Why I Like Yuppies.

I was thinking the other day that Europe really doesn't have yuppies, instead they have the bouergeoisie (at least that's what I saw in the Netherlands, if I had to use one word to describe whole swathes of the nation, I would use the word "bourgeois").

To my mind, the difference is that yuppies know they're trying to be chi-chi, while the bourgeios just are it - and, therefore, at least the Americans are working with this idea that they're coming from some sort of common background, even if they're trying to get past it or ignore it.

And thus, even when this idea that you come from a common background is being stifled, it nevertheless can often be a starting point for certain beneficial sympathies that are helpful for a society: niceness to outsiders, for example, or a certain sort of populism.

(When I've heard the Dutch defend their social welfare system, they usually say it makes economic sense or something business-y and transactional like that, I've never really heard them justify it on humanitarian grounds.)

The poor Dutch, I really do think they're constitutionally incapable of a kind of genuine empathy, and it's their national culture that did it to them.