Murray on the decline of marriage

The right tends to have orgasms over Charles Murray, because he is a rightist that is tolerated by the regnant left, albeit barely tolerated, therefore wonderfully high status as compared to the rest of the right, since regular rightists are not tolerated by our masters, therefore regular rightists are low status. Is it not wonderful to be allowed to get close to Charles Murray, who is allowed to get close enough to our masters for them to spit on him?

But, if he is tolerated, he has to be far to the left of reality, indeed almost as far out in la la land as any Dean of Diversity Studies. From where I stand, having confidence in evolutionary psychology and the wisdom of our ancestors (but I repeat myself), I can barely see the difference between Charles Murray and the Dean of Diversity Studies.

I now critique his latest interview:

Edward Luce interviews Murray on marriage, after chatting at length on whiter people dining.

Observe how the intro to this interview carefully delineates all the markers of high status:

the waiter says the black-truffle pasta is still on the menu, and we both order it as a starter

By the way, I am writing this after snacking on pork belly, roast potatoes, and home made wine fortified with a touch of moonshine and a bit of fermented prickly pear juice for added flavor and vivid blood red color. Mmmmm, pork belly. And the prickly pear is guaranteed to obliterate all those delicate subtleties of flavor and color that might have gotten into the wine during the fermentation process. And some instant coffee to compensate for the alcohol.

There is something wonderfully proletarian about pork belly, even though it is almost the same meal as pork spare ribs with some supposedly authentic Chinese seasoning, a meal beloved of whiter people when their pretense of being vegetarian collapses. Similarly fermented prickly pear, which should be a whiter people drink due to being obscure, organic, supposedly healthful, and all that, is not in the least a whiter people drink because it is as vividly colored and potently flavored as the stuff that blacks drink. I did not deliberately compose this meal to ridicule Charles Murray and his whiter people interviewer. I ate first, then read the interview.

Are you not impressed by the fact that this interviewer eats with Charles Murray, a man whose status is so high that our masters let him get close enough to them for them to spit on him? Clearly the interviewer expects you to be impressed.

And, by the way, should you find yourself dining an expensive restaurant with an elite newspaper paying the bill, don’t order black truffle pasta, because it contains only homeopathic amounts of black truffle. If you want to gain actual status from what you eat, try eating actual black truffles. If your expense account covers actual black truffles, then that will impress me. I am distinctly unimpressed by black truffle pasta. Back when we our ruling elite actually was elite, they ate truffles, so today’s whiter people imitate them by eating overpriced spaghetti with truffles in the name. You can do a lot better than spaghetti on an expense account.

And only whiter people think they can tell the difference between varietal wines and regular plonk. With a varietal wine, you are supposed to demonstrate your knowledge about the variety, all of which knowledge you actually cribbed.

After numerous whiter people dining tips, in which we are once again reminded that this is an expensive restaurant and the Financial Times is picking up the tab, and the interviewer and interviewee frequently hang out at this expensive restaurant (did I mention it was expensive) , we read some actual cultural critique.

“Whatever the Victorians did right in England, we need to resuscitate over here,” says Murray, between concluding mouthfuls of his pasta. “In the late 19th century, the entire English population were propagandized into buying into a certain code of morals. I would be happy if we could emulate that in some way in America.” Then he pauses: “But that gets into the whole question of whether the elite has the self-confidence in its own rightness.”

The rot started with the Victorians. Victorianism was the political correctness of its day. The state intervened in the family to dismantle patriarchal marriage, which is to say, to dismantle traditional marriage, new testament marriage, a change as arrogant and destructive as gay marriage.

Previously everyone knew that society needed patriarchal marriage because women were lecherous animals, and unless firmly kept in hand, the family would collapse, followed shortly by society. The account of women that one today reads on Pick Up Artist blogs was the standard mainstream view in the Georgian period.

To rationalize this disruptive and coercive change, to persuade people it would not lead to the collapse of the family, the state proceeded with a propaganda offensive on how women were chaste and pure delicate flowers threatened by vile lecherous men, which today is taken to ever greater extremes in ever more one sided rape, date, and domestic violence laws – for all the horrible details read your favorite Men’s Rights Activist blog. All the dreadful stuff that Men’s Rights Activists are complaining about got started with the Victorian propaganda offensive that Charles Murray is so impressed by.

Murray is now on to his barramundi, an Asian sea bass, while I have grilled sardines, both “drizzled with lemon”

Barramundi is deservedly high status because in places where you can get it reasonably fresh, it is very good. Washington is not one of those places. If you live in some place where people need to explain what barramundi is, the reason they need to explain is that it is not all that good. If you supposedly know about the variety of your varietal wine, you should know that barramundi needs to be fresh to be high status. Murray was eating thawed barramundi. Oh the horror.

Explaining about food status has made me feel like snacking on a bit more roast potato. And, by the way, we food cognoscenti call barramundi “barra” to show that we are so high status that the high status of barramundi does not impress us.

Maybe I will have some more instant coffee. Now if only someone would sell a coffee guaranteed to be slow roasted by oppressed workers forced to work in unbearable heat, perhaps I would get interested in varietal coffee.

“If you are arguing that 22-year-old men are saying to their girlfriends, ‘I just need a job and then I’ll behave responsibly …’ Well, that’s just bullshit. If you ask women in working class communities, they will say, ‘Why should I marry these losers? It’s like taking another child into the household.’ ”

The problem is that a working class job does not suffice to marry a working class woman, so working class men have no incentive to get working class jobs. Woman always marry up, and Uncle Sam the Big Pimp is higher status than a working class husband. Wives of upper class men are well behaved provided that they are slightly less upper class than their husbands, because Uncle Sam the Big Pimp is lower status than an upper class husband. Upper class career women, in particular lawyers are deadly, because they cannot marry men who are even higher status than themselves, so instead bang musicians, thugs, and sportsmen. As a result, they fail to marry or reproduce.

Any fertile age woman will tell you that only one man in thirty is barely acceptable. Since they seem to be getting laid we may conclude that Mister One In Thirty is a very busy man. As their fertile years start running out, they start looking for someone to marry, but how many men want to marry a woman whose fertile years are running out, and who will always compare him with two dozen of “Mister One in Thirty”?

I first had sex with my wife when she was a teenager, but the younger generation is finding that increasingly difficult to accomplish. So you get a job, keep your nose to the cubicle, and at the age of forty, get to marry a woman who has ridden a whole bunch of men she thinks are a lot better than you, and is getting close to forty herself. Oh what an incentive. Why even try?

The Gavi is going down fast

Naturally readers who are so high status that they read stuff by people sufficiently high status to eat with Charles Murray, who is so high status that our rulers allow him close enough to spit on him, would know that Gavi is an expensive varietal wine, and could doubtless give a lengthy discourse about cortese grapes and Italian vineyards. Perhaps the grapes were grown on the sunny side of the hill. Unfortunately I am out of moonshine and cannot easily get any more.

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9 Responses to “Murray on the decline of marriage”

  1. Neofugue says:

    Reading on archive the first half of that insufferable Financial Times article, the excessive and disgusting yet hilarious contempt Luce has for Murray is downright sad. The American Enterprise Institute should have provided him with proper etiquette coaching. Eating barramundi in Washington D.C. is as obnoxious as eating lobster in Las Vegas.

    Also, Murray, if you are reading this, you should know that one can purchase artisan egg pasta and ~$20 jars of pasta sauce with homeopathic amounts of truffle at any high-end grocery store for far less and make it at home in under 15 minutes. Just saying.

    • Kunning Druegger says:

      I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but I want you to know I have a particular set of skills: I am an appreciator of well-founded contempt. I will find you, and I will buy you a drink.

  2. […] (Whiter people is an epithet used by white people for other white people who ape the purported views and tastes of our rulers, the regnant left, with excessive enthusiasm and thoroughness. Recall me ridiculing Charles Murray for eating barra in Washington, and eating spaghetti with homeopathic quan….) […]

  3. […] And, by the way, should you find yourself dining an expensive restaurant with an elite newspaper paying the bill, don’t order black truffle pasta, because it contains only homeopathic amounts of black truffle. If you want to gain actual status from what you eat, try eating actual black truffles. If your expense account covers actual black truffles, then that will impress me. I am distinctly unimpressed by black truffle pasta. Murray on the decline of marriage « Jim’s Blog […]

  4. spandrell says:

    Funny thing. My woman cooks great pork belly, and she’s been doing it a lot lately. You should write more about food. It’s one of the last topics you are still allowed to have some taste.

    Murray doesn’t strike me as a man of the right. Allegedly the Bell Curve was his way of warning the people that equality was in danger. While all of us rightists love the book because it gives scientific proof of inequality. Which we like.

    Also ditto on the Victorians. You should watch Ken Clark’s Civilisation, if only the last chapter. The Victorian era is very hard to understand as a reactionarian. On one hand it was a very orderly society, and we are supposed to be for order. On the other hand it was the time where all the madness began. Abolitionism, feminism, popular sovereignty.

    • jim says:

      Mencius thinks, and the Victorian elite thought, that order comes from the top down. The state should make good laws, all respectable people obey those laws, and if there is lot of law breaking, the state needs to crack down harder.

      This is the doctrine that in China is called legalism, in the west, legal centrality. That rules and order come from the state. This worked out very badly in China, leading to the counter theory that order comes from society, from private associations, and in large part from the authority of the patriarch over his family. The new theory was that the emperor is emperor over china because the father is lord over his household, not the other way around, and that the laws give explicit form to what respectable people tend to do and insist on being done.

      The British empire came into being under Queen Victoria, but before there was a British empire, there was colonialism. A lot of British merchant adventurers wandered over the world, doing a bit of commerce, a bit of piracy, a bit of slave raiding, and a bit of brigandage. They tended to settle down and become stationary bandits, aka states. They not only robbed the natives, the Dutch, and the French, but also each other, yet they were admirable people, brave, valiant, clever, honorable, and loyal. Not so much orderly however.

      Imperialism was an anti colonialist movement, and today’s anti colonialist movement is the direct lineal descendent of the imperialists. The empire depended on the colonialists, but the imperialists thought the colonialists depended on the empire, and set about cutting them down to size, sawing off the foundation on which the empire sat.

      • spandrell says:

        Legalism created China, in a sense. It created the strength necessary for Qin to unify the empire. Confucianism could only flourish once the empire was created and stabilized, and the empire wanted the social peace that can only come from stable societal morals. They still went legalist when necessary. Singapore is cliché but it is a good example.

        I agree in the English empire being a humanitarian answer to colonialism. Those days when civilisation was a favor we were doing the savages. Still, were conditions on the ground improved after the Crown takeover? I would like some data on that.

        • jim says:

          Slavery was abolished as a result of the crown takeover, and the use of large scale pillage and massacre as a reprisal measure against trouble makers was, if not abolished, done more furtively. Naked piracy by colonialists was ended. It does not, however, necessarily follow that conditions on the ground improved, since the new government suffered diseconomies of scale. The colonialists tended to treat each group by its own laws, and respect traditional authorities and ways of life, while the new authority tended to enlighten them all whether they wanted to be enlightened or not, in the typical behavior of a distant and arrogant government, that treats everyone as identical interchangeable units.

          Obviously the imperialists considered these changes an improvement, and in view of the propensity of the colonialists to engage in piracy and massacre, hard to refute them, yet in fact, the new regime did not seem all that popular.

  5. sconzey says:

    It is funny that you see pork belly as being proletarian. Certainly over here in the UK it’s somewhat chic right now. Over in the thoroughly boho district of Soho, there’s a snotty Italian walk-in deli ( “using your phone in the queue? no service!” ) called Maletti’s which serves pork belly, and the swanky restaurant my company had their Christmas do at served pork belly as an entree.

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