'Must’ Reads … Or Not

The 1st will make you think, the 2nd might make you stink.

I listened to part of the first one on audio. It is an extremely interesting article about socio -politics over the past hundred years and why the parties are the way they are. 

I think you would get more interest in it though if you posted some excerpts. 

I understand it is a very long article. 

I thought of doing so but excerpts are primary bait for trolls and one should not feed them.

well thats one opinion

others say feed them to death, others subscribe to merciless mockery ... silence has some effect.

Well, it is in the ATLANTIC. In my experience, I definitely will be better informed by the time I get to the end of the reading session. The ATLANTIC is reputable. Give me the day to complete and 'utter' a reply!   (Smile.)

IMO, Packer hit the nail directly on the head.

Stinker for the second is perfect since it describes real stinkers to a T.

After wading through George Packer's novella, the most striking thing is it's hippie relativism.  What Packer describes can be traced to the beginning of the United States.  The political/social history of the United States did not begin in the 1960s or even in the 20th century.  

Free American and Smart America (as Packer calls them) are actually intertwined into an authoritarian anti-establishment sensibility that was evident in opposition to the Federalist advocacy for the Constitution.  While admittedly over simplistic, a marginally adequate description of the intertwining between Free America and Smart America would be a 'meritorious autocracy'.  The 'meritorious autocracy' opposed the limitations imposed and authority granted by the Constitution which would establish an independent authority higher than the 'meritorious autocracy'.  

The authoritarian anti-establishment sensibility of the 'meritorious autocracy' gave birth to the Democratic Party we know today.

Real America and Just America (as Packer calls them) are actually intertwined into a quasi-moral sensibility evident in the Federalist advocacy for the Constitution.  An over simplistic and marginally adequate description of the intertwining between Real America and Just America would be 'moral society'.  The 'moral society' accepts that individuals and government are subordinate to a higher moral authority.  

The quasi-moral sensibility of the 'moral society' gave birth to the Republican Party.  A valid argument can be made that the Republican Party has drifted from the quasi-moral sensibility that prompted the founding of the party.  As the Republican Party drifts farther away from the 'moral society' (or Real America and Just America) then it's likely another political part will emerge.

The point is that the divide that George Packer describes has always been present in the United States.  The founding of the United States required compromises to accommodate that division.  What we are seeing isn't something new; it's actually been a part of the United States from the beginning.

Which novella and why is it pertinent?

Which novella and why is it pertinent?

The novella you linked, written by George Packer.  I read it.  Didn't you?

The drivella written by Haley Mlotek doesn't appear to have involved much thought by the author so doesn't warrant being given any thought.  Mlotek regurgitates a stylized conventional wisdom obtained from pop-culture echo chambers.

I'm sure everyone else read it as an article as did I. You should not let your sponge post for you just because it is drenched in your standard drivel of dystopian derma.

I'm sure everyone else read it as an article as did I. You should not let your sponge post for you just because it is drenched in your standard drivel of dystopian derma.

It's Packer's sponge; not my sponge.  Packer places Free America and Smart America (using his labels) on the same side of the coin.  Real America and Just America are together on the other side of the coin.

Both Free American and Smart America are motivated by authoritarian anti-establishment sensibilities.  Liberals appear to make the mistake that Reagan, Gingrich, and neo-liberal demands for small government also means weak government.  That's simply not the case.  Both Free America and Smart America want meritorious individuals to be the higher authority than government.  That shouldn't be surprising; Thomas Jefferson's 'yeoman farmer' was a description of a meritorious society.  

The frontiers of science and the pursuit of technological progress harken back to the manifest destiny of settlement and western expansion of the United States.  The tech giants are little different than colonial land companies that settled the eastern coast of North America.  And the tech giants are pursuing manifest destiny in the same manner and for the same reasons as colonial land settlers taming the wilderness of the frontier.

Free America and Smart America are only separated by degree and superficialities.  Both share the same hegemony of meritorious authority to guide (and control) governance of those who deplorably lack merit.  The meritorious are the establishment and resist being governed by the interference of those who are inferior.

George Packer correctly places the dots together.  But, apparently, Packer's hippie relativism requires attempting to keep those dots separate rather than connect the dots.  Smart America is loathe to admit that it is little different than Free America; and vice versa.  The political conflict between Free America and Smart America is akin to a family feud between cousins; they're too closely related to ignore they are one family. 

The coin image is your's, not Packer's. Perhaps it is your thinking that is 2 dimensional? The either/or world is a fictional construct that could use a strong dose of neither/nor. Packer is smart enough to deconstruct his 'truth' and start anew. Are you?

The coin image is your's, not Packer's. Perhaps it is your thinking that is 2 dimensional? The either/or world is a fictional construct that could use a strong dose of neither/nor. Packer is smart enough to deconstruct his 'truth' and start anew. Are you?

Yes, as I pointed out Packer employs hippie relativism to make two coins.  One coin has Free America on one side and Real America on the other.  The second coin has Smart America on one side and Just America on the other.  The reality is that the coins are the same; the distinctions are rather esoteric and superficial.

Both coins are really Meritorious America on one side and Moral America on the other.  Packer may delude himself into believing there are significant differences between his two coins to satisfy some sort of arbitrary conventional wisdom but that doesn't deconstruct his 'truth' and certainly doesn't start anew.  

The 'hippies' are long gone, time to move on, they did.

The 'hippies' are long gone, time to move on, they did.

And Ronald Reagan is dead.  So, what does that say about continued influence, legacies, and the establishment?

An arbitrary conventional wisdom that reinforces the influence of the past isn't moving on, starting fresh, or turning the page.  

I finished getting through the first of four "America's" (in the same article). So far, I recommend it. As I thought The ATLANTIC has done it again! Superb and recommended reading. There is so many points in his (Free America) reading that I wanted to pull out and share, that I even settled 'down' on one part to post here: In keeping with the seeder's wishes I will not, however.

It makes me laugh out loud: Free America points out what I have been addressing in many comments of recent on NT. There are (some) conservative people among us who are fighting positive political changes for all they are worth!

Such conservatives "shit" on everything in an effort to keep this country from taking its proper place on the pantheon of time as the premier country of diverse people 'ruling' and harmonizing together. For them, this country is their sphere of influence, power, and of course wealth.

Go ahead!

A character in Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel, Freedom , puts it this way:

“If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life.” 

"The character is almost paraphrasing Barack Obama’s notorious statement at a San Francisco fundraiser about the way working-class white Americans “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.”  theatlantic

One of many "goody's in the article (already) and, I have not yet dived into the "second America"! (Smile.) The writer of the article is "articulatin'" on all cylinders!

(Rich) Republicans and conservative politicians, radio and television shock jocks and anchors respectively, along with the think-tanks they run, reserve the privilege of persuading poor conservatives to "hang in there" because holding on to dirt and rock for livelihood is better than making live 'work' for all of the citizenry!!

Politically, Smart America came to be associated with the Democratic Party. This was not inevitable. If the party had refused to accept the closing of factories in the 1970s and ’80s as a natural disaster, if it had become the voice of the millions of workers displaced by deindustrialization and struggling in the growing service economy, it might have remained the multiethnic working-class party that it had been since the 1930s. It’s true that the white South abandoned the Democratic Party after the civil-rights revolution, but race alone doesn’t explain the epochal half-century shift of working-class white voters.

West Virginia, almost all white, was a predominantly Democratic state until 2000.

If you look at county-by-county national electoral maps, 2000 was the year when rural areas turned decisively red. Something more than just the Democrats’ principled embrace of the civil-rights movement and other struggles for equality caused the shift.

Our second America: Smart America built on personal computers and "winners of the new economy!  A marked difference from Free America.

What was it in and around 2000 that triggered the shift you point out?  Was that when they really felt left behind when the dot-com blitz hit?  Was that when Newt 'the spoot" Gingrich's approach to governing (No compromise because they are the enemy) took roots.

Being a Kansas boy, I can attest to the truths put forth in the book: What's wrong with Kansas".   The GOP created the simple wedge issues of Guns, God, Gay Bashing and Abortion in order to get people to vote against their own best interests....   Fear works with conservatives.  Rush Limbaugh and other conservative bloviators have known this for decades.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker from 1995 to 1999, partially "the Clinton years." The global economy begin in earnest under President Bill Clinton and the status quo proponents in our society did not want to grow with that, in my opinion.