The Aaron Renn Show

Videos from the 1980s show a vanished America. You see the near total absence of the detached, ironic, cynical tone that characterizes the country today and which came to the fore in the 1990s. It's largely a pre-obesity. And it's still a mass culture America. Despite its flaws, the median American today might actually be better off in that era than today.

Conservatives bristled when President Obama said "You didn't build that." But they should understand that theologically and practically, we did not actually build all that we've accomplished by ourselves. We benefitted from good fortune, and often especially from networks and access to capital. Paying it forward in terms of helping be the network for others is one of the way we show gratitude for what we've achieved and been given.

Conservatives tend to view the media as leftist. Due to certain experiences of the Reagan and Bush II administrations, they also seem to believe the media tries to undermine a muscular foreign and defense policy. In fact, on matters of foreign policy and reporting on foreign countries, the media should largely be seen as supporting whatever the US policy towards those nations might be, policy that is typically quite bi-partisan in nature.Subscribe to my newsletter at: aaronrenn.com.

There's an element of social contagion in divorce. We are more likely to get divorced if our friends and associates are divorced. Hence, we should carefully monitor both our own and our spouse's friend networks, keeping an eye out for divorces. 

A Dutch soldier in Indianapolis for training exercises was murdered downtown, creating an international incident with global press and cabinet level officials in both the Netherlands and the US having to address it. And yet local Indianapolis leaders, in contrast to the abortion issue, can't talk about the role of crimes like this in our business climate and reputation. From crime to the water crisis in Jackson to drug abuse to our electric grid to elections to health care, Americas leaders cannot muster the will and ability to address serious problems. They are imprisoned by the ideological constraints of managerialism and hobbled by the increasing complexity of our systems. 

Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels (RIP), the FaZe Clan and many others online figures most Americans have never heard of have no become the decisive influence on Gen Z. While all of us know this at some level, few appreciate the full reality of it in practice. This feeds off of, and accelerates, the decline of trust in institutions.NYT: Can FaZe Clan Build a Billion-Dollar Business? - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/style/faze-clan-house.html

Some observations on the way evangelicals leaders have been speaking of "violence" as distinct from injustice, and present it as if it were a natural force like thunderstorms rather than a product of human agency.

Dr. Benjamin Mabry joins me to discuss his essay on anti-managerial aesthetics. We will discuss what aesthetics are, why the approach promoted by "dissident right" figures like Curtis Yarvin won't work, and why we should reject the idea of a top 20% vs. bottom 80% of society in favor of an aesthetic scaled to speak to both the elite and the average citizen.Anti-Mangerial Aesthetics Essay:  https://aaronrenn.substack.com/p/newsletter-67-anti-managerial-aestheticsPremium Mediocre: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/

In this month's newsletter, Dr. Benjamin L. Mabry discusses the importance of aesthetics, as well as sharing perspectives on what an aesthetic that would provide a genuine alternative and rival to the dominant managerial aesthetics of our culture today.  He describes the aesthetic mode of managerial society, which is based on an imperial mode in which there's a sharp boundary between ruler and subject, in this case the top 20% managerial class vs. the 80% of everybody else. He notes that a top 20% aesthetic is not that of a true elite in any case, as genuine elites are a very small share of the population, not 20%. He also argues that we should aspire to have an aesthetic that both the elites and the average citizen can relate to and admire, rooted in a genuine notion of excellence.He also talks a bit about what such an aesthetic is and and is not. It is not a "mania for newness", or is it a retro-aesthetic that treats the past as just another style element to mix and match at real. Rather, it is the aesthetic and genuine culture of a particular people or subculture, not cosmopolitanism. For the American, this in part means unpacking and expressing the full sense of the aesthetic signifier "Made in America."

Much of the language we use today can be divided into two categories: compliant and defiant. Compliant language - like DEI or ESG - signals agreement with the current elite consensus. Defiant signals some level of disagreement or rejection of that consensus.Defiant language today often uses terms and imagery that are alien to American to American political and cultural tradition. "Nationalism," for example, does not appear to be a way that Americans have understood their relationship to their country.  Catholic integralism and Continental philosophy and themes often seem bizarre to the average American.These phrase, such as nationalism, can be perfectly appropriate to use in some contexts, but we should be evaluating the language we use to think about whether it is consonant with the cultural mainstream of our country. As an example of an organization that did this well, consider the Claremont Institute's DC operation, which was called the "Center for the American Way of Life."  The idea of the American way of life is one that resonates with the average man on the street.