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~ Thoughts on Red States and "Deplorables."

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Monthly Archives: November 2018

What An Irish Phenotype and an Ivy League Education Will Buy You in 21st Century America

09 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Jim Langcuster in The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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2018 Mid-Term Elections, Beta O'Roarke, Camelot, JFK, Liberalism, RFK

BetoMan

Beto O’Roarke (Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia.)

I am not a frequent listener of talk radio, though I readily concede that conservative talk show commentator Rush Limbaugh frequently offers pungent and even prescient criticism of the American ruling class.

I was especially struck by a recent observation.

Speaking at the Trump rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Limbaugh observed that the hatred associated with the 45th president stems from boundless jealousy among our political class, haunted by the knowledge that not one of them — not Biden, not even the sainted Barack — can approximate the Trump’s star appeal.

Limbaugh’s observation was spot on, though I would argue that this observation, insightful as it is, doesn’t go deep enough.

The jealousy and enmity for Donald Trump run much deeper. And I’m convinced that this liberal disdain stems from a deep well of narcissism, which is reflected in the way that liberals — elite liberals, at least — both view themselves and their place within the American cultural and political context.

At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, I would even go as far to say that liberalism has always been less about ideals, more about perpetuating an image:  one in which the bold and elite-educated beautiful — the heirs of FDR, JFK and RFK —  are entitled by birth and intellect to be held in breathless veneration by the masses.

American liberalism has been bound up in this narrative for most of the past century.  It started with FDR, a handsome, polished scion of the American ruling class who, despite his physical infirmity, selflessly marshaled the slumbering masses toward a greater vision of themselves and the country.  But the young, telegenic Irish-American hero, John F. Kennedy, brought this narrative to the peak of refinement.  In fact, an aspiring professional historian could write a dissertation about how Kennedy’s assassination and subsequent martyrdom has driven this liberal narrative.

There has been a deep hunger among liberals ever since to find someone, some charismatic, Kennedyesque figure to modernize and carry forth this lofty narrative. A new movie scheduled for release on Nov. 21 explores the stellar rise and ignominious fall of the presumptive heir of JFK’s mantle, Gary Hart. But a string of other successful and unsuccessful Democratic contenders have also competed to fill this void: Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards.  Once upon a time, a few people even compared Jimmy Carter to JFK.

That is why the recent political phenomenon of Betomania is very instructive.  Indeed, it’s not all that surprising that Beto O’Roarke, notwithstanding this week’s defeat, already is being touted as a hot Democratic presidential prospect in 2020. He underscores how far a tall, lean frame, an Irish phenotype, an Ivy League diploma, and a reasonably aristocratic pedigree will take you in modern America, of course, providing that you’re willing to subject yourself all the outrageous indignities and misfortunes of modern America politics.

O’Roarke, in fact, seems right out of central casting: a fourth-generation Irish American possessing an almost an uncanny physical resemblance to the late Robert F. Kennedy — a dynast from an old El Paso political family that can even point to modest links to the Kennedy clan.  Even better, he hails from the deepest reaches of red America in a region of the country likely on the verge of being flipped purple, if not  blue. And to top it off, he’s nicknamed Beto, which affords something akin to an ersatz Hispanic identity at a time when ethnic ties to rising demographic groups are at a premium.

Indeed, we’re likely to see many different permutations of Betomania in an era when liberalism, beset with disillusionment and division, seems more bereft of ideological substance than ever its history.  In such a context, form will always trump substance.

The changes in American elite education that have occurred over the last few decades will only contribute to this. Earlier American elites such as FDR and JFK arguably felt a sense of noblesse oblige, partly stemming from a sense of guilt that their status was largely unearned.  Way back then, elite universities on both sides of the Atlantic functioned as extensions of Eton, Harrow and Groton.  FDR, described as a man of “third class intellect but first-class temperament,” was typical of his class.

Yet, elite education has undergone a sea change in recently years, becoming far more meritocratic, far more SAT-driven.  And the people who pass through these elite institutions now fit a wholly different set of criteria, conforming very closely to the products described by William Dereciewicz in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite.

Having clawed their way up to these to these stratospheric heights, they expect a payoff.  Even more than the old guilt-ridden WASP elites, they regard themselves as people worthy of deep respect, if not a healthy degree of adulation.  Many regard themselves as anointed by genetics to rule and to think on every else’s behalf.  And, oddly enough, this has only worked to reinforce the old elite liberal narrative.  Granted, many of them are not as poised and physically attractive as Roosevelts or Kennedys, but the old liberal elite narrative nonetheless resounds among them.

If you doubt this:  Consider what is unfolding even now in Silicon Valley as tech moguls arrogate to themselves the task of reengineering of a basic tenet of American liberty, free speech, simply on the basis that they have conceived something better.  Never mind the corpus of judicial rulings on free speech that have been handed down over the past quarter of a  millennium; they know better.

Simply put, the liberal narrative is undergoing significant revision, becoming even more virulently narcissistic as a new generation of meritocrats rise to assume the place of older elites.

Back to Trump.  He’s not one of them.  He openly mocks their pretensions to power.  Even worse, he even has inspired millions of ordinary Americans to turn their backs on them, the anointed, the heirs of this lofty narrative.

Small wonder why they hate him.

 

The Left’s Real Problem with the Senate

08 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, American History, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Federalism, Left, Mid-Terms2018, U.S. Senate

senate-logoThe outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections, especially in terms of how it is reflected in the composition of the U.S. Senate, underscores the perennial wisdom of the Founders. But the left’s dissatisfaction with this outcome and its increasingly strident criticism of the “undemocratic” nature of this upper chamber demonstrates two things: its ravenous thirst for power and its growing awareness of its power, especially as it’s manifested in the most influential facets of American culture, namely academia, the Establishment media and the arts.

Two other important points must be mentioned: First, the Senate represents the essence of America union and nationhood, and there would not have been a United States without this indispensable compromise. Second, no other institution established by the Constitution better embodies the limited nature of our federated republic

Indeed, the compromise reflects one of the primary concerns of the Founders: to establish a federal republic with sharply delineated powers and scope, one that enabled the individual states to carry on with virtually all the attributes of nationhood.

To put it another way, the Senate was conceived as a sort of chamber of state ambassadors to serve as a counterweight to the larger popular chamber: the House of Representatives. Its purpose was to ensure that the United States remained what Madison called a “republic of republics,” a federation with sharply circumscribed powers that chiefly functioned to protect the states against against dissolution and the inevitable threats from the chief European maritime powers, Britain and France.

Through its increasingly harsh criticism of the Senate, the left is calling one of the most vital safeguards of the Constitution and our federal republic into question. And, of course, there is an ulterior motive driving this, because abolishing or, at least, radically altering the composition of  both the Senate and the Electoral College would confer the blue coastal regions of the United States with virtually unbridled power to dictate to the rest of the country.

This demonstrates one of the perennial challenges of large, extended federal republics such as ours: the specter of sectionalism, the desire of one part of a federation to dominate at the expense of the others.  It was one of the factors that led to the outbreak of the bloody Civil War.  And without the vigilance of present-day Americans, it could lead to a similar upheaval.

For more insight into all of this, I recommend a thorough reading of the writings of South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun – that is, if you are able to wrangle a contraband copy of it.

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