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Detached from America? It depends
On Twitter, our friend Claire Berlinski (I could have just said Claire, and you’d know, but I used her whole name as a bat signal in case she gets an alert that I’m talking about her tweet) wrote:
Yes and no.
The problem with “Yes” is that different people have exactly opposite opinions.
For some: yes, they believe the country is on the brink of authoritarianism, and also there is not enough authoritarianism when it comes to masks and vaccines. The country is threatened by right-wing white supremacists who want to destroy Our Democracy; we’re always one day away from 1/6, and also, the riots of 2020 were regrettable but righteous and understandable. An astroturf cohort of “concerned parents” are violently attacking school boards in an attempt to keep schools from teaching about racism and the history of slavery.
On the other side: yes, because our expectation of minimal competence among the managerial class in government, always grudging and grumpy because they’re so sure of themselves and what’s best for us, has been demolished by two years of flat-footed mismanagement coupled with no diminution in their estimation of their abilities and importance. The current administration is empty at the top, indifferent to actual problems, intent on forcing things on the populace that the populace does not want, incapable of addressing lawlessness and public disorder, and hostile to the Moorlocks in the hustings with their retrograde ideas (like single-family zoning or the desire to buy a pickup.)
But. No, inasmuch as the real world is not the fret-fest of social media, where you stick your head into the yowling maelstrom of the tremulous and neurotic, or the locker-room of boisterous bros who bleep-post to own the libs. In the actual America people are going to bars and restaurants and grocery stores and getting along just fine, bearing up under the new problems, gritting our teeth, and holding doors open for people behind us without worrying who they voted for. Bad ideas come and go in cycles. We’ve been through worse.
Responses:
Uh huh. Comptroller of the Currency nom wants to bankrupt the energy industry, wants the nationalization of the banking industry, the FBI raids journalists’ offices, racial essentialism is the required intellectual posture in the circles of power, commerce, and education, but the real worrisome thought is ending up like Hungary.
Takes a lot longer slog to get out from under nationalized banks and no carbon-based energy sector, I think.
And:
Again, there was this thing called “The summer of 2020” when city after city, including my own, had spasms of leftist political street violence (with some assistance from opportunistic apolitical miscreants and alt-right morons) that burned down blocks, killed businesses, and increased crime; the reaction of the bien-pensants was to justify the Uprising and attack anyone who seemed to point out that property damage was bad. We have a record number of carjackings in our city, and I guar-an-damn-tee you there’s not a soul driving around worried that MAGA types are going to bracket their car and drag them out at gunpoint.
But yes, sure, Trumpian fascism is right around the corner. Be on guard! Also, report your co-worker for saying something approving about Dave Chappelle. It made you feel unsafe.
Published in Culture
When was the last time she actually spent more than a week or so on American soil?
It’s certainly no “skin off her nose” that Biden is president of the US, maybe she’d have a different attitude if he were PM of France or mayor of Paris.
Since Claire is no longer an American, no one should listen to any of her comments on America. She has disconnected herself from her country, and should no longer be thought of as an American.
She’s “American” the way Joe Biden is “Catholic.” Born into it, but not really practicing.
At some point I became cognizant that this woman was opining on American politics living in Turkey and then Paris.
I understand viscerally because I’ve spent time abroad and returned to another place. Things change. You need to have active experience in the country to understand what’s going on. She had a Euro-Wapo perspective and is literally disconnected from kitchen table American experience and their resulting policy preferences.
I’ve traveled much of the USA – in each instance, dozens of preconceived notions were shattered, leading me to actively question any report I hear.
I’ve been here a long time, but think I missed her prime as a contributor (or whatever). I don’t bear her any ill will, but have been stunned by some of her tweets for a couple years. Those who read her stuff here will have to tell me if Ricochet was just a career move unaffected by root ideology.
Just imagine what she’ll tweet after she receives Booster #8.
Oh, I don’t know. People adapt. I grew up middle-class in the middle of the continent in a middle-sized town, with the extra herbs-and-spices blend of having a father who was an independent businessman and a mother whose family still ran the farm 15 miles to the north. I ended up running off to the big city to make a living by typing, which is contrary to the actual work of my forebears. I mean, in my dad’s business, you had to deal with things like EXPLODING LOADING DOCKS, and in my grandparents’ trade, you got your sleeve caught in an augur and lost a limb. Put it this way: in my trade you don’t need Lava soap at the end of the day to get rid of the oil or the chaff.
If she’d grown up in Fargo, who knows? Could’ve fallen in love the prairie, as people do, and ended up teaching at the college, playing in the symphony.
Yes, yes, Minneapolis is hardly The Big City in the great global sense. It’s not Paris, but what else is? I could never live in Paris permanently, because I would never shake the sense – possibly reinforced by everyone else – that I was not French. Frustrating, in a way – considering what France has given to Western Culture, and how the unmatched urban artistry of 19th century Paris makes you want to be a Belle Époque flaneur. All proud citizens of Western Civ should call it home! <basilfawltyvoice> whatever you do don’t mention the revolution </basilfawltyvoice>But I would never feel as if I had the essence of the place in my marrow.
It was the same in DC, somewhat – everyone was from elsewhere, at least in the gummint and chattering class, has little investment in the place itself. I felt as if I belonged in the sense that all Americans belong to these symbols and monuments, but you never shake the tourist feeling. You end up moving to the suburbs, and no, you’re not really a Virginian, or a Marylander. You’re just a transplant in shallow ground. And so I returned to the Midwest, not because I want to go to the VFW and have a Grain Belt with a guy whose cap has ear flaps, but because it feels like home to be standing next to that guy as we gas up at the Casey’s, and it’s 10 below, and we give each other a stoic nod: nippy.
Also me as the winter sets in: screw this, AZ or FL, flip a coin, I don’t care.
Haven’t we all heard someone begin a
conversation
Random Guy or Gal: isn’t all this stuff crazy?
And you say,
yeah, really crazy.
The masks…(!)
Yeah, the masks….
And the unvaccinated.
The what?
The unvaccinated , the idiots who won’t follow the science.
Now you’re warned and signaled simultaneously. Good luck, you’ll need it.
It’s a kind of manipulation methinks.
The Hungarian Bugaboo – which sounds like a charming native children’s dance – is interesting, because I don’t know exactly what they mean. Is it just authoritarian Orbanism? Because it that’s the case then stop expanding the got-durned state and sticking its tentacles into places that would make Kurt Eichenwald blush. If it’s the nationalism, well, Hungary is different from the United States, and is under no obligation to be less Hungarian, any more than Japan is obliged to become more Spanish. Is it the religion? If so, what you mean is it’s the wrong religion, and they shouldn’t be so, you know, religiousy.
Time permitting, I’m willing to listen to anyone comment on America, including Attila the Hun, Jeremy Corbyn, or Peter Strzok. It’s good to keep an eye on some people.
LOL!
Or Tokaji.
Literally detached, for at least ten years.
I did enough time in L.A. to discover that one can grow sick of perfect weather. Practically no one in L.A. is from L.A. and if you stay long enough, you risk being of L.A., in which case, may God have mercy on your soul. The East Coast was more varied climate-wise, but some folks had deportment issues. I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. They were raised by wolves or something.
It’s nice to be able to get to a Farm & Fleet without needing an airline ticket, even if I don’t need anything right now.
Give me a feed & grain store with a bench in the shade of the porch where the old men whittle and squint, pontificating about … pretty much everything.
North GA has all three seasons and mild winters.
Summer is why we have centralAC.
This was my first thought. She’s now fully Frenchified and she looks at America as a strange foreign and forbidding place.
Claire loves America… she just doesn’t want to actually live here… because, ewwwww, it’s full of Americans.
There’s something that’s supposed to be romantic about being an expat, especially in Pah-ree. You know, F. Scott and Zelda, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway and Kay Boyle… and lots and lots of bags of cat litter… the whole “Lost Generation” thing with the faint aroma of ammonia.
Damn, Franco, you’re not messing around! :-)
I wondered why this wasn’t either one year or fifty years. Two doesn’t check out for me. Perhaps he’s just talking about the Fauci-ization and whatever enabled it — which does include GEOTUS I’m afraid.
To tell the truth, he’s never really taken office. That’s like saying that my bookshelf is well-read.
You;re not pulling any punches either. w00t!
Somewhere in a “penthouse apartment” (attic) there’s a catbox filled with crumpled drafts, past-due bills, Bill Kristol’s book (at least somebody is selling books) and tears, where the cats go oui.
I understand that person B is a friend to many here. For a couple of years, I still read what she said about people like me. I’m guessing that Zubrin was one of her finds. So I’ll just leave it alone from here. After all, things are much better now.
Claire is completely out of touch. Her information is obviously coming from very dubious sources. I’d like to think she is still the same person who wrote There is No Alternative, but it’s certainly hard to tell if that’s the case. ☹️
I suspect Claire-bear is getting a full court press on J6 and the violent GOP from Le Monde.
A quick browse of the front page of their site shows a story on Steve Bannon related to “the assault on the Capitol” and a report that highlights Q-Anon’s fascination with the ghost of JFK, Jr. What the…? Well, I admit my French isn’t strong. Oh, I see, JFK, Jr. is alive and engineering a coup.
Yeah, the biggest French-language paper is reporting on that.
So…who knows what she may be thinking? Sounds like a nutty country to me.
Where she pals around with Chris Steele from time to time.
Your last point, plus the response of local governments. I wasn’t impressed with Trump’s response, and no I’m not talking about bleach-drinking or any other canards. The messaging was scattershot. I don’t think he was the guy you want setting the tone when everything’s in flux, no one knows what’s around the corner, and repeatedly telling everyone “it’ll go away” sets up erroneous expectations.
None of that matters when compared to Operation Warp Speed, which counted more than anything.
She visited New York in there, somewhere.
If a New York person/resident visits Paris and then returns to New York, we don’t call them “French” or “A Parisian.”
If Claire visits New York once over 10-20 years, she’s still more French/Parisian than American/New Yorker now.