Botond173
4d ago
I’m aware that Southern Antebellum nostalgia as such is a recurring hot subject in the US culture wars. I’m also aware that my overall knowledge about this subject is scant, but I was reminded of something I’ve read about the English (First) Industrial Revolution, namely that it generally brutalized the local working class, and also implanted a rather deep sentiment of nostalgia and longing in the middle and upper classes for the bygone days of bucolic living in the countryside, when the environment wasn’t yet polluted to shit, you could still usually see the clear sky, there was no upheaval, misery, mass povery and general ugliness around you etc.
I suspect that Southern Antebellum nostalgia, which predictably gets portrayed in the worst possible light by the Blue Tribe faithful, is (more precisely: was, because I’m sure it doesn’t exist anywhere near the level as it did 50 or 100 years ago) essentially the same thing: Southern Whites mourning their peaceful, undisturbed lifestyle in a bucolic land, swept away completely by the dirty horrors of war, industrialization, social upheaval, the centralization of political power etc.
Botond173
6d ago
As far as I know, prohibition measures in the US, enacted on state level many years, even decades before 1920 in multiple cases, were a long-term indirect consequence of the massive culling of men in the Civil War. A lopsided operational sex ratio (yeah, I just found this phrase on Wikipedia) that favors men inevitably leads to an overall loosening of social norms concerning men’s behavior, which in turn invites backlash on the part of the church lady demographic. This isn’t surprising. Gorbachov’s anti-alcohol campaign in the USSR was driven by the same fundamental considerations, presumably. (According to the 1959 Soviet census, the male-to-female sex ratio among the 35-50-yrs-old cohort was a whopping 4:7. )
I’m wondering if similar social forces are at play in South Africa now.
Botond173
7d ago
Who could've known that a half-arsed comment of mine will generate multiple QC responses!
Botond173
8d ago
What is actually likely to happen is that he, in a literal sense, will conclude that she likes spending time with him - that's it. Nothing more.
Botond173
8d ago
In historical terms, it isn't long. But in terms of the cultural war and social change, definitely a lot has changed between 2016-2024, even more so between 2012-2024. So the social context is different.
Botond173
8d ago
True, it doesn't exactly do so. But I remember the days when, after years of culture-warring, Great Awokening, militant leftist SJW rhetoric, all the talk about dismantling the vestiges of structural racism, BLM riots etc, American society got to a point in 2020 when there were three rather old cishet White men remaining in the competition for the position of presidential nominee. I just found it rather ironic, and I saw a bunch of people online drawing parallels with the late-stage Soviet gerontocracy, which, considering the ongoing socio-economic crises (the opioid epidemic, rising rates of alcoholism - especially among single women - and prescription pill abuse, rising levels of violent crime and mental illness, the obesity epidemic etc.), appeared to be definitely warranted. I think it's just logical to extend this parallel when a relatively much younger candidate emerges, poised to win the election and portraying herself as the anointed one who will finally shake things up.
Botond173
8d ago
You're right. Maybe it's all just gaslighting, astroturfing etc. But I'm sure she has more political influence behind her than Trump.
Botond173
8d ago
She's relatively young. Gorbachev was also 54 when he assumed power, and was the protege of the former head of the KGB, and voted into power by the Politburo.
Botond173
8d ago
I think she’ll have every conceivable incentive to try. She’ll be pimped by the MSM and the Dem establishment as the first woman of color to become President, and they’ll push the narrative that she’s set to leave a great legacy and accomplish great things for a society still tainted by the vestiges of structural racism etc. Also, the polycrisis (I wasn’t even aware that such an expression exists!) will probably continue and worsen, so the overlapping negative socio-economic tendencies will reach a point of escalation sometimes between 2025-28 where Kamala’s supporters will compel her to act – if she doesn’t initiate reforms herself first, that is. Also, she derives whatever level of political legitimacy she has from not being an old white fart who failed to cure the nation’s ills i.e. Biden and Trump. She’ll have to continue to demonstrate that she’s different from both of them.
Botond173
8d ago
I think I have at least a vague idea of what the usual so-called “far right” accusations were against Biden, Obama or Clinton and I’m rather certain they never included that “he’ll accelerate the decline of the US empire and cause political instability/collapse due to failed reform attempts”. I can think of a dozen other accusations regarding abortion, gun laws, overreach of federal power, BLM etc. but not this one.
Also, I think the notion that Trump has a 50% chance of winning the upcoming election is, in light of what happened the last time he tried, is rather far-fetched.
Botond173
8d ago
Gorbachev wasn't that much younger. Andropov was 1914, Gorba 1931, barely 17 years difference.
True, but Kamala isn't that young either, in fact she's 5 years older now than Gorbachev was in 1985.
TR had 15 years on his predecessor, JFK 27 years, both promised plenty of new policies.
Again, true, but the political environment was rather different from the current one in both cases, wasn't it? There was no sense of vibecession/stagnation, disillusionment in the party leadership, general anomie etc.
The problem that in 1980s, the politbyro had been staffed by generation of Brezhnev, implementing Brezhnev policies since Brezhnev.
I suppose one can make a similar point about the Dem party leadership?
Botond173
9d ago
It's not merely that she's relatively young, it's that she's much younger than the two presidents who'll have preceded her.
What issues can be her Perestroika, her Glasnost, her liquor ban?
You can also name about a dozen potential issues, can't you? The college debt bubble, the NIMBY vs. YIMBY struggle, the opioid crisis, economic stagnation, the housing bubble, Medicare, women's rights etc.
Botond173
9d ago
There was an incident where there was a black convict who escaped from the prison, and the police chased him down and beat on him, and I just couldn't stand that.
I'm not a sociologist but I'm sure it's almost a small miracle that police were even available then and there to chase him town, instead of an armed group of vigilante citizens who'd have hanged him on the first tree after one or two rounds of torture, which I'm also sure was a completely normal course of events. I wonder how many suburban middle-class normies are even aware that poor and remote communities had little to no police force throughout history.
Botond173
9d ago
About a month age I made the argument that essentially, future historians will draw parallels between Gorbachev and the Kamala Harris presidency, which at this point seems to be rather likely to come around next year. I can understand why it was downvoted because I made it deliberately vague, thinking that spelling my assumption all out in detail would narrow the discussion down too much and derail it at the start. Anyway, I recently read the New York Magazine article titled The Joyous Plot to elect Kamala Harris... by Rebecca Traister, and while I wouldn't say that it strengthens my argument to the full, it certainly doesn't include anything that would contradict it, I think. She's being lauded as a champion of both Democrat party leaders and grassroots organizers (mainly of female ones, that is), ushering in a new era of hope and political change after long and disheartening years dominated by old farts in leadership positions.
Botond173
15d ago
Cultural Marxists are very willing to keep pandering to the same favorite groups, if they aren't marginalized and if the hierarchy favors them. The narrative is one of marginalized communities and right wing heirarchy, but you can, and in fact it is the increasing model, of increasing cultural marxism with the communities not being marginalized. If they marginalize disfavored groups, you will not see the kind of people called cultural marxists, reversing cause.
If a space becomes less diverse, by becoming more black, and less white, you won't sdee them complain.
That can be explained by their opportunism and dishonesty. But it doesn't explain how the ideology recruits followers in the first place.
Botond173
15d ago
I've never seen any of such complaints raised anywhere in any context other than one promoting cultural Marxism.
Botond173
15d ago
I'd say that when you're already dominating the social order, you're no longer gaining power by recruiting supporters but by raising and indoctrinating them. It's a different dynamic from then on.
Botond173
19d ago
So what do you call a movement that seeks supporters by appealing to the cultural grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly left-wing hierarchical social environments?
Reactionaries, I suppose.
Botond173
20d ago
I only quoted Ball to give an example of a purely economic argument for redistribution and equality.
Botond173
20d ago
Is critical race theory supposed to be a conspiracy?
It's an idea that's basically a variation of the old "it's just a few college kids on Twitter, dude" argument. They'll tell you that CRT is ackchyually just a really obscure left-wing legal theory from the '80s that like 50 academics in total are actually familiar with.
Botond173
20d ago
Cultural Marxism seems to be a subject that starts discussions here from time to time (this is the latest example, I guess), and one conclusion I came away with from these is that apparently many Blue Tribers are convinced that the concept is nothing but a neofascist myth, similar to how the same group dismisses "political correctness" as something not real and instead existing in nowhere else but the imagination of GOP propagandists.
Anyway, it's not like I want to reinvent the wheel here, but I propose a simple concept to differentiate cultural Marxism from economic Marxism. For the sake of argument, let's assume that both Marxist tendencies actually exist, although I understand that this is a very big jump for the leftists mentioned above. Instead of observing what these tendencies argue, let's look at how they find purchase in society, to the extent that they do.
Economic Marxism seeks supporters by appealing to the economic grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"How is it possible that I'm working my ass off yet still remain nothing but a poor shmuck while assholes who never worked a day in their life drive around in fancy cars and fancy clothes?!"
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men." (John Ball)
It's not difficult to see why economic Marxism lost most of the allure it ever had: the people who keep appealing to such grievances are no longer the Marxists. This has multiple causes of its own, but I won't try going into this here.
Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, seeks supporters by appealing to the cultural grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"Why is everyone in this town such a homophobic garbage Nazi shithead? I bet they'd start pelting me with rocks if I tried walking down Main Street holding hands with my BF."
"I'm from Alabama and my pal got thrown out of the house by his shitty Fundamentalist parents just for being gay and trans. Why is it such a cesspool, man?!"
"Everytime I visit family I get cold stares and they keep pestering me when am I finally getting married. I'm done with these fuckers."
"Why is it still considered normal here for shitbag rednecks to drive around flying the Confederate flag? I can't even."
These are examples of men getting criticized for their promiscuity though. This is a rather important distinction.
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