Post punk

 

As a liberal, I can't help sympathizing with the underdog, so I was paradoxically cheered by David Brooks' heartfelt excavation and reinforcement of the conservative "way of living":

In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions — first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft...Lack of institutional awareness has bred cynicism and undermined habits of behavior. Bankers, for example, used to have a code that made them a bit stodgy and which held them up for ridicule in movies like “Mary Poppins.” But the banker’s code has eroded, and the result was not liberation but self-destruction.

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

I wish this level of self-analysis carried more weight in American conservatism. Thirty months ago it might have given some positive direction to a Republican party thrashing around aimlessly in the wreckage of neoconservatism. Thirty years ago it might have been a center of intellectual gravity to pull the party from its death spiral into cynical, anti-government, wedge politics focused on winning rather than governing.

I thought I'd found another positive statement of modern conservative principle in Dinesh D'Souza's Letters to a Young Conservative, but yeesh. He starts off on the wrong foot with a superfluous description on page 2 of a hypothetical liberal protester as a "large, disheveled woman" who comes "rolling up the aisle shouting." Dude, seriously. Do you really not see what attitudes you've balled up into those few, unnecessary words? (Freudians, linguists, film theorists and other VLWC conspirators have advanced the idea that superfluous, seemingly unmotivated communication reveals a speaker's unstated and possibly repressed motivation. Which is exactly what you'd expect them to say.)

But most of D'Souza's shallowness lies conveniently on the surface. Gender wage discrepancies are easily explained ("among men, there are many more geniuses", btw) and we'd all be better off if women learned to value the private sphere more rather than compete with men in the public sphere. Oofda.

D'Souza was one of the whippersnappers associated with the Dartmouth Review, founded the same year I started college, and my opinion of them hasn't changed since then. They're punks. With the same truant bravado and desire to provoke and probably the same eventual collapse into a suicidal bloodbath of doctrinal purity. Whether the last ones in the clubhouse are screaming "No new taxes!" or "No new chords!", most members will gradually drift away to explore related but more complex alternatives. Which is what happens when your culture is founded on the comprehensive externalization of blame and you run out of things to blame.

Tony Wilson said, "Punk enabled you to say 'Fuck you', but somehow it couldn't go any further. Sooner or later someone was going to want to say, 'I'm fucked', and that was Joy Division." I can't wait to hear the Republican Joy Division.

Comments

[Charles]

I do like the way you've given the institutional underdog a helping hand while at the same time cheered on the impending bloodbath of doctrinal purists.

Excellent post. Bit of luck the GOP are done and dusted, but I doubt it. Too much money there.

[The Hidden Persuader]

I've read recently an interesting book (if you're into sociology and politics themes) called "The Social Construction of Reality". The basic premise of the authors is that we (individuals) are the producers of social reality (ex. institutions like family, marriage, church, trade, etc.) but we're also the product of these institutions. The problem arises when the social producer stops being one and becomes only a product of the institutions he interacted and helped creating and maintaining.

[Jeffre Jackson]

Thanks for the book tip. I'll order it today!

[Sophia]

Thanks and regards.
http://www.pdfqueen.com

[books]

this post is fucking epic. hats off to you, sir. thanks for pointing out the sexism in Dsouza and then finishing off with Joy Division.

this post made my day.

[Jeffre Jackson]

I'm happy to know that there are still people who share my '80s peeves and enthusiasms.