Browsed by
Month: February 2021

Boomer Moralism and Today’s Dysfunctional Politics

Boomer Moralism and Today’s Dysfunctional Politics

Comments 1 comment

I’ve read somewhere, more than once, that the Baby Boomers are the worst generation of political leaders in U.S. history. They are presiding over an era of extreme political partisanship and government paralysis. What I mean by “presiding” is that they are the majority of top political leaders, and that it is their generational peer personality that is primarily responsible for the combative, partisan nature of politics today. As I reviewed earlier, some Boomers acknowledge this, and that it’s even worse than you think. Basically, with Boomers in charge, nothing will ever get done, and government is doomed to be an ever-worsening shitshow.

At the heart of the problem is the moralistic character of the Boomer generation. This character was evident in their youth, which was famous for campus unrest and protests against the government policies of older generations. When Boomers aged into mid-life and entered politics themselves, starting in the 1980s, they brought their righteous indignation with them. Politics became more about confrontation over moral principles, and less about actually instituting policy.

This tracked with the overall evolution of the social order, which was steering away from the outer world and collective action, and toward the inner world and individual empowerment. It was what Strauss & Howe call the Unraveling Era, when the demand for social order reaches a nadir. But now that we are in the Crisis Era, and the demand for social order is rising, the confrontational, partisan mode of politics is proving to be severely detrimental. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, for God’s sake!

Which brings me to this remarkable essay by Julius Krein, called “The Three Fusions.” I bring it up because the author pinpoints moralism and ideology-driven politics as the root of this era’s failures of government. I’ll briefly review the essay, without going into what he means by his three fusions, or the details of how he breaks down the ideologies of the Left and the Right.

In “The Three Fusions,” Julius Krein argues that moralism in politics has undermined the democratic nation-state, which is why neither political faction (Left or Right) has been successful at implementing its particular political agenda. The problem is neither faction really wants the collective to be empowered, since each sees virtue as residing in the individual, not the collective. Both the Left and the Right end up trying to advance their goals by putting responsibility on individual morality alone. Each side’s vision of an ideal society can only be achieved by having all individuals freely internalize its moral principles, since neither side will allow for the empowerment of collective will through state action. Hence the ridiculousness of virtue-signalling memes buzzing through our social media feeds, as though given enough time they will cause a majority of the populace to internalize the correct moral viewpoint. But that doesn’t happen; each side’s social media bubble is impervious to the memes of the other. Representative democracy can’t work with two factions in total opposition and government consequently gridlocked by partisanship. So we’re stuck without any means to empower the state to serve the national interest.

Krein is a Millennial, born in 1986. His generation is of the opposite archetype of the Boomers, so it’s no suprise that his instinct is to turn away from moral correctness as the legitimating principle of government. He clearly yearns for a more practical, functioning mode; one that acknowledges differences in belief about morality while still allowing for collective decision-making. I think many in his generation do, as their political activism shows.

But how to get past the dysfunctional Boomer paradigm? And to be fair, it’s not just the Boomer generation that bears a responsibility for excessive moralism. Younger generations are playing along, even Millennials – just scroll through Twitter to see what I mean. They are following the lead of their visionary elders, which might work, if only there were a more clearly dominant vision.

Eventually, as the generations age, moralism will fade away on its own accord. But by then the damage done may be irreparable. There’s certainly no resurrecting all the people who have died from Covid-19. And it might be too late to restore trust in democracy, or to revert the trend of ever-widening inequality. We’ll end up in a 21st century dystopia.

I honestly think that getting to a dominant vision is probably the only way to a resolution of this problem. It allows the Boomers to fulfill their archetypal role of visionary, and the younger generations their roles as well. It won’t matter that the dominant ideology has logical contradictions. Obviously, not everyone is going to like it. But it’s either that or twisting in the wind and enduring the pain of a broken system. Lord knows we’ve endured enough pain as it is.

Subreddit of the week: murderedbyAOC

Subreddit of the week: murderedbyAOC

Comments 0 Comment

Years back, I wrote a blog post about how Millennials use social media for consensus building. I was tying into predictions based on Strauss & Howe generational theory on how the Millennial generation would behave as young adults in this era, the Crisis Era. One prediction is that they will enforce a code of good conduct.

Prediction about Millennials from The Fourth Turning.

Fast forward to today, and cancel culture is fully in place. Well, what is “cancel culture” if not an effort to enforce a code of conduct by ostracizing those who violate the code?

It seems that complaints about cancel culture come mostly from the political right. But before you call it a phenomenon of the left, I challenge you to go to a right-leaning site like parler and express support for President Biden. I’ll bet you get “cancelled” pretty fast.

Could the right’s problem with cancel culture just come from the fact that the left has been more successful at it? Perhaps that is because the left’s code of conduct better reflect’s the majoritarian view. Perhaps that is because the left didn’t choose a champion who is a criminal mountebank.

found on /r/murderedbyAOC

Or maybe the left really is just better at the culture game. We all know from reddit that the /r/TheRightCantMeme. And look no further than reddit to find a Millennial who excels at enforcing good conduct with her brilliant wit.

I mean Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has her own subreddit, dedicated to reposting the stinging comebacks to red zoners that she makes on social media. It’s a happy little bubble for a blue zoner to go and assure themselves of the superiority of their partisan viewpoint. And as a partisan blue zoner myself, I’m happy to declare /r/murderedbyAOC the subrreddit of the week.

Silent of the Week: Mitch McConnell

Silent of the Week: Mitch McConnell

Comments 0 Comment

He may well be the most hated man in America. Mitch McConnell has simultaneously angered Democrats by letting Trump off the hook for the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and angered Republicans by betraying Trump. In a bizarre moment in American political history, he acquitted the former President at his impeachment trial, then made a speech blaming him for the very crimes for which he had been acquitted.

Senator Mitch McConnell (b. 1942) makes a blistering speech condemning the former President, moments after voting to acquit him.

Egregiously, his reason for acquitting the former President was that the Senate didn’t have the power to convict an impeached officer once they were out of office, even though, as majority leader when the impeachment articles were presented to the Senate, he had refused to try them! It was like he was playing a shell game. Because of this, McConnell will likely be remembered by history for duplicity, even cowardice.

And yet there was that speech, laying the blame wholly at Trump’s feet. What gives? Well, consider that McConnell, as I have brought up before, is from the Silent generation (b. 1925-1942). This is a generation that puts process over principle. They are indeed masters of process, which McConnell certainly demonstrated with his little political trick that enabled him to personally blame Trump for January 6, while sparing his fellow party members from having to make any similar such political statement.

Honestly, I think that is his game. He is trying to divest the Republicans of Trump with as little risk as possible to the current Republican office-holders. At least, that’s my understanding of his motivation. If, ultimately, this gambit fails and Trumpism rises again (the feared “beer hall putsch” scenario), then McConnell will go down in history as one of those double-dealing politicians who fails to confront a growing threat until it is too late. Like the Compromisers before the U.S. Civil War, or like Neville Chamberlain.

But for now, since Mitch McConnell has demonstrated the art of political process and a thorough appreciation of his powers within the political system, I name him my Silent of the week.

The Small Wars Come Home

The Small Wars Come Home

Comments 1 comment

In their book The Fourth Turning, Strauss & Howe assert that there is a difference in the way wars are fought in the third phase of their historical cycle, versus the way they are fought in the fourth and final phase. In the third phase, wars are fought with moral fervor but without resolution or consensus. In the current cycle, this was the phase of the Iraq Wars and the War on Terror. In the last cycle, this third phase coincided with the First World War.

In the fourth phase, the Crisis Era, wars are fought to conclusion, for maximum effect. In the last cycle, this was the time of the Second World War. One can easily see how the Second World War can be understood as the First World War re-fought, but to a more decisive end.

In the mid-2000s, when the U.S. was floundering in Iraq, I actually described a kind of heady vision of how affairs might be different in the next era. In other words, how the nation-building wars in the Middle East might be re-fought, but more decisively.

As I understood it, we would finally have the right generational constellation for the Boomers to translate their values obsession into significant world change. Back then in the Bush era, it seemed to me that red zone values were dominating and a Republican would likely be the one to fulfill a role like that of FDR in the last cycle. Here’s what I wrote in conclusion:

Imagine, if you will, a President Sam Brownback. He knows the greatest poverty and oppression in the world lies in the continent of Africa, which is also where the greatest terrorist threat now lives, since Al-Qaeda has fled there after the Middle East has finally been stabilized. Imagine serious nation-building efforts to raise up the poorest of the poor African countries, which might include invasions to depose an intransigent dictator or two. Imagine a corps a hundred thousand strong of enthusiastic young Millennials, guided by competent middle-aged Gen-Xers, joining up to serve in one or two year tours, helping to build infrastructure and train indigenous peoples and do police work. This would be Boomer values finally bearing fruition…

–me, ~2008

It seems ridiculously out of touch now, but where I was clearly going in my thought process was to imagine that there would be a redux of the failed intervention in the Middle East, but one that would actually be successful. Just as World War II had been World War I fought to conclusion, I conceived of a future United States embarking on a new round of nation-building wars, but this time seeing them through to the end.

What’s actually happened, we now see with hindsight, is that nation-building has been repudiated, and the United States has pulled back from its global wars of intervention and turned its focus inward. And the circumstances the United States military faced in the Middle East, it now faces at home. Armed militias disrupt the functioning of government. A “green zone” like the one that was set up in Baghdad is set up instead in Washington D.C. itself.

During the War on Terror, doctrines emerged for fighting “asymmetric warfare”, part of a new focus on “small wars” in an age of unilateralism, with the United States as the sole superpower. “Post-conflict stablization” became a new mission in the wake of invasion and regime change. In a kind of karmic comeuppance for U.S. hubris, these small wars have come home. It’s like the mission now is to stabilize the United States – in the era in which the last round of wars are re-fought, but decisively.

Arguably, the degree of political instablility in America is nothing like what it is in the parts of the world where the U.S. once felt obligated to intervene. But consider that in the Crisis Era, to quote The Fourth Turning, “wars are fought with fury and for maximum result.” (p. 104). The fact that the energy of the U.S. has turned inward, and that the nation has just had a brush with violent domestic regime change, is ominous.