The Great Divide – America’s Cultural Split

George Rebane

Victor Davis Hanson continues the ongoing study of how America is coming apart.  In ‘Is America Repeating the Cultural Split Between Rome and the Byzantine Empire?’ VDH lays out the parallels and answers the question in the affirmative.

When the Roman Empire split into its western part centered on Rome, and its eastern part centered on Constantinople, the two halves took distinctly different approaches to governing their territories, with catastrophic results for Rome.  Rome’s hedonistic practices and passive acceptance of a “polyglot and often fractious” tribal cultures and religions (including versions of Christianity) soon focused people on the regional me and mine that came to vie with the you and yours.  By 600AD the disintegration that started around 450AD was complete.

This was not the case in the east – “the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.”  The Byzantine Empire, as it then became known, held together for a thousand years after Rome, finally becoming so over-bureaucratized and corrupt that it was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453AD, and Constantinople became today’s Istanbul.

Today we see the definite analogue of such a split in our red/blue America.  Now “millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past.”  Our conservatives are migrating to the interior, leaving both coastal areas to liberals.

This is producing two distinct Americas.  “While red states welcome change, they believe America never had to be perfect to be good. It will always survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, stays united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.”  The more conservative traditionalists prefer states “where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.”  

America’s Left prefers the blue state “bicoastal salad bowl” as their “model for immigration” where “newcomers can retain and reboot their former cultural identities”, and where “religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory grew out of coastal urbanity and academia.”  Tribalism par excellence.

VDH concludes with – “Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times.  But as in the past, it is far more likely that one state model will prove unsustainable and collapse than it is that either region would ever start a civil war.”  From his mouth to God’s ear.

So here again is the bottom line.  Today a lot of lip service is paid to ‘finding common ground’ and ‘coming together’ and ‘there’s more that unites us than divides us’, etc.  But for any of these attempts at dialogue to bear fruit, we must first and foremost recognize the gorilla in the room – the “radically divergent courses” that have been plotted and embraced by the tens of millions of polarized Americans which give rise to the Great Divide.  If these radically divergent courses are not resolved first, the rest will only continue the rehash of hot air.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

You're right again George.

"Finding common ground" - Alec and Kyle shared a common ground. Both killed someone.

"Radically divergent courses” - of course.

Kyle Rittenhouse, protecting himself from physical attack and shooting his attackers - "You're under arrest". Loudly condemned by any liberal who could spell 'newspaper' or 'reporter'.

Alec Baldwin, waving at the camera director, then shooting her - "You're free to go". Can you spell 'crickets'?

[Bill Tozer]

We do not live in a society? Maybe A Clockwork Orange society. I watched about 3:40 of this.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1337504503375494&aggr_v_ids%5B0%5D=1337504503375494&notif_id=1635074146667611&notif_t=watch_follower_video&ref=notif

[Bill Tozer]

Short piece from Sharpio. Not bad.

‘The End of Risk and the End of Civilization’

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/ben-shapiro/2021/10/22/end-risk-and-end-civilization

[Don Bessee]

The lamestream has gotten so comfortable being tools of the socialists' dems that they can not tell what is a lie anymore. -

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/10/24/washington-post-forced-to-admit-they-lied-after-pretending-fck-joe-biden-chant-was-lets-go-brandon/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

More VDH

https://www.facebook.com/304600892905134/posts/4825483860816792/

[Bill Tozer]

“If these radically divergent courses are not resolved first, the rest will only continue the rehash of hot air.” —-Dr. Rebane

This probably goes here. Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan have a sit down chat. Interesting points discussed over two days, but this nine minute chip gets down to aspects of the Great Divide from another viewpoint. Like having a local art club of go out to the park and each paint a picture of the same great old oak tree. End up at the same place, but each has a different painting.
From 2018

‘Joe Rogan's Thoughts on the Growing Political Divide’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-EtocAnlQA

That was then. When one believes that all the good angels are on one side and all the bad angels are on the other side, well.... it’s called irreconcilable differences. We tried to work it out and offered the benefit of doubt too many countless times. Shame of me for getting stung every time.

Going back awhile, remember when the Left was all red faced screaming ‘Stop the Vitriol!’ with talk radio (Rush, the King of the Great Hate Mongers) being blamed for Gabbie talking one in the melon. When they found out he did not listen to Limbaugh cause the shooter was not into Rush, they blamed Sarah Palin, ROFLMAO.

Vitriol sounds like a rather quaint word in 2021 compared to back then. Or mayb not. But things have gotten much worse, I tell ya.

Vitrol.

1.
cruel and bitter criticism.
"her mother's sudden gush of fury and vitriol"
2.
ARCHAIC•LITERARY
sulfuric acid.
"it was as if his words were spraying vitriol on her face"

Where does all that anger come from?

[scenes]

"Where does all that anger come from?"

It's awfully hard to beat anger as a group motivator, so you can argue that any belief system that is really successful requires being pissed off. Any other underlying prime movers would tend to be ignored, it's just cultural evolution. Whether feeding the beast requires destruction of the enemy or merely submission remains to be seen.

Since the Left has essentially expelled the working class and instead embraced identity politics as it's political Strong Force, you get the special addition of grouping large swathes of angry people by physical cues. Everyone knows which part of the rec yard they can hang out in. That's baked into the cake of humanity and doesn't take much to exhibit.

Now, the interesting variant of anger is that shown by privileged urban whites. It's happened before with dire consequences, particularly in military-aged nonworking/underworking people. There's probably something that strongly rhymes in the Russian and French revolutions, various happenings in China. Peter Turchin makes the case for a thing he calls 'elite overproduction'.

Perhaps the anger memes are simply a biochemical side effect of boredom (particularly physical) and lack of family life at an age when it always used to occur. With enough machine intelligence, maybe a person could predict social uproar with enough data. Simply feed in detailed demographics/economics/etc. Move away from Trantor when necessary.

OTOH, Mother Jones has it all figured out. FOx NeWs!!!!
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/american-anger-polarization-fox-news/

[George Rebane]

scenes 639am - If I recall my Peter Turchin, does he not have a theory of periodicity in the strifes of human affairs? I think he was predicting it was getting close to the time for upsetting apple carts.

[scenes]

"If I recall my Peter Turchin, does he not have a theory of periodicity"

Several. Some periodic (things like father-son cycles) and some that are purely predictive (birth of empires on inter-cultural fault lines when existential external threats cause in-group cooperation). Elite overproduction appears more the cyclical variety as everything flies apart and you get to start over.

They appear to be trying to build history databases for modeling. (Seshat project? something like that). Extracting signal is as hard as ever. I suppose if people were better at it, economics might actually be useful as a discipline.

The famous chart from a decade+ ago is this.

shorturl.at/alxD7

[Bill Tozer]

Somebody don't like white folk. She is big and boy is she pissed. Got revenge on her gentle mind.

'We Gotta Take These Motherf***ers Out’: Rutgers Assoc. Professor Rages Against White People

"...white people showed up being raggedy and violent and terrible and trying to take everything from everybody.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-gotta-take-these-motherfers-out-rutgers-assoc-professor-rages-against-white-people

[scenes]

re: BillT@4:37

I went through the jumps to find the original video and gave it a watch. (bummer that most news is news sites reporting on other news sites).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efjZqmVKm9Q

Worth a view, skip around if necessary. A fair amount of word salad but it gives you an idea where the S. Frischs of the world are coming from. 'Women's and Gender Studies' as a discipline shows the state of the times in any case.

A quick scan through her published work has the typical issue of being all about *her*.
"Love No Limit: Towards a Black Feminist Future (In Theory)"
"Does Anyone Care about Black Women?"
"A'n't I a Lady?: Race Women, Michelle Obama, and the Ever-Expanding Democratic Imagination"
"How Sarah Got Her Groove Back, or Notes Toward a Black Feminist Theology of Pleasure"

in specialty journals filled with the same sort of thing. M. Obamas treatise is the same sort of thing of course.

I'm working on a general theory of 'scholarship' that is all about ME and how I feel about matters. It appears to be a hall of mirrors filled with ad hoc vamping about the writer. It all has the smell of something that's as rigorous as a conversation over lunch.

[Don Bessee]

Why would they think creepy grampa joe would treat them any different than the rest of the country?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/progressives-bamboozled-biden-meeting-002400642.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink

;-)

[Don Bessee]

Reeducation anyone? -

AT&T Corporation is putting its employees through a racial reeducation program that teaches that “American racism is a uniquely white trait” and tells white people that they are “the problem,” according to a new report.

According to internal documents obtained by City Journal’s Christopher Rufo, the company implemented an initiative called the Listen Understand Act last year, which is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including intersectionality, systemic racism, white privilege and white fragility. The program peddles left-wing causes including reparations, defunding the police and transgender activism, according to Rufo.

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/t-employee-training-program-says-222048736.html

;-)

[scenes]

not a bad article as such things go. Basically making the elite overproduction argument.

https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-generation-that-wrecked-the-media

[Bill Tozer]

‘Our Degenerate Elites Are Losing Control And Lashing Out In Desperation’

The increasingly authoritarian tendencies of our elites and the institutions they control is a sign of their weakness and impotence and loss of control.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/28/our-degenerate-elites-are-losing-control-and-lashing-out-in-desperation/