Beginning to leave the fold
Here’s a sad article by a New Yorker named Lester Berg who’s just beginning to discover that any sort of disagreement on political matters can turn certain old friends against him.
It wasn’t that way back when Obama was president, because he and old friend “Jamie” agreed on the wondrousness of Obama:
Jamie and I would speak on the phone, discussing how refreshing it was to finally have a man of eloquence and grace in the White House. We railed against obstructionist Republicans who undermined Obama—like Joe Wilson, who shouted “you lie!” during the 2009 State of the Union address. We were living in momentous times.
Jamie is black—or rather, bi-racial like Obama—but this was no impediment until the “Age of Trump”, the non-eloquent and graceless Trump. But Jamie is by no means the only person Berg starts having problems with—as he discovers when he starts an MFA program in writing in Manhattan:
Like our old Brooklyn neighbourhood (by now, gentrified out of existence), the students varied stupendously by race and culture. I was excited at first, but soon began to sense a disconnect. Too often, their reasons for being there seemed to have little to do with a love of books. Some only read within a single genre. Others actually bragged about not reading at all. And the social climate could be tense—something I learned for the first time when a gay black classmate warned me to “be careful” before commenting on his story, which was centered on a gay black character. I thought of the verve and confidence that Jamie had always shown when discussing his identity as an author and, as politely as I could, explained that I didn’t have to be careful, because I could say whatever I wanted. Then I went on, as I’d initially intended, to praise the story for its vivid language.
A few weeks later, while scouring the racks at the school’s annual library book sale, I bumped into my professor. I held up a used hard-cover of E. L. Doctorow’s 2005 novel The March, which I’d scored for just a dollar. He looked at the book and asked, “Who’s he?” Doctorow was arguably the greatest living historical novelist in America. The professor, who taught a class on the role of history in narrative fiction, would later become the director of the school’s MFA program.
Berg drops out of the program, and things worsen with old friend Jamie, who had always sounded very full of himself but who now becomes a devotee of politically correct jargon:
“That comment,” Jamie replied. “And other things you’ve said to me…have me asking you to think more about whiteness, privilege, and how it affects every moment of our lives.” In that moment, I realized that the frank and evocative language that once had brought Jamie and me together as children had been replaced by brittle ideological boilerplate, copied and pasted from social-justice Twitter accounts.
Berg has not had any dramatic political change—yet. But what he describes are the stirrings of some sort of political change, and I believe that it’s based at least partly on the fact that the earliest of his formative years were spent in the Soviet Union. He writes:
My small acts of revolt against the political orthodoxy that now filled Jamie’s social-media world represented my first steps outside the New Faith to which the two of us had jointly pledged allegiance during the Obama years. With his stunning division of America into oppressed and oppressor, Coates seemed to be tapping into a moral world that lay beyond traditional Western ideals—a moral world that, in some respects, began to remind me of the one my Russian family had fled in the 1980s.
Berg goes on to say that while he didn’t support Trump in 2016, he had reservations about voting for Hillary, and later on:
After Trump was elected, I continued to seek the company of bookish kin, without fully realizing that they were in the process of excommunicating me. Something shifted in late 2016—and not just with Jamie. An author I’ll call Daniel, who’d solicited my critical feedback in the past, sold his novel to a top publisher, earning a huge advance. I was happy for him, and he was kind enough to thank me in the book’s acknowledgements. But the novel didn’t sell well. And Daniel found a way to blame the bad numbers on Trump’s presidency.
“I hate every Republican, good or bad, with every fibre of my being,” he declared to the world. Trump’s supporters, he said, were all “soulless troglodytes.”…
As a New York writer, I’m supposed to be reflexively hostile to Trump voters—a political breed that often is caricatured as a bunch of racist Appalachian hillbillies. But because of what I do for a living, and who my friends are, I’ve learned that Trump’s enemies can be every bit as Manichean and hysterical as Trump’s supporters. As with a massive gas giant orbiting a smaller body, the gravitational field of Trump’s symbolic presence has come to draw in the petty grievances, career anxieties and existential dread of a whole generation of intellectuals. I hate my boss: Fuck Trump! My spouse hates me: Fuck Trump! No one will buy my book: Fuck Trump! Please, I want somebody to love me: Fuck Trump! Here, at last, was somebody we could freely hate more than we hate each other or ourselves…
…I am no longer in touch with either of the two men [Jamie and another friend]. I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia…
And then Berg adds something very wise and very true:
The price one pays for acceptance by the congregation is, and always will be, one’s intellectual freedom.
Berg’s article reminds me of the beginning days of my political change, when I voiced a few fairly moderate—but still outside the circle of the liberal party line—opinions to certain dear friends and relatives, and in some cases was excoriated for those thoughts. The road can be quite lonely, and I take the problem very seriously because I’ve been there. I applaud Berg, and I understand why he adds this sad statement at the end of his essay:
…I write pseudonymously, afraid to lose what little ground I have gained while taking flight from the apostles who once called themselves my friends.
[NOtE: Although I was anonymous when I began this blog, I never kept my politics a secret from friends and family. What’s more, I started using my name many years ago when I wrote articles, so I’ve not been anonymous for about a decade. But I very much understand why Berg still is anonymous.]
Maybe changers need to think a little more deeply and critically about why they “need” to be anonymous in the first place; and what that says about the moral universe they really inhabit.
Having said that, the following passage is really great, and the last sentence could be a springboard for a deeper critical analysis of the progressive mind.
Perhaps this world of fear and chaos is what progressives mean when they refer to “the human condition”. As they experience it, at least.
Mr. Berg finds himself in splendid company:
“The price one pays for acceptance by the congregation is, and always will be, one’s intellectual freedom.”
— Lester Berg
“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”
— Mark Twain
I appreciate this post bringing this to my attention.
Berg being able to compare his adult situation with his earlier Soviet PC environment is important.
PC started as a soviet invention that we mocked in the 70’s, but which youth have internalized.
We mock these SJWs, yet they are captives who need to be set free.
Opportunity to edit went missing….
This is good news that needs to be experienced by another hundred million people in the US.
I fully appreciate the seriousness of the topic, but I had the best couple laughs reading it.
“Who’s he?” Also, “…[no] political change — yet.”
I vividly remember sitting at the dinner table with my visiting elderly parents and middle aged brother. Brother was riffing about grievances and against the world in general (Bush 43 was president), in a fashion only slightly more rational than DNW’s excerpt above. My father, who could be quite forceful and blunt said gently and softly, “How do you expect to move forward productively in your life with such a negative attitude?”
We’ve covered the following observation before, but it is worth restating Stephen Hicks’ surmise that the emotional force that is driving postmodern nihilism is essentially “resentment”, spelled and understood as the French do.
Do some people hate themselves and the world for what they are “as found”? It’s hard to conclude otherwise, when the primary existential problem according to rad feminists is the “tyranny of biology”. Of course their skepticism of the fundamental nature of the male and female and the implications of the sex act, curiously does not extend to the “orgasm” as well; which although rendered essentially otiose when liberated from its connection to that bad old tyranny of biology and reproduction, nonetheless escapes the critical eye.
I guess being a victim of biological imperatives is not experienced as a tyrannical impediment to freedom and a raised consciousness, if it provides good feelz.
But the novel didn’t sell well. And Daniel found a way to blame the bad numbers on Trump’s presidency.“I hate every Republican, good or bad, with every fibre of my being,” he declared to the world. Trump’s supporters, he said, were all “soulless troglodytes.”…
Daniel isn’t going to sell many books to Republicans if those remarks become well known. Recall that Michael Jordan kept silent about politics, because he knew that Republicans bought shoes, also. But Daniel will reply that Republicans are yahoos who don’t read. 🙂
In addition to the English prof who had never heard of Doctorow, the article points out that many he has interacted with in authors’ groups have read very little.
Writers who haven’t read what great authors have written. Oh well.
Fanaticism, zealotry = excessive intolerance of opposing views. This is what the progs have become – fanatics. And it’s not pretty.
What is it about humans that we can become so certain of our ideas that we can dismiss those we disagree with out of hand? Especially when we have not read some of the Great Books that are the basis of Western Civ. Steven Pinker, in his book, “The Blank Slate,” avers that open mindedness – closed mindedness is a genetic trait. An idea, which if true, doesn’t auger well for the future of the republic because all those closed minds are simmering with intolerance and cannot change.
The Thirty Years War was the result of religious intolerance. Millions died as a result of political intolerance during the Twentieth Century. Intolerance, whether religious or political, might be the major cause of our wars and inhumanity to one another. How long will it be before all the progressive intolerance of conservative ideas erupts in major violence? I don’t know, but it is worrisome.
Steven Pinker, in his book, “The Blank Slate,” avers that open mindedness – closed mindedness is a genetic trait.
I’m not so sure. My daughter who had a BS in Anthropology from UCLA refused to read “The Blank Slate” and told me she would only road it if I read Gould’s “The mismeasure of Man.” I told her I had read it and had it in my library. She said she still would not read Pinker’s book. Her mother and I are conservative. I think leftism may be contagious. My family was upset with me when I told them that I had voted for Nixon in 1960.
Plomin says DNA is 50% of behavior.
No edit. “would only read it…”
Lolita: “Maybe it was a bad translation.”
Gringo beat me to it. My third big laugh of the day.
What my liberal church didn’t finish, as I shifted conservative, my San Francisco writers’ group did.
The hatred of men and conservatives was rampant. I exchanged writing with one woman for a week and each day she sent me literally a snuff scenario of woman killing a man horribly. I felt sure if I had sent stuff like that to her, a police car would have shown up at my door within a couple days.
Another highlight was a guest writer who had just been accepted by the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He was tall, handsome, gay and black. He read his piece which was a recitation of his traumatic experiences as a gay black teen at some fancy boarding school intercut with bizarre postmodern writing.
After reading, he basked in our positive critiques, then got up and left. No need for him to have to listen to our inferior work and reciprocate.
“What my liberal church didn’t finish, as I shifted conservative, my San Francisco writers’ group did.”
I lived in San Francisco for a long time and while the liberal environment may have in some ways retarded my ideological transformation I think ultimately it contributed quite a bit to it. Because the far left which I believe has now taken over the Democrats was much more visible there a lot sooner in the days when the national party was represented more by sane patriots like Dan Moynihan and Scoop Jackson. They would probably be drummed out of the party today. For instance the anti-Zionism and anti-semitism of the left was apparent there at a time when the national party was still mostly pro-Israel. Not the only reason I changed but it definitely played a role.
I exchanged writing with one woman for a week and each day she sent me literally a snuff scenario of woman killing a man horribly.
then she is going to love the new movie coming out…
anyway, women’s march canceled cause its too white…
[us guys over at mancoat are figuring they didnt think things through enough]
I wonder how many such people haven’t left their original political positions at all. It’s that the parties and groups that they support have left them.
I live in NZ, and I have voted Labour almost all my life. I would still vote for the version of the party that was lead by David Lange and Helen Clark. They were on the Left, but not bound by shibboleths and capable of dealing with the world as it is, not how it should be. Most of all they were careful wards of the economy, and inveterate enemies of state support of industry and distorting “interventions”.
But the modern party has drifted towards the Progressives. Far too much time is wasted on social issues that the government should leave well alone (although not as far as the Democrat left), they’ve started the old-time Labour subsidies to industry and started to pork-barrel to their constituent groups. They’ve started a stupid campaign to return schools to the old centralised system (which is hitting the buffers, as people really don’t want that). Worst of all, they pander to the Greens, who are toxic in their economic ideas.
I have not left them. They have left me.
How many Republican voters would vote Democrat if you could still be anti-immigration, anti-abortion or pro-gun and be Democrat. It wasn’t that long ago.
WARNING: This is a little off-topic.
Those who clicked-through to the full story will have noticed that it was published in the online magazine “Quillette.” As it happens, “Politico” has recently published a story about Claire Lehmann, the young founder of “Quillette.”
The article’s entitled “The Voice of the Intellectual Dark Web.”
I think Quillette has been publishing some interesting articles, so I was also interested in the story about Claire Lehmann.
If anyone else is curious, here’s a link.
https://tinyurl.com/ya9tz2ym
I am a subscriber to Quillette and read more about the “second Sokol Hoax.”
All this makes me think of Samizdat in the USSR. Next year should be interesting as we see just how crazy the Democrats are.
Speaking of leaving the fold, I’ve seen a number of articles recently about droves of people (and businesses as well) escaping various Democrat ruled states and cities to get away from high taxes, crime, bad schools, bad public services, a bad business climate, over-reaching government and it’s rules and regulations, anti-gun laws, etc., and heading for other states and better places to live and set up shop.
I wonder what this might look like on a map tracking—year by year—this out migration and shift in population, wealth, and economic potential.
Snow on Pine:
Unfortunately, once many of them arrive at their new state they vote for politicians who favor the same policies that ‘forced’ them to move in the first place.
Not all of them. I’ve been spending weekends in Arizona for 25 years and finally moved here two years ago. My younger son is thinking about retirement and his wife runs a business from home that she could run anywhere. They will probably move in a few years, less than 5. All of us are conservative.
Colorado got lots of lefty Californians who were looking for “Rocky Mountain High” and got what they wanted. Vermont was wrecked by New Yorkers looking for ski resorts and scenery. Austin Texas is a blue island in a red state. I have relatives in Oregon and, outside Portland and the college towns, the state is conservative. Washington, east of Seattle is conservative. The tax refugees from Taxachusetts ruined New Hampshire but mostly stay around Concord and Portsmouth.
The big cities attract lefties, partly because they like city life and partly because the kinds of jobs they do are focused there.
I have a lefty son who is a trial lawyer. City dweller although he wants to get out of the Bay Area.
Mike K,
Yes, not all of these states go left but the problem in many is that the large metro areas totally wipe out the rural areas by sheer numbers. This is definitely true in Washington where I live and Oregon also I think. If the Seattle area votes 80/20 left then it is impossible for the rest of the state to overcome that and that is what happens here every election. Washington used to be a left leaning state but now it’s lost to the right forever probably and that started with the influx of Californians in the 1990s and has accelerated with the Amazon/Microsoft tech influx of recent years.
That’s why I don’t get it when conservative writers seem to write about these moves as a positive when in fact they are very bad for the right.
I fear I have lost a friend of some 40 years because I made, in an email blog on the arts I send to friends, what I thought was the unremarkable observation that Stalin killed a lot of people, that it was largely ignored at the time because a lot of people wished to think well of communism, and that the NY Times has never renounced the Pulitzer received by Walter Duranty, who lied about the famine and executions.
the problem in many is that the large metro areas totally wipe out the rural areas by sheer numbers
This is also true of California. I was in Washington in the late 50s and recall when eastern Washington wanted to secede and call themselves the State of Lincoln. Washington was also a blue state and nearly went dry in the 40s. The liquor industry avoided that with an initiative that established the state liquor stores and all profit went to the U of W medical school.
I had 10 acres on Vashon for about 15 years to build a retirement home but finally sold it.
don frese:
My sympathies.
Some will respond by saying “well, he (or she) was never really a friend to begin with, if that was enough to make the person end the friendship.”
My answer is that although that may be true in some abstract way, the person sure seemed like a friend and acted like a friend and felt like a very real friend till now, and to lose such a friend is a very great loss.
Don Frese,
Leftists have always supported murderous communist dictators and they will never admit their support was wrong because their intentions were good.
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/1998/04/30/american_leftists_were_pol_pots_cheerleaders/
Ray, that is an excellent op-ed by Jeff Jacoby. Thanks very much for the link.
Ray,
RIghtists have always supported murderous non-communist dictators and will never admit their support was wrong because we and they share common enemies.
I don’t see many Republicans making the argument that the Saudis can’t really be key US allies on the basis that their politics are abominable. I think the Saudis are every bit as evil as Stalin, and is repels me that countries chummy up to them.
So, in this instance, I’m not sure the Right has even one leg to stand on. When the right denounces dictators uniformly, then we can slate the Left for supporting them.
I’m fully expecting a “but that’s different answer because …”. Don’t bother. It isn’t different. Remember the US supported the Taliban when it was anti-USSR, so try to defend that.
The Left is a closed group. They have RULES that MUST be obeyed, completely and instantly. All who don’t are Satan’s Spawn. (Not that they believe in Satan. And MUST be expelled into the outer darkness.)
Tuvea–My wife and I voted with our feet, and are now settled in the South–a warmer climate, much lower taxes, low population, far more realistic and affordable real estate prices, a slower pace of life, and the people are markedly lower in key and friendlier than they were up North. It’s a small town atmosphere.
However, this area, near the ocean, back then with one main road, and mostly swamp and forest in the 1950s, has been “developed,” is now top listed in all sorts of Retirement magazines, and is now one of the fastest growing towns in the country, and experiencing a missive influx of Northerners.
So far the local government has played things just right, trying to preserve the low density, low traffic, historic buildings, natural environment, and overall ambiance that made this place so attractive. Notably within, say, 15 miles, we have many hundreds of very good locally owned/run restaurants, and just a minimal number of chains compared to the North.
But, I’m worried about just the problem you mentioned, people from the North settling here and, then, wanting to “modernize, “update,” “expand,” and “improve” things, bring in a lot more people, housing, stores, and traffic–and, believe me, we have plenty of stores already, pushing for/voting for exactly the same style of government management and policies that made the places the fled from so unbearable.
who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia…
CP is worthy of respect. She’s capable of telling the orthodoxy of PostModern Feminism to stuff it. I don’t agree with her on many things, but she’s not an idiot parrot.
Writers who haven’t read what great authors have written. Oh well.
NOT just “writers”. People who TEACH writing. People who organize writer’s workshops. People who supposedly claim the capacity to understand writing well enough to understand different techniques.
I have substantial reasoning capacity — such that I taught myself Calculus when I was 15 using a college text from the local library… But I’ve never really studied philosophy. So a serious philosophy student/teacher can probably run rings around me, if they are familiar with Locke and Hegel and Kant. Because people who devote their lives to understanding philosophy have likely thought of much of what I would arrive at, and have substantial reasons for not agreeing with it — especially in terms of patterns of reason and general ideas about philosophy.
Likewise, I would expect that, if I truly wanted to learn writing, one obvious part of the process is to understand the various techniques and notions of descriptive processes which one might apply during the activity. You need imagination to construct a plot, and experience to construct a character, but the written techniques one might use to express and describe both are constrained by what you can invent and by what others have taught you.
If the teacher doesn’t know jack or his smelly companion more than me on how to write, then the two of us are both getting left pretty ignorant and borderline incompetent at our craft.
Some people can rise above that, but not many people have inherent natural talent that they can invent a genre all on their own — and doing so via being Poe, or Heinlein, or Doyle is far far harder than it was for them, because you’re competing with people who built on what they constructed and producing far more polished works than even they are capable of.
You could take Babe Ruth and put him on today’s baseball field and probably he’d get struck out every time**. The game has changed, the minimum level of athletic ability is far higher across the board. Watch old football films to see how the playing ability of modern football players has changed. Those lumbering greats of old would be swarmed in no time at all by a modern opposition and brought down before they’d even started moving.
The level of competition continually improves. The only hope you have of actually competing today is to learn from your forebears. Not 100%, but at least some of it.
=========
**Mind you, natural athleticism does bear out. Take the real “babe” Babe Ruth, in swaddling clothes, and give him a modern training regimen in place of hot dogs and beer, and modern coaching, and he’d still likely be one of the greatest living players. But not if you pick him up at 22 and bring him to 2018.
“…RULES that MUST be obeyed…”
And if you don’t obey them, then THE LEFT feels that you are victimizing THEM!
(That’s right, they have all the bases covered….)
In any event, Mr. Berg, all things being relative, should consider himself lucky:
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/276672/cunys-anti-semitism-problem-and-the-campaign-to-fire-michael-goldstein
Not just Lester Berg but perhaps Jonathan Turley, too:
“Democrats are now defined by Trump the way that antimatter is defined by matter, with each particle of matter corresponding to an antiparticle.”
The link:
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/423178-donald-trump-is-completely-transforming-the-democrats
“The price one pays for acceptance by the congregation is, and always will be, one’s intellectual freedom.”
Exceptions may be rare, but they do exist.
https://www.agirlandhergun.org/2012/01/09/an-open-letter-to-the-anti-gun-folks/