Some days are better than other days

by Maria on September 17, 2013

Ugh. Some days, no matter how many nice or exciting things happening in my personal and professional life, I just feel that we are all, quite simply, fucked.

As a mini-reward for getting a small work thing into my outbox by 0900, I read Russell Brand’s take on his recent adventure award-ceremony-land, when he reminded GQ that its main sponsor, Hugo Boss, used to do a nice line in Nazi uniforms. What’s that trick fiction writers are supposed to do, to make the day to day seem unfamiliar so you look at it with new eyes? Brand’s description of how it actually feels to be the male mega-star walking through a corridor of identically dressed and posed women-as-ornaments shows how messed up it is that anyone could ever think it normal. And it’s not even cool, just “a vision of what squares imagine cool people might do set on a spaceship”. In this instance, Brand is how you might like to imagine yourself if you were fabulously successful, clear-eyed about exactly how, and both brave and talented enough to write beautifully about it. And honest enough to see it’s not even all that brave to give the two fingers to the suits; it’s just somewhat unusual.

“I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter of some and louder still silence of others. I realised that for some people this was regarded as an event with import. The magazine, the sponsors and some of those in attendance saw it as a kind of ceremony that warranted respect. In effect, it is a corporate ritual, an alliance between a media organisation, GQ, and a commercial entity, Hugo Boss. What dawned on me as the night went on is that even in apparently frivolous conditions the establishment asserts control, and won’t tolerate having that assertion challenged, even flippantly, by that most beautifully adept tool: comedy
.”

Walking up Oxford Street around noon, I saw an angry white man trying to pick a fight with a woman in hijab, and a white woman getting onto him for it. At least that’s how I interpreted the scene. A couple of minutes later, as I sat at my bus stop, the white woman came up to check which buses went from it, and the man followed, abusing her with various disgusting and shouted remarks about her appearance and how she shouldn’t dare to be out. I glared at him and made to get up and intervene, and he walked away. But with today’s Sun newspaper’s front page launching its campaign to ban Muslim women from wearing veils in schools, courts, hospitals, banks, airports and other ‘secure places’, but offering to ‘let’ them continue to be veiled in parks and on streets, I’m not surprised this particular bully feels he has a license to abuse and threaten women on Britain’s biggest shopping street.

On the bus home, I cracked open Colin Crouch’s Post-Democracy, feeling sick at the thought that it’s a long and useless decade ago that he wrote:

“… in most of the industrialized world (that), whatever the party identity of the government, there was steady, consistent pressure for state policy to favour the interests of the wealthy – those who benefited from the unrestricted operation of the capitalist economy rather than those who needed some protection from it.”

The book is about how politics is no longer shaped in pro-democratic ways by an organised and engaged working class, among other factors, but is returning to its pre-twentieth century norm of being “something to serve the interests of various sections of the privileged.”

Having just witnessed what I’d guess from his accent was a working class Glaswegian man using a public space to target his presumed enemy, a woman from a minority religion, I couldn’t help feeling that we – the leftists, the progressives, or anyone who gives a political damn about more than their own venal and narrow economic interests – we’ve lost, we’ll continue losing in ever more – and then ever less – outrageous ways, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

But at least it will be entertaining, eh?

Back home, I spotted Cory Doctorow’s take on the Sultan of Brunei’s little brother who has blown almost fifteen billion dollars on tat. (Why, by the way, do the .1% have such awful taste in music? If you could rent almost any musician for a private show, would you really pick Rod Stewart?) Lest anyone think oiligarchs have absolutely anything to offer the rest of us, politically or culturally, we are reminded that;

“It’s a kind of pornography of capitalism, a Southeast Asian version of the Beverly Hillbillies, a proof that oil fortunes demand no thought, no innovation, no sense of shared national destiny: just a hole the ground, surrounded by guns, enriching an elite of oafs and wastrels.”

I’m not saying our crowd don’t have the best songs. And we for sure have the best writers and comedians. But we’re still losing and we will keep losing, while amusing ourselves to death.

{ 98 comments }

1

Harry 09.17.13 at 1:20 pm

What has happened to Russell Brand? Is this what he is like sober? (He’s always reminded me of my step-brother, which is unnerving). This is the best para:

Foreign secretary William Hague gave an award to former Telegraph editor Charles Moore, for writing a hagiography of Margaret Thatcher, who used his acceptance speech to build a precarious connection between my comments about the sponsors, my foolish answerphone scandal at the BBC and the Sachs family’s flight, 70 years earlier, from Nazi-occupied Europe. It was a confusing tapestry that Moore spun but he seemed to be saying that a) the calls were as bad as the Holocaust and b) the Sachs family may not’ve sought refuge in Britain had they known what awaited them. Even for a man whose former job was editing the Telegraph this is an extraordinary way to manipulate information.

2

Anderson 09.17.13 at 1:28 pm

That $15B probably ends up as economic stimulus … at least, I’d like to tell myself that.

3

nnyhav 09.17.13 at 1:41 pm

4

Juno 09.17.13 at 1:54 pm

No, Maria, we are not doomed. Many on both the “left” and the “right” see that the US, the UK, etc. have become more authoritarian, “limited access” societies and are willing to work to reverse this trend.

5

Maria 09.17.13 at 1:56 pm

Harry, it’s hard to pick out a single paragraph from that piece (though I did linger over that one, too). So many magnificent snippets and it flows and builds marvelously.

Yes, I think this is pretty much Brand on the wagon and older, and also as the rare person making full use of the extraordinary life he’s living to observe and point things out.

If you haven’t seen his Morning Joe interview, you’ve missed out. It’s astonishing how he reveals and disrupts a deeply contrived situation by simply pointing out politely what’s going on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDCtFTyw6fI

I’ve heard that he does some classic manipulative NLP type moves from that during the Morning Joe interview. If so, at least he is using his powers for good.

6

Maria 09.17.13 at 1:59 pm

Juno, I’m both willing and working, too. I just don’t feel terribly hopeful, given the deeper historical trends at play. But I hope and would love to be proven wrong.

7

Steve Williams 09.17.13 at 2:00 pm

This, from the Vanity Fair article, was classic tiniest-violin stuff:

“The idea of Prince Jefri working for a living is on a level of when during the Russian Revolution they put the aristocrats in the streets of St. Petersburg in the middle of the winter without any clothes to sweep,” Jefri’s lawyer told the court. “Unimaginable wealth all his life. He’s 55 or so. Now he’s going to go and bus tables?”

Of course such a thing would never happen, but even imagining it has made my evening.

8

Lee A. Arnold 09.17.13 at 2:02 pm

Maria don’t be too depressed, it’s always darkest before the dawn, and all that sort of stuff.

Russell Brand is a case in point. He has a terrific intellect, is a very good writer, is psychologically very perceptive, and has that unusual intuition of crowd attention that only really smart one-man standups earn. He is someone to watch, because he’s got the chops to keep putting it together. Perhaps a great cultural critic. Let’s hope it doesn’t go to his head, because we will all be the better for having him.

9

William Timberman 09.17.13 at 2:23 pm

Oh, lordy. Forty-five years ago, when a fair number of my peers thought this turn on, tune in, drop out stuff might actually have an answer lurking in it somewhere, I said quietly to myself, I wish. And now, of course, having dutifully waded through all the murk Brand describes, albeit at the bottom rather than the putative top, I’m none the wiser. You can’t get far enough away from this evil malarkey for it not to matter. You have to somehow be wired differently, like Buckminster Fuller, maybe, or Gary Snyder.

I gave up early on utopian dreams, but wasn’t wasn’t really suited for anything practical, especially not anything political, so I taught myself to cook. It isn’t as good as playing the fiddle seems to be for those who can, but it does require my full attention. And afterwards, too, with a fork in my hand, I do have an occasional moment….

10

Chris Bertram 09.17.13 at 2:26 pm

It is indeed remarkable how all the places inhabited by the super-rich (Kensington, Mayfair, much of Geneva, the XVI arrondissement …) are really crushingly dull. At least little of real value will be lost when we burn them down.

11

William Berry 09.17.13 at 2:39 pm

CB@10, burning them down: Starting yesterday won’t be soon enough!

(On second thought, let’s recycle this time.)

12

Harry 09.17.13 at 2:43 pm

I’ll watch that this morning. He was great on Desert Island Discs, and that Guardian essay when Thatcher died was stunning. I feel that I must have been missing something. I’m not worried about becoming a great social/cultural critic going to his head — seems to have gone through that phase. I just hope he’s mentally well.

And, as Adrian Mitchell used to say, when the revolution comes it will be as much like our theories as a parallelogram is like a hippopotamus. I remind myself of that whenever I think we are on the slide (which is most of the time). Oh, but: I just surveyed my 19 freshman on various questions, including whether they think the government should support same-sex marriage. 18 for, 1 against. Go back 20 years — or 10 years — and ask the same question to the same kinds of kids.

13

MPAVictoria 09.17.13 at 2:49 pm

” I just surveyed my 19 freshman on various questions, including whether they think the government should support same-sex marriage. 18 for, 1 against. Go back 20 years — or 10 years — and ask the same question to the same kinds of kids.”

If there is one thing that gives me hope for the future it is the changing attitudes among the younger set towards homosexuality. We can learn to treat each other better. Now if we could just expand that kind of thinking to the poor and the outcast.

/Always glad to see you post on Crooked Timber Maria. I really enjoyed the Brand piece you linked to.

14

Sam Dodsworth 09.17.13 at 3:00 pm

I just surveyed my 19 freshman on various questions, including whether they think the government should support same-sex marriage. 18 for, 1 against. Go back 20 years — or 10 years — and ask the same question to the same kinds of kids.

As a data point… When I was a student back in the late 80s I was depressed that literally every trainee teacher I talked to was in favour of Section 28. I assume a lot of them ended up as teachers, but change happened anyway.

For that matter, the papers kept complaining that Young People These Days were self-involved and apolitical right up to the student protests of 2010 and the Occupy movements.

15

ajay 09.17.13 at 3:03 pm

It is indeed remarkable how all the places inhabited by the super-rich (Kensington, Mayfair, much of Geneva, the XVI arrondissement …) are really crushingly dull.

Oh, come on, Kensington’s lovely. Solid national treasures all the way from the Cromwell Road north to the Park.

16

ajay 09.17.13 at 3:09 pm

he reminded GQ that its main sponsor, Hugo Boss, used to do a nice line in Nazi uniforms

Which doesn’t actually set it apart from a lot of the rest of the fashion industry. Hugo Boss did SS uniforms, Coco Chanel was a nasty little traitor who shacked up with the SS and tried to profit from the Holocaust. L’Oreal was a safe hiding place for other French collaborators after the war. etc, etc.

17

Hal 09.17.13 at 3:12 pm

May I disagree?

Brand doesn’t need alcohol to put his foot in his mouth so he covers up by talking about “power structures” and professes to be shocked, shocked to discover that awards ceremonies are phony occasions and that people have selfish motives in attending them. So why’d he accept? Oh, right, “I was advised it would be good publicity.” What a shock that it wasn’t. Or, maybe it was? … Altogether a nasty, snobbish, unfunny piece.

18

MPAVictoria 09.17.13 at 3:17 pm

“Brand doesn’t need alcohol to put his foot in his mouth so he covers up by talking about “power structures” and professes to be shocked, shocked to discover that awards ceremonies are phony occasions and that people have selfish motives in attending them. So why’d he accept? Oh, right, “I was advised it would be good publicity.” What a shock that it wasn’t. Or, maybe it was? … Altogether a nasty, snobbish, unfunny piece.”

That strikes me as a pretty uncharitable reading Hal.

19

Manta 09.17.13 at 3:31 pm

The Nazi had quite a good taste in uniforms, and Hollywood does its best to portray them as dapper: so the fact that Hugo Boss worked for them should be a plus for the brand, no?

20

Chris Bertram 09.17.13 at 3:33 pm

@ajay, quite right South Ken, with the Museum of Natural History and the V&A should be spared, I was thinking more about the area around Kensington High Street. Should have mentioned Knightsbridge too, and Surrey.

21

Norwegian Guy 09.17.13 at 3:38 pm

This quote from Cory Doctorow :

“a proof that oil fortunes demand no thought, no innovation, no sense of shared national destiny: just a hole the ground, surrounded by guns, enriching an elite of oafs and wastrels.”

is based on a not uncommon misconception about the petroleum industry. But oil and gas exploration and production are activities that develop and utilize advanced technology. There is a lot more to it than just digging a hole in the ground, including thought and innovation.

22

Hal 09.17.13 at 3:44 pm

Sorry, MPAVictoria, (@ 18), maybe it’s just one of those days for me, too. Brand’s message (his “brand”?), advertised freely in the Guardian, seems to be just this: “I have to play the game but I’m really an ordinary bloke, even sensitive underneath, and too honest to be taken in by all the fakery.” Next time let him be really brave, decline the invitation and shut up.

23

Cian 09.17.13 at 3:46 pm

Sandbanks in Poole is hideous (another location for the super rich).

24

Cian 09.17.13 at 3:46 pm

Also Monaco. Personally I’d pay the damn taxes. More than worth it not to live in Monaco.

25

Cian 09.17.13 at 3:49 pm

Next time let him be really brave, decline the invitation and shut up.

Well that sounds rather boring. What good’s your revolution if I can’t dance?

26

Zamfir 09.17.13 at 3:58 pm

I am a bit with Hal here. I thought the Brand piece was well-written, made good points, gave a nice insight. I really liked it. And at the same time, it felt like a smart guy doing PR damage control. Pissed off the sponsors anyway, better get some creds for it.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being manipulated, by a master in the art. That deserves some grudging respect anyway.

27

Zamfir 09.17.13 at 4:02 pm

Well that sounds rather boring. What good’s your revolution if I can’t dance?
There’s dancing at award shows?

28

Steve Williams 09.17.13 at 4:25 pm

Norwegian Guy:

‘There is a lot more to it than just digging a hole in the ground, including thought and innovation.’

Well, yes, sure. I think the relevant questions are a) how much of thought and innovation came from the Sultan’s playboy brother, and b) have the engineers doing the thinking and innovating made a ‘fortune’?

29

Chris Williams 09.17.13 at 5:07 pm

Quite by chance I have a copy of Stephenson’s ‘In the beginning’ to hand. Here we are: page 25: “This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.’

30

Brett 09.17.13 at 5:23 pm

@Norwegian Guy

There is a lot more to it than just digging a hole in the ground, including thought and innovation.

Not for the Sultan of Brunei’s brother, though. He’s just living off of the royalties that state and private oil companies pay to extract oil from his land/waters. It’s quite literally rent-seeking.

@Steve Williams

b) have the engineers doing the thinking and innovating made a ‘fortune’?

They’re probably been paid quite well. Petroleum Engineering is one of the highest paid engineering professions out there right, and even many of the ancillary jobs pay quite well. At least anecdotally, I knew people who did the whole “expat working on foreign oil fields” thing and were paid quite well.

31

mud man 09.17.13 at 6:27 pm

@WT #9 Just because you sold out … there’s still plenty of out there out here, at the other end of the fork.

32

William Timberman 09.17.13 at 6:31 pm

Sold out. Yeah. Got such a high price for it, too, whatever it was. We’re nothing if not a collective, mud man. I did my time. Happy to give give all those folks with a spring still left in their step their shot. No regrets.

33

Maria 09.17.13 at 6:49 pm

Hal @17, I think you have a fair enough point, tbh. But I liked that Brand points out his own culpability, too, and then invites us along for the ride. If he wasn’t at all venal, he wouldn’t have been there, straight off.

But I don’t think sitting on his morals at home would be as useful as doing what seems increasingly to be Brand’s schtick; pointing out the bloody obvious in a culture where that’s increasingly verboten.

I don’t think he particularly needs the publicity – marrying Katy Perry covered that – but I do accept, per Zamfir, that Brand is quite calculatingly aware of the effect he creates. But have you ever stood up in front of a bunch of people to give a speech and, in that rare and beautiful moment, found you’re both utterly sincere and coolly managing their seeming rapture?

But anyway, I’m doing what I complained about, which is focusing on the trivia or the non-battles when we may be losing the war.

34

Maria 09.17.13 at 6:50 pm

WT, E. hates when I say this, but I have found that preparing and eating food is the only truly consistent pleasure…

35

Maria 09.17.13 at 6:52 pm

Though @ Hal, I definitely don’t agree Brand’s piece was nasty, unfunny, etc.

36

Maria 09.17.13 at 7:06 pm

Thanks, MPA @13.

37

Hal 09.17.13 at 7:38 pm

Maria,

Ok, it was funny in (a few) parts. But the insider shtick, letting his dear readers know how, despite everything (with titillating details of “everything”), he’s really, really no better than the gawkers “in the paddocks”, wore thin for me very quickly. If we didn’t know that Brand has a history of putting his foot in his mouth, we might suspect that it was all (in his own revealing words) just “good publicity”. So after a few smiles for me it was mostly rire jaune.

38

Kindred Winecoff 09.17.13 at 8:30 pm

Oppression of minorities by those in the majority *is* democracy, or at least democracy tends to devolve in that direction. There is no sense in which a white male denigrating a Muslim female in a Western country is undemocratic, per se.

Ultimately this matters. The great social democracies were mostly built in very homogenous places (e.g. Scandinavia) or in way that were exclusionary of certain groups (e.g. explicit racial segregation in the New Deal). As that basic orientation changed, via integration or immigration (which capital usually supports more than labor… not all labor politics is based on solidarity), support for social democracy started slipping. The fissures expand during economic downturns. Henry’s recent Aeon article, in many respects, speaks to related issues.

There is an opportunity here. The social democracy model was never as cosmopolitan as it claimed to be. It often depended upon provincialism or the strength of national identity. It excluded almost the entire non-Western world. As it comes under pressure, in many respects by the rise of what used to be called the Global South, there are ways to push for a more cosmopolitan solution. “Losing” could thus be beneficial in the long run. It’ll be messy, and a clear model is yet to be developed, but global solidarity could profit from the erosion of local social democracy. It is atrocious for white men (or anyone) to abuse Muslim women in London, but the fact that Muslim women are walking London’s streets at all is, in some respects, a marker of progress.

Then again, maybe not. As Titus Andronicus (the band) recently put, “It’s still us against them, and they’re winning.” But I’m more hopeful.

39

Chris M 09.17.13 at 8:49 pm

Note that the yelling man in this case was exercising his freedom of speech. He was doing it in a completely idiotic way, but still he was speaking. There are many places and there have been many eras when physical conflict would have ensued. The fact that it didn’t become violent is actually a sign of progress.

40

Dr Zen 09.17.13 at 10:36 pm

“our crowd”? Brand is an extremely wealthy member of their crowd. You don’t stop being a worthless parasite just because you’re funny.

41

nick s 09.17.13 at 11:59 pm

Brand’s tendency to regurgitate the dictionary — that combination of big words strung on flat sentences like Christmas baubles — does become a bit wearing.

The line I liked most came from Noel Gallagher, who has a reputation for surprisingly astute social commentary:

Noel once expressed his disgust at seeing a politician at Glastonbury. “What are you doing here? This ain’t for you,” he’d said. He explained to me: “You used to know where you were with politicians in the 70s and 80s cos they all looked like nutters: Thatcher, Heseltine, Cyril Smith. Now they look normal, they’re more dangerous.” Then, with dreadful foreboding: “They move among us.”

42

ezra abrams 09.18.13 at 12:27 am

Back in the 60s, when, as the saying goes, a dollar was worth something, iirc Life or a magazine like it did a spread on Ike and Tina Turners new Hollywood home.
As one wag put it, i didn’t know you could spend 100,000$ at Woolworths (kids – translation would be, I didn’t know you spend 500,000$ at walmart)

43

StevenAttewell 09.18.13 at 1:36 am

I dunno – seems to me that “losing” depends on local circumstances. Here in the U.S, the minimum wage is going to go up for about 4 million workers thanks to the California legislature and a smart executive order from Obama.

So I’m going with “don’t mourn, organize.”

44

geo 09.18.13 at 3:27 am

Kindred @38: Oppression of minorities by those in the majority *is* democracy

Depends. Remember that the fundamental law of a democratic society is its constitution. If the constitution is democratically adopted, and prohibits oppression of minorities, then majority decisions that contravene the constitution are not democratically valid — the majority has already ratified an overriding law against what it now proposes to do. Of course, the majority (or a supermajority, if that’s what the majority that ratified the constitution agreed to) can alter the constitution, making oppression of minorities permissible. Rights in any society, after all, are just what democratic majorities (or supermajorities) say they are. They don’t have an independent existence.

45

Meredith 09.18.13 at 4:19 am

Happy (U.S.) Constitution Day! (Well, yesterday — I am writing just after midnight.)

I’ve just begun to learn about Russell Brand, so this is an initial impression. He reminds me of Jon Stewart and especially Stephen Colbert, of someone who, using comedy or satire, combines (at least the projection of) a genuine kindness and depth of insight with alienation from all trappings of power and all forms of exploitation. (The way he keeps inviting Mica to relax, to enact fully the person her TV persona suggests she might be. Just do it! he seems to be saying. Like he’s some kind of therapist.) To do this, these celebrity (read: successful) comedians risk getting “co-opted” (to use a term of my “60’s” youth). Like Stewart and Colbert, Brand will have to work hard not to get co-opted (and, at best, will probably fail to some extent), but it takes a lot of courage even to try to do what these comedians/satirists are doing.

While on the subject of comedy, like Maria I have been feeling particularly discouraged these days. We have to remember to laugh — and to dance (hello, Emma!). And to then to get back to work. And then to dancing and laughing. It won’t ever end, even though each of us will.

46

bad Jim 09.18.13 at 4:54 am

What the fuck? In more normal times the United States would be engaged in a military campaign against Syria and we wouldn’t be a few months away from a historical expansion of healthcare, paltry though it might be by international standards but revolutionary nevertheless.

Nicholas Lemann has a review in the NY Review of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson which emphasizes the dread that pervaded the 1930’s. I remember visiting the New York Museum of Modern Art and being struck by the bleakness of the art of the era, its dark, muted colors, brown and black. For all its faults, at least our times are not like that.

47

derrida derider 09.18.13 at 5:09 am

Terry from the TV series Minder had it right on the foibles of the rich. Arthur – an incompetent petty conman, a spiv – holds forth on the glorious opportunities for enrichment available to “new men” like him under current PM Thatcher. Terry – his employee he hires out as “muscle” – responds:

“Yeah well you now what God thinks of money dontcha?”
“Na, what?”
“Well you’ve only got to look at who he gives it to.”

48

Meredith 09.18.13 at 5:34 am

bad Jim, don’t know you’re age, but I’ve recently been musing upon a photograph of my mother and her sister in the Bronx, in the 1920’s, in a building that zillow and truillo (sp?) are advertising as for sale, so I get to view even the fireplace my mother grew up with (she had no pictures of that kind of detail) and also to contemplate the changes in the neighborhood. (Really: between google maps and realtors’ penchant for pictures: there’s a world!)

I feel a bit like I am gradually joining my mother, and my father, too. Unto others, the future. Not a sad feeling. Resigned? Yes. Also hopeful, perhaps because my mother and aunt are so full of youth and energy and hope in that Bronx 1920’s picture in front of a building that still stands today, in a rough but energetic neighborhood (as it was, in a different way, in the 1920’s).

49

Maria 09.18.13 at 7:03 am

Meredith;

“While on the subject of comedy, like Maria I have been feeling particularly discouraged these days. We have to remember to laugh — and to dance (hello, Emma!). And to then to get back to work. And then to dancing and laughing. It won’t ever end, even though each of us will.”

Thank you so much. That really hit a nerve, a good one, mostly.

50

bad Jim 09.18.13 at 7:33 am

I recently used Google street view to wander around the first place I lived, just outside Washington, D.C. I last visited it ten years ago, and although the experience of walking around and aiming the viewer are not much alike, the two had enough in common that I had to concede they were approximating the same reality.

My mother’s father was a Swedish immigrant with an eighth-grade education who made sure both his daughters got college educations. He, of course, called me “Yimmy.”

I don’t have the sunniest view of humanity’s future, but I don’t think our immediate prospects are as grim as those my grandparents faced — depression, fascism, world war. These weren’t fantasies, they were in the daily paper and the newsreels, the formerly comfortable shared reality turning rapidly into a worldwide nightmare.

(What’s that you say, Lassie? Antibiotics aren’t working any more? The modern world is coming to an end? Good dog!)

It’s nearly impossible to remember just how bad things used to be. That said, I’m grateful that my parents worried much less about the safety of their children than parents do today. I used to walk to school alone; we spent a lot of time in the woods, outside adult supervision, and this was thought unexceptionable. Later, my mother had a job, I was what was elsewhere described as a latchkey kid, except that we didn’t lock our door, because we had a very difficult German Shepherd.

51

ajay 09.18.13 at 8:48 am

Ultimately this matters. The great social democracies were mostly built in very homogenous places (e.g. Scandinavia) or in way that were exclusionary of certain groups (e.g. explicit racial segregation in the New Deal).

Britain in the 1940s was not noticeably homogenous. It had a large Catholic minority, for a start. Same with the Netherlands, for that matter.

52

Chris Williams 09.18.13 at 9:30 am

Also, 1940s Britain consisted of Scotland and Wales (neither of which were especially culturally homogenous) as well as England, and (for example) Scots in England were an active focus for resentment.

53

Main Street Muse 09.18.13 at 11:09 am

This year, I have students whose families hail from Kuwait, Syria by way of Iraq, Iran, Kenya and Lithuania (an unusually global set this semester!) I’ve learned quite a lot already from these students – one lesson: pessimism solves nothing.

Kudos to Brand for disrupting the self-satisfaction of the complacent.

54

Ronan(rf) 09.18.13 at 12:05 pm

I’m surprised the argument that post war social democracy required (amongst other things) a high level of ‘cultural’ homogenity (and was by extension quite exclusionary) is receiving so much pushback. Isnt that part of the consensus on the post war order?
I was reading back through the Sheri Berman seminar just now, and that point seems to come up a lot

Here, for example, is Berman:

“A few of the commenters raised questions about my notion that social democracy has an inherently communitarian nature—and here again I will stand my ground. You may not like it, it may smack of nationalism or exclusivism, but the fact is that if you want an order based on social solidarity and the priority of social goods over individual interests, some basic sense of fellow feeling is required to get that order into place and keep it politically sustainable. So long as nation-states remain the basic form of political organization in the world, moreover, such fellow feeling will have to be fostered within national borders. Social democrats who can’t accept and deal with this will just end up ceding ground politically to the radical right and various populists, who will step in to supply the communitarian cravings that publics continue to display.”

Every socio-economic system is surely going to be built around excluding someone, in the case of post war social Democracy it was by empowering the native male working class to the detriment of women, foreigners (or those classified as foreign) and anyone outside the norm. (the system itself was built on quite conservative foundations)
I think I agree with Kindred’s point, as well, that a working class Glaswegian getting publicly called on sectarian and racist rhetoric is, to my eyes, a sign of *some* progress. Not enough, but some

I know I might be missing the point here, so I’m open to that

55

ajay 09.18.13 at 12:39 pm

the fact is that if you want an order based on social solidarity and the priority of social goods over individual interests, some basic sense of fellow feeling is required to get that order into place and keep it politically sustainable.

I’d agree with that actually. I just don’t think that a prerequisite to that solidarity is having a monoracial, monoconfessional population – as the examples of Britain etc show. There was a lot of national solidarity in 1940s Britain, but it wasn’t because everyone was a white English Protestant.

in the case of post war social Democracy it was by empowering the native male working class to the detriment of women, foreigners (or those classified as foreign) and anyone outside the norm.

This implies that postwar social democracy actually made things worse for women, foreigners etc, which is a questionable statement (and makes me think I might have misread). National health care was particularly good for women, for example, not because women get sicker any more often than men, but because they would otherwise have been the (often unpaid) carers for the chronically ill.

56

Pete 09.18.13 at 12:45 pm

It’s not that the left has “lost”, it’s just picked a battle and largely won it, without realising exactly what the territory was and that this involved abandoning other battles.

The battlefield largely won is identity politics and anti-discrimination. It’s not over yet, and there’s still substantial resistance holed up in many areas, but the battle for control over what is and is not “acceptable” in public life has been won. Obvious racism and sexism is grounds for destroying a career in public life, grounds for firing people from many jobs.

What has not been won is the “hearts and minds” of the “occupation” phase. People still think these things, mutter about them when they feel it won’t be stuck to them later. And people who have no credibility to lose in public life (such as your Glaswegian above) still say them. From his point of view, the world looks down on him anyway, why should he care about one more negative opinion?

The battlefield that has largely been abandoned is economic and class issues. Unfortunately this was too cluttered with fighting the last war, undergraduate Marxists still hoping for the revolution. That became untenable in 1989 and has yet to be replaced with anything as compelling or coherent. People are reduced to arguing with libertarians, which gives a quick shot of moral righteousness but achieves little. We’ve not even managed to marshal an argument against continuing privatisation of public services.

Then there is the question of solidarity. Ronan’s quote of Berman above is very apt. People like to know what the boundaries of their community are, like to have a sense of the “normal”, and share most solidarity with those like themselves. The US has an extreme version of anti-solidarity where people vote against healthcare and a functioning state largely out of spite towards poor black people; a similar effect is, I think, slowly rising in the UK, the Netherlands and other places.

If you want to be on the “side” of the disadvantaged in the UK you’ll have to find a way to be on the side of that Glaswegian man. Otherwise, to him, you’re just another elite keeping him down.

57

Pete 09.18.13 at 12:53 pm

I’ll just append: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2013/09/16/why-willie/

“He warned the SNP to ‘leave identity and values’ out of the debate. How do you leave values out of a political debate about your political future?”

But modern politics is often hostile about listening to people’s values. Dsquared will be along shortly to mock “debates about the nature of Britishness”, but this sort of thing is important to people and you can’t have a modern 21st century left that’s completely detached from the values of the public.

58

Ronan(rf) 09.18.13 at 12:56 pm

I cant really speak to whether it made things worse for ‘women, foreigners etc’ (Im willing to accept it probably didnt to any great extent) but wouldnt the question be ‘did its collapse make things better?’ Could the progress that has happened in those areas (debatable sure) have taken place within the post war order? (I know those changes began *during* it..)

“I just don’t think that a prerequisite to that solidarity is having a monoracial, monoconfessional population”

I agree, though thats now. From my (limited) reading of it though (and Im open to correction) it did matter. It certainly mattered on race, even in Britain. Even my most chippy nationalist side wouldnt argue, for example, that the way the Irish were received in Britian during that period was comparable to the way those from the West Indies, Bangladesh etc were. So race did (and does I think) matter
I’m just saying Im sceptical of some of the praise the post war consensus receives, not saying that you cant create some similar order now in the context of the world we now live in.

59

Ronan(rf) 09.18.13 at 12:57 pm

Above was originally response to ajay

60

JanieM 09.18.13 at 1:22 pm

Strands in this thread remind me of a poem by Grace Paley, quoted below. This version is from New and Collected Poems, 1992. I searched for a link but couldn’t find this exact version online, and I like this one better than the one I did find. (The poem is untitled.)

*****

If you have acquired a taste for happiness
it’s very hard to do without
so you try jollity for awhile
jokes
and
merriment

Song is one of the famous methods
for continuing or entrenching
happiness

Here is another example of ordinary joy:
the gathering together of comrades
in disagreement and resolution
followed by determined action

Still the face of life will change
partly because of those miserable scratches it makes
on its own aging surface
Then
happiness

in the risky busy labor of Repair the World
after which for the unsated there will surely be
talking all night dances in schoolrooms and kitchens
and sometimes
love

of happinesses the most famous of all

61

JanieM 09.18.13 at 1:24 pm

P.S. No surprise, the comment box/html messed up the spacing. A lot of the lines are indented in ways that shape the rhythm. Ah, well.

62

Phil 09.18.13 at 2:13 pm

I just returned from a weekend at Madeleine Pickens’ ginormous ranch in Nevada, where she is trying to save wild horses that the BLM has let languish. Madeline, the erstwhile wife of kabillionaire T. Boone, probably isn’t sickeningly rich any more but she still has plenty of scratch. Point being, there is some goodness and altruism within the .1 %…

63

Cian 09.18.13 at 2:22 pm

Pete:
From his point of view, the world looks down on him anyway, why should he care about one more negative opinion?

Pete, saying nasty stuff about women in Hijabs is perfectly acceptable in the UK. Politicians do it, including so called left wing ones. Newspapers do it. There are debates about it on UK. Alleged progressives do it (For their own good, of course). Islamophobia (as opposed to racism against brown people) originated from within the elites in the UK.

64

ajay 09.18.13 at 2:29 pm

I cant really speak to whether it made things worse for ‘women, foreigners etc’ (Im willing to accept it probably didnt to any great extent) but wouldnt the question be ‘did its collapse make things better?’ Could the progress that has happened in those areas (debatable sure) have taken place within the post war order?

There are a lot of questions here that are difficult to answer. Looking at the issue of women’s rights in particular:
did British women’s lot improve under postwar social democracy in, say, 1945-75? Pretty much unquestionably, in lots of ways. And a lot of those ways would have been exactly the same ways in which men’s lot improved. Lots more British women in 1975 had running water than in 1945. Lots more British men had running water too. Should we be ignoring that as an example of progress for women?

Did their lot improve more than in 1915-1945? Or in 1975-2005? That’s a much more difficult question to answer. I mean, in 1918-28 they got the vote, which is generally thought to be a pretty massive deal. Does that count for 100 Improvement Points and, say, no-fault divorce count for 25?

And even more tricky is: would the improvements in 1975-2005 have been possible under postwar social democracy? Were they, in fact, the result of a process that started back then and kept rolling on, regardless of what happened after ’75?
But then you have to look further back, and note that women’s rights and situtations improved in 1915-45 as well…

65

ajay 09.18.13 at 2:31 pm

Lots more British women in 1975 had running water than in 1945. Lots more British men had running water too. Should we be ignoring that as an example of progress for women?

Obviously this is a bad example, because it’s actually a case of relative as well as absolute progress for women; women derive approximately three times as much utility from running water as men, as they spend about three times as long in the bathroom every morning.

66

Cian 09.18.13 at 3:09 pm

I’m just saying Im sceptical of some of the praise the post war consensus receives

In Britain it was so enormously better than what came before at every level, that this seems like pointless contrarianism. Were things perfect? No. Were they better than the 30s, or the pre WWI period. God yes… And lots of the rights you’re talking about were possible because of the post 45 consensus in Britain. Women suddenly got treatement for pregnancy related problems. HUGE DEAL. Kids got educated, even women. They got access to better food, healthcare, housing. Without a mass of educated, and independent women would the 1970s have happened in the UK? Would minorities have been able to push back in the same way if they were struggling to survive in tenaments with no access to education.

The push back on the social democracy in Britain didn’t happen in earnest until the 1980s, but which point the battle had been won – winning the war was simply a matter of demographics. And to bring this back to Russell Brand. That war was partly won by light entertainment in the UK.

67

Hidari 09.18.13 at 3:12 pm

“women derive approximately three times as much utility from running water as men, as they spend about three times as long in the bathroom every morning.”

Is it difficult accessing the internet from 1975, Ajay?

68

Pete 09.18.13 at 3:46 pm

“The push back on the social democracy in Britain didn’t happen in earnest until the 1980s, but which point the battle had been won – winning the war was simply a matter of demographics. And to bring this back to Russell Brand. That war was partly won by light entertainment in the UK.”

I can’t work out what you mean by “demographics”, and which side you think light entertainment was / is on? Light entertainment in 2013 has some nasty regressive edges to it.

69

ajay 09.18.13 at 4:40 pm

Is it difficult accessing the internet from 1975, Ajay?

All but impossible. I blame the postwar social consensus.

70

lurker 09.18.13 at 4:50 pm

‘In Britain it was so enormously better than what came before at every level, that this seems like pointless contrarianism.’ (Cian, 65)
The only people with any idea of what the prewar was like that I’ve seen attack the postwar (criticizing it for falling short of its potential and promise is not the same) have been reactionaries and fascists. (Plus the occasional Deep Green who regards humanity as vermin.)

71

Kevin Erickson 09.18.13 at 5:09 pm

I regret that I can’t get on board the Russell Brand train. When the guy goes on Alex Jones’ show and doesn’t go after Infowars with the same force he goes after Morning Joe, it’s hard to feel like he’s playing for my team.

72

Ronan(rf) 09.18.13 at 5:12 pm

@68 I didn’t want to bring that up, but..

73

Meredith 09.18.13 at 5:40 pm

I’m tempted to remind ajay that women also probably did most of the dishwashing and laundry, but instead I’ll just counter that nobody takes more bathroom time than adolescent males, nobody.

And thanks to JanieM for the Paley poem — perfect.

74

Luke 09.18.13 at 6:16 pm

Long-time lurker here. It takes a lot to draw a comment from me, but some of the comments about social democracy (54, 56) have me pulling my hair out with frustration.

The notion that a level of nationalism and/or cultural homogeneity is necessary for social democracy just doesn’t cut it. In fact, as an Australian, I find it unfathomable. For example, the Australia that introduced introduced unemployment benefits in (IIRC) the early ’70s was very much an immigrant society containing people from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds.

More importantly, why is it that some white Glaswegian yob is allowed to stand in for the entire working class? Framing progressives as being out of touch with the opinions of “the masses” is common right-wing rhetorical strategy, and not the sort of thing I expect to see regurgitated at a site like CT. It’s also demonstrably false. For instance, re: the American example in 56, IIRC most Americans, when polled, say they are in favour of single-payer healthcare (or whatever it’s called). They don’t have it because their political system is *insufficiently democratic*, not because social progress is incompatible with democracy.

I find this kind of thinking is increasingly widespread among educated people, and it troubles me greatly. After the recent Australian election, friends were blaming ‘the bogans’ for the election of our new right-wing PM, despite the fact that the Liberal-National base has always been the wealthy, rural voters and the blue rinse set.

75

MPAVictoria 09.18.13 at 6:34 pm

” but instead I’ll just counter that nobody takes more bathroom time than adolescent males, nobody.”

Ha!

76

Cian 09.18.13 at 6:57 pm

I can’t work out what you mean by “demographics”, and which side you think light entertainment was / is on? Light entertainment in 2013 has some nasty regressive edges to it.

The old bigots died. The young of the 80s, who were less bigoted are now middle aged. The young of today who are even less bigoted (at least towards gays) are in their 20s. This is how societal shifts happen.

Light entertainment in 2013 is way less regressive than light entertainment in the 60s and 70s, but that wasn’t my point.

There’s been a normalizing affect as more and more obviously gay people (first closeted, but clearly queer – now openly queer) appeared on TV, pop music, film, soaps etc. It’s not the only thing, but it helped changed the culture in numerous ways.

77

Cian 09.18.13 at 6:59 pm

But my main point Pete is that the move towards equality began in the early 70s. Thatcherism is mid-80s, and was also pretty openly hostile towards it. So the idea that there’s a connection seems bizarre, and the idea that somehow if it wasn’t for us losing pensions, healthcare, free universities, etc – then no gay marriage is beyond bizarre.

We lost stuff because we let the rich take it.

78

Hidari 09.18.13 at 7:18 pm

Looking through this thread, there seems to be a lot of wilful misreading of the OP going on. Why are so many people so despondent, so despairing, when, by historical standards, many/most people in the ‘West’ are doing so well?

Well (and isn’t it interesting that when discussing things like this one reaches, almost automatically, for religious language?), ‘Man does not live by bread alone’. Which is simply true. Man is a specific kind of ape, yes, but unusually for apes, ‘Man’ uses myth, symbol, argument, debate, ritual, to define ‘him’self, to a far greater extent than other apes. And this has a direct impact on ‘his’ consciousness. And so while the statistics about longer lifespans, higher incomes, and better dental care are all welcome, they kinda miss the point. Man lives in the material world, but he (sic) doesn’t just live in the material world. Man has consciousness to a much greater extent than is normal amongst apes, which means, amongst other things, ‘he’ has consciousness of the future, of History.

And this is the key point. Since the modern Left began, roughly just before the French Revolution, what has distinguished it from previous political movements is the ‘historical sense’, and the sense that ‘we are moving ‘forward’ in time towards some future state that will be different from our own. And it was the Left’s contribution to political thought to state that this did not have to mean ‘differently bad’. Instead it was (for the first time, more or less) considered to be possible that we were moving forward to a new state where life might be more or less radically improved for the vast majority of people. It was not for nothing that people on the left were and are called ‘progressives’.

And this is why comparisons between ourselves and our ancestors solely and purely in terms of our material advantages over them don’t capture the whole picture.

“Also hopeful, perhaps because my mother and aunt are so full of youth and energy and hopein that Bronx 1920′s picture in front of a building that still stands today”.

As late as the 1920s, this dream was still alive, and not just amongst intellectuals either, but amongst ordinary working people. Sure the First World War gave it a bad knock, but it also led to the Russian Revolution, fantasies about which gave hope to ordinary working people in the interwar period. And of course World War 2, with the terror bombing, and the Holocaust, and Hiroshima etc, gave an even bigger knock to the idea of (left wing) ‘progress’. But, quickly after that we had the ’45 Labour Government in the UK, and, later on, the rise of strong, powerful Communist parties (in, for example, Italy and France) a wave of decolonisation, the defeat of the Americans in Vietnam, Nixon proclaiming ‘we are all Keynesians now’….straws in the wind, certainly. But as late as the early 1980s, real, serious, sensible people still believed that the radical Left’s dream of radical and fundamental transformation of the social and political sphere was possible.

Things started to go into reverse, seriously, with the Thatcher and Reagan victories. Thereafter the defeats for the Left came thick and fast. The defeat of the miner’s strike, the collapse of organised, political Communism in both Western and Eastern Europe, the acceptance by national liberation movements of the dictates of the IMF….even the very partial move back to the Left in the 1990s was very much a poisoned chalice with both Clinton and Blair being more concerned with slowing down (and in their later terms, not even that) the move towards neoliberalism, rather than reversing it.

Nowadays, hardly anyone serious believes in the dream that animated so many serious people for 2 centuries. It now seems to be almost inconceivable that the future might be anything except capitalist. ‘Progress’ seemed to stop in (roughly) 1983. And since 9/11 we have seen, if anything, the arrow of time move backwards, with torture (!) being effectively legalised, with gunboat diplomacy (of the sort we thought had been banished forever from the rule book of civilised nations) being practiced, and with global surveillance networks of almost unparalleled scope and power being instituted, and with democratic institutions rotting away from the inside.

So, yeh, if you are white, male, heterosexual, Christian (preferably Protestant) or secular , if you live in the ‘West’, and if you have a well paid secure job in academia, government or (the upper echelons of) business, yeah life is pretty good. Probably better than at any time in history. And I am sure you have access to excellent dental care. But ‘what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’

79

Jeffrey Davis 09.18.13 at 8:00 pm

I was happier before largely because I was younger.

****
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.

***

But then TS Eliot wasn’t very jolly to begin with.

80

Ronan(rf) 09.18.13 at 8:21 pm

“but instead I’ll just counter that nobody takes more bathroom time than adolescent males, nobody.”

Sure how else could we have made the time to do some serious thinking.. : )

81

godoggo 09.18.13 at 10:24 pm

I guess post-adolescence bathrooms are replaced by blogs.

82

godoggo 09.19.13 at 4:20 am

Everything goes into the blog, everything. Even the act of love.

83

Meredith 09.19.13 at 4:23 am

We can’t let these comments end with godoggo’s, however acute his insight.

How about (see Hidari), “This is the day which the lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

84

Meredith 09.19.13 at 4:57 am

Oops. Timing, like ripeness, is all. I posted with reference to godoggo@81, not @82!

85

QS 09.19.13 at 6:15 am

Well said, Hidari.

I’ll say that it doesn’t matter one iota whether Brand’s writing for the Guardian or his GQ bit are a calculated attempt at self-promotion. What matters is that we have gained a person who can put anti-neoliberal arguments into effective (and at times, hilarious) prose.

86

bad Jim 09.19.13 at 6:44 am

Hidari, I’m sorry, but you bring Matthew Arnold to mind:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar

Its disappearance is something in which I can rejoice, and I no more lament the withering away of communism than the replacement of psychoanalysis with more effective methods of treatment. The modern age, though it falls short of our hopes, is in most respects an improvement over the conditions my parents and their parents endured (please bear in mind that I’m rather old, so I’m including two world wars and a pandemic). Progress has been pretty spotty for Americans, but few who are not white males would prefer the conditions prevalent in the 1950’s.

It’s true that we no longer have the promise of an all-encompassing ideal leading us into the future, and find ourselves instead chopping our way through an endless thicket of obstacles, but, really, wasn’t it always thus?

87

godoggo 09.19.13 at 7:49 am

pompous much?

88

Ronan(rf) 09.19.13 at 10:11 am

@81

Always a special day when your bathroom grows up and becomes a blog ; )

89

Maria 09.19.13 at 11:35 am

From despair to useful hilarity – which is kind of what Brand is about, self-interest notwithstanding – sometimes I truly love the comments around here.

90

JanieM 09.19.13 at 12:54 pm

few who are not white males would prefer the conditions prevalent in the 1950′s

Amen to that.

91

ajay 09.19.13 at 2:17 pm

Always a special day when your bathroom grows up and becomes a blog

…while, of course, still being predominantly occupied by adolescent boys.

92

godoggo 09.19.13 at 2:43 pm

In case anybody is a little curious but not enough to google, #82 is a quote, with one word changed, from Inside Mr. Enderby, which I read in Borocay long before I had the misfortune of any of y’all’s acquaintance.

93

godoggo 09.19.13 at 2:57 pm

Boracay

94

Northern Observer 09.19.13 at 4:13 pm

The funny part of this is that a Muslim woman walking around in a veil is the moral equivalent of white men parading around in full Nazi dress uniform. I suppose it can all be permitted under our everything goes culture and legal regime, but one should not engage in the double blindness of not even seeing the nikab for the political statement it is.
The paradox of all this being, as Hitchens correctly pointed out, that the English Left should be the branch of English political thought the most engaged in social opposition to Islamic norms and practices. The fact that it is not speaks to what is wrong in our political culture today.

95

godoggo 09.19.13 at 5:35 pm

Don’t forget to wipe up when you’re done, dude.

96

Mandos 09.19.13 at 10:55 pm

The funny part of this is that a Muslim woman walking around in a veil is the moral equivalent of white men parading around in full Nazi dress uniform.

LOL, because veiled Muslim women recently ran a lot of concentration camps or what?

97

Lawrence Stuart 09.20.13 at 1:17 am

I did enjoy the OP and many of the comments. I would just add that pessimism or optimism is a disposition contingent, maybe, on what one thinks progress, or “Progress,” is. I’m inclined to rejoice in the the left’s current angst, hopeful that the angst itself is a sign of restless creativity that will not be pacified by ideological convergences. Homo economicus — coarse, destructive, and powerful as he is — is a hollow man. One response to his weakness is a nostalgia for the old gods (and History is among the most powerful of these deities). Another response is to laugh, to sing, and yes to dance, in and of the realms of human experience incomprehensible to those for whom the human is pretty much a reasoning intelligence grafted, more or less unhappily, onto appetite.

The ability to laugh at these rituals of power, if not while one is there, but after the fact, and in the public media, is one such way of sounding the hollowness. Brand, and we, can still laugh, and laugh at ourselves. We laugh because we know,/i> that homo economicus may be part of us, but doesn’t, in fact can’t, define us. Taking this crap too seriously is laughably, fabulously, stupid. In that knowledge, perhaps, there is not just amusement, but reason to hope?

98

Maria 09.20.13 at 8:22 am

Thank you, Lawrence Stuart. A good note to end this thread on.

(With a nod to godoggo’s response to NO@94’s stirring.)

Comments on this entry are closed.