I've been on Cape Cod for the last few days and had a few more observations about elite east coast culture.
The impression I had earlier this summer of cohesion of Jews and gentiles in the ruling class is just confirmed. I don't think it's a completely easy mix culturally– yet– but there's real cohesion. The tribes are getting along, at least the rich members of same; they have the serious business of running the country to do, and they share the table, the kids are working together. We were driving across Martha's Vineyard the other night and one of my relatives said, Well, Edgartown is considered the old WASP part of the Vineyard and now we're in Chilmark and that's the Jewish intellectual side, Alan Dershowitz has a house near here. (Dershowitz! I cried; my heart goes pitterpat when I just hear his name.). But the stereotype didn't completely hold. I saw a lot of mixing. Of couples, of parties. I see Jews and non-Jews of my generation beyond the intermarried who enjoy one another's company, who mix club tennis and conservation easements and Yiddish without raising an eyebrow, who don't really think about this stuff, or not apparently, and not nearly to the degree that I do. Seems like real progress.
It's funny to go from the richer parts of M.V. to the more democratic precincts. My wife and I got a boat out of Oak Bluffs yesterday, where lots of black people live, "and Methodists," as another relative put it. Though they too are obviously pretty well off. On the boat I was tickled to see how much blacks and whites were interacting in the age of Obama. You could feel the mutual respect, there are the beginnings of colorblindness. When a black mother told her daughter to stop making the peace sign everytime she took a picture–well, I've been there, you go girl. I know this is a blue-state elite bubble, but it's a good feeling, and I don't think it's ever going away, it's the American dream unfolding for all the world to see.
I still think of driving that night through Mr. Dershowitz's neighborhood, so far from his humble Brooklyn origins, stopping for cocktails on the great lawn of a friend with a buttload from the schmatte trade, running into another fancy New York friend on the dock at Menemsha, etc. I'm not going to get more specific because there are privacy issues, but today I have this very powerful feeling about Jewishness and its gifts. We are a minority and we are doing so so fucking well in America–do you think that for maybe one second we could lift our foot off the Palestinians' necks?
Related posts:
- Memo to Alan Dershowitz
- First calls to students who spearheaded Hampshire divestment came from an angered Alan Dershowitz
- Alan Dershowitz and Lanny Davis are rabbis for secular Jewish society
- the hard intellectual labor of sorting out Marty Peretz, Alan Dershowitz and Norman Podhoretz
- At Brandeis, Alan Dershowitz Snaps His Towel at Tony Judt
{ 27 comments }
Maybe it would help to get outside M.V. to see that the serious business of running the country isn't helping the rest of the nation nearly as well. You are very isolated Phil.
Phil you have your head up your arse on this one. What you describe is the sickening class having a party. What exactly is good about that? I guess buying one's way into Harvard and the elite is a good thing in your mind. You be wrong and many know it.
Todd:
"Maybe it would help to get outside M.V. to see that the serious business of running the country isn't helping the rest of the nation nearly as well. You are very isolated Phil."
To supplement this statement, I would like o add:
As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in the U.S., Class Mobility Stalls
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB111595026421432611.html
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html?_r=1&em&ex=1175313600&en=311ab7d3df477c4e&ei=5087%0A%E2%80%9C&oref=slogin
Faltering meritocracy in America
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3518560
The Mobility Myth
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0606-27.htm
This is OT, but I hope Phil reads this. David Shasha, who writes an email newsletter about Sephardic Jews and whom Phil made the topic of a recent post, just sent this. The link is to the article that Phil referenced:
Phil, it seems that all this agonizing self-appraisal you've been doing while deciding whether or not to have an affair is turning your brain into mush. Are you really so self-absorbed that you can't recognize how contemptible opinions such as those expressed in this post really are to we mere goyim?
Those possessing "Jewishness" are not really gifted, by and large. Genetically inclined to be verbal and verbose, sure. But what you portray as some exalted state of being "gifted" is actually tribalism taken to the most extreme. There is no other ethnic group "gifted" with such organized, ruthless, and relentless in-group loyalty. White characteristics of altruism and openness have contributed both to the rise and current fall of Western civilization. Jewish insularity has contributed only to their own self-worship and ultimate success.
You really need to read Dr. Kevin MacDonald. I agree, you just simply don't get out enough.
I wouldn't exactly call Martha's Vineyard a good cross section of anything. Except for people that go weak in the knees at the the thought of President Obama.
"I saw a lot of mixing."
Phil`s observations remind me for some reason of the robber gangs that roamed central Europe around 1800. These gangs of outcasts also saw a lot of Jewish-gentile mixing.
So, on both ends of the social spectrum there seems to be a lot of mixing.
to cooper: most people stay away from opinions they find "contemptible." you seem to be attracted to them. get a life.
We are a minority and we are doing so so fucking well in America–do you think that for maybe one second we could lift our foot off the Palestinians' necks?
It's not that they win it seems, but that the other side loses as well.
~
Actually the Jews in Sderot who are under rocket attack aren't doing has well as Phils Martha's Vineyard crew. Perhaps Phil and his family could change places for a while.
And Klaus, the biggest thieves in world history were the krauts. bar none.
"the biggest thieves in world history were the krauts. bar none."
Where are the robbery statistics that show that? Germany's colonial robberies for instance are neglegable compared to other European countries.
You shouldn't blame the krauts for more than necessary.
And BTW, why don't the Jews from Sderot go back to the land of their forefathers. Most of them probably still hold or are entitled to a passport of that land. This land may actually be Germany. Welcome back.
siderot(meaning side of rot) not sderot
and
where is a nuke when one or several would do the world good.
near the ocean and no one is waterboarding the mediocre from harvard. he should be selfwaterboarding. or maybe just being him is torture aplenty.
I like Phil's blog, but it reveals such a mania that it's exhausting:
Jews/Israel/Power/Money/Harvard/Jews/Israel/Power/Money/Harvard, repeated endlessly.
It's exhausting to read, and makes me very glad I grew up in the relatively low-key, egalitarian Upper Midwest.
We weren't obsessed with sizing up others and proving ourselves against their measurement; we just did our best, pretty un-self-consciously.
Phil's world sounds asphyxiating.
Phil, Why I Read Your Blog, Even Though It Is Painful.
I think you’re focused (most of the time) like a laser on the key political and journalistic issue of our time, namely: why don’t we talk about the gorilla in the living room of our failed Middle East policy? Which is the original sin of modern Israel, the Nakba, and the unwillingness of many in Israel and the United States, to acknowledge it. Also, the continuation until this day of that original sin in the form of aggressive expansion of settlements amid Palestinian suffering, abusing the power inherent from occupation to deprive the occupants of their land, their freedom, their inalienable rights to be equal, to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And the awful rationalizations that go along with that, especially the demonization of the “enemy,” in order to justify treating them inhumanely. A former settler’s moment of realization appeared on your blog, when he witnessed a Palestinian father trying to explain to his whimpering young daughter why they were stuck at a checkpoint, and he himself realized the truth, which was that their daily suffering was so that he could have a nice place with a great view in the settlement. That one moment of realization was all that it took for that one settler to abandon that life. That dream that had driven him to the settler’s life proved a false dream. I also learned that Alan Dershowitz apologizes for ethnic cleansing as an occasional historic necessity – something only learned from your blog – which also provided a moment of clarity. Your blog is superb in delivering these flashes of light.
The painfulness comes from reading some of the anonymous comments, which exude naked Anti-Semitism in all its horror. Your happy post-racial celebration not-withstanding, for too many, the racial/tribal worldview remains real and dominant, on all sides. Between these two terrible realities, which make a modern Valley of the Shadow of Death, lies our way forward. Barack Obama, with a will and a vision to find “more perfect” solutions, would lead us down that path. You, Phil, are providing one of the few sources of light illuminating the way.
Doppler
Hah – well Phil classifies various strata of American society extremely well – East Coast versions of course, substratum NorthEast rich.
I had to laugh about the Methodists. Of course the white Methodists are mixing with the prosperous black people in MV. You nailed my maternal family background precisely, and it's weird because I really didn't understand this grouping at all, and didn't think I was part of it (raised secular, moved a lot, didnt' develop roots in one town). However the older I get, the more I realize how much my mother's family's Methodist/farmer/preacher/teacher/able administrator background influences not only who I am, but who I socialize with the most comfortably. My grandfather was a Methodist minister who conducted the first integrated church service in New Jersey with one of his colleagues, a black Methodist pastor. (back in the 1950s). This black bourgeoisie/white Methodist nexus is real and of longstanding. I still feel extremely comfortable around black American professionals in general – much more than around high WASP blue blood types.
Remember that both Hilary Clinton and Laura Bush are Methodists. GW Bush "married down" but high WASPs and Methodists often intermarry … the teacherly, sensible, frugal and hardworking Methodists lend good sense and fresh blood to Episcopalian stock that has gone anemic. Hasn't seemed to help W's offspring much but we have yet to see.
Methodists are often found among people who run banks, colleges, schools, libraries and non-profit organizations of worthy mission. Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists all like to send missionaries abroad – and indeed Presby and Methodist pastors often switch with each other, like mutating flowers that are so closely related they exchange colors.
Hilary's high-mindedness, wonkiness, and self-righteousness fit right in with Methodist culture. Look up the Chautauqua movement in the 19th century – Methodists loved the Chautauqua. Self-improvement through lectures and culture, all while on vacation, but no alcohol, please! And my next novel might be about how that combination also attracts sexual profligates – see Bill Clinton – that's a pattern too, pretty entertaining (but also painful).
Whereas the Episcopalians are on the veranda mixing up cocktails and vying discreetly for status position re: college, country club, debutante parties and so forth. Like Updike or Cheever they are probably playing around too but there's a bit more worldliness about it.
Just like the Betas in Brave New World, I firmly believe that I wouldn't want to be one of those large-lawned, ruling class Episcopalian WASPs. No, I prefer hanging with the bohemian black sheep strayed from the Methodist family. And guess which Jews we bohemian black sheep Methodists feel happiest with? The ones whose grandparents were labor union organizers, or in the Bund, or Communists, or Sephardic teachers and lawyers. No Rothschilds and Lazaruses for me, too much money and snobbery. I am married to and hang out with artsy, high-tech or lawyerly Jews who might have grown up comfortable and attended the best schools, as my Methodist/Presby buddies did, but we're all from left-liberal activist stock.
The only upper, upper WASPs I have befriended are the ones who choose to live below their means and do good works. Similarly, my mother, who grew up poor but respectable in the South, made a whole career and social life in NC advising ultra-rich, socially conscious WASP feminists on how to take control of their money and change the world. I think she knew every rich, lefty WASP or Southern Jew in the Research Triangle during the 70s and 80s. This was not at all conscious on her part… More Methodist managerial behavior. She never wanted the country club, she thought it was pointlessly snobby. The rebels from the country club came to her.
To "get a grippe":
When faced with Machiavellians, do as the Machiavellians.
Get a clue.
For Doppler:
What is Phil obsessing over and validating if not his belief in the reality of the racial/tribal worldview? His pain comes from the fact- apparently revealed to him on a daily basis due to his familial ties- that his tribe is far less concerned with human suffering than the competing tribe. I'm betting that Phil won't give up any of the priviledge that allows him to cruise Martha's Vinyard while exulting in the egalitarian glory manufactured by his common, pedestrian, everyman surroundings. How 'bout you?
.
"My grandfather was a Methodist minister who conducted the first integrated church service in New Jersey with one of his colleagues, a black Methodist pastor. (back in the 1950s). This black bourgeoisie/white Methodist nexus is real and of longstanding."
Leila ain't lyin'. I recall one such cultural bridge-building initiative in 1965. An African minister from Tanzania, dressed in a green-patterned robe, sought mission funding from our rural Methodist church. Afterward, one of the parishoners approached the pastor, who was perhaps a bit ahead of his time in rural east Texas.
"Guh-uh-usss," he observed (lengthening the pastor's three-letter name to three or four syllables), "you said this here fellow was from AFRICA. But he looks like just a regular ol' n*gg*r to me."
Not only are Hillary and the First Lady Methodists, but so are the president and vice-president (nominally; allegedly). In 2004, I wrote to the presiding Methodist bishop — a woman in Illinois — raising the possibility of excommunication for their war crimes. After about six months, she replied, noting that her term as bishop had expired, and suggesting that I write to the new incumbent. There's a profile in courage!
Just this year, Southern Methodist University (my dad's alma mater) finalized a deal to host the George W. Bush presidential library, making it an accomplice in torture and aggressive war. Whether one speaks of Christians or Jews, it seems that in the real world of national policy, all their leather-bound holy books are just a load of pious horsesh*t. Bush in particular exemplifies the role of the murderous, scripture-spouting hypocrite.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright seemed like a man who was actually guided by his religious principles. But Barry dumped him. Oh well, with Senator Bozo's help, they can suck up to the pope. Bless me, father, for I have sinned. And I'm about to do it again tenfold, LOL!
cooper wrote: "What is Phil obsessing over and validating if not his belief in the reality of the racial/tribal worldview?"
you don't think the racial/tribal worldview is real? You don't think every group participates in their own version? coming from a guy who advocates reading Kevin MacDonald, i've got to think you need to to start thinking more and hating less. what MacDonald is talking about is the group politics of ALL groups–even your own.
(why is it necessary to "do as the Machiavellians"? can some of us choose not to if we don't want to?)
I can't imagine anyone finding any glory in hanging around Alan Dershowitz. A leftist acquaintance gave me his book "Chutzpah". It is quite an ode to Jewish supremacism. The part about how America was a backwater country prior to Jewish immigration at the turn of the 20th century implicitly scorns the white Christians who wrote the Mayflower Compact, The Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution.
Are there any Jews who really stand away from that mentality? Why would they expect any thinking people to not brim with resentment?
Phil:
WASPs are not a tribe. Gentiles are not a tribe. Catholics are not a tribe.
That is produced through your own prism of ingrained tribalism.
A leftist acquaintance gave me his book "Chutzpah". It is quite an ode to Jewish supremacism. The part about how America was a backwater country prior to Jewish immigration at the turn of the 20th century implicitly scorns the white Christians who wrote the Mayflower Compact, The Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution.
Wow. That's rich. A backwater country? You mean they wanted to emigrate to a country that enshrined the freedom of people without regard to religion in its constitution? That kind of backwater? Since they had been incapable of doing it themselves in whatever country they came from for the previous 300 years? And have been incapable of conjuring up the smarts or ability to create a constitution in Israel since its inception: 60 years.
What's a pre-backwater country? Tribal?
Oh super.
And over those games of golf, tennis and some such, what are the discussed topics pray tell?
"Say, Jack, lets make more money off this whole war shindig".
"Whay, Shlomo, splendid idea! I am with you on that Iran thing – would do wonders for my portfolio!".
Ugh.
Juuuuuuuust kidding.
Well, Doppler, since I had a hard time trying to understand what you said in your post above I will make the only possible connection I could find between what you said and what I said.
"Barack Obama, with a will and a vision to find 'more perfect' solutions, would lead us down that path."
I guess my observation that optimal solutions are non-robust caused you some pain. Sorry, but that is a fact. You may even imagine it is an antisemitic kind of fact, but I assure you it is a fact. If you think Barack is an optimizer (usually when people say "perfect" they have some sort of optimization goal in mind) be sure the world around him stays free from any disturbance, like inside of a bubble, you know, oval.
Other than that I see no reason why my disgust at the insanity of jewish self-obssession could cause you pain. I would be disgusted at any other group behaving this way, but as far as I know in the western world only jews have developed a formal ideology of exclusiveness and that ideology by some reason simply got insane. What we discuss in this blog and elsewhere is not normal. A nation who boasts its democratic virtues to the four winds of the earth has an entire sector of its population cast out of the political discussion regarding the use of the very body of their sons and daughters in war. Disenfranchised in their own homeland, that is the current reality of the part of the american people who is now killing and being killed in war. Mercenaries for their own country.
Remember it is we in the third world who are at the mercy of your preemptive doctrine. Want to trade pains?
Anyway maybe it's me but being you an excellent writer I find the confusion of you last paragraph strange. That's a pity because comming from you I am sure there is a valid point, but I cannot see it. If you care to explain I will consider carefully whatever you say.
Well, Anonymous, since you ask, I regard your characterizations of Jews in your comment under Phil's "Feeling Defensive" post to be offensive. You "dehumanize" them, literally. What I want to see isolated and attacked is the tendency of groups – tribes, parties, nationalities – to demonize their opponents/enemies, to dehumanize them, as a rationalization and excuse for then doing inhumane things to them. I find this practice to be offensive, whether it is done by Jews against Palestinians or other "gentiles," Muslims against Jews or other "infidels," whites against blacks, Christians against non-Christians, and sect against sect, blacks against whites, Hutus and Tutsis, Anti-Semities against Jews, "South Africans hate the Dutch, and I don't like anybody very much," went the old Kingston Trio song. Phil is carrying a lot of water in calling out his fellow Jews wherever he sees their short-comings in this regard. We can all admire his dedication to truth, "come whence it may, cost what it will." And the end of the exercise, if truth, rather than tribal hatred, prevails, is to move farther down the American path of universal human rights. And the American tent, the tent of universal human rights, is a big tent indeed.
Doppler says, "The painfulness comes from reading some of the anonymous comments, which exude naked Anti-Semitism in all its horror."
With all that has happened over the past century, I can only presume that this statement is meant to be subtly sarcastic. Otherwise you have quite a gift for the hyperbolic.
marc b.
Thanks, Doppler. It's a relief when my comments are received with something other than "Rich!? Rich!? there is an antisemite out there! Phil attracts them like flies! Do something to shut the blog down will you! Rich!? Rich!?"
Doppler, I don't think I say anything dehumanizing about jews, but I suspect I say things in a sort of non-venerating way, as if the subject of my comments were normal people, which seems not to be the way americans behave. And that, I guess is what made you unconfortable to the point of breaking the usual dopplerian equanimity and producing the phrase Marc b. referred to, which to prevent further damage I kept mute about, though my oppinion of it pretty much equals Marc b.'s.
In the end it is nothing more than a simplistic, concise and non-conformist style of writing. I don't use it all the time, anyway. Nothing to be worried about. In the substance I am rather conventional, or so I believe.
In general I don't classify the difference between jewish ethics and human ethics in superior-inferior classes. I use bounded and unbounded topological notions. Our ethics is universalist, theirs is particularist. We embrace, they refuse. We play the sheep, oblivious of their existence, and they play the chosen, ever aware of us, always trying to prove they deserve their chosen status and if they don't deserve they say it's because we pay too much attention to them and create difficulties, go figure. But there is nothing exceptional about this. Its pure vacuum filling on the part of nature. There is no possibility of a human ecology free of bounded ethics precisely because there is the possibility of an unbounded one.
I believe the "American tent," as you say, is far from your imagined tent of universal human rights, because right now you value too much the sensibilities of the jews and too little the sensibilities of other peoples and that makes you unable to think straight, let alone "universally." That's why your comment lost meaning after you wrongfully, in my view, tried to express a pain which is not only exagerated, but also completely inadequate to the reality of your country and our century.
In the end, even if I wrongly believe you overreacted, still I am certain you are a good person and speaks with good intentions, so I thank you again and apologize for having offended you. I'm not sure I will be able to avoid doing that again, though, but will receive even your reproaches with good will. Thank you again.
This is a test.
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