First Turning "purge"

[JasonBlack]

Quote:American conservatives seem overly impressed with businessmen and down to earth types who like to be left alone and be their own boss. That has been the pattern especially among rural folks for generations now. I have seen enough documentaries and voting records and such to know they (and you) are well disposed to the self-reliance philosophy that leads them in current times to support neoliberal slogans and vote Republican. Rural folks these days vote for Trump or Bush in margins of 4 or 5 to 1 or even higher. To me that indicates something is terribly wrong out there in the sticks. I don't believe that racism is not a big part of this, because the main reason to oppose such things as welfare and other social spending is because they think non-whites are milking the system. That's interesting symbolically, and maybe ironic, since milk is white. That is more true in the South, of course, where voting patterns are ultra partisan by race. Rural folks may be parochial, but that does not stop them from eating up the various conservative prejudices and ideologies, and btw that includes a lot of conservative Christians too who vote Republican because they want to "vote thair valyus".

you essentially just said "They vote Republican, so there must be something wrong with them". I trust it's not difficult to see how such an approach cuts off communication with the average conservative or rural farmer

Quote:Self-reliance is a virtue, I admit, but it's not the only virtue.

I'm happy to hear as much, and I agree.

Quote:You write as if you were more like my Dad, or the more conservative members of my Dad's civic generation that I met. I cringe when you laud and compliment male ambition as if it's what makes society possible

LMAO! One of the reasons I originally picked up "The Fourth Turning" is because my whole life, old women have been telling me some variation of "you're just like my father who fought in the war".  When I heard millennials were archetypally analogous to GIs, it piqued my interests.

Quote:I cringe when you laud and compliment male ambition as if it's what makes society possible. I say we need more women in charge, as Obama said, and more feminine qualities in society

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imo, masculinity exists on a polarity between building and destruction, and feminine on a polarity between harmony and drama. With that said, there is also "good destruction" (a willingness to clear out bureaucracy, fighting injustice, etc) and "good drama" (inspiration, creativity, evocative works of art).

Tbh, what society needs now is more people like your father: strong, stable masculine energy, heroism. Someone who can lead us by projecting calm authority in an era where people have turned showing off mental illness into an artform (fwiw, I do believe mental health problems are very real, but often, the solution is very different than what people think it is). Crisis is not the time to be a feminist. It's the time to embolden heroes 

Quote:But lots of guys these days are still masculine and have ambition, and there's nothing wrong with that; but just ambition to make money is not enough. What should we be ambitious about? I would say each one of us, or any gender or race, has a unique thoughtful or creative contribution to make. It is most fulfilling to discover what that (or several thats) are, and take up the challenge to develop what they love to do and to be. Money is only a means to an end,

good so far

Quote:but Americans don't seem generally speaking to know what the end is for it.

imo, this is largely a boomer thing (the root is less about materialism than it is about excess. boomers get a lot of shit done precisely because they bring a kind of missionary zeal to whatever they're interested in, and sometimes end up losing sight of why they started). Xers are much more "I just want to get my work done so I can go home and do what I want". millennials are just less work-focused altogether.

Quote:Just to be left alone does not fill the bill.

the vast majority of people who just want to be left alone don't want to just go live in a cave in isolation. what they want is privacy, independence and the option to help people in quieter ways of their choosing. I think modern society underemphasizes the kind of quite compassion that builds communities and relationships on a smaller scale, opting instead for an over-focus on big, dramatic causes.