Sharing some new writing, two separate pieces using the undead as central metaphors. Not sure why it shook out this way, it wasn’t intentional, I suppose I have zombies on the brain.
For American Mind I wrote about Paul Fussell’s 1983 classic of American class Class. In his era, the very top and very bottom of the class spectrum were “out of sight”—defined by their invisibility. I argue that as the middle class disappears, the very top and very bottom emerge into sight. The Favelazation of America.
Take a look at the most recent videos of homeless encampments in San Francisco and Portland. What do they look exactly like? Why, South American slums. As the middle class evaporates, favelas accrete. The reason why we see more “out-of-sights” is because there’s simply too many of them to hide. Parts of San Francisco look like Third-World slums because that’s exactly what they are.
Walk down to one of the open-air drug zones in San Francisco, as I have, and ask around. The paid “community facilitators” will all tell you the same thing: Honduran drug gangs act as police, real estate brokers, and chambers of commerce all at once.
But the people building California’s favelas aren’t the noble savages we see on T.V. Nor are they even the cooperative vagabonds of Fussell’s time—the type who, in George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, wandered 20 miles every day between public barracks which were intentionally spread out to keep the flow of vagrancy moving. No, these are violent, deranged, hideous, drug-fueled criminals. Walk 20 miles? How about no. How about you walk 20 miles to avoid me?
The reason it seems like there’s so many more homeless people is because there are so many more homeless people. The class itself has grown beyond its ability to hide or be hidden.
In The Federalist I wrote “How and Why the Ivy League Will Die” addressing prestige schools in the context of Robert Conquest’s laws. Zombie organizations managed by their own worst enemies.
DMV workers hate you. You know it. They know it. It’s obvious. Similarly, the Harvard admissions department hates Harvard students. The elite students are (or were) the class enemies of the admissions officers, who are always middles, lower middles, or even proles. Thus the admissions officers did what middle managers always do to institutions over time, actively dismantling the reactionary rules that gave the institution its original form. There are no greater “explicitly right-wing” rules than extremely high admissions standards. They kept the Ivy League important for a long, long time, but inevitably the rot became too great, and the managers, the enemies of the institution of truth, found a way to destroy those standards and open the floodgates to their own class.
The result is not the mass elevation of proles to elite status, which is of course impossible, but chaos. And chaos has a certain look. It looks like this:
In a recent Atlantic article, the reader learns that members of ultra-elite Yale secret society Skull and Bones ripped down posters of old white guys and replaced them with woke apologia. Then you learn that Skull and Bones classes have been exclusively non-white since 2020. Then you learn that on a visit to Skull and Bones alumni George Bush’s home, this new cohort confronted and denigrated the ex-president, accusing him of war crimes and racism.
An institution run by its enemies.
I also appeared on
’s great new podcast on talking about the week in memes and tweets.Enjoy.
Enjoyed this! Very impressive how prolific you are
https://americanmind.org/salvo/zombie-outbreak/
The favelization of the American mind - referencing Game of Thrones & zombie schlock while discussing serious issues. There's that "very bottom" again.