Our good friend the Zman is indicting America for its materialism.
Well yes, but not because of conservative white people. Our white culture is bound around the notion expressed in the Founding that we want to put a short leash on government and political power through the separation of powers. And that the normal day-to-day acquisition of material goods should be regulated throught the market economy where people labor to provide goods and services to meet other peoples' needs and that the material problem is solved by mutual service.
This is a cultural agenda that works pretty well for people that feel materially secure. But what about the rest of us?
I'd say that the success of leftist politics over the last 200 years is founded on the fact that, for the workers in 1848, and the blacks in 1958, the material question was front and center. As it had been for nearly everybody down the ages.
And really, it doesn't take much of a genius to convert the age-old culture of loot and plunder from looting the neihboring princedom to looting the princes of commerce.
When the lefties have adapted the old loot-and-plunder culture for use in democratic politics, then that is only game in town, until it isn't. We have seen how the polite conservatism of the last 50 years worked out. It didn't. Lefties always come up with a new reason to loot the capitalists and plunder the middle class and divide the nation into Us and Them.
And even if the left left off proposing new ways to tax and loot businesses and billionaires there would always be the backup: protecting the existing loot and plunder in entitlements and government employee pensions and stuff: don't let Republicans take it all away!
The problem -- and it is a gigantic problem -- is not "re-conditioning people to think culturally." The problem is to "condition" the workers and the minorities to think in cultural terms rather than material terms for the first time in history. Now there is a project for the ages!
And what better way to do that than to work on what the Zman in another piece calls the false idea of America as one nation.
In my view all nationalisms and tribalisms are fake tribalisms; they are the cooked up idea that "we," whoever "we" are, are a single People. But nothing is cast in stone. People change, and if you play your cards right you can persuade people to switch from one fake tribalism to another. When are disaparate peoples most likely to be persuaded that they are one People? Exactly, when their leaders unite them to fight a war.
So let us accept the idea that the United States started out as a federation of nations. After the Civil War, it was two nations, North and South. But then in the later 19th century it split up again, particularly on class and ethnic lines. World War II, I argue, united the disparate quarreling parts into a single nation. But in the Sixties the New Left split us apart again.
Let us be clear. The left believes in salvation by politics. But politics is division, into Us and Them. So inevitably everything the left does results in division and splitting. And one thing that our lefty ruling class is always working on is the fundamental Original Sin of America in slavery and racism and now toxic masculinity. It is a world view of division, between innocent slaves and evil racists, between innocent women and monstrous men.
The idea of the Nation is to unite all the peoples in America into a single People. And that is what Donald Trump is trying to do, to make people think of themselves as Americans rather than hyphenated Americans.
The question is whether anyone can unite us from our squabbling tribes without uniting us into a new tribe to fight a war.
This is particularly true of conservative white people, who have been trained their whole lives to define their existence by the amount of stuff their heirs will throw away when they die. Theirs is an entirely materialist existence, so the transition to cultural thinking is going to be difficult.The great challenge, he avers, "will be re-conditioning people to think culturally, rather than materially."
Well yes, but not because of conservative white people. Our white culture is bound around the notion expressed in the Founding that we want to put a short leash on government and political power through the separation of powers. And that the normal day-to-day acquisition of material goods should be regulated throught the market economy where people labor to provide goods and services to meet other peoples' needs and that the material problem is solved by mutual service.
This is a cultural agenda that works pretty well for people that feel materially secure. But what about the rest of us?
I'd say that the success of leftist politics over the last 200 years is founded on the fact that, for the workers in 1848, and the blacks in 1958, the material question was front and center. As it had been for nearly everybody down the ages.
And really, it doesn't take much of a genius to convert the age-old culture of loot and plunder from looting the neihboring princedom to looting the princes of commerce.
When the lefties have adapted the old loot-and-plunder culture for use in democratic politics, then that is only game in town, until it isn't. We have seen how the polite conservatism of the last 50 years worked out. It didn't. Lefties always come up with a new reason to loot the capitalists and plunder the middle class and divide the nation into Us and Them.
And even if the left left off proposing new ways to tax and loot businesses and billionaires there would always be the backup: protecting the existing loot and plunder in entitlements and government employee pensions and stuff: don't let Republicans take it all away!
The problem -- and it is a gigantic problem -- is not "re-conditioning people to think culturally." The problem is to "condition" the workers and the minorities to think in cultural terms rather than material terms for the first time in history. Now there is a project for the ages!
And what better way to do that than to work on what the Zman in another piece calls the false idea of America as one nation.
The United States was never a nation in the tradition[al] sense. It was always a federation of nations. The structure the Founders created was an explicit acknowledgement of it. The regional difference in the colonies at the time of the founding were not superficial. Those regional differences are still with us today, despite the migrant wave unleashed on many parts by the ruling class. America was always a house with many mansions.
Therefore, to speak of national character, other than in the most general terms, is to misunderstand the country and its people.Baloney and balderdash! For sure, the Founders understood that to create the United States they had to condone the various localisms in the various colonies. But that was then; this is now.
In my view all nationalisms and tribalisms are fake tribalisms; they are the cooked up idea that "we," whoever "we" are, are a single People. But nothing is cast in stone. People change, and if you play your cards right you can persuade people to switch from one fake tribalism to another. When are disaparate peoples most likely to be persuaded that they are one People? Exactly, when their leaders unite them to fight a war.
So let us accept the idea that the United States started out as a federation of nations. After the Civil War, it was two nations, North and South. But then in the later 19th century it split up again, particularly on class and ethnic lines. World War II, I argue, united the disparate quarreling parts into a single nation. But in the Sixties the New Left split us apart again.
Let us be clear. The left believes in salvation by politics. But politics is division, into Us and Them. So inevitably everything the left does results in division and splitting. And one thing that our lefty ruling class is always working on is the fundamental Original Sin of America in slavery and racism and now toxic masculinity. It is a world view of division, between innocent slaves and evil racists, between innocent women and monstrous men.
The idea of the Nation is to unite all the peoples in America into a single People. And that is what Donald Trump is trying to do, to make people think of themselves as Americans rather than hyphenated Americans.
The question is whether anyone can unite us from our squabbling tribes without uniting us into a new tribe to fight a war.
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