Fine Fellowes
Leo Linbeck III
[Note: No “spoilers” are referred to below. Given that there are still places (US, Australia, etc.) where the entire Season 3 of Downton Abbeyhas still not aired, I respectfully request that commenters avoid any Season 3 details that might spoil the fun for others.]
I was at a family gathering last night, and struck up a conversation with one of my sisters about the amazing success of Downton Abbey, which is now in its third season on PBS. I rarely watch TV, so I missed the first two seasons. However, through the magic of AppleTV, my wife and I purchased them online, and soon were swept up into the story.
For those of you who don’t know, Downton Abbey is set in the early 1900s, spanning the period from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 though World War I and now into the 1920s.
This period could qualify as one of the most consequential in human history, not because it is the backdrop for a popular TV series, but because it was an inflection point for modernity. The accumulating effects of changes in science, industrial organization, communication, transportation, warfare, manufacturing, politics, and philosophy reached a critical mass and societies began changing rapidly. The final vestiges of the old order began crumbling, to be replaced with who knows what.
The underlying belief, the catalyst for all of these changes, was the notion of progress, that change drove the human race inexorably in the direction of something better: better science (relativity, 1905), better industrial organization (Carnegie, 1901), better warfare (fixed-wing aircraft, 1911), better manufacturing (Ford, 1908), better politics (Oregon System, 1902), better philosophy (Vienna Circle, 1908), and so on. Everywhere you looked, the human race was making progress.
But, as we now know, it didn’t work out quite so nicely. For every positive, there was also a negative: eugenics, monopoly trusts, mustard gas, alienated workers, fascism, and Leninism. Hundreds of millions died, and the world we certainly transformed. But did it progress? Let’s just say the result was somewhat less than what was promised.
Downton Abbey takes us into this period, and into the lives of the Crawley family and their servants on a grand estate in Yorkshire, England. We are given a birds-eye view of life amidst this turbulence, and audiences are eating it up.
What accounts for its popularity? Let’s see what its creative force says in a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal:
Julian Fellowes, the creator and writer of “Downton Abbey,” doesn’t take long to say what he thinks is the message of his smash television drama.
“I think the—well, not even the subtext, the supertext—of ‘Downton,’ ” he says not five minutes after we sit down for coffee Monday morning at the Savoy Hotel in central London, “is that it is possible for us all to get on, that we don’t have to be ranged in class warfare permanently—that for the general public, the fact that people are leading different lives with different economic realities and different expectations is perfectly cope-able with.
“If you can’t deal with that,” he continues, “then your life would be unlivable. And I think politicians try to encourage us to think in a hostile sense [of] people who have a different circumstance to our own. Which I find very unproductive and uncreative.”
The notion that “it is possible for us all to get on” sounds naïve and oblivious to facts c.2013. We live in a divided world, left vs. right, rich vs. poor, Jews vs. Palestinians, West vs. East, and so on – the battle lines are drawn, and the war is waging.
And yet Downton Abbey resonates with millions of people all over the globe.
I think it is popular because we hunger for community, and it shows how a real community looks. The people in Downton are all individuals, and treated seriously, regardless of class, status, gender, education, sexual orientation, or any other grouping that forms the basis of the modern identity, and its enablers in the professional grievance industry.
And yet those varied individuals comprise a community. They may fight, argue, backstab, insult, manipulate, or otherwise tear at each other, but they stay together. There is a bond that transcends their role and circumstance, a bond of mutual caring, of love. They don’t lose their individuality by being part of the community. But they do all seem “to get on,” even in the face of the great adversity, much of it self-induced.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that the failures, disappointments, and frustrations of everyday life help make a social system antifragile. The Crawleys, for all of their travails, have survived. Actually, Taleb would say that because of all their travails they are more likely to survive. In fact, it is the very fragility of the individuals that enables the antifragility of the community. Their failures do not weaken them – with each setback they grow stronger as a family, a house, and a community.
But it’s not clear they are strong enough to survive what is coming. The world is changing all around them, and they are not insulated from those changes. World War I, the Irish independence movement, women’s suffrage, socialism – all of these massive forces are felt in England, and at Downton. Life will never be the same.
Or will it? Will Downton remain standing after the political tsunami washes over it, carrying the debris from other great estates in its wake? It’s not clear. But what is clear is that the loyal viewers of Downton Abbey hope it will survive, and it is that hope that I believe creates the greatest connection to the Downton Abbey audience.
Ours is a time of alienation bordering on despair; we feel disconnected from the past, and wonder if we can ever recapture the sense of community that was the driving force of America. Robert Nisbet described it thus in The Quest for Community:
I believe, then, that community is the essential context within which modern alienation has to be considered. Here I have reference not so much to a state of mind – although that is inevitably involved – as I do to the more concrete matters of the individual’s relation to social function and social authority. These, I would emphasize, are the two supports upon which alone community, in any reasonably precise sense, can exist and influence its members.
There are countless persons today for whom the massive changes of the past century have meant a dislocation of the contexts of the function: the extended family, neighborhood, apprenticeship, social class, and parish. Historically, these relationships had both depth and inclusiveness in individual life because they themselves had functional significance; because, however informally, they had a significant relationship to that distribution of function and authority which is a society’s organization. And because they had this, they had meaning in the lives of individuals. Having function, they could create a sense of individual function, which is one of the two prime requirements of community.
The other is authority. By authority, I do not mean power. Power, I conceive as something external and based upon force. Authority, on the other hand, is rooted in the statuses, functions, and allegiances which are the components of any association … Authority, like power, is a form of constraint, but unlike power, it is based ultimately upon the consent of those under it; that is, it is conditional. Power arises only when authority breaks down.
Downton Abbey has function, and Robert Crawley has authority. From these arises a true community. But the coming changes will weaken both of these “two supports,” and put that community at risk.
Its function is being undermined through processes of industrialization and urbanization. How can a small blacksmith in Downton survive if mass-produced goods are brought in from London, or Pittsburgh? How can a small estate farm compete with the economies of scale of the American Midwest, or Argentina?
Its authority is being undermined by processes of democratization and centralization. More rules set by politicians responsive to modern voters with an expanded franchise mean that the Crawleys will have less control. Eventually, the state will decide to tax these estates into ruin, lest they maintain their opposition to the concentration of power in London.
We live now in a time where those forces have played themselves out to their conclusion. Centralized power, globalization, universal franchise, and the cartelization of our political system have produced a society where the people feel powerless, if they feel anything at all.
We don’t know how this is all going to turn out. Perhaps that fear, that uncertainty, is part of Downton Abbey’s attraction as well. We appreciate antibiotics, automobiles, flat-screen TVs, and all of the other benefits of modern life. But we wonder whether the other stuff that came with it – the political reforms of the Progressive Era, the debasement of our educational institutions, the coarseness of the culture, the cronyism embedded in our economic system – was worth it.
So maybe, at the end of the day, it’s simple nostalgia. You can’t rewind history, but you can see life was like before its end.
Vienna Circle was 1922+. Positivism was much older, big in the nineteenth century, and its core empiricism much older.
I haven’t watched a moment of Downton Abbey.
Something must have been working in their society, the British Empire was at its peak. Nothing much is working in our society today, in spite of all of our technological miracles.
So it goes. Football game about to start.
Muslims Attacking Muslim Women AND non-Muslim Women in London
MSM here silent, as expected.
—
Leo:
Do you know about Great Hearts Academy in Arizona?
Arizona law allows private schools to avoid dealing with meddlesome local school boards, and private schools have flourished
—
1. Josh:
“Something must have been working in their society, the British Empire was at its peak. Nothing much is working in our society today, in spite of all of our technological miracles.”
But as Steyn and others remind:
When England relinquished it’s role as leader of the free World, the USA took on the mantle.
We face The Abyss.
—
Could things be worse if Eisenhower had not intervened in the Suez Crisis in 1956?
I think not.
Or maybe millions of people are fascinated by a depiction of basically decent human beings trapped within an unequal and unjust society. British television can depict something that no American media network dare to.
Imagine an epic set on Missouri plantation chronicling some rich powerful family (perhaps with some exotic sounding French name) and its servants from the 1810′s to the 1960′s. It wouldn’t happen. Feelings about slavery are too raw and the screenwriters would be tempted to treat various characters as wooden and less than human. Besides, it would likely be cringe-worthy at best.
Downton Abbey is vastly popular because it says what nobody dare say in American political discourse – that both slave owners and slaves were human beings who navigated through their lives with difficulty. Conscientious slave owners worried about keeping slave families together, which necessitated keeping the plantation solvent so creditors would auction the slaves. Freeing slaves wasn’t easy either; a slave might be married to someone on a neighboring plantation and would insist upon either arranging freedom for his whole family or staying with his relatives.
Slavery was evil. Yet, that didn’t keep some slave owners from trying to act conscientiously within the horrific confines of their peculiar institution. Downton Abbey plays the forbidden chord and sings the forbidden words and says what nobody in Hollywood would dare say.
@3 Alexis we had “Roots” on TV and it was hugely successful. Perhaps you’re right in that they wouldn’t do it now, which may say that now it’s really more about power than the injustice.
Alexis:
@3 Alexis:
On the farm, we had a much older neighbor who was raised in the South.
You could sense the almost familial affection he felt for the Older Blacks in his upbringing.
“Familial affection is innate. Whether one is a child, a parent, or a sibling, ties of blood join us together. Whether one is rich or poor, whether one succeeds or fails, family members are always a source of renewal, and home is always our haven. Family reunion and sharing our natural bonds are such warm tableaus, while family separation and the loss of family members are such painful experiences.”
“Its function is being undermined through processes of industrialization and urbanization. How can a small blacksmith in Downton survive if mass-produced goods are brought in from London, or Pittsburgh?”
Or family experienced that back in the 1960’s. My Dad had his own auto electric repair shop, rebuilding starters, alternators, generators, and even lead-acid batteries. Then came the big discount chains, selling such parts cheaper than he could rebuild them. I remember him railing away at the dinner table, “They should keep them from doing that!”
Dad closed his repair shop in the mid-60’s. That must have been terrible for him. He then went to work as a mechanic for a local dairy, only to have a larger outfit buy it and close down the local bottling plant.
But there are still a need for people like my Dad and shops like his. Not long ago a neighbor of mine wondered what he could do to fix his car. There was a problem with the electrical system and the dealer had said it would be $100 an hour to diagnosis it and it would take at least 3 hours of that. I said that was absurd, got my military surplus VOM, and figured out he had a bad alternator in about 10 min. I bought him a replacement alternator on line and we had the car fixed for no more than an hour of “diagnosis” would have cost. I did not learn how to do that kind of thing directly from my Dad, but I learned that it could be done.
So yes, we have gained much, but lost something, too. And there are still opportunities for people who have truly useful knowledge.
By the way, I never watched it but had assumed that “Downton Abbey” was a typo and that the series had something to do with an urban church. I guess I understand a little more now why it’s so popular.
The moral authority of Robert Crowley comes not from his position of power but rather from his noblesse oblige. People often presume that noblesse oblige is a side effect of authority when it is actually its cause. Further, one should not presume that mountains of money or power or prestige causes this authority when such moral authority comes from a desire to help others.
Community can exist without any one genteel patriarch or a “big man” posing as one. It comes from a sense of mutual obligation that cannot be enforced by formal lines of command. It comes from an aversion to hubris. The community that exists in the fictional Downton Abbey comes despite its hierarchy, not because of it.
There’s another reason why the British can talk about the inequalities of the past in a way that America cannot. Both the upstairs and the downstairs in British class society were of the same race. Some left wing wag said in the last century that if clothes could be abolished, no one would know a lady from a servant. Well that doesn’t work if they’re of different races.
It’s a subject so volatile that I wonder if the human race can ever discuss it rationally. Where are the neanderthals and what did they do to deserve what they got? Did our ancestors see the neanderthals as a political or social problem or did they see them as a species challenge?
My guess is that to understand the mystery of modern race politics is necessary to see how it is used by the centralizing state, which needs above all for its ascendancy the destruction of everything which bound the characters in Downton Abbey together. Multiculturalism is arguably the ideology of delegitimizing community.
To achieve it was no small feat. In the early 20th century it was all in the vogue to form communities. Irish Home Rule, the nationalisms of the Ottoman Empire … even before the independence binge of the post-world war anticolonialism hit its stride … espoused ideas which would be embarrassing to utter today.
But the one weapon which centralizing governments had to keep people at daggers drawn was race, or its near equivalent, religion. The requirement to be “multicultural” when properly manipulated proved a potent means for preventing communities from forming — even so called minority communities — whose structures were allowed to form only in a perverted manner, when they were led by demagogues and baiters.
A healthy community structure is probably a requisite for a functioning society; the bulwark against the domination of a great state. And to keep society from jelling in a healthy way our great state spinners have insisted on a kind faux unity that permits only an unhealthy or contrived form of unity based on spoils, like the Big Tent. In reality both the language and forms of government sponsored multiculturalism are designed to achieve the opposite of the love and understanding. They foster dishonesty, rivarly, competition for spoils, secret resentments. They erect walls where walls should have long ago naturally dissolved. But their solvent — so they insist on calling it — is really a kind of concrete in disguise.
One of the challenges to forming truly functional multicultural communities is to figure out how tight the couplings should be. In the Ottomon empire that was achieved by permitting a degree of separation. In federal systems the possibility of differences within a given unity was part of the setup. We will find community when we once again decide it is licit to be different; and having decide upon the distinctions, we can once again embrace the larger unity.
Perhaps over time unity is a kind of a dance, a process of nearing and distancing; a hand held out, a hand let go. But the intimacy is not in the pressing together, but rather in the interplay of the individuals. But that’s only possible among people. It is never achievable by the Masses.
Common Core Corrupts
Michelle Malkin
America’s downfall doesn’t begin with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student.
For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity, and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western-civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers, and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed grouping students by ability to be bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling, and multicultural claptrap.
Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but set the achievement bar high.
RWE@6 says:
“I said that was absurd, got my military surplus VOM, and figured out he had a bad alternator in about 10 min. I bought him a replacement alternator on line and we had the car fixed for no more than an hour of “diagnosis” would have cost. I did not learn how to do that kind of thing directly from my Dad, but I learned that it could be done.”
And the neighbor learned that “it” could be done. Perhaps he will pass that knowledge on to others, perhaps not. But if he does pass it on, not necessarily the exact steps mind you, but just the knowledge that something can be done, what a gift you have given.
The notion that “it is possible for us all to get on” sounds naïve and oblivious to facts c.2013. We live in a divided world, left vs. right, rich vs. poor, Jews vs. Palestinians, West vs. East, and so on – the battle lines are drawn, and the war is waging.
It’s not Jews vs. Palestinians, it’s Arabs vs. Jews and Muslims vs. Jews (AKA “descendants of apes and pigs” and “the greatest enemies of Allah” among other things found in Muslim scriptures written long before the founding of the Arab-Palestinian People some time between 1920 and late 1967). West vs. East is also inaccurate and don’t think it contributes much to understanding global reality. The West is pretty much one civilization with different shades or variations. The East, however, is made of different civilizations, including the Chinese, the Indian, the Westernized democratic East-Asian, the Westernized communist East-Asian, the Arab, the Islamic. The Arab civilization doesn’t have much in common with the Japanese civilization, nor the Indian civilization with the Chinese civilization. Some of these civilizations are set against the West and others are allied with the West or are neutral. So you can’t really think of the East as one bloc, though it’s a common and tempting cliche. But didn’t Julian Fellowes limit his argument to class warfare used by some politicians?
Authority is the same as Charisma. Power is not only force in action, or kinetic energy, but force in waiting, or potential energy. The loyalty of the community to Crowley both is drawn to and increases his charisma and potential. The Sovereign Center, King over in and or under Parliament in sequence from the 13th to 20th centuries, fears rivals and cuts them down.
The “Common Core” was the heart of the great liberal arts programs of the 20th century at Chicago Stanford Columbia and similar universities. They celebrated Western Civilization. Obama’s parody for precollegiate curricula is like the orcs made in mockery of the elves.
Wretchard: I believe that the phenomenon that you and Mr. Linbeck describe was some decades ago named “atomization.” Do away with clan, tribe, religion, civic associations and the lot and you are left with atom-like individuals — molecules in a gas.
The Marxists’ error was believing that having atomized society by force, they could change the molecules themselves, transforming reactive O2 to a more inert N2. Their successors, being realists, understand that they are limited to dialing up or down the temperature or changing the pressure of the gas. And that gets them pretty good results.
Race (really all identity politics that encourage an individual to identify with some ethnicity, gender, or orientation) is one way they manipulate masses. Sex is another since it satisfies the human need for intimacy without the unpleasant (to those who would rule) side effect of community. Orwell was absolutely wrong in that regard and Huxley was right. Finally there is the dole — the web of dependency that reduces its recipients to slavery.
Some days I tell myself that its not really so bad. That those who would rule haven’t shown any sign of decisively destroying the specialists who keep the whole thing running (military, engineers, law enforcement and many other castes and sub-castes) or “spetsy” as they were known in early Soviet times. But they are as lacking in wisdom as they are full of hubris. Who knows what we will wake to tomorrow?
“Great Hearts Academy” in Arizona has a very rigorous traditional common core curriculum.
A lot more classics than I ever learned.
@James: Roots, the book by Alex Haley, was shown to be mostly hoax, partly plagiarism. Thus, the tv portrayal was something of a sham, too. Left out of the story is that Europeans bought the Africans in ports on the coast from Africans who had captured them. Europeans did not, could not, go far inland and capture hundreds of thousands of Africans.
Every epoch or period is characterized by a “spirit of the times”. This spirit determines what politicians say, what rules people live by, how the arts express themselves and what direction scientific endeavours take.
The spirit of the Downton Abbey times was kind, people respected each other and there was great pride in their country and society. The spirit of that time caused people look beyond their own selves and welcome the new information that bombarded them.
The spirit of our times is mean, petty and shallow. It makes for mean, petty and shallow politicians. Except for a few outstanding exceptions, it produces nations of self absorbed, self pitying people whose only goal is celebrity in any form. The spirit of our times places new narratives before new information. It promotes made up stories and divisive attitudes to be the main pillars society.
The spirit of the times determines everything else. The everything else won’t change until the spirit of a new time arrives.
I ran into the erosion of community this week when the problem of gays in the Boy Scouts reared up again. I’d argued that it’s madness to give into the demands of the homosexual activists, that if you think for a minute you’d be buying approbation or even peace by this then you really don’t know the left. Of course I was instantly attacked on all sides by a number of narratives. The one that seems most appropriate to the topic of a lost sense of community was the angry, post-op trans-sexual Eagle Scout now going by the name of Christine who said to me, “You had gays in scouting when you were a boy, but you didn’t know it!”
Ah, but I did know it. We knew certain boys were “queer”, and we’d be amazed if they didn’t turn out gay. And they did turn out gay, and they remain our friends of old. We all had a better knowledge of how to get along. All concerned had the decency to realize when to let a sleeping dog lie.
Now ours are a time bereft of shame and, oddly, tolerance. In fact to be tolerant has become to hold demands that others change according to the proper set of view. The spectacle before us today, wherein one group with a chip on its shoulder is standing before the campfire demanding the total upending of tradition, was unthinkable not long ago as much as it has become perversely laudable today. I don’t mean to romanticize the past, we did have our problems, but who can point to a time in a human community when this won’t be the case? Am I to believe that the heady uplands of progressive utopia, their Shangri-La or New Jerusalem, is this fabled Promised Land where we really mean it at the Boy Scout campfire singing Kumbaya?
This seems unlikely to be the case. Around those old campfires a sense of community did serve to draw us together in fellowship. Today it’s a vehicle for faction. You watch your mouth. You redesign your skits, songs and mottos.
It was much better being free to be boy at ease and at liberty, in awe at nature’s wonders, and unencumbered by social agendas.
Downton Abbey is the country version of Upstairs Downstairs which aired on PBS from 1971 through 1975. Both programs portray the social transition at the end of the Golden Era and the end of empire.
Aside from the fact that the costumes and sets are beautiful, the soap opera appeals across class lines. Cynically, I can’t help but wonder if the US liberal audience likes the idea of an educated, upper class benevolently caring for their all but indentured servants.
ss @ 16: The spirit of the Downton Abbey times was kind, people respected each other and there was great pride in their country and society. The spirit of that time caused people look beyond their own selves and welcome the new information that bombarded them.
Oh, I dunno, I think 97% of it is looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses. I’d say the big difference is that in those days putting up a front and pretense was looked on as a good thing, at least in England, in the upper classes. But we out-lie them by 1000% today, so really what has changed and in what direction, I dunno, not that at least.
c @ 17: gays in the Boy Scouts reared up again
So to speak. So, what kind of new merit badges would that entail. So to speak.
19. Josh
Agree with the rose coloured glasses when looking at the past and there were the fundamental injustices of a class ridden society in post WWI England. But what I call the spirit of a time is independent of structures and institutions. The different nature of that spirit in different times can make the same structure vicious or tolerable. I didn’t live in 1920′s England but I did live in 1950′s England and I know that it was a kinder more generous place than today’s England because there was a kinder more generous spirit floating about in the (polluted) 1950′s air.
For example, my maternal Grandfather enlisted in the British army as a young boy in the early 1900′s by lying about his age. The army taught him to read and write and was in loco parentis as he grew up. He was gassed in WWI and was invalided out of the army so he spent the rest of his working life in manual labour type work. In his 60′s he worked as a gate man at a local factory and his bad lungs and the 1950′s smog caused him to be off work for longer and longer periods until the company had to fire him.
Except that he refused to be fired and kept turning up for work every day, however bad his lungs were and even though he was not getting paid. Eventually the factory gave in and started giving him paychecks again. They didn’t have to do that; he was not an important employee and he was not in a union. I think they did it simply to let him maintain his self respect.
It is worth remembering that Tolkien’s Shire was a reflection of Tolkien’s England.
Oops! 20. “refugee@shaw.ca” should be 20. stevesmith – a refugee from Britain.
c @ 17: “…wherein one group with a chip on its shoulder is standing before the campfire demanding the total upending of tradition, was unthinkable not long ago as much as it has become perversely laudable today.”
Just 20 years ago, when we moved to Hawaii, the Gays here were “Just asking to be recognized, and given equal rights.”
They repeatedly assured everyone that they would NEVER proselytize in our schools.
Today the Gay Curriculum is required throughout.
In California, new textbooks recognizing gays disproportionately are mandatory.
I’ve seen a lot of supposition and guessing at fan motives here by non-viewers that are biased opinions mostly full of hot air.
What viewers I’ve spoken to appreciate about DA is it’s lack of discernible political cant (of the author, director or producer). It’s the first production I’ve seen since “Bullit” that honestly scripts the way people speak and allowed characters to express emotions people really feel. The best part of it is progs don’t seem to notice that defect. It’s a delicious joke on them. Of course that could change at any time, but until then welcome to the fan club. We’ve been here since the beginning.
Oh, one other thing, that leftist wag was wrong, W. Trust me when I say in those days any observant adult could tell the difference between nude commoners and nobles.
I’ve seen a lot of supposition and guessing at fan motives here by non-viewers that are biased opinions mostly full of hot air.
What viewers I’ve spoken to appreciate about DA is it’s lack of discernible political cant (of the author, director or producer). It’s the first production I’ve seen since “Bullit” that honestly scripts the way people speak and allowed characters to express emotions people really feel. The best part of it is progs don’t seem to notice that defect. It’s a delicious joke on them. Of course that could change at any time, but until then welcome to the fan club. We’ve been here since the beginning.
Oh, one other thing, that leftist wag was wrong, W. Trust me when I say in those days any observant adult could tell the difference between nude commoners and nobles.
Doug…
And, of course, those gay guys are never the ultra-high profile tyrants of history:
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Nor the extreme, multi-generational, Spartans. Even Athens tops San Francisco.
There is not much mention as to why nations are terrified of gays with access to BIG secrets.
(The Cambridge crew springs to mind.)
Instead, it’s nothing but those wonderful gay artists — and poets.
If there is one constant theme it’s conflict resolution.
Never truly married, they never ‘give way.’
Bradley Manning is one of the many: while upset that the US Army got in the way of his bromance he retaliated by endangering his fellow soldiers — if the allegations prove out.
It’s a Brave New World of women in the highest positions of government
Michelle Obama
Valerie Jarrett
Hillary Clinton
Susan Rice
Dianne Feinstein
Barbara Boxer
The credo for the 21st Century?
“Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
“What difference does it make?”
Last night, I learned that Hillary had already seen Season3 before her use of same line from Lady Cora.
I digress.
Rooting for Daisy to join forces with Lady Edith and Branson in re-invigorating Downton’s farms.
Because I have to wait until Tuesday to watch FX’s “Justified”, which is quite brutal in it’s depiction of class in America, today.
Yeah, some of us just like to watch good stories on tv, with great dialog and fine acting. anything to escape the surreal news of today.
I’d add Senator Patty Murray, from the state of Washington, who distinguished herself early on after 9-11 by educating us of all of the good works of al-Queda, or the Taliban.
…the memory fails, and it was bad enough going to Google for a spell check, and seeing her image for the first time. Yikes! Dykes.
…I’m just guessin, I’m no expert.
—
Well, on the same page it says she’s married w/2 kids, both Girls.
Hope they’re safe and sound, and glad I’m not the spouse.
—
27. K2K:
HOW did you learn that factoid about Hillary and Fellowes?
The end of season two went way overboard into American afternoon soap opera territory: the heir’s [redacted]; the [redacted] did it; the [redacted] falling for the [redacted]. While I enjoy the show, it is borrowing from better sources (Lady [redacted]) and The Little [redacted], and not using it well.
So far no child has grown from birth to 16 in three years, but I haven’t watched season 3.
Community?
In the pre-desegregation era was there as much crime, shootings, drugs, out of wedlock births, etc in the “community”? When did succeeding in school become a ‘white’ thing? One of the consequences of desegregation was not only white flight from the inner city, but black flight of the upper and middle class. The leaders and social role models who by example or by imposed behavior would not tolerate such conditions were replaced by self seeking politicians redistributing other peoples’ money and ‘celebrity’ cultural substitutes.
Programmr #10:
Funny thing, a week or two after I fixed my neighbor’s car, on Car Talk they got a call from a guy with the exact same kind of problem, Car acting up, $100 an hour diagnostic charge, etc.
They told him “No, No! You just need to find someone with a VOM who knows what he is doing!”
I think that government programs are very much like that. Even with simple problems they have to bring in the whole battery of specialists and agencies. Part of this is it justifies the existence of more workers and more money. But it’s also likely that most of the people doing it don’t know of may other way – like the guys at the car dealership. At the Pentagon I would say, “Let’s ignore them and do what we need to.” This always brought somewhere between a shocked silence and a weary headshake, along with, “You just don’t understand…”
Leo, just had a conversation with another ETX friend, and we think you need to run for senate against Cornyn next time. Please consider it. You and Cruz would make a great pair.
31. RWE:
I was thrilled when I found the imported auto parts shop nearby in San Luis Obispo, California, because GM parts were so outrageous in those days.
My 62 Corvair Van was no Lamborghini.
Did not know about, or have access to, a rebuilder, though, which would have been the superior alternative.
There were unionized drunks in the 70′s just as there are unionized drunks today in the socialized auto industry.
Doubt if your dad was a drunk rebuilder.
—
32. MMc: Agreed – Cornyn is a strange “conservative”
Forgive my ignorance, but if this is a Victorian era drama, does the Lord of the Manor, a patron, have a patronizing attitude toward women, in other words, does he excuse women who exercise their “female logic”?
Watching the Stupid Bowl yesterday, and cringing much of the time, was a lesson about why the romantics who led us into the morass are so enthralled by the world they deliberately destroyed.
The constant, resounding message was the dominance of women and black-skinned humans. That and the dehumanized nature of most of the characters juxtaposed with the sugary sweet, almost barbaric ploy of America the Beautiful sung by the victims of its culture of death, Ray Lewis’ crocodile tears, and the moaning rendition of the national anthem by Alicia Keyes.
It was a circus of narcissism. No wonder they long, as all romantics do, to go back, back to a time when order was still somewhat more dominant than disorder, when restraint was more common than the acting out of every aberrant impulse that comes to the mind of an increasingly decerebrate populace.
In our nostalgia, we see less a longing for authority than obedience.
I have not watched DA, mostly on the assumption that, if liberals like it there must be something wrong with it. I see that it must be compelling, and it apparently doesn’t have the usual “progressive” (i.e. regressive) axe to grind, But I also remember how compelling The Sopranos was, probably for pretty much the same reasons, and how when it was over I thought that I had been tricked into doing something that was at least a waste and maybe even bad for my soul.
These things, all of them, distract us from the central, long forgotten truth: unity and peace exist on a different plane than this one. We all long for it, but we will never find it here. Here, we are all “poor banished children of Eve” and doomed to weep in this “vale of tears.”
The idea that the old days were better comes from the fact that the best age for those raised in a solid, traditional family, is 5 years old, when you can do most of what you want and have few responsibilities.
The big, real difference between this age and earlier ones is that for many centuries there was a continuous thread of real progress toward being more human, more as we are all meant to be, but that thread got lost several hundred years ago, and we are now clearly going backward.
One subplot that’s rather amusing (and unconventional) is that the devious ladies maid, Miss O’Brien, is setting up gay Thomas to get his ass seriously kicked by the new (and straight) footman, James. James tells her that he wants Thomas to leave him alone, and so she (knowing that Thomas is a closeted gay) is hinting to Thomas that James is in the closet too, and has a secret crush on him.
That should be fun when it gets to the payoff.
WWS @ 36 – So does the Lord of the Manor, in the end, tell Miss O’Brien (AKA Lucy)…
Lucy, You’ve got some ‘splain’ to do!
9. Doug
Common Core Corrupts
Michelle Malkin
America’s downfall doesn’t begin with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student.
Sorry Doug. This is a classic example of where ideology trumps common sense. There are flaws with Common Core, but they have little to do with Obama, the WH, or intent to “dumb down” curricula. I’m sorry that this hysteria cascade got started and many on our side of the ideological divide got sucked into it. They are making fools of themselves.
Well wws, gay intrigue. That isn’t progressive clap trap?
Everything is gay. The people who maintain the lights at the Super Bowl are gay. They are feeling each other’s oats and not minding the farm. That was my take away from the Super Bowl. Tribal Triumphalism and the lights went out. Made me think that while we are pushing universal healthcare, anti-second amendment, open borders that the dirt bags of the progressive Left will leave us in the dark soon or later… and from what I can tell, it will be sooner.
Priorities. We need some.
37. MachiasPrivateer
Would you believe that in episode #561 of Downton Abbey during the “Victorian” period of the 1920′s the Lord of the manor decrees that no female servant is allowed to make coffee for his Lordship, because that is what it says in the Bible? I am told he arrogantly waves the New Testament in the faces of his cowering servants while instructing them that there is an entire book in the Bible called “HEBREWS”.
I think you might be missing something here.
stevesmith @ 40 – I can see why CBS is losing audience. That CAD Boomer Esiason claims that Beyonce’s show was responsible for the blackout at the Super Bowl ! GASP! http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/02/04/blame-beyonce-boomer-told-of-2-power-outages-during-halftime-rehearsals/
Which means that if the Superdome has a spot network that Beyonce’s generators were tied into and that her generators were more than big enough to carry the full demand AFTER halftime ended, then the net load on the utility would have gone negative (just as if she had massive solar panels on the roof and the sun came out) and the network protector tripped to prevent a backflow into their network, as would happen if the feeder to the stadium’s transformer shorted to ground and the other parallel feeders connected to the spot network tried to feed into that short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_protector
But of course Roger Goodell is a fine Victorian gentleman, unlike Boomer!
Where, oh where, have you gone to Mrs. Emma Peel? Growls like a tigress and purrrrrrrs like a kitten!
Cowboy @ 17:
Yes, thank you for putting into better words than I can, how the BSA/gays controversy illustrates the way that multiculturalism and its acolytes undermine our communities. I also was a Scout and am a Scouter, and your description of the position of non-hetero guys in the troop is the same as in my experience. Nobody cared, UNLESS the guy shoved it in our faces. But, that went for all kinds of differences, including class and religion.
We joined and stayed because as you say, “It was much better being free to be boy at ease and at liberty, in awe at nature’s wonders, and unencumbered by social agendas.”
Good analysis, Machias – that sounds believable. If it had been something obvious like a blown transformer that would have been reported already.
stevesmith wrote: “Would you believe that in episode #561 of Downton Abbey…”
no, because there is no such episode. ha ha.
I have no idea how the show’s storyline is going to progress (assuming it remains commercially viable for several more seasons) but the world it shows will clearly vanish in 20 years, give or take.
World War 2 and the confiscatory taxation to follow will destroy the family’s hold on the place, wherever the money’s coming from. The building will end up as a National Trust site, and the people will be scattered.
wws @ 43 – I so much prefer modern girls. We can make such glorious music together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUpReTLLvaw
But I do understand why Geoge Lazenby failed as James Bond, his taste in women was so exquisite that what girl could ever hope to compete with them, even in her dreams?
That Diana Rigg really could give GREAT tongue. http://youtu.be/WYFCl9qJGSQ?t=28s
SPEAKING ABOUT WILDEST DREAMS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpJmOvnEUyg
Give Peace a Chance
Buy the world a Diet Coke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbXM9ATC5_4
Interesting that L3 notes he rarely watches [broadcast] TV. Seems that more & more people fall into that category. It is fascinating to walk through an airport and see how few people pay any attention at all to the omnipresent CNN screens. Leftist control of the media may be a wasting asset.
On the issue of whether life was better ‘back then’ — I recently read John Gribbin’s book “Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution”, in which the author made a serious effort to put Schrodinger (1887 – 1961) into historic context, tracing back to the 1700s. Based on quotes in the book, the perception that things used to be better seems to have been around for a long, long time.
Things change — always. We regret certain good things that have been lost, and take for granted the different good things we have today. How many of the TV characters in Downton Abbey (upstairs, as well as downstairs) have the chronically bad teeth for which the English were justifiably famous as recently as the 1970s?
Gays in the Boy Scouts? No need. Start a parallel organization, the Gay Scouts. See how far that gets you.
Culture is defined by the shared story of who we are and where we came from. Drawn from this story are values, models, mores and customs. Whereas I can agree that all cultures are valid in so far as their own self identity is concerned, the are certainly not valid in the context of a competing culture. But for the individual it always localized, ‘this is how we do things around here.’ Every culture has elements to be both admired and deplored as they define what it means to be really human within the constraints of human nature. Like it or not, human nature is immutable; the refusal to recognize this is the major error of the Left. In the end it will destroy Leftism, though hopefully before Leftism has destroyed everything else.
My father’s division–104th Infantry Division, Timberwolves–got to Europe in Oct 44. Initially they were with the Canadian Corps in the British Army under Montgomery until Holland was cleared. My Dad ran into a number of Imperial troops. A lifer noncom in the Brit army told him the social distance between officer and Other Ranks was greater than between the Brits and the wogs in India where he’d served before the war. And Canadian and Anzac troops hated the Brit officers’ hauteur and supercilious attitudes.
Be odd to think that was a function of the military only.
The UK Telegraph runs nice obits on various folks. Until they ran out of WW II vets, I used to read those and send copies to my father. Every year, just as regular, they ran an obit on an enlisted man. You could bank on it.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.