Lloyd's new article is up at www.psychohistory.com.
You'll note a couple of changes in this latest work from what he's written before. After a quick first read, these two stand out:
Current:
Kennedy soon needed a new war to consolidate his defensive masculinity
pose, increased the U.S. military spending the largest amount in any
peacetime, and then committed 16,300 U.S. soldiers to Vietnam. When he
went to Dallas, where there were many highly publicized death threats
to kill him, he needed still more “toughness,” and told his wife,
“Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle,
nobody can stop it.” “His Secret Service aides told him he better put
up the bulletproof plastic top on his limousine, so he specifically
told them not to do so,” committing suicide to demonstrate his
hypermasculinity. (Global Wars to Restore U.S. Masculinity)
Here, Kennedy is hypermasculine, even in suicide demonstrating his toughness.
Before:
Despite all the warnings, however, Kennedy unconsciously accepted the
martyr's role. He was, after all, used to doing all his life what
others wanted him to do. So although a Secret Service man told him the
city was so dangerous that he had better put up the bulletproof
plastic top on his limousine, he specifically told him not to do so.
In fact, someone instructed the Secret Service not to be present ahead
of time in Dallas and check out open windows such as those in the Book
Depository, as they normally did whenever a president traveled in
public as Kennedy did. Only then, with the nation, the assassin, the
Secret Service and the president all in agreement, the assassination
could be successfully carried out. (Assasination of Leaders)
Here, Kennedy is the life-long martyr, so used to compliantly doing what others want of him he agreed to "follow through" even to his death.
- - - - -
Current:
In addition, the U.S. is the only nation not to sign the U.N.
Convention on the Rights of the Child—all of which helping us
understand why the U.S. spends half of the world’s military budget.
(Global Wars)
Before:
Sorry, can't find the exact quote. But it's more that the reason for America's comparatively enormous military budget lies with its "right to happiness" philosophy: that is, owing to the marked allowances permitted by the long-ago psychoclass innovators -- the American founders -- not its mostly reactionary (psychoclass-lagering) "core." I wonder if Lloyd believes that America is not even home to the best of the world anymore? That what-would-appear-to-be modest -- and therefore benefacted -- Swedes are perhaps the most innovative in the world as well. I know in hockey, this is appearing the case. The best in the NHL are not Cdns or Russians anymore: other than the important exception of Crosby, the next three are Swedes -- the Sedin twins, and Lindstrom. People are noticing that the Swedes are less flashy but ultimately more effective and far, far more lasting (they're playing strong at 40, whereas everyone else is depleted by 30 or so years of age); maybe true genius can't be seen when what we're looking for is truly as much hightened sensation?
Or is lack of attention to America's highest psychoclass in Lloyd's current writings owing to something else? Sweden is clearly doing great things, but it's easy to take non-individualistic Sweden as mostly an example of a nation that quietly has all along been laying solid foundations while reckless America has so lost all that was once great about it to be now fairly just identified as a base, resource-depleted nation. That is, it's easy to not look at America too clearly, if your efforts are to show how you now too are for the long slog, the less flashy, but also the less selfish and more community-building: in sympathy with the kind of mindset that dominated the communal, purity-concerned, "simple but grounded" 1930s crowd.
My own guess is that the very highest psychoclass are still in the States, and that Sweden's best to some extent flourish because they bow, masochistically, before nation-before-self "philosophy," which earns them tolerance for a more enabling state apparatus.
- - - - - - - - -
I will add to this a note about "hypermasculine" language, something Lloyd talks about a lot in this chapter.
I would ask anyone who is on the lookout for tough-talk so as to ID groups or leaders as regressive to be somewhat careful, because if you're not empowered, if you're amongst the groups that are being heavily discriminated against, though possibly your language use might remain the same, very likely you'll start talking tougher. You're not actually hypermasculine, driven mostly by your innate rage, but as you are being pressed upon to the point that you sense that some people are trying to completely lay waste to you, your language will start seeming as if composed of an alphabet of missiles while your confidently empowered opponents -- representatives of the Great Maternal, who they know has surely got their back -- will have an easier time seeming moderate, patient, more-than-fair, and perhaps even laid-back – considering, and finally, reasonable, and grossly affronted by your unruly conduct. This advantage wouldn't make someone like Johnson become less hyper-masculine in style, but it will probably assist Obama in remaining so. In sum, be careful: when regressives are getting their time, and by regressives I'm not thinking so much tea-partiers as I am the regressing center, the regressing left -- the Obama-loyal -- part of what'll assure them of their rightness is how calm and reasoning they remain while their opponents flap about like nut-cases. Remember, the likes of conservative-and-ultimately-deficit-focussed-and-therefore-massive-sacrifice-enabling David Brooks, who recently wrote an article titled “Make everyone hurt” – and wasn’t so much not kidding as licking his lips – who laughs at the more moronic of Republicans but points out more vividly the Hitler talk used by Democratic public unions as well as their Orwellianism, who is looking for “founding fathers of austerity” who will show the public, “[b]y their example, [how to] [. . .] to create habits that diverse majorities can respect and embrace, when, as Krugman points out, it was largely through oligarchs that the deficit-bloom was created in the first place, which should, you would think, lead everyone to focus a bit more on what the mass of public benefactors have to say about all this rather than to a rarified elite, is probably playing out as the voice of reason here.
Watch all this Wisconsin business, how it plays out. Pay attention to who is using hypermasculine terminology. My guess is that the people under normal circumstances are least likely to use it -- the real progressive left, those of the more advanced psychoclass - are actuallly going to be the ones caught out for their threatening, disturbing aggressiveness, their unbalanced mental state. The California students who rebelled against criminal, jolting, astonishingly cruel sudden drastic tuition increases, became very aggressive. Be assured, these weren't regressives but progressives once again caught out by a state that is beginning to seem Nazi-denatured from normal emotional response.
Perhaps rather than look for hypermasculineness -- which would just
have us shaking our heads at tea-partiers (who, I repeat, are mostly irrelevant: just the foil by which the relevant meanies make irrefutable their ostensible own fair-headedness)
-- we need to be looking for lack of heart, disconnect, signs of a fugue-like status -- calm language at a time when a nation is so willing to undergo another 20 year period of uninterrupted sacrifice
(everyone is agreed: we must reduce our deficit) that in their minds they will still persist in seeing it happen even if some miracle could stop it from actually occurring, when if it was
truly reasoning, it could step out of it maybe even pretty much near right away? With
this, we'll spot out the most dangerous, that much more quickly.
Link: Global Wars to Restore Masculinity (Journal of Psychohistory)
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