Gentrifiers in Portland exchange greetings. Perhaps they're discussing the virtue of their Priuses.

Sandra Tsing Loh wrote a excellent piece in the Atlantic snarkily speculating what this recession will do to America’s culture leaders, the Xers, she calls them (a.k.a. David Brooks’s bourgeois bohemians and Richard Florida’s creative class).  Reared in America’s upper- and upper-middle class Valhallas, these college-educated, socially conscious idealists, having never tasted the bitter foot of Maslow’s hierarchy, have heretofore devoted their lives to the maximization of self-expression.  When one is accustomed to an easy life of economic privilege, one becomes too easily inclined to view the concern for things like economic development (the creation of actual wealth) as crass—dare I say unsophisticated!— hobbies.

Having splurged on overpriced liberal-arts degrees, pricey socially conscious clothes, and fashionably “fair-trade” this-that-and-the-other, the once trendy interest in all things eclectic and environmentally sustainable is no longer financially sustainable.   The lofty eclectic idealism has, over the past few decades, morphed this left-leaning bohemianism from an identity once defined by a distaste of consumption into an identity defined by its taste in consumption.

Wither the free-range chicken bistro?  Now that carelessly accrued credit card debt is out of fashion, how can one survive without a steady diet of the moral superiority digested from politically-charged cuisine choices?  Will the forced economic sobriety of our current economic affairs force America’s left-leaning culturally-righteous to reexamine their once-proud disregard of economics—that crass topic!?

Bid farewell to the increasingly progressive, self-righteous, self-congratulatory, overwhelmingly white, and socially stratified Portland.  Hello, diverse, affordable, yet bland, Cleveland.  Farewell to the ritzy Rive Gauche Xanadus, hello to the staid skid-rows bereft of artisan boutiques and scarily “authentic”.

Loh writes,

This economic catastrophe is teaching the Xers that their prized self-­expression and their embrace of personal choice leads to … the collapse of capitalism. Time to inculcate not those self-satisfyingly hip and rebellious values—innovation! self-fulfillment!—cherished by the creative class (a class, after all, that includes in its ranks those buccaneering entrepreneurs who’ve led us down the primrose path), but those staid and stolid values of the bourgeoisie: industry, sobriety, moderation, self-discipline, and avoidance of debt.

Hear, hear!  Perhaps now economic development will actually get a fair hearing when policymakers are forced to consider feel-good measures as taxes on plastic bags and carbon emissions, favored by the elite self-expressionistas, but opposed by the lower- and lower-middle classes, and by nearly every family on a budget.  Fewer can afford the luxury to sacrifice economic well-being for the sake of a political statement.

During my four years at the University of Maryland, I was satisfied with the academic freedom afforded students.  The university imposed no speech codes or speech zones on students and faculty and I even witnessed faculty publicly contradict and vehemently disagree with administrators.

As a public university, the University of Maryland’s budget is a matter of public record, thus limiting (though not eliminating) the shadowy policy-making that often plagues private universities.

During my four years, the Maryland General Assembly never intervened to impose politicized restrictions on academic freedom or speech.  How times have changed.

Upon hearing that the student-run theater on campus was going to screen a pornographic film Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, one member of the Maryland Senate, Andy Harris (R-Baltimore County) introduced an amendment to cut all state funding from any state university that showed a hardcore pornographic film on campus.

Shamefully, under threat of the amendment’s passage, the university administration promptly put the kibosh on the screening, striking a blow to free speech on campus.  Students are planning to screen the film elsewhere at an undisclosed lecture hall, but the prudish Senator’s threat still stands.  Sadly, lest they be labeled soft on hardcore porn, a majority of Senators probably would have approved the measure.

Though threatening to withhold funding for the university, likely shutting it down, is a political stunt that we’re sure plays well with Mr. Harris’s constituents, it threatens the beginning of a slippery slope toward speech codes.  What qualifies as pornographic?  And why end there?  Perhaps Mr. Harris would like the library to burn Peyton Place and the Canterbury Tales, and redact the cruder parts of Shakespeare.

Though the General Assembly has the right to review and determine the university’s budget, it is unwise for the General Assembly to politicize the university and it is likely illegal for the state to define content-based restrictions that do no serve any compelling state interest.

We predict that the movie will be shown elsewhere on campus and that the General Assembly will not follow through on its threat.  Even still, this quarrel will have a chilling effect on speech.  It is a sad day for the so-called Free State and its university.

Rarely does our culture explicitly extol the virtues of money.  It’s a bit crass, we’re told.  Money concerns, however, have a way of focusing minds on things that matter and away from faddish diversions.  There is only so much airtime and so many op-ed pages and so many emails to Congressmen that could ever be generated during the lifespan of any political controversy cycle.  When there’s nothing else serious to talk about, “cultural” issues (e.g. God, guns, gays, etc.) are afforded their fifteen minutes.

Mark Rich in the Times writes that in this economy, where concerns of money trump all others, the culture warriors of the past 20 years are getting laid-off, as President Obama reverses the global gag rule and stem cell policies of the Bush Administration.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Yes and no.  While the moral scolds are still scolding and their followers are still reiterating their specious talking-points, other issues are crowding them out.  Rich is wrong to think that “Americans have less and less patience” with those who want to teach creationism in school (a majority of the public wants this), or to keep the gays for marrying (even a majority of Californians won’t allow it).  These erstwhile “values voters” still exist in large numbers, but are distracted by more pressing economic concerns.  It’s not so much a matter of patience as it is a matter of attention.  When the economy’s decline has settled, the silent majority (Rich admits their silence, but not their majority) shall once again savor the luxury to take offense to Janet Jackson’s exposures and other such non-issues.

* * *

There’s one curious contradiction in Rich’s article:

As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book “Dry Manhattan,” Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president “who not only cared about their economic well-being” but who also understood their desire to be liberated from “the intrusion of the state into their private lives.” Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.

F.D.R. did not end “the intrusion of the state into … private lives.”  F.D.R. presided over a massive expansion of government intrusion, mandating all sorts of new taxes and social welfare schemes, not to mention the extensive economic regulation.  Whether or not one thinks the New Deal was wise, there is no doubt that F.D.R. expanded government intrusion.

Are you running up hefty credit card bills on expensive dates to impress women?  Dude, careless extravagance is so 2007.  This economy is impairing the dating scene for America’s go-getters, as more Ivy League  i-bankers exchange coke lines for bread lines:

“It’s been incredibly stressful for me,” said Neil Welsh, 27, the guy in the suit, who until last year was marketing director for a booming real estate company. “I was so used to using my financial situation to leverage my dating.”

The horrors!  While some families worry about buying groceries, ambitious, single twentysomethings fret that potential mates might have to judge them on personality and character instead of W-2 forms.

Though this economy is inflicting real pain on millions of people, one small benefit is that it’s forcing our society to re-evaluate our priorities and materialistic attitudes.

Needing a change of scenery. Image source: The Office, NBC

The Post today reports on the phenomenon of “ecomigration”, the resettlement of people due to environmental factors.  The Post article misses some important points, but also shines light on the climate hysteria gripping small numbers of paranoiacs in rich countries.

First, the Post fails to mention that people have migrated due to changing environments since the dawn of mankind.  Rivers dried up, people moved.  Volcanoes erupted, people moved.  Soils were exhausted, people moved.  Wild game disappeared, people moved.  This is not a new phenomenon.  What is new is the global movement based on the actual consequences (or the fear of consequences) of global warming.  Global warming’s consequences are far more gradual than those of the more immediate ecological catastrophes of history and pre-history.

The story mentions that the president of the Pacific archipelago of Kiribati is considering the wholesale resettlement of his countrymen to another, preferably higher, country (the Netherlands need not apply).  Though Pacific islanders in Kiribati may want to relocate to escape a slowly rising ocean, the Post fails to acknowledge the bigger story of the past century: huge numbers of people, particularly in poorer countries, have abandoned the countryside to seek riches in low, coastal cities.  No place is this more true than in China, where cities such as Shanghai draw migrants from rural, inland provinces.  For these millions of Chinese, ecomigration stands for economic migration and these cities’ locations at sea level have not deterred the domestic movement.  I suppose the Post has tired of writing stories about Chinese urbanization, though.

Instead, the article relates the story of the Fiers, a Montgomery County family so afraid of climate change that it moves to…  New Zealand.  Huh?

Fier, 38, a computer security professional who used to work at NASA, said he thought hard about the risks of global climate change. He knew moving to a new country would be difficult but thought that the dangers of staying in the United States were worse. Several years ago, he drew up a list of countries and studied how they might fare over the next century. He examined their environmental policies, access to natural resources and whether they would be safe from conflict. He decided that New Zealand would offer a comparable quality of life, has an excellent environmental record and is isolated from global conflicts by large tracts of the Pacific Ocean. Its tropical, subtropical, temperate and arctic zones also offer a variety of “bioenvironments” as a hedge against the vagaries of climate change.

I wonder if this move was really rationally decided or if the Fiers are privy to a crystal ball the rest of the burgeoning Washington area is not. Aside from national and county parklands, Montgomery County is far above sea level, so the Fier family’s fear must be based in something other than climate.  One must suspect the move was more of a political statement.  New Zealand is becoming the new Canada.

Fier offers some sophistries to rationalize his irrational move:

[Fier] argued that people who do nothing in the face of risk are the ones who are being irrational: If even a fraction of the consequences of global climate change that scientists are forecasting come true, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina might become the norm, not the exception. In a world afflicted by overpopulation and environmental degradation, he asked, is the irrational person the one who acts or the one who says the future will look after itself?

It’s impossible to see how moving to New Zealand protects one from environmental harm.  New Zealand has less arable land per capita than does the U.S. and its isolation makes the importation of food an expensive endeavor.  Furthermore, although New Zealand has its virtues, it is hardly a cultural, cosmopolitan mecca of the world.  The Fiers’s move to New Zealand is somewhat reminiscent of the white flight from American cities in the post-war years.  Fearing perceived dangers of the urban core (read: minorities) and aided by government subsidies for highways and housing, white Americans of means fled city centers for culturally homogeneous idylls in suburbia.  One can’t help but suspect the Fiers are motivated by a similar fear of what they perceive to be vile forces beyond their control.

More shocking is the tone-deaf callousness of the academic quoted for the story:

“The guy who moves from here to New Zealand is no different than the guy who moves from the lowland in the Philippines to the highland, or from El Salvador to Honduras,” said Rafael Reuveny, a political economist who studies ecomigration at Indiana University at Bloomington. “Down the road, probably sooner than we think, we are facing major environmental changes. These changes have started to occur and are moving relatively slowly, but the pace of change will accelerate in our lifetime.”

It seriously strains credulity to state that the family that moves from one of the richest counties in the richest country on earth is “no different than the guy who moves from the lowland in the Philippines to the highland”.  The former moves by choice as a fashionable political statement, whereas the latter moves when he finally has no other choice as the putrid swamp water laps at his rusted door.  Only from callousness or startling ignorance can one equate these two situations.

Furthermore, the article curiously states that “[w]ithin the United States, regions that are vulnerable to hurricanes appear to be producing the greatest number of domestic ecomigrants,” citing the gulf coast as a prime example:

Thomas Hoff, 50, of Lakeland, Fla., may soon be an ecomigrant. He said he has come to regret moving to the Sunshine State from Michigan a quarter-century ago and is exploring his options.

“The snow is looking better every cotton-picking hurricane that comes through now,” Hoff said. “I am constantly watching the tropics every hurricane season. You don’t know what is going to happen.”

The grass is always greener on the other side for some (for Mr. Hoff, it’s fondly icier on the other side).  The article conveniently forgets to note that while Mr. Hoff may be nostalgic for the Great Lakes State, the tide of recent history is against him: Florida’s population grew an astonishing 14% from 2001 to 2007.  And “safer” Michigan?  Only one percent.

A story on ecomigration should highlight those who are truly displaced by the environment, and not the middle-class ennui of Americans looking for an entertaining change of scenery.

The Atlantic reviews the book version of the famed blog Stuff White People Like (SWPL), a list of attitudes and tastes favored by America’s young, well-educated Left.  The review provides a good look into what I think is so compelling about the SWPL: it accurately capture the frivolous and egocentric superficiality that has infected America’s young “progressives”.  SWPL has found the young Left and called it out on its major flaw, namely its conformity masquerading as anti-conformity.

Despite its title, SWPL is not about white people; it’s about the tastes and preferences of the archetype of the young, urbane, well-educated American espousing politically leftish beliefs.  The main disappointment about this archetype is that he holds these beliefs not as a matter of universal, well-considered truth derived from a particular social or political philosophy, but as a superficial fashion statement.  It’s cool to be a privileged white liberal, after all.

This archetype forms many of his preferences because of their exclusivity or their lack of mass appeal—true elitism.  The Atlantic article notes

More damning is the conclusion produced by a careful reading of this often fine-grained semi-sociological analysis: a good deal of the progressives’ attitudes, preferences, and sense of identity are ingrained in an unlovely disdain for those outside their charmed circle. In Lander’s analysis, much of their self-satisfaction derives from consumption (the slack-sounding “stuff” in the title is deceptively apt)—and much of that consumption is motivated by a desire to differentiate themselves from the benighted. Sushi, for instance, is “everything [White People] want: foreign culture, expensive, healthy, and hated by the ‘uneducated.’” And whatever its goals, the ACLU is beloved by White People, Lander satirically but not wholly unjustifiably asserts, because it protects them “from having to look at things they don’t like. At the top of this list is anything that has to do with Christianity”—an aversion, Lander discerns, rooted not in religious enmity but in taste (Christianity is “a little trashy”), formed largely by class and education. To those of this mind-set, the problem with a great many Americans is that they don’t “care about the right things.”

How disingenuous it is indeed for one to claim adherence to the ideals of the Left (e.g. democracy, openness) while despising the tastes and values of the American majority.

Says the New York Times:

While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

Computer geeks were social pariahs who later became millionaires and culture creators, notes David Brooks:

People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority-figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers.

So, in a relatively short period of time, the social structure has flipped. For as it is written, the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth.

The meek shall inherit the earth?  Boomers railed against the establishment in the 1960s only to inherit power in the decades to come.  Powerful countercultural movements seem emerge in a pattern:

1. Founders note public criticism of the establishment.
2. Founders formally define their movement as the opposite.
3. Movement gains popularity among influencers and early-adopter types.
4. Movement overcomes the establishment in power/popularity.
5. Movement becomes the establishment (mass popularity or at least faces public acquiescence).
6. Movement is overthrown as the next group or generation starts with step 1.

Though this applies to organized movements, it can apply to disparate movements as well.  The point is that not every anti-establishment group is as powerless as it seems.  Some will go on to become the very powerful groups they despise.

One can never be a Senator, a millionaire and a “regular guy”.  Senator, you’re no Joe Six-pack.  But where did these pitiful scenes of Sen. Obama bowling, Sen. Clinton downing shots, and Pres. Bush crashing his bike originate?  The Post clues us in:

Presidential candidates have strived relentlessly downward in social class ever since the 1840s, when William Henry Harrison created what historians now call the “common-man myth.” While most of his peers campaigned from their estates, Harrison traveled the country and spoke under a banner depicting a log cabin and a bottle of hard cider. He won the presidency by a landslide, and his campaign model became the new standard.

There’s the old polling questions of which candidate would you prefer to have a beer with.  Who cares?  Being a good drinking buddy and running the Executive Branch require completely different qualities.

Whatever is a hipster to do once a baby arrives?  Never fear, there’s a party-circuit called Baby Loves Disco devoted to bringing occasional family-friendly discos to several cities.

The Post writes of the party’s most recent Washington incarnation that occured this weekend at the Rock and Roll Hotel bar on H Street.  Not only did little hipsters-in-waiting get to shake their huggies, but mom and dad got to sing along to the Pet Shop Boys while sipping rails.

Such a topic invites satire:

For some of the younger set, this was a chance to practice their moves with the ladies. David, 18 months, eyed an older woman: Lilah, 2. She was the quirky type, one leg warmer, a pink tutu, blond ringlets and a killer smile. He took a big pull off his juice box and wobbled up to her, a typical nightclub move. He attacked with fervor, giving her a giant, sloppy hug.

Adorable, but there are still some unanswered questions.  How much do you tip the barkeep for refilling little Taylor’s sippy-cup.

Robert Mugabe’s government has refused to admit defeat in the election three weeks ago and his government has not even bothered to release the total vote counts. While parking in front of the Zimbabwe Embassy in Washington today, I noticed one of the usual signs restricting a short strip of parking to embassy cars on weekdays. This sign restricted parking to the ‘Republic of Zimbabwe’, which I no long believe to be a true democratic republic. It is now dictator Robert Mugabe’s personal fiefdom, featuring a wrecked economy, 165,000% inflation (I kid you not), a refugee crisis, and one of Africa’s wealthiest populations reduced to penury. Equipped with some paper, a pen and some tape, I put together a revision to the sign so that it now reads

NO PARKING
7AM-6:30PM
DIPLOMATIC CARS
DICTATOR
ROBERT MUGABE’S
THUGS, GOONS
& APOLOGISTS
ONLY

Despite having robbed his people of both their livelihoods and the right to vote, Mr. Mugabe can still count on his defenders in the region. Shortly after it appeared that Mr. Mugabe stole the election, South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki, infamous for denying that HIV causes AIDS, met with Mr. Mugabe and, much to the world’s surprise, assured that Zimbabwe was not facing a crisis.

Fortunately, many South Africans, unlike Mr. Mbeki, do have a conscience.

The New York Times reports today that on Friday a ship carrying weapons and ammunition from a Chinese state-owned weapons foundry made a call into the port of Durban with goods destined for Zimbabwe’s military. News of the arrival quickly broke and the longshoremen’s union threatened to strike if forced to unload the ship.

The South African government, though, citing the absence of an official weapons ban on Zimbabwe, ruled that the shipment should be allowed to pass through South Africa. Not so fast, ruled South Africa’s High Court, after a South African activist and the Anglican archbishop petitioned for an embargo:

[Archbishop] Phillip, [human rights activist] Mr. Kearney and the lawyers argued that South Africa’s 2002 law on conventional arms included guidelines that directed the government to consider, in deciding whether to give permits for the transport of weapons, whether the government receiving the arms was committing human rights violations.

Late Friday afternoon, a judge in Durban granted their request. But on Friday evening, when the authorities drove out to the Chinese ship, An Yeu Jiang, to serve the court order, it pulled up anchor and moved off, according to a South African government official and Ms. Fritz.

What’s impressive is the reaction of South Africa’s civil society to represent the interests of human rights when its president fails to.

Even still, Mr. Mugabe is still holding onto his seat and the outcome of the election is still unknown. Will the State Department eventually eject Mr. Mugabe’s representatives in Washington? If he ends up stealing this election for sure, the State Department should consider it.