The industrious British journalist Mary Harrington has two stories up today/yesterday. One of them hits a little more than the other.
In Unherd she examines reasons for very split reactions to the Rittenhouse verdict. There's something to be said--in general--about the conflict between Rousseauian and Hobbesian views on law enforcement. So begin the calls to abolish the police and replace them with social workers.
But Harrington misses or avoids the topic of race, which is really the elephant in the room. I don't know if I would say that racial politics have gotten worse--as compared to what? But they have gotten weirder. And high profile criminal cases tend to draw that weirdness in sharp relief, especially when the media subject whites to the full "those people" treatment. These kinds of takes are meant to divide, and they especially tickle white elites who get someone they can feel superior to without guilt.
Better is her story for The Critic regarding the trend of the upper professional echelons more and more being made up of women. For one thing, while I may have heard/read the term "elite overproduction" before, this article defines it in a very illuminating way. Also intriguing is her comparison of the differing ways that men and women compete. Of course these are broad tendencies not universal to each, but society does seem to be conforming more to one of these than it used to. Which means new challenges, still in the process of revealing themselves.
2 comments:
That's a pair of very thought provoking articles by Mary Harrington you've linked to this time. As far as her thoughts regarding the Rittenhouse trial it seems to me somewhat oversimplistic to compare what's going on in the US right now as an essential disagreement between Rousseauian philosophy and that of John Hobbes. What I find very troubling about the way the popular press and social media are presenting is the disregarded potential for the kind of large scale backlash to a moribund government that lead to the Terror after the French Revolution. It seems to me the 'wokesters' in their enthusiasm for tearing down all the symbols of what they like to see as white supremacy, never mind their contempt for the verdict reached by a jury, are signalling their allegiance to the ideology of the Jacobins. While it would be less than realistic to compare right wing enthusiasts to the Girondists who tried to compromise with the king in 18th century France, there remains a strong element of restraint in that part of the population who maintain belief in the rule of law.
One of the most stunning moments in the old film 'A Man for All Seasons' and the one I remember best from that single time in high school when we were taken to Toronto to see a film our teachers thought important was this one:
“Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”
Of course, what's happening in the US right now has less to do with the politics of race and more to do with ambitious people jockeying for positions of power.
Ibram X. Kendi is no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King and the BLM Three could never compare to the civil rights activists of the 1960s. It's likely none of them have ever been on a bus never mind not being worthy to help Rosa Parks across the street. (Sorry, I get a bit exercised about this stuff.) I see these people as hucksters. From what I've read there are a lot of black people who don't trust their motivations either.*
The first thing I took from Harrington's second article about "The New Female Ascendency' pretty much confirms my opinion about there being too many dancers and not enough chairs in the game. (I never did win one of those, btw.) The fact is there are far fewer, not just elite jobs, but jobs as such in our highly technologized, roboticized environment. You just don't need more bank tellers when you have atms and online banking; nor do you need grocery clerks when people line up to check their own purchases out; the same goes for brokers on the floors of stock exchanges who've been replaced by algorithms. I could go on as you probably can as well. Have you seen the machinery used these days by the building trades and road workers? The system has become crazier with each passing year. 'Believe all women' - sure..
* Unsurprisingly there are those who will take advantage of chaos - criminals.
ps: Here's an an article I read this morning by Joaquin Flores about color revolution undercurrents of that trial.
Manichaean absolutes are a hell of a drug. The activist case is that the police aren't just excessive in some instances but illegitimate and on the wrong side. This would seem to imply that criminals--potentially including violent criminals--are the good guys. This is quite contra-indicated by reality and a sane movement would back away from the argument, but the movement is actually grabbing onto it with both hands. There probably is something of the Jacobin in it, as it's about the thrill of the ideological battle, not what you're going to do afterwards.
The line from A Man for All Seasons is very stirring and very true. I think that all of us want to imagine ourselves having Thomas More's courage and consistency. And actual life keeps proving how few people actually do.
I make a distinction between racial politics and race relations. One of these is much more anxious than the other. Like, the way the chattering classes talk about race--almost universally destructive at this point--isn't for the most part reflected in the way commoners of different races behave with each other. Although the owner of the SUV that went nuts in Waukesha demonstrates what can happen when that rhetoric does escape the elites. And you're very much right about Kendi and BLM. The latter announced their full support of Jussie Smollett right before a jury of his peers found that he had been lying his ass off about being attacked by Trumpers. Sure his proximity to Hollywood figures with deep pockets had nothing to do with their allegiance.
As I've thought for a long time, intellectuals talk about the march of technology as some kind of natural and uncontrollable force when it's really a series of self-serving decisions by humans. Technology doesn't want to take over your crappy job. It doesn't want anything. Your boss wants you out of the way. Where women enter the picture is that they are most often put in the position of justifying these decisions, of who works, who doesn't, and under what conditions. And it has an effect on interpersonal trust.
The color revolution thing is a bit beyond me, although I understand the basic concept. It's hard to tell which actions it applies to. The fact that the Ziminskis were never brought in to testify is awfully weird, though.
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