The Great Divide

[millring]

[concertinagirl]

Two of my favorites. No surprises though. Heard/read most of this before. Nice to see it in this format.

I rarely watch TV anymore. I am one of the "turned out" that Victor talks about in this video. Plus, I am just too busy. However, I do watch Mike Rowe on TBN on Saturday evenings. He comes on after the Huckabee show, which I very much enjoy. Mike does a segment that absolutely fascinates me. It is called, "The Story Behind the Story." He takes something common and explains how it came to be. I believe these stories are in book form. I need to get my hands on that book.

Thank you for posting this video, John

[Dub]

I’ll watch this because John posted it… but I’m eight minutes in and still have no idea what this conversation is about.

Still an hour and twelve minutes to go. Sigh.

[james]

I wondered whether to watch Victor Davis Hanson again but settled on the more agreeable alternative of vigorously attacking my private parts with a belt sander.

[Dub]

OK, I opened the video on YouTube instead of watching it here. There I found a link to the article that seems to be the basis of this extended conversation. Much faster to read the article and much less time to figure out what this is about.

victorhanson.com/americas-lab-rats/

[theevan]

Aug 10, 2024 14:43:15 GMT -5 james said:

I wondered whether to watch Victor Davis Hanson again but settled on the more agreeable alternative of vigorously attacking my private parts with a belt sander.

I don't know the man, but what did h ever do to you? Your preference sounds most disagreeable...not to mention painful...even at the finest grit.

[Russell Letson]

Like Mark, I crapped out after a while but dug out the text bases for the video.

Even if I hadn't encountered Hanson before, the Claremont and Hoover Instututes and Hillsdale and Pepperdine connections would warn me of his likely political-social positions and even more likely rhetorical techniques. Add his support of Trump and you have a near-perfect far-right intellectual whose political vision shapes his use of evidence. I recognize the pattern, having observed it among intellectually adept Marxists decades ago. (Also Catholic apologetics adepts.)

"America's Lab Rats" is a really clever bit of propagandizing, a collection of right-wing images and tropes ("the toxic COVID lockdown and the DEI racist fixations," "elite hard-left universities") poised against "muscular jobs" and "a vanishing America who did quirky things like salute the flag, go to church, believe there were still only two sexes." Cartoon much, Victor? The guy is smart, articulate, and adept. And still a propagandist presenting himself as a public intellectual. I'm not saying he's dishonest, but he is certainly an apologist. (And how anybody that bright and analytical can bring himself to defend Trump remains a mystery.)

Mike Rowe is fine while advocating for more respect for manuual work in general and the skilled trades in particular*, but somehow cozying up to current conservatives strikes me as not quite in the interests of the people with whom he sympathizes. (What, I wonder, is his take on unions?) And his take on a decent minimum wage is right in line with a lot of guys in the market-worshipping, bootstrap-advocating boss class.

"I want everybody to be able to support themselves. But if you just pull the money out of midair you're going to create other problems, like there is a ladder of success that people climb and some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs. They're rungs on a ladder."

BTW, Rowe's characterization of Jefferson as "a farmer first and then an intellectual" really stretches the notion of "farmer" to include a rich landowner/manager whose labor is supplied by slaves. As for Hanson's affection for family farming: I grew up among family farmers, and while many of them were quite well-off (better-off than our GE-employed family), I recall exactly one of my high-school bunch returning to the farm. Everybody else took their Cornell degrees and became nurses, teachers, and farm-implement engineers and salesmen. Because even with hired help, getting up before dawn to milk the herd and then heading out to the fields to do haying or harvest the corn or winter wheat or (later) soybeans is not for everyone. And now every one of those successful farms has been sold off and one of the biggest (with acres along the scenic Seneca River) is no longer productive farmland but a development.

* Son of a skilled-trades guy here, and grandson of another, and of a mill-hand, and great-grandson of a boatyard owner on one side and a cabinet-maker on the other.

[millring]

The irony of course is that this thread is exactly what they're discussing.

[Cornflake]

I read the essay.

I agree with this assertion, except for the phraseology: "The disruptions are the results of the long-term effects of globalization and the high-tech revolution that brought enormous wealth into the hands of a tiny utopian elite." I think the move to a global economy screwed a lot of ordinary Americans and concentrated far too much wealth in a very small proportion of the population. I'm all for boosting taxes on the very rich. Y'all with me?

Otherwise, Mr. Hanson articulates an extremely broad theory that ought to be tested by applying it to a few particulars. If he's right, those of us on the forum who are Democrats are witting or unwitting tools of this supposed "elite" that he keeps talking about. If this shadowy elite is running things, we're the ones who elected them. One possibility is that we are consciously trying to wreck America and concentrate power and money in the hands of a few. Another possibility is that we're not bright enough to realize that we're really serving some Dark Lord. We're either evil or we're dumb. Is that what you really think about us?

The reality, of course, is that we want the best for our country just as you do. We sometimes disagree with you about what's best and how to get there. That's not "class warfare." I'm not at war with anybody.

If Mr. Hanson's theory can't hold up when applied to particular cases, it's a crappy theory. I think this "elite" that he keeps vilifying is a political unicorn. An evil "they" is a useful fiction if your goal is to stir up anger and resentment. That seems to be his goal.

[millring]

Aug 10, 2024 17:40:52 GMT -5 Cornflake said:

The reality, of course, is that we want the best for our country just as you do. We sometimes disagree with you about what's best and how to get there. That's not "class warfare." I'm not at war with anybody.
.
.

This grace is obviously not even close to true anymore. Democrats are NOT saying that Republicans just disagree with what is best for the country any more than Republicans return the grace.

Even you personally have framed the current race as being at the precipice of losing our democracy. And I certainly believe that of the Democrats as they prove it with both the way they are running this race, but more to the point, what they want to do to alter the supreme court, and how dependent upon and supportive they are of the non elected administrative and regulatory State.


No, there is no sense from the Democrats that people who think like me are anything but "weird". The entire campaign is an exercise in
the flippant, the sarcastic, the glib, the crass, the prurient, the hysterical, the cruel.

The "deporables" of a dozen years ago are despised even more openly than before. The class struggle has changed champions but it's just as real as ever.

[millring]

And, no, a forest cannot be described by one tree in the midst of it.

To say that unless I'm describing you and your beliefs when I'm describing the Democrat party then I can't be accurate is rather absurd. Parties are coalitions of disparate beliefs with common goals.

[Russell Letson]

Every sufficiently large polity depends on administrators and regulators that do not derive their powers directly from the notional legitimate sources of governmental authority, whether that is called duly-elected or divine right or I've-got-the-biggest-army. Instead, notionally-legitimate leaders delegate the operation of the machineries of the state to specialists and worker-bees and satraps and viceroys and sheriffs and tax-farmers. There's always a theoretical chain of command and authority, and there's generally a long stretch from the little guy on the sharp end to the source. That's life in bigger-than-a-village.

Which is not to say that an optimal system of operational governance--of managing water & sewage and road-maintenance--would not be biased in favor of local control, of local appointment of managers and regulators. But too much purely local management results in the dry county/wet county mess, except in matters more significant than whether you can buy a beer in a given jurisdiction. And that's before we get to the obvious problems of local oligarchy and local corruption.

Hanson's "lab rats" argument is transparently propagandistic, littered with evidence-free assertions, emotive language, and cartoonish imagery. But then, I'm not part of the choir he's preaching to. Though I do recognize a tent revival when I see one.

[millring]

Aug 10, 2024 19:11:58 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

littered with evidence-free assertions, .

This clearly does not describe the Rowe interview I posted. If you don't want to watch it, I understand. It's long and that is an investment in time I can fully understand you not wanting to make. But "evidence free" is not the case.

[aquaduct]

Aug 10, 2024 15:50:26 GMT -5 theevan said:

Aug 10, 2024 14:43:15 GMT -5 james said:

I wondered whether to watch Victor Davis Hanson again but settled on the more agreeable alternative of vigorously attacking my private parts with a belt sander.

I don't know the man, but what did h ever do to you? Your preference sounds most disagreeable...not to mention painful...even at the finest grit.

Hey, don't try to talk him out of it!

[aquaduct]

Aug 10, 2024 20:30:16 GMT -5 millring said:

Aug 10, 2024 19:11:58 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

littered with evidence-free assertions, .

This clearly does not describe the Rowe interview I posted. If you don't want to watch it, I understand. It's long and that is an investment in time I can fully understand you not wanting to make. But "evidence free" is not the case.

Every time I read such drivel about supposedly "evidence free" claims wrapped in circular bloviating about nothing in particular, I'm reminded of the now deceased Chevron v. NRDC which really marked the rise of the non-elected administrative and regulatory State which turbocharged this great divide.

And I look forward to government getting back to deriving their powers directly from the notional legitimate sources of governmental authority.

And I look forward to the wailing and gnashing of teeth that can be expected from the class of elites who think they're so much better than the plumber who fixes their toilets.

[Russell Letson]

I went directly to Hanson's essay at victorhanson.com/americas-lab-rats/. It pretty much lacks the amiable tone of the half-hour or so of the Rowe interview I managed to sit through. Just as I looked up Rowe's opinions on unions and the minimum wage. As a political thinker, he's a pretty good advocate for the skilled trades. (And I do sympathize with him on that topic.) Hanson has nice company manners, but his essay reveals a reactionary political vision dressed up with classical-history references. Many American working people have reason for discontent, but the "elites" at which they should be aiming their ire are not quite the culture-war targets that Hanson & Co. would have them go after.

[epaul]

I didn't read the essay and I only made it half-way through the podcast (half-way only because it was long and I got sleepy) but in the half I watched, I found myself liking both Hanson and the pod cast guy and nodding every so often. Hanson was amiable and he was interesting, and I did feel a strong sense of place from him as he talked about his farm and the California he grew up in.

Anyway, this was a much more agreeable to me Victor Davis Hanson than the one Duck was linking to during the early stages of the war on Muslims. Might have been the beer I had with my grilled ribeye, but I found myself thinking, as regards the economy, is there some common ground to be found between Victor Davis and Bernie?

[epaul]

But, a question. Who was that guy in the lower right corner? That was a little weird.

[millring]

Aug 10, 2024 22:59:46 GMT -5 epaul said:

is there some common ground to be found between Victor Davis and Bernie?

I noticed the same thing. But, then, that observation has been pretty common for at least twelve years as people have noticed that both mainstream segments of both parties, in their insistence on claiming "moderate", are causing the rift that both Bernie and Hanson are describing. Only the solutions differ - and those by not as much as they used to. (ie. They're both talking about protections for the working class).

[millring]

Aug 10, 2024 23:39:43 GMT -5 epaul said:

But, a question. Who was that guy in the lower right corner? That was a little weird.

I wondered the same thing. I think it's the guy who uploaded the interview. There's probably other sources for the video out there. That's just the YouTube someone sent me.