I’ll actually be interested to see the crisis blog. I’m not too worried about the planet (it will sort itself out some way) or the human race (we had a good run) but now that we’ve exchanged teasings I’d actually agree that there are signs and portents of a pretty catastrophic convergence.

My old man works on the dynamics of complex systems (see scale threads) with a bunch of Finns doing Latour’s nature/culture hybrids. The projections on global warming alone are pretty miserable. I asked him when the window of useful intervention is likely to close, and he said “1963.” Oops.

There are also plenty of signs that the days of the U.S. working as the consumption pump for the global economy are winding down. It’s not just that this can tip to China and India and it’s all good. We’ve got a big military and we’re not going down without a fight. But not before the Chinese ask themselves if it’s really in their best interests to fund the student loans for our pampered idiot children to fart around in useless and uppity disciplines like anthropology and history. 😉 Dad and I laugh about whether my job at a marginal regional university will last out my lifetime. Probably not, is the answer.

Historically peripheral populations like women, ethnic and lifestyle minorities who have been drawn into the economy and granted ‘human rights’ as a result of this economic engine will find their traction dramatically degraded as the economy contracts and they are no longer needed there. The tenuous social peace our wealth has purchased us will unravel and we’ll suddenly notice that we’re (again, talking U.S. here) a basket case of fundamentally incompatible diversities. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Monkeys will be born with two heads and the seas will darken and vomit forth their dead. Etc.

OR someone could discover cold fusion and cheap, plentiful energy could catapult us into a golden age of plenty on this planet plus exploration of our galaxy. Have a nice day!

I’d say red-baiting is still around in coded forms and it accounts for the shape of a lot of US politics today (you’ve probably heard the words ‘socialized medicine’ before and know what a truly terrifying prospect they represent). I actually know people in my family considering voting for the guy with a weird name, but I’m quite sure that the eager and anxious attempts to reframe this phenomenon within manageable narrative-ideological conventions that dominate the news will sway their feeling away from him.

However, again, the point I was picking up on was not red-baiting per se, but the °linking° of this slur to a particular past, as when Lieberman says “the kind of environment from which he came ideologically”.

As to theories of the present crisis (just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean your society isn’t going down the tubes; people have had theories of apocalypse for a long time yes, but, you know, societies have actually experienced catastrophes, including those of their own making, in history and stuff) I suppose those merit their own thread at some point in the future…

And not to worry, I got the long brilliant version of your post by w.a.s.t.e. this morning.

As an intellectual historian I am familiar with the genre of apocalyptic metahistory. The original Spengler was a pretty fair version of the type and this new one seems a worthy heir. It all goes back to Jeremiah, or Noah, Gilgamesh, or another deeper ancestor for whom the signs and portents were all coming together in terrible doom (in cuneiform). I prefer to have these sorts of conversation with microbrewed ale in hand (another converging strand) so I’ll leave it at that.

I like the observation that anthropologists are a bunch of wussy women, with which I’ll happily agree. So nice to get credit for being in touch with my feminine side. (Sometimes the ale works as camouflage, although the microbrewed is a dead giveaway.) You do know that all of us in the humanities have been told this, often physically, by he-men wannabes at least since middle school, right? 😉

I’ll be interested to see if red-baiting still has any traction. Probably not with anyone who would consider voting for a black guy with a weird name in the first place.

From “Think Progress”:http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/14/lieberman-its-a-good-question-to-ask-if-obama-is-a-marxist/

In his New York Times column today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol claimed that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) now-infamous “bitter” remarks sound like Karl Marx’s “famous statement about religion.” On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if Obama is “a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?”

“I must say that’s a good question,” replied Lieberman, before stepping back to say that he would “hesitate to say he’s a Marxist”:

NAPITALIANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

My point wasn’t really that the substance of Spengler’s claims should be addressed – they seem nutty right off the bat; no, I don’t think Obama is planning to sabotage the US because his mother was an anthropologist. Nevertheless, I am glad Carl that you agree that his analysis is off base. 🙂

I actually am on the hysterical fringe who think the catastrophe is happening right now in the form of what Kunstler is calling ‘the long emergency’ or a ‘clusterfuck’ of factors, a complex emergent SNAFU, where multiple feedback loops overlap into one very nasty scenario. E.g., oil prices skyrocket, peak oil/oil shortages, food price crises all over the place, sovereign power preying on structural insecurities, financial collapse, etc.
See: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/ {Update: Needless to say, I don’t endorse everything Mr. Kunstler says, as for example, some of what he says today (14.04.08)… and in fact have argued with him via email once about whether it was appropriate to refer to architectural ornament as ‘faggotry’…not that I am in the league of people who do or do not have to endorse or not endorse anything or distance themselves from it, or whatever… it’s just little old me here.} It’s already happening. I think this makes me a further a example of anthropology’s suspicious status as a discipline.

I guess the point is to begin tracking the way that ‘anthropology’ itself is featured in the ongoing novelization of the US political scene. Various personae for Obama are being trotted out by the celebrity journalist clique who shepherd public discourse in the US. The way the news works is that Democrats are always prefigured by a former loser, e.g., Gore, Kerry, Dukakis… or, Adlai Stevenson! (see ‘typological’ styles of exegesis as discussed by Crapanzano or Faubion) How anthropology will figure in this framing, spinning, or story-telling of Obama will be interesting to say the least, and perhaps vexing and chagrining by the time things really get going.

The common thread seems to be the superficially-clever grandiose crank part.

I’m not sure if we need to fret about this. The original Spengler was a nobody who got popular because he perfectly captured a mood of aggrieved privilege in post-Versailles Germany. Although there is a certain minority of Euro-Americans who do feel aggrieved in their privileges, we’re not deep enough into the recession to make that a groundswell, nor are we clearly enough losing in Iraq.

Furthermore, Obama has nicely carved off the ‘rational’ resenters with his race/family speech. As for the rest, whether the candidate is Obama or Clinton there is going to be a hysterical fringe who produce all kinds of apocalyptic rubbish. (Just as a certain percentage of our friends will spout utter crap about the dire catastrophe that awaits if McCain is elected.) We’re just going to have to accept that as a cost of doing business. Any candidate who’s cool enough to excite us is by definition going to be anathema to the frightened shards of racist patriarchy.