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My suggestion: You have museums for white people, like the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and museums for each and every other group. You can have Jewish museums – which are already going aren't they? You have your Museum of African American History and Culture, which is there on the Mall right now as an upside down ziggurat. Next up is the Women's Museum, maybe vagina-like; and shortly a Latino one in the shape of an Aztec pyramid.

I think the other groups wouldn't like a white male culture museum though would they? Might start giving Europeans bad thoughts.

Still, all these non-white-male-groups are working hard pushing for this aren't they? Dear, dear.

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The answer is not more racial Balkanization, particularly around the coarse categories that people commonly use for race. The answer is a renewed commitment to shared humanity.

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Franklin, that's a noble idea but how are you going to convince the people who are pushing for this "racial Balkanization and coarse catagories?" The African-American Museum exists. So does a Native American Museum. They are in the planning stages at this very moment for a Womens' Museum on the Mall. There's a Holocaust Museum which has been there for a few decades. This is the imperial capitol, Franklin. Gay Pride and BLM flags hang from American embassies and the people who build these museums are now killing tens of thousands for what, "a shared humanity?"

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Take a deep breath. The builders of these museums are not killing tens of thousands of people. In fact those museums are justifiable, as a way of highlighting culture outside of the dominant demographic, which with respect to art, whites and men were for a long time. That is, they're justifiable in an atmosphere of shared humanity.

Of course without that sense of shared humanity, they can take on a sinister bent. But that would be true of any such effort, particularly the idea of a White Guy Museum.

I have no intention of trying to persuade the ideologues. I intend to offer an alternative.

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"The builders of these museums are not killing tens of thousands of people"

They are in Ukraine. For Gay Pride and BLM.

"those museums are justifiable, as a way of highlighting culture outside of the dominant demographic, which with respect to art, whites and men were for a long time"

You: "Patrick Deneen is correct, at least in outline, that liberalism is a victim of its own success and has resulted in social and existential atomization across the board."

https://dissidentmuse.substack.com/p/the-shinest-shoes-in-the-graveyard

You in the same piece concerning art criticism: "The audience, already bewildered and now only more so, steps cautiously away."

You above: "Of course without that sense of shared humanity, they can take on a sinister bent. But that would be true of any such effort, particularly the idea of a White Guy Museum."

Question: How do we develop a shared sense of humanity with different and hostile narratives concerning each group's history and culture? And why is a white guys' museum especially sinister?

You should reread your article. You sound like Nick Fuentes playing Jerome in Art School Confidential, staring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles and John Malkovich. LOL.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364955/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

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Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Author

I am sympathetic to the idea that an aggregate that I call "progressive postliberalism" was attempting to turn Ukraine into a model state, and that it is also connected to BLM and a certain ahistorical understanding of gay pride. It is a long way from there to the idea that they're killing tens of thousands of people in Ukraine "For Gay Pride and BLM." That's oversimplifying things into a slogan. Putin remains responsible for turning this into a hot conflict and is the unambiguous aggressor. I am not impressed by the entities labeled "Ukraine" and "Russia" and don't care whether the border of the latter is set on the left or right side of the Donbas. The Ukrainians and Russians are another story - they're human beings and should be allowed to live freely, including the gay ones, and the black ones too to the extent that they have any.

To answer your questions: Those competing and hostile narratives are psyops. People remain people, most of them are not totally bananas, and if you approach them as fellow children of the Creator they tend to respond commensurately. As for the White Guy Museum, you can't treat this like a logic problem, that since there is a museum for blacks and a museum for women, therefore there should be a museum for white men. History is more complicated than that. I suspect that you already know this.

We are going to be arguing about the competing uses of state power so long as we have a state, which indicates to me that we could eliminate those arguments to the extent that we can constrain the state. That is a healthier pursuit than trying to valorize white male identity, which is only going to give the progressive postliberals more ammunition. Committing to shared humanity is not just noble, it's strategic.

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"Those competing and hostile narratives are psyops."

Franklin, racial and sexual quotas are real things. Crime is real. Mutilating children is real. Mass migration is real. Mentally ill people who think they're the other sex is real. Race is real. Just ask blacks who's racist - hint, they mean you.

"you can't treat this like a logic problem,"

Well, ok, it's about identity, as you say. You seem confused about this. You have your identity and all other groups apparently want theirs. I'm getting a strong feeling you want white men to have none. This is where you go off the rails in my humble opinion. I suppose the project requires feminization and nihilism which doesn't benefit your group either.

You remind me of Frank Rich the movie critic. When the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of Christ, came out he wrote an hysterical column about all those blond, blue-eyed Nazis out there (in his Leo Steinberg cartoon-frame-of-reference mind because he's never been west of the Hudson river) who were going to march through the cornfields burning Jews and lynching blacks. Jewish paranoia is a very powerful thing, isn't it? Not much shared humanity there. See, you don't include white men. You and the other groups, including feminized white men, are failing because of this. You are destroying yourselves and you admit this. Or at least one half of your doppelganger does.

You're wrong about Ukraine too. The US is behind the whole thing, including the Nordstream sabotage. Merkel has even admitted that Minsk 1 and 2 were stalling tactics used to buy time in order to militarize Ukraine. And of course the US is fighting not just Russia but China too in an existential war with nuclear powers. Madness.

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As for non-returners, I was one well before COVID hit and wokeness went rabid. Also, "non-returners" is too vague; I prefer "fed-up people." The perversion and debasement of the art establishment have been evident for quite some time, though perhaps they were less offensive and off-putting to people less "difficult," not to say less aberrant, than myself. In other words, I've been fed up for a long time.

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You would think that research turning up the fact that half of non-returners couldn't find a program they wanted to attend would send a message that the providers were failing at their core mission. In fact that category absorbed the percentage drop of people worried about Covid. In practice it may be hard to make that claim because the sample size dropped by a third in the meantime, but it reinforces the possibility that interest was already waning and Covid broke the inertia to keep going to the museum anyway.

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Mar 28, 2023·edited Mar 28, 2023

Part of the problem is that the parties in charge are thinking more in terms of how they look to their own kind, meaning the art establishment, than in terms of the public. Thus, they wind up catering to the wrong audience, and the real audience is seen as people to be instructed or converted, as opposed to people who deserve to get what they want. I can say quite unequivocally that either the art system satisfies my desires and meets my needs or I'm not interested, and the slightest whiff of "we know what's best for you" is NOT welcome.

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Clarence Thomas would agree with you that it is condescending for white institutions to seek black representation without significant structural changes - he thinks in the case of affirmative action such black-washing preserves the power elite.

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Which is interesting, because that's also the progressive argument from Porchia A. Moore and others. In the latter case those structural changes sound total. "Today is a good day for museums to die," quoth Moore.

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Mar 28, 2023·edited Mar 28, 2023

Right, because people like Moore are clearly superior beings privy to perfect truth and wisdom and thus entitled to impose whatever they deem fit on all lesser creatures, especially those they consider degenerate (as in entartete Menschen).

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