Interesting article by Ruth Graham in the NY Times today. It focuses on conservatives who are tired of just whining about how bad things are and have decided to build communities more to their liking. I have a lot of issues with these folks, but I want to endorse this movement.
There is nothing I find more irritating than people who whine about the collapse of traditional values while themselves embodying the changes they gripe about. E.g., people who earn big bucks working for think tanks in Manhattan or Washington and constantly bemoan the decline of small towns and their values. People with no children in panic about population decline. People who employ Haitian nannies while they rage against immigration. I would say the odds against these people meaningfully influencing the broader culture are long, as symbolized by their fixing on Donald Trump as their leader. When your moral crusade is led by a man who was convicted of financial shenanigans for making hush money payments to a porn star with whom he had an affair, you've already surrendered the high ground, and most of the other ground as well.
But people with these values shouldn't despair. They should do stuff like this:
Many of the young activists and thinkers who have risen under Trump's influence see themselves as part of a project that goes far beyond electoral politics. Rather, it is a movement to reclaim the values of Western civilization as they see it. Their ambitions paint a picture of the country they want should Mr. Trump return to the White House — one driven by their version of Christian values, with larger families and fewer immigrants. They foresee an aesthetic landscape to match, with more classical architecture and a revived conservative art movement and men wearing traditional suits. . . .
Fed up by what they see as an increasingly hostile and disordered secular culture, many are moving to what they view as more welcoming states and regions, battling for American society from conservative “fortresses.”
Some see themselves as participants in and advocates for a “great sort,” a societal reordering in which conservatives and liberals naturally divide into more homogenous communities and areas.
If you feel like America's old tradition of clubs and social organizations is declining, found a club. If you miss suits, wear one, and start some private events where they are required. If you can't find any place where you feel comfortable talking about your beliefs, create one:
The year Mr. Kressin moved to Idaho, he and Mr. Williams were part of an informal conversation at Claremont about the need for new institutions in what some hope will be a rejuvenated American society. The idea was a “fraternal community,” as one leader put it, that prioritized in-person meetings. The result was the all-male Society for American Civic Renewal, an invitation-only social organization reserved for Christians. The group has about 10 lodges in various states of development so far, with membership ranging between seven and several dozen people.
I suppose the conversation in some of these clubs might turn toward calling out the army to put black people in their place, but I don't really care. Deplorable people needs homes, too. I think the notion that western civilization is collapsing are ridiculous, but if that's how you feel, quit bitching and build a fortress against it. Graham describes a project under way to move lots of Christian conservatives to a couple of small towns in Tennessee where they will be numerous enough to set the agenda. I doubt they will have much better luck than the liberatrians who tried to take over New Hampshire, but I sincerely hope they at least succeed in find a place where they feel at home.
No happy with the way things are? Stop posting Trump memes and build something more to your liking.
I don't actually find that, historically, this sort of personal, moral high ground consistency is terribly important to a movement's success. It's a classic historian's conundrum--much used to spark undergraduate discussion--to point out that X successful champion of Christianity was a man of war (eg, Constantine), Y leftist was a successful businessman (Eg, Engels), etc., etc. Trump's inconsistency has NEVER proven to be a political problem for him.
ReplyDeleteAs far as this movement in particular is concerned, I'm reminded of the line from Fiddler on the Roof: "Mmmmay God bless and keep the tsar . . . far away from us!"
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this line of thinking is that it effectively just reintroduces Segregation, just on political or cultural lines rather than racial ones. To embrace this notion is to reintroduce countless societal ills that we eliminated decades ago, just in new forms. Instead of signs saying "No Blacks", they'll say "No Queers"; instead of "Whites Only" they'll say "Christians Only"; etc. And the end result will be an even more divided society than we already have, with even more strife between Americans of different stripes.
ReplyDeleteEven putting that aside, the "fortress" mentality also produces horrible outcomes for a sizeable proportion of people born INSIDE such a "fortress". If you look, you'll find no end to the stories of people who grew up in extremely insular religious communities where no effort was spared to keep them sheltered and ignorant of the outside world - where young people are lied to, manipulated, and forced to conform to a way of life that they secretly find miserable and unbearable, until eventually the lucky few who are both willing and able to ask hard questions find out they've been used and betrayed, and ultimately "escape" into broader society.
In either case, the only way this sort of "solution" of wholly segregating people ever remotely "works" is when you carve out an entire contiguous chunk of land in a bloody civil war, draw up entirely new national borders, and forcibly deport people en masse.
And even then, the results are deeply dysfunctional - see the persistent strife between India and Pakistan; see the horrifying treatment of North Koreans by their own government, and the shock and amazement of those who escape to the South or elsewhere on learning that their entire life they'd been lied to and manipulated; etc.
There's no sensible, sane way to split up the country into "fortresses" without ruining countless innocent lives in the process, and for generations afterwards.
And what was it Abraham Lincoln said? Something about a house divided against itself? Hmm...
The Hasidim of Kiryas Joel have managed to do pretty much what you describe
ReplyDeleteLisa
@Anonymous / Lisa
ReplyDeleteSmall groups can withdraw from society to some extent. The Hasidi of Kiryas Joel number only around 40,000, after all.
The Amish are another classic example. There are over 350,000 of them nationally, but spread across a vast area - Pennsylvania has the largest single population within any state, of only about 87,000. They make up less than 0.1% of the American population, and they
But we're talking small groups withdrawing from society by going out into undeveloped rural areas and building their own idealized settlements from scratch (or nearly so).
There's a massive difference between that and much larger (and frankly far less homogeneous) groups of people like "Conservatives" who don't want to move from where they already live out to the fringes as a form of self-isolation, but rather want to try to claim entire cities or even states where they have a political majority as their own "fortresses", and then try to forcibly oppress or drive out anyone who disagrees with them.