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@Avery: Right. I’d agree that we have to distinguish between the policymaking sphere and the intellectual/cultural sphere. In the former, wokeness will chug onwards (for now). In the latter, I think the zeal is cooling down, and people increasingly just want to go with the flow (but not reverse the changes that the Great Awokening wrought).
If inflation cools down, and the Democrats win 2024, I predict that this trend will continue. If either of those things doesn’t come true, then I think we will be in for a new round of vitriol and polarization.
I was thinking about this thread this week. I’m not sure if anyone ever took up Tanner’s bet, but 2 years later, I would say that he won. We have definitely passed Peak Woke.
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The first point that convinced me was the Left’s reaction to the SFFA vs. Harvard decision, when compared to their reaction to the Dobbs decision. The reaction to Dobbs was militant rage and mobilization (even in deep red Spartanburg I see pro-choice billboards). The reaction to SFFA…as far as I can tell, the Left is ambivalent about it. Why else would NYT have featured Chris Caldwell, New Yorker have featured Jay Caspian Kang, and Noah Smith (a left-wing public intellectual on Substack) writing more or less against affirmative action in its current form? At the very least, they are not fighting this like they are fighting on abortion.
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The second point that convinced me was the Hanania brouhaha. If these revelations had happened in 2018, there is no doubt that Hanania would have been immediately, permanently ostracized from polite society. Now? Well I would say there has been some consternation, but I’m not aware that he has gotten significantly harmed at all.
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The third point is a bit more personal. I am returning to the Portland Metro Area (on the Vancouver side, thank God), where I am originally from. Most people here will know that Portland is a city renowned for militant left-wing politics. But weirdly enough, I know professionals with “he/hims” in their titles that will complain about the “social ills” of the city. One senior physician I know voiced her outrage that Portlanders have to pay exorbitant state/local taxes for no discernible benefit (specifically the “Homeless Tax” established in 2020, which, trust me, hasn’t done much). In the past, all these mundane complaints were submerged out of ideological zeal and anti-Trumpism, but that is apparently changing.
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This does not mean that we are going back to 1990. The woke movement has impressive institutional and organizational strength, and they have established a ruling ideology among Millennials. I predict wokeness will be the dominant paradigm for decades to come, much as the postwar liberal consensus reigned from 1945 up until the election of Nixon.
But the zeal and ardor are gone, and I think wokeness will become more drab and sane, and eventually another generation will take up the gauntlet of creating a new kind of Awokening.
Concur with Signfield.
Indians at the upper-middle class and elite levels are both very politically polarized and very attuned to American political debates. It was amusing for me to see the Dobbs decision chastised at length in OPEN (a relatively staid pro-BJP magazine), and the American LGBT debate (which has no Indian antecedents) becoming increasingly prominent.
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Anyways, when Indians show up (or grow up) in America, they quickly glom onto whatever the Democrats are doing. I saw this firsthand in my sister-in-law’s family, though leaving anecdotes aside, the polls also back me up on this.
Indians also tend to have stronger norms of endogamy than do Chinese, though this is starting to fade away in America.
Well, I might as well respond.
I was supportive of banning Chinese undergraduate students. My reasons were:
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1) Such a ban would deal a solid blow to many universities, and force reforms or closures.
2) At Oregon State we had a substantial number of Chinese students. They seldom interacted with American natives (probably because of the language barrier). On their side, the American students mocked them incessantly behind their backs. The whole dynamic dismayed me, and I imagine the Chinese students picked up on the hate they were getting.
I don’t think any college admin wants to fix the situation so that things like this won’t happen, they are too addicted to the easy Chinese money.
But I think the interaction of Chinese students with Americans has produced negative outcomes, and probably will produce more. I would not be surprised to learn that the Chinese Sayyid Qutb (read about his backstory when you have a moment) is a sophomore in an American college right now.
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I will defer to Tanner on matters of geopolitics and China. I guess my view is that at this point, it seems like the hour is late, and there’s probably nothing we do that will meaningfully change the Chinese people’s perception of us. And even if we did change that perception for the better, it would not translate into policy shifts.
Hmm. Well I concede, I had no idea fusionist thought was still present to such a large degree! Seems I overindexed on the very online.
This might be my personal bias, but I don’t feel that the old fusionist/libertarian types are really on the “Right” anymore (at least on the intellectual level). People like Friedersdorf, French, Cathy Young, etc now mainly play a role of telling Lefties how benighted modern conservatives are. Whenever I see them mentioned by Twitter Righties or their talking points discussed on the National Review podcast (the recent episode on DeSantis’ actions references this), it is in negative terms.
“Do you consider Chris Rufo part of the New Right? De Santis?”
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Can be argued either way. I PERSONALLY do not define them as New Right.
I say the distinction between the New Right and Old Right is that all branches of the New Right believe the current American system is illegitimate in some big way. The Integralists believe that Catholic teaching should wholesale replace the social order that what we have, the Industrial Policy guys believe the current American economic system is illegitimate and deleterious to many, the Thiel/Yarvin acolytes want some strain of technologized despotism, the Trumpists believe that our elections are illegitimate, and generally just want to rage.
The Old Right are people who believe the system is ok, the problem is the current managers. Rufo (and de Angelis) use established democratic means to make their argument. DeSantis appears fine with the current American economic system, fine with American secularization (at least he doesn’t argue about it), fine with American democracy as it is, he simply believes the problem is the current set of managers, and (as he’s doing with the New College) he’s using his power to replace them.
I would concur with you that the “New Right” includes all the people you mention. I would say there are three groups:,
1) Acolytes of Yarvin and Thiel (forward-facing techno-libertarians),
2) The Vermuele/Ahmari fans (“Integralists”)
3) The American Mind/American Conservative crowds on the third (mainstream, broadly pro-Trump conservatism).
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But to be honest with you, I have grown increasingly unimpressed with the “New Right.” The American Compass’ economic heterodoxy and the larger oeuvre on “industrial policy” turned out to be a dud, the trends in immigration and demography they dislike cannot be undone, and the “Integralist” project is a meme and joke at best. When I listen to the American Conservative or American Mind podcasts on my walks, I hear more impotent frustration than anything else.
I follow Corey DeAngelis on Twitter, who is probably the leading force in the establishment conservative “school choice” movement. After many years in the wilderness, he is racking up impressive wins in many states. Other recent establishment conservative wins include tax cuts, deregulations, cementing a pro-Ukraine consensus, etc. The New Right talks, the Old Right acts.
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The effect of the New Right will have been to influence the mainstream Right from the margins. You see some of this already, with the Federalist podcast referencing the “Cathedral” and hosts Thiel’s acolytes. But in the end, the Old Right will internalize some of the New Right’s critiques and rhetoric, merge them with its older causes, and keep chugging along.
I would second the Discord idea!
Some of the forum inactivity is sort of my fault, work/family were issues but I spend longer on Twitter than is good for me.
@Jeffrey:
Wow that’s pretty cool! I’m just on the other side of the border from you in Spartanburg, though I do some work in Polk and Rutherford Counties, and travel to Asheville regularly, so I get to see a broad political swathe of North Carolina!
I brought up my “Blue-Purple NC” hypothesis with other people who were similarly skeptical. Eg Aaron Astor (19th century America historian) responded that North Carolina still had rural areas (like the aforementioned counties) that the GOP could still make gains in. I think he is correct, but that doesn’t really invalidate the weaker form of my hypothesis (eventual political realignment). Republicans building massive rural margins is a strategy that works until it does not.
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“But maybe the Dem leadership in DC, in Chapel Hill, in Durham, and increasingly in local-politics Raleigh, will maintain its hard push nach vorne and keep leaving a lot of the middle for Rs, which I think is why prior decades’ predictions have not panned out.”
I am less familiar with these areas than you are, but I would counter that these kinds of pushes (like the education concerns you mention) might become less possible now that the upper-middle classes have shifted left, and can sideline Democratic policies that would be deleterious for them. This is the flip side of the realignment, and the people who want aggressively Leftist policies are its losers, just as movement conservatives are the losers on our side.
“I’d already seen so many contemporary movies with Tolkienic heroes that LOTR felt very cliched. Now that it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, do you think the pendulum might swing back towards non-Tolkienic heroism?”
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I don’t think so. One of the most well-regarded movies of recent years was “1917,” whose protagonist is the textbook Tolkienic Hero. I think this can feel shopworn to people who recognize the trope being used, but most of the audience doesn’t. And the remainder of the audience who does would prefer a Tolkienic Hero to a protagonist who thirsts for power, glory, and action.
I’m not even sure that kind of movie could be made today.
I’m not a lawyer, but in my work I encounter criminals frequently. Freud has never come up.
In medical school, I had to do a forensic psychiatry (psychiatry in the context of crime and legal system) rotation. I guess that if there was one place you’d expect to find Freud, it would be here. But I never heard of him there either.
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I’m not an academic criminologist, but based on my experience I am skeptical he is a major factor.
Well, Schmidt updated his data, and the picture is even more dismal.
@ipeds_nces just released new data on degree completions for the 2021 class (the first class with a full semester during the pandemic.) History and Religion have both joined English in being down to half their 2000s peak; philosophy's rebound persists, while area studies falls. pic.twitter.com/tfy1DFYHra
— Benjamin Schmidt (@benmschmidt) August 23, 2022
Perhaps more shocking is this graph. The number of CompSci majors alone is about to supersede the entirety of the Humanities.
The downtick in humanities this year pushes up the ETA for when CS is larger than all humanities degrees together to one of the classes currently in college. pic.twitter.com/muaYNhDIe4
— Benjamin Schmidt (@benmschmidt) August 24, 2022
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In light of this new data, I would say “1” is probably the most important reason. The middle classes that sent their kids to college in droves have made their will known, they want it to be a higher end vocational school.
Where does this leave history and the humanities? They may still fulfill a role as an accoutrement for elites and subelites. My major certainly gives me a small boost during job interviews! But I’m not sure the history professoriate will be satisfied with fulfilling that role alone. We shall see.
@Ethan: “When movies were “pre-grimdark,” the media environment was very conformist — most people could only read mainstream media, news rarely showed pictures or video, and most all believed in a candy version of American exceptionalism.”
Yes I think this is correct. After reading Hoel’s article, I went on Youtube to watch an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show. Got a few laughs out of it, but it was largely superficial and anodyne. Also a married couple slept in separate beds (which I understand was part of Hays Code censorship). For television, I think the “pre-grimdark” era was an equilibrium only sustainable by a combination of censorship and the television market and medium being in their economic and artistic childhoods, respectively. Hoel makes this argument as well. As censorship waned and markets expanded, it was probably inevitable that things would change.
The question we need to sort out is: why did things get darker in television/movies, but not in music, gaming, writing, etc?
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@Tanner: “Part of the problem, IMHO, is that American brains and bodies literally feel worse, and this is distorting our notions of the world around us.”
Hmm, I never considered this. But it seems intuitively true to me.
“There is also a question about how the political climate influences all this. The Bond example, and the Nolan batman one, are both clearly artifacts of the War on Terror.”
Yes I think this is correct. The Bourne franchise is another example of this (and it’s perfectly contemporaneous with the War on Terror). When you watch the Craig Bond movie Quantum of Solace, which openly apes Bourne’s cinematography, you know that the old Bond is completely lost in favor of something darker, grittier, and more urgent.
“Rap might be an interesting case study — far less violent than in the ’90s, but also the themes *seem* darker (e.g. “This is America”).”
Hmm. “Hate It Or Love It” was an enormously prominent and acclaimed song in 2005, the lyrics are openly violent and fairly cynical, but it later talks about success, wealth, and gratitude. “This is America” has no optimism at all.
That said, I think rap music about sybaritism, indeed music about sybaritism, will never go out of style.
Will respond in depth tomorrow, but one point on videogames:
I would say that popular, mainstream games often REJECT grimdark, sometimes deliberately. Eg League of Legends was inspired by DotA, but aggressively pushed in a fun, cute, lighthearted direction with its character designs. Overwatch is also an example of this design aesthetic. The acclaimed Hades also chose deliberately to be funny and quirky rather than go in the darker direction that Sony’s God of War (also about Greek mythology) did.
But as you said, there is a lot of variation here, especially if you go outside the most popular games. In fact there are entire genres where your game *will not sell* unless you go grimdark. Action RPGs (eg Diablo series, Path of Exile) are one, and Souls-likes (high-difficulty action platformers) are both increasingly popular genres in which grimdark is expected.