There's a huge amount to admire in this essay, Ross; I love its sweep and lyricism. I want to push back, though, on one point, which is your handling of "woke," which I found to be a touch glib. You write, of DiAngelo and Kendi (and their counterparts on the right):
"My own opinion, snooty as it might be, is that none of them write novels, and our intellectual class of the last century did."
For my money, the problem with DiAngelo and Kendi is that they were peddling a version of identity politics & antiracism stripped of class analysis. Increasingly, I've come to think that there are two competing strains of identity politics, left and liberal: on the left, there's the original recipe, which sees class as inextricably linked to oppression. In this version—the one practiced in U.S. civil rights movements until McCarthyism created a chill over anything that smelled of socialism—solidarity was made possible by the fact that everyone saw a place for himself in this coalition. By contrast, the liberal version, which came to dominate U.S. discourse after the murder of George Floyd, is almost entirely stripped of class analysis, and is thus, in many instances, willfully divisive and alienating. (I'm curious to know if you've read Olufemi Taiwo's essential book 'Elite Capture,' which discusses these trends more eloquently than I can.)
The grand irony of this moment is that Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson, and the subsequent awakening of a pan-ideological class-consciousness, is that it arrived just after an election in which Kamala Harris and her campaign utterly failed to read the room, believing that standing shoulder to shoulder with Liz Cheney in defense of democracy would woo the tens of millions of Americans who live in a state of constant economic precarity.
In reading your essay, I was genuinely moved by the palpable ache in the prose, at the same time that I longed for you to name the elephant in the room, i.e. the historic, engineered inequality we're facing, and the concomitant consolidation of big tech & authoritarianism. Perhaps you view this as being so obvious as to be understood axiomatically. (And I realize you imply it, somewhat, through your discussion of people's fury at the U.S. health care system.)
But for me, at least, one of the central questions, as we approach the coming years, will be whether or not we can, as a means of creating class solidarity, replace a politics of contempt with a politics of curiosity. To do that, I think, requires us to articulate the fact that most Americans suffer under the same conditions, and seek out different/opposing modes of cultural exclusion as ineffectual bandaids for the underlying material rot.
I don't think this contradicts anything you've written—even your observation about intellectuals of yesteryear writing novels—but rather operates, perhaps, as counterpoint.
We've had our disagreements but this is the most beautiful thing of yours that I've read. I am ordinarily not much of a fiction reader but this does make me seriously consider giving your novel a shot.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! I think you'll like Glass Century. Old-fashioned social realism. Fiction for people who don't usually read fiction, haha.
Modern life, as lived through the online, can feel invigorating when we encounter writing that places our moment(s) into enlightening perspective. But it can also feel exhausting, with a too-much-ness that you sense is about to begin with Trump's new term. Our news and entertainment media are not giving up their influence or perch that easily.
While I welcome a retrenchment of "woke" as the dominant cultural filter, I'm also weary of the New Right and its "own the libs" through meme-ness and Omniscient Narrator that mocks (and has a self-satisfied term and Dark Web Theory for everything) framing.
If there are some gaps that can't be bridged, there's a common cause of self-interest that is creating networks of connection and support. And it's needed at a time when, as Ross notes, our art is wan and our news media have largely abandoned any interest in being anything but heat-generating spectacles of limited duration but perpetual reignition.
People are open to heterodoxy, to what is intellectually challenging, to what is inspiring. And the art we create will reflect that as we turn from contexts of faction against faction.
As always, I love your points about art. There was something about the need for all art to represent #Resistance in Trump 1.0 that felt hollow. It was never bound to last; telling everyone they need to look at everything they consume through a strange identity politics lens first, otherwise they're deplorable pieces of shit.... it's so alienating. I always compared it to the Moral Majority, which also fell apart under its own weight.
Your optimism is based on your youth and lack of experience. Those of us who are more mature and have a firmer grasp of history understand that America is in an inexorable spiral of decline. Your generation and the next don’t read anything longer than texts or tweets and are either gazing at their phones or their navels while the world burns. A word of advice young man, lose the Olympian tone because you’re not a god.
You clearly don't know much about history if you think America is in a "spiral of decline." Also, how old are you? Are you 120? Did you witness any history in the early 20th century? But you get to opine on that, right? I bet you weren't even born in the 1930s. Who cares what you think? You can't even form an opinion on FDR.
Your discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian situation and the moral dilemma of American Jews is sensitive , nuanced and touching. I salute you for it, particularly the two earliest pieces. I think your father was spot on in his beliefs and you were fortunate to have him as a role model. Just put me in the place of the portly rabbi who made you cry because he felt you hadn’t studied enough.
Ouch, guess I hit a nerve youngster! A more mature person would have responded with at least an attempt at humor, but that’s obviously not your long suit. I’m 73, so twice as old as you and thus feeling somewhat sternly paternal regarding your ignorance. I majored in American history but studied enough world history to know when an empire is in decline. You mentioned the inclination of your peer group to turn to astrology or manifestation, meanwhile your Asian peers are actually studying something useful, like actual science. You may be right in that this won’t be the Chinese century but it could very well be the Indian one. Our society values influencers like the Kardashians more than we value scholarship, even Vivek was right about that. That’s not the sign of nation that’s vibrant, it’s the sign of decadence.
As a subscriber I’ve been awaiting your wisdom on the Palestinian genocide. If I missed it please advise, if you’ve made a decision not to write about it, is there a reason why?
I've written about Israel and Palestine repeatedly. You should learn to search an archive. (You're also more than 10 years younger than my late father. Like I said, you probably haven't been born deep enough into history to condescend to me. You were a kid in the 1960s. My father was an adult then. I'm supposed to take pay deference to you?)
Thanks for sharing the links, I’ll read them all before responding. Please note that I never mentioned deference based on age, perhaps you’re confusing that with respect .
On one level, I'm glad that the sound and/or fury of Trump 1.0 is over - we all agree in hindsight that pussy hats were "cringe" - but... I'm actually more worried that Trump 2.0 is going to be more like the Biden administration, in which ninja bureaucrats make unexpectedly large policy gains under the aegis of a more-or-less comatose POTUS. (And this time around, legacy media *won't* be thirsting for him to get Twenty-Fifthed.)
But... IDK. In 2017 Trump *didn't* make America fash again, and people *did* freak out. I guess we'll see which halves of that equation flip this year. I hope it's not both.
The growing success of Substack, especially in the literary space, shows the tide is shifting. A lot of people earnestly discuss high broke stuff here. There's a lot of philistinism in the world and it's a problem but there are green shoots of a new counterculture.
We shall see. I, like you, am nearing 40 so I have to say I'm not sure what the kids today are on about. I've been dismayed at the changing nature of record stores and repertory movie theaters, places in NYC that used to be outlets for me that don't garner the same intellectualism I felt they had a decade ago. Too many people lacking background in the subjects they are engaging in, using online discussion spaces as an entry point and never going past.
However, I continue to share your general perspective that, well, something has just gotta give. So I remain optimistic.
I would recommend doing some sightseeing on RedNote if you're comfortable. I think there's an interesting cultural exchange going on there. American users envy Chinese users for their lower rents, access to healthcare, and cheap produce. Chinese users envy American users because they work fewer hours per week and can express themselves more openly. There are even Americans pining for China, both as a place to visit and an immigration destination. Of course there are always Chinese folks coming to the US as well. I could see one major development of this decade being greater contact between members of "enemy" nations in open defiance of their governments.
Great thought-provoking essay. Some of those thoughts:
How have I lived this long before learning of JoJo Siwa?
When you refer to 20th century novelists, are you thinking about Norman Mailer, who I recently watched play Stanford White in the film adaptation of Ragtime?
Is the USA too big to fail? I hope we don't have to find out.
There's a huge amount to admire in this essay, Ross; I love its sweep and lyricism. I want to push back, though, on one point, which is your handling of "woke," which I found to be a touch glib. You write, of DiAngelo and Kendi (and their counterparts on the right):
"My own opinion, snooty as it might be, is that none of them write novels, and our intellectual class of the last century did."
For my money, the problem with DiAngelo and Kendi is that they were peddling a version of identity politics & antiracism stripped of class analysis. Increasingly, I've come to think that there are two competing strains of identity politics, left and liberal: on the left, there's the original recipe, which sees class as inextricably linked to oppression. In this version—the one practiced in U.S. civil rights movements until McCarthyism created a chill over anything that smelled of socialism—solidarity was made possible by the fact that everyone saw a place for himself in this coalition. By contrast, the liberal version, which came to dominate U.S. discourse after the murder of George Floyd, is almost entirely stripped of class analysis, and is thus, in many instances, willfully divisive and alienating. (I'm curious to know if you've read Olufemi Taiwo's essential book 'Elite Capture,' which discusses these trends more eloquently than I can.)
The grand irony of this moment is that Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson, and the subsequent awakening of a pan-ideological class-consciousness, is that it arrived just after an election in which Kamala Harris and her campaign utterly failed to read the room, believing that standing shoulder to shoulder with Liz Cheney in defense of democracy would woo the tens of millions of Americans who live in a state of constant economic precarity.
In reading your essay, I was genuinely moved by the palpable ache in the prose, at the same time that I longed for you to name the elephant in the room, i.e. the historic, engineered inequality we're facing, and the concomitant consolidation of big tech & authoritarianism. Perhaps you view this as being so obvious as to be understood axiomatically. (And I realize you imply it, somewhat, through your discussion of people's fury at the U.S. health care system.)
But for me, at least, one of the central questions, as we approach the coming years, will be whether or not we can, as a means of creating class solidarity, replace a politics of contempt with a politics of curiosity. To do that, I think, requires us to articulate the fact that most Americans suffer under the same conditions, and seek out different/opposing modes of cultural exclusion as ineffectual bandaids for the underlying material rot.
I don't think this contradicts anything you've written—even your observation about intellectuals of yesteryear writing novels—but rather operates, perhaps, as counterpoint.
Thanks as always for your beautiful writing.
I agree with this, and I could have gone further. To be honest, I was rushing a bit. I am deeply concerned about income inequality and Big Tech. In terms of woke, I wrote about its lack of class analysis way back here: https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/how-to-define-woke?utm_source=publication-search
Great comment, thank you
We've had our disagreements but this is the most beautiful thing of yours that I've read. I am ordinarily not much of a fiction reader but this does make me seriously consider giving your novel a shot.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! I think you'll like Glass Century. Old-fashioned social realism. Fiction for people who don't usually read fiction, haha.
Well done, Ross. Powerful writing.
Thank you, David!
First paragraph of this one is a banger.
thank you, I was aiming for something different!
Modern life, as lived through the online, can feel invigorating when we encounter writing that places our moment(s) into enlightening perspective. But it can also feel exhausting, with a too-much-ness that you sense is about to begin with Trump's new term. Our news and entertainment media are not giving up their influence or perch that easily.
While I welcome a retrenchment of "woke" as the dominant cultural filter, I'm also weary of the New Right and its "own the libs" through meme-ness and Omniscient Narrator that mocks (and has a self-satisfied term and Dark Web Theory for everything) framing.
If there are some gaps that can't be bridged, there's a common cause of self-interest that is creating networks of connection and support. And it's needed at a time when, as Ross notes, our art is wan and our news media have largely abandoned any interest in being anything but heat-generating spectacles of limited duration but perpetual reignition.
People are open to heterodoxy, to what is intellectually challenging, to what is inspiring. And the art we create will reflect that as we turn from contexts of faction against faction.
You forgot to open with the Pledge of Allegiance and close with the Star Spangled Banner
As always, I love your points about art. There was something about the need for all art to represent #Resistance in Trump 1.0 that felt hollow. It was never bound to last; telling everyone they need to look at everything they consume through a strange identity politics lens first, otherwise they're deplorable pieces of shit.... it's so alienating. I always compared it to the Moral Majority, which also fell apart under its own weight.
Your optimism is based on your youth and lack of experience. Those of us who are more mature and have a firmer grasp of history understand that America is in an inexorable spiral of decline. Your generation and the next don’t read anything longer than texts or tweets and are either gazing at their phones or their navels while the world burns. A word of advice young man, lose the Olympian tone because you’re not a god.
You clearly don't know much about history if you think America is in a "spiral of decline." Also, how old are you? Are you 120? Did you witness any history in the early 20th century? But you get to opine on that, right? I bet you weren't even born in the 1930s. Who cares what you think? You can't even form an opinion on FDR.
Your discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian situation and the moral dilemma of American Jews is sensitive , nuanced and touching. I salute you for it, particularly the two earliest pieces. I think your father was spot on in his beliefs and you were fortunate to have him as a role model. Just put me in the place of the portly rabbi who made you cry because he felt you hadn’t studied enough.
Ouch, guess I hit a nerve youngster! A more mature person would have responded with at least an attempt at humor, but that’s obviously not your long suit. I’m 73, so twice as old as you and thus feeling somewhat sternly paternal regarding your ignorance. I majored in American history but studied enough world history to know when an empire is in decline. You mentioned the inclination of your peer group to turn to astrology or manifestation, meanwhile your Asian peers are actually studying something useful, like actual science. You may be right in that this won’t be the Chinese century but it could very well be the Indian one. Our society values influencers like the Kardashians more than we value scholarship, even Vivek was right about that. That’s not the sign of nation that’s vibrant, it’s the sign of decadence.
As a subscriber I’ve been awaiting your wisdom on the Palestinian genocide. If I missed it please advise, if you’ve made a decision not to write about it, is there a reason why?
I've written about Israel and Palestine repeatedly. You should learn to search an archive. (You're also more than 10 years younger than my late father. Like I said, you probably haven't been born deep enough into history to condescend to me. You were a kid in the 1960s. My father was an adult then. I'm supposed to take pay deference to you?)
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-breaking-of-the-israel-consensus?utm_source=publication-search
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/israel-derangement-syndrome?utm_source=publication-search
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-israel-impasse-in-america?utm_source=publication-search
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/israel-hegemon?utm_source=publication-search
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-burden-of-the-american-jew?utm_source=publication-search
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/there-is-no-answer?utm_source=publication-search
Thanks for sharing the links, I’ll read them all before responding. Please note that I never mentioned deference based on age, perhaps you’re confusing that with respect .
Nicely written and even handed, refreshing.....
On one level, I'm glad that the sound and/or fury of Trump 1.0 is over - we all agree in hindsight that pussy hats were "cringe" - but... I'm actually more worried that Trump 2.0 is going to be more like the Biden administration, in which ninja bureaucrats make unexpectedly large policy gains under the aegis of a more-or-less comatose POTUS. (And this time around, legacy media *won't* be thirsting for him to get Twenty-Fifthed.)
But... IDK. In 2017 Trump *didn't* make America fash again, and people *did* freak out. I guess we'll see which halves of that equation flip this year. I hope it's not both.
Love your writing. And the whole damn thing. Beautifully wrought.
What makes you think there's truly a growing resentment around mass philistinism these days? I wish I shared your optimism.
The growing success of Substack, especially in the literary space, shows the tide is shifting. A lot of people earnestly discuss high broke stuff here. There's a lot of philistinism in the world and it's a problem but there are green shoots of a new counterculture.
We shall see. I, like you, am nearing 40 so I have to say I'm not sure what the kids today are on about. I've been dismayed at the changing nature of record stores and repertory movie theaters, places in NYC that used to be outlets for me that don't garner the same intellectualism I felt they had a decade ago. Too many people lacking background in the subjects they are engaging in, using online discussion spaces as an entry point and never going past.
However, I continue to share your general perspective that, well, something has just gotta give. So I remain optimistic.
I would recommend doing some sightseeing on RedNote if you're comfortable. I think there's an interesting cultural exchange going on there. American users envy Chinese users for their lower rents, access to healthcare, and cheap produce. Chinese users envy American users because they work fewer hours per week and can express themselves more openly. There are even Americans pining for China, both as a place to visit and an immigration destination. Of course there are always Chinese folks coming to the US as well. I could see one major development of this decade being greater contact between members of "enemy" nations in open defiance of their governments.
"By disposition, I am an optimist. I may be externally cynical, but I am, in my blood, hopeful and sincere."
From my own experience, I have come to suspect that cynicism is usually a product of frustrated or disappointed idealism.
Great thought-provoking essay. Some of those thoughts:
How have I lived this long before learning of JoJo Siwa?
When you refer to 20th century novelists, are you thinking about Norman Mailer, who I recently watched play Stanford White in the film adaptation of Ragtime?
Is the USA too big to fail? I hope we don't have to find out.
“Can it be resisted?”
As a parent of young children, this question keeps me up at night.