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A Response to Charles Murray —Majestyk
I want to start this post out by trying to establish my bona fides regarding the subject that I am about to talk about. I have seen a reasonably broad swath of socioeconomic status in my life. My parents started out as fairly typical, middle-class people. My mother’s family (from rural Green Bay, Wisconsin) were almost uniformly blue-collar (my grandfather failed to finish high school) while my father’s family (mostly college-educated) were landowners and timber barons in Idaho … but they ultimately lost it all.
Thus I certainly didn’t come from money, despite the fact that improvements in my father’s employment allowed him to purchase many nicer things for my younger sister than I had when I was her age. This is the nature of things. There was a little bit of Fishtown and a little bit of Belmont in my upbringing. But there was never a hint of the negative stereotypes of Fishtown.
I married a girl who was most certainly from Fishtown, despite my increasingly Belmont-ish young life. This was an unmitigated disaster. Ultimately, our values were simply incongruous on any of the major fronts of marriage (Emotional, Sexual and Financial) – and it caused me to have an unintentional tour of some of the more Fishtown-ish aspects of life.
In the depths of despair, financial ruin, and cuckoldry, I sued for divorce. After finally untying myself (and my children) from the millstone of Fishtown, I feel like my life has shot up from the muck of the slough of despond like a bubble released from a hot bottle of soda.
I’m certainly not rich now, but I’m much better off than I was previously and I’m on a trajectory that I couldn’t have anticipated. I feel fortunate; despite my own foolishness, my life is now on firmly on the road to Belmont.
Great, you say, but what does this all have to do with Dr. Murray?
Something that Dr. Murray said during the most recent Ricochet Podcast stuck out at me like a sore thumb: “The fact of being American [used to transcend] class.”
Did it really? When was that true? What has changed? Dr. Murray speaks of it as if at some point that fact stopped being real. But was it ever real in the first place?
My awful marriage to the Millstone of Fishtown drove home to me just how different of a world we live in from one class to another. The simple fact is: Being American no longer has the same meaning to people who live in different classes, if it ever did. One class views being American as an opportunity, and the other seems to view it as an opportunity to prey upon their fellow Americans.
I don’t share the values of those people in Fishtown – and I don’t want to have anything to do with them either. Their influence is toxic. Their values are foreign, alien, and repugnant to me.
This quotation by Dr. Murray from de Tocqueville struck me as well: “The more opulent members of America take great care not to separate themselves from the lower classes – they talk to them every day.” I find this to be highly suspect.
Did James Pierpont Morgan talk to dirt poor people on a daily basis? Did John D. Rockefeller? How about Andrew Carnegie? I doubt it. If you’re familiar with a place called “the Breakers,” you’ll realize that highly successful, even hyper-rich people like Cornelius Vanderbilt were not interested in mucking about with people from the lower classes. They wanted to get as far away from them as possible — and they built walls and barriers to keep the Fishtownians out of Belmont.
In a time more contemporary with de Tocqueville, you might argue that Thomas Jefferson spoke on a daily basis to dirt poor people, but I’m not sure that talking to people you owned really counts.
To be fair, most of the 19th century industrialists certainly did have the experience of coming from grinding poverty, but they didn’t live their lives as though they still did. Those guys demonstrate to me that Fishtown, poverty, and malaise are not merely places and class distinctions. They are attitudes, lifestyles, and outlooks.
In a country such as ours, a person has to be actively trying to sabotage themselves to end up in a position where they’re broke, helpless, unemployed and starving. Is that the fault and the moral responsibility of the people who sometimes fall into the trap of poverty? Perhaps it is. The other part of that is: Fishtown isn’t forever, except for a select few who are extraordinarily resistant to the incentives and signals that the economy is trying to transmit to them. Failure is actually a more clear economic signal than success is, and a far less pleasant one at that.
The simplest rules for having a successful life in America are the same as they ever have been: Finish school, don’t get pregnant as a teenager, work hard, save, and take care of your family.
That these simple values aren’t being successfully transmitted outside of the confines of Belmont seems not only unlikely, but impossible to me. Something else is at work here. I think it’s demonstrable that wrongheaded economic incentives delivered via government welfare programs led to entrenching a class of people who self-selected for dependency.
We’ll never be rid of Fishtown. Conservatives realize this because of our differing outlook on life, the universe, and human nature. Liberals and their policies guarantee not only that will we never be rid of Fishtown, but that it will perpetually grow on the outskirts of Belmont, feeding on the scraps and demanding an ever-growing portion of the pie.
Intermarriage and cultural exchange between Belmont and Fishtown can’t fix this problem; the cultural DNA of one is inherently rejected by the other. So why doesn’t one subsume the other? The DNA of one side of the equation is reinforced by the financial might of the other. The signaling is broken.
I don’t want to echo John Derbyshire and claim that we’re doomed, but we are certainly going to continue to do the same thing over and over again until we fix the problem of rewarding behavior that guarantees your perpetual economic ruin.
Published in General
Home Depot. You can return items without receipt up to 3 times per year at a lot of these places. All it takes is a photo ID.
I have seen it and agree with your take – the difference of course is that the “effete rich” as Dr. Murray described them simply have the financial wherewithal to buy their way out of the problems they create for themselves (sort of like the Yankees) whereas making these kind of mistakes and having those pathologies as a bona fide occupant of Fishtown will put you behind the 8-ball for years, if not the rest of your life.
I grew up in rural E. Tennessee. (Late 50’s through 60’s) There were many poor families in the area and I met and was friends with their children in my classes in school. The ones I knew were good people: not lazy; eschewed “welfare”; hard working. They weren’t Fishtown.
Years later I ran a day labor company. A close friend ran another office in a nearby town. We often got together for lunch. Once he said, talking about the bums we would hire out, “You know, but for the grace of God, there go we.”
I took immediate, loud exception. “No way in Hell!” I pointed that both of us had been out of jobs at various times and that both of us had dug in and done the things to get back going again. He once took a midnight job at 7-Eleven to make ends meet. I had done similar for the same reason. We both brought ourselves back to Belmont.
The guys working occasional day labor choose to take their pay and blow it on booze and drugs every evening. They choose to sleep under bridges and in parks. They choose Fishtown.
I should also say to whichever editor promoted me: Kudos on the picture selection.
Does this make the Mets the Fishtown of the baseball world?
It is almost impossible to climb the socioeconomic ladder while maintaining close relationships with friends who don’t aspire to do the same. I read somewhere that your income is the average of your 5 closest friend’s incomes. Continuing to associate with the dependency class will doom even those with the best intentions.
Simply put, there is a reason society is stratified by class.
I want to make my point another way (which I think is not that different from yours, Majestyk, though no doubt we’d put the emphasis in different places); the crucial difference between Fishtown and Belmont is not economic, but moral.
What’s maddening and horrifying about how far the left has succeeded in this country is that the government has so manipulated things that the link between free choices and consequences gets harder to discern.
I am humble about what I do under my own power. Or perhaps, I have been humbled. I come from a long line of sots, so the idea of staying upright and sober without the Grace of God must remain foreign to me. For…
I don’t know that we would differ on this. I would restate your point to say that the normal, rational link between cause and effect has been short-circuited. It just happens that the most obvious way that this displays itself is in economic outcomes. As a result of this, the government’s efforts to paper over that disparity distort one of the best methods that we have to signal to people that what they’re doing is wrong.
Morality is a series of cause/effect relationships; we’ve simply insulated people too well from the feedback of their choices.
I’m going out on a limb here because I haven’t finished the podcast and am not sure of the context, but it seems to me that to say that we’ve transcended class doesn’t mean that there is no class, but rather that we don’t define ourselves by class. What is unique about the US is not that there is not a “rags” class, or a “riches” class, but that you can go from rags to riches. In places like England you either are born or marry into upper class. Here, if someone is born in Fishtown, they can make it to Belmont if they change their ways and attitudes.
-E
New York baseball teams don’t get any slack from me.
I have yet to read Dr. Murray’s “Coming Apart.” I’ll get to it eventually, but here’s my objection to the title: In order to “Come Apart” we first would have had to “Be Together.”
I’m not so sure that we ever were in the first place, at least in a cultural sense. There are plenty of moral poor people and quite a few rotten rich ones, but in the end where you end up has as much to do with your own actions as anything – not where you started, as you say.
The State and the non-governmental sector — including many churches — have worked hand-in-glove to do exactly this. Charity cases have become clients.
Pope Francis warned of where this tendency leads in his first homily:
I want to expand upon my last comment as well – We conservatives embrace the notion of “Income Inequality” as a feature and not a bug of our system. How is it that this came to be?
The history of this country is a history of allowing “income inequality”; The system that we designed as a nation is actually a sorting mechanism. It allows for stratification, movement through class and differentiation.
We have been forever and always are “Coming Apart” as a natural function of the existence of our nation – this phenomenon is nothing new; we’ve simply retarded that process.
I understand Murray is sort of trying to show Belmont (rich Leftists) that they are not personally living their own politics etc. What bothered me from the beginning about Murray’s representation is that underneath it is the same as the Left’s- attack rich people. Why does it have to be their responsibility to not be hypocritical (beyond anyone else)? It has the undesired effect also of taking personal reponsibility away from Fishtown. Further it defines and sets ‘classes’ within the Leftist boundaries more than the traditional American definitions that are discussed above: middle class, for instance, has always just meant most people.
The little ‘bubble-class’ quiz was quite the book seller too. I know it was fun and interesting but also was another form of cementing class divisions (and left out the ‘upper class homeless’ I referred to in my previous post for instance. I’m sure they drink only the best beer others can buy them).
Right. This clientelism has exactly the wrong sort of incentive structure for the people who work in these organizations. Poor people stopping being poor means the people who administer these programs would be out of a job.
My point — and Francis’s point — is bigger that this, however. These organizations refuse to witness the very spiritual transformation that these people need to break their inertia.
Definitely agree with this.
I notice that arguments about how much control, exactly, people have over their own lives, while they are very easy to have, are somewhat beside the point in this whole matter. A person may believe that most people don’t really have a whole lot of control over their own lives and yet believe, like any good conservative, that people are nonetheless obligated to make the best of what little control they do have.
Whatever role circumstances play in shaping people’s lives (and I believe they play a rather big role), we owe it to the poorest among us to see that those circumstances don’t include a ton of perverse incentives that only encourage them to stay poor and helpless.
Agree totally about the normal link between free acts and consequences having been short-circuited. But let’s make sure we note that this happens on both ends of the economic scale. It’s not only the case that wastrels are insulated from their bad choices. Rich people are too. Bailouts, anyone?
Meanwhile, good people trying to make an honest living are too often getting the short end of the stick. They see, on one side, loafers milking the welfare system and living better than they are, and on the other, rich people milking the system and paying for their schemes by taxing the middle class to death. It’s discouraging.
Great post. And I think it appropriate to note just how important the choice of a spouse is. To quote the old knight in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie, it sounds like Majestyk “chose poorly” with his first spouse. Fortunately, he was able to undo that choice before he rotted away into a pile of dust. But choosing a spouse well or poorly is a huge thing.
Beyond the perverse incentives (which any Conservative knows), there are other Fishtowns. I often read comments from people who dare not utter their beliefs for fear of retribution (losing their jobs, shunning, etc.). They could plan a strategic exit (more resources than the poor after all) even if it included a loss in status or something. They live and work in cultural ghettos don’t they?
You’ve just described the Democrat party’s coalition.
The Steven Rattners and Geithners of the world aren’t necessarily as ideologically liberal as their masters in the Obama administration – they simply went to the same colleges and seized upon the opportunity to save their trust-fund buddies who backed the wrong horse at our expense.
Some choices can’t be undone – not that I would if I could. Who would wish away their children? At any rate, the advice that I always give to people who are considering marriage are to be bluntly honest with themselves about what their expectations are regarding their future spouse.
What is their background and what is their family like? We become our parents, after all.
How is their financial health? I don’t mean “do they have money?” I mean, what is their attitude about debt? Do they save? Do they barely scrape by from paycheck to paycheck?
What are your and their expectations about the amount of sex you’re going to engage in? Do you have a reasonable expectation of sexual fidelity (not serial monogamy)?
These are tough questions that I think people sometimes don’t take the time to answer to themselves seriously… sadly, because they’re in love. That’s a rather large perverse incentive.
Don’t forget the labor unions.
Did it really? When was that true? What has changed? Dr. Murray speaks of it as if at some point that fact stopped being real. But was it ever real in the first place?
I agree with Murray. (I’ve got about a generation on you Mr.Magestyk) I felt we DID transcend class. Certainly there are classes but in flyover country they may have slept in different places but during the day, my perception was of quite a bit of commingling. I was a caddy at a mid-level fancy country club.
Murray chose, somewhat arbitrarily I think, 1963 as when it changed. I can buy that. The Fishtown of 1963 has been transformed into an urban Indian reservation. Murray blames us baby boomers, I agree. It took me awhile but I eventually knew we were bankrupting ourselves but I soon took the position that I would be dead before collapse so I (we boomers) did nothing.
It seems to me that Majestyk is talking about the British-type upper and lower classes, while Dr. Murray is consciously describing the more recent fissures that have rent the middle class into two more distinct elements than was previously noticeable.
The problem, I think, is that a lot of the sociological analysis, just as the Left’s poverty/economic analysis, is done from a Cold War baseline, not starting with the teeming tenement swamps of NYC in 1910, but looking at city life in the period between 1945 and 1970, and today.
A very different picture emerges when viewed that way- in particular, the refining force of religion, which was taken more seriously during the post-WWII Cold War era than it was at other times, before and after, in cities. In fact, a useful parallel to the numbing evils wrought with decent intent by the Great Society is to watch the history of Billy Graham- his ascendance, plateau as a person of influence, and his aging decline to be replaced by the numerous megachurches now dominating the evangelical world.
I would defer to your judgment regarding the urban indian reservations, and confess that my own historical perspective is somewhat limited by the timeframe of my birth.
I don’t really know however that the situation which Murray has talked about (Belmont executives marrying Fishtown secretaries as opposed to two Harvard MBAs marrying) is troubling to me.
From within my historical perspective I’ve noticed (the same goes with friends) that dysfunction tends to breed dysfunction. People aren’t for fixing, and the condition that they arrive at your doorstep in is typically the condition they remain in.
Kevin Williamson has an interesting (as always) article on NRO today that makes the point that we should not think of class in static terms. He has the percentages, but something like 70% of people reach the top 20% income level in their lifetime and also spend some time at poverty level. For many of us that was in our student years, but the point is that income levels are very fluid. Even the top 1% tends to stay there for only a short time. We should trumpet this information from the rooftops. People do NOT need to feel helpless because they are in poverty. As many have pointed out, poverty is something of a state of mind, but if people understand what a land of opportunity this really is for those who work hard, it might cause them to rethink the helplessness of poverty and welfare that many sink to.
Another interesting point in the article (which relates to my church example above.) Even if children have only one parent, their prospects in life are strongly related to the number of friends they have who have intact families. In other words, role models make a big difference.