Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 7. One more won't hurt me. . .

or so conservatives must think.

Senator Joseph McCarthy.  McCarthy was actually largely correct in his accusations, once you see what they really were, and who they were actually made against.  He very clearly had an inside connection with somebody with intelligence inside the government.  My guess is that it was J. Edgar Hoover.  At any rate, while he was correct, he became personally so distasteful that he permanently damaged his cause and even later books that have shown the validity of his accusations have failed to repair his reputation or that of his cause.  He was loved at the time, of course, until he wasn't. There's a lesson here.

Donald Trump has been invited to speak at CPAC in Orlando, this Sunday.

Why would they do this? This will confirm Democrats and Independents, and traditional Republicans, in their choice not to go with the GOP this year, further decrease its influence, and make it harder for those who hold populist views seriously without it looking like simply Trump worship.

People like Victor David Hanson like to speak of "Trump Derangement Syndrome". While that may be worth talking about, the fact is that Trump didn't win the popular vote by any measure either time he ran.  He's not a popular man with the majority of Americans and by inviting him, the issues that concern populist Republicans are being fused to Trump in a way that will guaranty their electoral decimation in upcoming elections.

This is a serious matter.  Populists do have a collection of valid concerns and valid points about them. But Trump's effort at overturning the election and failure to distance himself from extremist are tarring all of them and the entire movement with the same brush.  The tighter the grip Trump has on any section of the GOP, the less likely it is to win anything at the national level going forward, and the more likely that the result will be a permanent shift of the American political center to the left.

McCarthy may have been right about most of the things he was complaining about in the 1950s.  But he was easy to dislike and has become permanently disliked. There's a lesson from history here and we all know what happens to people who fail to listen to history.

Nonetheless, what is clear at this point is that the traditional conservative wing of the party is now in full retreat.  Mitch McConnell, who only a couple of weeks ago sounded like he wanted to have Trump arrested, has stated he'd vote for him if he ran in 2024.  And right now, quite frankly, it looks like such a run is really likely, something that even a few weeks ago would have been regarded as highly unlikely.  As it remains unlikely that Joe Biden will run again, that would likely pit Trump against Kamala Harris, if . . . 

Doesn't anyone notice how old these people are?

If, that is, Trump hasn't passed on simply due to old age, or become mentally feeble due to the same reason.  

It's bizarre to see how even at this late state of the Baby Boom generation, people remain seriously entrenched in the seeming view that only they can lead the nation.  A person would have had good reason to believe that Joe Biden would have been the last Boomer President.  Now, that's not all that certain, as nothing in this political climate is very certain.

Restricting Balloting.

There's a lot of GOP effort being expended to address, proponents claim, chances of "election fraud", even though there's next to none of it occurring.

In Wyoming, legislators have a couple of bills floating on  the topic.  Senators Barrasso and Lummis have signed on to a Federal bill that will fail which will basically prevent States from making the reforms they did to address the still ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic.  The law proposes to eliminate unmonitored ballot collection boxes (one of which I saw in Rawlins just last week) and to require states to send absentee ballots only to those requesting them.

This is another issue that will come to haunt the GOP. There's no evidence of widespread ballot fraud at all, and this plays into the Democratic claim that the Republicans are seeking to restrict the vote.  While this will play to the Trumpite base, it won't play to the traditional wing of the party, which is now simply leaving it.

XX Chromosomes and Scouting

The first group of female Eagle Scouts received that status this week.

First of all, that's great for this group of young women. Achieving Eagle Scout status is hard to do, and they deserve praise for their accomplishments.

But it's also sad in a way in that its a further erosion of, well dare we say it, manliness.

Girls can be girls, but boys can't really be boys anymore, even virtuous boys, which was what the Boy Scouts were all about originally.

Let's be honest.  Because human nature remains human nature no matter how woke some may be and wish for everything to be, there are fundamental differences between men and women, and boys and girls, at every level.  Scouting recognized that, and hence that's why there was a Boy Scouts and a Girl Scouts.

While I note that I'm not an adherent every time I cite them, and then I go on to cite them, Strauss and How, in their generational theory (there's a category link to it below) argue that the character of men is different in different cycles as a whole (not necessarily individually) due to the views of women in any particular period.  So, for a lack of a better way to illustrate it, in some eras women want a bunch of touchy feely wimps such as featured on This Is Us.  In others, they want Ethan Edwards from The Searchers.

This makes sense from a evolutionary biology prospective, as women's role in elemental societies is, well, more societal than men's.  But rather crudely, if you live in a society that's about to be attacked, you want guys who are capable of handling that.  If you live in one where there's no risk of being attacked, you might now want guys who are looking for fights.

There's a lot more to this than that, but we live in an oddly emasculating era which has superseded a highly masculine one.  If Strauss and How are right, generational succession goes from Hero, Artist Prophet to Nomad.  They also figure the categories of generations by years a bit more differently, which is to their credit, as they would have the Baby Boom Generation ending earlier than some others do.   You can read all about that elsewhere, but they also have a concept of cyclical crises and periods of stability that impact generations, with women generally being the cultural influencers that impact male character patterns, if not necessarily individual males, at any one time.

Okay, so what?

Well, we are living in a very female influenced era culturally.  One that has even seen the intrusion of women into roles that are not only traditionally male, but arguably biologically male, from an evolutionary biological prospective and even attacks on the concept of gender itself, biologically unsounds though that may be.  And part of what occurs, when this occurs, is that men, and before that boys, really have no refuge in which they can be just guys.

This doesn't mean there's some previous era in which everything in regard to male/female roles was perfectly defined, although in a lot of ways that changes much less than people like to imagine, and perceptions of change have more to do with economic changes in broad economies at any one time then the do with actual changes in cultural views.  And it doesn't mean that there should be some sort of strict segregation between boys and girls at all times. Indeed, at least in my view, strict segregation at the primary school level actually tends to encourage vices, and the societies that practice that usually see the results later on in men and women who never learned about the others in their formative years with resulting permanent impacts on their characters.

But it does mean that there ought to be at least some places where boys can go just to be boys, and to learn, well, many things.  And the same is true in the opposite direction for girls. And indeed, for girls, it still is.  There's been no male penetration into deeply female roles or organizations in any meaningful sense.  Find a boy in the Girl Scouts and chances are high that you are going to find an odd storty behind it, and one that is probably vested in that person's parents.

Find a girl in the Boy Scouts, or now just the Scouts, and what you'll find is high achieving girls.  You'll also soon fine less manly boys in the same organizations, which have been having troubles recently anyhow, and soon just fewer boys in general.  Some will remain, but they won't be the same group that would have been there otherwise, and those who are there, aren't going to learn the same lessons they would have otherwise.  Overall, everyone will suffer for that.*

They forgot what society they lived in

People like Mike Lindell, that is.

Lindell is the founder of the My Pillow company. I don't know anything about the pillows and not that much about Lindell, other than his personal story is really a classic rags to riches type tale.  

In the U.S., that's enough to cause people to love and hate you, which is something to keep in mind.  He's also a vocal Evangelical Christian, which also will draw praise while drawing some dislike as well.  None of that, however, is what he's now in trouble for.

Lindell has been sued by Dominion Voting which is sick and tired of its voting machines being slammed.  Lindell made claims that Dominion rigged the election for Joe Biden, a statement for which not only is there no evidence, it's demonstrably false.  Dominion is a business and they don't like their product being hammered by falsehoods, no deeply believed by those who are asserting those falsehoods.

People like Victor David Hanson like to talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome which they claim causes people on the left to be completely irrational about Donald Trump. An argument can be made that some of that did in fact exist during the Trump Administration, particularly early on. The problem is that the same term can also apply to Trump's diehard supporters.

One of the things about Trump is, quite frankly, that while he had real accomplishments he has major character defects.  He's boorish, crude, and has had a history of questionable behavior with women.  He's also a prima donna and narcissist who simply can't stand the thought of public criticism or losing.  

In normal US politics that would doom a person, but it didn't with Trump.  A lot of his base supporters originally didn't care about any of that as long as he acted as a wrecker.  Over time, he's developed a personality cult that nearly worships him, in spite of all of his obvious faults.  People in that category suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome as well as they can't be objective at all about Trump.

This doesn't apply to every Trump supporter by any means.  But it applies to some.  Guys like Lindell and Patrick Coffin seem to have simply fallen off the reality wagon and are willing to endorse all sorts of conspiracy theories about one thing or another.  Coffin, who used to be an objective conservative religious voice now hosts people who see Bill Gates conspiring to create a pandemic in order to create a new world order.  Lindell boosted the Dominion nonsense.  

Lindell is now one of several figures getting sued by Dominion. Dominion no doubt doesn't hope to be reimbursed by them for their losses, whatever those may be, but is out to repair its reputation through litigation. The litigation will achieve that.

Dopey New Jersey

The Garden State has legalized weed.  Because that's what people in New Jersey really need to be, stoned.

Not that New Jersey is by any means alone in this, to be sure.  It's just following the pack.  

It does say something that in early 21st Century America, however, one of the biggest movements of the day is one that allows people to be oblivious.

Exit Franco

Francisco and Ramon Franco, 1925, in North Africa.

A statute honoring Francisco Franco's role as a commander in the Rif War, put up in 1978 was taken down this past week.  Apparently it was the last one, which is remarkable in part as it was put up in the 1970s.

Franco had his supporters in Spain during his long dictatorship, as well as his supporters elsewhere.  All that now seems definitively in the past.  Having said that, this has been a strange trip.  Franco had his supporters in the west during the civil war period that proceeded World War Two, and even had some after that.  Indeed, quite a few.  During much of the 30s he was, however, disdained by the American left including the popular media.  World War Two certainly increased that disdain, and for good reasons, as he crept up on joining Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the war.  By war's end, however, he was courting the west.  His regime died with him, which he was aware would occur, but he retained sufficient support for a monument to his command in the Spain's colonist Rif campaign was still erected, which is pretty amazing really. And we just passed the 40th anniversary of the attempted 1981 Fracoist coup, which of course failed.

Nobody in Span is going to try a Francoist coup now.

Streaming

Paramount movies has announced it will provide movies for streaming 45 days after their initial release.

Sign of the times.

Footnotes

*And, no, I wasn't an Eagle Scout.

I was in Scouting so briefly that I usually say I was never a Boy Scout.  In actuality I was, but as noted, very briefly.

The Stammtisch and Social Isolation.

It occurs to me that I'm lucky.  

I come from people who widely circulated, very well educated in history, and I have some close friends about whom I can say the same.  Some of them I meet mostly on line anymore, but I've met all of them in person and have engaged them all in lively conversations.  They includes geologists, geophysicists, businessmen, computer experts and infrastructure workers, who are self employed, industry employed, and government employed.  And it includes Catholics, Baptists, Calvinists and non denominational Protestants.

A sort of Stammtisch, if you will.

My Stammtisch is centered on horses and history.  Arguably, a second one centers on the outdoors and certain rarified sports.  That's not the point, however.  It's that I have them.  One, the one referenced above, is made up of Americans for the most part, although there are some people who stop by who are not.  The second one includes Americans, Central Americans, and Europeans.

At one time most Americans had that.

Now they don't.

And that explains a lot of the mess we're in right now, and what's going on right now.

One of the ways modern life really leaves us short is that we only associate, by and large, with our own kind.  Depending upon your station in life, that's more true for some than for others, but it's pretty true.

This has always been the case to a fair degree, but not as much as it is now.  Indeed, it's been the subject of entire books, Bowling Alone perhaps being the most notable.  Since the advent of television, followed by electronic media, we get up, we go to work and we come home.  With the enforced decline of family life caused by the Sexual Revolution and things that followed in its wake, that means that a lot of people really live that life exactly. They're not married, they have no family, they just come and go.

Friends have been substituted for "electronic communities" of the like minded.  People avoid and eschew settings where they mix with the unfamiliar.  For people who retain a faith, they often choose a congregation of the like minded.  For those interested in. . . well anything, they do the same.

This is incredibly dangerous as it means that ideas are never challenged in any setting.  Nobody really advances their ideas, or ever defends them.

This has become increasingly obvious to me over the last couple of weeks, in part because I'm finding I'm an exception not the rule.  I mix with people of other views a lot, and I have some very intelligent and thoughtful friends who hold a lot of my views. . . and a lot of views I don't hold.  

Elks Club annual outing, September 13, 1916.

On the danger first.

I'm a lawyer by training and trade.  The law is an intellectual field based in inquiry at its best, although the profession shows a lot of the worst anymore.  Be that as it may, I have tended to find that most really thoughtful active lawyers are appalled by recent events, irrespective of their political views. This view isn't universal, but it's quite widespread.  Being analytical by nature, and having had that reinforced by training, knowing the law in general, and knowing that developments in the law are constant and that it does not remain fixed in technology, it's overwhelmingly the case in the law that recent events regarding the election have been a horror to lawyers.

Lawyers by and large give no credit whatsoever to the claims that the election was stolen.  The facts simply aren't there.  Given that, it's been extraordinarily difficult for those in the law to grasp how anyone could possibly believe the opposite.  

Indeed, in one rare instance that I personally encountered the person's belief in the opposite was based on a faith in lawyers themselves, combined with a dose of Fox News, that most lawyers don't credit.  There were legal challenges in court, was their view, and therefore there must be merit.  That's charming, and it shows a faith in the nature of litigation that is based on the way it is supposed to work, but litigators certainly don't look at litigation that way.  Must have merit?  Lots of lawsuits are filed that have no merit whatsoever, and even less than that. We all know that.

Knights of Columbus group, 1914.

But what about everyone else?

Part of the problem here is what I've noted above.  People are in limited circles and they hear only what others in the same circles believe, and they have faith in certain social constructs that don't really deserve it.  If a lawyer can believe that merely filing suit indicates merit, regular people must surely believe that.  And lawyers know that.  Lots of suits are filed merely because they create a belief in potential jurors and the public that there must be a problem, thereby providing an incentive to the defendants to settle.  The law states that its always presumed that the plaintiff has the burden of proof on things, but regular people tend to look at it the other way around. The accused, they feel, must prove their free of guilt, not rely on the other side to prove their guilt.

Added to that, lawyers are highly adapted to things moving even when the law does not.  That's played a role here.  We as a society tend to believe we adapt well to technological changes, but we do a lot less than we imagine.  During the recent election voting by mail has been a big deal, and of course the Administration made it a big deal.  It made it a big deal in my belief is that its long been the case that Democrats often fail to go to the polls. The Administration's thought was, it seems to me, that if voting wasn't done widely by mail, it just wouldn't be widely done.

Sixteenth Head Camp, Modern Woodsmen of America, Buffalo, New York.  1911.

That turned into the outrage over what seemed to be the case that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans did not. That's not really completely true by any means, but there's an element of truth to it.  That's not surprising, however, as Democrats sizably outnumber Republicans in the country and voting by mail is easy.  Added to that, the Administration repeatedly condemned voting by mail and people who were highly loyal to the Administration naturally concluded that lots of mail in ballots would be lost, thrown away, or whatever, and therefore they should not vote by mail.  If you tell your loyal adherents not to trust the mail, they won't trust the mail.  If you tell everyone that the mail is not to be trusted, and lost of those people don't trust you, they'll use the mail.

Beyond that, Democrats, irrespective of the jokes about the Democratic Party not being "an organized party", are really good at organization. Republicans, with a strong ethos of independence, not so much.  That Democrats could exploit mail in voting through organization isn't surprising, but it isn't evil either.  It's strategic.

Mail in voting isn't new and again, to lawyers, its not even a big deal.  The thought that it is to others pretty much completely escapes us, as is now evident to me.  We have served pleadings by mail for eternity.  We were early adopters of things electronic.  Those from Western states, where mail in balloting has been around forever, already live in a world where people vote by mail.  We know that mail in voting can be trusted and frankly this is simply a natural evolution, in our view, in the process. Absolutely no big deal.

Apparently it is a big deal, however, in those camps where this was never thought of before and was really appreciated for the first time.  Victor David Hanson has an article expressing absolute horror that we've now arrived at a point where the American tradition is no longer "we all go to the polls on election day".  That tradition hasn't existed for decades, and indeed the American tragedy in elections was that most Americans didn't vote at all.  Cynically some Republicans opposed mail in voting for that very reason, often camouflaging it with concerns over the mail in process, but the real concern is that mail in voting is really easy, particularly if you live in a region where somebody has been proactive in sending you a ballot. Fill it out, and mail it back.  But if that's the case, most of those votes are going to be Democratic, by far.

Indeed, by a huge margin.

Which shows how well the GOP really did. The Republicans should have drowned in a year of mail in balloting. They didn't.

Anyhow, getting back to the circle of friends argument, it's now struck me how this has impacted the argument, by showing me how my thoughtful friends in the other camp view it.  But not to them quite yet.

Taking all we have above and processing it down for most people, what we have is this.  Most people don't listen to Meet The Press and This Week, check the headlines from The New York Times and the Washington Post, and read their local paper.  Not anymore.  Most people think they're informed if they watch a news channel. Television news has always been incredibly superficial, but even doing that people should have a good idea of what's been going on.

But most people who claim they watch a news channel are like people who claim they only have a beer on weekends. The weekend drinkers, with exceptions of all kids they make for themselves, extend the weekend to start on Wednesday and run through to Tuesday. We all know that this is true as we all do something like that ourselves.  People who claim "I watch CNN and Fox News", as if that were to actually make them informed, are actually watching only one, and only superficially.

Which means that people get armed with a narrow set of tailored facts, go to work with their fellows who are likely in the same station of life as they are, here the same views, and are never exposed to any others.

If, therefore, you work with people who believe that mail in balloting is really weird and will be full of illegitimacy, and its a plot, and everyone you know believes what you do, you'll believe that the election must have been stolen.

Indeed, in Wyoming, I've heard people say "that many people can't have voted for Biden". That's because in Wyoming in 2021 everyone in certain occupations supports only Trump.  Unbeknownst to them, there are entire occupations in the state where nobody will admit to every having supported Trump, they just keep their mouths shut.  What happens is that people are talking only to themselves, and reinforcing their own views.

I'll give an example of that.

I know a fellow who is a well educated very intelligent person, but who has no interest in politics and very little interest, if any at all, in history.  Mostly, he's interested in his family and religion, both of which are fine and admirable interests.  He's interested in his work.  

On a day to day basis he's mostly around his family.   An old fashioned Mid Westerner, he's highly gregarious, but his close friends are mostly drawn from his church.  He has work friends, and he likes to talk to them, but in a Mid Westerners sort of way.  When real Westerners talk, there's always a real element of seriousness to it. . . always.  Westerners don't really have casual conversations. . . not really.

This fellow's friends are all, as noted, from his church, one way or another. Which is fine.. . or actually not. They include a couple of politicians from the GOP.  Both of those politicians are hard line Trumpites.

So what, you may ask.  Well, it's simple enough, and it shows why Rod Dreher's acolytes don't understand him.

Another example that shows why.

I heard an interview at the start of the  Syrian civil war of a woman who had endured the earlier rebellion by Shia militiamen.  She noted, at that time, she was surprised to discovery, during the rebellion, that Syria wasn't a Christian country.  Her town was Maronite Catholic. . . she assumed everyone in Syria was because everyone she knew was.

Back to my friend.  He's exposed to one view, and the only political views he's been exposed to are from the hard Trump right.  He came into this assuming the election must have been stolen. And why wouldn't he believe that?  That was the only view, and therefore the majority view, of what he was hearing.  And people generally believe the majority view.

We could call it the Jo Jo Rabbit Effect.  For those who haven't seen the movie, it's well worth watching and a really eclectic comedy.  Set in the last days of Nazi Germany, the young German protagonist discovers that Jews aren't bad and that he's falling in love with the young Jewish woman his mother has been hiding.  I note it here, however, as the stories his fellows tell about Jews are bizarre, enough so that a German officer clearly doesn't believe them, but most people are have fallen for them.  It's the only news they're getting.

It's the same with my friend. His two politician friends, one of whom may simply in my view be adopting his positions for purely cynical self serving reasons, and the other who probably has adopted them simply because he's also only around his family and nobody else, have informed him the election is stolen.  Its the majority view where he is.  He's shocked to learn that other people think otherwise, and actually really shaken up about it.

Lets' contrast that a bit with how things used to be.  I'll go way back. . . to 1933 or 34.

33 or 34 is when my father started school as a four year old in Denver.  The first grade school he went to was a Catholic school in downtown urban Denver.  Suffice to say, a Catholic school, in urban Denver, even in the 1930s, was going to feature a really mixed set of ethnicities.  

When he was 7, his family moved to Scottsbluff and he was enrolled thereafter in public school.  I don't know if Scottsbluff had a Catholic school in the 1930s, but I do know that while Catholics weren't uncommon in western Nebraska by any means whatsoever, they were still a minority population.  He went to school with a lot of Hispanic kids (universally called "Mexicans" then, and while I was in school) and Indian kids as well.  When he moved to Wyoming and went to the only high school in town it contained kids from all walks of life and every local ethnicity.  He played football with one fellow that I later knew well whose first and middle names were "Robert Lee", named for Robert E. Lee, but who was black. They later worked together for a time at the Post Office and they remained lifelong friends.  My father left the Post Office, however, to go to university and then entered the Air Force.  Overseas his two closest, and lifelong, friends were two fellow officers, one of whom was black, and another who was Jewish.  My father, of course, was half German, half Irish, and Catholic.

Let's go to me then.  I went to grade school in Central Wyoming where Catholics aren't uncommon, but area also a minority.  Of the other two Catholic kids in my grade school class (there wasn't room in the Catholic grade school at the time) one was of Irish extraction and the other was "Mexican".  I went all the way through grade school with one kid who was Jehovah's Witness.  My closest friend in grade school was Baptist.  A good friend was Mormon.  

All schools in the county were by geographic district.  The districts were purely geographic, however, and therefore they mixed economics pretty well.  One kid's father was an ornamental iron worker.  Two kids had fathers who were lawyers.  One kid had a medically retired fireman for a father, and his mother, uniquely at that time, was the prime bread winner. She was a secretary (which my own mother occasionally was).  One kid had older parents who were already retired.  

In Junior High the mix increased with new elements.  The junior high I went to included the entire northern part of the city which was across the interstate highway and the railroad, the only solidly poorer part of town.  All those kids went to the same junior high.  The populations of Hispanic kids increased and almost all of the black kids went to the same junior high.  Most of us went on to the same high school.

After high school I went on to university, and also on to the National Guard.  My Army basic training and advanced training battery included men from the South and West and a large number of Hispanic men and African Americans.  My best friends in basic training were one young man whose had been raised by his grandparents and another who was married to a community college professor.  

At the University of Wyoming, this story continues.  Most of the students I knew at UW were white, as most university students were, but in the geology department there was one student who was a Turkish American.  My best friends in university included a lifelong friend who is a dedicated Baptist, another who is Lutheran, one who was a fallen away (and now reverted) Catholic, and one who was a non observant Protestant.  In college and university I dated a girl for awhile who was from the South, another who was from Central Wyoming, one from the town where I was born and raised and still live, and one who was Chinese Dutch (as in ethnically Chinese, but born in the Netherlands and a Dutch citizen).

That sort of experience is really broadening.  Theodore Roosevelt's biographer Edmond Morris maintained that Roosevelt would not have become President without having been a rancher in North Dakota.  It was there that he learned to speak to average people and to see their point of view and appreciate their intelligence.  Without that, he would have probably never risen above being a politician in New York.  

And as radical as it may sound, Hitler would not have become what he became if he'd stayed in Vienna, one of the most polyglot international cities in Europe in the early 20th Century.  Indeed, prior to World War One he's known to have at least one Jewish friend.  It was the isolation, both physical and intellectual, of German army life that allowed him to develop into the monster he became.

We like to think, for some reason, of the march of technology being every beneficial.  It isn't.  We've isolated ourselves from the natural world, an exposure to which is necessary in order for humans to really be humans, and we've isolated ourselves from ourselves.  Now, the Woke, with their absurd anti natural theories on human nature, aren't exposed to any humans save for those who agree with their absurdities. Those in the far political right, generally associate only with the like minded.  Qanon's (probably Russian backed) conspiracy theories sound absolutely absurd to anyone who isn't in the mix of them, but those who are tend to associate only with those who are.

And then add to that COVID 19.

COVID 19 accelerated the process of social isolation like nothing else. We were basically headed in that direction anyhow, as employers were steadily moving towards shifting things out of offices and into "homes".  The launched the process like an aircraft with JATO bottles.

Up, up and away. . . 

Or, rather, out, out and at "home", with that home probably being an apartment.

When the pandemic started some mused that it might serve to arrest a societal fall.  We had a long post on that which dealt with some of those views ourselves.  And maybe it will, but right now the evidence isn't great.

But for the Sexual Revolution and the absurdity of Wokeness, being sent home would have meant something a lot different than it tends to now.  Sure, not everything would have been great for everyone and the entire post 1950s view of the 1950s which tends to come up in such conversations never ever existed.  Probably part of what would have happened is that some guys who left their work to drink at he bar before coming home drunk to fall asleep at the dinner table would stay home, take to drinking and beat up his wife and kids.

But by and large they wouldn't have.

Now, part of that same generation isn't married and is having trouble getting married to start with, sucked into a hookup culture that was emotionally shallow in the extreme and which reduced human relations to the animal level. Stuck at home, they're taking to all sorts of vices as they don't know where else to go to satiate them. Booze, drugs pornography, you name it.  The sale of alcohol is way up.  Drug overdoses are way up.  Apparently visits to something called "Pornhub" are likewise way up.  Probably visits to Catholic Answers and Orthodox Christianity are as well, but they have to depend on donations and not pay pre view for addicted vices or soon to be addicted vices.

And some of those people, now really separated from the world, are going down some dark alleys.  Whereas in earlier extremely stressed time, the same people would have still had to go to work, and would have walked from their work to the train past some people arguing for extremism, but also past the Salvation Army seeking donations, Hasidic jewelers wearing their prayer shawls, and the two guys on the trains arguing the merits or demerits of the New York Yankees.  For some of those people now there are no interruptions, no matter how badly they may be wanted, and its an easy diversion to see what people you sort of favor politically are up to.  Pretty soon, you are deep into a conspiracy theory populated by people who really truly believe in it.

That wouldn't happen if the same people had a Stammtisch.

Most folks don't have, a Stammtisch such as I'm fortunate to have.

Well, what of this? 

I'm frankly not sure.  During much of human history this was the norm for most people actually.  If you were a Russian peasant, you know only Russian peasants, and so on.  

But most of them didn't live in a modern state like we do, and face the problems we face.  We're incredibly polarized in a way that we haven't been for a very long time, and have real problems to address.  Some of our conflicts are truly at an existential nature.  

I don't know how to cause people to have a Stammtisch.  Much of that culture is broken.  

And that's much of the problem.