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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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In last week’s thread Cirrus addressed the gerontocracy that is due to characterize the upcoming presidential elections (and characterized the two latest ones) in the US, and drew obvious parallels with the late history of the USSR. This reminded me of a comment by phoneosaur on the old subreddit 4 years ago, which I found fascinating enough in order to save it. Either way, this generated a bunch of replies last week, but I think some relevant points were not made.

First I’d bring up the following argument from the old comment:

My hunch is that the "establishment" in each era resorted to increasingly elderly candidates because the pipeline of ideologically reliable young people stopped flowing. The establishment become reluctant to hand power to a new generation when that generation has ceased believing in the legitimacy of the power structure.

Cirrus mentions something that might first read like the opposite, but pretty much seems to point out the same problem:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare those Accords with modern-day Wokism currently afflicting Western European culture. The older generation of leaders will roll their eyes. But they signed on to it. The next batch of younger idealist leaders—the Gorbachevs of our future—will take Wokism seriously to the detriment of our national integrity.

I think both of them are definitely onto something, so I’d draw a different parallel to illustrate what I think is going on. In the USSR, what Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all had in common was that they lived through Stalin’s terror as youths, and the Great Patriotic War as young adults. They had multiple common points of reference, which all made them politically cautious. They remembered the horrors of the past, and had understanding of the limitations and problems of the regime they served. Sure, they repeated the usual platitudes about the final victory of socialism, the supremacy of Marxist-Leninist thought, proletarian solidarity etc., but they didn’t take most of this seriously, and were wary of appointing younger cadres – after all, they, not sharing the common understanding and experience of the elders, not being humbled by terrible past events, and potentially being real believers or, alternatively, heretics, may end up enacting reforms that destroy the system, doing things that just don’t work out, being naïve idiots, or hotheaded, or just selling everything out to the enemy. This is just speculation on my part, admittedly – anyway, we know that the gerontocratic party leadership did eventually appoint a younger reformer of “merely” 54 years of age, when the economic and social crisis of the system became obvious.

In the US, the people in the highest political positions are mostly Boomers who lived through the political upheaval of the Johnson and Nixon years and the pre-1973 era of prosperity as young adults. (The Senate’s median age is above 65 years, and has been steadily rising for a while.) For them, these years, the good times, are basically a point of reference as a period of normalcy, and they remember the activities of revolutionary leftist movement as something to be avoided. And they are probably nostalgic for the Reagan/Clinton years. They will, of course, repeat platitudes about civil rights, restorative justice, empowering minorities, the future being female and whatnot, but they won’t tolerate anything that directly disturbs the peace of middle-class suburban normalcy, and won’t give power to true believers of social revolution. After all, they don’t want to rock the boat.

This reminds me of a different observation I’ve seen here from a Gen X-er (I can’t find the comment), namely that X-er voters are reluctant to vote fellow X-ers into political power, because there’s too high a chance that they’ll turn out to be dangerous radicals and true believers. So this isn’t a sentiment limited to just Boomers, probably.

All in all, it seems that in periods of political and economic uncertainty and stagnation, the elderly can remain in power easily, because people will want to stick with the Devil they know, and not risk future upheaval and collapse by giving power to politicians that are untried and untested.

Neoreactionary internet denizen Jim has an old post where he coined the term "generational loss of hypocrisy", and I wish it was used more widely. His given example sucks, which is probably why. I'll try to convey some other examples without waging the culture war or consensus building, and feedback is welcome if I fall short:

  • As described in your post, where Soviet politicians give lip service to things because they're expected to, and the newer generation of politicians believe them sincerely.
  • Jim's example is people expressing shock that a female prison guard would aid the escape of male prisoners she was sleeping with. He claims "everyone knew women were like this". Personally, I find the leap from "women like bad boys" to "women will break their bad boys out of prison" too large, and that's why I'm sad that there isn't a better defense of the concept somewhere.
  • Trends of work and play preferences for men and women. Boys and girls play differently (paywall bypass), but after a generation of trying to remove the stigma of boys playing with dolls, Damore got fired for his memo. Set aside the arguments of the actual culture war issues and look at the "generational loss of hypocrisy": The belief that "boys shouldn't play with dolls" is very dated, and its believers are mostly in retirement homes now. While the Baby Boomers will (broadly) approve of letting children play with whatever toy they want, they also (broadly) believe that there are gendered preferences, and going against those is abnormal. They just don't say that last part out loud. By the time we're to Generation X, there's significant support for equity as defined by the social justice movement, and expressing the unsaid beliefs of the Baby Boomers creates a hostile work environment to the point where you will be fired.
  • Some climate change scientists and activists present short timelines for catastrophic destruction. There's a history of extreme claims from environmentalists since, for example, Earth getting destroyed after whales go extinct gets more donations and support than statistics, charts, and threats of "loss of biodiversity" that most people just won't internalize. People in power pay climate change lip service and make a donation, but generally don't behave as if the world actually is going to suffer these catastrophic effects any time soon. Buying houses at sea-level is an example of this hypocrisy. Greta Thunberg took the proclamations at face value and is upset that people in power aren't backing up their talk with action. Criticisms of AOC's Green New Deal include plenty in the category of "You're taking climate change too seriously": if the more catastrophic predictions are correct then it would make sense to take significant economic loss now in order to prevent it.
  • Police/prison reform. Though I'm not very knowledgeable on the history of these movements, I think a lot of the older generation knows that some people are just anti-social criminals who shouldn't be free (related study), but the newer members of the movements has been pushing for the actual abolition of prisons and police.

Yes, that's basically the main thing I was trying to get at, at least as far as the US political class and the Brahmin class is concerned - admittedly whatever parallels with the USSR are to be found here aren't that clear-cut in my opinion.*

Jim's example is people expressing shock that a female prison guard would aid the escape of male prisoners she was sleeping with. He claims "everyone knew women were like this". Personally, I find the leap from "women like bad boys" to "women will break their bad boys out of prison" too large, and that's why I'm sad that there isn't a better defense of the concept somewhere.

I'm not a regular reader of Jim and not that familiar with his views, so I won't try defending them, but I would point out that his fundamental argument does still stand in this case. That is, the ruling class in bygone days all "politely pretended women were not like this", but they also put all sorts of social, legal, religious etc. mechanisms in effect to curb women's opportunities to be like this, so that no naive man ever realized that they are like this. One of the decisions this entailed was not permitting women to serve as guards in men's prisons, because duh, not all of them will end up helping some prisoners escape due to sexual attraction, but some of them will. Those mechanisms are long dismantled by now, but the polite pretension still lingers on, which is why there are prisoners successfully escaping with the help of their sex partner female guards.

In basically the same way, I'm sure the ideology of feminism, women's liberation and gender equality used to be propagated and continued for decades mostly by powerful men who, by today's feminist standards, were objectively sexists, rapists and phonies. But this state of affairs was never going to last; eventually the true believers gain power.

Other than this, I agree with your points.

*Gorbachev and his supporters were, I guess, true believers as well in the sense that they all grew up in late-stage socialism (heh), and thought it's stable and mature enough for it to be reformable and to be able to evolve.

we know that the gerontocratic party leadership did eventually appoint a younger reformer of “merely” 54 years of age, when the economic and social crisis of the system became obvious.

I feel like this narrative is very forced.

First, the fact that the USSR was already actively headed towards an economic and social crisis before Gorbachev is not exactly a glowing endorsement of the abilities of the gerontocracy to balance their decades of experience with the modern needs of their country.

Second, isn't the main lesson of the old USSR that totalitarianism and the destruction of markets was awful? Gorbachev may have rocked the boat, but it's hard to imagine that more experience of his friends and family going to gulags and and dying of starvation would have increased his tolerance for totalitarianism or command economies. I admit you could argue that glasnost reflects Gorbachev drinking the kool aid, but increasing transparency and allowing government criticism could just as easily be argued to be Western influences.

Third, the fact that Republicans also have several key, very old politicians suggests that any woke/left-only explanations are, at best, incomplete.

Of course it's no endorsement. The gerontocracy inherited a system with structural problems, but they didn't rock the boat because they didn't believe that liberal reforms would work i.e. would preserve the political regime. Which they indeed didn't.

No, it's mostly a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments.

In 2028, yes, if Trump doesn't win in 2024 is alive and out of prison (or maybe if he is in prison), he'll run again.

Otherwise, on the GOP side, you'll have a bunch of normal-aged politicians like DeSantis, Noem, Kim Reynolds, Stefanik, Abbott, Vance, on the GOP side who are all normal politicians ages.

Same thing on the DNC side - Kamala, Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Newsom, AOC.

Again, like or don't like these people, but they're all normal politicians ages. Same thing with the House & Senate leadership. Jefferies & Mike Johnson are normal political ages. Schumer & McConnell will be both are on their way out in the next 2-4 years.

Putting aside Trump, outside of him, I'll bet you a Trading Spaces dollar both nominees are under 70.

And yet all the presidential nominees were old White farts in 2016 and 2020 as well. Writing off at least three presidential elections as a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments is a bit of a stretch. Especially in a society where celebrating racial diversity, sexual equality etc. has pretty much been sort of a state ideology for a long time.

Yes, this past decade or so has been that very specific political moment I'm talking about. By 2028, it'll be over, outside of Trump.

If Hillary had done a little better on Super Tuesday in '08, maybe she's the nominee, picks Obama, and either she loses in 2012 in Romney and Obama comes back to win in 2016 or she's a two-term incumbent, Obama's the obvious nominee, and so on.

Why are you assuming this "political moment" will be over by 2028? Is there any long-term trend suggesting that the presidential nominees then will not be old White men?

C.f. The Republican Party is Doomed by @TracingWoodgrains.

There’s something to this, I think- the young are much more extreme in both directions than their elders- but the ‘where’s the dividing line?’ Aspect is possibly relevant and it’s less than universal. Like let’s take the turn to the right for young men; they’re disproportionately extremely moderate conservatives. On the other hand the leftward turn for young women seems genuinely left of ‘normal’ leftism.

Even my boomercon father notes regularly that ‘the old dinosaurs like Nancy pelosi are keeping the squad and AOC in check- apres lui, la deluge’. But at the same time, Jared Golden is influential within the democrats, is not currently undergoing fossilization while still alive, and is fairly moderate and normal. For some reason the weirdos are the younger people in a position to take over when our current leadership inevitably dies even in the presence of relatively normal ones.

Populism vs donor class politics.

A lot of younger Americans think health care is too expensive and has to become substantially cheaper. A lot of young people aren't enthusiastic about forever wars. A lot of young people think housing costs are unsustainable. A lot of young people would be skeptical of NSA spying. These issues cut across the left/right divide. Both a rightwinger and a leftwinger can agree that wall street is becoming parasitical and is sucking money out of the real economy. The boomer elite believe in the system, the younger party members see the system as broken and want to change it.

The situation is a bit like the situation in France in the 1780s. Older members of the elite believed in the system, a lot of young people didn't. That doesn't mean the youngsters agreed at all on how the situation was to be fixed.

I strongly agree with your point and this is something that I've been thinking about for a while. That said I think I go a bit further - I think Left/right as a meaningful political divide is going to either go away or simply transform into pro/anti regime/establishment, because neither of them can offer anything which actually helps people deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives. Trump is just the early foreshadowing of that realignment.

This sounds correct to me, as I'm a younger right-winger and those are points of agreement for me with the left wing. I think with health care, with social order, with institutional trust, with dating and relationships, I think young lefties and righties both see the same problems. They just often disagree profoundly on how to fix them.

Though I do wonder how much the NSA weighs on your average zoomer normie, who seems to treat spying by the government and corporations as a fact of nature because they've grown up surrounded by it.

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