Part V: Can the UK be saved? Why are the French suburbs so ugly? What do the Thai think of their neighbors? Plus: Why we have a culture war. Also: Notes on the News.
I can’t think of a more thorough analysis of those French cités than what you put forward. The French tend toward projects that are “grand”, and these are an example…how soulless, though, as we look at the pictures.
Re the US culture wars, stay away. What more can be said about your convictions enumerated in “Why Populism Fails?” I see two of your strong convictions coming through in CG: Ukraine “victory” at any price and the dangers of Trump. I thoroughly enjoy the commentary of the latter, but I think enough has been said. Continue with your deep analysis of foreign affairs.
Bari Weiss has a different product than yours. Since I can only afford one, I chose yours.
Re the US economy: Consumption accounts for 75% of GDP. Yes, all that schtuff you see on shelves in the US and on US Amazon sights, as offensive as it is to some eyes, is part of that.
Years ago I sold off a European stock fund and a Chinese stock fund. Some non-economic research is called for on your behalf, please, as to why, over time, the economy here exhibits intrinsic strength.
You know why I'm angry about the whole "lab leak" thing? Because I bought the lie. I told people, most strenuously, that the lab leak theory had been debunked. That the government response to COVID, while largely inadequate and broke, was the result of us simply not knowing. But the more I read, the more I realize we actually DID know. And I was duped.
I can't decide if the lying by Fauci, Collins and others is simply the result of them trying to cover their own backsides, or because they didn't want anything getting in the way of getting rid of Trump. Maybe it's a bit of both.
I'm tired of the people telling me that we need to hold Trump accountable (we do) turning a blind eye to the malfeasance of Fauci, Collins, and others.
Unless Britain finds a way to relocate its landmass to the Pacific next to the Pitcairn Islands, there‘s no way to get around the economic impact of that major own-goal of policy stunts. 1. Sovereignty: We follow the rules of the market we want to sell our stuff to. The party of economic wisdom has apparently skipped Economy 101. 2. The ‚beaurocratic monster‘ better known as the EU reduces red-tape. The UK would have to find, hire, train and eventually pay 50k customs agents to process import to and export from the UK. 3. In absence of the former, the UK has become a prime target for smugglers and human traffickers. 4. Brexit ain‘t done yet. there’s even more red-tape on the horizon. 5. Sunak has managed to annoy the EU which could still block the UK from Horizon. 6. All that red-tape will turn the UK to a market of last resort of EU exporters. (To be continued…)
I am not sure what everyone else means when they say "culture war". Some in here are talking about it like it's a new thing that didn't exist at some point in the past. I will turn 50 this year. I grew up in a hard left household during the Reagan years with parents who included me in adult conversations about politics, the world and everything. I don't have any memories without culture war, and my knowledge of the decades before I was born does not include any significant length of time in US history that has not had some kind of culture war going on.
In any society where people can read, there is awareness that culture has been different in the past and will be different in the future. How can this not lead to disagreement as to where it should go? What else is "culture war?". In a time and place where the wrong view gets you burned at the stake, or dissappeared, the disagreement is constrained by that fact. But in any place where you are allowed to declare and publish an opinion that isn't approved by the authorities in advance, to the extent that people have this freedom, they will argue over what way the culture *should* go. This is culture war. It is a good thing. The right thing to do is pick a side and cheerfully fight for it. Lamenting the fact that we have a culture war, and implicitly pining for a time when we didn't have one is exactly the wrong thing to do if you hope to promote the 18th century ideals mentioned in the "about" page of this substack.
I'll come back to note on the news, but let me tell ya: when I talk about the CosmoGlob to friends, I call it "analysis of goings on outside the US, for US readers." I may have that wrong, but I sort of remember you saying that's what you wanted it to be. Now if that's where you want to stay, then don't write about the culture wars. Or don't write about American culture wars, write about culture wars in France, or Germany or wherever.
But here is why you should write about the culture wars in America: they are real. I'll give you an anecdotal but nonetheless instructive example in my own life.
We just had a primary election here in the US. In my little town, where I serve on the school board, we have four positions open for election, one of which has three candidates, ergo that was on the primary ballot. On the ballot is a guy with no experience in public education but generally a decent sort I am told, a full on public school brokenist (I will of course be using that term from now on, and claiming it as my own) who does have experience as a teacher, and my friend and fellow board member, a moderate democrat who likes to call himself "Everyone's favorite pro-life Democrat." The election is going to turn completely on a culture war axis. My friend, who was on the board during COVID, is to be held to account for the decisions of the state office of public instruction, and the state health department, regarding the closure of schools. I'm told by people who know him and are (or were) his friend "He needs to be punished." And that's to say nothing of the conversations around CRT, trans-gender policies, etc. Doesn't matter that my friend is opposed to the trans agenda, that he's pro-life, that he's an Evangelical Christian. When it came out that he received the recommendation of the Riveters Collective ( a local progressive organization), friends asked me "How can you still support him?!" I said "Because he doesn't agree with those people, he never sought their recommendation, and never even heard of them until today..." But still they persist. "But they must know something...otherwise why would they endorse him?" I finally asked, of several people "Who do you trust more? Me, or those proglodytes?" The answer "Well we aren't sure, now..."
So we are going to toss out a 6 year veteran of the school board, with a deep knowledge of school finance, because of the culture war. And anyone who doesn't agree with this, is suddenly on the other side.
The culture wars are real, they are impacting elections, and lives, and policy. And tearing the country apart.
On the other side of this: My stepbrother, educated at Harvard and independently wealthy because right afterward he went to work for Microsoft, before it grew big, and thus has a ton of stock, wanted to do something useful with his time and serve his community and thus applied to be a public school teacher. My stepbrother would be a *great* teacher.
He was told a degree from Harvard wouldn't do it. He'd have to get an "education degree."
Yeah, it's essentially a technocracy. There are ways for the non-educrat (I just made that up), to get a foot in the door, but they'll always be on one side of a fence.
Claire, I do not believe you truly think a thing is only of worth if it’s paid for, that price signals indicate value in an absolute sense. That is far too simplistic for your intellect and doesn’t really reflect the stated views of TCG. There is a host of value outside the marketplace. If we stay within the brackets of what the market will pay at any given moment, a whole lot of art, literature, philosophy and science now considered our civilization’s treasures were deemed unworthy of note initially. When Yo-Yo Ma goes busking in a market in Nairobi, his intake is not a reflection of the worth of his product. The degree to which a product is broadly known in the market is also a factor- hence Mr. Ma. None of which helps you at the moment, I recognize. May I suggest you offer a sustaining membership option with pay levels above the current monthly suggestion. Perhaps along the lines of a weekly cappuccino at 5 Pailles. Seems eminently reasonable. In the meantime, I’ve bumped to founding. Sometimes you need to write about DJT in order to offer readers the context you promise. (See Fiona Hill on this topic.) Don’t do it more than you have to, we get plenty of that elsewhere. With that last foray, you were answering a question, so that’s a pass. If Global Eyes remains the main course of a TCG meal, your analysis and essays are the setting, wine, presentation and dessert.
Thank you, Norman, I appreciate your doing that so much. And I also appreciate these thoughts. (My reflections were slightly tongue-in-cheek. But not entirely!)
I’m starting to think the culture war is more consequential than you and I are inclined to give it credit for, because we find it so beneath us, so if my opinion counts, I think you should at least take it more seriously. But I don’t think you should let it take too much of your time, because it might detract from your other concerns that make this Substack so important. Like as I subscribe to you, I also subscribe to Bari Weiss. I don’t need two Bari Weiss’s you know? I like the free press. I think it’s great. But I love you and CG and I think your overseas focus is so important, bc hardly anybody is going out of their way to supply this coverage except for you. So perhaps softening your opposition to culture war subjects and giving it it’s due: is warranted, but without sacrificing any of the other stuff or, god forbid, losing your international focus.
“But if a deal is really on offer, it could be worth considering. What do you think? There’s certainly a lot of haggling going on.” (Claire Berlinski)
Tom Friedman is truly the dumbest of the dumb. As he hints in his column, the Saudis couldn’t care less about the Palestinians. The father of MBS is still alive and technically still King. He’s even more senile than Biden is (and that’s saying something). Yes, he may still have a soft spot for the Palestinians but his son, MBS, the man in charge, has as much sympathy for the Palestinians as he had for Ahmad Khashoggi.
It’s not the Saudis trying to wring concessions to the Palestinians out of Israel, it’s the Biden Administration trying to do that. Thank goodness Netanyahu is in power because if Gantz or Lapid were in the Prime Minister’s office, they would cave to Biden like the weaklings they are. Israel needs a Prime Minister who’s comfortable telling an American President to take a flying you know what. Israel is lucky that it has one.
Netanyahu won’t trade a promise to never annex the West Bank to achieve a Saudi deal. Like the Chinese, the Jews are a patient people who measure progress in decades, centuries and even millennia not months and years.
Netanyahu understands that he doesn’t need to give up anything substantial to get a deal. If Biden insists on concessions he will simply wait until Biden is out of office and Trump is back in. If Trump never regains the Oval Office, eventually a Republican President will and the Saudis can make their deal with the United States without the U.S. placing any demands on Israel.
If that doesn’t work out and MBS, who already hates Biden with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, moves closer to China, then Netanyahu realizes that Israel will end up as an even more invaluable partner for the United States in a fractured Middle East. The bottom line is that like most liberals, Friedman is too stupid to realize that the United States has much less leverage than it once did. In fact, thanks to Biden, the United States has been relegated to the status of paper tiger.
Friedman, who vigorously opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank, is so nervous because he understands that Netanyahu has the strategic patience to play the long game. The Palestinians were never a real people and their society is imploding in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Give it a generation or two and between their accelerating demographic collapse and emigration, Israel will be able to annex the regions that currently have a Palestinian majority without any risk to Israel’s Jewish majority. And if it takes three or four generations instead of one or two; that’s fine too.
The only community less likely to exist a century from now than Palestinians in the Middle East is the organized Jewish community in the United States. With intermarriage, secularization and an astoundingly low birth rate, the American Jewish community is disappearing before our eyes. Netanyahu understands that too, which is why he pays far more attention to American Evangelicals than to American Jews. Both the Palestinians in the Middle East and American Jews are committing suicide. They face the abyss.
By the way, the same logic applies to China and Taiwan. China is perfectly happy with the status quo. The American Uniparty is making an enormous mistake antagonizing China about this. The current Speaker of the House and the former Speaker of the House both made a point of meeting with Taiwan’s leaders. The meetings accomplished nothing except redoubling China’s focus on recapturing the Island it believes is there’s.
If there is a War with China over Taiwan, the United States will lose. Everyone knows that our aircraft carriers are sitting ducks for China’s hypersonic missiles. Anyone who expects Japan or South Korea to intervene militarily to help the United States and Taiwan is smoking something delightful. China surely noticed that our military had 20 years to defeat the Taliban and failed miserably. The idea that we would perform better against China is laughable. And all of this is before we take account of the fact that a large percentage of our antibiotics come from China. How long will our will to fight hold up when American infants begin to die of step throat?
Like the Jews, the Chinese are an ancient people. It’s inevitable that someday they will take Taiwan. But China would probably be happy waiting a century to achieve that goal unless the United States does something dumb.
Listening to the Tom Friedmans of the world dramatically increases the liklihood of very dumb decisions being made.
Do not write so much about "culture war topics" as about the culture wars themselves. Why are they suddenly so all-consuming? What is at stake? Are there alternatives to unceasing impotent gabble?
Also: unlike human beings, cultures are not created equal. Some are simply not a good idea. Who gets to adjudicate such things and on what authority?
On the subject of more Trump, I'm with the majority maybe a little. I would ask that you stay in your lane. Nobody, that I know including my MIT, Naval Academy graduates, and other smart friends who voted for the man, can explain his popularity. "I like his policies, and the Democrats are worse" are all anybody has articulated. So please don't bother trying.
I'm interested in your opinion of what European/Turks think of him. Including amusing anecdotes of confusion, anger, terror etc. What I really like to understand is the difference and similarities between Trump and the populist right wing parties in Europe.
As for culture war issues, I think it's legitimate and useful for the CG to cover them, albeit from an, ahem, cosmopolitan and globalist perspective. For instance, does the term mean the same thing or even exist at all in, say, Germany, as it does in the United States? My guess—that's all I have—would be no. In America, the culture war is very much bound up with the crisis of confidence in institutions. Is this the case elsewhere? Also in America, it so happens that the culture wars are very much a partisan political matter. For instance, the dispute over public school curricula led directly to the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin as Governor of Virginia in 2021. Is that peculiar to America? Inquiring minds want to know...
There were a lot of reasons for Youngkin’s win. And the parents in Northern Virginia who voted for him were more angry about pandemic school closures and other policy mistakes made by local school districts than the curricula. But as for Germany understanding the culture war, where do you think Kulturkampf came from? We wily Anglo-Saxons just came to the dance a day late and a dollar short.
Actually, as I recall, Kulturkampf was the term for the political conflict between the Catholic Church and Bismarck’s German government in the 1870s, which had mainly to do with control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. It was by no means a grass-roots phenomenon.
As for Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, you may recall that Terry McAuliffe’s fatal mistake was to say that parents should have no say curricular matters…
McAuliffe’s fatal mistake was running. It was a poke in the eye to the Richmond Democratic leadership by the NoVa moneybags. He was a mediocre governor himself, and the incumbent Northam was an abject disaster. The national media has overplayed the Angry Suburban Parent narrative. McAuliffe also pissed off voter for lashing out at a sheriff’s deputy at an FOP luncheon for asking about defunding the police. He also stormed out of a friendly TV interview because the journalist asked a less than softball question, and that got broadcast repeatedly. I think his loose cannon image and petulance combined with the usual anti-White House attitude of Virginia voters did more for Youngkin than the Fairfax and Loudoun County school systems.
“At the moment, the fashionable justifications invoked by the elite antinomian vandals attacking Western society from within are climate change, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and “anti-fascism” as a catchall category. Upper-middle-class young men and women who throw paint at artistic masterpieces or glue themselves to trains claim they are defending the earth’s environment, but they could just as well say they are fighting white supremacy or patriarchy. They are acting out the ethos of a Western elite culture that believes the act of transgression itself is virtuous; the alleged goal of the transgression is merely an excuse.”
“By now the antinomians in Western nations have won their war against tradition in every realm. The members of the credentialed corporate-government-nonprofit-academic-media oligarchy, along with billionaire entrepreneurs and bankers who themselves are usually born into managerial-professional families, are almost all modernist in their aesthetics, libertine in their views of sex and recreational drug use, and dismissive of nationalism and patriotism and religion, which they regard as mental diseases of the lower classes. They work in offices designed by trendy “starchitects” decorated with abstract art, and often live in postmodern homes designed to be sterile, off-putting, and the very opposite of petty bourgeois comfort.”
And yet, the voices clamoring the most against Leftist modernism are little more than Rightwing modernists, at best aping Medievalism and throwing their own temper tantrums, who fall prey to other elites who use them as pawns in these culture wars. That’s how you get VD-riddled geriatrics organizing pleasure boat parades for Christianity, the Common Man, and incipient fascism. How will we ever get out of this spiraling crisis of identity?
Reading about the French suburbs, I immediately thought: Cabrini Green. That was the public housing complex in Chicago that devolved into an urban dystopia for reasons similar to those Claire cited concerning the French suburbs. And I see that it rang the same bell for others...
I will follow links to Covid origins. I am still angry at the US Ministry of Censorship for banning discussion of theories among scientists and demonizing those who believed in Origin Theory X. Real public health does not ban or censor. Besides, individuals or groups believing in origin theory X or Y - does not effect one’s compliance with Covid safety measures.
Last month, I wanted to meet in-person with a former co-worker (who is woke) to discuss lab leak theory. She responded “I looked it up on-line last night. What’s done is done. I refuse to meet for discussion.” Me: You are not psychic and have no idea what I will say until I say it.”
They cannot accept the truth because they hate Trump so much. And to accept a lab leak theory as truth is to admit that Trump was, in part, right. Don't get me wrong: I'm no Trumpist. But I can set my views of him aside and think clearly on the matter.
This is (one of) the most utterly destructive elements of the culture war: We appear to have lost the ability to do the work of thinking for ourselves about *anything.* Our views are determined entirely by our loyalty to the tribe, even when this compels us to accept the abjectly nonsensical. I sometimes ask myself whether, if I'd stayed in the US, this would have happened to me, too: Is it an irresistible impulse when you're literally surrounded by it? I know it's true of my figure: there's no way not to be overweight in the US (either that, or completely neurotic); the environment is just so obesogenic. Does it also make it impossible to resist falling into one of two fanatically opposed camps on every political or moral issue?
You know what's weird? For some reason, naively, I thought that the repeal of Roe might give rise to a discussion in the media of the morality of abortion. That we might see articles asking, say, what we've learned about fetal development since Roe; how the issue has been viewed in various religious traditions and why; what we mean by "personhood," and how we form these judgements. But I don't think I've seen a single such article. No one actually wants to debate the issue--or persuade. They just want to impose their will. How do we run a democracy like this?
Claire - if you lived in US, you would probably be witch. I too expected abortion discussion. But a close friend was only concerned that “White men want to control women’s bodies”. And “pregnant Trans people are the oppressed by the Supreme Court ruling.”
Claire - you have an interesting perspective and therefore should weigh in on culture war topics and developments that you believe are noteworthy. I tire of many friends who just recite the TV news sentences and offer nothing more.
The culture wars are not news. They're a method to develop revenue for the media and fury from party members. The emotion They're generating is noise, not signal.
Claire,
I can’t think of a more thorough analysis of those French cités than what you put forward. The French tend toward projects that are “grand”, and these are an example…how soulless, though, as we look at the pictures.
Re the US culture wars, stay away. What more can be said about your convictions enumerated in “Why Populism Fails?” I see two of your strong convictions coming through in CG: Ukraine “victory” at any price and the dangers of Trump. I thoroughly enjoy the commentary of the latter, but I think enough has been said. Continue with your deep analysis of foreign affairs.
Bari Weiss has a different product than yours. Since I can only afford one, I chose yours.
Re the US economy: Consumption accounts for 75% of GDP. Yes, all that schtuff you see on shelves in the US and on US Amazon sights, as offensive as it is to some eyes, is part of that.
Years ago I sold off a European stock fund and a Chinese stock fund. Some non-economic research is called for on your behalf, please, as to why, over time, the economy here exhibits intrinsic strength.
You know why I'm angry about the whole "lab leak" thing? Because I bought the lie. I told people, most strenuously, that the lab leak theory had been debunked. That the government response to COVID, while largely inadequate and broke, was the result of us simply not knowing. But the more I read, the more I realize we actually DID know. And I was duped.
I can't decide if the lying by Fauci, Collins and others is simply the result of them trying to cover their own backsides, or because they didn't want anything getting in the way of getting rid of Trump. Maybe it's a bit of both.
I'm tired of the people telling me that we need to hold Trump accountable (we do) turning a blind eye to the malfeasance of Fauci, Collins, and others.
Unless Britain finds a way to relocate its landmass to the Pacific next to the Pitcairn Islands, there‘s no way to get around the economic impact of that major own-goal of policy stunts. 1. Sovereignty: We follow the rules of the market we want to sell our stuff to. The party of economic wisdom has apparently skipped Economy 101. 2. The ‚beaurocratic monster‘ better known as the EU reduces red-tape. The UK would have to find, hire, train and eventually pay 50k customs agents to process import to and export from the UK. 3. In absence of the former, the UK has become a prime target for smugglers and human traffickers. 4. Brexit ain‘t done yet. there’s even more red-tape on the horizon. 5. Sunak has managed to annoy the EU which could still block the UK from Horizon. 6. All that red-tape will turn the UK to a market of last resort of EU exporters. (To be continued…)
I am not sure what everyone else means when they say "culture war". Some in here are talking about it like it's a new thing that didn't exist at some point in the past. I will turn 50 this year. I grew up in a hard left household during the Reagan years with parents who included me in adult conversations about politics, the world and everything. I don't have any memories without culture war, and my knowledge of the decades before I was born does not include any significant length of time in US history that has not had some kind of culture war going on.
In any society where people can read, there is awareness that culture has been different in the past and will be different in the future. How can this not lead to disagreement as to where it should go? What else is "culture war?". In a time and place where the wrong view gets you burned at the stake, or dissappeared, the disagreement is constrained by that fact. But in any place where you are allowed to declare and publish an opinion that isn't approved by the authorities in advance, to the extent that people have this freedom, they will argue over what way the culture *should* go. This is culture war. It is a good thing. The right thing to do is pick a side and cheerfully fight for it. Lamenting the fact that we have a culture war, and implicitly pining for a time when we didn't have one is exactly the wrong thing to do if you hope to promote the 18th century ideals mentioned in the "about" page of this substack.
I'll come back to note on the news, but let me tell ya: when I talk about the CosmoGlob to friends, I call it "analysis of goings on outside the US, for US readers." I may have that wrong, but I sort of remember you saying that's what you wanted it to be. Now if that's where you want to stay, then don't write about the culture wars. Or don't write about American culture wars, write about culture wars in France, or Germany or wherever.
But here is why you should write about the culture wars in America: they are real. I'll give you an anecdotal but nonetheless instructive example in my own life.
We just had a primary election here in the US. In my little town, where I serve on the school board, we have four positions open for election, one of which has three candidates, ergo that was on the primary ballot. On the ballot is a guy with no experience in public education but generally a decent sort I am told, a full on public school brokenist (I will of course be using that term from now on, and claiming it as my own) who does have experience as a teacher, and my friend and fellow board member, a moderate democrat who likes to call himself "Everyone's favorite pro-life Democrat." The election is going to turn completely on a culture war axis. My friend, who was on the board during COVID, is to be held to account for the decisions of the state office of public instruction, and the state health department, regarding the closure of schools. I'm told by people who know him and are (or were) his friend "He needs to be punished." And that's to say nothing of the conversations around CRT, trans-gender policies, etc. Doesn't matter that my friend is opposed to the trans agenda, that he's pro-life, that he's an Evangelical Christian. When it came out that he received the recommendation of the Riveters Collective ( a local progressive organization), friends asked me "How can you still support him?!" I said "Because he doesn't agree with those people, he never sought their recommendation, and never even heard of them until today..." But still they persist. "But they must know something...otherwise why would they endorse him?" I finally asked, of several people "Who do you trust more? Me, or those proglodytes?" The answer "Well we aren't sure, now..."
So we are going to toss out a 6 year veteran of the school board, with a deep knowledge of school finance, because of the culture war. And anyone who doesn't agree with this, is suddenly on the other side.
The culture wars are real, they are impacting elections, and lives, and policy. And tearing the country apart.
That's an awful story.
On the other side of this: My stepbrother, educated at Harvard and independently wealthy because right afterward he went to work for Microsoft, before it grew big, and thus has a ton of stock, wanted to do something useful with his time and serve his community and thus applied to be a public school teacher. My stepbrother would be a *great* teacher.
He was told a degree from Harvard wouldn't do it. He'd have to get an "education degree."
Yeah, it's essentially a technocracy. There are ways for the non-educrat (I just made that up), to get a foot in the door, but they'll always be on one side of a fence.
Claire, I do not believe you truly think a thing is only of worth if it’s paid for, that price signals indicate value in an absolute sense. That is far too simplistic for your intellect and doesn’t really reflect the stated views of TCG. There is a host of value outside the marketplace. If we stay within the brackets of what the market will pay at any given moment, a whole lot of art, literature, philosophy and science now considered our civilization’s treasures were deemed unworthy of note initially. When Yo-Yo Ma goes busking in a market in Nairobi, his intake is not a reflection of the worth of his product. The degree to which a product is broadly known in the market is also a factor- hence Mr. Ma. None of which helps you at the moment, I recognize. May I suggest you offer a sustaining membership option with pay levels above the current monthly suggestion. Perhaps along the lines of a weekly cappuccino at 5 Pailles. Seems eminently reasonable. In the meantime, I’ve bumped to founding. Sometimes you need to write about DJT in order to offer readers the context you promise. (See Fiona Hill on this topic.) Don’t do it more than you have to, we get plenty of that elsewhere. With that last foray, you were answering a question, so that’s a pass. If Global Eyes remains the main course of a TCG meal, your analysis and essays are the setting, wine, presentation and dessert.
Thank you, Norman, I appreciate your doing that so much. And I also appreciate these thoughts. (My reflections were slightly tongue-in-cheek. But not entirely!)
I’m starting to think the culture war is more consequential than you and I are inclined to give it credit for, because we find it so beneath us, so if my opinion counts, I think you should at least take it more seriously. But I don’t think you should let it take too much of your time, because it might detract from your other concerns that make this Substack so important. Like as I subscribe to you, I also subscribe to Bari Weiss. I don’t need two Bari Weiss’s you know? I like the free press. I think it’s great. But I love you and CG and I think your overseas focus is so important, bc hardly anybody is going out of their way to supply this coverage except for you. So perhaps softening your opposition to culture war subjects and giving it it’s due: is warranted, but without sacrificing any of the other stuff or, god forbid, losing your international focus.
“But if a deal is really on offer, it could be worth considering. What do you think? There’s certainly a lot of haggling going on.” (Claire Berlinski)
Tom Friedman is truly the dumbest of the dumb. As he hints in his column, the Saudis couldn’t care less about the Palestinians. The father of MBS is still alive and technically still King. He’s even more senile than Biden is (and that’s saying something). Yes, he may still have a soft spot for the Palestinians but his son, MBS, the man in charge, has as much sympathy for the Palestinians as he had for Ahmad Khashoggi.
It’s not the Saudis trying to wring concessions to the Palestinians out of Israel, it’s the Biden Administration trying to do that. Thank goodness Netanyahu is in power because if Gantz or Lapid were in the Prime Minister’s office, they would cave to Biden like the weaklings they are. Israel needs a Prime Minister who’s comfortable telling an American President to take a flying you know what. Israel is lucky that it has one.
Netanyahu won’t trade a promise to never annex the West Bank to achieve a Saudi deal. Like the Chinese, the Jews are a patient people who measure progress in decades, centuries and even millennia not months and years.
Netanyahu understands that he doesn’t need to give up anything substantial to get a deal. If Biden insists on concessions he will simply wait until Biden is out of office and Trump is back in. If Trump never regains the Oval Office, eventually a Republican President will and the Saudis can make their deal with the United States without the U.S. placing any demands on Israel.
If that doesn’t work out and MBS, who already hates Biden with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, moves closer to China, then Netanyahu realizes that Israel will end up as an even more invaluable partner for the United States in a fractured Middle East. The bottom line is that like most liberals, Friedman is too stupid to realize that the United States has much less leverage than it once did. In fact, thanks to Biden, the United States has been relegated to the status of paper tiger.
Friedman, who vigorously opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank, is so nervous because he understands that Netanyahu has the strategic patience to play the long game. The Palestinians were never a real people and their society is imploding in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Give it a generation or two and between their accelerating demographic collapse and emigration, Israel will be able to annex the regions that currently have a Palestinian majority without any risk to Israel’s Jewish majority. And if it takes three or four generations instead of one or two; that’s fine too.
The only community less likely to exist a century from now than Palestinians in the Middle East is the organized Jewish community in the United States. With intermarriage, secularization and an astoundingly low birth rate, the American Jewish community is disappearing before our eyes. Netanyahu understands that too, which is why he pays far more attention to American Evangelicals than to American Jews. Both the Palestinians in the Middle East and American Jews are committing suicide. They face the abyss.
By the way, the same logic applies to China and Taiwan. China is perfectly happy with the status quo. The American Uniparty is making an enormous mistake antagonizing China about this. The current Speaker of the House and the former Speaker of the House both made a point of meeting with Taiwan’s leaders. The meetings accomplished nothing except redoubling China’s focus on recapturing the Island it believes is there’s.
If there is a War with China over Taiwan, the United States will lose. Everyone knows that our aircraft carriers are sitting ducks for China’s hypersonic missiles. Anyone who expects Japan or South Korea to intervene militarily to help the United States and Taiwan is smoking something delightful. China surely noticed that our military had 20 years to defeat the Taliban and failed miserably. The idea that we would perform better against China is laughable. And all of this is before we take account of the fact that a large percentage of our antibiotics come from China. How long will our will to fight hold up when American infants begin to die of step throat?
Like the Jews, the Chinese are an ancient people. It’s inevitable that someday they will take Taiwan. But China would probably be happy waiting a century to achieve that goal unless the United States does something dumb.
Listening to the Tom Friedmans of the world dramatically increases the liklihood of very dumb decisions being made.
Do not write so much about "culture war topics" as about the culture wars themselves. Why are they suddenly so all-consuming? What is at stake? Are there alternatives to unceasing impotent gabble?
Also: unlike human beings, cultures are not created equal. Some are simply not a good idea. Who gets to adjudicate such things and on what authority?
On the subject of more Trump, I'm with the majority maybe a little. I would ask that you stay in your lane. Nobody, that I know including my MIT, Naval Academy graduates, and other smart friends who voted for the man, can explain his popularity. "I like his policies, and the Democrats are worse" are all anybody has articulated. So please don't bother trying.
I'm interested in your opinion of what European/Turks think of him. Including amusing anecdotes of confusion, anger, terror etc. What I really like to understand is the difference and similarities between Trump and the populist right wing parties in Europe.
As for culture war issues, I think it's legitimate and useful for the CG to cover them, albeit from an, ahem, cosmopolitan and globalist perspective. For instance, does the term mean the same thing or even exist at all in, say, Germany, as it does in the United States? My guess—that's all I have—would be no. In America, the culture war is very much bound up with the crisis of confidence in institutions. Is this the case elsewhere? Also in America, it so happens that the culture wars are very much a partisan political matter. For instance, the dispute over public school curricula led directly to the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin as Governor of Virginia in 2021. Is that peculiar to America? Inquiring minds want to know...
There were a lot of reasons for Youngkin’s win. And the parents in Northern Virginia who voted for him were more angry about pandemic school closures and other policy mistakes made by local school districts than the curricula. But as for Germany understanding the culture war, where do you think Kulturkampf came from? We wily Anglo-Saxons just came to the dance a day late and a dollar short.
Actually, as I recall, Kulturkampf was the term for the political conflict between the Catholic Church and Bismarck’s German government in the 1870s, which had mainly to do with control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. It was by no means a grass-roots phenomenon.
As for Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, you may recall that Terry McAuliffe’s fatal mistake was to say that parents should have no say curricular matters…
Do you think today’s culture war is a grassroots phenomenon?
McAuliffe’s fatal mistake was running. It was a poke in the eye to the Richmond Democratic leadership by the NoVa moneybags. He was a mediocre governor himself, and the incumbent Northam was an abject disaster. The national media has overplayed the Angry Suburban Parent narrative. McAuliffe also pissed off voter for lashing out at a sheriff’s deputy at an FOP luncheon for asking about defunding the police. He also stormed out of a friendly TV interview because the journalist asked a less than softball question, and that got broadcast repeatedly. I think his loose cannon image and petulance combined with the usual anti-White House attitude of Virginia voters did more for Youngkin than the Fairfax and Loudoun County school systems.
This is how you write about cultural issues without rancor or hysteria. Note the reasonable tone. See,
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/culture-of-transgression
Here’s a taste to see if it interests you,
“At the moment, the fashionable justifications invoked by the elite antinomian vandals attacking Western society from within are climate change, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and “anti-fascism” as a catchall category. Upper-middle-class young men and women who throw paint at artistic masterpieces or glue themselves to trains claim they are defending the earth’s environment, but they could just as well say they are fighting white supremacy or patriarchy. They are acting out the ethos of a Western elite culture that believes the act of transgression itself is virtuous; the alleged goal of the transgression is merely an excuse.”
“By now the antinomians in Western nations have won their war against tradition in every realm. The members of the credentialed corporate-government-nonprofit-academic-media oligarchy, along with billionaire entrepreneurs and bankers who themselves are usually born into managerial-professional families, are almost all modernist in their aesthetics, libertine in their views of sex and recreational drug use, and dismissive of nationalism and patriotism and religion, which they regard as mental diseases of the lower classes. They work in offices designed by trendy “starchitects” decorated with abstract art, and often live in postmodern homes designed to be sterile, off-putting, and the very opposite of petty bourgeois comfort.”
And yet, the voices clamoring the most against Leftist modernism are little more than Rightwing modernists, at best aping Medievalism and throwing their own temper tantrums, who fall prey to other elites who use them as pawns in these culture wars. That’s how you get VD-riddled geriatrics organizing pleasure boat parades for Christianity, the Common Man, and incipient fascism. How will we ever get out of this spiraling crisis of identity?
Reading about the French suburbs, I immediately thought: Cabrini Green. That was the public housing complex in Chicago that devolved into an urban dystopia for reasons similar to those Claire cited concerning the French suburbs. And I see that it rang the same bell for others...
I will follow links to Covid origins. I am still angry at the US Ministry of Censorship for banning discussion of theories among scientists and demonizing those who believed in Origin Theory X. Real public health does not ban or censor. Besides, individuals or groups believing in origin theory X or Y - does not effect one’s compliance with Covid safety measures.
Last month, I wanted to meet in-person with a former co-worker (who is woke) to discuss lab leak theory. She responded “I looked it up on-line last night. What’s done is done. I refuse to meet for discussion.” Me: You are not psychic and have no idea what I will say until I say it.”
They cannot accept the truth because they hate Trump so much. And to accept a lab leak theory as truth is to admit that Trump was, in part, right. Don't get me wrong: I'm no Trumpist. But I can set my views of him aside and think clearly on the matter.
This is (one of) the most utterly destructive elements of the culture war: We appear to have lost the ability to do the work of thinking for ourselves about *anything.* Our views are determined entirely by our loyalty to the tribe, even when this compels us to accept the abjectly nonsensical. I sometimes ask myself whether, if I'd stayed in the US, this would have happened to me, too: Is it an irresistible impulse when you're literally surrounded by it? I know it's true of my figure: there's no way not to be overweight in the US (either that, or completely neurotic); the environment is just so obesogenic. Does it also make it impossible to resist falling into one of two fanatically opposed camps on every political or moral issue?
You know what's weird? For some reason, naively, I thought that the repeal of Roe might give rise to a discussion in the media of the morality of abortion. That we might see articles asking, say, what we've learned about fetal development since Roe; how the issue has been viewed in various religious traditions and why; what we mean by "personhood," and how we form these judgements. But I don't think I've seen a single such article. No one actually wants to debate the issue--or persuade. They just want to impose their will. How do we run a democracy like this?
Claire - if you lived in US, you would probably be witch. I too expected abortion discussion. But a close friend was only concerned that “White men want to control women’s bodies”. And “pregnant Trans people are the oppressed by the Supreme Court ruling.”
Claire - you have an interesting perspective and therefore should weigh in on culture war topics and developments that you believe are noteworthy. I tire of many friends who just recite the TV news sentences and offer nothing more.
The culture wars are not news. They're a method to develop revenue for the media and fury from party members. The emotion They're generating is noise, not signal.