The bourgeoisification of taste, or why poetry and everything is moribund. The triumph of the middle class whether it be in aesthetics or in politics is I think ultimately responsible for the death of culture because the middle class has fundamentally a mentally of risk aversion
and follow the herd. Their status is relatively precarious unlike a true aristocracy and they simply lack the resources for experimentation. I think the early 20th century was ultimately the turning point for this cultural shift, at least for the arts and letters. Whereas before
your average poet or writer was usually a gentleman of leisure, a polyglot pursuing his flights of fancy. Now everything has to be properly credentialed and everyone has to fit into a very narrow specialty. It's very constricting mentally. It's also why someone like Rudyard
Kipling could spend a few weeks Japan and declare that the Japanese were a race of Peter Pans who never quite develop adult sensibilities while every single Asia Watcher is just repeating headlines from US regime media stenographers as his expert opinions.
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The recent China Lithuania situation serves as a good litmus test of the intelligence of your average China Watcher journalist and think tanker. There are two different interpretations of the events, one of which is correct and the other merely politically correct. If you think
that Lithuania is a "plucky" democracy standing up to Chinese bullying and taking a principled stand for Taiwan which shares it's commitment to peace, freedom, human rights, and apple pie; then congratulations, you are a retard but well suited for DC politics. Big Stakhanovite
energy at work here holding high Blinkenism-Priceist thought. If you think that the real issue isn't about Taiwan or China at all, but actually about two third Party countries that the media is too stupid to mention, namely the US and Russia then congratulations you get to be
US government assets are very simple to identify because they cannot but help using very particular shibboleths that identify their loyalties. If they ever utter the word "civil society" he/she is a US government lackey plain and simple. Like Pentagonese or academic jargon, words
carry particular subtext for specific communities. In the case of "Civil Society" the dictionary definition is the intermediate organizations that are neither government nor family but that is never what the people who use the term mean. Instead they very narrowly use it to
singularly refer to the labyrinth of "independent" media organizations, ngos and quangcos, and activists who all get their funding either direct from the US government or various corporate and charity foundations with alphabet agency controlled pursers. Also any non-liberal
The idea that trannies is a bridge too far and that it will engender a pushback of some sorts vastly overestimated the political role of the lumpenproletariat, past history, and how human social dynamics function. The lumpenproletariat is fundamentally an inert force who can only
can only react to external stimuli chiefly by elites. They simply have no deeply held interests or beliefs. Every one of the now mainstream liberal social positions whether it be normalization of miscegenation or homosexuality started out vastly unpopular but it was an elite
minority that became a majority that shifted the Overton window by changing signalling that this was now the elite opinion to stake your flag to and the middle classes dutifully emulated those positions. If you think that this time is one bridge too far, human history will show
On why the most intolerant win. Or why Emily in Paris leads to Jihad. Now that I have your attention with a seemingly entirely random non sequitur there is actually a very real connection of how status is accrued in groups and how it directly leads to moral signalling spirals.
A fashion conscious American girl in France and a Syrian "freedom fighter" may appear to have nothing in common but within their respective peer groups they both serve as social vanguards whose raisin d'etre is to make their peers feel provincial and less. To diminish the status
of others and elevate their own via proximity to purity/authenticity. This role is as necessary for the would be class queen, the revolutionary, or the aspiring non resident fellow. People instinctively respond positively to conviction real or feigned and the more effective you
The Americanization of the West cannot be understood absent the impoverishment of the West. The world of 2021 is a completely different economic landscape since the end of the Cold War but in a way that is commonly misunderstood. The economic balance of power between America and
her satrapies has dramatically tilted in favor of the former against the latter. The US had a GDP of 6.1 trillion 30 years ago. At that time Japan's was 3.58, Italy 1.25, Germany 1.9, France 1.27, the UK 1.14. When the Cold War ended the US could truthfully be called the primus
inter pares of the Western alliance. What a difference 30 years makes where this year's US GDP is 22.9 trillion but Japan's a mere 5.2 and the former European powers even less. Like the Delian league what started as a voluntary defensive alliance has morphed into a hegemon strong
The reason why there is no unified Western response to Chinese economic "coercion" isn't because of domestic "wreckists" it's because the US doesn't want there to be for two simple reasons. 1st is that the US is simply in the habit of got mine and fuck you taking full advantage
of others either voluntarily leaving or being forced out of markets whether it be Australian agricultural goods or European semiconductor companies. There are always holes in a sanctions regime coincidentally enough for American companies that foreign competitors always furiously
notice but the journalists, activist, and think tanker sock puppets conspicuously never do. The second and even bigger factor is that economic coercion is America's biggest stick and it doesn't want it's satrapies developing any kind of actual spine or collective self-defense