I will probably pitch a review of One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, but since Matt Yglesias is pushing for preorders, I will note a few things about the book that might induce some people to buy it.
Firstly, it’s not a case for “open borders”. The title is kind of a gimmick or hook. Yglesias spends a bit of time laying out why one billion Americans isn’t crazy (our density would be like France, not Singapore), but he’s not that focused on the number and getting to it. Rather, from the perspective of someone on the Right, the takeaways from this book that were positive are that he actually makes an argument for “national greatness”, for families and children, and the conviction that America is not totally corrupt and unsalvageable. This is all clearly aimed at a college-educated liberal audience, so Yglesias has to be careful about how he makes some of them, but I’m glad someone is making the case. It takes some courage, for example, to accede to liberal concerns about climate change, but rebut catastrophism and suggest that the future could actually be better than the present.
For me, the less compelling sections of the book are those where he’s making points that agree with the priors of those of his liberal audience. Yglesias could say anything about how great mass transit is, and his audience would go along with it. So I don’t feel that those portions were given as much thought as the “Slate-pitch” aspects. Anticipating criticism sharpens the mind! Expecting adulation does not.
Finally, for those on the Right, the idea of mass immigration is terrifying. If you aren’t a libertarian, I don’t think Yglesias will convince you. But, to be frank I’m a lot more open to the idea because I’m not sure what sort of culture we’re trying to save at this point. Our cultural elites are pretty rancid in my opinion. The ultimate question is whether they are capable of making immigrants “turn” faster than their utility would be for the type of people that think nuclear families are great and should be promoted. If the number of immigrants is small obviously they will fall in line. But what if it is so large that they can insulate themselves more?* I know it sounds crazy. But 2020 is crazy already…
* From what I have heard from friends, the “woke” activism at places like Google did not come from the Chinese and Indian foreign nationalists, who are insulated from that sort of thing.
First of all, I want to stress that I agree with family and social cohesion being key to any healthy and prospering society. However, as an European, I have to shudder if thinking about my people being actually replaced by wave after wave from incoming new people. I’m not against immigration and gene flow per se, but we’re no longer talking about “some admixture”, we’re talking about Europeans actually disappearing, becoming small remains in a new gene pool, probably even like Neandertals. This might sound funny to some, but the birth rates of Europeans vs. immigration and foreign people birth rates are no hallucination and one just has to calculate the demographic future to come to this conclusion. Now people could say that the USA are not Europe, and I agree. Yet its an European country effectively to this date. Now if the world loses just the European character of the USA, I could still say, well, I don’t like it, but its probably ok with me. BUT, and there comes the biggest issue I have with this: Everything, every good and every bad influence, which becomes predominant in the USA being washed to Europe and the rest of the “Western influenced” world.
Like we had no reason for “Metoo” or “black lives matters” in the same way as the USA, there was no reason at all that something like that would have come up here, independently. Like “political correctness”, about which some of my professors, Left-Liberals, laughed when it came out first. They never thought that we Europeans, would swallow that dirt and take it seriously. How wrong they were!
The European political, economic and medial structures are completely dependent from the US Oligarchy. They are deeply rooted and connected to it. This means if the USA goes down, before Europe could emancipate itself truly from its Oligarchy, the whole occident will crumble. Whatever happens in the USA is absolutely central for much of the world and mankind.
That makes it so much worse: You can’t even say “I migrate to another Western European derived country to flee from Capitalism & Cultural Marxism”. In the mid-20th century, at the time of National Socialism and Communism and very different other conservative, democratic and mildly Socialist countries, you could still choose which system you prefer to live in, if being ready to move.
Now there is no choice any more and like with free opinion on the internet, the Oligarchy will try to make it everywhere the same, with nothing to flee and go anywhere. So what happens in the USA does matter to me not just because of relatives living there, this state and what happens in it, determines the future of the world and mankind, as bad as it is.
But let’s assume I wouldn’t care about the biological survival of European people at all, let’s say it doesn’t matter, its all about culture alone, you still have no viable solution with immigration.
Why? Because there is not one immigration to begin with, there are different people coming and different qualities, different attitudes and cultural backgrounds. Even from the same state and region, like I once told for people from Afghanistan: High level, intelligent, well-mannered people in the 1980, practically no criminals, violent and Islamist people, mostly from a Nationalist, Communist, Liberal-Democratic or just general bourgeois background fleeing from the Islamist onslaught. The second wave in the 2010’s and still coming is very different, actually the opposite.
In numbers, the elite immigration was exceptional, their numbers were low. The mass of people coming to European countries, and the same is true for the USA, is not like that.
And those immigrants which are best compatible with Europeans, as individuals and families, are, as a rule, also those most susceptible to the same mistakes and fallacies. They repeat the same pattern as do conservative country people of European descent which come to cosmopolitan, culturally degeneratated, purely Capitalist urban centres:
The first generation, even though rejecting the conservatism of the parents and relatives, still manages to keep up some values of importance, especially the priority of decency, honesty and family values. They might be atheists, they might be Liberals, but they are, more often than other urbanites, not completely rootless and arbitrary.
The second generation is a 50:50 chance, and the 3rd generation is, more often than not, and unless this family really evolves a new conservative ethnic and moral, completely lost.
That’s because the current, materialistic Western Capitalist system, in which money is everything, and the money flow controlled by a few, is unhealthy in itself and even the alternative concepts in the form of Cultural Marxism coming from this root are unnatural and not sustainable.
So what’s the end result in either case? Its a race of the Oligarchy towards total surveillance and technical control before the old social cohesion, which it fights to not become a target of the self-defence of the people in the transition, being so completely eroded and the population divided, that they don’t care any more.
Because the future is no longer dependent on millions of supporters, people can be – or that’s the vision – could be controlled by a few mercenaries and the money givers on top. That’s why the Oligarchy doesn’t care for demography or the future, its not just because they are short sighted and have no long term orientation because of greed alone, which is true as well, but this would be naive to assume. Because people being just a resource in this system, children expensive, and a homogeneous, socially cohesive people dangerous, because they could conspire to actually change the “elite” if its no true elite, but does more harm than good.
The immigration which is coming being split into those better assimilable, usually also more productive, and those not. The tragedy is, the better assimilable a people are, as a group or individuals, the more likely they fall victim to the same diseases Europeans die from themselves: They have no sustainable lifestyle in this Capitalist society further poisened by Cultural Marxism, which allied itself with this Oligarchy. Family and children are too much of an investment and a distraction from wealth, career and self-realisation. Also, for women they make them more dependent and put them in a “traditional role”, whereas for men the financial and personal risk is even higher, while contraception and aboration easy to do, at least for intelligent people. So there is, for “well-assimilated immigrants”, on the longer term as low as an incentive to found and keep healthy families, unless they are very, very child-loving. And even then its just a lifestyle issue to have one kid, maximal two kids, which doesn’t balance the feminists and career-people and hedonists out. So again, a dead end.
Now for the current establishment, “fighting white & male privilece” (in combination only) is like a propagandistic cement for all, for whites because they being kept in guilt, for the rest because they can concentrate on hate on people they can grasp, which are near them, and which they can stomp on argumentatively to give relief to their own social frustration. Which also means, that once this hallucinated “evil force” is so completely eroded, the system needs to create a new boogey man to keep people under check. At that time, since the Oligarchy itself will remain largely “white looking”, might be the most critical time in the history of this transition.
But like I said, this road to global dominance of a small group of people already relies on technical auxiliary means, and they just calculate that this will improve before the old pillars of the Western society collapsed completely.
Just consider how many people were needed to manipulate and control people in every era? The number was shrinking constantly. The best Roman armies could fight “Barbarian” enemies and revolts many times their size. Even in the peasant wars, a fairly small number of professional soldiers and knights could finish off a much larger rebellion.
Print allowed the spread of both state propaganda, as well as criticism.
Now we enter an era in which even journalists can be reduced, police men, soldiers. At some point you mainly need technicians on your payroll.
And what’s the potential for change from the immigrants? Like I said, the majority of the higher level and good to assimilate immigrants suffer from the same problems as Europeans, and the rest is more inclined to follow, if at all, more radical and “simpler” revolutionary approaches. Something between Communism, anarchy and Islamism is more likely to arise from it, than anything useful for an occidental revival if the Oligarchy fails with its plans. This might even result in a total comllapse of civilisation.
So I’m all for allying up with good people around the world, and immigrants in European countries with a good will, for making a change for a better future for all, but mass immigration as such just makes the situation worse, by any means.
One has to question the two main problems: The corrupted Capitalist Oligarchy and structures – I don’t mean to give up on market economy and introduce any “Communism”, absolutely not, just to make that clear. But the state needs to control some areas of society and economy and the influence of big money and the financial Capitalism needs to be cut back.
The second problem is the Cultural Marxist/Critical theory derived Leftism (anti-male, anti-white, anti-occidental, anti-biologistic, anti-logic, anti-traditionalist etc.), which got corrupted and instrumentalised by the current Oligarchy for its own goals and social engineering and is highly detrimental in itself.
These are the two main problems of not just the Western, but the current world system.
The third is religious fanatism which damages the modern technological and societal progress, but this is not that much of a problem for the USA, for which Cultural Marxism and Capitalism are the now predominant dogmas, as conflicting as these two are.
Both are effectively materialist in a detrimental way and without making a stand against it, there is no solution to anything for the majority of people and the future of mankind.
American right has guns. American military personnels are mostly sympathetic to the right. If the cultural left crosses a line, would the right stay loyal to the constitution? Constitution is only valid as long as both sides think they can win under its rule. But if the demographics of the country have been changed so much by the elite in the past few decades that right can no longer win, would they remain loyal to the constitutional republic. Why wouldnt they use their guns, execute the cultural elite and install an authoritarian republic. The right would need an effective leader who could sway the masses, but 2020 is already crazy enough.
Right. Let’s put it this way: the petition to redo Season 8 of Game of Thrones has (as of now) 1.8 million signatures. How many signatures do petitions to protect the Founders’ statues have? Do they even exist?
I’m broadly Right-leaning, not sure what exactly conservatives are supposed to be conserving besides tribalism, political polarization, culture wars, morbid obesity, verbal showmanship, and generalized nastiness. When I look at America, I don’t see much worth celebrating or defending.
So on that note, I’m all for a demographic metamorphosis. It’s time for large scale immigration to wholly change America, and restore its old dynamism and glory.
@H.M.:
“So on that note, I’m all for a demographic metamorphosis. It’s time for large scale immigration to wholly change America, and restore its old dynamism and glory.”
The state is a mean for a culture, the culture is a mean for a people. If you eliminate the people and culture, what’s the state for? Probably only for those running it for getting even more power and making even more money?
That’s the exact failure of the American system. We read probably a lot about Western civilisation and how it was coming up. The problem is, the very West went much to far, and too far of all went the United States, because they cut their roots and made money the new god.
Not all the people, but the state as such evolved in that direction, step by step.
Whatever would come out of a transformation by immigration will have little to do with anything resembling “old ideals”, and for the next time it will just make times easier for the Plutocrats. Because part of the problem is that they don’t need to have families for regional children and reproduction, because they import new people whenever they need it, which might be even less demanding and rebellious at first.
They don’t need good education (just indoctrination) or socially cohesive communities and well-paid workers, because they can import cheap new ones. So the balance between the classes is broken.
They don’t need the production in the country, because with the military, political, propagandistic and especially financial global power, the Oligarchy controls much of the world’s economy anyway (still).
That’s why they can do so many things wrong, why they think they can act short sighted without really harming their long term success. Because they feel so save and have still so many options, that they can largely neglect the very base of their initial success, without which they would have never get that rich, safe and powerful. Its the very country, I mean really the country, no state, no constitution, I mean the very country, the soil on which the United states were founded, and the people which build it up, defended it, fought for its rise and world dominance, even in the Oligarchy’s names on numerous occasions. But they don’t care, because they think money and control can buy them everything and if the people don’t function like they want, they just replace them.
And I tell you something else: The people, even those which are not “awaken” and “political”, even those which still trust their masters and system, they feel it, they feel the neglect and that everything is going wrong, somewhere deep in their hearts. Both on the upper echelons, but also in their neighbourhoods and families. They might tell you how super and progressive things are, but they getting holed.
Looking at the drug and opioid crisis in the United states, I really can’t think of much else. Also the youth culture, trends like mutilitaing oneself, scarring oneself, but also other trends. In many other countries only poor people are in that bad of shape, but in the USA, even the rich ones are more often distorted. Even looking at the Plutocracy, which are the only winners of this system, in theory, but are they doing really that well? They ruin everything which was build up in generations, they laugh and are arrogant about it, yet they thsemselves are not in good shape either. It will be a tragedy, it really is, and worst the USA are tearing OTHERS DOWN AS WELL.
Nations and states which would have never gone the same path down the drain without the “big brother”.
If you don’t get your things straight, I just hope you don’t drag the whole planet into the hellhole this state creates. Like if someone wants to commit suicide, people can offer help, but if this individual just doesn’t change its mind and is absolutely determined, just don’t run amok and ruin other’s existence. At this point, looking at what the USA did in recent years and where it was going since the 1990’s in particular, I guess more and more people around the world would just with that. If you can’t help yourself, leave others alone. But I guess that’s not something the Oligarchy wants to do. And the left? Some call Trump a war criminal
https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-say-trump-should-be-charged-war-crimes-iran-soleimani-2020-1
Yet Obama did more illegal actions and actual war crimes of significance per year than Trump in all of his presidency (so far). That tells you something about how manipulated the American, and even world public, is, how they are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality and what to expect from a new “Democratic” president with his prompters for the world. Imagine those guys which already bomb us with Liberal and Cultural Marxist propaganda poison day by day, hour by hour, from the United states Liberal centers, get their hands on bombs again. Makes me sick.
With Clinton as president the whole Middle East would have burned already, god knows where we would have landed! The USA are like a wounded animal by now, which is biting around and gets more aggressive with every pain it suffers, but instead of curing itself, it hurts others too. The USA needs to cure itself, otherwise it will become a catastrophy.
The problem is, these people have no power to go against the trend sponsored by the actual current elite. Increase their numbers, and they still won’t make a dent. The US (and its periphery) got woker despite getting more foreigners over the last years.
And of course, there’s the problem of whether the children of these foreign nationalists will be any saner than the current elite or will just join the general madness. AFAIK, 2nd generation Cuban-Americans have not stopped the nutcases and gen Mexican-Americans have not been as family-oriented as their parents.
If one looks at voting patterns by demographics, only about 30% of immigrants (and children of) vote conservative, at the high end. Newer generations in the US get more liberal as more share of the population are born to immigrants:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/20/latino-voters-favor-raising-minimum-wage-government-involvement-in-health-care-stricter-gun-laws/?amp=1
This also holds for values like free speech:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/?amp=1
Ditto on gun rights:
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/pdf/gun-control-2011.pdf
One of the sources of growing political polarization is laid out in the generational voting data.
If anyone has evidence that US immigrants will majority vote for American values and the Bill of Rights rather than against them, let’s see it.
Until then, if we don’t select immigrants for compatibility, they will ultimately destroy free speech, free press, a non-censored Internet, right to bear arms, etc. The failure of the US to select from the 60s onwards bears this out in the voting data.
If you know conservative immigrants (or descendants), that’s not an indicator of broader trends. Birds of a feather flock together, or in this case, produce sampling bias.
@Obs
Yes, this a thousand times. The cultural periphery is always aping the metropolis, which begets some bad results even when the things being copied are good in themselves (but just unfit for the aping country). Imagine when the things being copied are insane.
“The problem is, these people have no power to go against the trend sponsored by the actual current elite. Increase their numbers, and they still won’t make a dent. The US (and its periphery) got woker despite getting more foreigners over the last years.”
Its even worse. I grew up with immigrants coming from more conservative countries, they still had good values and I prefered their position more than once before that of my own local people, which I considered morally deranged much more often.
Yet what did happen in all these years? Some of them turned into the most radical Cultural Marxists of all, because they could feel better making themselves “victims” and others bad, by swallowing the whole ideology! Now they even accuse their parents and relatives of not accepting the ideological truth and influence THEIR HOME COUNTRIES with propaganda paid by Western Plutocrat sponsored foundations!
Instead of having a good influence on the local people, they support extreme Leftism, of the worst sort, even though they got all the advantages, get a good education and study for free, social care and insurance, never they were seriously discriminated, but the teachers planted ideas in their heads and the media did the rest.
Now they indocrinate their “less educated” parents, relatives and people in their home country. Its so great.
There are those other cases, people which don’t change that much of their attitude, but even those have a funny approach:
They are leftist extremists here, where they can say how bad everything is and how they being discriminated, but they are aggressive nationalists at home or if its about their ethnic pride and power even in their host countries. Like on one day demonstrating “against discrimination” by the local people, for no good reason, and the next day beating up some other immigrants or anyone because of not showing “enough respect for their nation” or just demanding minority rights in their home country (best example: Attacks of Turkish nationalists on Kurds everywhere in Europe).
So they didn’t internalise the Cultural Marxist ideas at all, but they abuse it for their own social forthcoming and position in society.
And most of the best integrated and accepted immigrants don’t care at all, at least they are neutral. But a help for any kind of “revival” they won’t be, nowhere. Individual exceptions just prove the rule.
The differences between Western states are not that big. Most make the same experience in general with specific immigrant groups in particular.
@ Harry Jecs
The American right loves to bluster about how they own all the guns and have the military on their side but neither of these claims are as strong as they were just 5-10 years ago. When Trump did his little church-walk photo-op back in June in the midst of the all protest pandemonium that was going on in front of the White House, a few days later his own Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman issued a video statement apologizing for taking part in the whole spectacle. Not to mention the military ordering the renaming of all bases named after Confederate generals, banning the use of the Confederate flag, etc. And I also saw on Twitter a few weeks ago a bunch of people dunking on the CIA for issuing a statement in support of Black Trans Lives Matter or something to that effect. Even amongst the military and intelligence agencies, the internal culture is being shaped by this newly ascendant Progressivism/Leftism/Wokeism/whatever.
The right’s bragadaccio over their high rates of civilian gun ownership I also think is rather hollow. Even if there is a relatively large number of of far-right gun hoarder types, they’re mostly sprinkled across a vast expanse of sub-urban and rural areas and they don’t have any higher organization or super-structure to which they can coalesce around. What good am I with all my AR-15s and 9mms when I’m only an army of one? Antifa cells seem to be more effective at organizing their followers than anything on the far-right.
If anyone has evidence that US immigrants will majority vote for American values and the Bill of Rights rather than against them, let’s see it.
you miss my meaning. THE OLD AMERICA IS DEAD.
i’ve been broadly supportive of restrictionism since the late 1990s. why am i giving up? because i don’t think there’s really any hope to ‘make america great again’.
it’s 2020. donald trump is president. there are huge numbers of ppl with bourgeois values out there. but what we have is an ascendence of what i can only call inversion and perversion. we’ve gone from tolerating difference to inverting the norms of most societies. it’s disgusting.
now, restrictionism makes sense for all the reasons you guys outline above. the native population has a stake. it matters. but the native population isn’t reproducing. also, the native population cares more about its consumer goods than its values. what are we preserving here??? i’m an american with 3 children, and i’m terrified about what i’m seeing around me. and we have a based republican president! i don’t want immigrants to assimilate into this culture. i want them to overwhelm it so that family-life is something that is valued as the ends of what the typical person should aspire to.
cultural marxism blah blah blah. great, they won tho didn’t they? who has kids? are europeans having kids? no. why not? who knows, but if they don’t care about their future, who will?
as for the military, etc. that’s great and i have some faint hope, but from what i’ve heard from my right-leaning friends the military leadership is easy to co-opt and isn’t made of stern stuff as we’d think 🙁
i hope i’m wrong and open-minded. but i hope i’ve made myself clear. the reason i’m now open to massive levels of immigration is i don’t want them to assimilate. we’re a repulsive culture that puts consumption and transgression at the center of things. i want them to transform us. i think the egg of americal classical liberalism has been fried, and it can’t be unfried.
current status: rod dreher is right
“2020 is crazy already”
Truth!
“cultural marxism blah blah blah. great, they won tho didn’t they? who has kids? are europeans having kids? no. why not? who knows, but if they don’t care about their future, who will?”
They care for the future, just not the future of their own people and culture. They are more concerned about any kind of foreign people at the other end of the globe or not just people, but some insects, trees and the climate, than their own lineage and nations. And those are the leftist “idealists” thanks to Horkheimer et al.
Now its about “ecological footprints of Western children” – they are too expensive now not just for education, health care, food and consumer goods, bad for the career and “women’s liberation”, but also “bad for the climate” for those maniacs.
But with some small exceptions, its all coming from America. Even if some of the ideas and people promoting it came originally from Europe, like most things anyway, the difference is “what makes it in the USA”, grows, gets big, even monstrous there, and then it tramps back with Hollywood, with American centered organisations, with millions and billions of dollars, the whole power of this huge country, just to be spread here too. So many cases where things were under control here, not good, necessarily, but ok, then came the American money and influence, everything goes down.
I completely understand your stance on assimilating your kids into the current Western, especially American popular culture. Its like throwing people in the trash, that’s like it is. Like with the generations from the countryside. Latest in the 3rd generation they are done, your efforts, those of generations lost, because this is a sick and completely unsustainable culture.
Its funny that some anti-immigration activists argue that “foreigners are only accepted if they assimilate”, yet honestly, can anyone say its preferable for a father if his kids being raised its better to be radical transgender sex workers in a totalitarian surveillance state of the Plutocracy than founding a family and living traditional gender role models in a socially cohesive, healthy society?
People which, without being raised in this distorted system, want to be part of it, are actually even more deranged than those brainwashed from childhood. But unfortunately, for the reasons mentioned above, the system is very powerful and effective, even in brainwashing newcomers and abusing their worst instincts and egoism. And in the end, that’s what unrestrained Capitalism is about, abusing worst instincts and egoism. This can be even used for creating good stuff, at times, but only with a good political leadership and at least some control by a state working for its people and not just an Oligarchy.
By now the Western states became the private property of the Oligarchy and so they can do with it whatever they want, if there is no resistance. Waiting for this, waiting for that, saying immigrants are the sole problem, or immigrants will be the only solution. The next crisis will help them, the next crisis will weaken them.
At some point people have to make a systemic correction, this or that way, or not at all and then the world, the whole human species is at stake.
Because this Oligarchy won’t give up easily, I see that coming. Even if they miscalculated and something goes wrong, and their ideas are so bad that even with all their might something will go wrong, they won’t step back. Either way, the future will become ugly and I don’t know how to prepare my kids for that, because I think there is no way to prepare Western people for the ugly things to come.
It would be easy, in theory, to correct things, but not if people are in charge which are so dishonest, brutal, arrogant and corrupt. That so many people believe the lies they spread just makes them more confident and risk taking, because they think people really are that stupid, they swallow everyathing, so what, we do whatever we want, we’re in charge.
I think many ideas about even the near future will be largely irrelevant soon anyway, because we might approach a financial crash from unprecedented proportions.
I said many months ago what can be a game changer, what kind of things might mix cards up, among these were the Corona virus, which I was pretty sure would explode.
This will cause a chain of events and the massive political pressure we see these days, from the so called Left, is NOTHING ELSE BUT THE PREPARATION. I tell you that. They hope the next election will be clearly in their favour, a Democratic president. Until then they want to get the internet under control, stop free speech and the spread of unfiltered news, put their thumb on the majority (Euro-) population in the West, distract the rest with divisive propaganda, to silence them and take away their courage.
When the crash will come, and it will come, there is not much anybody can do about it right now, its too late in all likelihood, the “restart” should be in the current Oligarchy’s favour. That’s what all of them saying in their interviews and propaganda efforts, ALREADY, for weeks!
This will be turbulent times, nobody can control all the events which might unfold then, the current Oligarchy can just prepare to increase its chances, that’s all even they can do.
If that prediction is right, if they don’t come up with a magic hat trick to save the day and their financial bubble system from “the big one” this time again, I doubt it, but in the virtual money economy a lot of things might be possible, you don’t have to wait for a decision in another 20 years and for millions of migrants anyway, it will be decided before.
This will be the systemic transition a large portion (not all) of the American Plutocracy worked and planned for, for a very long time. Its a good chance with the Corona virus induced crisis, because in 2008 everyone would have blamed them and their banking sector in particular at the end of the financial cycle, but now “its all Trump and the Corona virus blabla…”
They will become the scapegoat, you’ll see. That’s a once in a lifetime chance to correct and reform the financial and state system with people actually demanding it, because they want to be fed, what I completely understand. But it will be wrong people doing the reforms, actually the people and institutions which should be corrected will rig the system even more in their very own favour. That’s the plan and the first days of the lockdown made everybody clear its not a matter of course the supply chain always works. If it goes down, people will give up a lot of things to be fed again.
In my personal opinion, the next 5 years might be decisive as to where we all are heading. Don’t make plans for 20, 30 or 50 years, going by the current technological progress, it might be too late then. Because of the “system menial : rebel” proportions necessary to change anything in the new digital world we are facing, its no longer 1789 or 1917. Who is in charge in 20 years might stay so for long…
Wokeness is just a distraction. I don’t know why (some) people on the right get so wound up by it. It’s full of internal contradictions and it will sputter out soon enough – timing is hard but I assume within a decade or two. America has bigger problems than that, like economic concentration that grows without end, a seeming inability to learn from global best practices, and and an elite with no sense of noblesse oblige.
On the other hand, America still has tremendous strengths. If I consider moving to a “better” country, I can’t really think of any, given my personal situation.
I welcome immigration. I am an immigrant, actually. I think it would be better to have a Canadian style point-system, but given a choice between American immigration 2000-2016 vs a Trumpist shutdown, I’ll gladly take the 2000-2016 style of immigration. America needs it to replenish its talent pool – go to Silicon Valley and see who the engineers and startup founders are, largely immigrants or their children. America also needs it to maintain its cultural and economic vitality – it’s hard to be a dynamic, forward-looking country with a shrinking and rapidly aging population. Lucky for me it seems Trump is headed for a landslide defeat, so I’ll get what I want.
On a side note, the “funny” thing about the wokeness wave in the USA of 2020 is that it reminds me so much of the kinds of things that happened in South Africa over the past 20 years. But American demographics are totally different from South African demographics. It doesn’t really make sense. The best I can reason is that it’s basically just a game for a lot of white people on the left. Eventually the game will go a little too far and they will get tired of it. There’s also an element of reaction (freakout) to Trump, the need for which will be obviated very soon.
obs, how many children/grandchildren do you have? that’s all that matters. not words. i’ve written *millions* of words since 2002 on this website. i have 3 children now. those 3 are orders of magnitude more impactful than words.
europeans don’t have children. all that matters. the rest is commentary (which is fine).
the republicans tried to repeal obamacare and passed tax cuts. that’s what matters to them.
This comment is one of the best things you’ve ever written. It’s diamond like. I have one more child than you, and we all have two passports. America is finished.
JMcG, congrats! perhaps we’ll get 1 more, but we’re old(ish) now. we started late because we didn’t know what was important. instead of being a dad i was writing blog and having fun at 30 🙂
America is finished.
i do hope this is wrong. but i fear it is not. prove us wrong!
It seems to me that America’s biggest problem is that we have become too politically segregated with nastiness following. Many of the elites do not know any Trump voters and unthinkingly accept that all conservatives are racists. Conservatives are slightly better but not much. The bile spewed on social media plays to the echo chamber and prevents intelligent thought.
We need to get people to live with and talk with each other but that is very unpopular. How do we regain a sense of national community? I am an atheist but I am finding the religious conservative intelligentsia more and more compelling. They stress caring and community in a way that seems lacking in the rest of society. We need to become more like Mormons.
I cannot see how more immigration will help but I cannot find any other solution either. Nastiness pays off for politicians, academics and activists. Nice guys always finish last.
In terms of immigration as a means to promote nuke families, it seems kind of tough.
In terms of fertility, most everywhere in the world either has a comparable TFR to the US, or has skill pitfalls to unselected migration that would be even more politically destablizing (yes, unbelievely, it can probably get worse than QAnon believers in “mole children”, and media that pretends anarchists aren’t attacking federal buildings to precipitate what they believe in revolution, and academia that are suckered in by every Sciencing_Bi hoax that tries their hand).
If we’re talking about nuclear family structure, obviously I’m going to lay my cards on the table and I don’t think that’s important – the rise of divorce I tend to suspect has done roughly nothing too bad, and those countries with higher divorce rates and single parenthood rates don’t really come off worse, on a nation vs nation level (Sweden: A Wasteland?). Bad stuff happened to the nuclear family as the ideal and it didn’t really matter too much. Nuclear families seems pretty unimportant, controlling for “human capital”. That’s my guess that, obviously not much point arguing this point back and forth as it’s a topic done to death.
But if your goal was to get to that, then it doesn’t seem like there is a promising migration source that would help with that. Currently low TFR countries tend to have small families or not at all in a Western migration context; currently higher TFR source countries seem to tend to be more family fracturing once moved to a Western migration context.
I’d guess that since the baseline of why this happens is probably in Western law and economies and not cultural dark matter and norms, mainly simply that we allow divorce and that we have financial incentives that can encourage it, it probably wouldn’t matter much how much migration actually happened at once.
Anyway, if you just wanted to “roll the dice” and see if a US with a huge Asian migration wave would be more sensible than the current trajectory on politics, I could see that as viable. I just can’t see too much how it would too much for nuclear families (or really that it would be worthwhile if it did). In some parallel world where the US was focused on crass consumerism and Asia was focused on having large families and family life, that might work, but Asia’s TFRs have cratered, and Asian culture as it currently exists is as consumption focused on immediate and personal consumption as anything found in the USA.
(On the more general and speculative and long term question of “civilization replacement” that Obs raised up, probably a bit sci-fi for some, but I would guess humanity probably faces large scale replacement in some sense within a century from some combination of machine intelligence and genetically engineered intelligence from a non-human base. Which I’m fine with – it’d probably be smarter than us, and more beautiful of mind and form.
That’s probably the better outcome than being replaced by a shoddy, shanty, parody of Western consumer civilization, mouthing this empty Woke and Communist cant, once anywhere and anyone capable is in a fertility down-spiral and we’re really into the dregs. Better to be replaced by something that deserves respect than something which deserves contempt.
The good scenario is the developed world staying economically and politically stable enough until we get to the “worthy successors”, rather than half-arsing it and getting replaced by the “unworthy successors”. Best scenario, they can manage the general biosphere enough to keep it intact, and want to, to boot. Or maybe I’m just feeling particularly misanthropic today.)
corruption is superior to perversion
Repeating my previous comment on the topic:
One Billion Americans?
I doubt it. I cite below a new article from Lancet projecting low population growth on a global scale. The article projects the US population in 2100 to be 336 million, just barely larger than it is today (331 M) and that the peak US population will be 364 M in 2062.
Also: “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Bricker and Ibbitson (2019) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1984823213/geneexpressio-20
Good analysis of what it all means by Walter Russell Mead: “Snooze the Climate Alarms” | July 27, 2020 | https://www.wsj.com/articles/snooze-the-climate-alarms-11595889568
“Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study” | Vollset, Goren, et al. | July 14, 2020 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext
* * *
Methods: We modelled future population in reference and alternative scenarios as a function of fertility, migration, and mortality rates. We developed statistical models for completed cohort fertility at age 50 years (CCF50). Completed cohort fertility is much more stable over time than the period measure of the total fertility rate (TFR). …
Findings: The global TFR in the reference scenario was forecasted to be 1·66 (95% UI 1·33–2·08) in 2100. In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100. The reference projections for the five largest countries in 2100 were India (1·09 billion [0·72–1·71], Nigeria (791 million [594–1056]), China (732 million [456–1499]), the USA (336 million [248–456]), and Pakistan (248 million [151–427]). … 23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100; China’s population was forecasted to decline by 48·0% (−6·1 to 68·4). China was forecasted to become the largest economy by 2035 but in the reference scenario, the USA was forecasted to once again become the largest economy in 2098. Our alternative scenarios suggest that meeting the Sustainable Development Goals targets for education and contraceptive met need would result in a global population of 6·29 billion (4·82–8·73) in 2100 and a population of 6·88 billion (5·27–9·51) when assuming 99th percentile rates of change in these drivers.
Interpretation: Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. …
Highly skeptical of the idea that asian immigrants would maintain a culture of large families in the West: TFR of Asians is *lower* in the US than of whites (wikipedia), that doesn’t look like a trait acquired by assimilation. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong all have lower fertility rates than US whites or US asians, but Shanghai and Beijing have even lower scores, maybe the lowest in the world for cities, so mainland China is not going to be an outlier in this. Successful South Asian ethnic groups like the Parsis basically died out. Eastern Europeans and Russians with more socially conservative attitudes and family friendly rhetoric have lower rates than US whites. It is actually the US that is the outlier with higher than average fertility rate among developed nations.
Highly skeptical of the idea that asian immigrants would maintain a culture of large families in the West:
it’s like i need to write a book so my argument is not imputed to what it’s not. i know what the TFRs are.
how do we get our perverted elite to change? do you have an path? are they going to ‘snap’ out of their perversion? the republicans spent their political capital on TAX CUTS.
for 20 years my friends and i have assumed that the perversion could only go so far. but it gets worse! and it gets worse faster and faster.
so give me a solution? there are nations out there where the leaders aren’t perverts, they’re corrupt and incompetent. the people are not habituated toward perversion. i don’t care what they believe or what their customs are. are they not perverts? then let them in!
that’s basically my argument, and i am willing to be argued out of it. e.g., some of you think they’ll become perverts too! that’s a good point. that’s why i am open to a suggestion that we unleashed the floodgates so that they can absorb the perversion with less ill effect.
Maybe I’m missing something, but what is perverted? I live in Sodom central aka Manhattan, with little kids to boot. And I don’t see it. There are a lot gays here, and? Gays have been creatives in the West forever, and when you get beyond the initial awkwardness, I like women, they like men, it’s actually not that different, basically relatable. Trans are a step to far for me, but they are basically a non-issue, tiny percentage of the population. The American birth rate isn’t that low. I’m not a rabid environmentalist, but even I see that perhaps the world would be better with a lower steady state population. And more importantly, America’s population is a policy choice. If Americans wanted a population of 1 billion, the world’s answer would be “yes sir, can I have another?” There is essentially an unlimited number of people willing to immigrate here. Including hundreds of millions of high skilled socially conservative people from Asia, for instance. I don’t get the doom expressed here. But I’m also center left, although very “liberal” in the original sense of the word.
And the thing is, I’m not even white! My Asian friends (obviously) aren’t white. Some of the most pro-European culture people I met in my life were Japanese and Korean. Even Indians, scratch the surface of the big mouths and the inferiority complex, and even they value what the West has created. The Indian elite are basically brown white people who like curry and have a vague understanding of the Bhagavad Gita. It’s not “barbarians at the gate”
He means clownworld.
I wouldn’t rule out Trump just yet. I have some bit of love for the old America and won’t give up on it yet
Come a degenerate age, I will adjust psychologically by becoming a barbarian viewing with predatory eyes. No naive and fatuous liberalism for me and mine
I wish I had a simple solution, but I guess nobody does. What I and others have been pointing is that your solution likely won’t get what you want.
The immigrants have not been able to stop the madness, and likely will not even in large numbers. Pro-family Asians also don’t have many children either, and their children are more likely to join the American madness than to oppose it. Same goes for Europeans and Latin Americans, which anyway are part of the same mess. That leaves you South Asia and Africa, both places wherin the most pro-familiarity comes in the same package as a lot of traits you are going to dislike – and, even in this case, there’s no assurance they will also not be swallowed by Moloch once they arrive.
And I may be overstepping in this closing line, but I’ll risk saying it anyway: you mention your children with pride, but don’t forget that a lot will happen in their lives which you cannot control. They are not above being eaten too. Remember that Niobe had 14 children, and Priam had 50.
The people here are too pessimistic about America’s future, probably because they are too America-centric. This is something I notice about Americans who grew up in this country. Either they think America is the best in the world or the worst in the world. With the latter more likely nowadays unfortunately. So their beliefs have completely flipped from the previous generation but the paradigm they operate under is the same. Is nuance not a thing? The thing is America is an above-average country. Its neither the best nor the worst. Its not finished, no its not. But too claim it will remain the sole dominant power till the second coming of Christ is foolish too. Too many absolutes with zero evidence.
@razib,
Are there underlying reasons for low western fertility? I remember seeing a report about fertility in Norway being a issue. There was a times article about similar issues in US. Douthat had a recent article about suburbanites being tired of increased competition among school kids due to high skilled immigration. Further, I think he speculated this as being a reason for riding wokeness. Needless to say recent events have made the US a lot less attractive for family oriented immigrants.
Razib: I think I understand what you are saying. But, let me express it in my own way. Let me begin here:
“Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” by Charles Murray
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010-dp-030745343X/dp/030745343X/
From the Amazon page:
“In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
“Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.
“The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.
“The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.”
Not only are the classes coming apart, but the dominant ideology of the upper class is that the things they actually do (education, hard work, marriage) are not only not important, but that they are inimical to happiness and flourishing.
Thus:
“The National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the federal government’s Smithsonian Institution system, has removed from its website a chart listing “the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.” The chart listed individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, a belief in progress, a written tradition, politeness, the justice system, respect for authority, delayed gratification, and planning for the future, among others, as “aspects and assumptions of whiteness” that have been “internalized” by people of color in the U.S.”
“African American History Museum removes ‘whiteness’ chart” by Byron York | July 17, 2020 | https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/african-american-history-museum-removes-whiteness-chart
The Smithsonian said:
“Whiteness … refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. … Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal. … also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. … Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.”
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
Here is the nub:
We have an upper class who actually live by a set of values and practices that they say are illegitimate. They propagandize the lower classes, black and white, that the actual values of the upper class wrong, evil,and racist.
Their ideology is not only pernicious, it is evil. They are, perhaps the worst ruling elite in human history.
btw, truth, i’ve had 10x more conversations about leaving the USA for other parts of the world with friends, on the left and right, in 2020, than i have over my whole life.
WS, you are getting at some of what i’m frustrated. they’re perverts. and the republicans, they want lower taxes while their grandkids turn into pathetic coomers.
@razib, have you studied Weimar Germany, and if so, where do you see similarities and differences between that and present day US?
Yeah, the GOP doesn’t really understand what it’s doing. It is good at scoring a limited political victory and getting a tax cut or a bombing or a few judges…while America marches ever leftwards.
That said, the GOP is on track to be a rump party. *This is a good thing.* The lure of being able to eke out an electoral win and convert it into movement conservatism “victories” is what stopped it from introspecting about itself and America at large. Conservatives will have to take stock of what has happened, and stop thinking solely in short term political fights.
It was 40+ years from the Combahee River Collective to media megacorporations proclaiming “Black Trans Lives Matter.” Leftists have been willing to fight generational struggles for their beliefs. Can Righties say the same? Can they start working towards something that only *might* bear fruit in the 2060s-70s?
Well if not, then we know how things will turn out.
Hmm… If you were opposed to y’know “Too many young Americans are incels who like porn” sort of thing (probably a mischaracterization), maybe if you went really hard with selection for existing established family units in a migration policy, you could change things a little bit, with a massive amount.
Just going for a large volumes of migration wouldn’t seem to do too much itself, as its not like much of the developed world has a lower incidence of that sort of thing (Korea, China, Japan?), and even the less developed world is fairly convergent, controlling for access to the internet.
Still, I can’t see either political progressives or conservatives going for that policy. Former because it is somewhat discriminatory with a natalist/family values sort of end, latter because not very conserving of nation, identity, etc.
@WS; it seems somewhat of a paradox as the current “meritocratic” upper-class is both pretty happy to extoll the reasons why they should rule as being due to their “education, hard work”, but also seem convinced that this was never the explanation for anyone’s past success, or something? Seems like they spend enough time berating the “wrong sort” of people for their lack of education and hard work, anyway, with the aim of encouraging a values change among them.
If they actually did discourage “higher education… delayed gratification, and planning for the future” and “hard work” in the form of career striving, that might actually help with giving the US a fertility boost and increasing a more family centered way of life. If anything it seems like the US Upper Class’s promulgation of bourgeois values perversely centered on education, work and career, deferred childbearing, marriage *after* high levels of material accumulation are achieved, and then emulation of this way of life, is what is precisely responsible for changes towards a less family centered way of life?
Actually I have three kids, but children alone are no difference maker, actually they can make you more vulnerable and you have to protect them, without taking them chances to develop on their own, which is hard to achieve at any time, but in a way more complicated now.
But let me talk about some fundamentals, even if it might be tiring for some, I think its truly important. Its about the fundaments of Cultural Marxism and voting behaviour.
First of all, Cultural Marxism can be almost completely derived from the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, its not thinkable without. These group of emigrants, most Jews, had big hopes for a Marxist revolution happening from within Germany. Not like in Russia, but a more “progressive” and Liberal Marxism, still one which would have herald the end of conservative Europe which they despised.
But that didn’t happen and in their interviews after the war they said, LITERALLY, they BLAME WHITE MIDDLE CLASS AND WHITE MALES for ruining their great ideas and not participating in what was right. And that for this very reason, because WHITE MALE MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE are obdurate, the revolution can only succeed with indoctrinating women, by making women the new dominant sex and by letting masses of non-European immigrants flooding the occidental world. That’s not something I made up, if you can understand German, there are interviews from Fromm and Marcuse where they exactly said that. The future of the revolution will be women and colored people. The white males became the target not because they actually cared that much for women and colored people, you can see that especially in Marcuses interview, in which he was quite arrogant and cynical, but because white middle and working class males rejected their great ideas, again, like German society didn’t let them come to top before, even though they thought of being intellectually superiour.
So their new mantra for the “new society” was a colored matriarchy. Again, I don’t make that up, they just said it, in TV interviews you can see online.
Talking about voting behaviour and political activism, without female and immigrant votes, in how many Western countries political parties which promote Cultural Marxist, Liberal leftist ideas would win or even make a good impact? Look at the polls and how white males vote by now, practically everywhere, and how women and immigrants vote, practically anywhere too.
And like I said above, even if the immigrants are themselves rather conservative, even racist nationalists, like many of the Turkish immigrants in Germany, they still are more inclined to vote for Liberal and open Cultural Marxist parties simply because thats in their “minority group” interests. They will vote for the leftist parties unless they become themselves the dominant group and then they would, probably, vote for Turkish nationalist or Islamist parties rather than anything else.
That’s the same everywhere, immigrants, even conservative immigrants, tend to vote for Leftist parties.
Now about women and female vote: Females almost NEVER EVER vote for radicals or more important what they FEEL BEING RADICAL AND DANGEROUS. You can see that in the Weimar Republic and interwar France: Women rarely voted for Communists and Fascists alike! They preferred to vote for moderate conservatives and moderate social democrats.
Why? Females try to fit in and to avoid conflict. Its wrong to say they just vote for leftists because they promote women’s rights and Feminism, that’s only a minority. Even women which are themselves conservative and anti-immigration might
a) don’t vote for a party which they think is radical and will incite conflict – they are very susceptible to propaganda in this respect, which means they just need to BELIEVE a right movement might cause stress, conflict and unrest. They will prefer to vote for pacification.
b) even if they vote right or radical, they are less likely to tell it at the polls, because the social pressure is more for real for women, they don’t want to appear “asocial” or as “outsiders” even more than males do, which do the same, but just less pronounced.
So to keep up a stable corrupted system, in a democratic state with male and female vote, you just have to establish the mantra that only the establishment can keep up safety and prevent conflict, and the female votes will go for the establishment much more often than the male ones.
That way the Frankfurt School guys were absolutely right in concentrating on females and immigrants, even those don’t internalise their ideology completely, because they simply vote for their ideas and prevent a counter-initiative by both slowing down their males (“don’t risk something, that is too radical” etc.) and being afraid of a radical cut all the time. Females want things to go on, more like males. Fundamental changes being only embraced once they feel absolutely necessary or not preventable anyway.
So the psychological strain on women to act for a real change or radical shift must be much harder. Now some might come up with radical Feminists or Marxist activists, real hardcore fighting women, but even in the left, or anywhere, these are such a small minority. They are really, really rare. The majority of women, especially if counting votes, act like I say. And they do so in all polls from 1900 on.
Radical leftists have to sell them their recipe as being actucally “less aggressive”, “more friendly & good”, “better for peace and compromise”. And that’s what they do with the “race war” stories as well. The white women get a shock, they don’t want brutality, they don’t want conflict. Then the Cultural Marxists say: “You have to vote for us to prevent even more violence and unrest”, and they are more inclined to vote for them for exactly this reason.
And something similar was done even in the 1960’s by the earlist movements. This is where we come back to Marcuse & Fromm interviews. They instructed whole cohorts of “social scientists” and “politial activists” on what to do. That’s a fact. Even the French branches, which some deem more powerful, were effectively orthodox Marxists before getting to know Horkheimers gang and Critical Theory.
And talking about “the elite” of the Oligarchy, they love that approach too. Because another “radical thing” would be to question the power and corruption of those on top. Because guess what: To do so would question the order of the current society. Doesn’t sound cosy, doesn’t sound like preventing conflict. So better ignore it and talk about “white privilege” and “male privilege” in some very general terms, because middle class white males being so battered by now, they won’t fight back anyway. That’s the more peaceful solution…
@Matt:
“If they actually did discourage “higher education… delayed gratification, and planning for the future” and “hard work” in the form of career striving, that might actually help with giving the US a fertility boost and increasing a more family centered way of life. If anything it seems like the US Upper Class’s promulgation of bourgeois values perversely centered on education, work and career, deferred childbearing, marriage *after* high levels of material accumulation are achieved, and then emulation of this way of life, is what is precisely responsible for changes towards a less family centered way of life?”
Its bad even if just the males go for it, for this materialistic approach on life alone. But its completely ruinous if both sexes follow the same path. Basically the problem came with out of house wage labour. As long as farmers, craftsmen and merchants had their families at home and working with them, they had more children – always without Feminism and contraception. But even then, if they were too materialistic, for example because of the inheritance patter, they might have reduced the number of children already in Medieval times or antique Rome.
Without a sense for the family and lineage, people don’t get many children, especially not the more intelligent and disciplined ones, on average. And that sense was lost in the West long ago, already in the Medieval time for many with Christianity.
So when the working unit fell, the fertiliy plummeted too. And when females did the same as males, families became unsustainable.
To add something short to make that point from above absolutely clear: In a Democracy its about money and votes, and the Cultural Marxists get both!
Afro-Americans, Latinos, muslims, they don’t vote for Cultural Marxism because of gender issues, but because of a rigged race and social card. They want free health care, affordable housing, social and law security, a safer country and job.
What they get is Cultural Marxist brainwashing and Plutocratic rule served to them by the very same people they voted and work for.
That’s the current Western reality. Someone like Biden is just a puppet for that purpose and even he has no much better social program for his voters. Yet thats how the Cultural Marxist elite and the Oligarchy is selling their project since decades.
It doesnt matter what, e.g. Afro-Americans want themselves, they are a mean to an end in the bigger scheme. Like Biden implicitly said, from the Left’s perspective they have no reaö choice anyway than to vote for him…women voters and all kind of “suppressed” going by the Cultural Marxist diction, its the same,they just get triggered and activated for having them in the hand.
Now if conservatives in the United States would offer something social, while facing the main enemy from above, the Oligarchy, they would go against the established narrative of themselves.
That’s a very bad spot and they landed there on purpose.
If after Trump the learning from his defeat would be to leave “populism” and the social question behind, the Party would both become useless and seeing no land for long.
If Trump loses its not because his basic ideas were wrong, but because he wasnt good and powerful enough to execute it the right way.
Unlike many posting, I am not a right winger, and I am having a hard time understanding some of the ideas.
As someone who is very low on tribal thinking (seriously, why people enjoy sports and root for particular teams continues to mystify me – how does someone decide to pick a side?) the idea of lamenting the decline of the West is just odd. I didn’t have any choice in who I was born, be it my lineage, my culture, or my nationality. Having pride in anything I am not personally responsible for just seems silly as a result. I feel a sense of communal obligation to leave the world in better shape – for my children if nothing else. But beyond that…nothing.
I do think the decline in birth rates below the replacement level shows there’s something “sick” about modernity, but it’s not really limited to the West, as it’s happening in just about every country on Earth which is modernizing. I think much of it honestly just comes down to a drive for being a parent never being strongly selected for in the past. After all, prior to birth control, all you needed to do was consent to have vaginal sex (and if you were a woman, consent was optional). Certainly there seems to be at least a maternal instinct to bond with children once they arrive, but all that’s needed prior to pregnancy is a desire to have sex, not a desire to have children. Given a few hundred years though whatever genes which make people actively avoid parenthood will start to be culled from the global gene pool. Hopefully we won’t all just be Amish and Hasidim, but I suppose we will see how it plays out.
My take on “wokism” is basically it’s neo-Victorian morality. Those who espouse it the strongest tend to be professional-class strivers who want to put on a public-appearance of right-mindedness to gain the acceptance of their peers. It’s not about the content of their actions, but the publicly professed beliefs. Just like Victorians could be publicly sexually repressed but perverts in private, woke people can publicly call for integration while privately living in highly white communities.
My own take on the conservativism/left dichotomy is this: In every culture, conservatives are in favor of power remaining in the hands of the group which has traditionally had power, while the left favor power going to the outgroup (or subaltern, if you want to use academic-speak). When conservatives support the divine right of kings, liberals supported the Enlightenment and expansion of sufferage. When conservatives in the U.S. supported slavocracy, liberals moved towards abolitionism. When the ruling class shifted to a capitalist class, conservative values shifted to a love of the free market, and the left pole in politics shifted away from radical liberalism and towards socialism and its watered-down variants. Even in Communist nations, post-revolution there was a pivot, where people with natural conservative inclinations became the ultimate Party functionaries, as the Party became the ruling class, and conservatives are inclined to support established authority. If wokism ultimately “wins,” the result would simply be that 40 years later the same sort of people who would have supported it today will take a diametrically opposite position, supporting which ever groups now find themselves part of the subaltern.
@obs, interesting; I guess you could see if founders of family businesses tend to have larger families today. Family businesses still exist. Though if they did not it would not invalidate the model.
In some conditions I could see it being opposite; English merchants in the early modern period were know to foster out children as apprentices. It seems like that may have encouraged some to have more children than they would, when there was no place for them in the family business, they could still “do something” with unwanted boys and girls.
Wage labour seems like it could be a complement to family labour, rather than a substitute. The Victorians and those before them did send children up out to earn a wage and go up chimneys, after all. It may depend on the size of wages and relative costs of children, and how many skills are required of workers and so on.
@ Razib
What countries would you consider emigrating too? I think if there was any one country that probably outclasses the US in terms of opportunity and quality of life, it’s Australia, but other than that? Unless you’re thinking of pulling a Spencer and moving to a developing country where you can live like a king on your US dollar savings.
@ Obs
“And that for this very reason, because WHITE MALE MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE are obdurate, the revolution can only succeed with indoctrinating women, by making women the new dominant sex and by letting masses of non-European immigrants flooding the occidental world. That’s not something I made up, if you can understand German, there are interviews from Fromm and Marcuse where they exactly said that.”
Can you provide a direct quote where either of them said something like this?
@Mick: This interview is a rare gem in general, because they tell things in this interview, they even rarely wrote about! Like Marcuse declaring Horkheimer to be “an authoritarian leader and personality” – and that from this bunch! They destroyed Western civilisation in their mania for exterminating the “authoritarian personality”, yet what was their founder himself? How did they act when exercising power against their opponents and subordinates? They were far worse than many of those they criticised with so much hate and unfairness.
Like Fromm talking about people “with no good heart”, “unable to laugh and smile openly”, when looking at Horkheimer which is prototypical with his grimace! But there he couldn’t see it, right, only in people he disliked. This all makes their whole project even more absurd and hypocritical. Like always, they blamed others for what they were and did themselves on an even grander scale!
Anyway, the Interview with Marcuse in German (1980):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Uvwcbx7ok
From minute 32:00 he speaks about the revolutionary potential of women and how they can be instrumentalised for the Marxist societal change and “Feminise” society as a whole. Followed 36:00 about the infiltration of the societal institutions, in a “long march” to prepare revolution, with the leading role of “education” in the sense of re-education and indoctrination.
He proposed the so called “Randgruppenstrategie”, the strategy to actively involve “fringe groups” in the “revolutionary struggle”. This included even psychotics and criminals, in its initial phase in particular:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randgruppenstrategie
But the basic idea was to use all “groups from the fringes” and “all kind of suppressed” to activate them for the “revolutionary struggle”.
The interview with Fromm (1980):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVd4dKH3vng
In the first minutes he talks about Jewish prophetism and messianism interpreted by him as a “Weltverbesserung” (“Perfection of the world”), which motivates him to this day (in 1980). Also about how Freudianism/Psychoanalysis came into (his and Frankfurt Schools) Marxism and influenced it very much.
At 17:00 he begins his rambling against the occidental Christian culture and how its still “pagan” and needs be replaced, especially the classical and antique ideals, as being not “loving and peaceful” enough.
From 26:00 on he talks about the “white race of machine people” and its arrogance, about how the “simple culture” of “primitive people” being “superiour” and at 30:00 he talks about the “white fortress of Europe” which can be stormed, is no longer impregnable. And he is of course also hostile towards Eastern Communism, which is not “Freudian” enough, basically.
I think the implications are clear, his own emotional stance.
Here another interview, this one with English subtitles (1976):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1VeKFIv_Mc
How the 1960’s didn’t result in a revolutionary mass movement, and how women and “other suppressed minorities” being an avantgarde of the future, more radical revolution.
This is a must hear. Really, in my opinion one of the most important interviews to listen, it tells so much about what happened in interwar and postwar times and what role the Frankfurt gang played. I don’t say he is wrong with everything, he has some points which are right, the main problem with him and others like him is not pointing to problems, but the soluton they propose!
His correct and good aspects are mainly forgotten, but what the Oligarchy selected as acceptable, tolerable and even useful is now omnipresent, even constitutive for the modern Western US-society. And they were the first to formulate it with all consequences.
Reception of Marcuse by the radical left and its consequences today, one example for a conscious reception (most don’t even know who invented the phrases):
“If we all have a de jure right to express any opinion in public, the de facto condition is that left opinions are usually marginalized and often suppressed, while Right-wing ones, which benefit the ruling class, are given free play. “This pure tolerance of sense and nonsense” practiced under the conditions prevailing in the United States today “cannot fulfill the civilizing function attributed to it by the liberal protagonists of democracy, namely protection of dissent” (Marcuse 1965, 94, 117). We need to stress this analysis of the false equivalence of reactionary and emancipatory speech, fascist and anti-fascist violence.”
https://www.rpamag.org/2019/08/marcuses-relevance-today-violence-racism-and-the-critique-of-pure-tolerance
So the free speech from the Right has to be censored, not just because to stop violence, that was just an argument before, an excuse, but in reality to prevent them from being present in the discourse and probably even becoming dominant! Marcuse said himself: Even violence is not equivalent, but violence from “the suppressed” is always justified, almost no matter how brutal they act – while on the contrary even the defense of those he deems to be “oppressive” is not. Implicitly even if “the suppressed” could act politically in the given context and are not under threat at all, violence is still justified.
In this interview, where he justified terror, just like today commentators justify violence of Leftists and minorities, but not even self-defense, in case of an attack, by whites or other people perceived as “oppressive”, like police men. That is 1:1 what the Frankfurt School formulated 100 years ago and evolved on, especially Marcuse in the United states, with all his students, going on that way until now!
For him, by looking at the goals and programs of people, he can decide which group is “suppressed” and which is “oppressive” and therefore the “suppressed” always just exercise “counter-violence”. Of course, he and his ideologists can decide, on their own, what is what…
@Razib
Let them stay in their own countries where their elites will not pervert them. Starve the American elites of new demographics in the process. Then rebuild.
@RW: That’s the point. in a corrupt, dysfunctional and unsustainable system, the constant replenishment from outside is the resource from which this Oligarchy is still living. But societies shold be sustainable on their own, otherwise they are not healthy.
If you need technicians, motivate your techniciians to get more children and help them raising and educating them. The same applies to every other profession, especially those which demand higher skills.
To import experts, burn them in a sick system and call the next delivery is just the human equivalent to a waste economy. Humans per generations being a “one way resource”, not raised to form families and give birht to children of their own, but just work and consume until they die – for a corrupted Oligarchy and a decadent system.
That is, by the way, the main issue on which Marcuse was largely right. Its so absurd that the worst of Marxism and Capitalism was combined in the current political system of the United States and – because of this country being so dominant, all of the West and most of the world.
Speaking as a long-time lurker who finds your point of view very interesting, embracing mass immigration seems like an impulsive and poorly-reasoned response to American/Western decline (I’ll conflate them; I agree with other posters that Europe will probably follow America’s lead). My two cents:
I’m nowhere nearly as well-versed in history as you, but I can’t think of much in ancient history that supports your thesis, and I think American history argues strongly against it.
Referencing ancient history, I generally approach the 21st century West by analogy with the late Roman Empire. The barbarian invasions and ensuing disorder decimated the material standard of living and imposed an illiterate, disorderly elite. Recovery took somewhat less than a millennium. The trends today seems likely to yield a much worse long-term outcome. In the case of Rome, the barbarians were cultural cousins and shared many desirable customs with the Roman world (compare 1. reported individualism, normative monogamy, and elective monarchies with things/folkmoots, and 2. relative individualism, also normative monogamy, and the only pre-modern empire rooted in a republic). In the case of the modern West, the inflows predominating, Amerindian and Arab, are not like that: much more alien and branched off much earlier, with long recent histories of despotic government and minimal technical/cultural innovation. That last part will only get worse if the floodgates open.
I’m sympathetic to the arguments in “Escape from Rome”, but I doubt the invasion by barbarians was crucial. I bet recovery would have been swifter with polycentricity but without the barbarians.
Referencing American history, the present insanity was largely seeded by immigration. Hardly any of the ideas or cognitive/electoral manpower originated with the WASPs; you can perhaps see a little in the extremism of early abolitionists, but the real bulk was early 20th century immigration. Then Hart-Cellar just poured gasoline on the fire. You really want more of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Richard Carranza? I’m not sure the decline would have been delayed or prevented if America had remained a WASP settler-colonial society, but I do think America would have gone out with a slow whimper rather than the present clamor and rapid collapse.
Mass migration at the scale discussed in these recent posts would likely kill Western civilization permanently, leaving East Asia as the only example of high civilization for at least a millennium. The only strategy I have hope for is 1. reduce migration inflows as much as possible, 2. balkanize the US to quarantine the insanity, whether it’s through de jure splits or just greater federalism and more barriers to migration inside, and 3. work on the cultural and demographic foundation for at least a few civilized regions to hold out, preserve technical expertise, and eventually drive a future renaissance. The last part seems toughest: I think the root cause of this implosion is the decline of Christianity, and I’m agnostic as to whether it will adapt and recover or be replaced by some other reason to live. Regardless, one can pursue the first two tacks and hold out hope for the last.
Anyway, if you think turning America into Brazil would improve the situation, why not just move there, or Argentina, or whatever, instead of forcing it on everyone else? You can argue America exports its depravity to the rest of the world, but our soft power is already declining, and internal dysfunction and incompetence will only accelerate that.
If I knew Razib personally I would check in on him and make sure that he is ok. The 4:21 pm comment from sounds nothing like the person who was practicing his Straussian skills on Twitter only a month ago.
Razib is fine. He is understandably frustrated, as are most ppl with any wisdom whatsoever. Western elites are pure garbage, selfish and delusional to an incredible degree. The lack of any character or virtue is screamingly obvious. While there is a major power gap between the puppets (think Biden and McConnell) and the actual oligarchs (think people intimately associated with Epstein/Ghislane Maxwell, like Bill Gates/Les Wexner/Clintons/insert here) there isn’t a serious virtue gap. They all suck horribly, and we are talking Nero and Caligula level suck.
I like the fact that Razib is open to radical solutions, because the shit that’s been preached from the “right” mostly consists in Libertarian nonsense and is a fucking joke. They are almost as naive about human nature as the loons on the left.
I have become much more sympathetic to Islam, because when the State attempts to brainwash their young children, they don’t tolerate it. They have balls. I will take Islam over Woke lunacy any day of the week. Woke lunacy is death.
Yes, Razib is going a bit stir crazy at home; America’s been doomed for years and I’m in a good mood. It was always going to be a fight
Perhaps it helps that I have a fairly social job
@Obs/Razib/Julius
Have you taken a look at what Orbán is doing in Hungary to counter these trends? It’s interesting. Personally, I think people with children should get two votes in elections, and those without only one.
“We are heading towards the total eclipse of all values. Now don’t get me wrong. As a writer, I’m perfectly delighted … The human comedy has never been richer … I will confess to the occasional thrust of satire.” … “I think your soul is your relationship with other people.”
– Tom Wolfe, 1998 60 Minutes interview
@RW: The problem with Orban and Putin is that they both don’t change something fundamentally. As persons, they are doing fine, as good as they can. There is what I call “small corruption”, but honestly I prefer that over people like Angela Merkel which is hostile towards its own people and mentally completely corrupted any day. The elite is allowed to take its share, if there are no better ones available, as long as what they are doing is overall positive for the people. The opposite is also true, because if someone doesn’t do nepotism and is against corruption, but being completely controlled by foreign and hostile networks, again like Angela Merkel, they are a real threat to the state and people.
But these two are just individuals, when they are gone, and eventually they will, its almost like Trump. They created a lot of hate and reistance, and if the one who follows is not as good, the whole thing might turn out even worse. That’s the general problem of all kinds of strong leaders, especially those which have no broad ideological and political base in the population. They might help, but they can’t be the solution on the long run, in a worst case scenario even cause a collapse after they are gone. There are leaders from left and right (like Franco and Chavez), which did relatively fine, not that well, but ok, but look at the mess that came afterwards.
So what the Occident really needs is a true Renaissance and an ideological rejuvenation. People like Orban can only delay the inevitable and give European people more time to recover. But they are not enough. The whole “Populism” in the West is like a big experimental ground in which a true movement and recipe needs to be born. And obviously, the Oligarchy knows that this could happen and this is what they fear the most. This is why they will cut the internet down, letting the Cultural Marxists being their political henchmen and abusing the state to track down and persecute any cell which could develop to something bigger.
That’s also why they are ok with Trump, because Trump is really not that bad, as a person, people make him worse than he is, and he too had some god ideas and sees some things right. But he is too old, lacks competence, a network, the intelligent supportive group around him (that’s why things like the HBO interview happen primarily), and a solid ideological base. He just jumped in as a self-promoter with a big ego, seeing many things right, but then he got stuck.
And that’s the furthest the Oligarchy will go, anything more clearly against their rule will be shot down, I mean literally, being shot. Whether its more right or left Populism, doesn’t matter, if it goes against the Oligarchy, which is the MAIN CAUSE AND PROBLEM of the West and world by now, it will get ugly.
You could see it with “Occupy Wall Street”, this case really made it clear. Left or right, doesn’t matter, if it just touches the pillars of the Plutocratic wealth and influence, they punch on you, very hard.
This whole “woke thing” is primarily a prelude to the shutdown of free opinion and speech, on the internet, but also in the real world. You will see, that was the plan from the start. They want to prevent anything big to come up, a real alternative, from left or right, to their rule, when the transition starts, when the financial system needs to be rebooted. They want to use that to establish a global financial rule and political control system, and those small scale and grass root minority and Leftists activists are just allowed to play their game, to do their show, as long as they help with this plan.
As soon as they touch something which would hurt the Oligarchy, like “Occupy Wall Street”, they are done or if they really fight, it will get bloody. But I doubt they really fight, because that’s not their ideology, they can attack and kill right wing activists if being high in numbers and protected themselves by the state, but its against the fundaments of their ideology to having any military value. That’s why Cultural Marxism is so comfortable for the “elite”. Its on the Plutocratic life support, all the time! Once they don’t like it any more, they can put it off and tell people the truth about that crap and most people will just be relieved and agree, that those “extremists” went too far. Nice, rebels from the Right: Shot down. Rebels from the Left: Shot down too.
And ideologically the Randgruppenstrategie (fringe group strategy) of Cultural Marxists is really, really interesting. Because it doesn’t just activate classical social fringe groups, but with it constructing the identity politics, it did construct so many, that almost everybody can see himself as some sort of minority! You can be fat, or too thin, you can be dumb, or too nerdy, you can be tall, or too short, you can gay or a heterosexual with strange preferences, you can short sighted or a bad runner, you can be an immigrant, or member of a minority local community, you can be a women or a male feeling the pressure of his role model blablabla.
They made almost everyone some sort of “victim” of an imagined “evil tradition”. So that many people which don’t like perversions and corruption prefer to not engage with solid conservatives and right wingers, because they are afraid of “their freedom of expression”. In fact this very system of the Oligarchy using Cultural Marxism to install mind and speech control will strip everyone of his much more important rights and options, but that they don’t see! That was a big trick they used and it worked out so well. As if conservatives and right wingers “are just haters” and everybody should feel like he/she could become a “victim”. That’s not about facts, for long, just about imagined enemies, like war time propaganda. But people so fed up with Hollywood, the mass media and Cultural Marxist education, they believe crap not even the soldiers believed in the big wars! Like if you don’t follow their mantra, you are the devil to a lot of people. The propaganda machine of the Oligarchy is just so powerful and even intelligent, well-educated people – or better exactly those, because they got more of it through their life time, have swallowed the whole crap.
People need to really wake up, not by believing Cultural Marxist lies, but by looking at how this system really works and who profits the most from it and is truly in charge.
Its surely not middle class white males, it never was. They were probably privileged RELATIVE to other ethnicities in the past, but only so. Being dependent, but a little bit better off, is the same like the house slave, better? Yes. But still a slave? Yes too.
The true profiteers of the American Plutocracy were always other people, smaller groups of people. But as long as they gave the common people their fair share and protected them from the worst, it was ok, like I said, the elite can take its share, as long as its a true elite which cares. But they don’t do any more. Its even worse, its not just neglect, its deliberate destruction because they want to create a global nightmare in which they are on top.