I'm only slowly catching up with this story, Chet, but am I right in gathering that the Notional Pest is taking on the likes of McMillan and Shaidle as regular columnists, or is this some kind of specialty week, like the Let's Lie about Choice week they recently had?
McMillan thinks that Swift wanted a famine? Wow -- that takes the cake, you should pardon the expression, for disastrously bad readings. She should stick to literary and historical figures she is actually in some sympathy with, although it's true that few such names ever live on except in infamy.
Offhand, I'd dismiss this churlish bit of idiotic ranting as another piece of mean-minded tripe from the creatrix of SDA, but that would be assuming that she actually has a functional mind.
I'm just more disturbed that the national media think it's worthwhile to feature this kind of mindless drivel (which is really uninformed analysis leading to flawed conclusions and inappropriate solutions...ie, FAILURE). What kind of people are in charge, exactly?
There also seems to be a conspiracy of...I don't know what to call it...bonhommie?..professional courtesy?..among the brighter lights in the media (both of them) to avoid addressing this issue, which, as a media issue, is in fact, interesting and fascinating.
Actually, I had long pondered the disappearance of fortitude from modern, western civilization. Note Kate's remarks about the lack of grief counsellors, four dead children, etc.
Somehow, people seemed to survive what for us would be horrific personal ordeals, and they did it without a lot of belly-aching.
Kate's points - unfortunately missed by the usual brilliant Dawg - were:
1. We really lead soft lives compared to how it used to be;
2. We should view what riles us today in their proper, historical contexts (i.e. we never had it so good), and
3. We need to toughen up a bit as a people. Our collective identity has become wrecked upon the shoals of liberal entitlement and the virtue of victimhood.
I agree with her.
I'm not Dawg, but I'll answer this:
First of all, the idea that people survived hardship without complaining about it is simply without foundation. People have always complained about hardship. Much older art and literature is dedicated to exactly that.
Sure, we lead softer lives now than our ancestors did. Know why? Because our ancestors didn't like leading hard lives, and wanted to make damn sure their children didn't have to.
We're plenty tough as a people. When disasters happen, people now are as tough as they ever were. I hate to invoke 9/11 in this context, but when it happened, did people in New York shriek and scream and cower? Of course they didn't. People have always had the ability to rise to the occasion.
And finally, what McMillan is recommending here has a name: social engineering. She believes that the the structures that we as a people have built in our civilization ought to be dismantled because she wants to bring about some kind of transformation of our character. No thanks. My character, flawed or not, is my own, and I don't need people like her messing about with it.
Chet, you touch upon an interesting point, for all their bitching and moaning about the left changing things and interfering etc and how they want people left alone to do their own thing, the right sure seems to want to mess with society....
AS up there is referring to a cartoon version of reality...one that's built entirely on a media representation of real life.
He (or maybe she) is watching too much teevee about grief and tragedy and has precious little of the real thing to deal with.
...and where's gratitude? Nowhere. Apparently, not enough grief leads some people to wish for more.
Odd. Very odd.
He (or maybe she) is watching too much teevee [sic] about grief and tragedy and has precious little of the real thing to deal with.
Well, I could respond by saying that I have had more first hand experience with death and grief than you, but then I would be making the same kind of baseless assumptions about your life that you made about mine.
Instead, I will simply observe that what you pompously refer to as "civilization" has many benefits, but at least one unfortunate side effect: it has made people weaker. That's what happens when our characters are no longer shaped by adversity.
Only in a Liberal world is that a good thing.
AS and your solution is what?
A return to nomadic times? Hunting and gathering? Running Man?
Only a right wing git would think that a return to barbary would be a good thing.
C'mon, Cameron, you have to distinguish between extreme right wing gits and moderate right wing gits. True, we are all prone to pining for the good old days, but the nostalgic yearnings of we moderates run more to the "Happy Days" of the 1950's than to trying to eke out a precarious living in a sod hut on the frozen prairie. Or maybe we're just effete Easterners.
But even though I grant you conservatives tend to idealize the recent past more, it was boneheads on the left who started this game. State of Nature? Noble Savage? Margaret Mead?
AS:
They may not have had grief counsellors, but they had priests amd ministers who played comparable roles. A far superior and more effective ballast in my view, but that is an argument for another day.
They may not have had grief counsellors, but they had priests and ministers who played comparable roles. A far superior and more effective ballast in my view, but that is an argument for another day.
More to the point, they had faith. I have been making the Stations of the Cross this Lent, and perhaps that it what makes me think about the lost strength of character afflicting us today.
AS and your solution is what?
A return to nomadic times? Hunting and gathering? Running Man?
No. I think there must be a a way to advance the civilized part of man, without forgoing character to the dawning culture of entitlement and victimhood.
Can you not imagine such a world?
AS: The world you're railing against exists largely between your ears.
Peter: It's not harkening back to olden times that bothers me, it's the blinkered nature of your harkening.
In that the right reminds me of the goofs at the Society of Creative Anachronisms or various other Ren Faire asshats. Everyone wants to be the hot wench or the princess or the king or knight or monk and no one wants to be the serf or the slave or the poor sod who was meant to rush the highly trained warrior with nothing but a stick.
If you were white and middle classed the 1950s etc were great times, if you were poor and not white they were not.
"If you were white and middle classed the 1950s etc were great times, if you were poor and not white they were not."
Cameron, what you're say is more or less true, especially if you substitute "American blacks" for the vague "poor and non-white." Jim Crow firmly in place in the South, lots of segregation in the North, blacks' incomes and educational levels dramatically lower than whites'.
On the other hand, if you look at rate of improvement, the 1950s have it all over recent decades. Legal segregation was shattered, black incomes and educational levels jumped in comparison to whites, and poor urban blacks showed far less of the social dysfunction that emerged in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
The story since 1965, despite liberal triumphalism, has been far more mixed, with slower advances and massive retreats. How come? Did the white racists finally get their act together and push back? Or was there something wrong with the type of left-wing politics that emerged in the mid-1960s, both its black and white varieties. Obviously, my suspicions fall on the latter.
IP, my feeling is that poor and not white are really vague defining lines, that the real line is simply poor.
The difference between a poor black person in an American inner city and any white person who lives in South Boston are almost completely skin deep, it's just that (in the US at least) the poor are disproportionately black.
The world you're railing against exists largely between your ears.
That's pretty much it. The ideologically conservative mind is rich in symbolism, which is a very handy thing when your beliefs never have to intersect with how the world actually works.
I think you're underestimating the problems facing U.S. blacks specifically, but in general I agree: the same set of problems plague the urban poor in the U.S., Canada, and Britain regardless of race. In different proportions, however.
My main point, though, was that the transformation of left and centre-left during and after the 1960s doesn't seem to have helped things - in fact, seems to have screwed things up.
This was the insight of the original neocons in the States. I mean the sensible, domestic-policy neocons (Pat Moynihan et al. - "liberals mugged by reality"), not the insane, foreign-policy neocons who came later. (True, some of them were the same people, but whatever...)
but the nostalgic yearnings of we moderates run more to the "Happy Days" of the 1950's than to trying to eke out a precarious living in a sod hut on the frozen prairie.
The 'happy days' (or Cleaver family) of the 1950's you long for are also unfortunately just another myth.
IP, I don't discount the specific issues facing US blacks, I just think that there is a Robert Kennedy argument to be that poverty is more of an issue than just race.
You know, I've never seen an episode of Leave It to Beaver, but I gather it presented an idealised view of American middle-class life in the late 50s/early 60s. Well, 'idealised' is not the same as 'myth' in the sense you're using that word, FF.
The general wonderfulness of life in the 1950s was no myth for the white American middle class and working class. Especially the working class. There was steady employment; blue-collar wages rose to record levels in relation to white-collar wages; families that in the 20s and 30s would have lived in walk-up apartments now owned houses; universities opened up to the non-wealthy, non-brilliant. Crime was low; family breakups were low; public education was mediocre but improving.
For blacks and other minorities things were not as rosy, but (as I pointed out early) they were improving a faster pace than anytime before or since.
If the economic and social trends of the 50s had continued to the present, we'd be living, maybe not in utopia, but somewhere a lot better than what we have. So where did we go wrong? Are we still blaming Nixon?
Nixon or Clinton... I can't figure out which ex-Pres we're blaming this week...
Cameron, Frank:
I think we all understand, or should, that nostalgia is figurative, not literal. We also all understand that material security has increased steadily over the past several hundred years, so it's easy to play the "do you want to send children back to the mines?" game that my decidedly conservative, capitalist father used to play on me. But it's a mug's game if played literally. I sure wouldn't want to be a black in the American south in the 1950's compared to today, but how about an African, Cuban, hopeful Muslim progressive or labour union leader? And am I supposed to assume that that the cute, wholesome, fun family on "Happy Days" or the Cleavers were irredeemably racist by definition, but only when the cameras were turned off?
However, to my friend's on the left I ask, if so much today is better than in yesteryear, does that mean nothing is worse? Does it mean that material improvements and progress trump whatever is worse by definition (i.e. without argument)? If that is so, then surely tomorrow will be better than today ipso facto, so why are you folks such doom and gloomers about climate, health, population, resources, democracy, etc.? The left in the thirties was decidedly progressive in the sense of looking forward to the future, but the modern roccoco version seems more corporate and averse to change than the medieval Catholic Church.
Frank:
"The 'Happy Days' (or Cleaver family) of the 1950's you long for are also unfortunately just another myth."
So, can I assume the same thing about "Will and Grace" today?
However, to my friend's on the left I ask, if so much today is better than in yesteryear, does that mean nothing is worse?
So far in this discussion, I've seen "better" and "worse" thrown around without much qualification or indeed, any data.
I wasn't alive in the 50's and barely remember the 60's. The only thing that has gotten worse, in opinion, is the abandonment of widely acknowledged standards and authorities. And I chalk that up to commerce and business practices (especially where the media is concerned) more than anything else.
What is much improved is access to information. However along with the abandonment of standards, simply replacing limited access to quality information with easy access to a glut of what is mostly disinformation doesn't seem like much of an improvement at all. In fact, I think it's been a disaster.
AS, what I "pompously refer to as 'civilization'" is, in fact, civilization: life in civil society; the alternative to barbarism. There's nothing "pompous" about referring to something by its proper name.
if so much today is better than in yesteryear, does that mean nothing is worse?
Of course it doesn't. But on the whole, we're better off than we used to be.
If that is so, then surely tomorrow will be better than today ipso facto,
Nope, nobody's making that argument. Specific improvements happen because people make them happen; there's nothing magical about the process, and it doesn't run in straight lines or on its own.
The last 50 years have been mixed bag, for sure. To make a sweeping generalisation, anything having to do with technology is much, much better; many things to do with social cohesion are worse.
For an example of the latter, take suicide rates. Looking at U.S. figures, the overall is actually down about 25 percent since 1950, but that is almost entirely the result of old people killing themselves less often. I'd ascribe the decrease to Social Security. But youth suicide (ages 15-24) has doubled, and child suicide has tripled. That's very disturbing and suggests some very profound negative change has taken place.
But youth suicide (ages 15-24) has doubled, and child suicide has tripled. That's very disturbing and suggests some very profound negative change has taken place.
Unless we have a proper understanding of what prevented child and youth suicide in the past (and assuming the issues involved in reporting deaths as suicides are not significant), this doesn't really say much.
Don't get me wrong; I think there is something disturbing happening, but I'm concerned about faulty analyses leading to false conclusions and innapropriate remediation.
I happen to think a big part of the problem is simply horrible urban planning.
I just picked a random example of a trend that's obviously negative; I don't have a theory to go along with it, except my usual socon prejudices. At a guess, family breakup is the biggest factor - though I agree the dire cityscapes we've been creating since 1950 haven't helped.
It's true that a lot of suicides were covered back then, but there are other indicators pointing in the same direction. With depression, for example, I believe there is a cohort effect. In other words, it's not just that more people were diagnosed with depression in the 90s than in the 60s (which might be an artefact of changing diagnostic practices), it's that GenX-ers were more susceptible than Boomers, who were more susceptible than people born before World War II, who were more susceptible than people born before World War I.
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