Please excuse my likely lack of coherence as I am about to hop my third now flight twenty some hours in to attend a wedding in Sweden. Residency to S'pore to Dubai to Stockholm deal. Here's the deal on my end with your comment about "the Jews." 1. You will find Jewish Americans on every side of every issue: political, social, etc. In my…
Please excuse my likely lack of coherence as I am about to hop my third now flight twenty some hours in to attend a wedding in Sweden. Residency to S'pore to Dubai to Stockholm deal. Here's the deal on my end with your comment about "the Jews." 1. You will find Jewish Americans on every side of every issue: political, social, etc. In my experience, it does not make sense to think of them as a monolithic group. 2. You could look at income and other achievement stats for Indian (subcontinent) Americans, Vietnamese Americans, etc. You would find results well above the norm. Culture matters greatly.
So if we have someone who is raised in a household which values and education and achievement, and who has role models in the family -- father, mother, or uncles and aunts -- who are engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, college professors, etc -- that is the standard. That sets the expectations. "Normal" is always local. Success -- through both family culture and some family wealth -- can be perpetuated across generations if the family/ethnic culture has some degree of discipline and regulation with in it. Shaming, etc.
Here's a useful real-world exercise. If you are near a major STEM university, see who is in the graduate program. Do an informal demographical analysis of the students. You can reasonably expect many of these young men and women to make up the technocratic class -- and yes, to bring their values with them. And later, when hiring, to prefer people who are "culture fit" in corporate speak. It does as you rightfully suggest go beyond the corporate culture. And yes, this can present a problem now -- as similar behavior has done in the past.
Let me wander back to my main point. Nothing in my experience allows me to think of or treat Jewish Americans (including Jewish Canadians) as monolithic in their political and cultural views, values, and commitments. For example, the Grayzone is doing amazing reportage on Ukraine and the USA intelligence state. Many smart, articulate, engaged people against the Covid lockdowns and mandates are also Jewish American. Etc. From my point of view, these people -- based on their work and their commitments, not an intersubjectively derived ethnic or religious identity -- are allies. Your language might unintentionally seem to discount or deny that possibility: the possibility that you also could share common ground and common concerns. Hence my comment here. All best
Sure. They're not monolithic at all. Two Jews, three opinions, as they say. And yet - neocons, pretty much all Jewish. Then there's Ron Unz's (a Jew, btw) study of Ivy League admissions. Jews are massively overrepresented, and academic performance doesn't explain it. They may be smart, but they're not that smart. Just two examples amongst many. Ethnic nepotism is a real thing.
But you're only allowed to say that about white people for some reason.
Ethnic nepotism is very real. So is "elite recapture" with legacy admissions at the Ivys and Stanford being just one example. Then we could have a discussion about the control of elite/expert credentials. The book awards, up to & including the Pulitzers. The grant and fellowships awards, including the now travesty that is the MacArthur's Grant. Etc. I'm not denying your claims. The game is rigged, and you will likely never even get a hearing except to be denounced. But when discussing why some groups do better than others, please also consider the importance of socialization and family culture.
I don't deny the importance of culture (and genetics) at all. Both/and is the key here. Likewise with 'white supremacy': white people being a bit smarter and more capable than most other groups, and white people favoring white people, are both features of reality.
I don't even think it's a bad thing, whether whites, Jews, or Chinese are doing it. I only get annoyed when we're required, for political reasons, to pretend that ability is wholly determinative in one case, and ethnic nepotism wholly determinative in the other. The vicious reactions against suggestions that whites are smart, on the one hand, or that Jews are nepotistic, on the other, pisses me off not because I think that whites are especially superior or that Jews are especially conniving. What gets my goat - and the goats of many others - is the explanatory double standard. In a sane world, it wouldn't be racist to say that whites are a bit smarter, and this explains some of their success, along with ethnic nepotism in the context of white majority societies. Likewise, one would be able to point to Jewish culture and intelligence, AND their propensity to help out fellow members of the tribe, as simultaneous explanations for their group success.
Good point, John, but would add that ethnic nepotism itself operates on a spectrum and is rarely consistent or reliable, it is very much situation specific. Anglo elites have no loyalty to sub-elite Anglos whatsoever. Ditto Jews. So loyalty of a nepotistic character may be real, but may not extend as far or as strongly as outside observers think. Ethnic and other communities fragment and change over time. Kinship also incites mimetic rivalry, which destabilises everything and frustrates nepotism. It is a fascinating subject and well worth pursuing so long as evidence is available.
Would suggest some potentially useful caveats for consideration. The Jewishness of the neocons within the upper reaches of the Beltway is in many instances ancestral rather than substantive. To a degree, it appears to me as largely a legacy identity and fast becoming as ghostly and insubstantial as the Calvinism of the New England WASPs. Worth noting, but would not rely on it to make strong inferences about the ideation or behaviour of any individual.
IMHO we should be mindful of the saying: East of the Mississippi, people believe in the bullshit of community, west of it people believe in the bullshit of opportunity.
Indeed, many, perhaps most, are non-practicing; but that doesn't necessarily mean much at the practical level of group motivation if they participate in an ethnic identity. The key factor is how people themselves identify. Then there are observable effects. High level foreign policy decisions such as invading and destabilizing the Middle East are ridiculously counterproductive for America, but benefit Israel to a great degree - and Israel is the one country that can never be criticized. Similarly, provoking war with Russia is insane, but makes more sense from the perspective of old, inherited ancestral hatreds. It's probably going too far to infer that ethnic group interests are the sole determining factor in US foreign policy; but it's naive to imagine they play no role whatsoever.
In full agreement. Connecting real life policy to anything is tricky and 'observable effects' are not always a reliable way to establish causation. Re Mid East the US prime interest was access to oil and pushing the UK out (40s through 60s), the petrodollar (70s onwards) and, now it is preventing the integration of the region into the Russia/China bloc. Weapons sales (involving kickbacks all-round) comes second, everything else is a distant third and this third is a very useful cover for the mischiefs undertaken to achieve primary and secondary goals. Public policy is typically a matrushka doll....something is always concealed.
The current dynamic in US politics is fascinating: I suspect that there are multiple agendas working themselves out, but my starting point is that the US is all about the US and the players in US foreign policy are supremely parochial (also pig-ignorant, both the Mid East and Russia are Rorschach blots on a map to most). The China/America relationship has me stupefied, it is beyond Byzantine.
Politics in the imperial capital have always been, and will always be, a labyrinth of competing foreign and domestic interests. Once a hegemon has been established, the low-energy solution to power is to worm your way in with bribery, corruption, lobbying, blackmail, and the like. To render the tangled rat's nest even somewhat legible, it's necessary to identify as many actors as possible ... and an actor has a big advantage if you're not allowed to publicly discuss its existence.
Comparative differences can be more meaningful than absolute properties. For instance, most blacks are fairly law-abiding, nice people. Doesn't change that their population, for whatever reason, has much higher rates of violent crime than any other.
Likewise, obviously the overwhelming majority of Jews aren't financiers or neocons. They're regular folks. That doesn't change that they were wildly overrepresented in communist groups in the early 20th century, or are wildly overrepresented in high level government positions currently.
The outliers people complain about aren't generally the kind of outliers that don't follow stereotypes; they're the exemplars, the ones who are extreme examples of the stereotype.
Please excuse my likely lack of coherence as I am about to hop my third now flight twenty some hours in to attend a wedding in Sweden. Residency to S'pore to Dubai to Stockholm deal. Here's the deal on my end with your comment about "the Jews." 1. You will find Jewish Americans on every side of every issue: political, social, etc. In my experience, it does not make sense to think of them as a monolithic group. 2. You could look at income and other achievement stats for Indian (subcontinent) Americans, Vietnamese Americans, etc. You would find results well above the norm. Culture matters greatly.
So if we have someone who is raised in a household which values and education and achievement, and who has role models in the family -- father, mother, or uncles and aunts -- who are engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, college professors, etc -- that is the standard. That sets the expectations. "Normal" is always local. Success -- through both family culture and some family wealth -- can be perpetuated across generations if the family/ethnic culture has some degree of discipline and regulation with in it. Shaming, etc.
Here's a useful real-world exercise. If you are near a major STEM university, see who is in the graduate program. Do an informal demographical analysis of the students. You can reasonably expect many of these young men and women to make up the technocratic class -- and yes, to bring their values with them. And later, when hiring, to prefer people who are "culture fit" in corporate speak. It does as you rightfully suggest go beyond the corporate culture. And yes, this can present a problem now -- as similar behavior has done in the past.
Let me wander back to my main point. Nothing in my experience allows me to think of or treat Jewish Americans (including Jewish Canadians) as monolithic in their political and cultural views, values, and commitments. For example, the Grayzone is doing amazing reportage on Ukraine and the USA intelligence state. Many smart, articulate, engaged people against the Covid lockdowns and mandates are also Jewish American. Etc. From my point of view, these people -- based on their work and their commitments, not an intersubjectively derived ethnic or religious identity -- are allies. Your language might unintentionally seem to discount or deny that possibility: the possibility that you also could share common ground and common concerns. Hence my comment here. All best
Sure. They're not monolithic at all. Two Jews, three opinions, as they say. And yet - neocons, pretty much all Jewish. Then there's Ron Unz's (a Jew, btw) study of Ivy League admissions. Jews are massively overrepresented, and academic performance doesn't explain it. They may be smart, but they're not that smart. Just two examples amongst many. Ethnic nepotism is a real thing.
But you're only allowed to say that about white people for some reason.
Ethnic nepotism is very real. So is "elite recapture" with legacy admissions at the Ivys and Stanford being just one example. Then we could have a discussion about the control of elite/expert credentials. The book awards, up to & including the Pulitzers. The grant and fellowships awards, including the now travesty that is the MacArthur's Grant. Etc. I'm not denying your claims. The game is rigged, and you will likely never even get a hearing except to be denounced. But when discussing why some groups do better than others, please also consider the importance of socialization and family culture.
I don't deny the importance of culture (and genetics) at all. Both/and is the key here. Likewise with 'white supremacy': white people being a bit smarter and more capable than most other groups, and white people favoring white people, are both features of reality.
I don't even think it's a bad thing, whether whites, Jews, or Chinese are doing it. I only get annoyed when we're required, for political reasons, to pretend that ability is wholly determinative in one case, and ethnic nepotism wholly determinative in the other. The vicious reactions against suggestions that whites are smart, on the one hand, or that Jews are nepotistic, on the other, pisses me off not because I think that whites are especially superior or that Jews are especially conniving. What gets my goat - and the goats of many others - is the explanatory double standard. In a sane world, it wouldn't be racist to say that whites are a bit smarter, and this explains some of their success, along with ethnic nepotism in the context of white majority societies. Likewise, one would be able to point to Jewish culture and intelligence, AND their propensity to help out fellow members of the tribe, as simultaneous explanations for their group success.
Not either/or, but both/and.
Good point, John, but would add that ethnic nepotism itself operates on a spectrum and is rarely consistent or reliable, it is very much situation specific. Anglo elites have no loyalty to sub-elite Anglos whatsoever. Ditto Jews. So loyalty of a nepotistic character may be real, but may not extend as far or as strongly as outside observers think. Ethnic and other communities fragment and change over time. Kinship also incites mimetic rivalry, which destabilises everything and frustrates nepotism. It is a fascinating subject and well worth pursuing so long as evidence is available.
..and now you've been appropriately and gently corrected from believing your own eyes, by a totally non-conspiracy systemic phenomenon.
Would suggest some potentially useful caveats for consideration. The Jewishness of the neocons within the upper reaches of the Beltway is in many instances ancestral rather than substantive. To a degree, it appears to me as largely a legacy identity and fast becoming as ghostly and insubstantial as the Calvinism of the New England WASPs. Worth noting, but would not rely on it to make strong inferences about the ideation or behaviour of any individual.
IMHO we should be mindful of the saying: East of the Mississippi, people believe in the bullshit of community, west of it people believe in the bullshit of opportunity.
Indeed, many, perhaps most, are non-practicing; but that doesn't necessarily mean much at the practical level of group motivation if they participate in an ethnic identity. The key factor is how people themselves identify. Then there are observable effects. High level foreign policy decisions such as invading and destabilizing the Middle East are ridiculously counterproductive for America, but benefit Israel to a great degree - and Israel is the one country that can never be criticized. Similarly, provoking war with Russia is insane, but makes more sense from the perspective of old, inherited ancestral hatreds. It's probably going too far to infer that ethnic group interests are the sole determining factor in US foreign policy; but it's naive to imagine they play no role whatsoever.
In full agreement. Connecting real life policy to anything is tricky and 'observable effects' are not always a reliable way to establish causation. Re Mid East the US prime interest was access to oil and pushing the UK out (40s through 60s), the petrodollar (70s onwards) and, now it is preventing the integration of the region into the Russia/China bloc. Weapons sales (involving kickbacks all-round) comes second, everything else is a distant third and this third is a very useful cover for the mischiefs undertaken to achieve primary and secondary goals. Public policy is typically a matrushka doll....something is always concealed.
The current dynamic in US politics is fascinating: I suspect that there are multiple agendas working themselves out, but my starting point is that the US is all about the US and the players in US foreign policy are supremely parochial (also pig-ignorant, both the Mid East and Russia are Rorschach blots on a map to most). The China/America relationship has me stupefied, it is beyond Byzantine.
Politics in the imperial capital have always been, and will always be, a labyrinth of competing foreign and domestic interests. Once a hegemon has been established, the low-energy solution to power is to worm your way in with bribery, corruption, lobbying, blackmail, and the like. To render the tangled rat's nest even somewhat legible, it's necessary to identify as many actors as possible ... and an actor has a big advantage if you're not allowed to publicly discuss its existence.
Outliers don't invalidate group-level properties. They are, however, what keeps the world from getting boring and predictable.
Comparative differences can be more meaningful than absolute properties. For instance, most blacks are fairly law-abiding, nice people. Doesn't change that their population, for whatever reason, has much higher rates of violent crime than any other.
Likewise, obviously the overwhelming majority of Jews aren't financiers or neocons. They're regular folks. That doesn't change that they were wildly overrepresented in communist groups in the early 20th century, or are wildly overrepresented in high level government positions currently.
The outliers people complain about aren't generally the kind of outliers that don't follow stereotypes; they're the exemplars, the ones who are extreme examples of the stereotype.