That attempt to tar & feather all Trump voters as racist Nazis blew up in their faces during the election season, because everyone knows there aren't tens of millions of Nazis in America. Saying so made the anti-Trumpers sound utterly insane to normal people, and discredited whatever else they were trying to say about Trump's vision.
By the same token, the white nationalists should learn the same lesson: they were irrelevant to Trump's victory. There aren't enough of them to make a dent at the ballot box, and they were not the ones driving the narrative and news cycle -- that was Trump himself. Nor were his amplifiers on social media a bunch of white nationalist LARPers.
The attempt at making Trump repeatedly disavow the wannabe Nazis also failed to achieve the intended goal of putting Trump on the defensive. True, he doesn't want to have to respond to every simpering fag who screams out "Do you want the support of these white nationalists?!" Still, he truly does not identify with them or like them, so he can sincerely disavow them and not "give" anything to the enemy ideologically.
Now it is time to lob the collective blame grenade back over into the enemy's territory where it came from. The other side has already made clear that they intend to target all Republicans, even if they were vocal never-Trumpers. So we have to respond in kind by casting blame at the broadest level, as in the disruption of a Trump assassination performance that blamed the entire audience for contributing to the normalization of political violence.
Applied strongly enough, collective blame can prevent the rise of a violent minority, as the other side's majority cracks down on its black sheep to avoid further blame.
Toward that end, the best way forward for Trump is to invite a high-ranking Democrat to a joint press event where each one disavows and condemns the extremist violence coming from their own side, calling out specific groups, as well as a general statement about condemning political violence "no matter who commits it, and no matter who it targets".
He could invite Obama to condemn the cop killings committed by those radicalized by Black Lives Matter, as Trump condemns the church bombing and car attack by white nationalists.
He could invite Hillary Clinton to condemn Antifa -- after which Attorney General Sessions opens an investigation into them as a domestic terrorist organization, since the FBI has already begun to investigate the Alt-Right.
He could invite Joe Biden (who claims there's "only one side" in political violence) to condemn the Alexandria shooter who targeted Congressional Republicans as a whole.
He could invite the head of CAIR to condemn the radical Islamic terror killings from just the recent past.
It would be more powerful to have two or more big Democrats, and more Republicans than just Trump (although not some spineless cuck), to make the event more of a clear bipartisan team effort to tone down the rising political violence.
It's win-win for Trump: if they accept, he forces them to concede the point that everyone already knows, about liberals and Democrats being far more prone to collective violence, he forces a public apology and denunciation, and he avoids being portrayed as the "only side" responsible for collective violence.
If they refuse, he forces them to concede their hypocrisy about caring about political violence, and that they are tolerating and even encouraging future political violence by their side, while exploiting human tragedy just to score cheap shots against someone from the other side of the aisle. He comes off as magnanimous and says how sad it is that the other side cannot bring themselves to condemn the violence coming from their own side.
Either way, they have to drop one of their major masks, and the media will have to follow suit.
If Trump is not allowed to pursue this winning strategy by the Pentagon coup members in his cabinet, then some other high-profile Republican could take his place, and invite similar-ranking Democrats. Tucker Carlson inviting Rachel Maddow, for instance -- and both broadcasting the same event during their shared primetime slot of 9pm.
We can never let the general public forget about who commits the vast bulk of collective violence in this country. And we won't have to draw a pie chart -- although both sides will be condemning extremists on their own side, the audience knows how many BLM cop killings or radical Islamic terror attacks there have been, as opposed to white nationalist murderers.
My guess is the other side would reject the bipartisan outreach effort, just as the White House press corps laughed at Mike Cernovich for asking them to condemn Antifa after a string of violent clashes throughout April, or as Virginia Governor McAuliffe just ignored a question from Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam if he condemned Antifa. Oh well, at least the media, Deep State, and Democrats will never be able again to harangue Trump and his supporters about white nationalists.
I literally went to the White House to ask the media to disavow poltical violence.— Mike Cernovich 🇺🇸 (@Cernovich) August 13, 2017
They laughed. #Chalottesville pic.twitter.com/nvN7XkpMX7
I just asked @GovernorVA if he wanted to condemn antifa as well as neo Nazi groups. He heard. Refused to answer. pic.twitter.com/W7vcH4fSI0— Raheem 🇬🇧 (@RaheemKassam) August 12, 2017
I think spending any effort on political extremism is a waste of time. TBH, I don't think the public really cares about this stuff past a 24-48 hour media cycle. You will never get the left to denounce their pet left wing hate groups (antifa, BLM, etc.) because they do the DNC's dirty work. On the right, the media will do what they do best and start to smear as many of their competitors (Breitbart, Fox News, etc.) and Trump cabinet members as possible so as to lose complete credibility. The public has already become numbed to these so they've totally lost their ability to shape a narrative.
ReplyDeleteThe whole think stinks.
ReplyDelete- The media was prepping for it and promoting it.
- Aging queen David Duke (whose had as much work done as Joan Rivers) is present and accounted for.
- Was Dickie Spencer hiding out, or protected by his posse, or protected by the authorities? Maybe after he got punched "they" realized that they had to a to do a better job of protecting Spencer being that he's going to be a go-to right-wing dipshit for decades to come.
- They had it the event close enough to the Beltway, presumably to make it easier to keep tabs on and control. And McCauliffe is as skeezy as they come.
- The cops were told to stand down; we all know what happens when the police don't correct minor disputes and obvious trouble makers quickly. It's possible I suppose that the Lefty side would've gotten so annoyed with heavier handed cops that they would've attacked the cops, thereby making it more difficult to put all the blame on the Right for whatever happens.
- The previously noted lack of kids and women (at least on the Right side) really suggests that a lot of it was astroturfed. The gubmint pushes the event in the neo-Nazi "community", and the ostensible conservatives who show up are either male Lefty posers looking for trouble or deranged trolls tired of being keyboard warriors.
Note that the Right has not had to fabricate Lefty zeal or violence, as is evident from organic Millennial SJW culture and the "professional" protester culture that the Left has been refining for 50+ years, going back to Jews and blacks deliberately agitating Southern good ole boys in the 60's.
And of course, the MSM/reigning campus ideology promoted by academic elites/gutless politicians often explicitly promote and excuse Lefty terrorism.
I don't think the whole thing was astroturfed but the outcome was going to be the same: the media crying about evil Nazis, the media crying that Trump didn't denounce them hard enough, etc. The stories were already written before the event even happened. Another reason why I think James Fields' joyride isn't going to make the impact some people are thinking.
ReplyDeleteThe black church shooter was much better grist for the Lefty mill, but that happened before Trump really took off.
ReplyDeleteCar attacks have got to be the lowest and laziest form of terrorism.
I doubt you'll hear this in polite company, but both sides were morons for showing up to the Virginia "rally" (rallying whom?). The event was heavily marketed as a spike in right-wing extremism to attract dumbfucks from both sides, and if you didn't expect a dangerous outcome from something like this then you need your head examined. Nobody in their right mind should've gone anywhere near this.
As is now well established, the Left is encouraging chaos and violence to create a climate hostile to right-wing dissidents and populists. BLM activity seems to have wound down in favor of pouncing on Right populist activity. Only a handful of smaller scale BLM protests have happened in 2017.
I think we're being awfully naive to think that there's the slightest chance that the Left is going to back off anytime soon. Too many people of a generation (those born in the late 80's and early 90's) have been brainwashed, and too many middle-aged/elderly liberals have invested so much in attaining and perpetuating a hysterical tone in a decade that, at long last, rings true to them as the long-awaited sequel to the 1960's.
IMO if you try to frame it as "whites are becoming a minority" then you're killing your message right out of the gate because that's immediately tied into white nationalism and despite what some in that group think, explicit WN messages are not at all palatable to the average person. Messaging is a very important thing. Opposition to immigration from certain areas is thus framed as being about border security i.e. protecting against the cartels as well as about job creation and security or framing it in issues of national security. Sure the left and MSM will gnash and wail about how that's being racist towards Mexicans (and by extension Central Americans since Mexico, like Italy, is a geographic expression for these types) and Muslims but most people will see those points and go "yeah, that makes sense".
ReplyDeleteSame with being "tough on crime and drugs" and ostensibly that means dealing with the largely black and hispanic gangs engaging in violence and pushing drugs but keep it vague in regards to generally being about "safety", throw in a bone to combatting the opioid epidemic (a large benefactor of said epidemic being Mexican cartels) and again you've made it more palatable to Joe Normie. Start screeching about birth statistics and whatnot and you'll turn those people off instead thus getting nowhere.
I deleted the comment you're replying to, BTW. Anything smacking of spergy WN-ism, it's gone.
ReplyDeleteFeryl, no way should the Right secede the public sphere to the Left, allowing that helped bring the Left to power the last time
ReplyDeleteNor should amenable authority like we say in Charlottesville be tolerated period. There are limits to how we can fight back now but we do have some options lawfare among them that are safe and legal
I'll grant you a bit more management of the Hit-Larpers and costume Nazis and the agent provocateurs masquerading as such is in oder but in the end, it doesn't matter.
Trump could fly out of the White House stop a meteor and an alien invasion in one day, bring mankind limitless energy and he'd still be worse than Hitler by nightfall.
Trump is a civic nationalist, and given how they treat him , the Alt Right .Alt Left who are even more opposed them will get it worse no matter what.
In the end this isn't really a political dispute, its far closer to a religious war and the Left and its allies wants White Christian America subjugated or dead.
They can't be reasoned with any more than a suicide bomber or bubonic plague can be.
So we will end up fighting them. Right now of the trim away enough support to reduce amenable authority , bring the fence sitters on board , bring in some sane Left Wingers and recruit the normal people phase
If we get lucky or are uncommonly smart, we can win without bloodshed but in any case, restoration of the Republic or outright war with the Left its as Leonidas said in the 300
Give them nothing and take from them everything !
One thing that was brought up was the higher ups (i.e. mayor and chief of police) telling the cops to stand down once Antifa started showing up. Same thing happened in Berkley for the Milo event and that makes me wonder if the intent then (and this weekend as well) wasn't to try and lure the right into getting agitated and thus coming to blows against the leftists which makes them look like animals. In Berkley that didn't happen, the right generally kept their cool and the left were the first to act, but this time -- if that was indeed the plan -- it went off without a hitch likely due to a variety of factors.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it mentioned on Twitter I believe that the police, when dispersing the Unite the Right crowds, pretty much herded them towards Antifa and you can't discredit agents provocateur needling things as well (I don't buy into the car false flag conspiracy theory). Makes it seem like there's some behind the scenes coordination going on beyond simple leftist organization.
A.B.: Time and time again, since the 60's at least, the authorities have proven inept at handling young Leftist maniacs. Failure to do so in Virginia got people killed, and there will be no accountability for it beyond the dumbass driver.
ReplyDeleteThe Left demonizes any attempt at reining in yoofs as racist/fascist/otherwise monstrous, even when the yoofs are being violent and criminal. The authorities going back 60 years would've been within their rights to beat the living shit out of the brats, and if the brats were sufficiently aggressive and destructive, shooting 'em to send a message really shouldn't be off the table.
Until the authorities can get deprogammed, we don't have enough allies to back us up as we stand up for ourselves. There were actually some cases of the authorities forcefully putting down agitators and sympathizing with Rightists back in the 60's (the '68 Dem. convention comes to mind), but that was back when everyone in Peoria supported the police who raided and shut down gay bars.
Hell, even "libertarians" are more concerned about reining in cops than they are with doing what it takes to instill respect for law and order. Bringing back the wholesome mid-century entails forfeiting most kinds of mischief (rioting/demonstrating, violence, disrespect for authority) that the Left and cuck right have encouraged to disastrous effect for 50+ years. We've got a long a way to go, and the demographics aren't helping.
Joe Six-pack begin to lose faith in the system in the 70's, and that's for good reason. The Silent Majority voted for the GOP in the general elections of the late 60's and 70's and 80's. But it's not like they could confidently physically stand up to the brats who needed a reality check and in many cases a nightstick to the ribs.
"I've seen it mentioned on Twitter I believe that the police, when dispersing the Unite the Right crowds, pretty much herded them towards Antifa and you can't discredit agents provocateur needling things as well"
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but I'm not sure about that, because the police tend to be conservative and Trump supporters. It could have just been incompetence.
Yeah A weakness to Leftism is kind of inherent in free countries and given the US has been somewhat free though socialist after a fashion since the 1930's its even harder to deal with the issue
ReplyDeleteIts hard as hell to get out of socialism until the system collapses . This isn't though some kind of moral weakness but a product of complexity and economy of scale
Marxists are correct in noting that people who are surplus do to efficiency tend to socialism. In that sense automation is the driver of Leftism . We don't have any means to deal with that and ensure that most people work especially as progress and innovation are part of our national myth. That efficiency is basically killing the West though
If we could reign that in we can build a Right wing society otherwise you end up with some sort of distrbutive society and in that you'd need firm measures to keep idle people being Commies and to keep some semblance of fiscal equality . You don't do this, you get Reds
You'd need a lot of Kent States and a lot of people on the so called Right who just weren't Yesterdays Leftists and who ate perfectly willing to drop the hammer on amenable authority. Had we been able to do that back in the late 50's and 60's , we could shUt the Left down
Lots of reason we couldn't do this but its costing us.
Now in fairness the current Congress is getting better but the need for the system to self propagate limits our ability to shift the culture much at that level
Though as things tighten, its shifting naturally.
How far it will go or if it will go to guns I don't know. I suspect its going to be unpleasant but I'm a pessimist
Someone on r/The_Donald looked into Kessler and found out that he was a hardcore lefty/Obama guy until, coincidentally, November 2016 and that his group was only registered in January. There's also a video by Lee Stranahan going over how everything about the Charlottesville fiasco is taken straight from the same playbook as the Euromaidan color revolution in the Ukraine right down to torch-bearing imagery and cries of "Blood and Soil".
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, something stinks and it won't be long before the Soros connection is found.
So, the ACLU among others intervenes to make sure the event goes on. Then right after it starts, it's declared over by the authorities who then do nothing to keep each side from each other. The FBI announces an investigation into the "alt-right", when Neo-Nazi groups have been known/studied/infiltrated for decades. Where are the high profile public statements from LE about scrutinizing BLM or Antifa in the wake of their mayhem?
ReplyDeleteThere's also the journalistic malpractice of using Alt-right/Neo-Nazi/White nationalist interchangeably. It's like treating animal rights activist and vegan as the same thing. Again, wrt the FBI statement, they singled out the Alt-right. The Alt-right is a niche movement with no consistent leader(s), does not plan large scale illegal activities, does not hold protests or counter protests, and does not have a clear ideology or long term goals.
After Trump announced his run, Right gatherings have had two flavors: multi-generational/multi-gender/multi-ethnic/ multi-ideological pro-Trump rallies, that have little to moderate alt-right associations. The second type are the white nationalist shit shows designed to piss people off and which attracts the biggest trolls, typically young and male, from the Left and the Right. There has been a stellar track record of the mainstream Trump rally supporters behaving themselves, in spite of Left agitators being out of control. On the other hand, the WN trolls are basically anti-social by definition.
The majority of the Alt-right, especially the ones over 30, has no interest in violence or unrest. That obviously can't be said for BLM or Antifa, which are derived from Leftist agitator culture. Popular Alt-right friendly personalities like Alex Jones and Cernovich often preface comments with "I'm not encouraging violence or crime". The Right by and large wants it's agenda implemented with a minimum of fuss, and has been building itself up with reason and morally attuned righteous rhetoric about learning to fight back metaphorically, and only if absolutely necessary, physically if we must defend ourselves and our allies.
But the Left has gone nuts, hysterical, paranoid. They preach the enforcement of tolerance using witchunts, McCarthyist tactics, and even senselessly violent and combative mobs. They're the ones who stand to lose what took 60 years to gain, the moral imperative and elite approval to advance cultural Marxism by any means necessary. Any effort to take away their entitlement and status elicits caws and howls of childish tantrums
They're trying to divide the right and further marginalize us. The more time that's spent on distancing ourselves from the Nazi retards/posers, the less time we've got to get things done.
BTW, I read an article about political extremists which mentioned the Northwest and it's history of Neo-Nazis. The Western US has always been a fertile soil for kooky crap to grow in. Hippies, Mormons, Neo-Nazis, etc. Remember that people out there are often descended from people who couldn't fit in back East.
McMaster, Murdoch and Scaramucci have all been very quick to pounce on the opportunity to try and get Bannon ousted as well. The first two aren't surprising but I knew Scaramucci was too capricious and too self-interested to be trusted as well. The entire Charlottesville incident now reeks of a greater behind the scenes plot by the elites.
ReplyDeleteCocooning updates/research. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
ReplyDelete""The number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently""
Also, when they started asking about sleep in 1991, kids reported getting more sleep. Seems like anxiety is a bigger problem in cocooning eras, since sleep problems have gotten progressively worse since the early 90's
"Of course, putting off the responsibilities of adulthood is not an iGen innovation. Gen Xers, in the 1990s, were the first to postpone the traditional markers of adulthood. Young Gen Xers were just about as likely to drive, drink alcohol, and date as young Boomers had been, and more likely to have sex and get pregnant as teens. But as they left their teenage years behind, Gen Xers married and started careers later than their Boomer predecessors had."
"Gen X managed to stretch adolescence beyond all previous limits: Its members started becoming adults earlier and finished becoming adults later. Beginning with Millennials and continuing with iGen, adolescence is contracting again—but only because its onset is being delayed. Across a range of behaviors—drinking, dating, spending time unsupervised— 18-year-olds now act more like 15-year-olds used to, and 15-year-olds more like 13-year-olds. Childhood now stretches well into high school."
.
Well, whereas Boomers spent most or all of their early life in the outgoing 60's-80's's and were able to live it up as party animals and/or careerists, some Gen X-ers had less than 10 years in that outgoing cycle. The increasingly neurotic and joyless and even nihilistic vibe that took hold in the 90's and has yet to let us go did no favors to younger generations' ability to put the bong down and go forth as adults. Besides, while Silents had post-WW2 prosperity to give them new houses and families, X-ers and Millennials didn't have that luxury. The Silents had prosperity, the Boomers had the urgency that came with an outgoing era.
We can tell that Millennials born in the later 90's are really in tough shape, being that people born in that era have faced no pressure (not from culture, not from their parents, not from peers) to have lives.
I'd chalk most of that stuff up to the hyper-competitiveness and inequality cycle, except for not meeting with friends.
ReplyDeleteLoss of sleep due to greater stress of hyper-competitive school climate.
Delayed adulthood due to not having money to fund adulthood. Rent / mortgage, wedding, children -- all require lots of money. A 20 year-old was very rich in 1960, but very poor in 1990, let alone 2010.
It's not so much status-striving per se that delays adulthood, as though young people were replacing families with self-centered hedonism.
Successful 20-somethings are still getting married and having kids -- they can afford it. These same people are also very hedonistic and self-absorbed, just like their less successful age-mates.
The main cause of transitioning out of adolescence is a job that delivers enough income to support a family. When those jobs disappear, adolescents will coast on in their ways through their 20s and 30s.
It's the changing material conditions (off-shoring, de-industrialization, immigration, etc.) that are corrupting the minds of the young, not narcissism rays beamed in externally by Martians.
"
ReplyDeleteLoss of sleep due to greater stress of hyper-competitive school climate."
Things like sexual harassment and bullying go along with that. In periods of rising equality, only the bad apples get bullied, whereas during rising inequality its used more for competitive advantage. My grandfather, born in 1920 or so, said that the male students would gang up on someone who they thought was bullying others.
Gen Xers more likely to have been bullied directly or beaten up, Millenials more likely to be ostracized or been the victims of rumors/false accusations. cocooning makes it more indirect and insincere; Gen Xers got it worse, since the bullying was more direct and sadistic.
During a period of rising inequality, half the class envisions themselves ditching their town for greater and greater things, the other half thinks they're gonna get stuck pumping gas. This creates a toxic environment, where kids don't see a point in being nice to each other(except for the ones who think they are going to pump gas, who do have some level of solidarity).
"It's the changing material conditions (off-shoring, de-industrialization, immigration, etc.) that are corrupting the minds of the young, not narcissism rays beamed in externally by Martians."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this. Narcissim and sociopathy are highest in striving times, though I believe today's wealthy, especially on the Mental Left, are the most dangerous cohort of all because of cocooning's isolation not checking them, keeping them beholden to ivory tower beliefs. Ironically, hyper-striving and growing inequality makes the wealthy more evil and confident in their evil, while at the same time shrinking their numbers.
I can't contribute much, to Ag's topic, being absent for most of it and still out of the loop.
But this I can say...
Several days before the identity politics violence, Cassandra Fairbanks and a liberal female writer were both warned by a friendly to be extra careful with their personal safety as the friendly felt a very powerful, palpable feeling that the vanguard MSM were becoming utterly unhinged and untethered. To an outside observer, the hysteria would appear to have no cause. The friendly was not aware of anything uttered negatively against the two, but the friendly intuited something very dark was coming.
For the past couple days, both have been dealing with death threats, revenge porn threats in Fairbanks' case, and more. The stated reasons are because they either are a Rightist, or are appreciated by some Rightists over coverage of Wikileaks.
The friendly had no idea why Fairbanks and the liberal writer would be threatened nor in what form the catalyst would come, but that something was coming, there was no doubt.
What the friendly picked up on was anger, guilt, fear of exposure, dread, etc. on the part of the vanguard identity media over the crumbling of Trump-Russia including the role they played in hiding the truth and promoting what they knew was a lie. Most MSM are innocent, but this is worse than the Iraq War WMD hoax given there were more accessories.
So, as their world was beginning to fall apart, their egos, their ids, completely stressed out, reverted back to the primal, their personal favorites: Identity Politics on steroids. Seeing the 180 degree turn and the absolute hysteria, the friendly warned Cassandra and the other woman as they were the cause of their pain.
(It just so happens that other people, much further away from the Trump-Russia imploding before, but following the Identity politics violence closely, are calling it the new Trump-Russia; from a completely different vantage point and far away, they're intuiting the same thing."
Ag, I'm scared. Please hide or delete this post. It's all true, but remove it, please.
DeleteI'm a Canadian millenial in my early 30s and it sounds like i'm a statistic. I push shopping carts for a living, live with my parents(early boomers), never went to college, never had a girlfriend, Weed and video games are my hobbies. Love reading this site, Agnostic has an interesting perspective.
ReplyDeleteCoup plotter General Kelly behind Trump caving on denouncing specific right-wing groups but zero left-wing groups for violence, hatred, etc.
ReplyDelete"Several of Trump’s senior advisers, including new chief of staff John Kelly, had urged him to make a more specific condemnation, warning that the negative story would not go away and that the rising tide of criticism from fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill could endanger his legislative agenda, according to two White House officials."
https://apnews.com/395f6966223043babc448e9eae97c6b8/Bowing-to-pressure,-Trump-denounces-hate-groups-by-name
Wow, if Trump didn't allow the media and DC Establishment to hack off one of his limbs, they might not have hacked off another! (Corporate sell-out agenda in Congress)
Ag, would you please delete my earlier comments
Delete"Gen Xers more likely to have been bullied directly or beaten up, Millenials more likely to be ostracized or been the victims of rumors/false accusations. cocooning makes it more indirect and insincere; Gen Xers got it worse, since the bullying was more direct and sadistic."
ReplyDeletePTSD themes became a lot more common in the 80's, in the mainstream. It's been known for a long time that trauma can be difficult to overcome, but it seems like Boomers for whatever reason got a better handle on the subject in the 80's, perhaps due to the condition of returning 'Nam vets. In the 70's we looked the other way, but the condition of Vets became a big deal in the 80's.
It could also be that people sensed that our safety net to support troubled people was already weak in the 80's. Feeling of alienation, abandonment, and rage got stronger in the 70's and 80's, and by the 90's it seemed like there were loose cannons everywhere who felt unwanted, cheated, and depressed. Stephen King wrote a story called Rage in the late 70's, about a teen holding his high school hostage, that hit too close to home and by the 90's he no longer allowed it to be printed.
It's true that X-ers got hit earlier and harder by both peers and adults than Boomers did, but just the same, many Boomers (esp. the later born ones) got lashed pretty hard by the Me decade of the 70's (let's not forget that the 70's were the salad days of the swinging Silents, who were too old to be as vulnerable as Boomers and X-ers were). Also, Boomers got hit hard by the growing culture of climb up or get kicked down that intensified in the 80's (remember Robocop's boardroom massacre, where ED-209 targets a young suit and the other suits frantically push him away instead of defending him?)
I think that declining testerone levels have as much to do with changes in bullying culture as anything else. Teen X'ers in the 80's and 90's often looked very physically developed. Aggro Gen X culture promoted physical aggression and brash acting out.
As T levels have fallen and PC gas gathered strength, Millennials and Gen Z have grown up being told that violence is the worst thing in the world; that driving is dangerous and optional; that sports inflict debilitating brain injuries; and that dangerous people and situations should be avoided as much as possible. Any wonder that people look increasingly neotonous the further they were born after 1980? Silents grew up in a cocooning period but mid-century culture didn't demonize rough-housing (within reason) or having a life, unlike the soy dosed Millennial culture promoted by airhead Boomers and encouraged by a massive drop in T levels affecting us all, but which have been hardest on those who came of age in the 2000's and 2010's since these cohorts would never get the early doses of male hormones that allowed earlier generations to physically and emotionally develop much more rapidly.
Much of Gen Z culture in particular sounds disturbingly infantile and femmy. How do we expect a generation to step outside and confront anything, or even really learn anything (X-ers did more homework in the 90's than Gen Z does now), if they're programmed by nature and culture to be pansies? They can't scrape themselves off of the couch or even at times their beds, and I don't recall even Silents having that level of neurosis (young Silents learned useful skills and socialized as much as cocooning would allow in the 40's and 50's) likely because normal T levels provide you with the energy and confidence to not want to be a loser.
Also, for the record: Dazed and Confused, written by a late Boomer and set in '76, depicts a fair amount of tension between different age groups and cliques. The turn from the equitable culture of the 30's-60's was already evident as early as the mid 70's. Aggro rough housing in football and hockey got noticeably worse in the 70's, as late Silent and Boomer athletes began to affect a nasty attitude that was a big contrast to the warm sportsmanship that prevailed in the 30's-60's.
ReplyDeleteThe Silents, though cocooned, came of age in a time when there were still career opportunities to make money in manufacturing or manual labor. They learned how to build and fix things.
ReplyDeleteSame applies to the Baby Boomers - there was a lag between the onset of inequality, and the destruction of wealth, so that the Boomers still learned how to do all that stuff. Its like I heard a boomer say in an office once while watching a "how-to" show about construction: "they make shows about things I knew how to do when I was 14".
Gen-Xers, coming of age in the late 80s and beyond, were more lifestyle-oriented.
"Feeling of alienation, abandonment, and rage got stronger in the 70's and 80's, and by the 90's it seemed like there were loose cannons everywhere who felt unwanted, cheated, and depressed."
Yes, that was part of the trauma that led to cocooning and helicopter-parenting. Average people watching their kids fall into drug use, criminality, or becoming the victims of criminals. They saw helicopter-parenting as the solution to that - a way to keep them on the straight and narrow.
The rise of angry bachelors also scared the public - potential psychos everywhere. In the mid-90s, Hillary Clinton talked about "superpredators". Movies like Silence of the Lambs and Twin Peaks portrayed criminals as being almost mutant-like and supernatural.
Reading about horror movie trends helps here. Even though they're often written off as cheap and dumb, they still can project what was on people's minds at a given time.
ReplyDeleteThe 70's being the bummer that they were, it was common to portray institutions as being inept; The beaches are kept open in Jaws; Micheal Meyers isn't rehabilitated and is allowed to escape. Demonic forces seemed to be afoot too, with The Omen and The Exorcist suggesting that people were frightened that a world that once seemed orderly, sensible, well-understood had been invaded by great evil.
In the 80's, there was a shift to 3 sub-genres: Slashers, which played on the surging concern regarding then-high violent crime rates (after all, nearly all trad. slashers feature blasé protagonists being stalked and harmed in naturalistic environments). Second, there were "rubber reality" stories, kicked off by a Nightmare on Elm Street, that picked up on the 1980's tendency to accentuate the positive and glossy surface while subconsciously we knew that at any moment, the ugly reality (or ugly past) that was lurking could rear it's head at any moment. That's also what accounts for the schizo tone of the decade; we had a lot of fun and seeming prosperity, but what about MA Destruction, rising rates of homelessness, the decay of civic culture, and the aforementioned crime problems? The third type is the horror-comedy, kicked off by Gremlins and (sort of) Ghostbusters in '84. Then Fright Night, Critters, Return of the Living Dead, etc. Basically, they took every established sub-genre/type and threw some jokes in. I've heard some people say that 80's horror movies never tried to be scary, but that's way off-base. Nearly all slasher movies were played straight (yes, even A nightmare on Elm street; the later movies had quips but that doesn't make them comedies),and the more fantasy based movies(Like Hellraiser) still try to be scary and intense.
The 90's were a lame decade for horror, but as already noted, the theme of the clever/sophisticated/cunning interloper was popular. While 70's and 80's antagonists ranged from evil-incarnate to downright inscrutable, 90's "monsters" could be room mates (Single White Female), baby sitters (Hand that Rocks the Cradle), co-workers (The Temp), class-mates (Scream) etc. This does cause overlap with the Thriller genre; Horror reliably had fantasy elements in the 20's-80's, but the tendency to "explain" everything often in mundane terms in 90's horror made a lot of horror movies verge on psycho thrillers. The other dominant trend was self-aware/meta/"you know this is a movie, right?" elements, which amplified trends that could already be seen in the later 80's. Though Scream is usually blamed for this, it didn't start there. Even the other-wise straightforward Exorcist 3 (1990), inexplicably had distracting celebrity cameos (early 90's movies commonly pulled this gimmick, for reasons I can't explain or defend given how much it takes you out of the story). Neil Howe says that Boomers and X-ers were creatively exhausted by the 90's, thus why it became easier to just recycle/make fun of/demystify everything, instead of "boldly going where no man has gone before" with no smirking.
" Feeling of alienation, abandonment, and rage got stronger in the 70's and 80's, and by the 90's it seemed like there were loose cannons everywhere who felt unwanted, cheated, and depressed. "
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good point. I feel like my first response doesn't do it justice, because it goes beyond just parents beings afraid their kids will use drugs.
A large mass of men were more and more alienated during the period of rising-crime. The male suicide rate began rising during that period also, rose much more steeply than female suicides.
For some reason, cocooning is more accomodating towards these masses of men, who end up becoming angry troublemakers when crime rises.
"Wild" cycles: Hooliganism, brawling, vigilantism, lust/sex crimes (rape, child molesting, serial killing, etc.), "crimes of passion".
ReplyDeleteStriving cycles: Outbursts of simmering frustration and pique (mass murders); status-related cruelty like bullying and petty one-upmanship (think of the business card scene in American Psycho).
One thing that made the 90's so ugly was that it had strong elements of both cycles; I've been thinking that every cultural cycle is best represent by one decade. The 50's were a high and the 70's were an awakening, with the 60's being a cross between the two. The 90's were the unraveling and the 2010's a crisis period, with the 2000's being a cross between the two. As Strauss and Howe pointed out, nobody likes an unraveling period; people start to lose faith, run out of ideas, become jaded and fatalistic.
Just how the each of the 4 cycles plays out depends on the nature of striving at the time and the nature of wildness at the time. For example, the 1970's Awakening was unquestionably a wilder time than the 1990's Unraveling, yet mass murders were more common in the 90's. The cynicism and alienation that set in by the 90's made it easier to forget just how dangerous the 70's were; Boomers still are amazed by anger driven mass murders which just didn't happen when they were kids and teenagers. Young Boomers tended to kind of write off incidents of rape/robbery/murder in the Awakening that wasn't fully over until the 90's. Yeah, shit happens, there's some fruitcakes out there, but I'm just gonna do my thing.
Hyperactive anxiety takes over in the Unraveling, which has the effect of both exaggerating the current wildness level (which gradually diminished in the 90's and 2000's) and driving neurotic moods that can build into outbursts of violence and anger.
"Neil Howe says that Boomers and X-ers were creatively exhausted by the 90's, thus why it became easier to just recycle/make fun of/demystify everything, instead of "boldly going where no man has gone before" with no smirking."
ReplyDeleteNot so much that creativity was exhausted - great new ideas were coming out until the very end - but more that people were overwhelmed, couldn't handle it anymore.
Howe is right about some things, wrong about some things. The mistake h made was to try to correlate the crime rate with his 40-year cycles, which we know is wrong.
He's right that the period from 1985-present has been one of weariness and cynicism - its because striving wears on too long, people lose the adrenaline rush of being selfish and aggressive. But he's wrong to correlate a lack of creativity - the late 80s/ and early 90s were ripe with creativity, as was the early 2000s. He didn't know about cocooning when he made his theories.
for the record, I emailed him a link to a post that summarizes the cocooning theory and falling trust levels on this blog. He replied: "Thanks. Very Interesting". Who knows if he will try to do anything with it.
There's also generations to consider. Music (which is the best indication of the artistic and public mood) was best in the late 70's and 80's when most if was done by Boomers. People started getting out more often in the 60's, but that decade's music ain't all that because Silents were never going to have the charisma or conviction of the Boomers.
ReplyDeleteIn 1991, Howe mentioned cocooning as a topic that came up as early as 1988, which he attributed to Boomers growing more conservative and protective of their kids (and indeed, the birth rate among whites started rising in 1988).
Striving cycles: 50-60 years
Cocooning: 30 years
Up (bombast) or Down (austerity) style: alternates from one decade to the next, and most pronounced in the middle of the decade (mid 70's soft rock, mid 80's drum machines, mid 90's brown lipstick, mid 2000's torture porn). Our memories of a decade are typically focused on about the 4 middle years (1973-1976, 1983-1986, etc.) because the first 3 years are a continuation of the previous decade and the last 3 years a preview of the coming decade, so the beginning and end of a decade are bit too nebulous to stand out as much.
Political hysteria/civil unrest cycles: "on" for 8-10 years, "off" for 10-15 years (e.g., on in 1964-1973, off for 1974-1987, on for 1988-1995, off for 1996-2010, on 2011-present).
Activist cohorts (1943-1954, 1967-1975, 1987-1996?) vs detached and insouciant ones (1955-1966, 1976-1986, 1997-?)
The S&H 4 part history cycle theory (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis, then onto another cycle)
So yeah, there's a lot of factors to every decade's culture.
"But he's wrong to correlate a lack of creativity - the late 80s/ and early 90s were ripe with creativity, as was the early 2000s"
ReplyDeleteWell, there's quantity of creativity and then there's the tone of it. Creativity gradually rises in the first decade of wildness, attains a high level in the 2nd decade, then is maintained in the 3rd decade, before totally disappearing 5 or 6 years into the subsequent decade of cocooning. The 60's had a moderate amount of creativity, that was pretty bombastic (the 60's were a bombastic decade) with the earlier 60's being more amiable and theatrical and the later 60's being more tense and gritty (due to the activist unrest of the time). The 70's had more instantly memorable songs and movies, with the earlier 70's favoring a more idiosyncratic and pensive approach to reflect the death throes of the "counter-culture", and the later 70's being more populist to reflect the transition to greater social calm and R&R.
Things stayed on track in the 80's, though the bombast got turned up with each passing year (by 1986, WHOOOAAAA-OHHHH, LIVIN ON A PRAYER!). In the late 80's, due to both the emergence of another activist phase and a sense that we were nearly finished with three "heavy" decades, a sort of autumnal but still edgy mood gradually took over. Also, whereas the "High" and "Awakening" cultures of the 60's and 70's allowed for a certain earnest naivete, the Unraveling culture that emerged in the 80's gave rise to sanctimonious Cassandras predicting certain doom (nuclear war, super-predators, epidemics, insolvency of personal and state finances, etc.) There's a clear shift in the late 80's to movie characters being more shallow, annoying, glib, competitive, etc. Some of this could also be attributed to early cocooning, buy hyper snarky and loud-mouthed characters were not very common in 40's and 50's movies (One reason Batman and Robin was so awful was because the people involved clearly missed the mark on capturing the irresistibly bubbly camp of the early 60's TV show, which was made when the national mood was much more buoyant. If the 60's were flamboyantly optimistic, the 80's were flamboyantly brooding (the post-apocalyptic movies, the surly action heroes, the pouting power ballads).