{"id":165579,"date":"2025-12-21T07:53:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T15:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165579"},"modified":"2025-12-21T07:58:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T15:58:38","slug":"the-lost-generation-in-the-age-of-conservative-claims-of-cultural-oppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165579","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Generation In The Age Of Conservative Claims Of Cultural Oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob Savage\u2019s essay “The Lost Generation<\/a>” argues that a cohort of white male millennials in creative and academic fields (journalism, TV writing, academia) has been systematically “lost”\u2014sacrificed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates that accelerated around 2014. Savage contends that while older white male elites (Boomers and Gen X) retained their power, the entry-level and mid-career doors were shut on younger white men, who found themselves facing structural barriers and opaque hiring processes that explicitly disfavored them.<\/p>\n

Rony Guldmann\u2019s books, Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression<\/a> and The Star Chamber of Stanford<\/a>, add significant theoretical and psychological depth to Savage\u2019s sociological observation. They provide a philosophical framework to understand why this exclusion happens, how it is rationalized by the perpetrators, and what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a culture that denies its own hostility.<\/p>\n

Here is how Guldmann\u2019s works add depth to the essay:<\/p>\n

1. The Theory of the “Progressive Clerisy” and Institutional Control<\/p>\n

The Essay: Savage describes a world where gatekeepers in media, Hollywood, and academia act in lockstep to enforce new identity-based norms, effectively shutting out a specific demographic regardless of individual merit.<\/p>\n

Guldmann\u2019s Depth (Conservative Cultural Oppression): Guldmann theorizes this network of gatekeepers as the “Progressive Clerisy”\u2014a secular priesthood comprised of elites in academia, media, and bureaucracy. He argues that this Clerisy does not wield power through direct force but through “persuading, instructing and regulating” social norms. Guldmann\u2019s work explains that what Savage observes is not just a series of HR decisions but the operation of a “hero-system”. Liberalism, according to Guldmann, is a covert religion that derives its spiritual meaning from “rising above” the benighted (in this case, the “privileged” white male) to champion the oppressed. The exclusion Savage describes is the ritual sacrifice required to maintain the Clerisy\u2019s moral self-image.<\/p>\n

2. “Plausible Deniability” and Gaslighting<\/p>\n

The Essay: Savage notes a disconnect between the official narrative\u2014that DEI is a “benign practice” meant to be fair\u2014and the lived reality of his subjects, who feel “the world is… deliberately rooting against you”. His subjects often feel crazy or bitter, wondering if they simply weren’t good enough, even as they see less qualified peers advancing.<\/p>\n

Guldmann\u2019s Depth (The Star Chamber of Stanford): Guldmann\u2019s memoir is a case study in exactly this dynamic. He describes being “gaslighted” by an institution (Stanford Law) that suffocated his career while denying it was doing anything of the sort. Guldmann argues that liberal institutions specialize in “plausible deniability”. They maintain a facade of neutral, meritocratic procedures while informally enforcing a strict ideological conformity. Guldmann\u2019s concept of the “unofficial reality”\u2014a shadow set of rules that everyone knows but no one admits\u2014perfectly articulates the “invisible curriculum” and “different hiring schemes” Savage\u2019s subjects encounter.<\/p>\n

3. The Mechanism of “Liberal Privilege”<\/p>\n

The Essay: Savage highlights a generational divide: older white men (like the provost who implemented Brown’s diversity plan before leaving for Apple) get to be the benevolent architects of diversity, while millennial white men pay the price.<\/p>\n

Guldmann\u2019s Depth: Guldmann introduces the concept of “liberal privilege”. He argues that elite liberals are privileged because their values are treated as the neutral default, allowing them to engage in “sublimated and intellectualized” forms of exclusion that would be condemned as bigotry if practiced by others. The “Star Chamber” effect Guldmann describes is a mechanism of this privilege: it allows the elite to preserve their own status (“symbolic capital”) by displacing the costs of their morality onto a designated scapegoat. In Savage\u2019s case, the “Lost Generation” serves as the scapegoat that allows the older elite to purchase moral absolution without sacrificing their own positions.<\/p>\n

4. The “Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges”<\/p>\n

The Essay: Savage\u2019s subjects are described as possessing “dangerous” or “hopeless” interests\u2014like the student interested in Roman military history who is deemed unemployable because his topic is “white and European and male and dead”.<\/p>\n

Guldmann\u2019s Depth: Guldmann frames this as an “insurrection of subjugated knowledges”. He argues that the liberal “civilizing process” seeks to extirpate “atavistic” or “pre-modern” impulses\u2014traits often coded as masculine, aggressive, or traditional. By Guldmann\u2019s logic, the exclusion Savage describes is not just about demographics but about extinguishing a specific type of consciousness or “way of being” that the liberal ethos finds intolerable. The “Lost Generation” is “lost” because they embody a “Constitution of the Self” (e.g., the “rough-and-ready” or “ornery” American) that the “Star Chamber” of modern culture is designed to filter out.<\/p>\n

Savage\u2019s essay documents the crime: the systemic immiseration of a specific demographic to satisfy institutional mandates. Guldmann\u2019s books provide the motive and the weapon: they explain that this is a “religious” purge carried out by a “Clerisy” that uses “plausible deniability” to frame its sectarian power grabs as neutral progress. Guldmann reveals that the “Lost Generation” is not just a victim of bad timing, but the necessary “Other” against which the modern liberal identity defines its own virtue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacob Savage\u2019s essay “The Lost Generation” argues that a cohort of white male millennials in creative and academic fields (journalism, TV writing, academia) has been systematically “lost”\u2014sacrificed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates that accelerated around 2014. Savage contends … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,42933],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-rony-guldmann"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t