Commenter Archive

I don't want to be the old geezer who blames everything on the internet, but it seems to me that all the touted ability to hook people up with like minded individuals has a lot of people missing the diversity in their own backyard. That diversity used to keep these sorts of opinions in check, even though they were held by people, by isolating people, it allows them to flower. Not a new idea, but one I think holds.

I've been reading Jeffrey Hall's Japan's nationalist right in the internet age: Online media and grassroots conservative activism, and he has this

In his book, Yasuda portrays Zaitokukai [an ultra-nationalist and far-right extremist political organization] as a product of feelings of economic uncertainty among the working classes of Japanese society. In other words, they feel socially and economically isolated, and can experience positive emotions by channeling their ill feelings into hatred of Koreans.

Sociologist Higuchi Naoto conducted interviews with Zaitokukai participants and came to very different conclusions. Instead of finding social or economic anxiety as infuences on joining the movement, Higuchi found that many of his interviewees had been raised in politically conservative households or had been involved in conservative political activities for the year.90 The idea that they are just “ordinary” people who, due to anxiety, join nativist groups was misleading. Most of Higuchi’s interviewees were already ideologically on the right:

 

"There are, in this sense, specific problems with Yasuda’s opinion that Zaitokukai is made up of “your neighbors.” There are certainly many activists in the nativist movement who are “ordinary people” with jobs, but ideologically they are not “neutral or apolitical”; they are conservative."

 

People who are already subscribed to a conservative worldview are more receptive to how nativist groups frame and introduce information. Higuchi sees these nativists as an outgrowth of the existing nationalist and revisionist movement of the 1990s and a conservative establishment that already encouraged hostility toward Korea and China. He also argued that the geopolitical situation in Asia has aided in their rise. Issues such as war responsibility, the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea, and ongoing territorial disputes fueled hatred toward people from Korea and China. Higuchi found that the attitudes of Zaitokukai members toward immigrants from countries such as the Philippines and Brazil, who tend to have a lower socioeconomic status than Korean and Chinese immigrants, were not particularly negative. This is very different from the observations of scholars of the far-right in Europe and the United States, for whom the perceived economic or cultural threats from immigrant laborers, or demographic replacement, are central ideas.

That last point is interesting, as it suggests that there is a stronger class element involved in this for the West than it is for Japan.

Are you in contact with your Apache and Hopi cousins? 

I'm in touch with my cousing Peter - the Apache - on Facebook. After Charlie retired from FDNY he painted houses, and Peter basically apprenticed with him and continues to work as a house painter and general handyman. He had some bumpy times, but is all good now. Peter has the best family pictures and has become kind of the family archivist.

My cousin Tara - the Hopi - grew away from the family a bit at some point, although she and her daughter Kateri are still in touch with Charlie's kids.

The Eddie aspect is even more moving, if that's even the right word. No wonder you miss them.

Charlie and his wife (and the rest of them) sound like wonderful people.

They were a pretty remarkable crew.

FWIW, the younger guy on the left, sitting in front of my grandfather (older Archie Bunker looking guy in the white shirt) was Eddie Gonzales. Not a brother by birth, but basically unofficially adopted into the family.

Eddie's father abandoned him, and his mother was an alcoholic. Eddie himself was gay, which nobody ever talked about but everyone knew, and nobody really cared about one way or the other. He was good friends with the brothers, so he came and lived with them and my grandfolks raised him along with the rest of the gang.

Eddie was at every family gathering and was just part of the family, full stop. Just a part of the larger Richmond Hill crew.

So yes, this weird dilemma of people who are personally beautiful - kind and outgoing and generous - but aligned with social and political movements that are... not.

I think a part of all of this for my mom's folks was coming up through the Depression, and then WWII. The brothers were too young to serve in the war, but my father (guy in front of the Christmas tree holding the baby - you can only see the top of his head) did, and they all dealt with rationing etc.

They were basically poor - not desperately, but poor enough to have to watch every nickel and do without a lot of things. Like everyone around them was. Tucky - the brother in the middle with the big smile - was offered a full basketball scholarship to Columbia, and wasn't able to go, because the family needed him to work and bring money into the house.

My sense is that all of those experiences - the anxiety of having just barely enough, the sacrifices around wartime - gave them an ethic that you pull together and help out whoever needs help.

But lots of folks came through all of that and were not quite as open-hearted.

This crew and their kids were my people, really - my father's family were all in Georgia, and I did not see them as often, many of them I never even met. They were a joy to know, and I miss them.

Vance strikes me as a person who has no values beyond self-promotion and no sincerity. He'll say or do what is convenient at the time. He might decide to dump the Hindo wife to marry the wife of the martyred Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Are you in contact with your Apache and Hopi cousins? I'm curious about how their lives turned out. My shirt tail relatives of that generation had a native adopted daughter, but their attitude was condescending and eventually she cut off all connection.

As for how good people do bad things. I think partly it's because they are good people that they can do bad things. They know their own lives, their values, their actions and think that people like them aren't doing anything bad. That plus the harm they do is an abstraction to them.

Charlie and his wife (and the rest of them) sound like wonderful people. It's so valuable to hear the specifics, and to be reminded (and one needs to be reminded) that people are complicated, and that they contain multitudes. Sometimes, like in that old Dirk Bogarde movie, you have to focus on the singer not the song.

In color.

I'm resigned to the impossibility of figuring out how otherwise good and smart people have horrible politics. I can only observe, without having a worthwhile explanation, that they sometimes do.

It's much easier if the person in question is plainly an a**hole.

I think you make a good point about people being complex. So the first question that's worth asking about someone whose politics you question is Why are you supporting this horrible person for office. The answer can be surprising.

Take one obvious example that most of us are old enough to remember. There are people who supported Clinton both times that he won, simply because they liked the platform he ran on and despite his character flaws. There are others who opposed him, not because they necessarily disliked his platform, but because they believed that character matters in elected officials and found his objectionable. (Personally, I think him a pretty appalling excuse for a human being, even if I like many of the things he tried to do while in office.)

Things get more complex when you find people that have essentially identical views on the issues. Faced by a candidate whom they agree with on some issues and disagree with on others, they may vote differently based on how they prioritize the various issues.

Certainly there are extreme cases -- Trump, for example, has absolutely nothing that I can see to recommend him. Unless you somehow manage to see politics are merely a show, with zero real world consequences. But in general people, and circumstances, are rarely binary good/bad.

But cleaned up kinda misses the point, doesn't it?

All cleaned up...

Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?

In pretty much any country, no group has a stronger work ethic than immigrants. About the only exceptions are places where most of the immigrants are retirees or the idle rich.

The US is unusual only in the numbers of immigrants that we have been blessed (and we have been blessed) with. Not unique, certainly, but unusual.

I have a long time friend, Kile Smith, who is actually a living breathing composer. He heard a recording of the Brahms Requiem when he was a teenager and decided, without much other background or context other than playing some bass and singing in his high school chorus, that that was what he wanted to do.

I met Kile when we both attended Bible College in the mid 70's. Long story for another time. Suffice it to say we became good friends, went our separate ways for a while, and then reconnected a few years ago courtesy of Facebook. For which I'm grateful, Kile is a good person to know.

Most serious arts have a sort of "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" aspect to them. They require a lot of time - hours and hours and hours - of hard work, often time spent alone, with no particular guarantee that you are going to get anywhere. Composing has the additional complication that, to actually realize your work, you have to get someone to perform it. Which introduces a kind of chicken-and-egg thing - if you don't really have a reputation yet, how do you persuade someone to invest in performing your stuff? But if nobody ever performs your stuff, how do you build a reputation?

It's a challenge.

Kile is my age - 69 and counting - and his work is now performed and recorded a lot, by ensembles with real national and international reputations. But it took decades of hard lonely work to make that happen. If you ask him, he will tell you that his secret is having an "iron butt" - he made himself sit in a chair for hours, day after day, to do the work. He's an extremely humble guy, makes no great claims about his talents, but he also knows his work is good.

And it is good.

Most of his work is sacred choral stuff. He's also done some orchestral work, and has set texts by folks as various as Seneca, Robert Lax, Tagore, and Stephen Foster.

Here is Kile talking about his process in composing an Agnus Del.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMoL-y_vjIY

One of the movements from his setting of texts by Seneca, "The Waking Sun".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0J1pgCAx3g

"The stars shine", from his "Consolation of Apollo", a setting of a text from Boethius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZIe8d5StCw

"Three Spirituals for Piano Trio", an instrumental piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq6cjnOxW00

Kile almost died this year. He had been feeling ill for a while, with weird and non-specific symptoms. Doctors gave him a bewildering variety of diagnoses, none of which led to a useful treatment plan. He finally got an accurate diagnosis of multiple myolema and has spent the last couple of months in the oncology ward at University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He's doing better - still a long road ahead, but improving, with good prospects for managing things and having lots of years to go.

While in isolation, he finished a piece that had been commissioned. I suggested to him (via Facebook IM, it was a no-visitors situation and talking on the phone was too tiring) that he might want to take his condition as an opportunity to rest for a bit, but apparently he wasn't having it.

Let us work while we have the light.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my good friend with you all.

Thank you, nous, lj and pb.

Also, as a comment on the "work ethic" thing:

Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?

Maybe it's just me, but every time I see someone who looks "immigrant-ish" - which usually means cafe au lait skin tone and an accent - they are working their asses off.

You know those "how many X does it take to do Y" jokes? Here is mine.

How many immigrants does it take to... oh wait, never mind, they're done.

Just saying.

Now, some of us have more Neanderthal DNA than others, but that miscegenation is long, long in the past.

There are far fewer men who self-identify as Neanderthal than there are women who claim that they're married to one.

russell - Grok needs to read the Second Treatise on Government. Also the preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution, which preceded and was a model for the US Constitution.

I'm sure that Grok has been fed those things, but what it "thinks" about those things is just a matter of remixing what others have said about those texts.

Core Tenets of American Culture

The “rugged individualist” myth has been the source of more suffering in America than almost anything else.

And Grok cites Locke to support the claim that it's a "core American value".

You can persuade me that Locke argues for fundamental human rights, belonging to each individual.

I am... less than persuaded that Locke argued for "rugged individualism". If anything, Locke argued for a social contract, where we all agree to surrender some personal liberties in order to live in society, as opposed to in a state of nature.

Grok needs to read the Second Treatise on Government. Also the preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution, which preceded and was a model for the US Constitution.

Oh, I expect that they would be satisfied with establishing whether there had been miscegenation in the last generation or two. The old 1 drop approach having died of all the mixing in the century and a half since owners could, and did, rape their slaves with impunity.

One could try just going by melanin, except that would restrict testing to late winter and early spring. Otherwise summer tans start confusing the issue vs permanent sun tans.

I doubt that DNA testing would do what the racists want, since by the old "one drop rule", we're ALL africans, and the thing that gets them riled up is "melanin content", which is only weakly related to DNA.

Now, some of us have more Neanderthal DNA than others, but that miscegenation is long, long in the past. Probably.

And tends to be an enthusiasm of people whose "understanding" of the American frontier is limited to Hollywood movies and old TV westerns. When the reality was that, in the Old West people cooperated to survive. And those who didn't didn't.

Core Tenets of American Culture

The "rugged individualist" myth has been the source of more suffering in America than almost anything else.

As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws.

As a small bit of pedantry, what we had were anti-miscegenation laws.

At least this time around it would be possible (maybe not feasible as a general rule, but possible) to use DNA testing to determine if those laws had been violated. Although there might be an issue with the fact that some (whisper it!) expertise is required to run such tests and interpret the results.

Maybe a compromise could be found (call SCOTUS!) by creating 'metic' and 'helot' as new legal categories. His Orangeness already claims the right to revoke citizenship (iirc it's already in the works to get it to SCOTUS). If he could reduce non-Aryans to helots, the employers, who currently employ the swarthy 'illegals', would have their practices legalized and the base could be persuaded that legally abusable 'not really Americans' could be a boon instead of a nuisance. As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws: Race defilers would lose their full citizenship status which would be OK with SCOTUS since it would not technically make mixed marriages illegal but just discourage them and also further reduce the number of residents eligible to vote. For the privileged their non-Aryan wives could get the legal status of concubine (I think His Orangeness would appreciate that).