RSS
I don’t know about lately, but back in the 20th Century, it was common for London newspaper pundits to periodically loudly announce a whole new stance on a major issue of the day such as the Common Market. Public feuds with ex-friends and embraces of ex-enemies would ensue.
Sometimes the change would be on one issue, sometimes on most issues.
Christopher Hitchens is an example well-known in the U.S. of that British tendency for side-switching. Paul Johnson is another. Arianna Huffington, who moved from right to left in America, was the girlfriend in London of top pundit Bernard Levin, who had a tumultuous career, so she has the British rather than American perspective.
I presume this difference between Britain and America was linked both to the economics of the punditry business and to the British culture that puts a higher weight on nonconformity in matters of public debate.
The British had about a dozen highly competitive national newspapers largely sold at news stands to commuters, so a fun controversy could translate into weeks of higher sales.
American newspapers and magazines typically sold by subscription, so controversy and unexpectedness mostly just generates dreaded “Cancel my subscription” letters. I also presume political debate in America is more subsidized by interest groups than in Britain, where it’s paid for more as entertainment and the first rule is: Avoid Boring People.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Until recently, IIRC, being an American pundit was much more lucrative as long as you kept your nose clean. I remember being shocked at how many members of the media “summered on Cape Cod” as if that were a perfectly normal thing for a member of the media to do, presumably while the Peter Fallow-types who stayed in London got drunk down the pub.
That was in the good old days of multiple oligopolies, which placed a premium on stability.
I hadn’t seen an American paper until I went to university. I was struck by how dreary they were. I issued my harshest condemnation: “worse than Le Monde”.
The British term for the practice is “reverse ferret,” although the phrase usually refers to a drastic change of opinion by the newspaper as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_ferret
It’s the trains. Americans (outside a handful of east coast cities) listen to the radio while they drive during commute time and Brits read the papers on the trains.
The Republican pundits on the right are scared of losing that sweet, sweet Koch brothers money, and payola from oligarchs’ think-tanks. The Dem pundits in the center are scared of losing their sinecures like NYT columns and tenured faculty positions. There are a handful of pundits on the left that are anti-establishment, like Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi.
I like Taibbi. He's a liberal, but he's intellectually honest. Unfortunately, since most of our media is owned by a few conglomerates and oligarchs, speaking up against the powerful (Wall Street, Donor Class, military-industrial complex, Israeli lobby) can get you fired quickly. So lots of liberals stick to "safe" topics, such as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, and Donald Trump.Replies: @AKAHorace, @Art Deco
Ryan-care has been withdrawn from Congress. Hopefully Trump keeps his word and moves on from healthcare
although i bet he'd make a great ambassador to north korea
It's so complicated it would have been very hard to tinker with it to make better.
Obama should have simply gone single-payer.
There are not nearly as many complaints about the model in Canada as you'd expect. For example, I had to wait 6 months for cataract surgery. But I unknowingly had the condition for years. So what did another few months matter?
(An optometrist found it when I made routine visit for new glasses).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Piers Morgan seems to have done a 180 since returning to Britain. He has been critical of the American MSM and supportive of Trump’s initiatives when writing for the Daily Mail. I initially suspected it was for remunerative purposes only, but maybe not.
Thank goodness for the internet where I can read the Daily Mail whenever I want.
The Daily Mail: the World's Newspaper of Record!
Meanwhile, someone has written an article on a topic of interest to Steve:
https://infogalactic.com/info/Oroville_Dam_Crisis
“I know of no land where there is less range of thought than in the United States.” –
Tocqueville, 1834.
It’s a good question I have wondered about too and those are goods answers, none of which had occurred to me.
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be–or used to be–surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren’t insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.
(George MacDonald Fraser might have been a historical fiction writer, but for this kind of cultural insight I think he's as good as any historian. He also wrote one of the best "grumpy old man" complaints about political correctness and the decline of Britain I've come across:
The last testament of Flashman's creator: How Britain has destroyed itself)Replies: @Alden
Contemplating that response, I decided that it gave a grisly insight into The Condition of the USA.Replies: @Desiderius
"Each year, 15 million civil cases are filed in the U.S. Unfortunately; many people are looking to come across a big paycheck, resulting in frivolous lawsuits. Lawsuits are handled differently in different countries. For example, in other legal systems, the loser in a suit must pay a large portion of the winner’s legal fees, which encourages litigants to exercise more caution. In the U.S., each party pays their own fees, giving people less of an incentive to be careful with lawsuits."
http://www.commongood.org/blog/entry/infographic-lawsuits-in-america
Is there an American equivalent to classical liberal but PC and SJW hater Sargon of Akkad (video blogger). He’s often funny, too.
BTW Canada resembles the US here, so I think Steve’s argument about how newspapers were sold (pre-Internet) must be part of the problem.
We may be worse than the US. How did that fool Trudope get elected?
Look what happened to the Wild Rose Party in Alberta around 2012. For those who don't know, Wild Rose was an upstart provincial political party that made noise about maybe, juuust maybe putting the brakes on the Progressive madness that had gripped the country. The White working class loved 'em, so that made Wild Rose evil incarnate (sound familiar?).
This is a video was created during that election. In it, a colourful band of diverse and SWPL youngsters engage a 2 minutes hate on White conservatives to encourage strategic voting in order to thwart the Wild Rose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPR84Gn1d9IReplies: @Frau Katze
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be--or used to be--surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren't insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.Replies: @Autochthon, @Randal, @Anon, @dearieme, @conatus
Guess: lots of newspapers all competing in the same smaller national market as opposed to lots of separate competitions between two newspapers in each big city in the US?
So perfect market size (in both number of consumers and compact geography to support multiple competing views.)
TV is gradually imposing PC conformity however.
shucks – seems that maybe Ryan is not up to the job
although i bet he’d make a great ambassador to north korea
On the subject of differences between the British and Americans, are the British too proud to get themselves a 1st Amendment for freedom of speech just because we have one.
God bless James Madison.
Boy, was I wrong.
...for being the first President to lose a war, so LBJ didn't have to worry about it.
I always thought that trying to change Obamacare in any way that would leave millions without care would have been a political disaster.
It’s so complicated it would have been very hard to tinker with it to make better.
Obama should have simply gone single-payer.
There are not nearly as many complaints about the model in Canada as you’d expect. For example, I had to wait 6 months for cataract surgery. But I unknowingly had the condition for years. So what did another few months matter?
(An optometrist found it when I made routine visit for new glasses).
It’s doubtful that Messrs. Will, Krauthammer, Steyn, Limbaugh, Goldberg, Kristol, or Hewitt have ever received a dime of Koch funding. Ditto Mme. Malkin and Mlles. Coulter and Ham. Megan McArdle attended a structured series of workshops associated with the Mercatus Center, but that aside is not patronized by the Koch brothers either. David Frum had a berth at the American Enterprise Institute and Bruce Bartlett had one at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Those places employ some people who are primarily publicists, but you generally have to have some sort of scholarly history or professional experience to land a position at these places, and many who do have day jobs elsewhere or pensions from elsewhere. (AEI and NCPA had the sense to can these men).
As to Steve's original point, of those listed none can be called non-conformist except perhaps Malkin, and maybe Coulter, though she just seems to be a provocateur rather than a serious pundit.Replies: @Art Deco
It's so complicated it would have been very hard to tinker with it to make better.
Obama should have simply gone single-payer.
There are not nearly as many complaints about the model in Canada as you'd expect. For example, I had to wait 6 months for cataract surgery. But I unknowingly had the condition for years. So what did another few months matter?
(An optometrist found it when I made routine visit for new glasses).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Some Democrats want to win back the Great Lakes by pushing Canadian-style single payer. They also secretly think it would do the Democrats a lot of good to have an old fashioned tax-and-spend issue as their flagship issue rather than Hillary-style identity politics of hating normies.
As PJ O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."
It will be like the weather, everyone will complain about it and nobody will do anything about it.Replies: @gcochran
Sure taxes of some would have to be raised.
But I understand some are paying in the hundreds per month for insurance.
Except for the wealthy, they'd be better off with an increased income tax.
“Why Are American Pundits More Conformist Than British Pundits?”
But Brits have swallowed the ‘Americanization’ of UK, so maybe pundit solidarity wins over pundit individuality.
One Voice swallows up many voices.
In this country, the side switchers have tended to be people published in low circulation fora who had other income streams or could count on a ready stream of philanthropic funding (extended before or after switching sides). Right to left have included Garry Wills (academic posts), Edward Luttwak (in a way, and, again, academic posts), Michael Lind (misc. philanthropies), David Brock (sorosphere &c), and Damon Linker (whatever crumbs he gets). Left to right have included Irving Kristol (misc. philanthropies), Norman Podhoretz & family (American Jewish Committee), Seymour Martin Lipset (academic positions), James Q. Wilson (academic positions), Charles Murray (misc philanthropies), Richard John Neuhaus (misc. philanthropies, ministerial backstop), and Joseph Epstein (Phi Beta Kappa Society, academic post). Tacking one way and then another over the years have been Nathan Glazer, Robert W. Tucker, and Glenn Loury (f/t academics all).
Tocqueville, 1834.Replies: @fitzGetty
At Big Sur, after a Highway 1 bridge failed and ”’had to be demolished “‘, normal traffic and access will not resume this year … America no longer bothers to maintain its infrastructure…
the number of people using the infrastructure goes up while the percentage who can contribute to maintaining it goes down
there's a long time lag between when it starts and when things literally start to collapse but if we're around tipping point now we should start to see bridges/dams/health care systems etc collapse quite regularly
John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novel series pretty much nailed the problem in the US print media way back in the 1970s: consolidation of ownership. All else flows therefrom.
Dubious? Read, or re- read “A Dreadful Lemon Sky” etc.
God bless James Madison.Replies: @anon, @Randal, @Eustace Tilley (not)
Arrogant – they didn’t think they needed one – and then PC snuck up on them.
De Tocqueville made the point that Americans were more conformist in general. This might take different forms in different parts of the country but the fear of being excluded from the mainstream seems fairly universal.
Levin was Arianna’s cleverest career move – my grandfather confirms.
In those London days she was known as “‘the Greek Pudding”‘ …
She never fulfilled the promise of the English days .
The Times review of her Picasso biog is a classic demolition job …
That’s where we are headed. Medicare for all and a VAT to pay for it.
As PJ O’Rourke said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.”
It will be like the weather, everyone will complain about it and nobody will do anything about it.
OK, so some are whores for the Mercer family, and some are owned by the Scaiffe heirs. The right wing on the radio absolutely gets funded by plutocrat sugar daddies. See, e.g., http://crooksandliars.com/2014/04/wingnut-welfare-right-wing-radio-expands (first cite I googled, it’s been reported elsewhere quite often). Those on Fox News are paid lackeys for the transnational Murdoch empire.
As to Steve’s original point, of those listed none can be called non-conformist except perhaps Malkin, and maybe Coulter, though she just seems to be a provocateur rather than a serious pundit.
The best John D. MacDonald novel is The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl,_the_Gold_Watch_%26_Everything
Friend of Trump, and Morgan paid a high price for opposing the Iraq War. Honest lefties find a lot to like in Trump.
Steve makes the UK press sound more fun and it is, but I think the pressure to be entertaining also leads to a lot of talking bollocks.Replies: @LondonBob, @Sunbeam
God bless James Madison.Replies: @anon, @Randal, @Eustace Tilley (not)
I’ll freely admit I was (a few decades ago).
Boy, was I wrong.
Piers Morgan paid a high price for running fake photos showing British soldiers abusing prisoners.
Steve makes the UK press sound more fun and it is, but I think the pressure to be entertaining also leads to a lot of talking bollocks.
An American is his job, so it’s dangerous to be Mickey Kaus because you won’t get hired again by your former friends. The identification of job and status is not as extreme in UK. I remember Toby Young making this point about conformist Americans.
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be--or used to be--surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren't insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.Replies: @Autochthon, @Randal, @Anon, @dearieme, @conatus
I used to assume this was a result of the welfare state safety net meaning British workers didn’t have to fear losing their jobs as much as American ones, but I read something in one of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books suggesting British workers were always more likely to punch a toff than foreigners were, so maybe it goes deeper in the culture than I thought.
(George MacDonald Fraser might have been a historical fiction writer, but for this kind of cultural insight I think he’s as good as any historian. He also wrote one of the best “grumpy old man” complaints about political correctness and the decline of Britain I’ve come across:
The last testament of Flashman’s creator: How Britain has destroyed itself)
Use Chrome to view the UK Daily Mail. Firefox cannot handle the graphics load even though I have ad blockers installed.
BTW Canada resembles the US here, so I think Steve's argument about how newspapers were sold (pre-Internet) must be part of the problem.
We may be worse than the US. How did that fool Trudope get elected?Replies: @BenKenobi
Diversity, and the mush-headed White Canadians who love diversity.
Look what happened to the Wild Rose Party in Alberta around 2012. For those who don’t know, Wild Rose was an upstart provincial political party that made noise about maybe, juuust maybe putting the brakes on the Progressive madness that had gripped the country. The White working class loved ’em, so that made Wild Rose evil incarnate (sound familiar?).
This is a video was created during that election. In it, a colourful band of diverse and SWPL youngsters engage a 2 minutes hate on White conservatives to encourage strategic voting in order to thwart the Wild Rose.
Well, the number of new immigrants Trudope has in mind is only clog the system even more. Let's stipulate for argument's sake that the immigrants would be "good" ones: they generally work and aren't over-represented on welfare or in prisons.
There's still a rate that's too high. There's a great shortage of GPs (at least in BC, my daughter says BC doesn't pay enough). But it could just be simple numbers. You bring in a million new immigrants but you don't increase the supply of doctors. It takes years and years to build new med schools and get students through.
Traffic gets worse. Drivers become increasing rude. (These last apply to Vancouver.)
Worst of all, some of the immigrants have lots of money (mostly Chinese in Vancouver). The price of housing is unbelievable. Although I was born and raised there, at the moment, neither I nor my sister live there now. Of six grandkids, only one remains (renting) in Vancouver.
But of course many migrants won't be "good." I'm concerned about Muslims. There aren't many in BC, but I understand they're thick on the ground in Toronto.
I know people who are fed up. But apart from the Wild Rose group, there's no political opposition at all. Even the Conservatives bragged about how many new immigrants they were bringing in.
I guess things need to deteriorate more. Replies: @BenKenobi
wren,
The Daily Mail: the World’s Newspaper of Record!
inevitable side effect of the oligarchs trying to drive wages down with immigration
the number of people using the infrastructure goes up while the percentage who can contribute to maintaining it goes down
there’s a long time lag between when it starts and when things literally start to collapse but if we’re around tipping point now we should start to see bridges/dams/health care systems etc collapse quite regularly
Steve makes the UK press sound more fun and it is, but I think the pressure to be entertaining also leads to a lot of talking bollocks.Replies: @LondonBob, @Sunbeam
I wouldn’t necessarily connect that episode with his opposition to the Iraq War, he got a lot of flak before that episode. Not convinced the photos were fake or the incident contrived anyway.
Firefox struggles with a lot of websites. Still use it though.
For UK Daily Mail with all its photos..... loads much smoother on Chrome and same for youtube. Firefox is better in some ways. If you open seven windows with ten tabs each and all the sites you open are non graphics heavy like Unz.com. Then Firefox does better. I can tell by cpu and memory usage and some other "tells".
Chrome 57 just came out which is supposed to improve matters!
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Chrome+57&pc=MOZI&form=MOZCON
Brits just like to argue. Debating is a national sport in Britain. Perhaps because their social life revolves around the local pub, where people gather to drink pints and talk for hours.
Another factor could be the great tolerance for individual quirks and excentricities, and for different opinions. Whereas conformity is a virtue in America, in England it’s perceived as a weakness and lack of character. There’s no greater sin than to be boring and conforming. Excentricity is feted and revered, unlike in America.
Of course, PC of late has greatly eroded UK’s freedom of speech and stifled debate.
The same pattern can be seen with music. British musicians are expected to express their personality, while Americans are expected to adhere to the conventions of their chosen musical genre.
There is no political thought in the US. People choose their ideology from a limited menu and spend the rest of their days eating the same meal and insisting it’s delicious.
God bless James Madison.Replies: @anon, @Randal, @Eustace Tilley (not)
Yes. God bless James Madison.
…for being the first President to lose a war, so LBJ didn’t have to worry about it.
Why does Jonathan Miller have such a huge, phallic schnoz?
Good comment.
I like Taibbi. He’s a liberal, but he’s intellectually honest. Unfortunately, since most of our media is owned by a few conglomerates and oligarchs, speaking up against the powerful (Wall Street, Donor Class, military-industrial complex, Israeli lobby) can get you fired quickly. So lots of liberals stick to “safe” topics, such as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, and Donald Trump.
ROTFL.
Steve makes the UK press sound more fun and it is, but I think the pressure to be entertaining also leads to a lot of talking bollocks.Replies: @LondonBob, @Sunbeam
“Steve makes the UK press sound more fun and it is, but I think the pressure to be entertaining also leads to a lot of talking bollocks.”
It also sounds like pro wrestling for eggheads – or those that imagine they are.
They’ve got all the tropes, it’s like Hulk Hogan going from good guy to bad guy.
Is there any evidence that the bridge collapse was due to a lack of maintenance? Big Sur is pretty unstable terrain. If the land goes, the bridge has to follow.
(George MacDonald Fraser might have been a historical fiction writer, but for this kind of cultural insight I think he's as good as any historian. He also wrote one of the best "grumpy old man" complaints about political correctness and the decline of Britain I've come across:
The last testament of Flashman's creator: How Britain has destroyed itself)Replies: @Alden
I have all the Flashman books and I absolutely love them.i also love the MacDonald books.
Winston Churchill was a side-switcher.
Twice.
In 1904 he left the Unionists to join the Liberals. In 1921 he left them to be a Tory.
In his words ” anyone can rat, but it takes a genius to re-rat”.
Winston Churchill – not a man of principles, merely an opportunist.
Suck it, neocon Churchill-worshippers.
Could this be more evidence for Steve’s theory that the U.S. is more German than English in many ways culturally ?
Very good points by all, but can anyone comment on British attitudes toward eccentricity? Seems some degree of it is more popular over there.
English writers started portraying amusingly eccentric characters as illustrative of humours. After awhile these kind of literary character portraits of humours started being associated with what we think of as humor: i.e., being funny. After awhile, the English started to associate eccentricity with comedy with Englishness, and brag about how much more tolerant of eccentricity they were than the un-funny Continentals.
Granted, when I try to recall the theory, it sounds pretty unconvincing, so I'll have to find the encyclopedia and see if it makes more sense in the original.
Seems plausible … That was the idea of one of my readers, an Englishman who grew up in a cult commune devoted to worshipping an Indonesian holy man. He says when he’s in the U.S., it seems very German to him: the food, the sense of humor, etc.
"Kindergarten": where did that word come from?
Our K-12 is not a copy of the English system. The universities are organized differently too.
I might be wrong but I seem to recall reading that around the last part of the 19th century, Germany had a much respected education system.
I know they accomplished an enormous amount in the sciences.
It's hard for we post-Hitler people to even imagine that.
PS I'm not German despite pseudonym. I have a boring UK ancestry. But a good pseudonym requires not being obvious.Replies: @Desiderius
In those London days she was known as "'the Greek Pudding"' ...
She never fulfilled the promise of the English days .
The Times review of her Picasso biog is a classic demolition job ...Replies: @AKAHorace
Bernard Levin appeared to me (back in the 70s) to be a smart guy. He predicted that the Soviet Union would dissolve peacefully (“without hanging people from lamp posts” if I remember correctly). UK opinion writers now are a lot less better read. Liberalism at its best.
I like Taibbi. He's a liberal, but he's intellectually honest. Unfortunately, since most of our media is owned by a few conglomerates and oligarchs, speaking up against the powerful (Wall Street, Donor Class, military-industrial complex, Israeli lobby) can get you fired quickly. So lots of liberals stick to "safe" topics, such as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, and Donald Trump.Replies: @AKAHorace, @Art Deco
He sold out Mark Ames. Read the exile, the best thing that either of them ever wrote.
I read a book or two by Levin in the 1970s and found them impressive.
I’ve noticed this, or rather suspected it might be a publisher’s trick across the pond. A fairly recent example of abrupt single-issue reversal I can remember was George Monbiot (think: genteel Labour-Left) endorsing nuclear power, on a theory of global-warmist priorities; meanwhile Alexander Cockburn gradually turned against global warmism, to the point his regular reader base were speculating it was a performance-art joke. The latter occasionally lit up vegetarians too, for no apparent reason than maybe, per Steve’s theory, juicing the circulation. It’s interesting to ponder at what point this hype-chasing style becomes internalized as a writer’s habit– Ctrl-F’ing the post I’ve detected no mention of the early 00s champion of erratic side-switching and public feuding, Andrew Sullivan — another Brit (who probably pushed the gimmick too far, actually).
The only Americans I can recall doing this playful/opportunistic side-switching were William F. Buckley Jr. and (more timorously) Charles Krauthammer. Others who seemed like switchers, e.g. David Frum, I think were just not fully socialized to the hyper-doctrinaire mode of American punditry and its more hierarchical guild mentality vs. Fleet Street. The ideal is someone so self-serious and boring as David Broder or Bob Herbert.
You’d expect among a group of educated adults of one faction, for them have little disagreements here & there while still being on board to joust under whatever banner they’re associated with– but no. (You’d be mistaken to think pundits would enjoy kibbitzing about their “crazy differences,” to put it another way.) When medium-well metro-lib Kirsten Powers became a born-again Christian she was disdainfully treated as a freak by Slate/Salon goodwhites, likewise insincerely praised by right-wing God-botherers. If one’s career is going on TV to spout 60-90 seconds of coarse certitudes it’s probably incompatible w/ being a complex person. Incidentally I think she pretty much had to come out with it, due to the thick sub-rosa tension around abortion in American punditry. A few pro-life Democrats are still around, even famous ones like Dennis Kucinich, but there’s no way to be a pro-life liberal in the opinion biz. How this became a deal-breaker eludes me. I think the taboo is starting to run the other way now, with dotty unreliable “conservatives” like Kathleen Parker maintaining their grip mostly by espousing the pro-life cause. I think both the Hitchens brothers were pro-life but the dead one didn’t get much traction on it because of being based in D.C. (the living one doesn’t get much traction on it because Brits apparently don’t care about the issue either way).
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be--or used to be--surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren't insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.Replies: @Autochthon, @Randal, @Anon, @dearieme, @conatus
The British were a mono-culture until recently, with shared white ancestry. If you’re part of the in-group, you can say what you please among the other in-group members. They’re like your family, and you tolerate more obnoxiousness from your relatives than you would from a stranger. It’s only been recently that out-group members have appeared in Western cultures, and that certain cynical in-group people have been using them as a wedge to divide their own white group against itself.
Look what happened to the Wild Rose Party in Alberta around 2012. For those who don't know, Wild Rose was an upstart provincial political party that made noise about maybe, juuust maybe putting the brakes on the Progressive madness that had gripped the country. The White working class loved 'em, so that made Wild Rose evil incarnate (sound familiar?).
This is a video was created during that election. In it, a colourful band of diverse and SWPL youngsters engage a 2 minutes hate on White conservatives to encourage strategic voting in order to thwart the Wild Rose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPR84Gn1d9IReplies: @Frau Katze
I live in BC, but I have heard of the Wild Rose Party, apparently it still exists but only just.
Well, the number of new immigrants Trudope has in mind is only clog the system even more. Let’s stipulate for argument’s sake that the immigrants would be “good” ones: they generally work and aren’t over-represented on welfare or in prisons.
There’s still a rate that’s too high. There’s a great shortage of GPs (at least in BC, my daughter says BC doesn’t pay enough). But it could just be simple numbers. You bring in a million new immigrants but you don’t increase the supply of doctors. It takes years and years to build new med schools and get students through.
Traffic gets worse. Drivers become increasing rude. (These last apply to Vancouver.)
Worst of all, some of the immigrants have lots of money (mostly Chinese in Vancouver). The price of housing is unbelievable. Although I was born and raised there, at the moment, neither I nor my sister live there now. Of six grandkids, only one remains (renting) in Vancouver.
But of course many migrants won’t be “good.” I’m concerned about Muslims. There aren’t many in BC, but I understand they’re thick on the ground in Toronto.
I know people who are fed up. But apart from the Wild Rose group, there’s no political opposition at all. Even the Conservatives bragged about how many new immigrants they were bringing in.
I guess things need to deteriorate more.
So the diverse can have Canada -- they broke it, they bought it. (PS: there's these people called "natives", and they will expect you to entertain their bullshit with grace and aplomb.)
I know Vancouver well. Every bit of the city is fascinating. I live downtown, Yaletown specifically. 6 years now. There is a certain bent appeal of being the only out-of-the-closet Deplorable in the downtown core. Well, me and Peter Wall I guess.Replies: @Frau Katze
I think if those Dems got the upper hand and campaigned on that, they might well win.
Sure taxes of some would have to be raised.
But I understand some are paying in the hundreds per month for insurance.
Except for the wealthy, they’d be better off with an increased income tax.
I found an old Encyclopedia Britannica article that I’ll have to dig up: it says that the English started off with the medieval theory of four humours as determining personality: e.g., choleric, melancholic, etc.
English writers started portraying amusingly eccentric characters as illustrative of humours. After awhile these kind of literary character portraits of humours started being associated with what we think of as humor: i.e., being funny. After awhile, the English started to associate eccentricity with comedy with Englishness, and brag about how much more tolerant of eccentricity they were than the un-funny Continentals.
Granted, when I try to recall the theory, it sounds pretty unconvincing, so I’ll have to find the encyclopedia and see if it makes more sense in the original.
I may have missed it but I have been surprised that the situation of Big Sur has not made it to national news. It really is dire. There have been air lifts of food into the area. And like so much repair in California following the floods (and no maintenance for however long) repair is going to take months.
The Germans seem to have influenced the education system in the US and Canada.
“Kindergarten”: where did that word come from?
Our K-12 is not a copy of the English system. The universities are organized differently too.
I might be wrong but I seem to recall reading that around the last part of the 19th century, Germany had a much respected education system.
I know they accomplished an enormous amount in the sciences.
It’s hard for we post-Hitler people to even imagine that.
PS I’m not German despite pseudonym. I have a boring UK ancestry. But a good pseudonym requires not being obvious.
Bernard Levin was a massive name for a long time. Today he’s largely forgotten. And deservedly so: like Marx, Freud, Stephen Jay Gould, Christopher “Robin” Hitchens, Stephen Fry and many other members of the white community, he was good at seeming profound without actually being so. Thanks to white privilege, they become big names regardless.
Well, the number of new immigrants Trudope has in mind is only clog the system even more. Let's stipulate for argument's sake that the immigrants would be "good" ones: they generally work and aren't over-represented on welfare or in prisons.
There's still a rate that's too high. There's a great shortage of GPs (at least in BC, my daughter says BC doesn't pay enough). But it could just be simple numbers. You bring in a million new immigrants but you don't increase the supply of doctors. It takes years and years to build new med schools and get students through.
Traffic gets worse. Drivers become increasing rude. (These last apply to Vancouver.)
Worst of all, some of the immigrants have lots of money (mostly Chinese in Vancouver). The price of housing is unbelievable. Although I was born and raised there, at the moment, neither I nor my sister live there now. Of six grandkids, only one remains (renting) in Vancouver.
But of course many migrants won't be "good." I'm concerned about Muslims. There aren't many in BC, but I understand they're thick on the ground in Toronto.
I know people who are fed up. But apart from the Wild Rose group, there's no political opposition at all. Even the Conservatives bragged about how many new immigrants they were bringing in.
I guess things need to deteriorate more. Replies: @BenKenobi
Hah, I know how you feel. I checked out long ago. I’m no longer Canadian, I just live here. I have served in two of the regiments who took Vimy Ridge. One of them while in Afghanistan. Our war dead from 1812 up-to-and-including friends of mine in the 2010s did not die for diversity. They were betrayed. I consider the 1982 constitution to be a soft-coup against the old, true Canada.
So the diverse can have Canada — they broke it, they bought it. (PS: there’s these people called “natives”, and they will expect you to entertain their bullshit with grace and aplomb.)
I know Vancouver well. Every bit of the city is fascinating. I live downtown, Yaletown specifically. 6 years now. There is a certain bent appeal of being the only out-of-the-closet Deplorable in the downtown core. Well, me and Peter Wall I guess.
If I dwell on it, I just get depressed, because there's absolutely nothing I can do.
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be--or used to be--surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren't insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.Replies: @Autochthon, @Randal, @Anon, @dearieme, @conatus
“In the workplace too, British can be – or used to be – surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors.’ When I remarked on Marginal Revolution that Britons, Aussies, and Kiwis have a conspicuously greater tendency to free speech than Americans, other commenters immediately assumed that this free speech habit must be used to make “racist” remarks.
Contemplating that response, I decided that it gave a grisly insight into The Condition of the USA.
Try a larger/more representative sample.Replies: @Art Deco
As to Steve's original point, of those listed none can be called non-conformist except perhaps Malkin, and maybe Coulter, though she just seems to be a provocateur rather than a serious pundit.Replies: @Art Deco
Limbaugh and Hewitt are commercially viable. They do not need philanthropic funding. Neither does Fox News. I’m sure ‘Crooks and Liars’ is absolutely dispassionate and fair.
I like Taibbi. He's a liberal, but he's intellectually honest. Unfortunately, since most of our media is owned by a few conglomerates and oligarchs, speaking up against the powerful (Wall Street, Donor Class, military-industrial complex, Israeli lobby) can get you fired quickly. So lots of liberals stick to "safe" topics, such as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, and Donald Trump.Replies: @AKAHorace, @Art Deco
I like Taibbi. He’s a liberal, but he’s intellectually honest.
ROTFL.
"Kindergarten": where did that word come from?
Our K-12 is not a copy of the English system. The universities are organized differently too.
I might be wrong but I seem to recall reading that around the last part of the 19th century, Germany had a much respected education system.
I know they accomplished an enormous amount in the sciences.
It's hard for we post-Hitler people to even imagine that.
PS I'm not German despite pseudonym. I have a boring UK ancestry. But a good pseudonym requires not being obvious.Replies: @Desiderius
Yes, our wonderful Progressives of the early 20th Century modeled our education system after the Prussian, in all it’s humourlessness.
Yeah Steve – Guess that’s another thing Americans and Brits have in common – following ” Indonesian Cult Leaders ” LOL Seriously , the thing that stuck with me was how The Scorpions always seemed like more of an American band than ANY English band . Even more so than The Stones or The Animals or Led Zep , even though those bands had much more of a blues sound to them . Our military bases in West Germany probably had something to do with it too.
Me using Windows 7 on a PC … I always have task manager open and monitor cpu use and memory use (hogging) by chrome and firefox. Firefox is my prime browser because I have lots of bookmarks organized and much easier to do this on Firefox than Chrome. I keep a batch of secondary bookmarks organized on Chrome. I use add blockers on both.
For UK Daily Mail with all its photos….. loads much smoother on Chrome and same for youtube. Firefox is better in some ways. If you open seven windows with ten tabs each and all the sites you open are non graphics heavy like Unz.com. Then Firefox does better. I can tell by cpu and memory usage and some other “tells”.
Chrome 57 just came out which is supposed to improve matters!
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Chrome+57&pc=MOZI&form=MOZCON
As PJ O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."
It will be like the weather, everyone will complain about it and nobody will do anything about it.Replies: @gcochran
As of 2014, Canada spent 10.4% of GNP on health care, US 17.1%, according to the World Bank.
Right. And in Canada, you can wait 6 months for an MRI, or have to drive 80 miles to get a pacemaker installed. True stories.
When comedy was actually funny.
I’m highly compressed that Steve is familiar with Spitting Images. That is a wonderful clip.
That spitting image ditty was a dead ringer for Jonathan Miller.
Bernard Levin was always completely unbearably insufferable, however I rather like Dr Jonathan Miller, even his rather self-parodied cadence and style. I especially liked his series A Brief History of Disbelief.
Last year, back in Blighty, I saw the Gilbert and Sullivan musical he directed – The Mikado.
It was originally set by Gilbert and Sullivan in Japan; Miller’s PC rendition had it in European garb…to pander to contemporary sensibilities. Which I thought was a profound cop out on Miller’s part and pissed me off rightly.
The predictably fluffy Grauniad review.
OT:
Singaporean teen Amos Yee has been granted political asylum in the United States. He made a video titled “Lee Kuan Yew is dead finally” and another now-deleted video where he dry-humped a Koran, but an edited version of the video is still available, “Refuting Islam with their own Quran”.
While sometimes humorous and occasionally thought-provoking, Yee is mostly an attention-seeker and has conviently deleted all of the videos from his channel that reveal his true person. He would fit right in at Hampshire College.
Journalists are usually forgotten within about two days of retirement.
That’s just how it works.
So the diverse can have Canada -- they broke it, they bought it. (PS: there's these people called "natives", and they will expect you to entertain their bullshit with grace and aplomb.)
I know Vancouver well. Every bit of the city is fascinating. I live downtown, Yaletown specifically. 6 years now. There is a certain bent appeal of being the only out-of-the-closet Deplorable in the downtown core. Well, me and Peter Wall I guess.Replies: @Frau Katze
It’s really frustrating. My father (five years overseas as a bomber pilot WW II) would be horrified. But so many didn’t survive.
If I dwell on it, I just get depressed, because there’s absolutely nothing I can do.
Contemplating that response, I decided that it gave a grisly insight into The Condition of the USA.Replies: @Desiderius
Marginal Revolution is aptly named.
Try a larger/more representative sample.
He was definitely a great writer, and I agree about the Flashman books.
Nevertheless, I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be--or used to be--surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren't insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.Replies: @Autochthon, @Randal, @Anon, @dearieme, @conatus
In Britain the legal system is based on ‘loser pays’ principal so there are fewer fishing lawsuits.
“Each year, 15 million civil cases are filed in the U.S. Unfortunately; many people are looking to come across a big paycheck, resulting in frivolous lawsuits. Lawsuits are handled differently in different countries. For example, in other legal systems, the loser in a suit must pay a large portion of the winner’s legal fees, which encourages litigants to exercise more caution. In the U.S., each party pays their own fees, giving people less of an incentive to be careful with lawsuits.”
http://www.commongood.org/blog/entry/infographic-lawsuits-in-america
Try a larger/more representative sample.Replies: @Art Deco
She’s indubitably referring to one of 4 regular commenters on that site, one of whom is Canadian and one of whom decamped to Germany 25 years ago.
Journalists are usually forgotten within about two days of retirement. That’s just how it works.
Ok, but my point was that Levin didn’t deserve to be famous in the first place: like Gould, he was smoke-and-mirrors, not substance. Same with Christopher Hitchens, Susan Sontag, most neo-cons and a long list of other folk who have enjoyed white privilege down the years.
In his day, Bernard Levin sold a lot of newspapers in the world’s most competitive newspaper market.
Oh, I was impressed by him once. I was impressed by Gould too. I would probably have been impressed by Hitchens at the same age. But I’m not taken in by smoke-and-mirrors any more. Kevin MacDonald took psychoanalysis and Freudianism seriously once, I think.