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snousleJust finished Coming Apart this morning while camped out in the back of my car following a party. Yeah, real wild night, LOL. Everyone else is still asleep so I might as well jot down a few thoughts.
As I mentioned earlier, Charles Murray is the author of the notorious The Bell Curve. And yeah, intelligence is heritable, yadda yadda. Who cares. I don't think that this is a very important consideration in this book, at least, and although he likes to talk about homogamy and the segregation of the cognitive elite, that's not what annoys me about this one.
Let me start by saying that his characterization of the growing divide between the upper and lower class is spot on, rich in detail and undeniably true. If you aren't already familiar with this, this is a good way to get there. He includes a devastating little quiz in the book titled "How Thick Is Your Bubble?" in which he pretty much nails the cultural isolation of the wealthy in the US. The questions make me squirm a little because they're so unexpected yet so telling. Did I buy a major-brand (not microbrew) beer for my own consumption in the past six months? LOL. No, but I did buy a case for my crazy redneck neighbor. (Still hasn't gotten me into his pants.) Anyway, he does a great job of eviscerating the 1% and their tunnel-vision view of the world. He isn't so unforgiving with the new lower class he identifies as having emerged since the 60s - he understands that their behavior is a matter of socioeconomic reality, not personal "immorality" - but articulates the unhappiness of that condition with great clarity.
What bugs me is that he goes on at great length about "The American Project" and the exceptional nature of American culture and economy without ever saying exactly what it is that's so great about it. He contrasts this with the "imploding welfare states of Europe" as if France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland were indistinguishable from Spain, Italy and Greece. All the while completely, totally ignoring the rather large and prosperous country that shares a border with the US, one which completely rejected the "American Project", and which now enjoys a comparably powerful economy, higher quality of life, and - can I say it enough - MORE ECONOMIC FREEDOM than the US despite its toxic, soul-sapping welfare state. If his analysis is to be believed, the failure of Canada to embrace distinctively American ideals will surely doom it to economic and social collapse any day now. [Glances at watch.] Yep, real soon, just wait.
Another contradiction prominent in his analysis really irked me. He wrote a bit about the American concept of "fairness"', and how under American business ethics it was perfectly OK to, say, buy a house from an ignorant seller at far below market value, or to enforce a contract that the other party hadn't bothered to read. Then he turns right around and uses legal personal bankruptcy as an index for "integrity". That was the only thing in the book that really made me want to say "fuck you", because it displayed such naked prejudice against the financially disadvantaged.
The interesting thing is that right at the end of the book, he hints at a perfectly reasonable and workable solution for the dysfunction of American social welfare programs - replacing them all, in a revenue-neutral way, with equivalent cash transfers, while eliminating the "program" part of the program. This is something on which we are in complete agreement: social assistance must be performed in such a way as to not undermine individual responsibility and incentive, and the easiest, least destructive, most humane way of doing that is to simply give people money, no strings attached. The political impossibility of this - opposed constantly by a control-freakish need to meddle in the detailed affairs of welfare recipients - is the actual source of the social corrosion welfare produces, not the financial transfer itself. But god forbid the state should ever give money to someone who doesn't deserve it. They might use it to buy DRUGS!!! Instead, we set up elaborate computerized systems to ensure that food stamps can't be used to buy whiskey, as if that weren't a perfectly nutritious alternative to lentils. :-P
The elephant in the room, which he NEVER addresses, is something that to my eyes is totally obvious - the structure of American government itself now makes it almost impossible to get anything done in a sensible and effective way. It doesn't matter whether you have Republicans or Democrats in office, they are all bloody thieves, enabled by an antiquated system that is ill matched to any modern industrialized country. Arguments along the liberal-conservative axis are mostly a distraction, a parlor game that serves to obscure the collaborative looting of the treasury, most of which takes place through the mechanisms of national defense and health care. This is not a problem that can be solved by electing Republicans.
A final point that strikes me as interesting, and which is a subject he just barely touches on, is that the "team red" and "team blue" polarization of US politics is something that nearly disappears among the upper class - which he occasionally refers to as the "cognitive elite" or "symbolic analysts". It's very easy to read his book without actually getting angry, because, despite its flaws, he still writes it in the same language I use myself. While he takes many intellectual shortcuts that made me roll my eyes, he never lapses into the habit of making cheap, provocative shots at liburulz. Yes, there are political disagreements among the intellectual class, but they aren't the emotional, existentially threatening ones you'd imagine from watching Fox News. This is something that does leave me with some hope that the US will not actually fall apart in the way he warns us about; that among the people who actually do rule the country, some level of sanity prevails, even in the midst of fake scandals and looney-tunes rhetoric that dominates on the surface.
Anyway, it's not a long or difficult read, and on the balance I recommend it as a clear and fair articulation of the conservative agenda and a decent (as opposed to cruel) perspective on how the class divide might be repaired. Liberals should read it because they need more exposure to conservative ideas they may not have fully considered before, and conservatives should read it because they need more exposure to conservative ideas that aren't stupid.
As I mentioned earlier, Charles Murray is the author of the notorious The Bell Curve. And yeah, intelligence is heritable, yadda yadda. Who cares. I don't think that this is a very important consideration in this book, at least, and although he likes to talk about homogamy and the segregation of the cognitive elite, that's not what annoys me about this one.
Let me start by saying that his characterization of the growing divide between the upper and lower class is spot on, rich in detail and undeniably true. If you aren't already familiar with this, this is a good way to get there. He includes a devastating little quiz in the book titled "How Thick Is Your Bubble?" in which he pretty much nails the cultural isolation of the wealthy in the US. The questions make me squirm a little because they're so unexpected yet so telling. Did I buy a major-brand (not microbrew) beer for my own consumption in the past six months? LOL. No, but I did buy a case for my crazy redneck neighbor. (Still hasn't gotten me into his pants.) Anyway, he does a great job of eviscerating the 1% and their tunnel-vision view of the world. He isn't so unforgiving with the new lower class he identifies as having emerged since the 60s - he understands that their behavior is a matter of socioeconomic reality, not personal "immorality" - but articulates the unhappiness of that condition with great clarity.
What bugs me is that he goes on at great length about "The American Project" and the exceptional nature of American culture and economy without ever saying exactly what it is that's so great about it. He contrasts this with the "imploding welfare states of Europe" as if France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland were indistinguishable from Spain, Italy and Greece. All the while completely, totally ignoring the rather large and prosperous country that shares a border with the US, one which completely rejected the "American Project", and which now enjoys a comparably powerful economy, higher quality of life, and - can I say it enough - MORE ECONOMIC FREEDOM than the US despite its toxic, soul-sapping welfare state. If his analysis is to be believed, the failure of Canada to embrace distinctively American ideals will surely doom it to economic and social collapse any day now. [Glances at watch.] Yep, real soon, just wait.
Another contradiction prominent in his analysis really irked me. He wrote a bit about the American concept of "fairness"', and how under American business ethics it was perfectly OK to, say, buy a house from an ignorant seller at far below market value, or to enforce a contract that the other party hadn't bothered to read. Then he turns right around and uses legal personal bankruptcy as an index for "integrity". That was the only thing in the book that really made me want to say "fuck you", because it displayed such naked prejudice against the financially disadvantaged.
The interesting thing is that right at the end of the book, he hints at a perfectly reasonable and workable solution for the dysfunction of American social welfare programs - replacing them all, in a revenue-neutral way, with equivalent cash transfers, while eliminating the "program" part of the program. This is something on which we are in complete agreement: social assistance must be performed in such a way as to not undermine individual responsibility and incentive, and the easiest, least destructive, most humane way of doing that is to simply give people money, no strings attached. The political impossibility of this - opposed constantly by a control-freakish need to meddle in the detailed affairs of welfare recipients - is the actual source of the social corrosion welfare produces, not the financial transfer itself. But god forbid the state should ever give money to someone who doesn't deserve it. They might use it to buy DRUGS!!! Instead, we set up elaborate computerized systems to ensure that food stamps can't be used to buy whiskey, as if that weren't a perfectly nutritious alternative to lentils. :-P
The elephant in the room, which he NEVER addresses, is something that to my eyes is totally obvious - the structure of American government itself now makes it almost impossible to get anything done in a sensible and effective way. It doesn't matter whether you have Republicans or Democrats in office, they are all bloody thieves, enabled by an antiquated system that is ill matched to any modern industrialized country. Arguments along the liberal-conservative axis are mostly a distraction, a parlor game that serves to obscure the collaborative looting of the treasury, most of which takes place through the mechanisms of national defense and health care. This is not a problem that can be solved by electing Republicans.
A final point that strikes me as interesting, and which is a subject he just barely touches on, is that the "team red" and "team blue" polarization of US politics is something that nearly disappears among the upper class - which he occasionally refers to as the "cognitive elite" or "symbolic analysts". It's very easy to read his book without actually getting angry, because, despite its flaws, he still writes it in the same language I use myself. While he takes many intellectual shortcuts that made me roll my eyes, he never lapses into the habit of making cheap, provocative shots at liburulz. Yes, there are political disagreements among the intellectual class, but they aren't the emotional, existentially threatening ones you'd imagine from watching Fox News. This is something that does leave me with some hope that the US will not actually fall apart in the way he warns us about; that among the people who actually do rule the country, some level of sanity prevails, even in the midst of fake scandals and looney-tunes rhetoric that dominates on the surface.
Anyway, it's not a long or difficult read, and on the balance I recommend it as a clear and fair articulation of the conservative agenda and a decent (as opposed to cruel) perspective on how the class divide might be repaired. Liberals should read it because they need more exposure to conservative ideas they may not have fully considered before, and conservatives should read it because they need more exposure to conservative ideas that aren't stupid.
