I think this review is still giving too much credence to what's basically a monocausal explanation of 'kids these days are the problem' for everything. That is, even if we grant that there was a shift towards meritocracy in college admissions (some of the other comments talk about it being more complicated than that, but I'm not that familiar with the topic):
* The transition towards simplified art - that is, more or less, modernist art - started in ~1900, not 1955.
* Postmodernism is closer to the correct timeframe, but it started in Europe. Furthermore, the concept of a meritocracy determined by standardized testing is *much* closer to High Modernism than premodern elites, and some serious explanation would be needed for this meritocratic elite to be the ones that turned against meritocracy.
* Whether or not 'starving artists' have vanished as a class, Fussell wasn't among their number, and the concept doesn't seem to much overlap with 'Class X'. (I do think ACX has a tendency towards over-cynicism in assuming that everything is signaling and that people have no honest interests. The vast majority of 'new elite' members do not enjoy whitewater rafting, and so they don't participate in whitewater rafting.)
* Conservatives have complained about the new generation lacking 'values' for the entirety of human history. The fact that they're also complaining now really doesn't require explanation.
The connection with political polarization, though, does seem like it may be related - if the same elites ran both parties, it makes sense that their policies weren't that different. Of course, polarization very much is a cycle. Then again, the dominance of the Old Establishment wasn't eternal either, and the late 19th century seems like very much a period that also followed a different elite (the agrarian slaveholding elite, maybe corresponding to the 'Cavaliers') losing much of their elite status. So maybe there's something there - cycles of elite competition and all that. (Though searching for cycles in history is generally a matter of finding patterns in random noise, and I'm not entirely convinced Turchin's work is different.)
I think this review is still giving too much credence to what's basically a monocausal explanation of 'kids these days are the problem' for everything. That is, even if we grant that there was a shift towards meritocracy in college admissions (some of the other comments talk about it being more complicated than that, but I'm not that familiar with the topic):
* The transition towards simplified art - that is, more or less, modernist art - started in ~1900, not 1955.
* Postmodernism is closer to the correct timeframe, but it started in Europe. Furthermore, the concept of a meritocracy determined by standardized testing is *much* closer to High Modernism than premodern elites, and some serious explanation would be needed for this meritocratic elite to be the ones that turned against meritocracy.
* Whether or not 'starving artists' have vanished as a class, Fussell wasn't among their number, and the concept doesn't seem to much overlap with 'Class X'. (I do think ACX has a tendency towards over-cynicism in assuming that everything is signaling and that people have no honest interests. The vast majority of 'new elite' members do not enjoy whitewater rafting, and so they don't participate in whitewater rafting.)
* Conservatives have complained about the new generation lacking 'values' for the entirety of human history. The fact that they're also complaining now really doesn't require explanation.
The connection with political polarization, though, does seem like it may be related - if the same elites ran both parties, it makes sense that their policies weren't that different. Of course, polarization very much is a cycle. Then again, the dominance of the Old Establishment wasn't eternal either, and the late 19th century seems like very much a period that also followed a different elite (the agrarian slaveholding elite, maybe corresponding to the 'Cavaliers') losing much of their elite status. So maybe there's something there - cycles of elite competition and all that. (Though searching for cycles in history is generally a matter of finding patterns in random noise, and I'm not entirely convinced Turchin's work is different.)