even federal intervention probably won’t prevent small businesses from going under while bigger businesses ride things out, accelerating the pre-existing drift toward a less entrepreneurial, more monopolist America.
This is similar to a point that I made when I gave a talk on the virus economy over Zoom to a small group of friends and synagogue members last Sunday.
More controversially, he writes,
In politics, similarly, what was likely to be a slow-motion leftward shift, as the less-married, less-religious, more ethnically diverse younger generation gained more power, is being accelerated nationally by the catastrophes of the Trump administration
I think Ross needs to get out more, virtually if not physically. I doubt that the times are a-changin’ as fast as the Times is.
It does not seem to me that the younger generation is ready for power. The most visible young activists are too arrogant, tyrannical, and ideologically crazed to govern. Look at their performance in Seattle. What is the probability that the whole country gives way to that?
My guess is that whether Biden wins, loses, or draws in November, the young progressives will stir chaos. But their behavior will mostly serve to galvanize their opponents.
Your point is a good one. Remember the hippie communes of the late 60s and early 70s? They were quite a bit like a more loving, caring, sharing, less-full-of-hate version of CHAZ/CHAD. But they couldn’t govern themselves for love (or money). The problem then was, in large part, shirkers; and the problem with similar groups today is a sense of entitlement, which leads to the same shirking problem. A big difference might have been that while the communes had power struggles and authority figures, they were (for the most part with some notable exceptions) much less violent. It is the willingness or even eagreness of the members of such groups today to use more force and violence to enforce their pollyanna schemes that makes today’s dreamers more dangerous.
When we were young, we used civil disobedience more than violence. I worry that young dreamers these days are more willing to use violence — their own AND the force of the state — to try to achieve their goals.
There is going to be violence. Let me explain.
A hundred years ago, starting in early 1920, only a year after the German Revolution that overthrew the Monarchy and established the Weimar Republic, the German right wing paramilitary outfits (collectively the kampfbund) were already knocking a lot of heads in street and meeting-hall melees with members of all the other paramilitary outfits of all the other parties, especially the Communist RFB (with their scary Red Power fist logo). It was a “knock or get knocked” kind of situation.
Occasionally things would get really bad or out of control, and the cops would arrest some people. If the cops or local prosecutor or mayor sympathized with the party of those particular thugs, there was no strong motivation to go after or grab these guys, and they’d be let off with a warning. If it was so bad and obvious that there was no options but to hold a trial, if the judge sympathized with that party, they would also be let off easy with a slap on the wrist, “boys will be boys”, that kind of thing.
At the time, the judges, tending to be older and more conservative, sided with the right-wing nationalists over the communists who were openly and explicitly trying to subvert the traditional German culture and social order.
Predictably, this state of affairs proved to be incredibly emboldening to the nationalists, who understood that they could almost literally get away with murder, because the criminal justice system was playing favorites and was unofficially on their side.
So emboldening in fact that it was only five months after the first couple of “trial run” beer hall meetings in Munich and only two weeks after announcing the irredentist 25 Point Program at the Hofbrauhaus until they actually tried to take over the government with General Ludendorff (who invented the idea of “total war”) in a Berlin coup plot known as the Kapp Putsch which intended to undue the revolution.
The putsch failed in a few days when the former (leftist) government, ejected from the city, called on all the (leftist) trade unions to strike, but the putsch leaders were still treated very gently and leniently by the justice system, which was also kind of terrified of them and their head-knocking buddies. The communists interpreted this as *general* weakness and organized the Ruhr uprising literally the next day, with a 50,000 soldier-strong “Red Ruhr Army”, which had already been trained and equipped with that many rifles and a proportional amount of ammunition of Russian origin. Kind of a “color revolution” movement, you might say.
It was kind of a shock when within the just hours of getting back in the city (though not yet really back in charge) the government discovered there were four divisions of trained and equipped communist troops ready to march on a moment’s notice, and even more of a shock that they had actually started the marching. They called out the army (sympathetic to the nationalist hooligans) and also the freikorps (largely composed of those nationalist hooligans) and put the Ruhr uprising down hard, killing over a thousand of them (losing nearly a thousand men themselves), and executing a bunch of communist commanders later too.
It was also a unpleasant surprise to the government that the same trade unions they had asked to strike to protest the nationalist coup had decided to continue the strike to protest the putting down of the communist Ruhr coup! The government came to the general conclusion that the nationalists should be tamed but the communists were a true enemy and clear and present danger, and there was a dramatic impact on the representation of parties in the federal elections held just a few months afterwards, because the “centrist” (i.e., not quite Bolshevik) Social Democratic party couldn’t hold things together.
The more energetic nationalists got the message and immediately started planning for another putsch if they couldn’t win enough seats, and fast forward only three years to the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler was eventually arrested and tried for treason. The judges were lenient. They let him wear a suit and not prison clothes. Ludendorff arrived for trial in a limousine! Hitler was allowed to filibuster the trial with hours of speaking which in general produced a positive impression in the judges, who sentenced him to only 5 years in prison. He only service 9 months before being released, but it was enough time to write a book you might have heard about. Afterwards the nationalists redirected their efforts to acquiring party legally and democratically. Mostly.
It is kind of ironic, but mostly tragic, that in all the recent discussion about reforming the police and the criminal justice system and qualified immunity, there has been zero mention of things like Castle Rock v. Gonzales and the problem with there being no duty against which one can claim for the police and prosecutors and city officials to actually enforce the law in good faith and provide protection in an equal, neutral, and consistent manner.
Because if you play favorites and crush your opponents but allow your friends to get away with small crimes, soon it will be big crimes, and soon they will be getting away with murder. Maybe, one day, mass murder.
Who exactly is friends with the protestors? I guess I don’t see anyone in power who really likes them. I see a ton of people who hope not to be harmed by them, but that isn’t the same as actually wanting them around. I am pretty sure that the Democratic Party hopes that the protests go away by the fall, and I don’t see any elite institutions that really side with the protest. Certainly I don’t see any institutions or companies that want to change their business model or modus operandi because of the protests.
“Who exactly is friends with the protestors? I guess I don’t see anyone in power who really likes them.”
If you don’t see them then you have flies in your eyes.
Democratic politicians are friends with the protestors.
This is the part where I start to list examples and someone plays Calvinball or Lucy with the football and pretends these are mere anecdotes and not a sequence of exhibits all supporting the general case. Look, you tell me what the standard of rigor and burden of proof is here – what it would take to convince you – and I assure you I can then set up those pins and knock them down.
Those politicians ordered the police to stand down, retreat, and not to molest the protestors in multiple cities. Do you remember Baltimore mayor, President of the Conference of Mayors, Secretary of the DNC (i.e., not some mere nobody) explaining such a policy 5 years ago with, “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” That’s called a “Kinsley Gaffe”.
This time around, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Mayor Katherine Greenlaw instructed the police not to respond to 911 calls involving protesters. When the emergency calls for help came in, the dispatcher recommended that they “call city hall” instead. That really happened. The protests were degenerating into riots with plenty of property damage and people scared of violence, and the police launched some tear gas to disperse the unruly crowd.
Major Greenlaw apologized to the protesters, not to her citizens who called for help which never came. “Who exactly is friends with ordinary citizens?” – “Who exactly is friends with normal people?”
My view is that being friends with the protestors/rioters would be giving them power, or doing something that helps them attain real power. So far I don’t see that.
I do believe that politicians haven’t done anything but CYA and look for opportunities to enhance their own careers, and not acted as “friends with ordinary citizens”.
Thanks, Arnold. I agree with your position on both RD’s statements. About the second one, just before entering into your blog, I watched this video in Cafe Hayek
https://cafehayek.com/2020/07/while-everyone-was-distracted-by-saul-alinsky-it-turns-out-the-real-action-was-antonio-gramsci.html
that refers to the Long March against U.S. institutions. Yes, this Long March has succeeded in capturing at least elite-colleges and now the newly anointed wants to take over our lives. The Long March’s strategy, however, is still far from reaching the power Gramsci dreamed, so it’s not a surprise that the anointed youngsters are too anxious for accelerating the march’s pace. Today they struggle to take advantage of the opportunities created by both the anti-Trump forces (RD is a member of the soft force) and the virus. This virtual coalition is betting for a big upset in November not to impose a common, impossible program, but to complete the elimination of their enemies (Trump is just the frontline). Yes, Arnold, they are coming for you.
I agree…but then who is watching CNN, MSNBC or reading the NYT, WaPo?
Those organizations are off the rails, yet considered mainstream….
“I think Ross needs to get out more, virtually if not physically. I doubt that the times are a-changin’ as fast as the Times is.”
A funny play on times and Times. But still, it’s a surprising statement, and I would respectfully ask you to flesh this out more. I think that if you try to do it, you will find it difficult enough that it might change your mind. Even if it were true in the short term, the NYT is powerfully influential, so what happens at the Times is going to happen everywhere else soon enough.
My view is that times are changing very quickly, as they changed incredibly quickly in other historical circumstances.
You could measure the rate of change in terms of how long it takes “for another 10%”, whether that is another 10% of the public supporting the position, or another 10% of companies likely to fire someone for a particular act. If it’s ten years, that’s slow change. If it’s ten months, that’s medium change. If it’s ten weeks, that fast change. If it’s ten days, watch out.
Consider someone saying “all lives matter” or “every life matters”. How long did it take to go from, say, 10% of organizations likely to terminate someone for saying that, to 20%? It was somewhere between 10 weeks and 10 days. That’s *fast* change.
“It does not seem to me that the younger generation is ready for power. The most visible young activists are too arrogant, tyrannical, and ideologically crazed to govern.”
They are not ready to use power *well*. They are not ready to govern *well*. And they will never be ready or capable of doing so.
But that doesn’t matter, because they are champing at the bit for it, and where are the adults in the room standing in their way. Who will stop them? How? Life is about to get very interesting for us.
Just because certain institutions are taking up common cause with social-political fads, doesn’t mean the majority is going to like it.
Remember 40 percent of the country leans right to far right.
Another 20 to 30 percent are deeply a political, which in itself is a form of right wing politics.
And only a solid 30 percent is left.
Let’s see how the NBA does with their social justice resumption to the season. Republicans buy Nikes too!
Amazingly, Trump still seems to be above water in polling on his handling of the economy. Who knows if that will last until November, but if it does, the election could be another close one. In which case continuing protests may well be enough to secure victory for Trump.
In any event, I would expect countries like Russia and Iran to try and use online media to goad people into doing controversial things that can easily be turned into viral memes on social media.
It occurs to me that in Boomer presidents, those in the Woodstocker wannbe (12-19 yrs old in 1968) category were skipped over. That is those who were the “protesters of the 1970s.
I wonder if similar will happen to this current group of “activists”?
“It does not seem to me that the younger generation is ready for power. ”
—-
I give them a 50/50 chance they will improve the system slightly. This time, the last time, and the time before that were never really different. Some improvement is the goal, a fairly low bar for a an unstable government.
Agree with your conclusion.
The biggest failure is that of the Baby Boomer generation to capitalize on the bounty it received from the Greatest Generation, seize power from it when it proved unwilling and incapable of effecting needed changes, and to implement those changes by governing effectively.
To say that they won’t rule overnight is a given. But in the meantime they will have done as much as other groups to move the needle further leftward while angering the Right and guaranteeing that violence will increase in the future. As we speak, the Left is engendering all the forces they claim to abhor. And the US will deserve the chaos that descends on their land for tolerating this 60 years leftward shift.
It is not left, it is a tax rebellion. Plain, simple generational tax rebellion, right on schedule.
Hard disagree on this one, time for the boomers to let more young blood in to the institutions.
I’m a millenial and I don’t think it should be millenials (at least not primarily), but I (and my peers) would be infinitely happier with more people aged 40-60 in positions of power than the gerontocracy we currently have.
This would play a huge part in defusing millenial radicalism as the gap in views/upbringing/understanding of the world between 20-40 age group and 40-60 age group will be less than what we have currently.
I have an alternative suggestion which is Nucleocracy.
Nobody gets to rise above a mid-tier glass ceiling, or remain in the top tier or elite positions of the society’s commanding heights, if they don’t have school-aged children at home in nuclear families. People who are too old, too young, or too single (that is, too divergent in personal interests from those who have to worry about raising kids) or insufficiently monogamous don’t get to run any of the shows.
As radical a solution as it may seem, things have gotten to a point where this is now probably the minimum step necessary to provide support to family formation sufficient to ensure the sustainable growth of human capital.
Interesting idea, but it would never happen. I would prefer to just give children the vote with parents voting on their behalf until the age of independence.