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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
An American Werewolf in Paris.
Count how many cities in the Apalachians have major universities, orchestras, major museums, etc. There is even a book.
We were very favorably impressed when we drove through several years ago.
That’s all very nice, but my second desk is the Paris of my Apartment. Context matters.
Short answer: Nah, Claire. Even in San Francisco. Have teed up 3 CRT school board members to kick over the goal posts in a recall and Soros funded DA is next on June 7. Optimism abounds. Even in the strangest places.
I love this. The problem is some aren’t seeing it.
Our institutions are comprehensively failing. We did every single thing wrong in the face of the wage deflation and job destruction from automation and globalized labor.
The only intelligent option is to do anything you can to make things stop moving left. Retreating is usually very dangerous.
Also, the ordinary voters that support these guys don’t really study anything. I watch those principles first types like a hawk and it’s a big problem. They have all of this idealistic crap in their heads that probably was OK before 30 years ago. They just aren’t assessing things properly at all. They’re being duped, effectively.
I’m being screwed by a shortage of LPNs. Anybody on any side of this that thinks you can whip up medical labor out of unicorn dust is an idiot.
“Expats” not “exPats”. From the Latin “ex patria”, “Outside of Fatherland”. By the way, all my Latin is from North Carolina schools.
Um, well, not quite…
Very interesting, I thought. Claire’s analysis is rock solid when she says the EU is not a thing dedicated to principles. Unfortunately, she seems unable or unwilling to answer the logical followup (the interviewer also does not think to ask): what, then is the EU committed to if it is not a principle or set of principles?
The answer is the EU apparatus–not its citizens–is dedicated to its power, and has its member states either on board, sufficiently placated, or bought off. Claire is halfway to this conclusion, it seems, but is unable or unwilling to look at the devastation that analysis would cause her worldview.
And then Trump threatened liberal democracy by encouraging Brexit? No, Claire, Brexit threatened EU power and clout (see above why the continent was upset). The EU is not a liberal democracy, and its administration is quite a departure from how we would expect a government so-described to operate.
The Brexit referendum, by the way, was an exercise in liberal democracy, and how did the ‘stay’ forces argue their side? They promoted fear.
Very interesting, indeed. Thanks, @django
That is exactly the part of the EU that always gave me the creeps.
Exchange “the aristocracy” for “the EU apparatus” and all becomes clear.
I think the EU started out as a good idea to just facilitate trade.
Europe is at a disadvantage because they have so many legislatures, cultures, and they had so many currencies. When they tried to solve that, they really screwed it up.
Are there any worthwhile supranational governance structures? I highly doubt it.
Yes, I had “elites” in there with it, but was trying not to throw too much out there. I figured we could talk about that interview with Claire in a whole other thread for quite some time.
And how, despite warnings from everywhere. The EU has an expiration date thanks the currency union, partly because of rules drawn up by their bureaucrats (European Commission) that are binding over democratically-elected governments.
This is an important point. It is not as though I (we) disagree with the principles of the principles-firsters, and in fact I admire their focus. The problem is that operating strenuously from principles is best suited for winning moderated debates. It is less suited for convincing people in the real world, and very poorly suited for actually getting things done. Those principles must inform, not dictate.
That’s the way I feel. The other thing is the government and the structure of the economy have changed so much, that boiler plate libertarianism or conservatism just isn’t ideal right now.
If I had the ability to wish Americans
into the cornfieldto Paris permanently, Claire wouldn’t be on my list.But there is a list.
An undisciplined retreat usually becomes a rout.
I have a list, too. but it’s people I’m going to wish into Kandahar.
Place hasn’t been the same since TGIFriday’s closed.
Could you explain that expiration date? That’s not something I had heard about. I find it interesting because it seems to me that the currency union was the point at which the EU turned bad.
I won’t be forced to wear, green, plaid Toughskins jeans this time around. So there’s that.
I understand. In my post, I used Claire as a place filler for several folks in my life who have disappointed me as well. I could be wrong. I had many very nice discussions with Claire before all this went down and what has happened has been very sad. She isn’t stupid or evil and I think that too often that is where this discourse devolves too.
I guess my main point is that there is still a soul there. If we are to save ourselves it will be by winning her and others back. Of course, there are others out there who won’t be and/or can’t be, as others have mentioned. Maybe that is where she is and possibly was all along? I just hope that isn’t the case and would like to express some desire to still be open to folks like her and be respectful until we can’t be so anymore. Some say that point has been reached and I don’t hold that against them at all.
At about the same time the Euro was put into circulation (it was traded for some time prior), the EC (European Commission) put a rule in place that prices had to be the same throughout the common market. Now, as you’re no doubt aware, here in the ‘States there is a range of places where the cost of living is less or more depending where you are. The same is true in Europe, and the money people earned where the cost of living was less suddenly bought a lot less when the EC’s rule was put into place.
So, overnight the standard of living for people in Greece, Italy, and Spain (conspicuous examples), went south, so to speak. There are or were additional rules that favored larger manufacturers over smaller ones, to the degree that it determined that Dutch beer had to be served in restaurants in Greece, and also pushed smaller, local manufacturers out of business.
That’s an untenable situation, and the Greek financial crisis was largely down to their government’s efforts to make up the difference. The EU, with all its brainpower, simply didn’t take into account that the Greek or Spanish or Italian economy wasn’t the same as Germany’s. I haven’t updated my reading on the situation in some time (things have been happening here, after all), so I don’t know if that rule is still in place, but you can see that it’s something the richer economies don’t notice because the standardized prices are based on theirs, and the lesser economies simply cannot afford the prices forced upon them.
Were you speaking of a de facto rather than a de jure expiration on the common currency, then?
Yes, indeed. No particular date in mind, maybe Friday, though. Whenever German taxpayers decide enough is enough
Poland seems to have been dragging out its timetable for joining the common currency. It would be good for the EU if it and other such countries just keep going that way.
You can’t have a common currency with separate and otherwise sovereign legislatures and cultures. They made everything worse.