Being the continuation of InstaPunk and InstaPunk Rules
The impenetrable NYC Bubble
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Funny as hell and deadly serious
Let me begin on a note we can all agree on. There is a time in our teen lives when we imprint on popular music. What we were listening to during the dramatic changes in our bodies, social lives, and aspirational identities stays with us, regardless of what we come to value and treasure later in life. Everyone has those certain songs that are foundational chords in their lives, and they respond physically to even a few notes of the recordings that gave rise to their libidos and, well, self. Two not unrelated things. This is a constant and nothing new. There are Sinatra imprints, Elvis, Beach Boys, Dylan, Motown, Beatles, Stones, Who, Doors, Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, James Brown, Rick James, Springsteen, Metallica, and on and on and on imprints. (Apologies to the imprinters in Country, Disco, Jazz, and Blondie/Madonna Pop, have my own chords there too.) I never judge those. We just all have them. We all have more than one. They’re just the nest of emotions that surrounds the most vulnerable early years of our lives. And, obviously not all the imprints are superstars. Everyone also has hits heard too often heard on car radio, bad songs that were too catchy to forget, and what the hell, I liked it at the time and will never forget it.
And, just as obviously, this imprinting phenomenon is not limited to music. It takes in a lot of factors. Especially in closed communities. The movies make this a melodrama for us. The extent to which the years of high school in particular shape our future lives, the continuing hurts and resentments we live down by besting the popular cliques of jocks and cheerleaders who wind up as gas station attendants and fat fussy disappointed bitches we want to show up at the reunion.
I missed all that. This post shows you where I was instead. And the difference is important. It explains why New York thinks it can look down on the whole rest of the nation. Why there is a bubble bringing down the nation without even thinking about it. They are not exempt from the rule cites above about primary identity shapers. What they are exempt from is the comedowns associated by real life as experienced in high school reunions. Their losers are not gas station attendants and fat peevish ex-cheerleaders. They are just dead in place in still perfect clothes and poses. And they are not thinking about it at all.
We have one important clue. A book published back in 1980 called The Preppy Handbook. NYT bestseller. Hilarious. Passed around. You’d think it would still be alive on Kindle at least. No. That would be déclassé. Only available as original copies, ranging from $150 to $500+. Why I have to show you pictures of pages, which will do. They show you a community apart, one I happen to be very familiar with. And why I’m the only one who can explain to you why the NY-centric lawfare against Trump can continue despite the exorbitant costs it will exact on what was once the greatest city in the world.
Here’s the bubble that contains the fiftyish New York elites who live with each other, can afford to buy the essentials and luxuries, and just look down on Trump because he’s about the only punchline they have left in otherwise blank carbon-copy lives of one another. Everything he’s ever done is just not done. He went to an effing military academy before going to the most grinding industrial unit of, uh, Penn…
What you really really can’t have is your own Boeing 757 and a gold plated toilet.
Just so you don’t get the idea They’re uneducated or not well read.
A really big thing is knowing how to look like you’re not trying,
even if you really aren’t. Sweaters are IMPORTANT.
Overall, you gotta look good. In these particular ways…
How else are you going to marry her and live on the Upper East Side.
Not like they weren’t always preparing themselves for leadership…
Born to run absolutely everything with taste and Topsiders.
Yeah. A 40 year old imprint. They’re in their 50s now. Has anything changed?
How do I expect you to look at all this? I was there. The book names names. Lots of them. Not mine. Which helps me define not resent. There is a community of the top 30 or so schools that survives everything. It’s not even Exeter and Andover, the media version of prep school Harvard and Yale. They are, well, not exactly our kind. We’re talking society here. I keenly remember, with outstanding incredulity, a graduate of Moses Brown School(?) in Providence RI calling NJ’s literarily famous Lawrenceville School a “3rd rate prep school” at a time when Lawrenceville had more Harvard admissions than any single Grottlesex School in New England.
The sin? Absence of a magnetic epicenter in the urban northeast, which excludes Philadelphia and therefore U. Penn as well, because, well, you, know, who’s just better? The definition of the Bubble, which is what Fitzgerald was really talking about way back when in Gatsby:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
What kept them together? Sweaters and shoes and drunk nights on Nantucket and conventions they still believe amount to taste, like no PDOA, but otherwise doing what they want without being indiscreet enough for others to see. And continuously looking down or at least past everyone else whose lives might have a different kind of center.
Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? No. The people described in The Preppy Handbook went to affordable schools in their time. In those days Exeter had a tuition of $1,800. My school had a tuition of $2,700. Today it costs $66,000 to attend my prep school. The middle class is gone from these student bodies. Now we are back to the 1930s, when only the richest and most pampered get to pick which sweaters are de rigeur and which shoes are appropriate for this weekend’s soirées.
I can assure you they don’t care. I can assure they don’t think about why they despise Trump. I can assure you they don’t care about the slaughter on the streets and in the neighborhoods and even the boulevards of New York City. They’ll be in the Hamptons when the bad shit happens. Like as not in unisex salmon-colored cableknit cashmere sweaters atop white Egyptian cotton turtlenecks and whale pants.
The purpose of this post is to remind you that they are also rooted in their own youthful imprints. As a group they have accomplished no great things. They are the lucky parasites they mostly were from the start. They hate Trump for the very small reasons that always obsess untalented snobs. He doesn’t do the right things right. He has unseemly successes. He doesn’t pretend he wasn’t trying. He’s, well, gauche.
Which is worth sending the entire country to hell. No worse than firing the au-pair for putting the wrong forks on the table for the dinner party last week. Some people have some nerve. Not that we’re noticing.
Thing is. It’s a bubble. An important one. Why you can’t buy this book on Kindle. It’s a grimoire, a kind of magic manual, even scripture. I can tell you about it because I was there, survived and prospered in it, documented it, and went on to new kinds of magic rooted to home and land and Detroit horsepower, bootchains, and real world contests not unlike what Trump has spent his life engaged in.
I disengaged myself. As the rest of us should do. This is not a respectable code of life. It’s a phony, made more corrupt every day because actual merit has left the process. When I went to my school it cost $2,700 a year; now it costs $66,000. Same with all the other preppy schools. All that’s left is the children of the pampered class, the only ones left who can afford this level of affectation, however it’s accoutered itself in fashion terms now. What do they do? Not much. Why do they hate Trump? They don’t know. They just do. Trust me. I’ve talked to them. They’re just better. And they will never learn. They concentrate in New York and all the plush environs of their class, where they feel permanently safe. Our job is to make them feel less safe. New York? Drop dead.
How should we envision the current crop, failed parents and stoned progeny? Try this glimpse of the Harvard Legacy Class of 2024:
But the Grotties and Choaties are still producing Muffy’s and Buffy’s to
marry the Chips and Trips and Skips who will win at Nantucket softball.
This is what I call an omnibus post. That is, it will contain many links to what I have published here and elsewhere previously. Not going to apologize for that. I don’t mind asking you to read a variety of approaches to the same gigantic topic. It’s a topic so big we’ve all become accustomed (or trained ourselves) to deal with it only in pieces. But the pieces are all part of a larger whole that has grave consequences for the culture as a whole. A great many people aren’t going to like what I have to say here, but it’s time it was said. I won’t be mincing words. If you feel like contending with specific points I am making, you’re well advised to read what’s at the links before you cut yourself the easy break of dismissing this post as irrational or wrongheaded or over-generalized. It isn’t. It just won’t be popular. A word about the word ‘general’ as it used in vernacular expressions like ”in general” or “generally speaking.” We all do generalize, mostly without acknowledging that whe...
Invocation of Nemesis by the Summoners Click on Rosie. Thought I’d get this part out of the way right up front. I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about the upper class British sport of fox hunting: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.” As it happens, I’m working on two different posts at the same time this morning. This one and another one about the sad PR plight afflicting the unfortunate middle child of the three worst First Ladies in American history. . What the posts have in common is that the dominating element of both stories is a function of female psychology and can only be understood in those terms. There’s also the irony that Wilde’s jibe can be applied with some justice to both predator and prey in the two posts. Because I’m going to admit at the outset what most of the MAGA faithful won’t. You are right that Donald Trump is responsible for much of the imminent danger we are facing as a nation. Without his arrival on the political scene 11 years ...
Happy Independence Day No. 250! I’m planning to do my part for the year-long celebration of the still remarkable birth of the United States of America. Just starting to realize that the number of us who remember the last big anniversary in 1976 is getting smaller every day. Why I have some special ideas about focusing on the moment of transition, that is the tick of the clock last night when the 249th year became the 250th. A kind of time capsule that may be buried now but dug up later to see who were way back when you were still as young as you think you are now. My credentials for the job. Quite a few actually, but the most important one today is that I was a working participant in the official Bicentennial celebrations back when I was still young. I wrote a post about it almost 10 years ago, ancient history in today’s 24/7 chronometer dial. In honor of the ones no longer with us from that time, I dug up the old post from the Wayback Machine and put it back together here a...
Yeah. Click on the blue headlines. There are two precursor posts to this, both still in-process. I’ll finish and link them later. One is about the death of the historical novel, which mirrors a lot of other deaths in our culture. The other is about divorce, an absolutely transformative and deadly factor in what has become of us as a nation. What does that leave us with? The end result of our progressive devolution, largely invisible to all, because it is a function of the variable we tend to think of as a constant, human consciousness. Which it isn’t. I’ve written quite a lot about the consciousness problem over the years, and Instapunk Returns, as well as a couple other of my blogs, contain 5+++ years worth of thoughts on the topic. I’ll be sending you to those posts here, providing you with an excerpt, usually the lede, a sample graphic or two, and a link. The order is roughly chronological. I’m not going to give you any particular setup from piece to piece. The relevance to the main...
The last group photo I’m a part of that’s still in my possession. My sister’s wedding in the late1990’s, with me and my mother in attendance, here in Salem. I don’t get out much anymore. Haven’t for a long time. If I didn’t take pictures of myself, nobody would, or could, anymore. I don’t give them the chance. Why in recent years I’ve made a point of doing an official birthday selfie, to keep track of the wear and tear of the years and see if the falling apart process is gaining speed. This year was not a good year for hair. That much I’ll tell you. But here’s the Official 74th Birthday Selfie I took on Friday. Not as young as I used to be. I hadn’t really shown this pic to anyone, but imagine my surprise when I received a gift yesterday by parcel delivery from a young lady I helped raise who will always be close to my heart. She and I hadn’t spoken about the Rolling Stones in years, but somehow she must have divined I’d been thinking of them, because here’s what she ordered sent ...
If you’ve never seen an Asylum production of their “Saving the World from Imminent Destruction” series, you’re excused from this post. The rest of us already know the basics. A once prominent, now disgraced scientist (often Sam Baldwin, but not always) is minding his own business making a living income and trying to mend his struggling family life when he notices that something is seriously amiss in the cosmos. Gravity isn’t working quite right. Or all the birds seem to be migrating at the same time. Or some local pond suddenly ejaculates a pillar of lava. You know. The warning knell of an extinction-level catastrophe. Meanwhile, where are the kids? They were supposed to be home by now. He calls his ex-wife. She doesn’t know where they are. He calls an old colleague at the agency in DC where nobody else will take his calls anymore. In a whisper, the colleague tells him the experts in charge haven’t noticed anything to worry about cosmologically speaking. This far in, we already know wh...
The Valley of the Jerseyikes When you’ve decided to your own satisfaction that life doesn’t end with physical death, what have you got to worry about? That probably depends on where you come down on the age-old questions about ghosts. Do they exist? Are they a possible fate of troubled souls after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil or been yanked out of it too suddenly? What if you expire peacefully and find yourself waking up in the attic of your own house, somehow tethered to it with no watch you can trust to keep track of time? I know I’ve stopped wearing a watch at all, like almost all of you out there. Are we taking some kind of risk that we’ll miss the departure signal for the trip to the other side? One side effect of getting old and not liking most of what’s on teevee is that you wind up watching too many paranormal shows, which have the virtue of no politics, no gratuitous sex scenes, and extended stretches of restful watching with almost nothing happening on screen. ...
Marc Antony: “ Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest– For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men– Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.” [Worth noting, Gaius Julius Caesar was not an emperor; the successors who fought for absolute power and took his name as a title were emperors and brought about the death of the several hundred years of Roman Republic.] The American Republic is now at an end. We had a good run. He will be forced to concede, because Trump will not declare martial law....
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