If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that...He's a good enough writer that I assume he didn't misspeak.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
I don't share his economic theories. I do think immigration had a major effect on destroying America's working class, and I think the free-trade policies he champions did too. Bracket that, though: we'll agree to disagree on the question.
The welfare dependency he cites is a major part of the problem. America's welfare state, set up precisely to help the poorest Americans, has been deeply destructive to their lives and culture. It should be dismantled.
However, I am surprised that he doesn't see the effect of both welfare and over-regulation on the traditional economies of these regions. What did they ever produce? Small farms. You weren't going to get rich running a family farm, but you could sell the milk you got from your cow each day, and cheese, and a few crops. You were going to have to work hard (the absence of which he says is the root of the moral rot he describes). You'd need to keep the family together, somehow, to get that work done. Presumably no one would do it if they could sit back and collect a check from D.C., and the checks get bigger if the family falls apart. Subsidize anything and you get more of it.
But now not only is there the check, there's a huge set of rules and regulations that ban you from collecting and selling your cow's milk without expensive technological investments. You'd need to hire a lawyer to make sure your farm wasn't violating rules nine ways to Sunday.
The black market in drugs flourishes in part because, if everything you know how to do for money is illegal, you might as well do the most profitable one of the crimes.
The problems he cites of course generalize to all of America's working poor, but if you wrote the same column about the urban poor you'd be fired as a racist. (John Derbyshire's equally honest treatment of urban black culture in America is how he got shown the door). I won't call for that, because I value honesty. It's good to speak your mind plainly. Being offensive is sometimes helpful to breaking a deadlock on a big problem. The solution to America's poverty problem is not that the poor communities should 'die out,' however.
The solution is dismantling the existing transfer-payment welfare system and also the vast set of food production regulations that make farming the business of corporations instead of small family farms. In their place, we will need to set up CCC-style systems to teach people how to do the things that the current generation no longer knows how to do because their grandparents had to give it up.
We can structure our regulations to make it more likely that small family farms succeed, and we can make work-based systems like this the only welfare game going. Do that, and you'll have a healthier working poor. They'll still be poor. But they will have decent lives.
Along the way, we'll also get a better kind of food. Small farmers doing grass-fed, grass-finished beef or free-range chickens is something people want anyway: it's just too expensive to be marketable. Increase the supply vastly, however, and the price will come down. Doing so will ultimately be much cheaper than the transfer-payment systems we have now, and give us several goods we would be glad to have.
I'm having trouble fully integrating the idea of this group, which is working-class but on welfare. I get it that this is somewhat because there aren't so many good jobs for them now.
ReplyDeleteBut this is why I see Williamson's point that the current group is a drain. "Working class" was a bigger category when I was young, and bigger still to my father and grandfather's towns. Because most people are at least somewhat industrious and respectable, the Working Class as a whole was more likely to be industrious and respectable. But there were plenty of ne'er-do-wells then as well. (And some of them were wealthy, but that's another story.)
It's a smaller group, so the same number of parasites looks larger. And in practice it is larger, because they are now more concentrated and their cultural effect is greater. The respectable working class, as the national wealth increased, became middle class and got the hell out of Dodge if they could. As the effects of family breakdown increased, more drifted downward - and there were few jobs for strong backs and weak minds to keep them afloat. The change in the economy and the change in family formation have conspired against them, perhaps. They bobbed like corks in the current, not much able to affect events. Yet still, some of it is their own.
This is Charles Murray territory, and he is not entirely pessimistic about it.
Does not sound to me like he was talking about a "working" class. Sounds like he was talking about a "welfare"class.
ReplyDeleteApply the same hideous ointment of socialism and you get the same rash, does not matter if it is in US inner city, a rural village in Appalachia, or some English town. Color matters not a whit-
I would have a hell of a lot more respect if he had the guts to use the same approach on the inner cities. It is particularly troublesome that in the inner city case every possible excuse is trotted out to excuse the condition, poverty, drug abuse,homelessness,lack of fathers, discrimination, the list goes on an on -the black culture is NEVER to blame. -yet when it is a white social catastrophe, it is all the fault of the white people.
BTW, I did not read his article- your excerpt was enough for my blood pressure.
I think that it's fair to say that "working class" is a tendentious expression, though this is the class of people from which workers of a certain kind are drawn. But welfare is endemic to the rural poor now, not just the urban poor, and it is deeply destructive.
ReplyDeleteI still use the phrase "working class" because I'd like to think that we could get them working again. I think they'd be happier, and we'd be better off, but it requires treating them as something other than a disease that we wish would somehow go away.
The CCC was a solid effort. When I was younger I worked on a documentary that interviewed CCC vets (who were to a man also WWII vets). They all said the same thing about the program, though we interviewed them at different times and places. They said the CCC was the best time in their lives, except for the Army.
I imagine that both times were actually quite hard, but that they found a lot of meaning in being part of a unit and working together in an important cause -- repairing an old Civil War fort, or building the Blue Ridge Parkway, or fighting the Nazis.
In the process, I notice, poor people of these very same classes did tremendous things for the good of the country. Almost everything the CCC touched was improved by their efforts -- compare that to the welfare system of transfer payments! Things like the Blue Ridge Parkway are national treasures. I have slept in shelters they built on the Appalachian Trail.
We could make their lives a thousand times better, give them skills and discipline that would serve them the rest of their lives, and also do great things that we would be very glad later to have done. What we do instead is pay them to do nothing but fester, and then hate them for being bad people.
Good post. I'd note that Obama's war on coal is making this problem worse: coal was going to be in trouble anyhow, given cheap natural gas and efficient gas-turbine technology, but the political hostility toward this fuel is certainly causing these jobs to go away faster and more completely than they otherwise would.
ReplyDeleteThe situation is somewhat analogous to that of American Indians on the reservations: it's easy to say 'they should just move somewhere else,' but the % of people willing to turn their back on all they have known is always going to be a minority in any society.
ReplyDeleteThere was just a link on FB about the Dalles and other dams on the Columbia River, which displaced some Indians as well as white people....a legitimate use of Eminent Domain, I would say...but of course the relocation and support promises to the Indians were never kept, over multiple decades. It would have been much better if some small % of the revenue generated by these dams were simply allocated to the tribes, to spend as they liked, rather than putting them at the total mercy of the bureaucracy.
I get that otherizing people with whom we disagree is just human, but really, no one is going to challenge the notion that rural meth heads, on welfare, are Trump supporters? I'm having a hard time believing that they bestir themselves to vote, let alone attend Trump events. But I guess it is part of the meme to depict the Trumpers as losers. There can be no other explanation.
ReplyDeleteAs for the working poor, yeah there are a lot of us still around, who have no representation in either party.
...but really, no one is going to challenge the notion that rural meth heads, on welfare, are Trump supporters?
ReplyDeleteI believe you just did.
As the old Chinese saying (or curse) goes: "May you live in interesting times."
ReplyDeleteYowza. I see this as part of the problem with all the blather on the internet. So this is one guy talking smack-talk in an online article, and only because he's said stuff that people find offensive does it actually get any attention.
But I looked at the comments of the NRO site for this article and the first 50 or so are uniformly negative.
I wonder how many are going to cancel their subscriptions over this.
...only because he's said stuff that people find offensive does it actually get any attention.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's why I said I don't think he should be fired over it. If we are willing to accept being offended, sometimes we can break loose a useful discussion. Derbyshire was just giving his honest opinion, too. Lots of people thought it was awful and hateful, but I'll wager a lot of people felt that way if he did -- he was a semi-elderly Briton with a love of math, after all, not a KKK Grand Wizard. It would have been a lot healthier for people to ask what was driving him to be so afraid, and how justified it was, and what could be done about the justifications.
Williamson isn't wrong that there's a lot of meth, and families are falling apart, and welfare is doing horrible things to this community. Some of these people are my neighbors (though in the rural areas where I live, "neighbor" implies a fair bit of distance).
Where he's wrong is in failing to feel a basic loyalty to his fellow Americans. In viewing their communities as deserving to wither and die because they aren't profitable, or as he puts it "negative assets," he's choosing to favor economics over patriotism. It's a philosophical error common to National Review writers, with some honorable exceptions.
Just some random thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI think that this election cycle is about class. The beautiful people, by way of the servant class (politicians, media talking heads) are deflecting the issue by putting racism, nationalism, genderism, sexism…. front and center for all the chumps out there.
From a post by Michael K on
"But the social sciences is so consumed with the side issues of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and various other thought crimes that they cannot see the forest for the trees."
I agree and the take over of the "Social Sciences" by the political left has left them with almost no insight. The best we have is Charles Murray with "The Bell Curve" followed by "Coming Apart" which have done a lot to explain the social stratification of the past two decades.
Speaking of the past two decades, I cannot recommend too highly this 1994 interview of Sir James Goldsmith on GATT, the new tariff law.
It is eerie to see him predict what has happened but to do it 22 years ago.”
Another somewhat related topic:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/03/wow-finally-article-from-nyts-about.html
Also on Althouse, they are trying to find parallels between Truman and Trump, as a rebellion by the Middle Class interesting,no?
Just an aside from me, a few days ago we were talking about dignity. Do we think material well being is an adequate substitute for the dignity of meaningful employment?
You'd need to keep the family together, somehow, to get that work done. Presumably no one would do it if they could sit back and collect a check from D.C., and the checks get bigger if the family falls apart.
ReplyDeleteDig into the 'social-justice' writings of Pp. Leo XIII and you find that "the economy" is dependent, whole and entire, on intact marriages. That's something he learned from Aristotle, whose 'oikos' was small communities based on families.
Edith:
ReplyDeleteDo we think material well being is an adequate substitute for the dignity of meaningful employment?
No, I don't. That's part of the point of mentioning the CCC and WWII. These guys were talking about living through the Great Depression and the worst war in human history as the high points of their lives. Material well being, which they knew later, did not enter into comparison with the meaning they found in working together for a good cause.
D29:
Dig into the 'social-justice' writings of Pp. Leo XIII and you find that "the economy" is dependent, whole and entire, on intact marriages. That's something he learned from Aristotle, whose 'oikos' was small communities based on families.
Quite right about Aristotle, although when I've talked about his economics in the past I hear that his economic theory is incredibly impoverished. He viewed the household as the proper means of economic production -- as opposed to businesses or corporations or state-run enterprises -- and thought that being a merchant or a tradesman might plausibly disqualify you from citizenship. You weren't adequately independent to vote independently, and also people who focused their lives on getting money are ethically stunted, he thought. Economics was only for providing the means to the good life, and any focus on acquisition beyond those necessities was improper.
Williamson would doubtless reject Aristotle's theories, although he also views the capacity to produce enough wealth to live independently as a kind of barometer of who is worthy to be a citizen (and who ought to die off, and certainly have their interests ignored by our politics as non-citizens might). If you do it by working for a corporation instead of through marriage and family, though, he would regard that as only sensible: corporations are often efficient wealth-producing organizations.
Is Kevin Williamson gay and hates his Texas father? This article makes that accusation. and maybe that explains his hatred of poor whites and his death wish on them?
ReplyDelete.......If you haven’t figured it out yet, Williamson’s racist screed was actually aimed at Whites. Just substitute “whites” and “white working class” everywhere you read “blacks” and “African-Americans”. The racism against Whites gets published; the version of it with “blacks” replacing “whites” would get Williamson fired from National Cucktacular and his penis-shaped head on millions of network broadcasts as the featured “two minutes hate” antiracism whipping cur (which he’d probably enjoy).........
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/national-reviews-resident-cuckmug-kevin-d-williamson-pens-racist-screed/
I'm not sure they meant that charge seriously. I think they probably intended their option #1 to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteThis thing they call 'the “White identity” alt-right' isn't something I know much about -- I don't read any of those sites, nor would I have read a PUA site if you hadn't linked it. I have read some of the people who believe in race -- Sailer and Derbyshire himself -- but I'm not convinced that race is real. Culture is real. Genetics is real enough, but I'm not sure how much it can explain about America -- there's been much more exchange of genetic material than is admitted here.
President Obama, for example, is a cousin of George Washington on his mother's side. There's a lot of that, both in terms of "whites" who would have been "black" a few generations ago, and in terms of "blacks" who are actually pretty "white" except for the old one-drop rule. There's a huge divide between African-American culture and non-African-American culture, but there's a lot of genetic material that's shared even if people don't want to admit to it.
That's not to say that there aren't "pure" examples of white or black. I myself am as white as you could find -- according to my parents' recent DNA tests, mostly English/Scottish/Welsh, with some Western European on my mother's side. Very little indication of much other genetic material. But I think that's rarer than we take it to be (and indeed, until the tests were done I like Elizabeth Warren had heard from 'family lore' that we were part Cherokee).
This isn't what I get from reading Williamson's article. He doesn't want the white working class to die; he wants people who live in communities where there are no jobs available to move to where there are jobs. ("You're a four-hour bus ride from the gas fields of Pennsylvania.")
ReplyDeleteThe town he discusses has not relied on agriculture for over 100 years, perhaps over 200 years. It sprang up because gypsum was discovered and withered when gypsum was no longer a hot commodity. He also considers the death of anything recognizable as a family to be a (perhaps the) serious problem facing the people he is writing about.
Do I think he's right that unemployed white men are supporting Trump because they long for a father? Nope. I don't have much time for psychic psychoanalysis. But just as those who oppose Trump don't realize how angry - and bewildered - the people who support him are, so too the people who support Trump don't realize how angry - and bewildered - the people who oppose him are.
A fair point about the anger (as well as bewilderment) motivating people like Williamson. I was bewildered about Trump at first, because I couldn't believe anyone would take him seriously. Guy who never served taking cracks at John McCain's war service? All these empty phrases that don't mean anything at all? Reputable politicians concoct implausible lies that really could be a policy if they were sincere about them. Reputable politicians don't urge their crowds to violence and offer to pay their legal fees. (Joke's on the guy who took him seriously: the best lawyer in the world isn't going to get him off after he sucker-elbowed a guy on four or more cameras, admitted to it and said it was his favorite part of the rally, and then suggested he might have to kill the other guy if he came back.)
ReplyDeleteNow that I've watched a couple of his speeches, though, I understand what he's doing and how it works. He's really good at what he does, and the oratory that reads empty and foolish sounds much better when it's heard as part of the interaction with the large crowds that it really is. It's just pep rally stuff, but that's what a lot of people want. They want to believe it's going to get better, and they want to believe he knows how to make it better. He's just letting them do what they want to do.
I remain convinced that he is not the ideal choice. I rank him above Clinton solely because of her manifest corruption. At least Trump would probably be trying, if only because he wants to look good and nothing looks better than success. Clinton would just be figuring out how to build wealth pipelines to her foundation and an organizing structure that would let her pass the Presidency off to Chelsea. Along the way she'd appoint Supreme Court Justices who would simply rewrite the Constitution so that it said what she wanted it to say instead of what the Founders put there. She might even get some legislation through, but as long as the money is right, who really cares about that? And the money will be right, just from the favors she could do with control of the bureaucracy.
Compared to that, Trump is a better choice. But he's still right at the bottom of my list excepting Herself.
I'm with Elise.
ReplyDelete" But just as those who oppose Trump don't realize how angry - and bewildered - the people who support him are, so too the people who support Trump don't realize how angry - and bewildered - the people who oppose him are."
ReplyDeleteI think this is often overlooked. Consider the debate from 1994 I linked to in an earlier post. Much a What Sir James Goldsmith predicted came true, in fact, this debate sounds contemporary if you close your eyes. It's hard to say who won, Tyson the advocate for GATT or Sir James. I think we are all supposed to have swell high tech service jobs by now, while we cultivate our inner artiste. Why do all those working people in Middle America feel left out or behind. Are they stoooppid? stubborn? Tyson, the GATT advocate would be baffled by the ingratitude and would marshal up all her statistics to say, we have made your lives exponentially better, you ingrates; you should be thanking us and asking for more of the same. You can see the beautiful people are baffled by the failure to appreciate their theories.
But why Trump?, because he is the one who is listening to the Working Middle. I am sympathetic to, and count myself as one of those, who have been left behind, so maybe that is why I hear disdain, dismissal, paternalism, condescension from the other Republican candidates. Even Hillary makes the right noises, but since she is fresh out of ideas, she tries to paper over class warfare with sexism, racism, xenophobia, genderism themes. And then, there is Bernie, at least he doesn't despise the ones that are worried or Left Behind, even if his ideas are left over from decades ago.
ReplyDeleteAnother random thought, if everything is so swell for the Middle and Above, why are millions on anti-anxiety meds?
ReplyDeleteEven if we read Williamson's argument not as he puts it -- these communities need to die out -- but as simply an admonition to leave the communities to seek work elsewhere, it gives us this striking feature: in a year in which Americans are concerned about the effects of mass immigration, his solution is to turn Americans into immigrants.
ReplyDeleteThat's the effect of his brand of economics. Communities are to be sacrificed, so that people are to be broken away from whatever family or community they have and turned into atomic individuals who function as economic units. They may, as Mexicans and Filipinos famously do, elect to send their money home. But at some point, home changes: why still think of yourself as a Mexican citizen (as opposed to culturally Mexican), if you've abandoned Mexico forever? Or if your father did, and you've never been there?
The next step is to ask: what if the globalization part of this globalization/immigration strategy means the jobs aren't in America anymore? Is the right thing to do to get on a boat somewhere? Should Americans leave America, and stay gone, if that's the only way to earn a living? It's what Mexicans do, in many cases these days.
The short term effect is the destruction of these small communities. The long term effect is the destruction of nations as communities of value. America is about a vision of human liberty, but not everyone in the world shares that vision. If we are to export our population freely, and absorb whomever fits more immediately into economic entities, we are ultimately going to have citizens whose values are totally out of line with the American vision. There's no reason to think they will vote to sustain it.
And that is true, in reverse, for every other nation as well. What is France about, as a civilization? Will it continue to be that civilization now that 25% of its teenagers are Muslims thanks to this kind of economy-driven mass immigration?
It sounds so simple: just get on a bus and go where there are jobs. But the consequences are Aristotle's: in that small move, you've changed the purpose of the civilization away from enabling the good life for members of a community formed of local families with a common vision of what the good life happens to entail. Now the purpose of civilization is economic activity. What kind of life it entails for its members becomes a disposable question.
It also becomes a more contentious question. Mexican immigrants try to influence our politics to make our civilization more pleasant to them -- we should always offer Spanish language services in government, we should be more socialist. They often fail, and end up living in a society they don't care for. But they don't always fail, meaning that we lose a part of the society we wanted. Muslims in France want different things from the French, and they're pushing for them hard. When they fail, it gets ugly. When they succeed, part of France is lost.
If the values of a community are worth defending, then we have to look to defending our members. We might be happy to take immigrants who agree with our values. Instead, we take immigrants who are cheap sources of labor.
I think we have all of this backwards. The problem starts with these economy-centered political theories. Economics is necessary for civilization, but it's not the purpose of civilization.
I'm afraid the purpose of civilization also is not to enable people to stay put instead of moving to better conditions when that becomes necessary. I thank Heaven for my moving ancestors.
ReplyDeleteEasy to say, since they moved here. They might have moved to Saudi Arabia to take part in oil field work there.
ReplyDeleteThe explosion in robotics and self learning systems is going to exacerbate the economic displacement of workers beyond belief, especially in middle class and upper class jobs. The working class jobs are already gone, what is going to happen when some robot takes over tax preparation or surgery?
ReplyDeleteI was struck by the comment of one of the Go masters after being defeated by a self learning machine, that some of the moves he had never seen and they were astoundingly brilliant.
Indeed, the question is becoming more important because of these technological advances.
ReplyDeleteThe right's commitment to economics as a civilizational test is an outgrowth of the Cold War. It was a useful criticism of Communism that it reliably led to mass famine. It remains a useful criticism of socialism that it reliably leads to shortages, sometimes even severe ones.
We should not, however, mistake that to mean that providing economic resources adequately is the purpose of a civilization. That's not why we established the Constitution. The Preamble does mention promoting "the general Welfare" as one goal, but it isn't clear exactly what that means; and in any case, it is only one goal among several. "To secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity" is the one given the place of honor as the ultimate justification for the Constitution.
I am skeptical about the claims for widespread technological unemployment as a result of some sort of step function in "robotic" capabilities. For one thing, no huge improvement in rate of productivity increase has shown up in the statistics, quite the contrary in fact. For another, consider some of the automation that has been introduced in the past:
ReplyDeleteThe power loom (early 1800s), the punched-card programmed Jacquard loom (ditto), the teleprinter, displacing Morse telegraph operators (early 1900s), recorded music and radio, displacing local bands & orchestras (early 1900s), mainframe computers, displacing lots of clerical workers (1960s-1970s), numerically-controlled machine tools (1970s and beyond), etc etc. Not to mention all the labor-saving improvements in power machinery and transportation: railroads, steamships, diesel ships, tractors, etc.
Is what is going on now *really* more significant in job terms than these things were?
I certainly can't claim to speak for Williamson but the idea that the (perhaps hypothetical) person about whom he is writing is relying on a disability check to make ends meet rather than going elsewhere to find a job doesn't seem like something that builds family and community. If there is potential in the town - for agriculture, for another industry, to become a cutesy destination village, for something - then, yes, the people living there should follow that path. But that requires a certain mindset (virtues, if you will) that don't appear to be in evidence. And I'm not convinced that telling them they can keep their town together with back-breaking farm labor and intact marriages is going to suddenly produce those virtues.
ReplyDeleteAs for Trump, his appeal has never bewildered me. His call to halt and reverse (illegal) immigration resonates for both economic and cultural reasons. I simply cannot overlook his huge downside. It's fine to say he'll really be trying and will be restrained by saner heads in Congress, but I worry way too much about what he will do in international relations to ever vote for him. Plus I don't trust him to do what he (intermittently) claims he will do with regard to immigration.
"Easy to say, since they moved here. They might have moved to Saudi Arabia to take part in oil field work there."--Or stayed wherever was so bad that moving to Saudi Arabia sounded like an improvement.
ReplyDeleteIs what is going on now *really* more significant in job terms than these things were?
ReplyDeleteThis is a question that interests me a lot. I know that we have been through this before, in fact some of my ancestry is from Lambley (aka Lambeleia in the Doomsday book),the site of the first Luddite Uprisings. Of course they voted with their feet and came to the USA. Not to mention, we could all name lots of jobs that provided dignity in the not so distant past, that have just disappeared in our own lifetimes. I don't know at what point a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference.
In 1994, Sir James Goldsmith anticipated unprecedented mass migrations and wondered what happens when 4 billion subsistence farmers are displaced. In 1994, he saw GATT as potentially destabilizing the industrial west and a source of significant unemployment. I am assuming we all know that there are other contributors. At what point do we weigh the cost of material well being against instability.
"Easy to say, since they moved here. They might have moved to Saudi Arabia to take part in oil field work there."--Or stayed wherever was so bad that moving to Saudi Arabia sounded like an improvement.
ReplyDeleteWho else has open borders, despite no longer having frontiers or a need for labor? I am not even sure I would be able to immigrate to Canada and I am half Canadian with Canadian cousins.
The short term effect is the destruction of these small communities. .....The long term effect is the destruction of nations as communities of value. America is about a vision of human liberty, but not everyone in the world shares that vision.......... If we are to export our population freely, and absorb whomever fits more immediately into economic entities, we are ultimately going to have citizens whose values are totally out of line with the American vision. There's no reason to think they will vote to sustain it.
ReplyDeleteThis. Sir James Goldsmith touches upon this too.
The transnationals, those industries and corporations that have global supply chains and a global customer base are only American by happenstance. We already know that they and their servants are willing to sacrifice American values and sovereignty for Commerce Uber Alles. I'm not saying that they are evil or wrong or that much of this is not inevitable. But, rest assured, that the economic well being of Americans is not their mission, let alone their priority.
The black class was destroyed and broken to slavery anew under welfare. Whites weren't immune to that in time.
ReplyDeleteClinton would just be figuring out how to build wealth pipelines to her foundation and an organizing structure that would let her pass the Presidency off to Chelsea.
ReplyDeleteHah. Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture. That's how the throne is passed down.
As for race and culture and dna, race has genetic flags, which the alt right sometimes use to signify it as being responsible for culture as well. Certain types of culture vs others.
Most of it revolves around scientific theories, such as R vs K strategies. Or epigenetics. Sounds like Leninism, the New Way Forward. Except these days, it's a combination of any number of cultures, religions, and philosophies.
Just remember that "epi-" anything means "we don't know what we're talking about." It's a hand-wave even in the ancient Greek.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, but they were describing a theory I had already had in mind from other sources, before they gave it a name on wikipedia and the internet.
ReplyDeleteSo my primary sources didn't come after, but before it was popularized and used by others. Like I said, I keep many things to myself, since they would sound pretty crazy if I tried to explain them without social backing. Since I develop them often years before the society is even aware of the theoretical concept.