America's Angriest White Men

[Queersetti]

We're talking here about a process that goes back no further than the 1970s.

Thomas Jefferson envisioned the 1970s and the constitution doesn't prohibit two toned wingtips?

 

[Saint Peter]

Thomas Jefferson envisioned the 1970s and the constitution doesn't prohibit two toned wingtips?

Would brown and slightly browner qualify as two toned?

 

[KingOrfeo]

We can't go back to the Jeffersonian ideal, his was an agrarian economy that could never support 310 million people.

Why not? America's land supports that many, it's a just a question of how it is distributed/organized.

A more recent iteration of the same notion is Distributism, formulated by lefty Catholics in the late 19th/early 20th to provide an alternative to both socialism and capitalism.

According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right[4] and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism), a few individuals (plutocracy), or corporations (corporatocracy). Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership[5] and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order.[6]

Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism,[7][8] which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative.[9] Thomas Storck argues that "both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernizing and anti-traditional forces. Further, some distributists argue states that socialism is the logical conclusion of capitalism as capitalism's concentrated powers eventually capture the state, turning it into socialism.[10][11] In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life".[12]

But, the industrial side of it is necessarily based on small-scale craft-and-cottage industries; I've never seen any explanation of how any large-scale industrial enterprise -- and in many industries an enterprise must be large-scale to be at all efficient -- could be organized along Distributist lines.

Which I guess goes back to your "agrarian economy" objection -- we can only get that much food out of the ground with so little labor by mechanized farming, which requires high industry to support it.

Of course, we also saw some "small is beautiful" thinking in the 1960s and '70s -- but, the same objections apply.

 

[jeninflorida]

Please don't quote jen, just iggy it.

yeah, because little bitches like you don't like the truth and hate it when someone calls you out on your fucked up bullshit.

 

[Queersetti]

Would brown and slightly browner qualify as two toned?

If it was intentional, yes.

 

[Queersetti]

Why not? America's land supports that many, it's a just a question of how it is distributed/organized.

Cool. I always wanted to be an indigo farmer.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Thomas Jefferson envisioned the 1970s and the constitution doesn't prohibit two toned wingtips?

I meant the economic process that has dispossessed these AWM of their fathers' farms and businesses goes back no further than the 1970s. Is it too late to reverse it?

 

[KingOrfeo]

From The Good Shepherd:

Joseph Palmi [Joe Pesci]: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people [Old-American WASPS], Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson [Matt Damon]: The United States of America. It's ours. The rest of you are just visiting.

The above scene is set in the 1950s, when an Anglo-American could proclaim that with confidence. ISTM that today's AWM are angry because that confidence is gone -- or, perhaps, they are finally starting to work it out that when Wilson said America is "ours" he was not referring to Anglo-Americans in general, but only those of his old-money class.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I'm one-third of the way through the book now. Really fascinating. Kimmel's thesis is that AWM have bad reasons to be angry (a sense of "aggrieved entitlement") and good reasons to be angry (economic marginalization/dispossession), but in either case their anger is misdirected -- they are "sending their mail to the wrong address"; whoever or whatever is to blame for their troubles, it is not minorities or immigrants or feminists or biggummint.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I'm one-third of the way through the book now. Really fascinating. Kimmel's thesis is that AWM have bad reasons to be angry (a sense of "aggrieved entitlement") and good reasons to be angry (economic marginalization/dispossession), but in either case their anger is misdirected -- they are "sending their mail to the wrong address"; whoever or whatever is to blame for their troubles, it is not minorities or immigrants or feminists or biggummint.

You just KNOW it's a good book when Wingnut Nation bands together to blast the book on Amazon reviews.

*puts book on my bittorrent download list*

 

[Skiddles2014]

That could be a good title for a reality show.

 

[KingOrfeo]

That could be a good title for a reality show.

Could it include Ultimate Fighting?