BREXIT (UK) — A FAILED, TEAR-SHEDDING DREAM TO RESURRECT THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE AGE OF SAIL IS IN THE GRAVE

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally commenting on the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted. 

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So, ‘Liz’ Truss resigned as Prime Minister (UK) on October 20, 2022 — after only 44 days in office, the shortest since 1827 when Tory George Canning died in office after 118 days. 

Her resignation speech is here — a signal example of a nationalist word salad of conservative slogans and hopeful but flawed illogic that some conservatives love to mouth but flounder on after a short time that shows how hollow those slogans actually are.

Ms. Truss makes the fifth UK prime minister in six years — the fastest turnover in nearly a century.

What can one say except it’s about time for the global fantasy-dreaming about past nationalist ‘glory’ to end … the ‘days of sail’ and exploitative spice trade are long over.

The ‘Now’ has changed from the crawling pace of sailing ships to the dynamic, high-tech, increasingly information-driven supersonic age that is above all sustained by interdependent associations not standalone empires… no one country is now truly self-sustaining. Not even America.

‘Brexit,’ the UK withdrawal from the European Union has proved to be an economic flop run by a false performer in a clown suit and Halloween wig (several candidates here, but …).

What Truss’s resignation means is that political posturing and claiming a mantle of past glory is what it sounded like to many— hot air and opportunism that rapidly turns into a disaster for the naive voter and certainly for their nation.

The lineup of guilty politicians who've covered their true motives or lack of true smarts is long but includes such stars as BOJO (Boris Johnson, Truss’s predecessor), Vladimir Putin, and, of course, the current era’s grand wizard behind the curtain, Donald Trump.

Putin is perhaps a special case as he seems to have the naked power to take Russia down with him, but he will not soften in his pursuit of personal glory and the glow of Tsarist Russia.

Let’s hope the UK will regain its senses…and find a way to re-enter the EU (big problems there with lots of 'cold crow' for the UK to swallow, but it has to be done to save England from economic collapse). And let’s hope the American path doesn’t curve back to Trumpism.

The Fate of Capitalist Nations: America and Britain Have Lost Important Battles but Maybe Losing the War IS Not Yet Clear

There are three 'logical' endpoints that are debatably inevitable for a capitalist nation. One, the logical endpoint of historical colonization is currently exampled by America, Britain, France and Germany who are experiencing the consequences of foreign population flow-back from colonized markets to the colonizer because the colonizer became dependent on cheap labor to 'man' the low wage, but essential, manual and service jobs at the bottom of the economic pyramid. (Rome saw this happen.)

All of these top-of-the-pyramid nations have discovered that it is difficult or impossible to control the back-flow of cheap labor from exploited, foreign labor markets to the homeland exploiter. Thus, despite the immediate historical profits from exploited foreign markets, eventually there have come high social and as well economic costs to the exploiting homelands -created by cultural-linguistic incompatibilities prolonged and strengthened by segregation, needed health services, and education and skills gaps in general.

The problems to the home country of adapting foreign market population back-flow, are exacerbated by a kind of problem-solving paralysis deriving from the homeland's need to 'obey' democratic-philosophic principles that dictate costly humane solutions when the directness of behavior as in the foreign exploited markets would be more efficient, i.e., less costly, less humane and quicker actions. This built in self-paralysis has made it impossible control foreign market population back-flow both legally through immigration laws or via natural blocks such oceans and artificial blocks like walls.

But mostly making it resistive to control foreign population back-flow are the strong pressures and rewards for illegal immigration by the needs to fill low paid domestic service jobs (in hotels, restaurants, private homes, health clinics, etc) and likewise in low wage roles in industries such as the agri-business sector.

The major former colonizers are now less 'whip and chain' masters but still exploitive colonizers!

Overall, the former colonial 'masters, have found it difficult or impossible to control (much less to block) back-flow of native populations for at least two reasons:

One, refusal of immigration from exploited markets violates the democratic principle of 'fairness and equality' that
is shared by these nations.

Two, and perhaps the most important problem for the homeland, the internalizing by foreign populations of the same
democratic self-identity badges that unify (and help to pacify) the home land populations.

Once foreign, cheap labor begin to internalize the same narrative used to keep domestic populations in check, 'whip and chain' controls become unsustainable in the same way as narrated and revered in the history of the homelands.

This self-contradiction of messaging constitutes a built-in self-destruction button at the breast of the colonizer and is the core reason for the historical and current fragility of the colonizer-colonized relationship. And, this fragility increases as countervailing forces develop against exploitative capitalism as international ethical standards evolve (to the dismay of the capitalist).

In a perfect capitalist world of free, unregulated and ethically unhindered markets, the logical endpoint is concentration of all wealth and assets at the upper stratum, the 1 percent. (This is the free-market, finite-sum game-theoretical model of successful business management that is the guide and goal for every hungry, aggressive capitalist.. no mater how strong a protest.

But in a real world, such total concentration of wealth and the efforts to achieve that goal, are guaranteed to create social resistance and eventually lead to a path ending in society's self-destruction.

We seem now arrived at the logical endpoints of free market capitalism with disruptive consequences of a perceived scarcity of 'Goods' at lower economic strata mainly exampled by a scarcity of employment income presumed by competition in a zero-sum economy from illegal immigration.

Our economy is not a zero-sum situation but where did this perception come from? That is a question to be secondarily answered perhaps, along the way to thinking up and planning for new industries and subsidizing new, spring-board technologies.

Never the less, our society's 'Hoi Polloi' have become disaffected as there is no longer a frame of reference where they are 'superior' to a social stratum below themselves thus removing the intangible but crucial ego support (a virtuality paycheck) that makes their own poverty palatable.

The capitalist knows this and through influencing government (lobbying) has constructed complex systems of social codes and strata-segregation rules and laws to appease the lower masses and thus imprison them in their own, ego sustained world of false, prejudicial rewards - artificial (intangible) wealth that 'buys' nothing and doesn't compete with the capitalist who is busy accumulating real wealth.

The third consequence of a free-market capitalist society is that the wealthiest capitalist is seen as the most eligible to govern; but this is a fallacy because the most successful capitalist is by definition the most focused on maximizing the bottom line, P&L, which requires the most effort to distance oneself from emotions linked to people and society (and even national loyalties).

Thus, the most successful capitalist, operating from the pure business model, is by definition the least suited for, and capable of, husbanding the 'Common Good'. G

Good historical examples of pure free market capitalists are current cultural heroes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Black Beard and kin. The most successful capitalist is the most vicious pirate, the most blood thirsty jungle predator desirous of a world of unregulated commerce and business operation where 'business' has the pure objective to make wealth without being weighed down by any societal considerations, even consumer safety and benefit except as unintended fall-out (eg, "Trickle Down"). The mindset of the capitalist must be the accumulation of ALL wealth, motivated by the anxiety of viewing the economic world as a finite, zero-sum game.

In this context, as examples, both Trump and Romney are 'successful' , or at least 'worthy' businessmen although they collectively accumulated wealth by treasonous and corporate-cannibalistic 'just business' behavior. In their business life, and certainly Trump in his personal life, both followed societally destructive paths that endangered jobs and national security.

One might say (certainly this commenter can say it) that any nation that calls itself a 'democracy' should exclude these gentlemen, and their brethren, as candidates for top governance positions.

But admittedly, such exclusion, which is beneficial to protecting the Common Good is by definition difficult,inadvisable or impossible in a democracy … especially once the capitalist has succeeded in legally redefining capitalist elements such as corporations from bloodless, paper-boundaried legal structures to personhood with the same rights as flesh and bone people, (viz,. Citizens United).

The result of such dilution of a nation's democratic principles will inevitably be, as it is now become in both the cases of Britain and America, a chaotic, dysfunctional, internally disturbed, directionless and self-destroying state (State)... even without the aid of an external enemy.

This vulnerability makes it easier for an intervention by an external enemy through bullet-less means (unconventional warfare). Both Britain and America are experiencing and losing, subtly-fought unconventional warfare with similar outcomes - social and political self-disruption without enemy boots setting foot. Such is the fate of former, and current colonizers who perfected empirical foot-ship-and-air armies.

In the cases of both America and Britain, the common unconventional 'weapon' used to invade and conquer them has been Russia's legal use of social media (capitalist uber-products) to 'capture-and-manipulate' the minds, i.e., voting preferences, of homeland populations. Russia's weapon of choice was through contracting services from Cambridge Analytical (an internet data corporation) to accumulate and exploit web-user data. These were successful projects as demonstrated by the election of Donald Trump (with his announced goal of possible exiting from NATO), and Britain's Prime Minister May's intent, at all costs, of exiting the European Union ('BREXIT'). Both objectives successes have brought along wild social and political tides and involved direct treason , through the Trump-Putin 'collaboration'. In both cases, these two colonizer homelands (Britain and America) were caught unprepared for unconventional, bullet-less warfare. More, they were blind to the fact they were even at 'war' involving Russia's 'soft' weans such as cyber data 'bullets' and treason hidden in the weeds of the global market and electronic banking systems.

Election 2016: Brexit and Trumpism - We saw it Coming, Where are they Going? Future Benefits.

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ORIGINAL ESSAYS
White Trash
- over time, America has seen more downward than upward mobility, and migration often substitutes for actual class security.
- Americans continue to tell themselves they believe in social equality, but history tells a different story.

- "White Trash": The language used to describe classes and the poor can be traced back to the forceful imprint left by British colonization. Before it became that fabled "City upon a Hill," America was, in the eyes of 16th-century English adventurers, a foul, weedy wilderness — a "wasteland," they called it, where the Old World could unload the idle poor.
- Among the unheroic transplants were convicts, Irish rebels, known whores, ex-soldiers, adults in debt, and the children of beggars, all of whom either chose exile in place of a prison term (or hanging!) or else sold themselves into indentured servitude.
- The great majority of the early colonists were classified as a surplus population, as expendable "rubbish" — a rude rather than a robust population.
- These were America's "waste people," who, sometime around the 1820s, came to be called "white trash."
by Nancy Isenberg, June 21, 2016 4:44 PM

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Brexit and Trump-ism share common themes and causes focused on the growing disposability of American and European workers. This was a sensed phenomenon Pericles21 posted on this blog site about some time ago (Pericles21' post of February 6, 2009 - "MBA Follies #1: The Public as Labor Pool [Or, MBA wet dreams gone bad)" was a growing but still, at that time, a somewhat contentious question of 'being' for the American worker - what or who exactly, was the American (and western powers) worker in the world of the now truly big, truly powerful multi-national corporations?

Were developed-nations' workers still, foremost, citizens or were they in the process, or well along the way, of becoming just a cost parameter, a cog, in the profit machine...without countervailing powers, losing respect from the national governance systems, and increasingly having their 'being-hood' (ascendancy as living persons) given to, or high-jacked by, the corporations (viz., the American Supreme Court's 2010 decision favoring virtually unlimited corporate election donations, 'Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'.

Continuing the list of erosions of hard-won benefits and powers suffered by American workers, there has been a ever closer examination by researchers on the decline of unions and real wages since the 1970's. This had resulted in a growing, 'itchy' sense in both researchers and workers that all was not 'ok' in the land of the free, and it's motherland of ideas, Great Britain...and likely including Spain, Greece, and several other nations at this point.

That question about the value and constitutional importance of workers, and the larger worker-middle class (80% of America) could be condensed into a broad question - 'exactly who is the American citizen, what place in American politics does a citizen have in today's America and especially in corporate-globalism, or global-corporatism (the two descriptors are now indistinct since the top-most power element after the 'Elite 1% is the corporate empire which is global and has come to control governments and global electoral processes...until BREXIT and Trump-ism..which caught the pundits, seated politicians and just about everyone else, including BREXIT and Trump supporters by surprise.

On BREXIT and Trump-ism: Not surprisingly, the very democratic principles that the corporate world had cleverly sought (successfully) to manipulate with the result of 'Citizens vs. United', also proved wonderfully robust enough to provide the victims of supposedly all-conquering corporatism with the supreme countervailing power, the referendum and (perhaps) the upcoming vote to elect the American President.

If Trump is not to be the next American President, at least the bells have been rung in this 2016 re-enactment of France's 1790s times of rolling Trumbrils and tumbling heads. Heads may not fall in America, hopefully at least not in reality, but again hopefully we will see balance created in the tug-of-war between the American citizen-worker and the corporate bloc.

Now the question is, 'are there ANY rights left to the worker-citizen?

'Brexit' (and Trumpism) seems to answer for the common folk in both countries, 'Well, one can't be certain where the citizen fits in these days but the common folk have shouted out they do not want to continue to lie in this bed of gross economic inequality.

The ground theme behind Brexit and Trumpism is a combination of lingering, media-romanticized feudalism, dog-whistle racism and habitual knee-bending worship of nobility and its modern equivalent, the corporate and wealthy elites. But why haven't Trumpism and BREXIT exploded before now?

First, Pericles21 challenges the idea that Trumpism and Brexit are original ideas and movements - Trump and Brexit are just terminal signs of a pot that has been building in temperature for several decades and now is exploding its lid.

Pericles21 also proposes that, once again, in America and as well in Great Britain, the roots of citizen passivity-until-eruption derive from the same source - the culturally-engrained, centuries-old, feudalist acceptance by the 'common folk' to be governed by their 'bettors', currently the all-mighty corporate citizens (white collar and those somewhat securely employed under that umbrella) and corporations themselves who in recent years have been given by governments and legal courts astounding recognitions and power in the form of the 'Gift of Beiing' as proferred on bended knee to the corporations by the American Supreme Court in the above-mentioned 'Citizens United' SCOTUS 2010 decision that gifted corporations with personhood.

This class fatalism can still be heard in direct or indirect form among back country, 'White', Scots-Irish-transplanted English folk in the Virginias, Carolinas, Georgia, ...and their generatios later descendants just about anywhere in the south-of-Dixie original states and especially in the family trees of the former Confederate states.

The modern form of this feudal 'inheritance', passivity in the face of corporate excesses, is not a good thing for a modern nation - this passivity is civically unhealthy, but it is ingrained and difficult to get rid of because it is a key theme of American culture that is still programmed into our group think in the iconic symbols of the 'suffering-with-pride', simple-living, uneducated heroes exampled by the Clampett's of television's'Beverly Hillbillys', the 1940's movies' 'Ma and Pa Kettle', ...and many other movie and television creations. These simple folk were held as American memes of truth and quality-of-life, in integrity, while material and social network quality-of life was preserved for their 'bettors', the corporate and upper classes.

This self-delusion had to (must) end and Trump is its voice. If Trump is not eleted President, let's hope that the next President anad Congress will have listened to what Trump's calling out is messaging, deep disatisfaction of the American working class, and implement programs to better the quality of life for the common folk of America (national health care, free college at least at the two-year level, national wage reviews, ...), modernize America's infrastructure to support the businesses of the next century (high-speed rail, national internet, space-resources exploration and mining systems development)

Election 2016: More On Trump - Who, What And Why (And Trump's Angry White Males Who Don't Need to Remain Angry)

Trump...Trump..trump...trump (clumsy, callous, 'mow em down' brutality of words, Asp-quick and cobra-venom of wit)...here he comes...run for your lives just about everyone who is not of a certain demographic - white male working class/blue collar/tea party...(but including Sarah Palin who is her own personal demographic).

Point by Pericles21 to be made further down:

it is likely that Trump is not leading a movement but is 'surfing' a socio-economic swell of disaffection that already existed for decades but just needed a channel (demagogue) to curl and break. Trump is that demagogue. But Trump just might wake up one morning (like the English Labour Party's quick backing away from it's 'Leaving' support only 4 days after the Brexit referendum) and realize that he is not really in control of his 'own' movement and that he could be run over and shoveled aside like road-kill when he becomes a known factor and, consequently, boring. Further, Trump's main constituency - disaffected, white male, working class, self entitled but job-threatened - have reasonably and with savviness found mutual, real sharing of self-interest in Bernie Sanders (thus refuting the lie about their lack of intelligence) Hopefully. Trump's base will find their new home in Elisabeth Warren, who Pericles21 champions as someone whose integrity and message are what America needs.

To be blunt,'Trumpism'is an American phenomenon - a pornography of the ego, typical American 'candy' - that appeals to the very large American population sector that has for several decades suffered serious ego-damage by loss of jobs through outsourcing, loss of real wages and a fair share of income and wealth ('inequality')and just being ignored. America has for decades abandoned the founding principle of the Common Good and turned the Constitution upside down from the rule of law, 'Lex Regis', to become in Trump, 'Rex Legis', the king is law. -

This post was drafted a week ago but things are happening fast in the world, beginning in Europe with the June 23 UK referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union. This is not a total surprise, but it is unexpected because economically the expectation is that Great Britain will suffer. Also, 'Leaving' doesn't appear to be in the best interests of the constituency most strongly supporting 'Leaving - the working class, the older and the less well-off who live outside the major urban hub of London - the statistics show the radically different degree of support between 'town and country', 'heeled and working' and of course the old 'them and us' racial divide. All of this was barely under the surface, with occasional outbreaks but constantly seething emotions regarded as just the hardly-quaint inability of certain neighborhoods (e.g., Brixton) to adapt to modern multi-culture, multi-nation cooperatives all based on supposedly mutual economic advantages. But, of course, as we have been jolted awake to recognize in the past several years, the vast bulk of economic advantages have gone to the top 5% of every population on the planet. In summary, the referendum paints a picture of Great Britain as a divided union that has been divided since the end of the second world war around 1945.

Why did the referendum turn out the way it did? The better question might be, 'Why did it take this long for the truth about England's ill-at-ease attitude to ward joining the European Union to come to a head? The answer is the referendum outcome is the culmination of a long-recognized drift towards a new global nationalism (Economic Jihadism) that threatens to break apart the European Union - additionally 5 to 7 other Eu countries might be expected to join England's exodus - along with similar disaffections in other treaty arrangement, and return that the planet to a kind of neo-colonial assemblage of distrusting trans-continental princedoms.

'Brexit' has happened. Ostensibly, England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) will proceed to implement June 23'rds referendum mandate to unlink from the European Union and go search for the holy grail of recovering Great Britain's (or at least working class England's) national virginity. This is not too much of an exaggeration and so is the resemblance to America's 'Trumpism' as revealed by the personal-declared alliance between Donald Trump and the assumed next Prime Minister - the right wing, super nationalist, Boris Johnson. Trump has also declared that part of his mission is to recover America's 'Greatness'.

Why is Brexit addended to this post? Because a possible Trump Presidency may mirror what will happen in the UK now that the 'voice of the people' has voted and prevailed.

So let us all pay careful attention to what will happen over the next few weeks in Great Britain. Will there be an 'exit contagion' of a copy-cat sort that will lead Scotland and Northern Ireland (who overall favored remaining in the EU) to leave Great Britain (i.e., leave formal ties with England who is now revealed as having a distinctly different national outlook on being a member of the EU)? Or will Scotland and Northern Ireland cast their lot with independence from the UK and remain with the EU?

What does this 'New Nationalism' movement have to do with Trumpism? The path of nationalism in England, and the potential break-up of te United Kingdom, may foretell the disruption that may occur in America resulting from a totally self-focused, self-centered Trump foreign policy and domestic primitiveness, a new Isolationism.

But back to Donald Trump.
'Trump' is a kind of anti-heroic villain. He is the natural spawn of an un-natural, sinful, evil, inhumane culmination of a century of rabid, run-wild, limitless greed and exploitation put upon the American people by Big Bucks interests and their puppets - bought and sold Washington politicians and leeches of both political parties.

A century of ripping off America - and principally America's working citizens - has resulted in a huge socio-economic imbalance of wealth and income. Currently 5% of American's population owns or earns as much as the other 95%. We have experienced three decades of declining real wages for working Americans. There has been a steady loss of sustaining manufacturing jobs because of off-shore outsourcing to cheap labor markets. Overall, with the rush to greater profits and no countervailing resistance to abandonment of common Americans in the 'lower'95%, there has been an overt, undisguised neglect of the Common Weal. This neglect is reflected in the erosion and abandonment of common weal principles - substantive work, access to education and health ('Obamacare' the only bright exception to this trend)...it goes on in sad, embarrassing sameness, example after example of rampant, capitalist greed and the raping of America - it's resources and people.

But here comes a hero, it seems, of the down-trodden. Trump the billionaire capitalist. 'What?' Billionaire? Isn't he the epitome of who and what has killed the American spirit and social contract? Yes, he is the epitome but he is still the hero of his class's antithesis.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of Trump is he doesn't hide anything but the truth. In other words Trump lies, or rather he 'mis-states' but without apology or offering self-corrections - and somehow, this sits pretty well with his constituency, the mostly male, white and working class American. Trump's message seems to be a 20016 version of McCluhanism where the medium is a given venue of the message but now the 'message' is not the words but how they are spoken. Trump's 'message' is not his words but the emotion and volume of his presentation...and his presentation and anger - even if his anger is mostly off-the-mark and (underneath it all) not serving the best interests of his white male, working class constituency - appears to be unscripted and genuine.

'Unscripted and Genuine' Are these tow attributes of Trump so rare in current America that what Trump's words say or not is just not that critical? Look at the picture. There is a billionaire, trust fund baby, having (apparently) made it bigger, leading a working class movement, although admittedly racist-driven in part. Why do Trump's supporters follow his lead so eagerly and strongly?

The answer is likely that Trump is not leading but is 'surfing' the swell that already existed but just needed a reason (demagogue) to break. Trump just might wake up one morning (like the English Labour Party's quick backing away from it's 'Leaving' support only 4 days after the referendum) and realize that he is not really in control of his 'own' movement and he is about to be run over and shoveled aside like road-kill.

In this respect, Trump has declared 'war' with the American media sector - and has offered them no quarter but to see it his way or get out of the way. Every lie, mis-statement and twisted curve of his psyche is laid open for all to see. And the Media and Democrats and alarmed Republicans indeed see it all. But wtf, it hasn't mattered one bit, Trump's aura protects him from harm and every arrow shot his way seems to look good leaving the bow but turns to dust as it nears his thick skin or is merely deflected straight back to the shooter.

Donald Trump is on the scene. The tension, the tension - it's 'Friday the 13th' every day now, but Trump is nastier, bigger and badder than Freddy ever was. And it will get nastier because the Republican party controllers who lost control are emerging from their cloudy confusion and weak-spined whining and are salivating in anticipation of the skullduggery tricks and dirty tactics they plan to dump on Trump at the Convention. 'Just wait' they are thinking, the GOP Convention will be the 'show of shows' for sure,...a shot-in-the-eye, kick-in-the-pants spectacle. But Pericles21 is betting that Trump and his thugs will turn the tables and complete the destruction of the Party. The Convention will be a debacle of violent emotions and violent retributions. And the worst of it will be a descent into Hell at the Convention will be what Trump's supporters want and will be proud of. The Trumpists need that kind of outlet for the rabid emotions Trump will generate as only he can.

But who, what and why is Trump?

A book review of Michael Kimmel's, 'Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era' (2013, Nation Books)

This review is from Hanna Rosin's NYTimes review of Michael Kimmels Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (Nation Books, 2013)
Kimmel's 'AWM' doesn't offer solutions but it very adequately explains the 'why's' of angry white men and this brings a kind of relief - at with understanding assisted by Kimmel, least there might be a beginning to a solution and resolution. Personally, from reading between the lines written by the author, there seems to be a 'forgotten' segment of American society, i.e., white men and specifically working class and under-employed (economically poor) white men. I say 'forgotten' because while virtually everyone else (minorities and women of all races) was being 'freed' and brought into equality, white men as a collective profile were regarded as the reference point against which new freedoms were and still are) measured. But we forgot to 'release'(reprogram with understanding and support) white men from the social programming that had entrapped them into their self-entitled (and too often self destructive) corner to begin with. Instead, our media messages from film to television continue to reinforce the idea of privileged, all-powerful, king-of-the-hill, American white males as the only white male worthy of respect - this is almost a criminal misleading of younger white males who must grow up and function in a very different world from the simplistic ones portrayed in the media. This continuing media image leads to dysfunctional self-expectations and acting out from frustration and confusion that the media profiles and formulae for masculine 'success' don't work. We can hope that books like 'AWM' will lead to educating younger generations of white males how to exist (happily) as co-inhabitants in a new America.