted out of that to a big degree. Jaded detachment is better for well-being, but ultimately a lot less entertaining than Boomer naivete and experimentation.

    Strauss and Howe say that elite Boomers really put the screws to fuck up Boomers and all X-ers in the 80's (the beginning of the "unraveling"). In the great compression, people got more than their fair share of chances, trust was higher, and credentialism was less common. Older generations feel less anxiety because people were more trusting, friendly, and forgiving before the 80's.

    The self-esteem movement came about because guilty Boomers felt bad about the abuse and neglect that adults put children through in the 70's and 80's. Be that as it may, trophy-ism still smacks of a striving era since adults are already reminding children of the importance of "winning". That they all get to win doesn't change the fact that adults in eras of growing striving (circa 1970-2020) create a culture in which children who grew up in these eras feel intense anxiety about social status and being a "loser". It's why X-ers and Millennials have a harder time interacting with strangers and people of a different class. It's also why post-Boomers are more cynical, more snarky, and feel less empathy for various "loser" people (who they remember getting bullied in the Lord of the Flies environment of post 1980 schools and workplaces).

    One odd thing about Stand By Me is that though it's ostensibly about Boomer kids and late Silent/very early Boomer teens, the kids in the movie are clearly Gen X-ers stung by in-group and out-group competition and class anxiety. The movie's resonated much more with X-ers than Boomers over the years. Compare that to Dazed and Confused, which late Boomers feel is like a trip back in time to being a teen in the mid 70's. Although the hazing scenes are anachronistic and feel much more 90's; Ben Affleck's character is a Gen X tuff guy meathead, not a cocky and joyful Boomer hell-raiser like my AC/DC fan late Boomer dad was (in the late 70's, that band was def. not mainstream).

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  35. Working-class people could at least elect each other to local public office, and pass local measures to make a big political difference. Too bad they're elitists...Ralph Nader would appreciate their self-interested civic action, but he's been disappointed since his influence peaked ~1968 (I'm guessing the date). The only time a populist who really protects the working-class from exploitation, like Nader does, mentions social and religious conservatives is when it's convenient to accept the agreement of a Pat Buchanan figure. I don't know anyone working-class heroes, because there seem to not be any anymore. They like reality TV, driving SUVs and pickups running on OPEC gasoline, and economically supporting Chinese factories and Wal-Mart billionaires. I consider them decadent and self-defeating, because they gave up on morality. I don't like blaming them, because genocide (civil war, world wars, cold war, all war) accomplished a lot of their recent moral fall. They could've just not fought in those wars though, and not encouraged their sons and husbands to go kill other men. They could have protested the civil war enough to PREVENT it, not marching around in paramilitary parades for years before it started outright. The working-class kill each other too much for me to trust them.

    If they refuse to pay taxes during unjust wars killing the working-class youth, that's conservative, or maybe populist with respect for peace and other people's sovereignty, which is conservative. If radicals had not tactically claimed that good but difficult policies are always liberal, making it easy to be conservative in a shallow way, but difficult for smart people to be conservative, you would have higher standards of conservatism.
    If they supported the Iraq war and Bush, which I think they did, I find them jingoist. I care about how policies affect survival. Does the working-class do anything to contain or punish abortionists or other traitors of the human race? (My consideration of the white working-class is not only about Americans, but it applies here.)

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  36. DB - the appeal of cultural conservatism to younger generations was heavily limited by Slients and Boomers being preachy, hypocritical, and prissy about social issues in the 80's and 90's. As you mention, the hedonism and lack of self-control exhibited by teens and adults in the late 60's and 70's is hard to reconcile with their come-to-Jesus moments in the 80's and 90's. X-ers wanted their MTV and Mortal Kombat, if for no other reason than to spite middle aged adults who spewed their (and other's) bodily fluids all over the Western world in their youth.

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  37. How did they feel about the "American Taliban," a very young man who pretended to be black on the internet and converted to Islam after watching Spike Lee's Malcolm X film? Did they do anything like expect his parents to apologize for being rather typical west-coast people, meaning that they divorced after his dad came out as gay and started living with a gay sex partner? I'm sure it's easier to be moderate about religion and morality when your dad is not cheating on your mom with a man, yet John Walker Lindh's father insists we should actually listen to his wise, enlightened son, who really understands this whole Middle East situation better than we do. His pro-Taliban activism started as apathy, an emptiness of heart, when his son expressed support for violence:

    While abroad, Lindh sent numerous emails to his family. In one, his father told him about the USS Cole bombing, to which Lindh replied that the American destroyer's being in the Yemen harbor had been an act of war, and that the bombing was justified. "This raised my concerns", his father told Newsweek, "but my days of molding him were over."

    Whites right now agree that young people make their own bad choices, meaning, the Boomers are not responsible for anything that happens. If many whites were conservative, Lindh's parents would not be such hardcore trolls who attempt to gas-light us, because the consequences for this dishonesty would be more serious.

    I am concerned that Lindh will be released from prison in about two years, and might then do more Taliban-supporting, or maybe ISIS to stay on trend. His gag order will end then, so he'll probably go back to accusing the military of torturing him, which might just mean he is tortured by being near infidel Americans who remind him he is white, not an minority. Maybe people born ~1981 coincide with the small truth of John Dilulio's criminological "super predator" theory. I think the end of the cold war, and subsequent gangster period, the 90's, was harsh on them. They had few older siblings, because there were few Gen X births. Especially in places like Chechnya, I suspect the age distribution of violent Millenials is very skewed. "Super predator" theory did not hold up, because it's just Boomers blaming us, as usual. But some age cohorts, I would expect, are more violent than others.

    This guy decided on a plea bargain for him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff

    While "cherhta" means trait in Russian, "chyort" means hell. I seriously wonder about Mr. Chertoff's family name's origin. Maybe it's not Russian though.

    Chertoff has an interesting relationship with the Clintons, which makes me think elite ambivalence toward them is why Hillary lost, not working-class or white or alt-right opposition to her and Obama (who really cares about Benghazi or Operation Fast and Furious, which killed American public servants? - few voters). She had no fully committed supporters, unlike Senator Bernie and Trump. If the working-class were conservative, she would have never risen to power to begin with, or dropped out before the election due to low polling and big protests at her rallies. Didn't happen.

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  38. Did whites of any class have any meaningful anger when Kurt Cobain, Jerry Garcia, Amy Winehouse (British Jewess, but popular; she tried to be an African-American jazz singer, so I don't know why people listened to her larpy singing) and other famous musicians were killed by overdoses supplied by "friends"? Was there ever any vengeance against drug dealers and demands that cartels be contained, except from victims' families? Trump talked about these things, and has already passed some executive orders regarding crime, but I always thought he's the one pushing this law and order agenda, more than his supporters care for it. They want jobs and comfort, not safety. If they wanted safety, they would build the wall on their own dime, decades ago.

    If that's too anarcho-nationalist, as opposed to watching Dancing with the Stars while people are dying, too bad, because the minutemen did do just that, and immediately accomplished the 2006 bill for a border wall by building a quarter-mile one themselves. It took a few weeks, that's how easy conservatism is. It would have taken little more to build the wall when it was needed decades ago, under Nixon or Reagan, negotiated in exchange for amnesty to existing invaders, or even without such a pardon.

    The possibilities for a conservative America are far greater than electing Trump, but now not supporting him after his election victory. Democrats' town halls get few if any conservative protesters, or even attendees. This is not just a "cuck" problem of superficial, platitudinous politics. It's pride, or maybe sloth.

    Conservatives are resting on their not-yet-existing laurels, and letting antifa beat up actual Trump supporters. Conservatives would not be outraged much if Trump supporters were massacred. That's my simple test of political allegiance- do lives matter? Nearly all cucks would turncoat prog. immediately, oh-so-suddenly, so Trump's main insecurity is his dangerously fragile base.


    I think you want whites to be conservative, but that's not how they treat each other and other peoples. Plenty of them already do construction work, building walls to protect liberals' buildings and properties from liberal policies' consequences, like college campuses near crime-ridden neighborhoods.

    The white working-class does a lot to hurt itself. Too often, meaning, ever, idealistically, but really, a lot, the working-class and whites are not compassionate. This is not exclusive to them, but I see moral concern and compassion as essential to conservatism, so they are only superficially conservative.

    By the way, the minutemen have SWPL-type sentiments about treating foreigners well... but they mean it! They care more about Mexicans than Mexicans do, and do their own chores, figuratively speaking.

    http://www.vdare.com/articles/mr-smith-goes-to-sacramento-tim-donnelly-vs-californias-treason-elite
    (VDare is staid, but their journalism is concise and always on topic.)

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  39. "Truth be told, the African-American working-class seems to be more socially conservative as well, though things like affirmative action were too good to pass up. This could explain Agnostic's experiences with some working-class blacks expressing sympathy for Trump voters."

    Dr. Ben Carson is probably their emblematic leader, and has a chance to help them. Affirmative action was more fully accepted once invaders started taking blacks' good, union jobs, like cleaning office buildings. With a clear betrayal on the part of white Boomers, who hired the invaders just to save some money, and perhaps to spite blacks, blacks reciprocated mistreatment by accepting indirect reparations. Affirmative action advantages smarter, educated blacks, who are eligible to receive much more status and money. Non-elite blacks would be better off with borders, not aff. action.

    -

    www.fourstardenim.com has a promo code now, ONEYEAR for 10% off a purchase of two or more pairs of jeans, celebrating their first year of business. They hired 12 workers their first year, and are quickly growing even bigger. I had no idea local clothing manufacturing can be so cheap, and only mention it because it's important to buy American. I'm not a marketer, so there's no affiliate link :).

    Finally Agnostic, tell me if I comment too much. I think I do, but I don't mean to. Also, you could open separate posts as comment threads, if you prefer that. I think you've considered it before.

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  40. I think my recent comments were slightly too political. Everyday life is not so abstract and feisty. Today, I remembered... other things. That led to new ideas.

    I did some lazy research, mostly reading others' analyses with simple graphs, and tentatively found that a local population's gender ratio affects voting. I need to control this for other factors before being more sure.

    So far:
    A disbalance with few men tends to support Trump, and this phenomenon might be related to all the ambitious and cute and/or smart women leaving for the big city to become SWPL liberals, which is an established cultural and sociological trope. The remaining townspeople become reactionaries, relatively, when their departed children and friends get ugly tattoos and never marry, or don't even call home.
    That's my conventional, normie conservative explanation. My more biopsychosocial one is that the sociosexual "market(s)" themselves determine people's political attitudes and electoral choices. When men are scarce, no one is a feminist. When women are scarce, everyone is a feminist. This is a deterministic oversimplification, for brevity's sake. I know the periods after large wars are like an experiment in low-male population dynamics, and don't have much if any any masculinism. The forgotten issue now is that thousands of American soldiers have died, and are continuing to die at war. This is somehow not a conscious big deal to most voters, but I think it makes people want a strong military that can end the wars it starts. The "Oh, death and suffering, whatever" attitude is why I don't consider Americans very conservative or compassionate, and it extends to the tepid response to drug overdoses and urban violence, too.

    Other factors include voter participation, meaning that I think men are much more likely to vote when there's little political conflict among them, or among couples. Men seem to act nonchalant about community issues and defer to others if there's too much arguing or discipline involved, though the stereotype is that women avoid conflict.
    I suspect organized religiosity, meaning active church and other temple membership, correlates with Trump support more than most think. He's officially a "positive thinking" believer, but that might be a public position. It seems sincere based on who officiates his weddings, but that's public too, for him.
    His promise to let churches discuss politics would actually anger many churches, because they want pretend neutrality; having no political responsibility makes their jobs easier. If it happens, I expect my church to pretend nothing has changed. There's no activism or policy everyone agrees on, not even defending fetuses and heterosexual marriage. Maybe progressive taxation and the importance of vacations are the most popular consensus, because everyone appreciates money and comfort.


    I haven't done any real stats analysis, because I haven't found or downloaded needed data yet, and am a newb. The Electoral Atlas is a start. But this task is easier than I thought, especially because statistics was a fun class. Is there any particular handbook or pdf I should buy? And what free program is best to use?

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  41. "One odd thing about Stand By Me is that though it's ostensibly about Boomer kids and late Silent/very early Boomer teens, the kids in the movie are clearly Gen X-ers stung by in-group and out-group competition and class anxiety."

    The movie may have emphasized different things than the novella, but the novella itself seems like Stephen King pining for his egalitarian childhood. The four childhood friends are mostly freed from concerns of social class or status, and King's stand-in - a nerdy kid coming from a middle-class home - easily engages in conversation with the four working-class kids who come from much rougher environments. Though, like I said, they may have emphasized totally different themes in the movie.

    I see "Stand by Me" as King dealing with some of the guilt of leaving his working-class friends behind. In the epilogue, its revealed that while the nerdy kid became successful, the three other kids died randomly - one in Vietnam, one in a house fire, and one by getting in an argument with a random crazy in a KFC. That kind of random misfortune becomes more common when you get stuck in the underclass during a period of rising inequality - because of poor infrastructure/poorly maintained buildings, carelessness(leaving a cigarette in the wrong place), having to deal with random crazies in public spaces, or getting drafted in Vietnam.

    It also, obviously, reflects the rising-crime rate - life becomes much more randomly dangerous, not just because of becoming the victim of a crime or dying in a war(war more likely when crime rises), but also being at risk of accidents in general.

    So when he wrote the book, King was kind of experiencing a mindfuck where he saw his working-class friends just degenerating because of inequality. The movie "Beautiful Girls", if you ever get the chance to see it, has a very similar theme - guy becomes a successful movie writer, visits his hometown, and is disillusioned to see his working-class, high school friends have become losers.

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  42. " It's also why post-Boomers are more cynical, more snarky, and feel less empathy for various "loser" people (who they remember getting bullied in the Lord of the Flies environment of post 1980 schools and workplaces)."

    That's absolutely true - the irony is that the early Baby Boomers, who are responsible for steering society in the direction of status-striving, are themselves more egalitarian and cooperative. Boomers were raised in a time when even the town drunk was treated with at least some level of respect.

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  43. "(the beginning of the "unraveling")"

    Interesting you should mention that, as I found Strauss and Howe's cycles more accurate than Peter Turchin's. Turchin, for instance, can't explain why there is some massive crisis every 80s years - Revolutionary War(1775); Civil War(1861); World War II(1943).

    It does seem that status-striving really took off in the mid-60s, though materiel conditions didn't deteriorate until later. and it also seems that status-striving peaked in the early 2000s, with Bush's first term. things like persona-striving represent a degeneration of status-striving, in other words its becoming harder to status-strive.

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  44. Strauss and Howe's cycles

    Reference please? pdfs or books?

    status-striving really took off in the mid-60s

    To me, adding Alaska and Hawaii, natural territories, as states, was a striving move. Eisenhower looks pompous and gleeful when signing the bill for Hawaii. Promotional videos from back then, in full color, are bragadocious about learning to surf. Wow, much larpage, wave-wizard dude. But I felt like it was wrong they didn't mention the Pearl Harbor memorial in HI,recovery from wartime in the 40s, or anything else on the islands, only chilling on the beach, like decadent bums who need to take on some foreign, pre-modern island culture to compensate for suburban malaise or ennui. There was also a continuation of Gilded Age injustice, in mistreating the native Hawaiians.

    Alaska conveniently had an oil discovery in the 60's. Nader is proud of how Alaskans, perhaps because they were new to statehood, won a sort of "compensation" for the resource extraction. It's close to 1 or 2 thousand dollars per year, for each family I think. That's more than I thought the big bad greedy industry would share with people who do not actively contribute to the business. Somehow, I think it's sort of striving to get a good deal from dirty business. Preventing oil spills would be more meaningful to me, and spills are only possible when the quite sufficient safety regulations are violated willfully. I think every spill is caused by criminal negligence, not unavoidable accidents. The negligible cost savings from not following needed precautions are sadly craved, maybe in a daredevil way. I think many former Mormons work on oil rigs and attend Burning Man, whatever these tendencies mean. I also suspect an adversarial, spiteful antipathy among some oil entities towards environmentalists, native peoples, the oceans, and competition within and outside the industry.

    materiel conditions didn't deteriorate until later

    I believe they deteriorated even earlier, in the 50s. The University of California, and probably other colleges too, had huge enrollment leaps, much more than doubling, I think 10x, with dormitory construction, student desegregation racially and sexually, and ignorance of the Great Depression rather soon after it ended, because WWII and the Cold War displaced the earlier 20th century's place in people's minds. These changes were material, as in physical, but in a human way, not in manufactured objects. The 'McCarthy era' was combative and sardonic, with a split between different American regions. California was already harboring communists, especially because former Nazis and other Europeans were compensating for the World War they ideologically and immorally caused, by... promoting the Red Revolution, Soviet and Mao style. The Chinese communists learned how to be Marxist from the Soviet Commintern, mostly... of a certain ethnicity. They used a newspaper as a cover business, proving to me that harshness and censorship are necessary to prevent revolution. America really bungled the Cold War by abandoning China to the red tide, then decided to gently protect Japan by supporting Social Democrats, a compromise position liberals instead was rightist. LOL, I guess Economic Republicans are reactionary.

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  45. But Japan was basically a colony, only threatened by U.S.S.R. influence, WWII war criminals remaining in power, perhaps organized crime, and economic modernization challenges. I feel like the East Asian economic successes starting in the 60's largely saved the world, by showing capitalism can work well for people to whom it is foreign and imposed by military coercion. The Korean War, the most forgotten one of the 20th century, was horrible, according to my Silent Gen. tutor in high school. Jim was a gentle man, and seeing murder scarred his soul. Maybe he himself had to kill enemies, and after two world wars (if not more, counting the Caspian), everyone was severely worried war must never be waged again, because of nuclear weaponry and the risk of escalation and quagmire. The stalemate between North and South Korea continues to be painful. The North, back then, was advanced and wealthy. The South was devastated by the war, and somehow advanced ahead of the North amazingly quickly. That must have been noted by elites and news-watchers worldwide, very convincingly. This simple shift continues to protect us from Marxism.

    I think only focusing on the U.S. is very naive, for historical purposes. We need more data, from many places.

    I recently attended a talk on 20th century Soviet art history, and learned that there were very distinct phases. Stalin's death really weakened the U.S.S.R., thus escalating the Cold War with several fiascos in Cuba and other ones I haven't even heard of, because my history teachers failed. This started in the 50's at the latest. I don't like the focus among Agnostic and others on finances. It's convenient to use such metrics, but... hugely inadequate. The 50's, to me, were already status-saturated. Sports cars, ridiculous bras and skirts and bluejeans and jackets, all of which I think were prohibited in conservative schools, celebrity culture only the wealthy could access, rising divorce rates, I suppose mostly among the urban, and all of this kind of interpersonal, subtly affected-by-economics inequality is quite objective to evaluate.

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  46. But Japan was basically a colony, only threatened by U.S.S.R. influence, WWII war criminals remaining in power, perhaps organized crime, and economic modernization challenges. I feel like the East Asian economic successes starting in the 60's largely saved the world, by showing capitalism can work well for people to whom it is foreign and imposed by military coercion. The Korean War, the most forgotten one of the 20th century, was horrible, according to my Silent Gen. tutor in high school. Jim was a gentle man, and seeing murder scarred his soul. Maybe he himself had to kill enemies, and after two world wars (if not more, counting the Caspian),everyone was severely worried war must never be waged again, because of nuclear weaponry and the risk of escalation and quagmire. The
    stalemate between North and South Korea continues to be painful. The North, back then, was advanced and wealthy. The South was devastated by the war, and somehow advanced ahead of the North amazingly quickly. That must have been noted by elites and news-watchers worldwide, very convincingly. This simple shift continues to protect us from Marxism.

    I think only focusing on the U.S. is very naive, for historical purposes. We need more data, from many places.

    I recently attended a talk on 20th century Soviet art history, and learned that there were very distinct phases. Stalin's death really weakened the U.S.S.R., thus escalating the Cold War with several fiascos in Cuba and other ones I haven't even heard of, because my history teachers failed.

    This started in the 50's at the latest. I don't like the focus among Agnostic and others on finances. It's convenient and accurate to use such metrics, but... hugely inadequate. The 50's, to me, were already status-saturated. Sports cars, ridiculous bras and skirts and bluejeans and jackets, all of which I think were prohibited in conservative schools, celebrity culture only the wealthy could access, rising divorce rates, I suppose mostly among the urban,

    and all of this kind of interpersonal, subtly affected-by-economics inequality is quite objective to evaluate.

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  47. My 50's-born parents actually found later decades less status-y, because once Stalinism ended, everyone could relax and be more trusting, thus investing wholeheartedly in ordinary, local life, not talking up party politics talking points every day and regularly announcing the long-awaited worldwide revolution. The cycles of status and cocooning do not seem entirely separate and secular. I think they are dynamic, maybe moreso in older countries. America could have fragmented social phenomena.

    I wish I had psychiatric data to test my alternative hypothesis on the mid-20th century's socioeconomics.This potential research is one of the few things I really want to do in useful science, not just for fun.

    Just as importantly, I think, the quantity of WWII orphans went down every year, in all WII-stricken countries. Orphans as a % of the child population, and widows and widowers among married adults, are a huge component of inequality. We are so perverted by Marxism, we forget that living without parents or spouses is generally more painful than being lower class, besides how it's incredibly harder to be comfortable, both with goods jobs and income, and psychosexual warmth, without healthy, happy adults in the family.
    This is biblical, not theoretical. You might want data on it, the way I would enjoy having the Bible confirmed by modern research, but it's so common-sensical, I consider it indisputable.

    Less death, less terror = much more meaningful equality, regardless of rubles. The global art historical record confirms that striving was high in the 50s, but changed in form, just like it changed in the 2000s.

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  48. Status-striving has separate peaks for different metrics of it. Partly, different people have different life-schedules: women strive, I think, more when young. Men, more later. So striving is changed by sex-selecting feticide. Feticide is complex, I'm trying to understand it less judgmentally.

    Sexual status is pursued more by people without socio-intellectual advantages, so IQ-lowering phenomena increase sex and other sensual competition. Higher IQ => more civic, scientific, artistic, and corporate competition. These things are so simple, they're easy to check and verify or disconfirm.

    I hope people can learn from recent history to avoid personal and collective calamities, from breakups to war. We can't just fight for fair taxes and less disease. I'm really frustrated by my neighbors right now, because they have become single-issue voters, even more partisan than before, and stupid. I expected peaceful discussion in the Trump era, not "combat," as my congressman describes petitions attempting to punish Democrats who vote with Republicans on anything whatsoever, suspending normal legislating duties, and "reaching out" to people like mercenaries, to really "organize the community." It's not scary yet, but getting there.

    I am glad this "combat" is mostly lip service, intended as a way to soon bow out of politics with an excuse ("My constituents didn't do my job for me well enough, wow, just wow, the whole democracy is ruined... blah blah blah"). I'll have an update about this soon, as I communicate more locally about why most Americans are mutually ok with Trump, but communists who say things like, "Jail all the bourgeoisie for life" are not approving of almost anyone. Basically, utopians have impossible standards of fairness, but most people grow out of that in elementary school or, if retarded like me, sometime later.


    I think the "whale-tail" exposed thongs, sagging, and other "look at my special pelvis, everybody, I'm single for the next 2 hours to 2 weeks" (sexually and dating-wise, respectively) fashion trends do indicate that sensual striving peaking in the early 2000s. It was disgusting and silly-seeming to children when it happened, and I felt like we helped end it. Probably, guys getting scolded by grandpa, and gals by grandma, made more of a difference than my quizzical looks. Older people must remember better than I do. I might have been precociously thoughtful, but I was not active in society.

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  49. I also think verbal, speech and written competition peaked. Maybe this includes all socio-intellectual competition. The rise in outgoingness is related to this, but some forms of cocooning-related striving remained in place, like huge cars to replace passengers with empty space, huge houses to replace families and homemaking with illegally hired and exploited help and householding to take care of all that work (along the lines of, House-Status-Crafting-Santa's atheist elves need a big empty family room to fit in all the tasteless presents), huge mortgages to be busy "making money" instead of socializing or doing economic but unpaid work like volunteering, and other such "I'm too successful / busy for civil society and intimate friendship" excuses. I didn't like this time... but at least it was exciting.

    Some good books were written, particularly in the humanities, but the Harry Potter saga craze was dorky and occult in a nerdy, queer way (Daniel Radcliffe's personal troubles, Dumbledore's gayness, general perversion, special magical people in a secret society above the plain muggles, an abused orphan as a main character with an epic destiny... like Roald Dahl's Matilda, but sissified and more sentimentally poignant, but less realistic. This "sorcery fantasy" stuff was also feminist, given that magic is gender-neutral, in J.K.Rowling's world. She, a divorced single mother, wrote the book on NAPKINS in cafes. How sad and cheap is that, given that notebooks are incredibly cheap, probably too much given that tree pulp is scarce? And why were children, including me, allowed to read fan-fiction style literature, before the movies were made, making each actor a celebrity? Reading was a hugely cultified activity back then, before Borders closed. President GWB was reading a book to children in a public school, with a librarian wife, on 9/11/01.

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  50. "She, a divorced single mother, wrote the book on NAPKINS in cafes."

    Wait, that just can't be true. A single book would take thousands of napkins. Manuscripts are not accepted in napkin form. I now conclude she was divorced to be with another man, and was rich the whole time, but less affluent than when married.Fiction writers are very dramatic, not very realistic.

    -

    Michael Moore could not openly criticize this as vain and inappropriate for the chief executive, because books were all treated like the Bible.

    Churches have official Readers as clergy, and Bush was doing a clergy activity. At my elementary school, the principal dressed up as The Cat in the Hat, and we ate green eggs and ham. Immigrants don't always find American schools civilized just because of this cult. Remember, "Dr. Seuss" made war-time propaganda, and his children's books were literacy propaganda. They dumb down smart children who would rather read adult books, or at least interesting ones, and give less smart children false hope of being erudite, academically accomplished, and sophisticated. I was unaware of how reading ahead in the painfully simple books we were assigned in first grade was a huge violation of intellectual egalitarianism. I was bored, and preferred Harry Potter, but found that strangely similar. Rowling basically rewrote classic Greek mythology and European tropes into purified postmodern meme-trash. Here's some of my own quick meme-trash:
    Pepe goes to Hogwarts, I spotted him there in the fourth(?) movie when they practice spells on toads, but the alt-right frog infiltrates Hogwarts, and Hagrid the half-giant was born female.. /sarcasm. I could have fun doing trollicious fan fiction. It's good for "creativity," if I major in English and then can't seriously express myself in censored college courses. Professors can't much disagree with my idea of Hogwarts 2.0, a "magical" college with co-ed frats, more administrators than students, and a dark magic STD epidemic. Much lulz, if I do a good job. My own first college was like this, without the hyperbole.


    Obama released a list of books he read during his presidency, which is doubtful because he must have been busy playing golf with "friends."
    I feel that people who know they are ignorant are desperate to read books when college is high status. The U.S.S.R. had absurd book-ism when the iconoclasts initially burned bibles, abused churches in satanic ways, especially Ñ„Ñ‹ museums, and taught peasants how to read. They couldn't really comprehend what they read, like if I read physics equations or watch chemistry experiments.

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  51. "From another perspective altogether, Allan Schore, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine, explores the slower development among boys “in right-brain attachment functions.”

    This “maturational delay” in brain function, Schore writes in an essay that was published earlier this year in the Infant Mental Health Journal, “All Our Sons: The Developmental Neurobiology and Neuroendocrinology of Boys at Risk,” makes boys

    more vulnerable over a longer period of time to stressors in the social environment and toxins in the physical environment that negatively impact right-brain development."

    "This vulnerability, in turn, makes boys more susceptible to

    attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and conduct disorders as well as the epigenetic mechanisms that can account for the recent widespread increase of these disorders in U.S. culture."

    This is from an NY times article about the decline of male prospects. Male offspring of broken families fare much worse than boys who grew up with an intact family, and girls aren't affected either way.

    We start to see more anxiety among late Boomers (who were in children in the later 60's/70's), and it gets more pronounced with subsequent generations. As inequality grows, the traditional sources of security (intact families, quality workplaces, wholesome schools, The Church) are weakened.Males who need a lot of socialization (especially lower IQ ones) no longer have leaders, role models, and teachers who give them a better shot at succeeding. And the failure to develop males and give them appropriate and dignified work alienates them from women who tend to not adopt the bleak outlook of restive underclass males.

    How each generation responds is a bit different. Late Boomers became hedonistic and cynical, while X-ers checked out from the idea that the outside world was worth paying attention to (especially seeing as how older generations actually blamed X-ers for the decline of culture). Millennials, on the other other hand, were treated as "special", as a generation that would surely accomplish great things, yet their poor socialization and horrible economic prospects has made a lot of them intensely agitated by the uncomfortable position of mutual ass kissing with authority in spite of the utter failure of leadership over the last 40 years.

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  52. "But I felt like it was wrong they didn't mention the Pearl Harbor memorial in HI,recovery from wartime in the 40s, or anything else on the islands, only chilling on the beach, like decadent bums who need to take on some foreign, pre-modern island culture to compensate for suburban malaise or ennui."

    See, I see the opposite, which is that the "beach bum" culture of the late 50s/early 60s was more a sign of equality. It was accessible to anybody who lived nearby, and was focused more on hanging out than being competitive. As the 60s wore on, access to the beach became harder for the average person - Steve Sailer has written about how the rich go to great lengths to block off certain sections of beach, and you can scare away teenagers through harsher policing.

    By the 80s, beach culture had transformed into competition featuring expensive toys such as sailboat racing, windsurfing, scuba-diving, etc.

    BTW I do appreciate you and Feryl responses, can't get the energy to respond to everything right now, though there is lots to say, and I find everything you guys say fascinating and very informative.

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  53. "Did whites of any class have any meaningful anger when Kurt Cobain, Jerry Garcia, Amy Winehouse (British Jewess, but popular; she tried to be an African-American jazz singer, so I don't know why people listened to her larpy singing) and other famous musicians were killed by overdoses supplied by "friends"? Was there ever any vengeance against drug dealers and demands that cartels be contained, except from victims' families? Trump talked about these things, and has already passed some executive orders regarding crime, but I always thought he's the one pushing this law and order agenda, more than his supporters care for it. They want jobs and comfort, not safety. If they wanted safety, they would build the wall on their own dime, decades ago. "

    There's no righteous vengeance over drug dealers because drug users are seen at best as naive, and at worst recklessly hedonistic. Supply and demand. While many people still believe that drug dealing is crime worth punishing, most people find other criminals to be more despicable since it's not like the victims of theft, assault, robbery, rape, etc. set out to be preyed on.

    One reason the war on drugs wore people out is that you can't blame the dealers for people being stupid enough to try drugs in the first place.

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  54. This is a totally off-topic post, but since someone mentioned inequality and it got me thinking:

    I wonder if one force keeping inequality in check during the 1950s and 60s was the fear of communism. After all, if the rich hog all the wealth for themselves and mistreat the working class, the working class might get pissed off enough to start a revolution, and the USSR and China would gladly give aid and comfort in the hopes of spreading their ideology. So the elites of that time, fearing the fate of Nicholas II and Chang Kai Shek, acted with more noblesse oblige than today.

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  55. Peter Turchin makes exactly that point. It was around the time of WWI when the world looked like it would blow itself up because of hyper-competitiveness, never backing away from competition no matter how pointless, just to "win".

    That was changed by the Russian Revolution, and similar events around the Western world (including here in America -- Battle of Blair Mountain, labor strikes, anarchists, etc.).

    The elites did not want the Russian Revolution to happen here, so they decided it was better to restrain their hyper-competitive behavior and start accommodating others -- their workers and their fellow citizens (closed borders during 1920s).

    Once the Russian Revolution, violent labor strikes, and the like became not only forgotten -- but never remembered in the first place because they were not born yet -- then the elites don't see what could go so wrong with another Gilded Age regime of laissez-faire and hyper-competitive status contests.

    That was the Me Generation of Silents and Boomers during the 1970s. The youngest of them were born during the '20s, after the real heavy shit had already hit the fan.

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  56. And by the same token, it was the generation born in the late 1800s who played the biggest role in shaping the Midcentury. The climate surrounding WWI was their first major formative experience when you start to really get politically aware, during your 20s and 30s.

    Eisenhower, FDR, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, etc.

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