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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35989 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The future Liberals want by Noah Smith on substack. It’s not that interesting a vision really: the future of the West is highly diverse, urban, self-expressive (trans accepting), and abundant with oh thanks an olive branch for conservatives.

I think the bizarre thing about this is that Noah — as woke, neolib as it comes — felt the need to write this at all. Everyone knows this is the vision; it’s all we hear about! Conservatives all know that this is what is on offer if society remains on autopilot towards the future too.

What strikes me about it is a vision of total anomie and dissolving of any sense of common culture and this is supposed to be good. Each nations singular (or maybe 2-3 tops) religion replaced by anything or nothing. Each national ethnic group replaced by a multicultural hodge podge with inclusion and acceptance for all. Diversity of income (inequality). Imagine there are no countries…

I can’t help wonder what families are supposed to be like in this vision — or indeed if they really exist. Is a world of radical self invention fuelled by technology compatible at all with human flourishing as its always been known: freedom to choose the burdens we bear for maximum meaning. What if blank slatism wasn’t a description of the world, but a challenge!

It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).

The "vision" makes no allowances for reality.

How about radical environmentalism? Here, I think Thiel is envisioning some sort of mashup of degrowth ideology and over-regulated Eurosclerosis. But when it comes to the major environmental threat we face — climate change — the solution will be the opposite of degrowth. The price of renewable technologies (solar, wind, batteries, and electrolyzers) has come down so far, so fast, that decarbonizing our economy will actually lead to increased profits, increased growth, and abundant energy.

Meanwhile, in Europe and California, they're actually doing the degrowth thing. Shut down the power plants, ban fossil fuel use. Increased profits, increased growth, and abundant energy? No, recession and shortages

Today, however, this attempt at broadening the core American polity has been hotly contested — Hamilton is hated by conservatives, Lizzo’s flute-playing has ignited a culture-war debate, and the 1619 Project is of course wildly controversial. And these divisions have been exploited adroitly by our illiberal enemies, as when Vladimir Putin cynically accuses America of racist colonialism while simultaneously railing against trans people and atheists.

You see? When conservatives oppose the 1619 Project, they're helping Putin.

These urbanists don’t want to turn the whole world into Manhattan, or even Amsterdam. Instead, their visions are of somewhat-built-up suburbs that offer more transit options (trains, buses, e-bikes), are more environmentally friendly, and combine multi-family housing with single-family housing. The person I know who has done the best job of drawing pictures of what this might look like is the architect and artist Alfred Twu:

Ah, yes, their neighborhoods are wonderful visions which offer all thing to all people (except nasty car drivers). But that's all they are, visions. And the nasty car drivers stubbornly refuse to go away.

But now we’re adding a third type, which may be the best of all: densified green suburbs.

And the only qualities they lack is that of existence and possibility. Yes, you can find architects and artists to draw a Utopian vision. But just because you can draw it doesn't mean you can build it.

I believe the answer to all of these can be, and should be, “yes”. But so far the Abundance Agenda is still just a talking point and a collection of op-eds, while no one is really presenting a coherent future vision of either good jobs or entrepreneurship.

To its credit, the "Abundance Agenda" link in the original mentions the National Environmental Policy Act and other regulations. Noah does not; he is too busy blaming conservatives for not getting with the program. He's willing to say empty words in favor of free enterprise, but not to acknowledge that his "liberal democratic future" is in conflict with itself. And it won't be the "Abundance Agenda" that wins.

I don't see why defending bland, generic car based urban sprawl at all makes sense for conservatives. They are soulless, placeless expanses originally envisioned by liberals. The traditional city is walkable, has a strong sense of community, is unique and has a sense of belonging. There needs to be places for people to meet, small businesses and room for local culture. A stroad with endless generic housing with some big box stores selling the same products that can be found on the other side of the planet is essentially the anti thesis to the traditional city. The urbanist walkable city with cafes and restaurants at least has the aesthetic of a real city. My main critic of liberal urbanism is that it focuses purely on the aesthetic and not the function. There is no focus on having a common culture, a sense of belonging, an architectural style unique to the town and its geography etc. It is a disney-world version of a city. I would still much rather have that then the completely atomized suburban sprawl that has been built since WWII. Suburbia has isolated people from their communities, made people fat, ruined the environment and created a boring society. Instead of a public square which is a public space there is a mall which is nothing but a commercial space controlled by someone who has no connection to the town.

Cars are a massive waste of space, force kids to sit in their houses while their mom has to drive them to their friends, and replaces the bakery with bland factory bread. The best thing that could happen to conservatism is 150 dollar per barrel oil.

I don't see why defending bland, generic car based urban sprawl at all makes sense for conservatives.

The only thing he said about suburbs was that, unlike whatever grand plan Noah has for society, they have the advantage of existing, and being relatively functional. People have every right to demand a successful test run somewhere, before you start redesigning their communities from scratch.

Traditional cities have functioned and existed for millennia and still function and exist with tens of millions of people living in pre car developments across the western world. What hasn't been able to function well is the complete break with tradition after WWII when cities were entirely redesigned and we ended up with long range commuting, massive environmental damage, low social cohesion, extreme blandness and the sheer ugliness of urban sprawl. Looking at what has actually worked and created cities like Barcelona, Budapest, Boston before WWII or Copenhagen is a much better route than continuing with one of the biggest failures of progressivism in the 20th century. Suburbia was a progressive project, and it doesn't make sense for conservatives to take the blame for it.

I understand what you're going for, the question is whether you can reproduce that in a modern context.

Suburbia was a progressive project, and it doesn't make sense for conservatives to take the blame for it.

Maybe they just don't want to take the blame for whatever comes next.

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