It is always a pleasure to listen to Frank DiStefano.
I think the panel is dancing around the defining grand issue of our times which is staring them in the face though, not only in this country, but across the West. The true polarizing issue is identity. It is the most sweeping change in racial and cultural demographics in our history.
The electorate is being sorted into two rival camps along the social identity axis. In one camp, you have people who are cosmopolitan and who are social liberals. In the other camp, you have people who reject those changes and who are traditionalists or social conservatives. If you ask people a simple question like “are you ashamed to be American” or “are you ashamed to be British,” you would find a rough breakdown of where this is going in the future. This is where the gargantuan cultural rift exists.
The heat in our politics is entirely around deeply polarizing racial, cultural and gender issues which are culture war flashpoints. We haven’t even gotten to the point yet where we are going to throw AI and all the disruption that is going to cause across the economy on top of this bonfire.
I think the panel is missing the great upheavals in Western culture which tend to happen around every 100 to 120 years or so:
The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648
The culture war between Catholics and Protestants built from the time of Luther before it culminated in the Thirty Years War.
The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, 1789-1815
The Age of Reason built up from the time of Descartes and Hobbes before culminating in the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.
The World Wars, 1914-1945
The Romantic age divided Europe into rival nation-states which exploded in World War I and World War II.
Our Own Times, 2020-???
After the World Wars, nationalism was discredited. Western elites turned against their own people and began replacing them with foreigners.
Look at the big picture:
Faith led the Wars of Religion. Western elites reacted to the Thirty Years War by exalting reason.
Reason led to the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Western elites reacted to that crisis by championing sentiment.
Sentiment led the World Wars. Western elites reacted to the World Wars by embracing disenchantment and cynicism.
Disenchantment and cynicism with our own civilization led to … what?
The culture has grown toxic and has begun to combust. Politics is far more heated than in the recent past. When you step back and look at it though, you might conclude that it has to happen and always ends this way. Every age has its own big idea. The system that we have been living in since the World Wars and which was created in reaction to the World Wars is coming apart at the seams.
I think you’re right. Everywhere, all over the world, millions of people are starting to ask a question which for most of history wasn’t one for most people. “Who am I?” and finding the prevailing progressive culture wanting. .
“I think the panel is dancing around the defining grand issue of our times which is staring them in the face though, not only in this country, but across the West. The true polarizing issue is identity. It is the most sweeping change in racial and cultural demographics in our history.”
Yes, they are ‘dancing’.
That is symptomatic of a society that, having been programmed in recent decades to think that race could not possibly matter, in any field of human endeavour; that to even think of such a thing is evil, cannot bring itself to even ponder the possibility that such might be the case.
We are not free to be anyone we would wish to be, and, THAT, for Modern Americans, is a truly scary thought.
We are not free.
There is a God, a savior, and an inherent Natural Order, and, yes, there are engraved individual differences, not only in individuals, but, in groups as well.
Of course, as Southerners, we have never staket our happiness to the thought of being much free, not in any kind of sense as has the secular modern culture of New England and their allies, The Jews,, the soul of the two which drive The United States.
Yes, Southerners love freedom, but, only when negotiated within a fixt context of Faith, Family, Community, and tradition.
This country, however, is obseesst with the idea of freedom, to the point of attempting to obliterate any context.
Shameless punditry. Might as well own it. Where do the simps donate hunter?
PO Box
What I never understood about “global citizens” is what is going to hold their project together when one group rightfully or wrongly feels like they’re getting the short end of the stick and they rally together?
What would be the buy in to stop groups from splintering off?
Rich-kid shitlibs like Will Menaker and rich-kid antiwokes like Aimee Terese will say the same retarded bullshit of everyone should/would just act “normal” and should/would be a “good” person. Only one blames republicans and the other blames democrats… but one day!
Obviously anybody on this site or anyone who thought for two seconds recognizes that is nothing but bullshit slight of hand nonsense.
One point against the JQ (especially in the most maximalist form) is that they do not have a good narrative for ANYONE!
However that doesn’t mean I think it’ll fail. In the short run most still have more to gain than lose with american Israeli Saudi faggotry. Especially “global south” non-whites will not believe in the narratives but will fight tooth and nail to defend it.
I just think shit is going to get really shitty.
The problem with the anti-wokes is that all of them will defend their wokeness that protects them…
Aimee Terese will mock “babies in cages” but was against trump in the 2016 primaries and his first couple of years because of his “Muslim ban.”
And lots of Latinos would say they don’t care about the Muslim ban but Trumps hardline on immigration was a deal breaker…. or blacks don’t like illegal immigration but their priority to protecting/expanding affirmative action obviously takes priority over their dislike of immigration…
Anti-whiteness is what holds wokes & antiwokes together
The wokes blame white men.
And use whites as a piggy bank to buy buy-in from non-whites, and/or the promise to buy them off on whiteys dime
The anti-wokes blame white women.
And use anti-whiteness as steam valve release/mid-wit jujitsu move to make their super majority white readers/listeners feel vindicated while heaping all of their blame/vitriol onto white people themselves, only white women instead of white men… ?