I've often thought that you can't have this as either/or, and keep civilization. All-honor gets you Somalia. All-law gets you anarcho-tyranny and slow collapse, for the same "Road to Serfdom" reasons that planned economies fail both practically and morally. There's definitely a parallel "why the worst get on top" dynamic involved. Your "Dumbing Down Racism" piece explores one facet of that. It's a facet wherein a totalist approach to law by a kakistocracy of the self-interested leads, paradoxically, to law trying to enforce honor. And destroying itself thereby. I see two big underlying issues making this law/honor dichotomy the central question, because I agree with you that it is. One is the collapse of Rule of Law in European societies, the only place it was ever really native (the Chinese have a kinda-sorta Confucian formulation, but it isn't the same thing). A predatory elite that believes itself to be above everything is... is basically creating the same attitudes to the law found in many black communities, on a national scale: don't trust them, don't involve them, they're often-corrupt agents of The Other. Of course, we as a people aren't blameless. When we decided that "stop and frisk" was a good idea for black neighborhoods, we might have thought about what our airport experience was going to be like down the road, and why. In the end, we are not divisible that way. Trying to do it to The Other, or to become The Other and wall ourselves off in enclaves, lead us in equal measure to a Police State. The first mistake falsely assumes that the isolated measures we take won't bite us all (TSA says hello). The second runs into the fact that that Balkanization destroys trust, which then requires much more force from a central authority in order to keep it all together. If they can. But even maximum force can't do it all without trust, so honor replaces law in the day-to-day. And thus anarcho-tyranny gains steam. The second issue relates, rather surprisingly, to "Think About the Future." Metcalfe's Law and network effects make many key pieces of digital infrastructure natural monopolies. Even as they make the inner lives of millions of citizens legible to authorities - or to each other. Visibility to each other is, obviously, a huge boost to honor culture. Hence Twitter mobs. Meanwhile, known censorship by monopolies like Facebook further erodes the trust on which law depends, while the very existence of these semi-private panopticons boosts totalist approaches to law by creating the illusion of its possibility. Elites begin believing they can control the vertical... the horizonal... but this Twilight Zone ends up being something they don't expect, either. The horse stirrup made feudalism almost inevitable in Europe. Does modern digital infrastructure, as presently constituted, make fascism (or corporatist racial socialism, same same) almost inevitable here?

"If you're going to call this a categorical racial problem, then the answer is Chocolate City. If you're going to call it a problem of failed institutions, then you have to shut down the racial paranoia, because a failed democratic institution is bigger than a failure of black politics. And what is obvious here is that black politics has not solved this problem - probably not anywhere." This makes much more sense to me than the article. All I could get from that was "You can't run a politics of fear." But the application seemed confused, because Eric Garner's last words were pretty much that. I'm a citizen, I'm tired of the hassles, it ends today, and no I won't cooperate. Now, there are ways to do non-cooperation, and there are ways. But there's a lengthening pattern across the country of police, black and white, coming unmoored from meaningful accountability for shooting people, or simply robbing them (civil asset forfeiture), etc. We're at a point where you can quote Ice-T about buying a gun in part to protect yourself from the police, and lots of white heads will nod. So yes, failed democratic institution. But the only way to un-fail it is for people to insist - consistently, and very firmly - on respect, and withhold cooperation. Doesn't have to be violent. But deferential? No. Just teach them HOW to do non-deferential properly, as a citizen, vs. screaming about being a victim.

<<< "Today, and since 2008 I have been making sense of how much economic shrinkage it is reasonable to accept and how the failure of public confidence in democratic institutions and civil society ought to affect people with the will and determination to survive and excel. It is from this POV that I wonder how much convenience is good for society and how much poisons the commons." >>> It isn't as much convenience that poisons the commons, it's enforced insanity. With examples to numerous to mention. People believe that they will be punished or targeted for behavior that takes significant steps toward survival or excellence. Or just have their personal measures washed away like a seashore sand-castle at high tide. That isn't an irrational belief, and a society morphing fast toward a police state adds an added element of risk. Beyond that, they live in a society where their reserves are low. That isn't just idiot proofing, though there's a contribution from that source. It's having large chunks of discretionary income removed, needing to pay $X to live in a place with basic security, hence 2 parents working, etc. In the late 1950s/early 60s, this kind of situation could have been cushioned by a combination of redirected money, and redirected time (wives at home). Now, there is precious little reserve lef tin either area. As long as you're one person against all this, it's seriously tough. Most people are demoralized, and are keeping their head down so far. To pull out of that, you kind of need other people. Which will sound strange to geeks, but I've observed it to be true. There's a whole sliding scale of what "group response" means, from the Manosphere (which is pushing "survive and excel" successfully, reward = more sex), to quiet community-building, to the kind of hard-core stuff your Ferguson posts have been illustrating. It's the emerging landscape and societal portfolio of those responses (or non-responses) that will have a lot to say about our eventual future. <<< "I am willing to take on for myself the various burdens of preparedness. I am a 180 degree opposite kind of 'preppie' than I was in 1983 in my green Polo shirt, belt and shorts. These days coyote is the new black. But I am not so confident that everybody wants or needs to take on a stoic attitude. Nevertheless, there is that inebriation of convenience - that drain of skill and capacity that comes from not having to do your own homework." >>> This is absolutely true. Mind you, not having to do that homework is part of why the USA is so rich. Do the time math, and as much as gaining these skills is satisfying, it's going to exact a price in other areas of your life. The hard-eyed truth is that if we all have to start doing this, we're all going to be poorer. More resilient, but poorer. The harder-eyed truth is that resilient may be > richer, given the times that are coming. But when? Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, especially with top-level organized fraud at work on a massive scale. Right now, what you're doing requires both foresight, and faith that an action with known costs will pay off in future. Prep time will be almost over when it only requires foresight. And even then, "The Idiot City" is just one small way in which this cardinal virtue has been trained out of the population. <<< Something tells me that I will find a lot of answers in India. I gotta get over there. >> You'll find a lot more answers if you get to know some Mormon friends. Help you along in your own personal prep quests, too.

"Policy becomes the deadly vengeful god of the Progressive whose prophets of truth are TED lecturers and university studies." Hmmm.... "Policy becomes the deadly vengeful god of the Progressives, whose fatwas are promulgated through TED lecturers and university studies." Fixed.

That should be a post of its own.

Why wouldn't the exact same statement be true of, say, the Tea Party?