- Young white guys love to dabble in extremist politics.
- Older, minority and working class voters prefer moderate, pragmatic politicians.
- Because academia is so inconsequential, professors can afford to be at war with one another.
- Amidst their opulence, Americans have become pugnacious "tenured radicals".
- Hipster pseudo-radicals are ultimately privileged and extremely happy with the status quo, despite their self-image.
- As the world becomes more prosperous, it becomes more riven with phony ideological divisions.
- Historically, humans have exhibited a warlike nature.
- William James proposed a "war against nature" -- that is, economic development -- as a preferable alternative to continuing wars between men.
- To what extent was James merely reflecting pre-existing American sentiment?
- In an isolationist USA, the struggle for survival in the wilderness took the place of war as a source of personal integrity which made citizenship possible.
- In the 21st century, is the war against nature obsolete and dangerous to humanity?
- The problem with environmentalism is that it has the same public image problem that pacificism had in the early 20th century.
- Elon Musk has repackaged renewable energy as macho.
- There are examples of how ideological issues are repackaged -- in fact, fabricated -- to fill the human need for war.
- Abortion is the single most substantive -- and phony -- issue.
- There is a disconnect between ideological passion and actual behavior.
- People need to create issues in order to demonize others in order to create a war.
- How does a society deal with all this testosterone?
- Europeans learned to channel their martial spirits into cultural snobbery rather than into war or economic development.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-internet-supporters-2020.html
Why is that?
One hint might be their reputation for being young white guys.
Young white guys love to dabble in extremist politics.
It was pointed out years ago that the young American white guys attracted to Trump or to Sanders have a history of flirting with extremes.Typically, they were once libertarians, then they became anarchists, then socialists and finally Trump fans.
Here's an analogy from the world of hair care.
In terms of hairstyles, women like a "perfect" and appropriate and refined haircut.
In contrast, young guys like something radical.
They grow their hair long, then later shave the sides into a mohawk, and even later shave it all off -- including all their body hair.
This also might apply to politics.
Older, minority and working class voters prefer moderate, pragmatic politicians.
In contrast, over-confident young white guys like to experience living on the edge and being radical.This is precisely because young white guys do not live on the precipice.
This is very similar to the culture of academia.
Because academia is so inconsequential, professors can afford to be at war with one another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_lawSayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter."That might answer why the USA has fallen into such an intense culture war.
It might not be because of increasing inequality.
In fact, the problem might be too much progress, peace and prosperity.
Americans now have the luxury of pretending to be at war with one another.
Amidst their opulence, Americans have become pugnacious "tenured radicals".
Hipster pseudo-socialists in particular are actually conservative "tenured radicals".They perceive themselves to be politically aware, radicalized and engaged.
Hipster pseudo-radicals are ultimately privileged and extremely happy with the status quo, despite their self-image.
Politics engages them the way that sports rivets the working class -- precisely because it is of no real consequence.Again, they are comparable to comfortable professors who have fantasies of themselves as great radicals.
As the world becomes more prosperous, it becomes more riven with phony ideological divisions.
However, moderates do exist in the USA because not everyone has it quite so good.There is a division within the Democratic Party between highly educated and prosperous yuppies who flirt with extremism, and working class voters who gravitate toward pragmatism and moderation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/opinion/trump-voters.html
There are other sources of internal tension and conflicting interests among Democrats and liberals.
I have written frequently on the problems confronting the “upstairs-downstairs” Democratic coalition — combining well-educated, relatively affluent voters who are disproportionately white with poor and working class voters who are heavily minority.
In his book, “Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change,” and in an Atlantic article, Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts, has focused on the relatively weaker commitments of the upscale constituency of the Democratic coalition to policy initiatives aimed at providing substantive help.
Many college-educated people “think they are deeply engaged in politics,” Hersh wrote in the Atlantic:
"They follow the news — reading articles like this one — and debate the latest developments on social media. They might sign an online petition or throw a $5 online donation at a presidential candidate."
In fact, he argues, their consumption of political information is
"a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs. These people are political hobbyists. What they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football."
Hersh is hard on these voters, a group he describes as “college-educated white people, a demographic group that is now predominately Democratic.”
These voters, he writes,
"do politics as hobbyists because they can. On the political left, they may say they fear President Donald Trump. They may lament polarization. But they are pretty comfortable with the status quo."
They do not
"feel a sense of obligation, of “linked fate,” to people who have concrete needs such that they are willing to be their allies. They might front as allies on social media, but very few white liberals are actively engaging in face-to-face political organizations, committing their time to fighting for racial equality or any other issue they say they care about."Why this global groundswell of pugnacity?
Historically, humans have exhibited a warlike nature.
Up until the American Revolution, wars were fought for profit and excitement.From the late 18th century onward, wars were fought for nationalism and ideology.
However, these modern official reasons given for war are mere alibis.
Deep down wars are actually fought for the sake of war.
People really, really love war.
The philosopher William James asserted that humans love war, and nowadays fabricate moralistic excuses to fight it.
Nowadays, people claim that it is the enemy who is bloodthirsty.
https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html
At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, are solely for "peace." Germany and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths today is a synonym for "war expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no government wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the "peace"-interval.What happens when economies initially modernize, develop and adopt consumerism?
There emerges a popular belief that people are becoming weaker and are degenerating in the absence of war and hardship.
[M]ankind was nursed in pain and fear, and that the transition to a "pleasure economy" may be fatal to a being wielding no powers of defence against its degenerative influences. If we speak of the fear of emancipation from the fear-regime, we put the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding ourselves now taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy.Hence the wave of militarism that swept the developed world in the early 20th century.
In the developing world, where the ancient martial spirit lives on, men might look on with some disgust at a prosperous consumerist society.
Meanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a pain-and-fear economy -- for those of us who live in an ease-economy are but an island in the stormy ocean -- and the whole atmosphere of present-day utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority.This revulsion with comfort and ease and "socialism" as ideals might be especially true in the Moslem world.
Islam seems bound up with a masculine ethic compared to Christianity's passivity.
But even in the developed world, the ancient warrior virtues are still necessary for the survival of society, even if these martial drives no longer are channeled into war.
All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built -- unless, indeed, we which for dangerous reactions against commonwealths, fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.Patriotism finds its historic origins in war, but later serves as the impulse behind civic life and social reform.
The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gain by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why should men not some day feel that is it worth a blood-tax to belong to a collectivity superior in any respect? Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark until the whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.William James proposes that the impulse behind war can be channeled into economic development.
The irony here is that, as James just explained, it is economic development that undermines the martial impulses.
William James proposed a "war against nature" -- that is, economic development -- as a preferable alternative to continuing wars between men.
It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now -- and this is my idea -- there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwashing, clotheswashing, and windowwashing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.William James's speech on the "moral equivalent of war" was delivered at Stanford University in 1906.
To what extent was his declared "war against nature" as an alternative to actual war taken to heart by the American people?
To what extent was James merely reflecting pre-existing American sentiment?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ansel-closing-american-wilderness/In 1893 a young historian addressed the American Historical Association, which was meeting at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Frederick Jackson Turner presented his thesis, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." He began by quoting from the Census of 1890:
"Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line."
Turner concluded his thesis, "The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history." As if to confirm Turner, the Columbian Exposition displayed a small log cabin as an artifact.For Turner, the frontier shaped and defined the American character, its manly toughness and rugged individualism.
Turner argued that the frontier had made the United States unique. Due to hardship, residents were forced to become resourceful and self-reliant. They developed strength and "rugged individualism," which in turn fostered the development of democracy. Turner paid no attention to women or the plight of Native Americans.Again, in most societies historically, war was seen as the source of masculine virtues such as honor and patriotism.
In an isolationist USA, the struggle for survival in the wilderness took the place of war as a source of personal integrity which made citizenship possible.
In many respects, Turner was reflecting the views of his generation. Americans generally thought of the frontier as a primeval wilderness, where men could live close to nature and be purified of civilization's corruption. Many thought of the West as a social safety valve, where the poor could start a new life instead of succumbing to urban problems in large cities.A bold new question arises amidst this review of history.
In the 21st century, is the war against nature obsolete and dangerous to humanity?
Much the same has been said about war itself.As the military historian Gwynne Dyer explained, war is now obsolete.
Wars were once fought for profit, and more recently for ideology.
But with the creation of weapons of mass destruction, war no longer serves a plausible purpose for anyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(miniseries)
But it's not just WMDs that make war obsolete, but globalization.
However, this is not the peace that liberals imagine would come from free trade and the resulting global democratization and mutual understanding, etc., etc.
Rather, its the extreme dread of disrupting global commerce.
Global trade has become too big to fail.
In 2019, Iran launched an attack on Saudi oil fields, an event certain to launch a world war.
Yet Saudi Arabia did not retaliate, explaining that a war in the Middle East would lead to the collapse of the world economy.
Likewise, in 2020, the USA assassinated an Iranian general.
World war did not result because the Iranians dread the collapse of the world economy.
Progressive intellectuals like Steven Pinker assert that violence and war is (supposedly) on the decline.
Pinker claims that this is because humans are becoming more modern, rational and enlightened.
This is true, but in a different sense than Pinker's optimism would imply.
Rational governments are not embracing their opponents out of a spiritual awakening brought on by science and technology.
Rather, educated people understand that the consequences of war would be the total collapse of civilization thanks to the dreadful weapons created by science and technology.
What is it like for a civilization to collapse?
Three thousand years ago, Greek civilization collapsed for a 200 year period.
In fact, the entire eastern Mediterranean fell into anarchy and piracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages
The Greek Dark Ages, Homeric Age[citation needed] (named for the fabled poet, Homer) or Geometric period (so called after the characteristic Geometric art of the time),[1] is the period of Greek history from the end of the Mycenaean palatial civilization around 1100 BC to the first signs of the Greek poleis (city-states) in the 9th century BC.
The archaeological evidence shows a widespread collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean world at the outset of the period, as the great palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans were destroyed or abandoned. At about the same time, the Hittite civilization suffered serious disruption and cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed and in Egypt the New Kingdom fell into disarray that led to the Third Intermediate Period.
Following the collapse, fewer and smaller settlements suggest famine and depopulation. In Greece, the Linear B writing of the Greek language used by Mycenaean bureaucrats ceased and the Greek alphabet would not develop until the beginning of the Archaic Period. The decoration on Greek pottery after about 1100 BC lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenaean ware and is restricted to simpler, generally geometric styles (1000–700 BC).
What Gwynne Dyer says about war -- "We can't do that anymore" -- now applies to the uninhibited exploitation of the environment.
The problem with environmentalism is that it has the same public image problem that pacificism had in the early 20th century.
It looks wimpy.But this is changing thanks to Elon Musk's genius for rebranding.
William James sought to re-make economic development into a macho military project.
Again, this was at a time when development looked like a source of weak, feminine, corrupt, degenerate character.
Perhaps animal rescue could be rebranded as macho if it involved the kind of macho daring that is associated with hunting.
[The Most Interesting Man in the World rescues the fox at a fox hunt]
Elon Musk has repackaged renewable energy as macho.
Musk presents the technology that will save the Earth to the American people as the macho technology that will propel humans to colonize Mars.On the one hand, perhaps owning a Tesla buys into a consumerist macho fantasy.
This is much the way that aging, privileged "tenured radical" professors imagine themselves to be so subversive and potent.
On the other hand, the progress Musk has made in mainstreaming and advancing once-marginal technology is striking.
The lesson of Elon Musk is that to fight climate change, it might be better not to mention the words "climate change" or "global warming".
Instead, there would be massive investments made in scientific research and technology development related to global warming.
But the reasons given for this would be for national defense and long-term energy independence.
There is a precedent for this kind of relabeling of scientific research.
President Ronald Reagan called for the construction of a space-based missile defense system in 1983.
It would seem that the bulk of the program consisted of re-categorizing unrelated and already ongoing scientific research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
There are examples of how ideological issues are repackaged -- in fact, fabricated -- to fill the human need for war.
It has been debated whether the current "culture wars" are really about anything other than conflict for the sake of conflict.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/opinion/is-politics-a-war-of-ideas-or-of-us-against-them.html
Is the deepening animosity between Democrats and Republicans based on genuine differences over policy and ideology or is it a form of tribal warfare rooted in an atavistic us-versus-them mentality?
Is American political conflict relatively content-free — emotionally motivated electoral competition — or is it primarily a war of ideas, a matter of feuding visions both of what America is and what it should become?
Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at Brookings, recently put the issue this way in an essay at the National Affairs website: “Here we reach an interesting, if somewhat surreal, question. What if, to some significant extent, the increase in partisanship is not really about anything?”It seems that both actual ideological differences and tribal partisan spirit are generating conflict.
This debate is sometimes framed in either-or terms, but the argument is less a matter of direct conflict and more a matter of emphasis and nuance.
Yphtach Lelkes, a professor of political communication at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote me that “ideology and partisanship are very hard, and likely impossible, to disentangle,” but, he argued, the larger pattern appears to be that
"while both seem to be occurring, ideology driving partisanship only seems to be occurring among those that are most aware of politics, while partisanship driving ideology seems to be happening among everyone."At play, there is conflict for the sake of conflict along with real substantive issues at stake.
Abortion is the single most substantive -- and phony -- issue.
Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly divided on social, moral, and group-linked issues and are less likely to follow the party on these matters.” She pointed out that the tribal loyalty of many Republican voters would be pushed beyond the breaking point if the party abandoned its opposition to abortion, just as it is “difficult to imagine feminist women continuing to support the Democratic Party if it abandoned its pro-choice position on abortion.For example, in an American small town that is not afflicted by economic troubles, there is only one political issue -- abortion.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/where-the-small-town-american-dream-lives-on
And yet abortion as an issue is curiously recent.
There is no mention of abortion in the Bible.
The great sin in both the Old Testament and New Testament is divorce.
Once upon a time, very few Americans got divorced.
As divorce rates have climbed and marriage rates have declined, most American marriages now end in divorce.
Meanwhile, with birth control and sex education, the abortion rate has dropped.
It seems that the current popularity of divorce has made it an untenable target for disapproval by traditional religion.
Perhaps in the same way, the falling abortion rate has actually made abortion a more convenient issue for conservatives to harp on.
There is another big elephant in the room.
There is a disconnect between ideological passion and actual behavior.
Catholics in the USA have the same abortion rate as the general population.https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/01/24/catholics-are-just-likely-get-abortion-other-us-women-why
There are substantive issues at stake in the current ideological civil war.
But those issues are recent fabrications.
People need to create issues in order to demonize others in order to create a war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theoryLabeling theory posits that self-identity and the behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them. It is associated with the concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping. Labeling theory holds that deviance is not inherent in an act, but instead focuses on the tendency of majorities to negatively label minorities or those seen as deviant from standard cultural norms.Those who oppose abortion are pseudo-conservatives who retroactively invent traditions.
Interestingly, this is quite similar to the pseudo-radicals of the university who psychologically feel a need to manufacture fake grievances.
This brings us back to the so-called "Bernie bros" and other young white guys who keep switching ideologies in their quest for a good fight.
How does a society deal with all this testosterone?
The launch of the Crusades in the Middle Ages is instructive.Within Christendom, there were multiple players who each had multiple motives.
One motive was a thirst for war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade#Historiographical_debate
The very influential Steven Runciman (1951) significantly shaped the popular perception of the crusades in the later 20th century. Runciman represents the view that the motivation for the crusades was primarily that of a "barbarian invasion" motivated by greed and the desire for spoils and adventure among the Frankish nobles.[115] Runciman argued that the crusade was motivated by a combination of theological justification for holy war and a "general restlessness and taste for adventure", especially among the Normans and the "younger sons" of the French nobility who had no other opportunities.[116] and goes as far as suggesting that there wasn't any immediate threat from the Islamic world, arguing that "in the middle of the 11th century the lot of the Christians in Palestine had seldom been so pleasant".However, once in the Moslem world, these rough Christian warriors found themselves surrounded by civilized courtly life.
This was an inspiration for the development of medieval "courtly love".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love
Courtly love (Occitan: fin'amor [finaˈmuɾ]; French: amour courtois [amuʁ kuʁtwa]) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages, a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice.[1][2]
One great influence was Moslem Spain.
Courtly love began in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne, ducal Burgundy and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily[3] at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent".
Hispano-Arabic literature, as well as Arabic influence on Sicily, provided a further source, in parallel with Ovid, for the early troubadours of Provence—overlooked though this sometimes[quantify] is[by whom?] in accounts of courtly love. The Arabic poets and poetry of Muslim Spain express similarly oxymoronic views of love as both beneficial and distressing as the troubadours were to do;[3] while the broader European contact with the Islamic world must also be taken into consideration.[16] Given that practices similar to courtly love were already prevalent in Al-Andalus and elsewhere in the Islamic world, it is very likely that Islamic practices influenced the Christian Europeans - especially in southern Europe where classical forms of courtly love first emerged.This is a big step in the evolution of Western macho.
At one time, societies tended to glamorize the warrior life.
In the USA, this impulse gets channeled into economic productivity.
In Europe, it is associated with "cultural capital" in the form of education, art and "culture".
The USA is the outlier here.
In almost every society, men are associated with culture, and women with nature.
In the USA, men are associated with nature and women with culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_C._Lewellen
In Europe, one can see how the association of men with culture developed.
A portrait of Louis XIV, the "sun king" of France.
For the American viewer, he is dressed like a woman, from the wig down to the high heels.
For the European of that age, this is the iconography of power.
Europeans learned to channel their martial spirits into cultural snobbery rather than into war or economic development.
In some respects, the association of power with ritual and display might be a Catholic thing.Secularized Catholic countries like France value art and culture and associate it with moral virtue, and they distrust wealth.
In the USA, wealth is held a sign of virtue, whereas "culture" and art are window dressing at best, suspicious and abnormal at worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Lamont
