What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

It is the Dawning of the Age of...of...of...

...well, P. Diddy, I guess.

Hat-tip (once again) to Lawrence Auster for pointing out this very interesting (not very good, mind you, but very interesting) essay in the latest issue of The Atlantic: "The End of White America?", by a certain Hua Hsu of a certain Vassar College.

Herewith some early highlights:

"Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we're approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities--blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians--will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

"As a purely demographic matter...white America...may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it's already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America's multiethnic, multicolored heirs...

"What will the new mainstream of America look like, and what ideas or values might it rally around?

"...consider Sean Combs, a hip-hop mogul and one of the most famous African Americans on the planet..."

Well, OK, Hua Hsu, let's consider Sean Combs:

* * * * *
Please note that Hua Hsu is not some right-wing kook like me. On the contrary: he seems positively giddy in his anticipation of the increasing cultural ascendancy of the likes of P. Diddy.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll find the stomach to go on. For there's much worse to come.

But that's enough for now.

Comments (31)

"According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities--blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians--will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042...As a purely demographic matter...white America...may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still."


Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch and conspire and plot and plan for the inevitable day of [the White] Man's downfall - the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under [the proverbial] radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we will build our own cities in which there will be no place for [White] humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you... NOW!

-- Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Ari: is that really the subtext of the portion you quote from CotPotA? Or are you merely reappropriating the passage to fit the current discussion?

It's an inside joke intended to play with a popular misconception of the movie and what actually is a polyvalent message.

In any event, those movies profoundly delved into the intimate matters of society unlike its ersatz television counterpart.

Steve,

I always get worried when someone writes yet another version of "The Closing of the American Mind". The truth is that America has rarely had a "common center" with respect to culture and there will always be various versions of high-brow, middle-brow and low-brow (i.e. P. Diddy...who thinks he is being clever with that video but instead is being totally derivative as those ideas have been bandied about ever since the Jeffersons moved into Queens) on display at any given time. Your post reminded me of the recent dust-up between David Frum and Alan Jacobs over the state of American literature.

Thanks Steve. Making headway here requires recovering an understanding of 'culture' in the sense of "high culture". This a sense of culture that is not morally or aesthetically relativistic. It relates beauty and truth and moral goodness. It allows us to evaluate one culture above another, objectively, on those grounds. This is what we find in Dawson, Eliot, Weaver, Scruton, Pieper (See his Tradition: Concept and Claim, though it deals with this only obliquely), and John Senior. Culture is not relative. At the heart of [high] culture, they argue, is religion, and its recognition of the transcendent. The transcendence of the Mass is the source and support of all high culture. Of course, if they are right, the implications of making worship casual and informal are obvious. But we (as a society) have all, mostly, lost our taste for truly good music (cf. Scruton's The Aesthetics of Music). I recently went through the top 40 music charts, year by year, starting in 1981 all the way to the present, trying to get a feel for how popular music has changed in that time. It is interesting to see the rise in the popularity of rap music in the last thirty years. Such music was not on the top 40 charts in the 80s; now it dominates the charts. But the aesthetic battle was lost much earlier than in the 80s, as Weaver points out (in the 1940s!). Plato was right to be concerned about music in the Republic. We have to recover and promote the objectivity of aesthetics in music and the arts. It isn't about self-expression. Fine art is beautiful, and helps make us beautiful, virtuous persons.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

Bryan,

I recently went through the top 40 music charts, year by year, starting in 1981 all the way to the present, trying to get a feel for how popular music has changed in that time.

I would hardly attempt a comparison between today's (and even yesterday's music) to that of Classical.

Apples and oranges.

It would be like my attempting a comparison of Mozart's Great Mass with something from Dylan's repertoire.

Bryan,

What ari said. But I should also note that I recently read an interview with Scruton in which he said he thought the heavy metal band Metallica made music worthy of serious reflection! Interesting idea about Mass though -- I wonder if it is Mass or simply the ideas and beliefs of religion that sustain the greatest works of art. For example, all the paintings of the Passion seem to me inspired by the Bible (although I guess back in the 14th and 15th Centurys most people 'read' their Bible in Mass, so maybe you do have a point...)

"According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities--blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians--will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042.

As currently categorized, most probably. Whether or not a majority of people will be considered white by the standards of the 2040s, however, is a somewhat different question. By the standards of 150 years ago the U.S. long ago ceased to be a majority nation, demographically speaking. Yet a majority today consider themselves white due to the fact that as groups assimilated into the American mainstream, the definition of what counts as white was expanded to include them. The Irish, for example, would not have been considered white during the 19th century. Neither would Italians, or Slavs, or Jews. Today most members of these groups would consider themselves white, and so would most everyone else.

By the standards of 150 years ago the U.S. long ago ceased to be a majority nation, demographically speaking.
Yet a majority today consider themselves white due to the fact that as groups assimilated into the American mainstream, the definition of what counts as white was expanded to include them. The Irish, for example, would not have been considered white during the 19th century. Neither would Italians, or Slavs, or Jews. Today most members of these groups would consider themselves white, and so would most everyone else.
Really? I see this claim frequently enough, originating I think with the "(anti)whiteness studies" movement, but it doesn't get any more plausible upon repetition. It is true enough that there was an intra-white racial hierarchy, but the simple fact that Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, etc. were allowed to immigrate freely, and settle where they liked within the United States, and intermarry as desired indicates that they were in fact thought of as white, and not something else. Contrast this with the treatment accorded Chinese and Japanese immigrants, or black internal migrants.

Jeff - I think you're missing my point here. Maybe my following post will clarify a bit.

Bryan:

I thank you for your kind words, but I'm afraid that I must disagree with pretty much everything that you have to say.

The "transcendence of the Mass" was undoubtedly the "source and support" for some of the greatest accomplishments of "high culture" - e.g., Josquin's incomparable *Missa L'homme armé sexti toni* - but I don't think that it had much to do with, say, *Don Giovanni* - let alone *Don Carlos*, let alone *Tristan & Isolde*.

&c &c &c

aristocles & jeff:

The popular and the classical are not (or, at any rate, have not always been) "apples and oranges."

Consider Liszt.

Consider Verdi.

Jeff, again - could you provide a link to the interview where Roger Scruton said he thought that "Metallica made music worthy of serious reflection?"

Good for him, for noticing.

Editorial note: Steve, are you certain Hua Hsu is a male? The only Huas I know are female. Consult your friendly local native Mandarin speaker.

Steve,

I was using the term broadly.

Liszt and Mozart are relatively more suitable items for comparison than, say, Dylan vs. Mozart.

Whoever made the crack about Dylan is just trying to provoke me. I don't insist that Bod Dylan must be loved by everyone. I do think that it should be acknowledged that Dylan is a man of deep biblical faith whose music has for 30 years antagonized the hippies who still claim him as their poet. Funny, that.

Paul,

It appears you've missed the point entirely.

The fact is one cannot say that Mozart's music is better than Dylan's or vice-versa.

Technically, they're different classes of music.

However, if you should feel that it is entirely possible to do so, I would greatly appreciate the benefit of demonstration.

James Howard Kunstler:

"...we will become keenly aware of the limitations of human nature... Life will get much more real.... Irony, hipness, cutting-edge coolness will seem either quaint or utterly inexplicable to people struggling to produce enough food to get through the winter."

--The Long Emergency

Watching the video, I was struck by how amazingly its aesthetic depends on commodities likely to be in shorter supply in years ahead: the "right clothes" (made, I suppose, by sweatship workers in China), big cars requiring plenty of fuel, yards with extensive lawns to water (good luck with that), big houses costing $$ to heat, plenty of electricity to power the light show and amplifiers, and the life's-a-party ideal, etc. This might be the cool-thing-right-now for many people. To me it reeks of a time that is so close to extinction that it's practically over already. Time to put away the love beads, peasant blouses and sandals, gang, we've got a new normal to get used to.

Time to put away the love beads, peasant blouses and sandals, gang, we've got a new normal to get used to.

If Kunstler's The Long Emergency is correct and I fear, much of it is, hand-stitched peasant blouses and sandals will be the new normal. Everything that grew out of our machine-made paradise looks broken past the point of repair.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters broken saws
Broken buckles broken laws
Broken bodies broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath feel like you're chokin'
Everything is broken.

Bob Dylan

Kevin quotes Dylan! My week is complete.

Aristocles,

A demonstration? If I'm trying to show my daughter how Mozart's music is superior to that of Radiohead, I don't use a syllogism. I try to teach her how to listen.

Aesthetic relativism can be masked by multiplying genres and alleging their incommensurability. The same rational power by which we judge that Sean Combs's music is not fitting for liturgy is the same rational power by which we may judge rationally that one musical genre is more beautiful, noble and worthy than another. Which would you rather have played at your funeral mass: this or this? The same rational capacity by which you are capable of determining which is more beautiful and fitting, is the same capacity by which we can make rational aesthetic judgments *across* genres.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

That Dylan song has been coming to my mind, too, during this interesting time we have entered. Well, really ol' Bob wrote the songbook for these times (or revived songs by others -- listen to "Hard Times" on Good As I Been To You).

The peasant blouses and sandals might be worn during the Long Emergency, all right, but from necessity, not to be fashionable for a few months.

"Aesthetic relativism can be masked by multiplying genres and alleging their incommensurability"...

OK, "Bryan" - you now have my full attention. Please expand on this (very important) point.

And enough with your "peace of Christ" joke. I get it, already.

Steve,

I think Bryan is agreeing with your implication (here, but you've made it elsewhere) that there are objective aesthetic values. In other words, whatever disagreements you may have about how all this relates to the Mass, you're on the same page in thinking that hip-hop is degraded and its popularity a bad sign.

And he signs all his comments off that way--"In the peace of Christ." He does it on Zippy's blog and everywhere else. It's just like a sig file. It's not a joke.

And I've known Bryan Cross on the Internet since before there was such a thing as the blogosphere, or at least while the blogosphere was still in its relative infancy, and his name really is Bryan Cross, not "Bryan," so I don't get the point of the scare quotes.

Bryan,

A demonstration? If I'm trying to show my daughter how Mozart's music is superior to that of Radiohead, I don't use a syllogism. I try to teach her how to listen.

That is not a technical demonstration; it is a show of preference.

However, it seems you are so bereft of any intimate technical knowledge of Classical music wherein you are incapable of appreciating, for example, Fernando Valenti's talented and expert performance of Scarlatti on the harpsichord over the late Bill Buckley's rather laborious rendition at his usual Christmas parties.

I can assure you that those conversant in such would find it the height of absurdity to be performing a technical comparison between the movements and variations of such a piece and the contemporary music of, say, a Dylan or a Springsteen.

To that ignorance and surprisingly arrogant pride in such ineptitude, I can express merely a sense of pity and cite another of those things what's wrong with the world.

Steve,

You need a subscription to The Philosopher's Magazine to read the whole interview, but this guy makes reference to it in his review of a recent Metallica concert.

Lydia:

Thanks for the info about Bryan Cross.

I thought I was being joshed, and I had a guess about who was joshing me.

It's not every day that one encounters such a combination of sophistication and silliness.

I mean, is "the transcendence of the Mass" somehow "the source and support" of *Don Giovanni*? Or is *Don Giovanni* somehow not a part of "high culture?"

aristocles: shame on you for your latest. I mean, really: shame on you.

"...it seems you are so bereft of any intimate technical knowledge of Classical music wherein you are incapable of appreciating, for example, Fernando Valenti's talented and expert performance of Scarlatti on the harpsichord over the late Bill Buckley's rather laborious rendition at his usual Christmas parties..."

Wha-huh???

I'm simply at a loss to figure out what Bryan Cross wrote to deserve that response.

Steve,

It is not actually that he is so bereft; on the contrary, it is exactly the opposite (which is why I wrote as I did).

He, of all people, should know that comparing contemporary music with classical, all to prove the point that one is superior to the other, is a fool's errand.

I have yet to encounter a legitimately expert professor of music that would even have so much the gall to do so.

Not that I, myself, am a fan of today's music, but do note that there was a time when the same hostile criticism he makes of today's music was vehemently spewed about the music of such greats as Tommy Dorsey, Mel Powell, Buck and Bubbles, Charlie Barnett, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Goodman!

Sorry, aristocles, but that is simply unresponsive.

I love Metallica!

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.