Sigh, your evocative description of what is used to like almost brought a tear to my eye, I miss it so much. And I'm a woman and all my female friends always talked and acted like this too. We all did. Now, we can only do so with our spouses and an ever-dwindling and smaller circle of true friends you can trust.
This just solidifies my belief that Americans born around 1974 to 1982ish...those Gen X who were born AFTER the civil rights and women's lib movements had occurred and grew up assuming we were all equal, when Cosby Show was the reigning TV show, but before parents turned into hovering children-obsessed helicopter parents...are truly the coolest and best people. The nineties, when we came of age, were a golden era when people actually liked each other. I agree that by 2000, things had started to go too far and the first decade of the 2000s was culturally trashy. And now we have this sanctimonious, mean, nasty, spiteful, envious woke backlash happening.
I try to figure out what it was about the Gen X upbringing that makes us cooler than everyone else -- sorry but it's true. We had a sense of self worth in a very grounded and humble way. We didn't get offended and we didn't assert grievances. Today's young seem on the one hand to be INCREDIBLY insecure, anxious, envious, striving, always worrying about likes and influence and status and image and self-identity, while on the other hand they're self-important and sanctimonious and moralistic and nasty and judgmental. No one seems to actually like each other anymore, and certainly no one trusts each other. Everything is a competition of who has the most grievances (or can be the best ally to the aggrieved) and who has the most claim to oppression, who can be the snarkiest. What an enormous turnoff.
In contrast, I find Gen Xers to be for the most part stable and comfortable with themselves, yet also not of the opinion that anyone really cares enough about them for the things they say or do to be of interest or consequence. And we liked each other and had fun with each other, we truly did. We were rough and nasty and aloof and didn't have enough self-importance to get offended by anything, which came off as apathy, but it came from a place of true friendship and affection, not what I perceive today as a constant game of one-upsmanship, cloaked in moralistic high-ground.
What happened? Well, for one thing, starting in the 90s, parents starting raising kids in a much more child-centered and "soft" manner. When I was a kid we were actually scared of our parents and teachers -- and of our friend's parents too! I remember being terrified whenever my friend's dad came home from work and I'd hightail it home. That was normal in the 80s. Probably never happens today. But we also were actually steeped in an ethic of equality of the sexes and races, and believed it. So why not make everything into a joke? It was always us against the adults. We loved each other and everyone could have fun and everyone could make fun of each other.
And frankly, I think most Gen Xers find what's going on today to be stomach turning (I'm not leaving anyone out, but I think it's near universal for those in their 40s). It's just such wimpy, weak, narcissistic, self-serious, self-righteous, pathetic behavior. And it's sad. It's sad so many young women now truly view men as a class of sexual predators (unless they shirk their gender, then they're welcomed). And that so many black and other POC view themselves as oppressed people that white people secretly look down on. In the 90s, there was much more genuine affection and trust between the sexes and different ethnicities (at least in my little world).
I do blame, for the most part, a certain class of very lame and uncool women for a lot of this. They are for the most part the activists and the teachers and those working on non-profits and as professors and the HR professionals who drove much of the current woke nonsense. A world dominated by men is brutal, hierarchical, and exploitative. A world dominated by women becomes overly indulgent and governed by the tools that women have always been more adept at wielding for control and manipulation: shame, ostracism, spite, envy, and exaggerated appeals to sympathy. Perhaps its no surprise that their new demi-gods, the one group they are terrified by and won't dare to cross, are the ones who most strongly leverage the preferred tools of both men and women: big black trans women, like the two in your photo at the top of this essay. They've got the physical domination and display the aggression of men, they're still free to use cutting humor and make fun of everyone else, and they fully wield the feminine manipulative tools of victimization, grievance, and shaming. Therefore, they can't be touched and their interests are to be elevated at all times.
It will be fascinating to see where this all goes. Sadly, while I believe most Gen X view the woke stuff (as well as the right wing crazies) as revolting, we're unlikely to do anything about it. Even though we're in our 40s now and therefore should be the parents and managers in charge. I don't think our generation has enough of a sense of self-importance or power to try to will ourselves upon others or dominate them. It's just against our ethic. At my workplace at least, it's all Gen X who are the bosses now. And the Zoomers/late Millennials and the Boomers are practically at war and constantly coming to us with their respective demands, complaints, and grievances, while it wouldn't have occurred to any of us to ever make such demands. We're just trying to keep the peace.
As a GenXer I see cancel/woke culture as the empire in decline devouring itself, a purely destructive force, not a creative one. Chaos as it were, swirling around order. Which is in a way inevitable, I suppose. But living in the midst of civilizational collapse is the opposite of abstract, and I find myself looking for cover.
1973, with you about all of it. Except that, even in my own marriage and friend group I can't speak freely. In my social circle in the hyper-progressive SF East Bay, my friends all have kids and their kids' schools are so captured. My friends going on 50 are parroting the same woke talking points as everywhere. Trump came along and suddenly everyone I know is on Team Blue and can no longer think in nuance. It is thoroughly depressing.
I've concluded that child centered, helicoptering parenthood reflects a confluence of certain trends: divorce becoming nearly a rule rather than an exception; delayed motherhood/fatherhood; and late marriage + delayed parenthood leading to the need for medical intervention to achieve pregnancy, which, in turn, can lead to limiting families to one child. If you are yourself from a broken family, got married late, had a child late, and are approaching middle age that son or daughter is precious cargo indeed.
Yeah, my little brother was born my senior year in high school. My dad and step-mom had him in their 40s and he was basically an "only child" since his siblings were so much older. They totally helicoptered and spoiled the crap out of him, it was astonishing, my dad was like a different dad -- because honestly, in a sense they raised him almost more like grandparents treated grandkids (i.e. with much more kindness and spoiling than the parents traditionally did). He's in his early 20s now...his older siblings were all completely independent at his age even if it meant living in utter poverty working crap jobs -- no way would we go asking our parents for anything! He's still supported by my parents, he's overweight, a complete video game addict, and soft and innocent as a newborn baby bunnyrabbit. He's a nice kid, but the spoiling didn't seem to do him any favors in life.
Also, the Zoomers hate on the Millennials. The Millennials hate on the Boomers. The Boomers can't tell the difference between Millennials and Zoomers and are profoundly hurt that they don't respect them. The Millennials are jealous of the Zoomers and hurt that they make fun of them. No one bothers to hate Gen X because we're not important enough for anyone to care.
Yeah, I was born in '71 and recognize a lot of this. If I had to put a finger on it, I would say that we caught the sweet spot between feeling the real effects of integration and MLK's dream, but before social media kicked into high gear. The worst of us, our generation, are the ones on Facebook and Twitter and have joined the mob of malcontents, so to speak. But so many of us have already cast it off, or only use social media to show pics of our children.
But it is easy to feel good about yourself and to not spend any time reflecting on the past and possibly egregious actions that we participated in.
I'm always surprised when people talk about Facebook/Instagram as full of misinformation, hatred, and political fighting, because all I see on mine is photos of people's kids and pets and like soccer games and family vacations. There's a tiny minority of my peers who post political stuff, but even then it's usually either as a joke or making an open-minded point, not a hate-filled screed or nasty meme. But apparently both my Boomer parents and my Zoomer nieces and nephews get lots of high-octane hate-filled stuff from their peers. Twitter, obviously, is a toxic waste zone.
I think Gen X needs to have more pride. But it doesn't happen, because we're the least assuming and entitled group and we aren't prone to bragging and don't think anyone cares about us -- and to be clear: they don't. But maybe we could at least claim the mantle of being cool. ;) I don't think I ever did anything egregious -- I mean, maybe from my parent's perspective as far as smoking and sneaking out and doing all kinds of bad stuff as a kid. But not as far as being mean to other people. Hell, up until recently I would've described myself as a total bleeding-heart liberal who always took the underdog's side and was ready to give the finger to those in power. But things have gone off the rails in recent years, and "progressive" now seems to mean someone who participates in the victim Olympics and enforces speech and thought codes, so I can't put myself in that category anymore. Malcontents is an apt word choice.
your parents should be very proud of you especially with your critical thinking skills and your ability to write...this coming from a guy who had 4 daughters 74 to 84 all doing well.
Meant to add that I always felt the GenX generation to be an incoherent, massless concept with no real collective identity. Since the Millenials and zoomers have come along, the Gen X identity has flash-crystallized into being in a stunning way
Yep, totally. I never felt any of these things either til recently, and now it seems crystal clear that we actually DO have a discernibly different ethic or mindset. I guess it takes everyone else seeming insane for that to happen.
I had to read your post twice, it was that captivating. I am all about Gen X and their particular brand of generational superiority. I write about it a lot on my platform. Please check out this one https://riclexel.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-gen-x
I ma writing those Gen X posts as a series of Open Letters. Do you write for a living? You have a great style. I would love to have you as a guest-writer for one of these open letters. Your take on our attitudes is eerily similar to mine. That is a total Gen X thing.
Thanks. I read your post and it is pretty spot-on. I fit it to a tee: parents divorced when I was in elementary school at a time when it was considered a shameful secret to be bottled up and never spoken of. And by high school, we all had divorced parents, empty houses, and our parents knew basically nothing about our lives. I doubt my parents could've told you the names of any of my teachers, if you'd asked them. They apparently didn't even notice when I started smoking at age 13 and smelled like an ashtray the next four years. I rarely got caught for anything, either out of willful blindness or because they were distracted dating new people.
But yet...that makes it all sound so dark. I had a lot of fun as a kid and teenager! And while it looks neglectful in retrospect, back then I thought my parents were too involved in my business and basically viewed them as prison guards. I mean, we were BAD, me and my friends. We used to tell our parents we were sleeping at each other's houses for the weekend, then take a bus to NYC and hang out on the streets picking up boys and buying dime bags in the park. We lied to them constantly and told them nothing. But we eventually turned out fine and normal as adults...married, jobs, mortgages, kids, whatever. So it was okay...right?? I don't want to knock it too hard. Or start wondering if my distaste for complainers and expectation of stoicism is the result of some scarred-over, blackened heart.
You prompted me to Google Gen X traits, and the results I get are: independent, self-sufficient, casual, informal, autonomous, skeptical, flexible, adaptable, resourceful, value humor, value freedom, value responsibility, critical thinkers. Those are pretty cool traits! I might be tempted to say it's incumbent on Gen X to right the ship and bring people back in line with reality and sanity. But the paradox is that we are not group-oriented enough, don't have the will to power, and don't think we're important enough to do anything like that. So I've resigned myself to merely spreading the word that we should at least be respected for being super cool.
It seems notable that the bulk of "heterodox" people who don't fit into an ideological box, and who can talk with all sorts of people with humor and curiousity, while also treating them as *actual* equals (not ranks to be deferred to on a status and oppression totem pole), seem to be Gen X. Whether they're celebrities (Rogan, Bill Burr, Chappelle, Barkley) or journalists (Wesley, Katie Herzog), or politicians (Andrew Yang), or pretty much the entirety of the "intellectual dark web". And scary that there's a whole cohort who finds them to be barely distinguishable from right-wing, white supremacist whateverophobes.
I watched the recent Chappelle Netflix special, not having much experience with his comedy, only really watching because so many people I find obsessed with Race and Gender and otherwise humorless were raging at him and it. I found him and it to be very human and refreshing. That it is such a terrible thing to suggest there is something real about gender, as in, it is the fundamental basis of mammalian biology on planet earth, is to me just one more regrettable sign of how far removed from nature we have become, about as pathological as PFAS chemicals, microplastics and eternal fossil fuel consumerism. That so many transgendered and friends of transgendered hate Chapelle and this special, despite his very touching tribute to his transgendered friend and fellow comedian who killed herself because of the hate she received from the transgendered community, for her support of Chappelle, makes me wary of my support for the transgendered. That corporations generally, the medical establishment, the military and the Intelligence community have embraced transgendered/woke ideology makes me doubly wary. The empire it seems, having spread consumer ideology globally to the ruination of the biosphere, has embraced cancel culture as a means to maintain hegemony, but seems to me more a sign of civilizational collapse in the making.
I’m agreeing with you and attempting (fail) to be clever. Us mammals come in two genders but we’ve convoluted everything with social science gibberish.
Now I get it. I fail at understanding sometimes too.
Yes, two genders, but in humans I do get that gender is fluid. That's ok. It is not necessarily something to cancel Western Civilization with, nor to take control of an empire, nor to embrace the worst habits of ruling elite.
It is altogether a mania, we’ve been overtaken, it is out of all proportion. Dave Chappell has tickled the dragon, I think mistakenly, but he covets the limelight, so maybe he is right. He is certainly smart, it’s a calculated risk, he presumably sees this tempest as helpful to his considerable ambition - everyone is going to know him now.
Andrew Sullivan explains why this is happening: tribalism.
Tribalism is a dragon. Powerful stuff, that’s why I think Chappell‘as gambit is very risky. But he’s a fuck it kind of guy so - damn the torpedos I guess.
I write about tribalism on my platform. Human evolution required tribes for survival. Nature colored the tribes differently so members could identify with and seek safety in the tribe. Humans really don't need different skin colors to survive as a species any longer.
But we still identify ourselves by those ancient tribal colors - black, white, brown, yellow, red.
The formula is the basis for our most beloved stories: Girl from one tribe meets and falls in love with boy of another tribe. The tribes are against it. The couple is shunned. Disney fakes the ending by making love conquer all and live happily ever after. Shakespeare had it more closely aligned with reality: When tribe members go against the tribe, it's open warfare. For Daphne Dorman, the fact that the tribe that told her to be herself, that cheered her decisions to think and act for herself, turned on her for doing just that. It really is disgusting, this culture that shames and shuns. The exact same tribes doing the shunning and shaming were the ones demanding that all of the "others" need to tolerate diversity and individual freedoms. What now?
A working class, non credentialed conservative friend of mine who voted for Obama and Trump, deeply wishes the Democrats would be the party of tolerance, diversity and wage earning people. But as he is white and rural, instead he keeps hearing that he is a racist, misogynist, bigot, xeno/transophobe.
? I have been working poor all my adult life, currently making about as much money relative to real inflation as I did stocking shelves and pushing carts for Sam's Club when I was 18 in 1991. But I do have an English degree, I have written two books and a screenplay I have never bothered to publish, and a million words besides, so thank you for that comment. Not sure what you mean with that second sentence.
Nicely summarized points about the trajectory of masculinity from natural roots to the point of egregiousness, and the resulting backlash, and now the alternative trajectory occurring of the feminization of society. Ive wondered recently how far this feminization will go before there’s a backlash, and what the nature of that backlash could possibly be. The interconnectedness of the globe, built on the infrastructure born by the hands of men, but obviously supported by women, favors a feminine world where EQ is more necessary than physical command.
Given your point about masculinity having its origins in the dynamics of nature, I wonder at what point in the future does that ever fit in again? Honestly, what is the point of men if there is little to no role left for one of their fundamental natures? Do they morph into a different type of gendered being whose qualities are more adapted to future societies?
Worth considering - perhaps the Era of the Algorithm has decoupled one half of the culture from the other, so that instead of a pendulum swinging, the backlash arrives early for one side, and never for the other
There are paragraphs in some of your pieces that deliver an experience not so different from that of watching a basketball player steal the ball and make a fast break for the opposite end of the court to score — you see the shape of the play as it’s unfolding, you see risk and uncertainty and ambition, you feel a certain suspense — will he pull this off? — and then, in a blink, boom, slam dunk.
Gotta admit I’m really hoping the “20-volume Dave Chapelle Review” is a bit of Wesley’s characteristic dry humor… but I suppose if anybody can make such a thing readable it’s him.
Chappelle's anxiety that led to his "abrupt self-cancellation" wasn't misplaced (an assertion I'm almost certain Wesley agrees with, based on my reading of The Soul of Yellow Folk). It's important to be clear-eyed about this, and not succumb to gauzy nostalgia (and I'm as guilty as anyone) for the good ol' days of the 70s-90s, when too often, we were color-blind only when convenient. Lazy stereotypes of entire generations of human beings obfuscates rather than elucidates; far more binds the generations than distinguishes them from each other. Human nature persists.
From my seats on the 25 yard-line of the Alabama-Tennessee game Saturday night -- Roll Tide -- some observations. They're not fresh -- I've had them before, I've been to dozens of 'Bama games in my lifetime and grew up in this state -- but they still, somehow, startle me anew.
Before the game, the 1971 Alabama football team was honored. Along the south endzone stood fifty or so gray-headed white men, many of them of almost comically slight stature. While 'Bama technically integrated in 1971, only two black players were on the squad that year. That 1971 team won an SEC title but was absolutely thrashed by a fully-integrated Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl for the national championship.
1971: that's 35 years after Jesse Owens -- incidentally, an Alabama native -- dominated the Berlin Olympics; that's 639 homers into Hank Aaron's -- another Alabama native -- record-breaking 755; that's 638 homers into Willie Mays' -- yet another (!) Alabama native -- illustrious, arguably-GOAT career. And the University of Alabama's legendary football program was only taking the most tepid baby steps toward allowing black athletes on the team.
Today, of course, 80% of the team, and 90+% of the starters, are black. The makeup of the attendees remains overwhelmingly white. It makes for an interesting, and not altogether unhealthy, dynamic -- as long as we're playing well, that is.
It was homecoming. At halftime, I went to get some Dreamland BBQ nachos while my 12 year-old daughter remained in her seat to take in the festivities. While I stood in line, I heard a loud boo go up from the crowd -- during halftime, mind you. When I returned to my seat, my daughter asked me why the crowd booed the homecoming queen, but cheered loudly for the runner-up.
So that was the boo, I thought. I explained it to her: the runner-up was a well-known and popular softball player, a pitcher who had led the Tide to the Women's College World Series last year, a tall and stately blonde, quite popular on campus and well-known throughout the state.
(This isn't going where you think it is.)
The homecoming queen was also a white woman. She was the "Machine-backed" candidate for homecoming queen, certainly the daughter of an influential, old-money family. What is the "Machine"? It's a secret society, a remnant of the Theta Nu Epsilon suprafraternity, that controls student affairs at the University. It's made up of secret representatives from the most prestigious fraternities and sororities on campus. It's been running the campus for over a hundred years, using the Student Government Association as a sort of training ground or farm league for state politics. It rarely loses, and when it does -- or even thinks it might -- it engages in conduct that makes Watergate look laughably tame.
Why the boos? There was a widespread belief in the student body -- only 20-25% of the students are members of the Greek system -- that the Machine would rig the election. And, as it turns out, they did: for starters, the Machine-controlled SGA simply ignored the run-off requirement and gave the crown to their candidate with only 47% of the vote. The softball player had received 45% of the vote. There were three other non-Machine candidates who shared the remaining 8% of the votes.
Same ol' shit.
Reflecting on Saturday night, I reread an Esquire Magazine expose of the "Machine" from 1992. Then, our color-blind, Gen-X fraternity brother -- trying to navigate calls to force the integration of the Greek system following an incident where two white Kappa Delta pledges had donned full blackface to attend a "Who Rides the Bus?"-themed fraternity party costumed as pregnant black women -- articulated his own dream of racial harmony and the conditions under which he'd accept integration of his particular fraternity, Kappa Alpha:
" "I'd love to be president [of Kappa Alpha] when there's one [a black person] who's right," he says. He seems sincere. "But I don't see it in the next five years. I'd love to give him a break. Someone who really, really wants to be a K.A....Someone who appreciates southern heritage....Someone with the same view I have, that there's niggers and there's blacks and there's rednecks and white people." "
'Bama would go on to win the college football national championship that year, 1992, when they routed Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Black players like George Teague, Antonio Langham, Sam Shade, Eric Curry, John Copeland and Tommie Johnson led a legendarily-stingy Crimson Tide defense to a stunning upset over the heavily-favored 'Canes. Our golden boy white quarterback was 4 of 18 for 13 yards and 2 interceptions.
Our friendly, color-blind, Gen-X, Kappa Alpha member almost certainly celebrated that victory and thumped his chest harder than anyone.
Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that integration had to be forced on the UA Greek system -- in 2014. Not that it has made much difference.
But perhaps it will surprise you to learn that Alabama continues to labor under the longest written constitution in the world -- no, literally -- the 1901 Constitution, whose explicit purpose, as articulated by the president of the constitutional convention during his opening speech, was "to establish white supremacy in this state." It's been remarkably successful in preserving the power of the landed gentry, the former slave-owning plantation farming families, while ensuring that the descendants of slaves stuck in the Black Belt and poor whites stuck in the Appalachian foothills have virtually no prospects. And, like the stupid, petty homecoming queen race at the University of Alabama in 2021, the "Machine" of that time quite openly stole the election ratifying the 1901 Constitution, going so far as to stuff ballot boxes in Black Belt counties with more votes than there were citizens - literally.
No, Chappelle's anxiety wasn't misplaced at all. He sensed something that was - and is - real: a failure, our failure, to live up to what we say we want, which is to see and treat others as full-bodied individuals, regardless of skin color, regardless of social station or power, and our unwillingness to courageously confront real injustice and real entrenched power, and a tendency, our tendency, to treat tokenism and smiling at black people and rooting for black athletes and laughing at black comedians and "having black friends" like the endpoint of racial progress. It's not, and he was right to sense that he was being used in that way, even if it was unintentional.
The answer isn't to throw out the creed, though. The creed is good, right, and just -- indeed, the only just and workable principle for a civilized society. Chappelle has re-emerged to courageously fight for the creed, even as so many of us have cowered in the corner as the Successor Ideology terrorizes the land. Certainly, many will seek to use Chappelle in the same way they used him before. I hope it won't be too many. He's got something very important to say.
Love the post. I was at UF in the 1992 (Blue Key). Very similar dynamics. I'm not sure how much has changed in 30 years, but at the time we often spoke of The Machine and admired its ruthless efficiency.
To add a brief thought before I shut down for the day: Race, yah. Like I said: Outstanding. But, to me? Bigger problem is the Machine. And to me the Machine as represented by the college-graduates as opposed to the 2/3 that don't have a 4-year degree. Of those, I've probably mentioned, the bottom HALF of Americans own 2% of the wealth. Would wonder what their views are about life, but who would bother?
Ah well... Grumpy and tired at this time-a day. Plus reading a couple air-heads making the tons of money being political commentators with their own show/podcast/not-sure WHAT all. Krystal Ball, STAR formerly of MSNBC and another man more on conservative side. (Always bad with names. ;) PART of it is hindsight is 20/20. But hearing how GREAT Sanders is and "the multi-racial working class." I just have a LOTTA trouble in my mind about Socialism. And not at ALL sure these two aren't just same-ole radical talking-heads. Hard-ta argue against success, tho.
But NEED to read the POVs so it's all on my own head for spending so much time on these two.
I upgraded to paid service recently because you challenge me like few current writers do, both in your ideas and your use of the language. Reading this post again from the point of view of one of those athletes as a child and young man in the 80's and 90's, and my time as an adult working among men in various trades and warehouses, never able nor willing really to compete in the way you describe, preferring to let my abilities and work ethic speak for me, you elucidate the changes well, and their relation to successor ideology.
I see Chappelle's "self-cancelation," if it is an abnegation of minority culture, homo-social, ironic, transcendence of racism of the past, it seemed to me as much a rejection of the excesses of successor ideology, and also a plea for peace. Chappelle has transcended cancellation in a way, so able to call it out on the carpet so to speak. As a comedian it must be humorous to see the humorlessness of those who have advocated consciously or not for the end of due-process and free speech. I think he is inviting a new backlash against a new PC that is embraced by the empire.
At least in my world, females engaged in this anti-PC conversation all the time. In my world and perhaps because I am older, we referred to our Lesbian friends (to their face) as "lezzies," when we were headed to Skokie, we were going to "Jew town," we made dick jokes a lot, called our girlfriends that had an affinity for gay male friends "queer whores," called our white S. African friends "African-Americans" and lots more. This wasn't way back in the day, PC was already a thing. And still...In closed rooms, this conversation continues with my female friends. We don't blink an eye. We aren't very happy about the so-called pussyification of society, but I find many people with prostrates are just as responsible for this change in the order of things.
This is an excellent piece. I too am interested to see you're going with it.
I don't agree with the "free pass" that was historically given to men "in the locker room." I tend to think that what you are in private is what you really are. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." - Jesus of Nazareth
That said, if free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, the price is the occasional set of hurt feelings.
Very insightful, one of your best yet. I'm a little older, but I know well the culture you're talking about, and a lot of what you say about it rings true for me. It's interesting how many people seem to still long for it, and pretend it still exists--either because they want to live in it, or because they find it emotionally or politically satisfying to continue reacting against it.
You've made me realize that our cultural arguments today really are rooted in a culture that was in place decades ago.
It's worth noting (sorry if I've been beaten to the punch here, 64 comments is a lot to read today) that the school culture shift of the early 2000s had additional influences -- the Columbine Shooting and the introduction of Common Core. The leadup to Columbine involved that same culture of administrative passivity towards 'rough male socialization' and of hazing those who didn't make the cut -- this is not the only explanation but it's something that schools believe they can control, hence the attacks on "toxic masculinity" and the "war on boys." Common Core restructured schools towards test-taking and related academic soft skills, all of which require a lot of sitting around studying and not a lot of *doing things.* Young boys have a much harder time sitting still for long periods of time than young girls. This has also contributed to the "war on boys" and the absurd over-prescription of stimulants to them to get them to confirm to these new behavioral standards.
The culture shift you describe certainly plays a part in both these events, and personally I think it would be a fool's errand to try to determine if the cultural shift here was a cause or an effect -- it's all part of the same growing snowball. The children who grew up fully in this new school culture (like myself, I was in kindergarten in 2000) are beginning to fully participate in the production and reproduction of culture.
Nice, Sir Wesley, but too tired to give it enough thought. I was literally in a YMCA boys club until we moved away from all my boyhood friends when I was 14.
Alcoholic Mom through puberty. Second wave of Women's Lib in a Matriarchal household with two fem-militant sisters?
Took me decades, but I didn't get any lasting scars that bother me now at 66. Not saying there's much hope. Just that I lucked out.
I must admit, today’s installment leaves me scratching my head a bit about where this line of thinking/reasoning is headed - but I will keep reading to find out.
Sigh, your evocative description of what is used to like almost brought a tear to my eye, I miss it so much. And I'm a woman and all my female friends always talked and acted like this too. We all did. Now, we can only do so with our spouses and an ever-dwindling and smaller circle of true friends you can trust.
This just solidifies my belief that Americans born around 1974 to 1982ish...those Gen X who were born AFTER the civil rights and women's lib movements had occurred and grew up assuming we were all equal, when Cosby Show was the reigning TV show, but before parents turned into hovering children-obsessed helicopter parents...are truly the coolest and best people. The nineties, when we came of age, were a golden era when people actually liked each other. I agree that by 2000, things had started to go too far and the first decade of the 2000s was culturally trashy. And now we have this sanctimonious, mean, nasty, spiteful, envious woke backlash happening.
I try to figure out what it was about the Gen X upbringing that makes us cooler than everyone else -- sorry but it's true. We had a sense of self worth in a very grounded and humble way. We didn't get offended and we didn't assert grievances. Today's young seem on the one hand to be INCREDIBLY insecure, anxious, envious, striving, always worrying about likes and influence and status and image and self-identity, while on the other hand they're self-important and sanctimonious and moralistic and nasty and judgmental. No one seems to actually like each other anymore, and certainly no one trusts each other. Everything is a competition of who has the most grievances (or can be the best ally to the aggrieved) and who has the most claim to oppression, who can be the snarkiest. What an enormous turnoff.
In contrast, I find Gen Xers to be for the most part stable and comfortable with themselves, yet also not of the opinion that anyone really cares enough about them for the things they say or do to be of interest or consequence. And we liked each other and had fun with each other, we truly did. We were rough and nasty and aloof and didn't have enough self-importance to get offended by anything, which came off as apathy, but it came from a place of true friendship and affection, not what I perceive today as a constant game of one-upsmanship, cloaked in moralistic high-ground.
What happened? Well, for one thing, starting in the 90s, parents starting raising kids in a much more child-centered and "soft" manner. When I was a kid we were actually scared of our parents and teachers -- and of our friend's parents too! I remember being terrified whenever my friend's dad came home from work and I'd hightail it home. That was normal in the 80s. Probably never happens today. But we also were actually steeped in an ethic of equality of the sexes and races, and believed it. So why not make everything into a joke? It was always us against the adults. We loved each other and everyone could have fun and everyone could make fun of each other.
And frankly, I think most Gen Xers find what's going on today to be stomach turning (I'm not leaving anyone out, but I think it's near universal for those in their 40s). It's just such wimpy, weak, narcissistic, self-serious, self-righteous, pathetic behavior. And it's sad. It's sad so many young women now truly view men as a class of sexual predators (unless they shirk their gender, then they're welcomed). And that so many black and other POC view themselves as oppressed people that white people secretly look down on. In the 90s, there was much more genuine affection and trust between the sexes and different ethnicities (at least in my little world).
I do blame, for the most part, a certain class of very lame and uncool women for a lot of this. They are for the most part the activists and the teachers and those working on non-profits and as professors and the HR professionals who drove much of the current woke nonsense. A world dominated by men is brutal, hierarchical, and exploitative. A world dominated by women becomes overly indulgent and governed by the tools that women have always been more adept at wielding for control and manipulation: shame, ostracism, spite, envy, and exaggerated appeals to sympathy. Perhaps its no surprise that their new demi-gods, the one group they are terrified by and won't dare to cross, are the ones who most strongly leverage the preferred tools of both men and women: big black trans women, like the two in your photo at the top of this essay. They've got the physical domination and display the aggression of men, they're still free to use cutting humor and make fun of everyone else, and they fully wield the feminine manipulative tools of victimization, grievance, and shaming. Therefore, they can't be touched and their interests are to be elevated at all times.
It will be fascinating to see where this all goes. Sadly, while I believe most Gen X view the woke stuff (as well as the right wing crazies) as revolting, we're unlikely to do anything about it. Even though we're in our 40s now and therefore should be the parents and managers in charge. I don't think our generation has enough of a sense of self-importance or power to try to will ourselves upon others or dominate them. It's just against our ethic. At my workplace at least, it's all Gen X who are the bosses now. And the Zoomers/late Millennials and the Boomers are practically at war and constantly coming to us with their respective demands, complaints, and grievances, while it wouldn't have occurred to any of us to ever make such demands. We're just trying to keep the peace.
As a GenXer I see cancel/woke culture as the empire in decline devouring itself, a purely destructive force, not a creative one. Chaos as it were, swirling around order. Which is in a way inevitable, I suppose. But living in the midst of civilizational collapse is the opposite of abstract, and I find myself looking for cover.
I find the “notes on a crisis “ guy an idiot, his reason for leaving substack is very weak
1973, with you about all of it. Except that, even in my own marriage and friend group I can't speak freely. In my social circle in the hyper-progressive SF East Bay, my friends all have kids and their kids' schools are so captured. My friends going on 50 are parroting the same woke talking points as everywhere. Trump came along and suddenly everyone I know is on Team Blue and can no longer think in nuance. It is thoroughly depressing.
I've concluded that child centered, helicoptering parenthood reflects a confluence of certain trends: divorce becoming nearly a rule rather than an exception; delayed motherhood/fatherhood; and late marriage + delayed parenthood leading to the need for medical intervention to achieve pregnancy, which, in turn, can lead to limiting families to one child. If you are yourself from a broken family, got married late, had a child late, and are approaching middle age that son or daughter is precious cargo indeed.
Yeah, my little brother was born my senior year in high school. My dad and step-mom had him in their 40s and he was basically an "only child" since his siblings were so much older. They totally helicoptered and spoiled the crap out of him, it was astonishing, my dad was like a different dad -- because honestly, in a sense they raised him almost more like grandparents treated grandkids (i.e. with much more kindness and spoiling than the parents traditionally did). He's in his early 20s now...his older siblings were all completely independent at his age even if it meant living in utter poverty working crap jobs -- no way would we go asking our parents for anything! He's still supported by my parents, he's overweight, a complete video game addict, and soft and innocent as a newborn baby bunnyrabbit. He's a nice kid, but the spoiling didn't seem to do him any favors in life.
To be fair, I think just about everyone thinks their generation were the best and coolest people. We're each our own standard of reference.
Yeah, but they're wrong. ;)
Also, the Zoomers hate on the Millennials. The Millennials hate on the Boomers. The Boomers can't tell the difference between Millennials and Zoomers and are profoundly hurt that they don't respect them. The Millennials are jealous of the Zoomers and hurt that they make fun of them. No one bothers to hate Gen X because we're not important enough for anyone to care.
as i wrote those words, i thought of my WWII SeaBee vet grandpa smitty, and that he must have been saying
really?
but we r the only cohort in human history that will ever have had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood,
i write about it on my platform, would love to get any feedback you may have on that content...
Yeah, I was born in '71 and recognize a lot of this. If I had to put a finger on it, I would say that we caught the sweet spot between feeling the real effects of integration and MLK's dream, but before social media kicked into high gear. The worst of us, our generation, are the ones on Facebook and Twitter and have joined the mob of malcontents, so to speak. But so many of us have already cast it off, or only use social media to show pics of our children.
But it is easy to feel good about yourself and to not spend any time reflecting on the past and possibly egregious actions that we participated in.
I'm always surprised when people talk about Facebook/Instagram as full of misinformation, hatred, and political fighting, because all I see on mine is photos of people's kids and pets and like soccer games and family vacations. There's a tiny minority of my peers who post political stuff, but even then it's usually either as a joke or making an open-minded point, not a hate-filled screed or nasty meme. But apparently both my Boomer parents and my Zoomer nieces and nephews get lots of high-octane hate-filled stuff from their peers. Twitter, obviously, is a toxic waste zone.
I think Gen X needs to have more pride. But it doesn't happen, because we're the least assuming and entitled group and we aren't prone to bragging and don't think anyone cares about us -- and to be clear: they don't. But maybe we could at least claim the mantle of being cool. ;) I don't think I ever did anything egregious -- I mean, maybe from my parent's perspective as far as smoking and sneaking out and doing all kinds of bad stuff as a kid. But not as far as being mean to other people. Hell, up until recently I would've described myself as a total bleeding-heart liberal who always took the underdog's side and was ready to give the finger to those in power. But things have gone off the rails in recent years, and "progressive" now seems to mean someone who participates in the victim Olympics and enforces speech and thought codes, so I can't put myself in that category anymore. Malcontents is an apt word choice.
your parents should be very proud of you especially with your critical thinking skills and your ability to write...this coming from a guy who had 4 daughters 74 to 84 all doing well.
Interesting accounting. I recognize a lot of my youth in these reminiscences.
Rhyd Wildermuth explores this stance toward the world as ressentiment, which i find incredibly apt.
Thanks for the reference, I'd never heard of him before.
Children should not speak until spoken too.
I grew up with that phrase
Our buddy Kate of state said she was afraid of her dad, so was I . We are far too indulgent towards children: spare the rod spoil the child.
Exactly my sentiments. This comment just crystalized everything I've been thinking for the last 4 years. Thanks Kate. And thanks Wes.
I like this reflection
Meant to add that I always felt the GenX generation to be an incoherent, massless concept with no real collective identity. Since the Millenials and zoomers have come along, the Gen X identity has flash-crystallized into being in a stunning way
Yep, totally. I never felt any of these things either til recently, and now it seems crystal clear that we actually DO have a discernibly different ethic or mindset. I guess it takes everyone else seeming insane for that to happen.
Hi Kate, I posted my new piece today https://riclexel.substack.com/p/is-comedy-safer-now
I mentioned you and your comments in it, would love any feedback
and still would love for you to guest write for my platform
thanks
Ric
Hi Kate,
I had to read your post twice, it was that captivating. I am all about Gen X and their particular brand of generational superiority. I write about it a lot on my platform. Please check out this one https://riclexel.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-gen-x
I ma writing those Gen X posts as a series of Open Letters. Do you write for a living? You have a great style. I would love to have you as a guest-writer for one of these open letters. Your take on our attitudes is eerily similar to mine. That is a total Gen X thing.
Hope to chat soon.
Ric
riclexel@gmail.com
Thanks. I read your post and it is pretty spot-on. I fit it to a tee: parents divorced when I was in elementary school at a time when it was considered a shameful secret to be bottled up and never spoken of. And by high school, we all had divorced parents, empty houses, and our parents knew basically nothing about our lives. I doubt my parents could've told you the names of any of my teachers, if you'd asked them. They apparently didn't even notice when I started smoking at age 13 and smelled like an ashtray the next four years. I rarely got caught for anything, either out of willful blindness or because they were distracted dating new people.
But yet...that makes it all sound so dark. I had a lot of fun as a kid and teenager! And while it looks neglectful in retrospect, back then I thought my parents were too involved in my business and basically viewed them as prison guards. I mean, we were BAD, me and my friends. We used to tell our parents we were sleeping at each other's houses for the weekend, then take a bus to NYC and hang out on the streets picking up boys and buying dime bags in the park. We lied to them constantly and told them nothing. But we eventually turned out fine and normal as adults...married, jobs, mortgages, kids, whatever. So it was okay...right?? I don't want to knock it too hard. Or start wondering if my distaste for complainers and expectation of stoicism is the result of some scarred-over, blackened heart.
You prompted me to Google Gen X traits, and the results I get are: independent, self-sufficient, casual, informal, autonomous, skeptical, flexible, adaptable, resourceful, value humor, value freedom, value responsibility, critical thinkers. Those are pretty cool traits! I might be tempted to say it's incumbent on Gen X to right the ship and bring people back in line with reality and sanity. But the paradox is that we are not group-oriented enough, don't have the will to power, and don't think we're important enough to do anything like that. So I've resigned myself to merely spreading the word that we should at least be respected for being super cool.
It seems notable that the bulk of "heterodox" people who don't fit into an ideological box, and who can talk with all sorts of people with humor and curiousity, while also treating them as *actual* equals (not ranks to be deferred to on a status and oppression totem pole), seem to be Gen X. Whether they're celebrities (Rogan, Bill Burr, Chappelle, Barkley) or journalists (Wesley, Katie Herzog), or politicians (Andrew Yang), or pretty much the entirety of the "intellectual dark web". And scary that there's a whole cohort who finds them to be barely distinguishable from right-wing, white supremacist whateverophobes.
I watched the recent Chappelle Netflix special, not having much experience with his comedy, only really watching because so many people I find obsessed with Race and Gender and otherwise humorless were raging at him and it. I found him and it to be very human and refreshing. That it is such a terrible thing to suggest there is something real about gender, as in, it is the fundamental basis of mammalian biology on planet earth, is to me just one more regrettable sign of how far removed from nature we have become, about as pathological as PFAS chemicals, microplastics and eternal fossil fuel consumerism. That so many transgendered and friends of transgendered hate Chapelle and this special, despite his very touching tribute to his transgendered friend and fellow comedian who killed herself because of the hate she received from the transgendered community, for her support of Chappelle, makes me wary of my support for the transgendered. That corporations generally, the medical establishment, the military and the Intelligence community have embraced transgendered/woke ideology makes me doubly wary. The empire it seems, having spread consumer ideology globally to the ruination of the biosphere, has embraced cancel culture as a means to maintain hegemony, but seems to me more a sign of civilizational collapse in the making.
WHDuncan, you write very well. You have to be rich to be this stupid and education beggars common sense.
I’m agreeing with you and attempting (fail) to be clever. Us mammals come in two genders but we’ve convoluted everything with social science gibberish.
Now I get it. I fail at understanding sometimes too.
Yes, two genders, but in humans I do get that gender is fluid. That's ok. It is not necessarily something to cancel Western Civilization with, nor to take control of an empire, nor to embrace the worst habits of ruling elite.
It is altogether a mania, we’ve been overtaken, it is out of all proportion. Dave Chappell has tickled the dragon, I think mistakenly, but he covets the limelight, so maybe he is right. He is certainly smart, it’s a calculated risk, he presumably sees this tempest as helpful to his considerable ambition - everyone is going to know him now.
Andrew Sullivan explains why this is happening: tribalism.
Tribalism is a dragon. Powerful stuff, that’s why I think Chappell‘as gambit is very risky. But he’s a fuck it kind of guy so - damn the torpedos I guess.
I write about tribalism on my platform. Human evolution required tribes for survival. Nature colored the tribes differently so members could identify with and seek safety in the tribe. Humans really don't need different skin colors to survive as a species any longer.
But we still identify ourselves by those ancient tribal colors - black, white, brown, yellow, red.
The formula is the basis for our most beloved stories: Girl from one tribe meets and falls in love with boy of another tribe. The tribes are against it. The couple is shunned. Disney fakes the ending by making love conquer all and live happily ever after. Shakespeare had it more closely aligned with reality: When tribe members go against the tribe, it's open warfare. For Daphne Dorman, the fact that the tribe that told her to be herself, that cheered her decisions to think and act for herself, turned on her for doing just that. It really is disgusting, this culture that shames and shuns. The exact same tribes doing the shunning and shaming were the ones demanding that all of the "others" need to tolerate diversity and individual freedoms. What now?
A working class, non credentialed conservative friend of mine who voted for Obama and Trump, deeply wishes the Democrats would be the party of tolerance, diversity and wage earning people. But as he is white and rural, instead he keeps hearing that he is a racist, misogynist, bigot, xeno/transophobe.
As for what now, lots of examples from history, scarlet letter for transgressions or a yellow star on the lapel, yes?
Bravo, really.
? I have been working poor all my adult life, currently making about as much money relative to real inflation as I did stocking shelves and pushing carts for Sam's Club when I was 18 in 1991. But I do have an English degree, I have written two books and a screenplay I have never bothered to publish, and a million words besides, so thank you for that comment. Not sure what you mean with that second sentence.
Nicely summarized points about the trajectory of masculinity from natural roots to the point of egregiousness, and the resulting backlash, and now the alternative trajectory occurring of the feminization of society. Ive wondered recently how far this feminization will go before there’s a backlash, and what the nature of that backlash could possibly be. The interconnectedness of the globe, built on the infrastructure born by the hands of men, but obviously supported by women, favors a feminine world where EQ is more necessary than physical command.
Given your point about masculinity having its origins in the dynamics of nature, I wonder at what point in the future does that ever fit in again? Honestly, what is the point of men if there is little to no role left for one of their fundamental natures? Do they morph into a different type of gendered being whose qualities are more adapted to future societies?
Super weird to think about.
Worth considering - perhaps the Era of the Algorithm has decoupled one half of the culture from the other, so that instead of a pendulum swinging, the backlash arrives early for one side, and never for the other
There are paragraphs in some of your pieces that deliver an experience not so different from that of watching a basketball player steal the ball and make a fast break for the opposite end of the court to score — you see the shape of the play as it’s unfolding, you see risk and uncertainty and ambition, you feel a certain suspense — will he pull this off? — and then, in a blink, boom, slam dunk.
Gotta admit I’m really hoping the “20-volume Dave Chapelle Review” is a bit of Wesley’s characteristic dry humor… but I suppose if anybody can make such a thing readable it’s him.
Chappelle's anxiety that led to his "abrupt self-cancellation" wasn't misplaced (an assertion I'm almost certain Wesley agrees with, based on my reading of The Soul of Yellow Folk). It's important to be clear-eyed about this, and not succumb to gauzy nostalgia (and I'm as guilty as anyone) for the good ol' days of the 70s-90s, when too often, we were color-blind only when convenient. Lazy stereotypes of entire generations of human beings obfuscates rather than elucidates; far more binds the generations than distinguishes them from each other. Human nature persists.
From my seats on the 25 yard-line of the Alabama-Tennessee game Saturday night -- Roll Tide -- some observations. They're not fresh -- I've had them before, I've been to dozens of 'Bama games in my lifetime and grew up in this state -- but they still, somehow, startle me anew.
Before the game, the 1971 Alabama football team was honored. Along the south endzone stood fifty or so gray-headed white men, many of them of almost comically slight stature. While 'Bama technically integrated in 1971, only two black players were on the squad that year. That 1971 team won an SEC title but was absolutely thrashed by a fully-integrated Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl for the national championship.
1971: that's 35 years after Jesse Owens -- incidentally, an Alabama native -- dominated the Berlin Olympics; that's 639 homers into Hank Aaron's -- another Alabama native -- record-breaking 755; that's 638 homers into Willie Mays' -- yet another (!) Alabama native -- illustrious, arguably-GOAT career. And the University of Alabama's legendary football program was only taking the most tepid baby steps toward allowing black athletes on the team.
Today, of course, 80% of the team, and 90+% of the starters, are black. The makeup of the attendees remains overwhelmingly white. It makes for an interesting, and not altogether unhealthy, dynamic -- as long as we're playing well, that is.
It was homecoming. At halftime, I went to get some Dreamland BBQ nachos while my 12 year-old daughter remained in her seat to take in the festivities. While I stood in line, I heard a loud boo go up from the crowd -- during halftime, mind you. When I returned to my seat, my daughter asked me why the crowd booed the homecoming queen, but cheered loudly for the runner-up.
So that was the boo, I thought. I explained it to her: the runner-up was a well-known and popular softball player, a pitcher who had led the Tide to the Women's College World Series last year, a tall and stately blonde, quite popular on campus and well-known throughout the state.
(This isn't going where you think it is.)
The homecoming queen was also a white woman. She was the "Machine-backed" candidate for homecoming queen, certainly the daughter of an influential, old-money family. What is the "Machine"? It's a secret society, a remnant of the Theta Nu Epsilon suprafraternity, that controls student affairs at the University. It's made up of secret representatives from the most prestigious fraternities and sororities on campus. It's been running the campus for over a hundred years, using the Student Government Association as a sort of training ground or farm league for state politics. It rarely loses, and when it does -- or even thinks it might -- it engages in conduct that makes Watergate look laughably tame.
Why the boos? There was a widespread belief in the student body -- only 20-25% of the students are members of the Greek system -- that the Machine would rig the election. And, as it turns out, they did: for starters, the Machine-controlled SGA simply ignored the run-off requirement and gave the crown to their candidate with only 47% of the vote. The softball player had received 45% of the vote. There were three other non-Machine candidates who shared the remaining 8% of the votes.
Same ol' shit.
Reflecting on Saturday night, I reread an Esquire Magazine expose of the "Machine" from 1992. Then, our color-blind, Gen-X fraternity brother -- trying to navigate calls to force the integration of the Greek system following an incident where two white Kappa Delta pledges had donned full blackface to attend a "Who Rides the Bus?"-themed fraternity party costumed as pregnant black women -- articulated his own dream of racial harmony and the conditions under which he'd accept integration of his particular fraternity, Kappa Alpha:
" "I'd love to be president [of Kappa Alpha] when there's one [a black person] who's right," he says. He seems sincere. "But I don't see it in the next five years. I'd love to give him a break. Someone who really, really wants to be a K.A....Someone who appreciates southern heritage....Someone with the same view I have, that there's niggers and there's blacks and there's rednecks and white people." "
'Bama would go on to win the college football national championship that year, 1992, when they routed Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Black players like George Teague, Antonio Langham, Sam Shade, Eric Curry, John Copeland and Tommie Johnson led a legendarily-stingy Crimson Tide defense to a stunning upset over the heavily-favored 'Canes. Our golden boy white quarterback was 4 of 18 for 13 yards and 2 interceptions.
Our friendly, color-blind, Gen-X, Kappa Alpha member almost certainly celebrated that victory and thumped his chest harder than anyone.
Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that integration had to be forced on the UA Greek system -- in 2014. Not that it has made much difference.
But perhaps it will surprise you to learn that Alabama continues to labor under the longest written constitution in the world -- no, literally -- the 1901 Constitution, whose explicit purpose, as articulated by the president of the constitutional convention during his opening speech, was "to establish white supremacy in this state." It's been remarkably successful in preserving the power of the landed gentry, the former slave-owning plantation farming families, while ensuring that the descendants of slaves stuck in the Black Belt and poor whites stuck in the Appalachian foothills have virtually no prospects. And, like the stupid, petty homecoming queen race at the University of Alabama in 2021, the "Machine" of that time quite openly stole the election ratifying the 1901 Constitution, going so far as to stuff ballot boxes in Black Belt counties with more votes than there were citizens - literally.
No, Chappelle's anxiety wasn't misplaced at all. He sensed something that was - and is - real: a failure, our failure, to live up to what we say we want, which is to see and treat others as full-bodied individuals, regardless of skin color, regardless of social station or power, and our unwillingness to courageously confront real injustice and real entrenched power, and a tendency, our tendency, to treat tokenism and smiling at black people and rooting for black athletes and laughing at black comedians and "having black friends" like the endpoint of racial progress. It's not, and he was right to sense that he was being used in that way, even if it was unintentional.
The answer isn't to throw out the creed, though. The creed is good, right, and just -- indeed, the only just and workable principle for a civilized society. Chappelle has re-emerged to courageously fight for the creed, even as so many of us have cowered in the corner as the Successor Ideology terrorizes the land. Certainly, many will seek to use Chappelle in the same way they used him before. I hope it won't be too many. He's got something very important to say.
Love the post. I was at UF in the 1992 (Blue Key). Very similar dynamics. I'm not sure how much has changed in 30 years, but at the time we often spoke of The Machine and admired its ruthless efficiency.
Outstanding, Sir!
To add a brief thought before I shut down for the day: Race, yah. Like I said: Outstanding. But, to me? Bigger problem is the Machine. And to me the Machine as represented by the college-graduates as opposed to the 2/3 that don't have a 4-year degree. Of those, I've probably mentioned, the bottom HALF of Americans own 2% of the wealth. Would wonder what their views are about life, but who would bother?
Ah well... Grumpy and tired at this time-a day. Plus reading a couple air-heads making the tons of money being political commentators with their own show/podcast/not-sure WHAT all. Krystal Ball, STAR formerly of MSNBC and another man more on conservative side. (Always bad with names. ;) PART of it is hindsight is 20/20. But hearing how GREAT Sanders is and "the multi-racial working class." I just have a LOTTA trouble in my mind about Socialism. And not at ALL sure these two aren't just same-ole radical talking-heads. Hard-ta argue against success, tho.
But NEED to read the POVs so it's all on my own head for spending so much time on these two.
I upgraded to paid service recently because you challenge me like few current writers do, both in your ideas and your use of the language. Reading this post again from the point of view of one of those athletes as a child and young man in the 80's and 90's, and my time as an adult working among men in various trades and warehouses, never able nor willing really to compete in the way you describe, preferring to let my abilities and work ethic speak for me, you elucidate the changes well, and their relation to successor ideology.
I see Chappelle's "self-cancelation," if it is an abnegation of minority culture, homo-social, ironic, transcendence of racism of the past, it seemed to me as much a rejection of the excesses of successor ideology, and also a plea for peace. Chappelle has transcended cancellation in a way, so able to call it out on the carpet so to speak. As a comedian it must be humorous to see the humorlessness of those who have advocated consciously or not for the end of due-process and free speech. I think he is inviting a new backlash against a new PC that is embraced by the empire.
At least in my world, females engaged in this anti-PC conversation all the time. In my world and perhaps because I am older, we referred to our Lesbian friends (to their face) as "lezzies," when we were headed to Skokie, we were going to "Jew town," we made dick jokes a lot, called our girlfriends that had an affinity for gay male friends "queer whores," called our white S. African friends "African-Americans" and lots more. This wasn't way back in the day, PC was already a thing. And still...In closed rooms, this conversation continues with my female friends. We don't blink an eye. We aren't very happy about the so-called pussyification of society, but I find many people with prostrates are just as responsible for this change in the order of things.
"Homosocial." Now that's provocative!
This is an excellent piece. I too am interested to see you're going with it.
I don't agree with the "free pass" that was historically given to men "in the locker room." I tend to think that what you are in private is what you really are. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." - Jesus of Nazareth
That said, if free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, the price is the occasional set of hurt feelings.
Very insightful, one of your best yet. I'm a little older, but I know well the culture you're talking about, and a lot of what you say about it rings true for me. It's interesting how many people seem to still long for it, and pretend it still exists--either because they want to live in it, or because they find it emotionally or politically satisfying to continue reacting against it.
You've made me realize that our cultural arguments today really are rooted in a culture that was in place decades ago.
I am also asthmatic, effete and sensitive. But I'm not of Korean stock and do not descend from Confucian intellectuals.
I am consistently awed by your writing and intelligence.
It's worth noting (sorry if I've been beaten to the punch here, 64 comments is a lot to read today) that the school culture shift of the early 2000s had additional influences -- the Columbine Shooting and the introduction of Common Core. The leadup to Columbine involved that same culture of administrative passivity towards 'rough male socialization' and of hazing those who didn't make the cut -- this is not the only explanation but it's something that schools believe they can control, hence the attacks on "toxic masculinity" and the "war on boys." Common Core restructured schools towards test-taking and related academic soft skills, all of which require a lot of sitting around studying and not a lot of *doing things.* Young boys have a much harder time sitting still for long periods of time than young girls. This has also contributed to the "war on boys" and the absurd over-prescription of stimulants to them to get them to confirm to these new behavioral standards.
The culture shift you describe certainly plays a part in both these events, and personally I think it would be a fool's errand to try to determine if the cultural shift here was a cause or an effect -- it's all part of the same growing snowball. The children who grew up fully in this new school culture (like myself, I was in kindergarten in 2000) are beginning to fully participate in the production and reproduction of culture.
Nice, Sir Wesley, but too tired to give it enough thought. I was literally in a YMCA boys club until we moved away from all my boyhood friends when I was 14.
Alcoholic Mom through puberty. Second wave of Women's Lib in a Matriarchal household with two fem-militant sisters?
Took me decades, but I didn't get any lasting scars that bother me now at 66. Not saying there's much hope. Just that I lucked out.
TYTY Sir!
I must admit, today’s installment leaves me scratching my head a bit about where this line of thinking/reasoning is headed - but I will keep reading to find out.