WARNING: This post is nothing but process talk, so sue me. Trying to understand what my infant daughter is going through, I’ve been reading up on brain development and emotional maturity ….
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I’ve been perplexed for years about something a trauma nurse once told me. She said that there’s no bigger whiner in the ER than a middle-aged white male. It was an ER conventional wisdom, apparently, just like “scum never dies,” but I couldn’t make sense of it for the longest time.
Years of marveling at the grand stupidity of politics, however, has cleared a few things up for me.
Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be sociopaths:
In medieval Japan there was a sarcastic expression that translates, iirc, as “shogun wisdom.” The example I recall was of a tutor playing a board game with the son of the shogun, expected to be the shogun himself one day. If the boy made a hopelessly stupid move, opening himself to certain defeat, the tutor was expected to throw up his hands and say something like “oh, what a brilliant move! I have no hope of winning this game! Truly, you have your father’s acumen.” It was either that or the tutor could expect to lose his head.
“Shogun wisdom,” meaning the incapacity of the pampered, was used to explain the incompetence of a generation of military leaders, thought to have gone soft. Think Rome in the 3rd century.
I observed a frustration in white males, especially those older than me. I can pass for “white” in the sense that I am what is called “white,” but was not raised to think of myself as “white,” since my upbringing always kept my real heritage before me. I thank my mother for raising me to know who I am and instilling me with a reflexive disgust for racism and racists. “Black” and “white” are not races, I know, which is why most American talk about race is simply a fairy story with a body count. Thus, I passed as a non-white among whites and listened to their chatter.
They were not happy.
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Wouldn’t you like to know people?
Great King Rat was a dirty old man
And a dirty old man was he
Now what did I tell you
Would you like to see?
Where will I be tomorrow?
Will I beg or will I borrow?
I don’t care I don’t care anyway
Come on come on the time is right …
Excuse me, could you please turn down your sound-track?
They, having been raised on the cultural artifacts of the mid-20th century, which pretended to embody the values of the late nineteenth century (something comical to those who know better), were therefore raised with the expectation and certainty that they would get the girl, kill the bad guy, and run off into the sunset. Women would be marginal actors, if occasionally pretty. Non-whites would be marginal actors unless they were the baddy.
This silly little mythology set them up for massive disappointment because these boys, once grown to manhood in the 1960’s and 70’s, found themselves in the crosshairs of a rising force of non-whites and non-men. This generation of white men found themselves blamed for the excesses of their father’s hegemony, the brutal reality of what kept non-whites and non-men in servile roles. Regardless of whether my father’s generation could be blamed for continuing those excesses (they can), they resented being blamed for them. Why? Because they never enjoyed the full fruits of that hegemony. Yes, I know that white males still enjoy considerable advantages in America, but these advantages are considerably reduced while white males take infinitely more shit about them (in the sense that ‘1’ is infinitely greater than ‘0’). They’re disappointed.
Don’t listen to what mama says
Not a word not a word mama says
Or else you’ll find yourself being the rival
The great Lord before He died
Knelt sinners by his side
And said you’re gonna realise tomorrow
They lived after the Long Summer of the White Male. They got to pay for their fathers’ crimes, but they never really got to enjoy their fathers’ criminal empire. Just imagine if you went through the long hazing process of joining a fraternity and then, once you were an upper-classmen, hazing was banned by law. You paid, but you never got your payback.
This is why I keep saying that the anger over “the loss of white male cultural hegemony” drives conservatism in the present day. It explains the movement’s archaism, appeal to racists, and its silly little tin-eared testicle-poetry that passes for postures of strength. This is why middle-aged white males whine about not being allowed to be tough any more without seeing the irony, much less the pathos.
They’re so cute when they’re angry!
Brain-damage is not a political philosophy:
Being spoiled literally means that they have not developed emotional maturity and the ability to restrain themselves. They were raised to be on top no matter what, so why would they develop emotional maturity? Being perpetually frustrated, furthermore, means that these emotionally immature males are in a perpetual state of petulance, and this makes them easy to exploit. The left side of the brain interprets speech. The right side of the brain registers the emotional value of that speech. It does not matter that the right is talking crap. That crap registers in the right side of the angry white male’s brain. It does not matter that the left is talking process. That crap registers in the right side of the brain of no one.
This is a cultural predisposition. It reproduces itself. The right selects as its leaders people who can talk crap to angry idiots. The left, conversely, is preselecting for failure by selecting for leaders that can talk sense to an empty room.
It is irrational to be compulsively rational in the face of the irrational. Dealing with the irrational as irrational is the only rational response. Politics is substantially irrational, since people subscribe to a political identity as a rationalization and justification of their own identity. Policy is merely an epiphenomenon. Once the left learns that, the right is dead in this country. Strong emotions enhance memory. The right provides strong emotions and little to remember besides magical thinking and scapegoating. The left provides almost no emotional stimulus and yet expects you to remember more detail about policy. Therefore: they have turned a weakness into a strength, we have turned a strength into a weakness. The art of post-rational politics was indeed an Art by the middle of the nineteenth century. Look at a calendar. It’s time for the left to learn.
No I’m not gonna tell you
What you already know
‘Cause time and time again
The old man said it all a long time ago
Come come on the time is right
This evil man will fight
I told you once before
Breeding reactionaries, breeding failure:
This cultural predisposition also reproduces itself on an organizational scale. The differences in hierarchy are reflections of differences of philosophy. The right can create a marketing strategy at the highest levels because it idolizes the elite. The right’s lower strata will repeat that message, regardless of how silly or contrafactual, because of the right’s fetish for followership. They pay their dues at the lower levels and expect that once they reach the top they will be able to be able to do unto others (which, considering the closed nature of elites, is kinda sad). Reactionaries make the best followers.
But this also explains why the left thinks that it has to have one message for everyone (because we actually value Democracy) and expect everyone to see the truth of our message (because establishment Democrats trust rationality and disdain emotional appeals). Being right doesn’t mean shit when your government is determined by popularity contests called “elections.” Often, the truth is unwelcome.
The right’s appeal to spoiled white males explains why they have no patience for policy. The right’s political philosphy is a series of riffs on basic, magical thinking. The economy is supposed to take care of itself, if only it is left alone. The family is supposed to take care of itself, if only it is left alone. Technology is supposed to develop itself, if only it is left alone. But this is merely a re-hash of Kropotkin’s anarchy, a collectivist response to the proposals of communism in early 20th century Russia.
From Russia with Love, just like the neocons:
Kropotkin’s anarchy states that, once you eliminate all unnatural influences on a society, that society will naturally take on its best and most efficient form. If the circumstances of that society change, it’s best to do nothing, since everything is self-regulating.
Sound familiar?
This is the excuse of the spoiled white male to do nothing and expect everything. This is why the right wins elections but can’t seem to govern. This is why, when the spoiled white male doesn’t get his way, he’s gonna blame you even though he’s in power! That’s the story of his whole, pathetic life.
His mythology and reliance on magical thinking predispose him to respect superstition and distrust science. Superstitious thinking allows him to reconstruct entire mythical superstructures from a single data-point, making the maintainance of his ignorance very data-efficient. Conversely, superstitious thinking allows him to reject an entire scientific consensus, if it’s inconvenient to his betters, simply by citing a single flaw in a single study (real or imagined). A coward by nature, he runs away and hides in what he thinks are the caves of his ancestral superstitions.
Now listen all you people
Put out the good and keep the bad
Don’t believe all you read in the Bible
You sinners get in line
Saints you leave far behind
Very soon you’re gonna be his disciple
Abortion. Global warming. Creationism. Mythology is more important than the facts, it’s even more important than getting results, for one simple reason: if you can’t win elections you don’t determine policy. Tapping into the mythology of a bloc that has nowhere else to go can keep you in power even if you produce only failure after failure.
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