Latest read: Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe

 The latest read is Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe. Arguably it is pointless to read a critique of liberal guilt after watching MAGA lunatics take over the Capitol. On the other hand, 2020 saw an incredible outpouring of liberal guilt and self-flagellation, and the end result of that liberal guilt and self-flagellation is that the mob was not stopped. Mind you, I'm not placing all of the blame on any particular liberal official or faction, or denying the role of the Trump administration (far from it). Trump and his cult are indeed the bad guys here, and beating ourselves up did exactly nothing to stop them. Say everything that needs saying about the ignorance and bigotry of MAGA and I will agree with the big picture and most details. (I will always reserve the right to dissent from specifics, but I might also assign that dissent a low priority, depending on the detail.) 

But given all of that, what did liberal guilt do to stop them? Did liberal guilt get reinforcements in place sooner? Did liberal guilt erect more barricades or get more police out there? Did liberal guilt speed any evacuations? Did liberal guilt talk any Trumpanzees out of the insane notion that Democrats rigged the election for Biden but forgot to rig enough Senate seats to give themselves a majority prior to the Georgia elections? Did liberal guilt persuade anyone that the ghost of Hugo Chavez isn't dropping off faked ballots in Maine?

Liberal guilt is worth exploring precisely because it is the irrelevant distraction that liberals turn to. And, honestly, what is simultaneously heartening and disheartening about this book is just how little things have changed. All of this has happened before and will happen again. To wit, page 26 quotes a particularly woke passage from a Vogue article. I don't know exactly when it was published, but presumably in or shortly before 1970 (the year that Wolfe's Radical Chic essay was published). There are two salient points here:

1. Vogue was woke even back then. I bring this up because the anti-PC corners of the internet have, in the past few years, taken note of the extreme wokeness of Teen Vogue. They find it strange, and quote excerpts of articles with definitely woke viewpoints. Being a person who has never read fashion magazines, I likewise find it strange. Then again, since I've never read fashion magazines, how would I know what is normal for them? There's the old joke about only reading Playboy for the articles, acknowledging (and protesting!) that Playboy has articles about things other than naked women. I guess it makes sense that a fashion mag would have political articles about things besides the gender politics of skirt lengths or whatever.
2. The Vogue article capitalized Black but put white in lower-case. 2020 saw a lot of this, and a lot of carping about how it was a new and unreasonable stylistic choice. The reasonableness is very much a matter of opinion, but the newness is factually wrong, as I now know.

At this point I don't have a lot else to say about the book. But I'm glad to see that all of this has happened before and will happen again.