The Ash Twins Blog

According to this excerpted interview with Janine Roberts, author of Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel, diamond monopolist De Beers invented the tradition of a diamond engagement ring:

Diamonds became engagement stones around the end of the recession. Ernest Oppenheimer, who was in control of De Beers in the 1930s, was shutting down diamond mines to control supply and keep the price of diamonds high. He sent his son Harry to New York to meet with advertisers, because he realized that he couldn’t have diamonds being bought up just by rich people. They needed something that would appeal to everyone.

Well, everyone has to get engaged. So they spent a million pounds a year (about $1.7 million) to establish the diamond engagement ring as a sacrament — a spiritual thing. “Diamonds are forever.” They invented that and advertised it at every high school at the time. They got Paramount Studios involved by having the female stars wearing diamonds and by creating diamonds films. Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and such. That advertising campaign created the myth.

This is an epic example of the power of advertising. De Beers invented a social norm requiring newlyweds to purchase an expensive diamond ring from De Beers. As of today, what was once an advertisement has become an institution of American culture, and its status as consumer manipulation is invisible. Even worse for us (but even better for De Beers), the manipulation has become self-enforcing: With the myth internalized, the receipt of a diamond engagement ring is rewarded with verbal approval, while the absence of a diamond engagement ring is punished by verbal disapproval and gossip.

David Barstow at the New York Times recently published a great article on the “Tea Party” movement. One of the interesting things, which might just be a product of Barstow’s reporting choices, is that elderly women are some of the most important activists in the movement:

As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama.

“I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm. . . .

He felt compelled to do something, so he decided to start a chapter of Mr. Beck’s 9/12 Project. He reserved a room at a pizza parlor for a Glenn Beck viewing party and posted the event on Craigslist. “We had 110 people there,” Mr. Stevens said. He recalled looking around the room and thinking, “All these people — they agree with me.”

Leah Southwell’s turning point came when she stumbled on Mr. Paul’s speeches on YouTube. (“He blew me away.”) Until recently, Mrs. Southwell was in the top 1 percent of all Mary Kay sales representatives, with a company car and a frenetic corporate life. “I knew zero about the Constitution,” Mrs. Southwell confessed. Today, when asked about her commitment to the uprising, she recites a line from the Declaration of Independence, a Tea Party favorite: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” . . .

[Tea Party author Richard Mack] said he has found audiences everywhere struggling to make sense of why they were wiped out last year. These audiences, he said, are far more receptive to critiques once dismissed as paranoia. It is no longer considered all that radical, he said, to portray the Federal Reserve as a plaything of the big banks — a point the Birch Society, among others, has argued for decades.

People are more willing, he said, to imagine a government that would lock up political opponents, or ration health care with “death panels,” or fake global warming. And if global warming is a fraud, is it so crazy to wonder about a president’s birth certificate?

“People just do not trust any of this,” Mr. Mack said. “It’s not just the fringe people anymore. These are just ordinary people — teachers, bankers, housewives.” . . .

A popular T-shirt at Tea Party rallies reads, “Proud Right-Wing Extremist.” . . .

[66-year-old Tea Party organizer Pam] Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

A lot of the anger in the Tea Party movement stems from the mass political voicelessness imposed by the two-party political system. The Republicans and Democrats are often in agreement on issues that many people have highly divergent views about. Meanwhile, voting for a third-party candidate often helps the mainstream candidate that is farther away from you ideologically. I have a limited knowledge of the history in this area, but it seems like right-wing third-party movements have been more successful and durable in American politics. This phenomenon is counterintuitive to the extent that  right-wing attitudes are associated with authoritarian attitudes, which would predict support among right-wing individuals for the extant political hierarchy.