BF2S Forums DAST Chat

Shahter wrote:

okay. so the google doesn't seem to confirm what you posted above. being deselected doesn't mean removal from the currently occupied post for a politician - it means he won't be able to run for it again in the following election. thus, no matter how poorly one does, he still gets to stay for the whole term. that is a big difference - and that's what i was pointing out in my first reply to jay.
am i missing something?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47283976

yes

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine … community/

Article from conservative who argues that socialism is only becoming popular as a result of social and community institutions becoming less popular. There are actually some Boomers in the comments complaining about how the government is causing their Church group to collapse (???).

The reason old social organizations have collapsed is obviously a result of the personal and political failure of their leadership who are almost totally Boomers. People don't want to be a part of rich white people gossip clubs. Young people rather watch Netflix and play video games than listen to Becky talk about her vacation to Ireland or new BMW her husband leases. God how awful.

Dilbert_X wrote:

its going to be a different world in 20 years.

Breaking news!

Dilbert_X wrote:

Freemasons are dying out, Lions/other volunteer clubs are dying out, sports clubs - football, tennis etc are advertising for members, the average age in most sports clubs is well over 50, pubs and live-music venues are shutting down.

Not sure what millenials do with their time, asians don't seem to do much more than waddle from noodle bar to noodle bar, its going to be a different world in 20 years.

it's sort of strange you include freemasons in that list. the others are mostly voluntary and inclusive, open to everyone. freemasons, whilst nominally 'open', is like a less accessible version of the rotary international or something. as far as medieval guild organisations go, i'm not sure modern society will miss them any more than they'll miss the worshipful company of goldsmiths or fishmongers. this reads literally like a complaint from an Old White Male that they are losing control on reality. there are plenty of official groups that young people are flocking to for membership and organisation (hint, they have names like Momentum and come with frightening progressive politics and a concern for gender equality rather than secret handshakes and insider dealing).

it's true that many old social clubs are dying out -- but new forms of social activity are replacing them. fortnite and minecraft are probably a paltry replacement for football and tennis on a balmy summer eve, but what can you do? i think the kids will be alright. they are still being social, just not in a form we recognise. sports clubs are just hangovers from the age of industrialism with industrial-scale organised fun, in any case. new economic conditions, new social arrangements, new forms of play. it's quite simple. do you really expect kids to be crowding the terraces every sunday to watch the local F.C. club play? what, do they need flat caps and whippets too? how about a daily bell to tell the factory's open? besides, i see plenty of youth teams and leagues for these sports, for those who are inclined; you can hardly say that sport is no longer still a huge part of daily life. it's just no longer an obligatory group ritual or central identifying trait, which can only be a good thing.

considering that asians from the educated classes of china, from hong kong, from japan and (especially) from south korea spend about 12–15 hours a day in education or revising/cramming for said education, i frankly don't blame them that spend their only spare time in noodle bars or getting bubble tea together. don't forget the extra-curricular grade 5 piano, english as a foreign language, and gym/dance that they are all forced to do in order to stand a chance of getting into a good university. i'm sure growing up in an england in the 1970s where everything was free, grant-paid-for, and higher ed was a more lax affair, de facto restricted to about 15–20% of the society, i'm sure you can really lecture these hyper-pressured kids on how they spend their time. you should team up with their suicide counsellors -- get them doing hopscotch or something!

live music venues are only shutting down in areas where yuppie apartments are forcing changes to licensing through noise/anti-social disorder laws. when was the last time you went to a live music venue that wasn't a giant out-of-town stadium to see some foreign import (or their hologram) prance about on stage and then leave? i'm sure you have a real concern for sustainable arts scenes, dilderp. one thing young people are still into is music, especially live music. pubs are dying out because, like the sports and social clubs named above, they are obsolete. gastropubs and craft beer bars are replacing them, or simply socialising at home; and, frankly, who can mind? most pubs in england sell the same 4 beers/lagers from the same 2 breweries, the smoke from the 1970s is still in the furniture, there's peanuts and sawdust on the floor, and the regulars are missing teeth (and out to claim some of their own in fisticuffs). no thanks. the public house had a specific social function in a specific historical circumstance. sorry, but none of us are gathering to gossip about the village bastard or stopping off on our day-long road trip through worcestershire to slake our thirsts anymore. besides, most publicans and landlords will tell you that it's the breweries, franchises and licensing laws that have the entire industry by the balls, squeezing their profit margins.

Last edited by uziq (2019-05-22 02:34:15)

niall ferguson? you mean that historian who was laughed out of his home country and its universities because of his sentimentalised and borderline revisionist view of the age of imperialism, queen victoria, and everyone, especially our imperial ‘charges’, knowing their place? right.

his point about local politics is interesting — within its concrete context. and that context is basically that localism and grassroots organisation is being won by the left, especially among the young and educated. whilst his tory right and conservative colleagues have abandoned localism to the internationalism of the market (which is responsible for all the rootlessness and deracination you speak of; its the free-market and it’s invisible hand you speak of so much, not some nebulous ‘modern life’ or hollywood. sure, it was those scary jews and progressives in california that bamboozled everyone into upending their lives! this reminds me of that time you blamed hippies in greenwich village for destroying the black nuclear family).

he is anti-mass culture and anti-egalitarian. he sees an autocracy of the plebeian, everyman. sure. but his wish to keep it out with insider clubs of freemasons and rotarians and patrician elites is hardly a solution to anything. haven’t you rallied against that very thing before? it’s like we’ve come full circle. it’s not like rotarians have done anything to update their (white, christian) inclusivity to pluralistic modern democracies. if they were a business you’d be applauding them going bankrupt as a natural correction.

further reading: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mi … h-this-man

Last edited by uziq (2019-05-22 05:17:12)

local politics is actually a big thing now. labour and the greens kickstarted it in europe. in the last few years it has also been a major thing for the populist right (five star in italy a depressing mirror to spain's podemos, etc). but i think niall's general critique of all these is that they are mass-movements aimed towards populist causes. his dyed-in-the-wool conservatism sold itself out to market-based ideology 30 years ago and hasn't got a single sensible answer to all the people who are pissed after the banking crisis, after they were told to entrust their national destiny to the benign free-marketeers.

the left wing are responsible for nation states and nationalism? that's a pretty fucking hot take. i think you might like to re-read a basic outline of the 18th and 19th centuries, and these little centralised affairs that europe indulged in called empires. the first left-wing autocratic nation state didn't appear until 1922. the entire 19th century was full of socialists, and latterly marxists, theorising an opposition to the nation state and nationalism (the first communist organisations weren't called 'the x international' for nothing).

and i don't doubt for a second that you have a venal core that would love nothing more than to be a member of a yacht club. truly an arriviste.

Last edited by uziq (2019-05-22 05:53:49)

increasing isolation and anomie is mostly a symptom of major-city-living, i think. people are forced into meat grinders to make their careers where they can hardly afford to rent, let alone to buy and put down roots. you get transient populations and people combining together for nothing more than to climb up slippery career ladders. professionals marry off and move out. property needs to be affordable before community can develop. cities themselves are only going to become these sort of hyper-capitalist interzones so long as all the 'residents' are living on the other side of the world and only buying the local available property as tax evasion/investment schemes.

young people are organising for themselves all the time, forming groupuscules and clubs and societies. maybe you'll scoff at feminist dj collectives putting on events and local community-run radio stations, but then again not many young people are into target practice and shooting.

Last edited by uziq (2019-05-22 06:37:43)

i was talking more about young people uniting over trendy progressive causes, of which there is plenty in every city, believe you me. social networks are still forming, just it's more cause-based nowadays than hobby-based. everyone's main hobby is being a social media brand, in any case.

it can be tedious, for sure, but i'd be a lot more bored around people discussing their putting average or their shooting accuracy.

i mean, critiquing eco-warriors is quite a different thing from claiming that the entire social fabric of the current world is disintegrating and that we're all headed to cyberpunk-shanghai dystopia.

i mean, your entire country was founded because it wanted to get away from an autocratic and unaccountable state/ruler ... how the hell are you going to say 'the left pushed for nation states'? that is historically illiterate even by your normally slipshod standards.

i'm pretty sure in the US that a lot of hawkish, war-making nation building was done in the name of right-wing nationalism before wilson came along.

Last edited by uziq (2019-05-22 08:28:35)

Jay wrote:

I went to a Niall Ferguson lecture with my father in law one time. His primary message was that it was lamentable that important local institutions like the rotary club etc. were dying as they functioned as important bedrocks for local engagement with neighbors and local politics. It's largely true, and I think it has to do with the transience of modern society. Hardly anyone lives where they grew up. The ones that do are looked at like they are mutants.

I think Hollywood did a good job undermining these institutions by portraying them as stuffy and lame but I think it was a trend that was put into motion by the nationalization and internationalization of politics in general. Local newspapers are dying because no one cares about local stuff. Those that care about politics have their eyes on Washington. Even at the state level the politicians seem more interested in scoring points against other states than they are about governing. California just proposed a law to give tax credits to movie studios that move their filming out of the states that just passed abortion laws. How is that relevant to the interests of Californians?

Ferguson's thesis is that we are traveling towards autocracy because we've turned our backs on local governance. He may have a point.

i think californians benefit from movie studios moving filming/production back to california in the form of more jobs. I'm not sure if you know but california has a pretty deep history of involvement in the film industry.  You even mentioned Hollywood in your post!

Local newspapers are dying because media conglomerations are consolidating and favoring national coverage because it's cheaper to produce and disseminate, not because no one cares.

You are reading this completely wrong and using it as weak evidence of state politics ganging up on other states (?) because you would rather look at the current snapshot in time as opposed to the past 200 years of states doing exactly that, and the larger context of state vs. federal rights (something you yourself have significantly commented about on this very site).

Rotary and other social clubs are dying because the internet has replaced the need for people to sit on old leather sofas in mahogany grand rooms to socialize.  There doesn't need to be a spurious reason like the idea that hollywood is undermining institutions or because people these days just don't care about what old farts in the past cared about. People went to social clubs to...be social. Now they do it on the internet.  Times, they are a-changing.

In the end it really doesn't matter if you like or don't like progress. People can be upset about change, people can try to resist change, but at the end of the day, things will still change. Embrace it, fight it, reluctantly agree to it - it's your choice.

They're morons.