Jim Clair: Good Word

The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson FTP: 7 Warning Signs of Societies Annihilation

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 23:06:45 GMT

The End of Everything will be in the running for the top three non-fiction books read in 2024. At least for me.

I was blown away. It was insightful, entertaining, substantive, damning, and it featured great writing.

The book is about societies that didn’t collapse but were annihilated. It discusses the four biggest annihilations:

Thebes
Carthage
Constantinople
Tenochtitlan

From Alexander the Great to Hernando Cortes.

The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson FTP: I love this passage

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 23:05:01 GMT

I love this passage on page 141:

The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson FTP: Times Change But We Don't

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 23:02:18 GMT

The End of Everything slaps, as the kids say. I’m a Victor Davis Hanson fan, I listen to his podcast, I read a number of his articles, and I’ve read two of his books, one of them twice. What I enjoy most about Victor, he’s a heavyweight intellectual — he’s a classicist by training — yet he has such a handle on human nature and human behavior. He isn’t the standard stuffy intellectual who loves ideas so stupid and complex that only an intellectual could love them.

The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson FTP: Engaging with an Engaging Thesis

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 23:01:06 GMT

Victor Davis Hanson starts The End of Everything with a clear, concise, and poignant thesis. Not every author starts off in this manner. It’s in a way, like a fighting style. Some lull you in and then hit you. Some immediately come out with decisive blows. The latter is how VDH starts on the first page:

Fletch by Gregory McDonald FTP: The Movie is Better

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:30:58 GMT

Fletch the movie is a classic. It’s easily one of my favorite movies of all time. I even like the sequel. While not as good as the original, it’s a bit too much shtick, I still enjoy it.

Only a few years ago I learned Fletch was a novel. My love for the movie built high expectations for the novel. I planned on it being better than the movie. But then I ran into the 1970s nihilism.

Fletch the movie is a product of the cinematic 1980s. Most movies from that era have a sense of optimism and hope. Even ridiculous action films like Commando enjoy a sense of optimism. Good defeats evil. Even the hedonism, the buxom babes saved by the handsome man, come with an atmosphere of enjoying life. The bad guys, they had babes, but it always looked like the bad guys and their babes were headed to a road of self-destruction. The optimism won out.

1970s movies, many of them at least, are nihilistic, cynical, and often unsettling. Even the action movies. Consider the famous action movie Death Wish starring Charles Bronson. It starts off as a simple revenge tale. A pacifist’s wife is raped and murdered, and his daughter is raped after some thugs followed them home from the grocery store. He seeks vengeance. But Bronson’s character starts to get off on killing criminals. He gets off on a double life. Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta, we tend to think of it more along the lines of the 1980s version of Footloose. But it’s a deeply unsettling movie. Rape, suicide, both men and women objectifying each other with deep cynicism, deception, and low intellect people running into cultural ceilings. It’s an unsettling movie with about three total dance scenes. Movies in this era lacked the optimism and fun of the 1980s.

When I opened the pages of Fletch I expected more of the character I’ve come to love on the screen. Chevy Chase’s version is a cad, but he’s charming, has a moral code underneath the snark, and has a sensitivity to him along with his sense of justice.

Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: Rhetoric - Simplifying Heady Ideas

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:26:58 GMT

Rhetoric eludes most readers and writers. It’s a shame. For readers, rhetoric can unlock an argument for us. And if done poorly, we see an insecurity on behalf of the author. Or in the case of fiction or satire, poorly done rhetoric stated by a character gives us a window into that character. For writers, rhetoric, when deployed correctly, injects horsepower and precision handling into our writing. And this goes for all writers. Yes, even for you copywriters, rhetorical devices are a great tool.

As I’ve gushed before, Shelby Steele is a stylist in the vein of a masterful fencer. He’s beautiful, graceful, simple, yet lethal. On page 127, he uses a rhetorical device to summarize a philosophical point that would take many writers, even great ones, a few passages to get to a clear definition.

What is The Good? Well, The Good that I am speaking of is not that timeless and hard-earned Good that our great religions and great secular documents (like the US Constitution) try to shepherd us toward. The Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights spell out disciplines (moral and political) that, among other things, align us with The Good when we follow them ardently. This Good is earned the hard way by adhering to that long litany of classic human virtues — selflessness, courage, humility, sacrifice, fidelity, and so on.

Steele deploys, I believe, a version of Isocolon.

Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: He Just Said It

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:25:15 GMT

Every once in a while you come across a statement detonating heavy shockwaves. Shame is the 12th book for my American Decline series. And twelve books in, I am convinced conservatism is a viable path away from decline. I don’t believe in a one-party state, nor would I want that. The more I’ve read, however, I have noticed the grievance obsession of liberals. I’ve noticed this in conversation in person, and online.

The other day, I spoke to a gentleman who told me that inflation is a Republican shibboleth trying to distract us from the real issue: price gouging. He told me that white greedy males are raising the prices of eggs, Mountain Dew, beef, vegetables, cars, and houses, in sum, all of the cost of living spikes we’ve experienced are due to “systemic greed that makes big corporations screw over the little guy.”

Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: Death by Poetic Truth

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:40:27 GMT

Steele is a fencer.

That I’ve mentioned.

Steele is a dangerous man.

That I’ve mentioned.

What makes Steele a writer to study and a thinker to consider, is how powerful he makes his argument.

Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: Poetic Truth

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:38:53 GMT

It takes an observant person with a witty mind to see a fallacy that is yet defined. And then to define it, depict it, and after depicted and defined, you can’t unsee it.

Steele does that here with the fallacy he labels: poetic truth.

Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: Small Words for Big Atmosphere That Slices Your Opponent

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:36:28 GMT

Shelby Steele wields words like an elite fencer. I read his words, and how he packs such vivid meaning, detail, and clarity into a sentence, I want to hate it. Hate it because it’s so good, and hate it because how he does it seems impossible. But I don’t hate it, Steele, resides among my top three favorite stylists.

What makes Steele special, is that he’s able to encapsulate meaning and atmosphere — cultural, social, political, ideology, emotion, experience, and more — into his word choices. Further, he’s able to direct it towards an argument. He states a position, states the position of the other side, and then wields a lethal argument. He is like a fencer, concise, poetic, poignant, a dance of pure talent, and then finishes with a lethal blow.

The Two Parent Privilege by Melissa Kearney FTP: America Has Become A Two Class Country

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:34:53 GMT

Two Parent Privilege is the ninth book for my American Decline series. I’d say all but two books have emphasized income inequality. Going into this series, I thought income inequality was a myth. And in the manner I considered it, it is. But I was thinking about it wrong. I was thinking of income inequality as a “pay gap” between genders and races. Pay gaps exist in places, but they are rather narrow. My mistake, I was observing my world and the world I grew up in: the broad elite. I was thinking of the pay gap between two college grads -- man and woman -- not outside of that parameter. Seven books of this series, and especially Kearney, have shown me a true and concerning income inequality.

That inequality isn’t some diversity thing, it results from the divergence of two classes since 1960, and especially since 1990. America has diverged into a large upper class, the broad elites to narrow elites at the top, and into a lower class. That lower class is being priced out, and regulated out of what would be considered, The American Dream.

When I’ve mentioned this on X, the money Twitter crowd comes racing in saying it’s the younger generation’s lack of work ethic, and them growing up on daddy’s money, getting participation trophies, and some generic slam to Onlyfans girls or girl influencers being too entitled and too promiscuous to be of any value. Unless you’re part of the Greatest Generation, bitching about the younger generation's lack of work ethic signals a profound and impressive ignorance of the modern economy.

Money Twitter’s ire directs itself at the youth of the broad elite. The broad elite are anxious, depressed, and nihilistic. That does not bode well for our future. But what money Twitter also misses in its complaints, and in fact what many people miss, and miss wholly, the men and women of the lower classes. Each faces excruciating issues. Men who don’t go to college are checking out, as opportunities become rarer for them. They’re even checking out on dating. And the women of this generation, many of them end up single mothers, and single mothers face a host of issues. A big issue, the children of single mothers are more likely to not go to college, are more likely to stay poor, and are more likely to have emotional issues and have more transgressions.

The Two Parent Privilege by Melissa Kearney FTP: Handling Your Audience

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:33:50 GMT

Melissa Kearney sits on the left side of the worldview spectrum. She’s an esteemed intellectual on that spectrum. She's a member of the Left-wing elites. Her topic is marriage. Marriage is not necessarily partisan. But the belief of marriage as a good tends to lean towards the right side of the spectrum.

The Bell Curve by Charles Murray & Richard Herrnstein FTP: The Power of Repetition

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:31:42 GMT

Anaphora occurs when the speaker repeats the same words at the start of successive sentences or clauses. Anaphora generally serves two principal purposes. Returning to the same word creates a hammering effect; the repeated language is certain to be noticed, likely to be remembered, and readily conveys strong feeling.

That’s from Ward Farnsworth’s superb Classical English Rhetoric. A book every writer should read. The way he teaches it, you remember the structure, and the key here, repetition. Good writers repeat words or phrases as a way to argue a point, make emphasis, add rhythm, paint a picture, show passion, or concisely limn a particular thesis.

The Bell Curve, Charles Murray & Richard Herrnstein FTP: Make Your Thesis Snap

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:30:00 GMT

To the writers in my audience, here you’ll find a superb example of getting the snap out of your thesis. By snap, I’m picturing a whip snapping. The whip flies through the air and then that crack at the end.

I see this in writing as laying out your summary first. This involves the questions or hypothesis you perhaps started with, and then shaping that into a few concise sentences, and you write a thesis packed with conviction.

I’ll bold the thesis:

Coming Apart by Charles Murray FTP: If A Guru Says THIS It Proves They Have Low IQ

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:26:20 GMT

Inside the Hustle Fan Club, we hear why reading the news is stupid. Another common Hustle cliche, politics are stupid and a waste of time. People will drop threads on X (formerly Twitter) saying how they used to read the Wall Street Journal_ or The Economist in the hopes of looking smart and being well-informed. And now they claim that exercise was a big waste of time. The hustle boys instead tell you to focus on your craft, crafting hooks, and building your empire, because the news or publications like The New Yorker are for the sheeple.

I’ve been to events where people turn the above paragraph into performance theatre. Around the time of the Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots, me and a few people were chatting. Craig Ballantyne was in that group. Someone mentioned the Super Bowl and Craig on cue leaped to his script, “Super what? Is it like a cooking show? I don’t even know what a Super Bowl is!”

Someone mentioned it was the Eagles versus the Patriots and said football. Craig, relishing in his performance, said, “You mean like Soccer? I never heard of those teams.” After an awkward pause, Craig finished as only he knew how, with the cliche, “I'm too busy and too focused on my business, I don’t have time for sports or pop culture.”

That theatre is incoherent.

Why?

Coming Apart by Charles Murray FTP: Get The Readers on Your Field

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:23:27 GMT

Clear writing comes from clarity of thought. If you’re a writer you’ve likely heard the cliche is “clear writing equals clear thinking.”

That is a baseline. A start.

Great writers make concepts clear to their audience. That they do getting clear on definitions and getting the audience on their playing field. In Coming Apart, Murray’s thesis is that the end of the American experiment is nigh. A bold claim. And Murray goes on to say that a class divergence pushes us towards the end of the American experiment. Another weighty claim.

Coming Apart by Charles Murray FTP: Eye-opening Thesis

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:21:38 GMT

This thesis undergirds my American Decline series. Various authors in this series have worked to cement a date fomenting a critical change in America. Most of the authors see that critical period as the 1960s. They see a divergence in class, values, economy, and culture.

Alienated America by Timothy P. Carney FTP: This Causes Societal Decline

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:19:03 GMT

This is a recurring theme throughout Alienated America and throughout my American Decline series.

From page 135:

In short, white-working-class woe in America is the fruit of collapse of civil society; and in America, among the non-wealthy at least, civil society mostly means “church.”

Across the books I’ve read for this series, a cycle exists. It roughly resembles:

Alienated America by Timothy P. Carney FTP: Carney Makes Ross Douthat Look Foolish

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:16:48 GMT

The more I read through the books I picked for American Decline, the more I noticed more gripes with Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society. I felt his “punch right” was cynical and tone-deaf. He makes non-elite Conservatives out to be meme lords and racists. Which explains nothing of Conservatism’s complaints but everything of Douthat’s fealty to the New York Times.

Alienated America by Timothy P. Carney FTP: Money Can't Save Broken Communities

Jim Clair — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:10:50 GMT

“Give them money! That will solve the societal issues.”

This is a common argument from the Left. Popular Left-Wing personalities like Rutger Bregman make this claim their entire personality. The Right also has proponents for a Universal Basic Income.