Gonna go see PARASITE with my daughter today, at last, so that should be cool. I hope something in the below is good for you.
Misperceptions of both sides of the political fence are rife in the US.
Speaking of impressions, are Americans' views of socialism changing? This piece suggests they might be, margially. It wants to say more than that, but that's all it can say so far. Still, that said, the big change is not between 1949 and 2019, it's what is exactly half-way between them, 1989. Those who support "socialism" has not yet figured out a way to explain 1989. It's the theodicy problem for socialism, in a sense. Some Weberian "meaning-making framework" labor to do on this issue, I think. Is anyone doing it?
This is quite devastating, not to mention well-deserved:
It’s been a longtime malady of American intellectuals of all ideological persuasions to mistake the activities of a handful of little magazines for the bold stirring of a mass political consensus. That’s been especially true for the published work of conservative intellectuals. Since the birth of the modern right after World War II, its self-appointed leaders, intellectuals, policy professionals, and media personalities have never been able to consistently exercise any control or even influence over any mass constituency. Their pet policies have gained little public support. At best, these leaders have been able to first articulate, with varying degrees of accuracy, some inchoate dissatisfaction, or to hitch themselves opportunistically to waves of popular discontent. For the most part, however, they are merely the sideline interpreters of political and social events—and even then, they often see the world through a glass, tinted darkly by ideology or tendentiousness.…
The ghosts of Weimar hover behind the right’s growing embrace of friend/enemy politics. Here the guiding authority isn’t a Spengler or an E.A. Ross, but rather the influential German political theorist Carl Schmitt. For Schmitt, the contest between existential enemies was the very essence of political life. By contrast, Schmitt argued, the haggling and intrigues of mere parliamentary democracy were a “depoliticized” shadow of true politics, which always involved the possibility of actual killing. Vanguard intellectuals on today’s right such as Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard, now openly invoke Schmitt’s influence on their own work, and it’s hard to overlook the echoes of his thought in right-wing New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari’s call for an end to “depoliticization” and for a “politics as war and enmity.”
More on demographics and immigration. First, a somewhat alarmist account that says the US is going to shrink. Barring some mass pandemic, it's not going to shrink. Immigration will continue. Still, this is interesting because it's about birthrates.
For a better perspective, read Brookings' more responsible takeaway:
The nation will continue to become more racially and ethnically diverse under all immigration scenarios. This is a function of the country’s already large and youthful nonwhite populations, and the projected aging and decreased size of the white population.
Any political rhetoric suggesting that reduced immigration will make the nation “whiter” flies in the face of demographic evidence. In fact, the main reason the United States is growing more rapidly than most other industrialized counties stems from its healthy immigration levels over the past four decades.
Is there a "culture of meanness" in the art world? My friend, there is everywhere else, so I don't see how there can not be.
Charming little post, excerpted from a book (these are effectively longer-length ads, and getting more common, it seems), on trees around the world: The ceiba or kapok, a tree native to Precolumbian Central America and Carribean; the tōtara, native to New Zealand; and the Judas tree, native to the Mediterranean. To me it's not exactly clear how these trees "tell the story" of "ancient cultures," but that they were a part of the way these cultures lived and understood themselves, seems pretty visible.
Ooh, archaeo-botany:
the exchange of items, ideas, technology, and human genes through the mountain valleys of Central Asia started almost three millennia before organized trade networks formed.…The mingling of crops originating from opposite ends of Asia resulted in the crop-rotation cycles that fueled demographic growth and led to imperial formation. East Asian millets would become one of the most important crops in ancient Europe and wheat would become one of the most important crops in East Asia by the Han Dynasty. While the long tradition of rice cultivation in East Asia made rice a staple of the Asian kitchen, Chinese cuisine would be unrecognizable without wheat-based food items like steamed buns, dumplings, and noodles.
Really interesting! I love stuff like this. And if you want to know more about this research, here's an interview with one of the scholars involved about his recent book on Central Asia's importance to human history, especially through agriculture. (And cool things about apples.)
Happy weekend!