However, the core achievements of the post-1950s cultural revolution are all largely safe in the hands of the counter-revolution. None of the major gains are really up for grabs with a few exceptions.
They are access to abortion (which will only be seriously curtailed in some states) and the fact that the counter-revolution also contains crazies — old style white supremacists, vaccine deniers. (But that's politics — just as the left contains Stalinists, Maoists and all kinds of riff-raff. The counterrevolution has also got all kinds of bad things associated with it from my point of view — from being hostile to climate action to being headed up by a criminal — The Donald.
But beyond that, the cultural-revolution is largely safe. There are no great resets on the rights of women, black or gay people. Just a new allergy to identity politics — which should be welcomed.
And that raises the question of what went wrong for the revolution. I'd say two things — its MO was successful in cowing centrists, preventing them from responding to extremists. Nicola Sturgeon sent a rapist who was born a man to a woman's prison. What a woman was suddenly became contentious. I guess that's a compliment to the savvy of activists who managed to put that on the agenda. But leaders of major political parties couldn't say what a woman was. New circumlocutions, genuflexions and pieties increasingly infest corporate and bureaucratic life — as sent up in the TV program Utopia. These things matter because they completely hamstring our ability to discuss difficult subjects.
We can say that domestic violence hurts aboriginal women particularly, but not that aboriginal men are major perpetrators. I'm just reading a book now by David Goodhart documenting the social costs of family breakdown. He notes that children of single-parent families have substantially higher rates of crime and poverty than the average, but that that has been airbrushed out of National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children stats so as not to stigmatise single-parent families. And on it goes.
And worst of all, the cultural revolutionaries somehow built a revolution that obliterated awareness of the unique privileges and injuries of class.
I’m just not buying your premise. The revolution you describe, being a cultural one, reached its heights in the 1960s. Whatever counter-cultural revolution there was, namely the conservative movement intellectually led by William F. Buckley then dumbed down and cheapened by the Reagan counter-revolution finally petering out with “compassionate conservatism” led by a faux rancher blue blood who lied the country into horrendous war and presided over the destruction of the financial order. Trump doesn’t represent anything other than corruption and nihilism. It’s nothing remotely close to a cultural movement, much less a conservative counter-cultural revolution. Rather, all you are observing is the failure of the neoliberal order that had both right and left flanks. What has been ushered in its place are morally putrid cock-ups wielding power indiscriminately who simply want to join the world totalitarian movement. You’re just trying to intelectualize the fall of a society taken over by oligarchs destined for destruction. Culture my ass.
Thanks for the post Robert.
However, the core achievements of the post-1950s cultural revolution are all largely safe in the hands of the counter-revolution. None of the major gains are really up for grabs with a few exceptions.
They are access to abortion (which will only be seriously curtailed in some states) and the fact that the counter-revolution also contains crazies — old style white supremacists, vaccine deniers. (But that's politics — just as the left contains Stalinists, Maoists and all kinds of riff-raff. The counterrevolution has also got all kinds of bad things associated with it from my point of view — from being hostile to climate action to being headed up by a criminal — The Donald.
But beyond that, the cultural-revolution is largely safe. There are no great resets on the rights of women, black or gay people. Just a new allergy to identity politics — which should be welcomed.
And that raises the question of what went wrong for the revolution. I'd say two things — its MO was successful in cowing centrists, preventing them from responding to extremists. Nicola Sturgeon sent a rapist who was born a man to a woman's prison. What a woman was suddenly became contentious. I guess that's a compliment to the savvy of activists who managed to put that on the agenda. But leaders of major political parties couldn't say what a woman was. New circumlocutions, genuflexions and pieties increasingly infest corporate and bureaucratic life — as sent up in the TV program Utopia. These things matter because they completely hamstring our ability to discuss difficult subjects.
We can say that domestic violence hurts aboriginal women particularly, but not that aboriginal men are major perpetrators. I'm just reading a book now by David Goodhart documenting the social costs of family breakdown. He notes that children of single-parent families have substantially higher rates of crime and poverty than the average, but that that has been airbrushed out of National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children stats so as not to stigmatise single-parent families. And on it goes.
And worst of all, the cultural revolutionaries somehow built a revolution that obliterated awareness of the unique privileges and injuries of class.
Interesting read. But 10 years late I am afraid. Pankaj Mishra has succulently argued this (and more) in his Age of Anger
I’m just not buying your premise. The revolution you describe, being a cultural one, reached its heights in the 1960s. Whatever counter-cultural revolution there was, namely the conservative movement intellectually led by William F. Buckley then dumbed down and cheapened by the Reagan counter-revolution finally petering out with “compassionate conservatism” led by a faux rancher blue blood who lied the country into horrendous war and presided over the destruction of the financial order. Trump doesn’t represent anything other than corruption and nihilism. It’s nothing remotely close to a cultural movement, much less a conservative counter-cultural revolution. Rather, all you are observing is the failure of the neoliberal order that had both right and left flanks. What has been ushered in its place are morally putrid cock-ups wielding power indiscriminately who simply want to join the world totalitarian movement. You’re just trying to intelectualize the fall of a society taken over by oligarchs destined for destruction. Culture my ass.