This news item is, shall we say, unsettling:
Beijing has launched two medium-range missiles into the South China Sea in a scathing warning to the United States, as tensions between the superpowers soar, triggering World War 3 fears in the region. The move came on Wednesday morning, one day after China said a US U-2 spy plane entered a no-fly zone without permission. A source close to the Chinese military is understood to have told local media the missile launch was intended to send a warning to the United States.
I've written about Ross Douthat's book The Age of Decadence: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success before. I recall excerpting from and linking to the interview Rod Dreher did with Douthat about it at The American Conservative. I haven't read the book yet, but based on that interview and now this review by Charles Murray at Claremont Review of Books, I very much want to.
Douthat structures his formulation thusly:
Douthat assesses contemporary life in terms of “the four horsemen” of decadence: stagnation, sterility, sclerosis, and repetition.
Murray's review also works as a stand-alone essay. He devotes some space to a subject I discuss a lot here at LITD:
The fourth of Douthat’s four horsemen, repetition, is different from the others. It is not just an indicator of cultural exhaustion. It is the thing itself. It is seen most easily in terms of the arts over the period that Barzun wrote about, 1500 to 1900.
The Renaissance produced three rich new (or to some degree rediscovered) cognitive inventions in the arts: linear perspective for the visual arts, polyphony for music, and the use of the vernacular for literature. The implementation of these resources was fostered by technological innovations—oil paints for the visual arts, improved instruments for music, and the printing press for literature. Through 1900, the combination of cognitive and technological innovation produced successive waves of wonderful new creations. But harbingers of exhaustion were discernible even in the 19th century, and became palpable not long into the 20th.
The visual arts represent the obvious example of deterioration. By mid-century, with a few admirable exceptions, the modern art world seemed determined to make itself the butt of jokes, as Tom Wolfe memorably described in The Painted Word (1975). Little has changed since.
In music, the disappearance of listenable music in the high culture (again with a few admirable exceptions) was accompanied by vibrant creativity in the popular culture, whether it took the form of jazz, the compositions of George Gershwin, the Broadway musicals of the 1940s and ’50s, or rock ’n roll during the 1960s and ’70s. But since the late ’70s? The increasing repetitiveness of composition and musicianship in pop music has been documented in technical journals, but it’s not necessary to resort to that level of subtlety. What’s the difference, really, between the music of the 1990s and the 2010s—between the music of Madonna and Lady Gaga, of Mariah Carey and Adele? Between the heavy metal or rock or rap of the 1980s and those genres now? Nuances distinguish them. You don’t need to resort to nuances to tell the difference between the music of the 1970s and 1950s or the 1950s and 1930s.
In literature, serious American fiction was redefined continually through the first 60 years of the 20th century. Compare the distinctive sensibilities and styles apparent in the voices of Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, and John Updike. How are the sensibilities and styles of the best authors in the 2010s distinguishable from those writing in the 1980s?
* * *
Does the picture improve when we turn to the new platforms that the 20th century gave us, film and television? For most of the 20th century, those new platforms fostered steadily improving creations. The film industry still produces the occasional gem, but the gems are increasingly buried beneath the pile of superhero franchises and recycling of old material. Consider: among the 25 top-grossing films in 2019, just three—12%—had a story line and characters that had not already appeared on screen. The others were all sequels or remakes. By way of comparison, the percentage of new stories and characters for the top-25s from 1950 to 1979 was 90%.
The closest thing to an exception to the curse of repetition is television, which has produced a torrent of high-quality miniseries over the past 20 years. But, Douthat points out, there’s a caveat even for television: “it’s telling that even the great shows of the early 2000s often felt vital and relevant precisely because they were so good at holding up a mirror to frustration, futility, repetition, decay, corruption—in a word, to decadence”—and here he cites The Wire, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, True Detective, and Girls as examples. And, he adds, even television’s golden age appears to be increasingly replaced by a different age “in which the flood of content is overwhelming but also often algorithmically optimized, tending inevitably toward its own forms of repetition, mediocrity, the safe imitation of more daring forms”—a transition exemplified by the abrupt deterioration of Game of Thrones in its final season.
Murray and Douthat stress that the kind of decadence being examined in this book is not wha might first come to mind:
As you will have gathered by this time, Douthat’s version of decadence is far different from decadence as many of us used to think of it. In the 1970s—the decade of Studio 54, open marriages, mainstream porn, powder cocaine at upscale parties, and skyrocketing crime—we seemed to be headed toward the hedonistic dystopia portrayed in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. It now appears that Aldous Huxley was more prophetic than Burgess. Douthat argues that society is moving toward a “comfortable numbness.” Crystal meth is still with us, but the drugs with the broadest appeal now are downers such as marijuana, heroin, and opioids, more like the soma of Brave New World than mania-inducing uppers. Virtual realities, whether they consist of sex robots or wraparound gaming headsets, offer other kinds of escape. These new uses of drugs and virtual realities “don’t solve social problems; indeed they worsen them…but at the same time, they prevent those problems from having the broader consequences that a society without so many drugs and distractions would expect to experience.”
Brave New World also appears to have been more prophetic than George Orwell’s 1984. Douthat describes the kindly despotism that is likely to oversee decadent societies as “the pink police state”—a state that merely nudges if possible, shoving only when necessary. The pink police state will protect civil liberties of pleasure and consumption and the freedom to be “safe.” The unprotected civil liberties will be freedoms of speech, religion, and privacy.
Jason Whitlock at Outkick rips BLM and the professional sports industry that has gone all in for it with bracing vigor:
[LeBron] James is the Al Sharpton of sports, an agent of chaos working closely with politicians who use racial division to rally voter support. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and black ministers can no longer deliver black voters to polling booths. The task has now been handed to James, Colin Kaepernick and black athletes. It’s their job to inflame the emotions of black people and get us to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depended on it.
As you know, I don’t vote. I reject the pervasive dishonesty in politics. As it relates to BLM, the man or woman sitting in the White House has absolutely nothing to do with how police engage with a resisting suspect. President Barack Obama was in office when Michael Brown tussled with officer Darren Wilson.
The politicization of Jacob Blake is a byproduct of political dishonesty. The prevailing sentiment propagandized by BLM that police are intentionally targeting black men is a political ploy.
Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Eric Garner and Rayshard Brooks are not examples of “systemic racism.” If anything, they’re examples of “systemic resisting arrest.”
The police, even bigoted police, are not nearly as dumb as BLM supporters would have you believe. LeBron James has foolishly suggested that police officers are intentionally hunting, targeting and killing black men. When discussing the actions of Kenosha police, James said:
“Or maybe he just left the house saying that, ‘Today is going to be the end for one of these black people.’ That’s what it feels like. It just hurts. It hurts.”
Police are not that stupid. Killing a criminal suspect complicates and jeopardizes the life of the police officer, even if he’s not convicted of a crime. You think Darren Wilson is somewhere happy he was involved in the death of Michael Brown?
Speaking of BLM, what happened when Star Parker of UrbanCURE tried to take a message of uplift and empowerment into several post-American cities, as she recounts at Townhall, is a blood-curdling reminder of how far along the Left is in imposing its program of stomping human dignity into the dust:
We purchased billboard space in hard-hit cities across the nation and posted a short, time-tested message that strikes at the heart of what drives poverty.
The billboards show a picture of a young black man or young black woman and say: "Tired of Poverty? Finish school. Take any job. Get married. Save and invest. Give back to your neighborhood."
The billboard then refers to Proverbs 10:4, which says, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich."
This is a message delivered with care and love. It's a message I know is true.
It is so true that it produced an immediate reaction from Black Lives Matter, which contacted the billboard company, Clear Channel Outdoor, demanding that the billboards be taken down.
Claims from Black Lives Matter -- laced, of course, with profanity -- that our message is racist, inaccurate and self-hating are a crude distortion of reality.
And, yup, Clear Channel caved.
Now that Kenosha has had a taste of this summer's urban mayhem, perspectives there are shifting, which has the New York Times worried for political reasons:
I’m guessing the Democrats’ internal polling on the current rioting and protesting is looking really bad, because the New York Times this morning declares a five-alarm fire with this new story (I’ve bolded some revealing bits of the reportage):
How Chaos in Kenosha Is Already Swaying Some Voters in Wisconsin
. . . [S]ome voters who were less sure of their choice said the chaos in their city and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were currently nudging them toward the Republicans.
And some Democrats, nervous about condemning the looting because they said they understood the rage behind it, worried that what was happening in their town might backfire and aid the president’s re-election prospects.
Ellen Ferwerda, who owns an antique furniture store downtown just blocks from the worst of the destruction that is now closed, said that she was desperate for Mr. Trump to lose in November but that she had “huge concern” the unrest in her town could help him win. She added that local Democratic leaders seemed hesitant to condemn the mayhem.
“I think they just don’t know what to say,” she said. “People are afraid to take a stance either way, but I do think it’s strange they’re all being so quiet. Our mayor has disappeared. It’s like, ‘Where is he?’”
Observation: If you “don’t know what to say” about rioters, you won’t know what to do about it either. More:
Mr. Geraghty said he disliked how Mr. Trump talked but said the Democratic Party’s vision for governing seemed limited to attacking him and calling him a racist, a charge being leveled so constantly that it was having the effect of alienating, instead of persuading, people. And the idea that Democrats alone were morally pure on race annoyed him. “The Democratic agenda to me right now is America is systematically racist and evil and the only people who can fix it are Democrats,” he said. “That’s the vibe I get.”
Mr. Geraghty said he understood peaceful protesting but felt frustrated with Democratic leaders who seem afraid of confronting crowds when things turn violent. He was angry at the statement by Gov. Tony Evers on Sunday, which in his view took sides against the police in a knee-jerk way that worsened the situation. . .
Don Biehn, 62, owner of a flooring company, was standing in line at a gun store on Tuesday afternoon. He said that he had never bought a pistol before, but that he had a business to protect. A former county board supervisor, Mr. Biehn said he had been calling county and state officials for days, trying to explain how grave the situation was. . .
He added: “It’s chaos — everybody is afraid.” Mr. Trump, he said, “was not my man,” but now he is grateful he is president. He said he seemed to understand in a way that other politicians did not. “There’s nobody fighting back,” he said. “Nobody is paying attention to what’s going on.” . . .
Priscella Gazda, a waitress at a pizza restaurant in Kenosha, . . . said she had voted only once in her life — for Mr. Obama in 2008.
“I’m not the one who would ever vote,” she said. But after the chaos in her town, this year is different. “I am going to vote for Trump,” she said. “He seems to be more about the American people and what we need.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review comes to a grim conclusion: the Republican Party is utterly impotent with regard to the culture war:
We need something less ambitious. Republicans must answer a simple question this week: What’s the point of us?
The true answer is that the best conservatives can hope for is divided government. And I don’t mean just the formal constitutional offices being held by two parties. Even if Republicans occupied every seat in the House and Senate and Trump occupied the White House, the result would still be divided government.
Why? Because the Left has captured much of the permanent government. All of the culturally formative institutions of American life — public education, academia, the entertainment industry, and, increasingly, the rest of corporate America — are controlled by progressives, and as such are a gravitational force dragging the country leftward.
Don’t believe me? Neil Gorsuch ruled earlier this year that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects transgender rights, even though it was passed years before academics invented the concept of transgenderism. The Big Tech companies are run by progressives. The sports leagues are bending the knee too. Major international corporations, while willing to meet with Republican politicians and occasionally throw a max-dollar contribution to a GOP congressmen to keep the regulators off their backs, will turn around and give a seven-figure donation to a progressive NGO or activist group.
The last four years should have proved that Republican officeholders — and Trump in particular — cannot achieve conservative aims in this environment. They can’t keep the Little Sisters of the Poor out of federal court. They can’t stop public schools from adopting the 1619 Project as the basis of their history curriculums. They can’t stop the government from funding “social science” that is designed to portray allegiance to family, place, and faith as fascistic, dangerous, and oppressive. And they can’t stop the riots. Trump can’t end the interminable foreign wars other Republicans started, and he can’t get the intelligence community or the military to stop leaking embarrassing information to the press. He can’t even get a cabinet confirmed.
Hennepin County's chief medical officer says that George Floyd was so loaded on fentanyl at the time of his run-in with police that he was basically OD-ing:
The Armed Forces Medical Examiner filed a memorandum agreeing with the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s final conclusion that Floyd's death was a homicide, saying, “His death was caused by the police subdual and restraint in the setting of severe hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and methamphetamine and fentanyl intoxication.”
However, two other memos filed Tuesday from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office about conversations with Chief Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker paint a different picture about the nature of Floyd’s death.
In one memorandum filed May 26 after a virtual meeting with Baker, the Attorney’s Office said Baker concluded, “The autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation.” Baker told the attorney his investigation was incomplete pending a toxicology report, however.
The other memorandum filed June 1 by the Attorney’s Office indicated Baker said Floyd’s level of fentanyl was “pretty high,” and a potentially “fatal level.”
"[Dr. Andrew Baker] said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death,” the June 1 memo said.
Once again, Tucker Carlson shoots off his mouth and lands in hot water.
