07-24-2020, 11:32 PM
(07-24-2020, 03:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(07-21-2020, 12:40 AM)Mickey123 Wrote: During the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, a number of groups, civil rights, feminists, anti-war, and others, all found they were united by a single goal - to smash the Establishment. They've never stopped trying.
Not quite. Many of them used the Establishment -- the courts, the media, and academia -- to promote their goals. It is now anything but Establishment to express overt racism, male chauvinism, or a desire for aggressive war. The Establishment is much more flexible than you give it credit for being.
Quote:But what was once the ideology of a small number of radical leftists has become a cancer infecting the West, a belief system designed to destroy Western culture and societies by turning everyone against one another and in particular against anything that makes society strong and functional. Referred to at times as "cultural marxism" or "woke culture", the essence of it is that society consists of a power struggle between oppressor groups and the oppressed. Men oppress women, whites oppress other races, Christians oppress non-Christians, the wealthy oppress the working class, the able oppress the disabled, and so on.
Like most people I am far more tolerant of "cultural" expressions of Marxism, which are basically Marxist coloration of existing models of Western culture. "Cultural" Marxism does not create proletarian revolutions. If you want to know what promotes such revolutions, then I have a list of characteristics that make such a revolution possible:
1. early stages of industrial development in which the proletariat experiences severe danger, regimentation, dislocation, neglect, and disappointment resulting from mass poverty associated with such a level of development
2. incompetent or corrupt political leadership that profiteers from mass suffering
3. the absence of democracy as workers have no say in politics and cannot find political allies in pro-labor parties or factions within parties In the plutocracies in such places any dissent with the order is shoved to the underground, where extremists become increasingly violent in rhetoric and conspiratorial in character
4. emphasis on anything other than consumer goods in the economy -- basically people are working, but what they produce can never improve their lives. Emphasis on heavy industry, luxury exports, or weaponry might accelerate development without improving the lot of workers.
5. excessive concentration of industrial activity in a few places -- there may be huge numbers of cheap labor where the economic activity is, but that also means mass misery and large numbers of people amenable to crude Marxist propaganda because they have nothing to lose.
Marxist regimes do not appear in places in which democratic norms allow people to assemble for redress of grievances and social reformers can achieve majorities in the legislature or where industrial development begins with cottage industries. Mohandas Gandhi knew what he was doing when he promoted small-scale spinning of textiles.
6. the breakdown of traditional society -- an inevitability, but those societies that depend upon maximal profitability by keeping people on the brink of starvation, sweating and abusing them, are most likely to find themselves in catastrophes such as military debacles from which they cannot recover.
If you want to know what really causes Marxism it is the mirror-image Marxism of economic elites entrenched in irresponsible power who agree with a Marxist stereotype on how capitalist society is organized and then endorse and enforce such. The difference between such people and Marxists is that Marxists see such as an abomination as well as a reality.
Marxism-Leninism, the consequence of such horror as existed in Russia just over a century ago, China or Vietnam nearly a century ago, colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique, Nicaragua under the Somoza clique, and Ethiopia in the latter years of its Solomonic dynasty, does not succeed because of alienated intellectuals looking for something to salve the emptiness of their lives and finding Marx. It arises from mass suffering that makes obvious that anything is better -- and that Marxism-Leninism offers more.
Quote:The goal of this is to tear society apart by putting everyone in conflict with everyone else. As nearly every person will find himself belonging to both oppressor and oppressed groups, therefore everyone is simultaneously destructive and evil, as well as a helpless victim of others, who can only solve his problems when the oppressors above him somehow stop oppressing him.
Completely wrong except for the White Power types who see anyone non-white and non-Christian as a blot upon what used to be a "Christian white man's country". Despite being as different from each other as they are from white people, America's model minorities are practically in lockstep with each other politically. Contrary to what one might expect from the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East, American Jews and Arab-American vote largely alike.Intermarriage between them might be rare and cultural differences between them can be profound, but they all recognize a shared enemy in the White Power types.
OK, I am a white man, but as a German-American I understand those White Power types all too well. I went through a phase in which I was fascinated with the culture of great Germans... and it is quite rich, and it is something that one never abandons. I also found out one thing that I had no desire to adopt from German history. I recognized that many of those Germans were Jews, and many who fled Germany for being Jewish brought much of their German culture with them.
If I ever had to choose between being a Jew and a Nazi (an unlikely choice unless in a scenario that I could imagine on Judgment Day I would choose to be a Jew. I would need make neither cultural nor moral compromises to be a Jew. I despise killers, thieves, exploiters, sadists, liars, and torturers.
The model minorities have a few things in common: respect for formal learning, faith in business formation, acceptance of solid family life as a necessity, rejection of criminality and violence of any form, and adherence to democracy as the only viable means of operating a society that has room for competent people with differences. Hey! Deal me in!
Quote:As the left has, over time, essentially won the culture wars and taken over the media almost entirely, it has become ever more authoritarian, as authoritarians are drawn to positions of power. In the hands of left authoritarians, this ideology is entirely destructive. The left hates men, hates white people, hates capitalism, and in fact hates the west altogether. (All of this despite the fact that many of these left authoritarians are white males)
The left-wing cultural wars petered out in the 1970's as the Establishment showed its willingness to compromise. The Establishment is at times more pragmatic than you might expect. It's when parts of Corporate America tried to use mass resentments against educated people as objects of contempt for their alleged exploitation and humiliation that we had a virulent culture war. A placard that says "The Zoo has an African Lion; the White House has a Lyin' African" exemplifies such. The cultural war this time is between the well-educated and the ignoramuses. Ignoramuses ultimately lose unless they get some despotic patron. Trump offered himself as such, and we are in a Crisis until at the least this hideous man is out of office.
Get this clear: this time the Left (as you describe them) is using the tools of Western civilization against a would-be tyrant who shows little influence upon his life from the glories of that civilization. Despite his privileged background and his great wealth, Trump exemplifies the low end of American life, the sort that a solid education ideally compels one to see as inadequate. A good life is far more than bureaucratic power, material indulgence, cheap thrills, admiration by callow people, and "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll". Service, principles, culture, literacy... not consorting with mobsters and whores.
Quote:Liberals are almost entirely unaware that any of this is going on. They had for a long time viewed themselves in a conflict with conservatives, and still view cultural conflicts from this viewpoint. They have completely failed to notice that they now stand in the middle between conservatives on the right, and left authoritarians. This is primarily because all of the positions of the authoritarian left are designed to appear to be liberal positions. The left is anti-male, but masquerades as feminist, the left hates whites but masquerades as champions of civil rights.
The traditional sort of conservative is now off the scene, marginalized, or co-opted. That sort of conservative was a fallback in the event that radical reforms went awry or if the culture spiraled into anarchy. Tradition in part or whole offers a ready alternative against new and ill-founded ideas. Consider that until a couple decades ago it was commonplace for liberals to blame crime on poverty when the real cause is bad character. To be sure, poverty merits alleviation due to its destructive dehumanization, but there have always been plenty of good people in the most deprived ghettos, barrios, and Reservations. It may have been an ironic consequence that such a view of crime that poverty creates it creates in itself a fear of poor people and a hopelessness of improving a lot. Such a 'social organizer' as Barack Obama had to find out whom he could trust and whom he couldn't if he were not to get knifed by a pimp or drug pusher.
We liberals rediscovered that character matters greatly, and we use that rediscovered knowledge against someone who has had all the advantages of life except for character. Yes, Donald Trump.
Quote:Liberals believe in freedom of speech, the authoritarian left is utterly opposed to it. Liberals believe that people are innocent until proven guilty in a proper court of law, the left believes in mob justice. Liberals want a healthy functioning society, the left wants to destroy society.
Finally you recognize that liberals are not Marxist-Leninists. Did I accuse a conservative of the past such as Bob Dole of being a fascist?
Quote:While most of those pushing woke culture don't have any sense of an overall goal to what they're doing, there is a goal, which is the old traditional goal the far left has always had, socialist revolution. Once the west is utterly broken down and everything it once stood for destroyed, the way is paved for the glorious socialist utopia, which will of course be a nightmarish police state, similar to the Soviet Union or communist China.
Police state? Just look at what Donald Trump is trying to inflict upon America! Just look at his contempt for anyone who dissents with him. Look at his demagoguery and his willingness to exploit superstition and anger.
With a slight modification of a quip by Benjamin Franklin
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/benjamin_franklin_136955
I could replace "temporary safety" with material comfort or economic gain and it would still be true.
Quote:The west is in the middle of a cultural collapse, with western values almost completely destroyed, leaving nothing but tolerance and diversity, which are by themselves the absence of values. We have no values and so invite in anyone else who still does, and we tolerate everyone because we have no values of our own to uphold.
No, it is not in such a collapse. People are sorting things out with the expectation of a wholesome synthesis that pleases far more people. Such will still require the freedom of cultural identity.
Quote:To bring this topic to the subject of this message board, all of this is coming to a climax, and soon. The left's ideology of oppression cannot persist into the next High. It will either be destroyed in the general coming together of society, or it will be destroyed after the socialist revolution succeeds and anyone who dares to criticize any aspect of the new society is killed.
We need to get through this Crisis Era if our next Awakening Era is not to become a failure because a brutal, authoritarian elite successfully quashes it in the name of a perverse tradition of despotic power, class privilege, and pre-modern orthodoxy. There will be no socialist revolution... and if anything I have more cause to fear a new America that sees Donald Trump as a permanent break from "America before Trump". That is more like fascism than like Marxism-Leninism.
Quote:Liberals are not aware of the rise of the authoritarian left, but conservatives are extremely aware of it. They have identified the enemy and are preparing to do battle against them. On the one side, a possible fascist remaking of society to purge the cancer and reassert traditional values, on the other side, a death cult intent on destroying the west and creating the worst police state the world has ever seen. And liberals stand in the middle between the two, oblivious to it all, living under the illusion that they have almost perfected society, if they could just clear out a few nagging remnants of the old ways.
The Authoritarian Left collapsed except in Cuba and North Korea, and it is shaky in Venezuela. China and Vietnam maintained the symbolism of the long-past revolution while abandoning Marxist theory. As for traditional values, however one defines them, those often give a pretext for significant left-wing reforms. An example: I became for gay rights once I was gay-bashed because I recognized that institutional protection for homosexuals would make life safer for me even if I am not a homosexual. The problem wasn't that I failed to prove to the gay-basher that I am straight; the problem is that the gay-basher who threatened severe bodily harm against me could do so to anyone. I came to the recognition that the old conservative virtue of law and order mandated LGBT rights. Groups differing by creed, ethnicity, and linguistic origin have different ideas on what the traditional values are, at least in cultural identity and the values of those groups are just as valid as my conception of traditional values. Lebanese and Lithuanian tradition are just as valid in America.
As for Confederate paraphernalia going down... maybe a Confederate flag does not mean quite the same thing to blacks what a Nazi swastika means to Jews... we can live without either symbol, can we not? Statues of Confederate political and military war heroes? I have mixed feelings on Robert E. Lee, who at least told former Confederates to abandon any dreams of recovering the Old Way of Life to the extent that it implied chattel slavery or the oppression of blacks.. there were plenty of analogues to him in Germany, Italy, and Japan. But other than he, a Confederate statue (typically erected around 1915, fifty years after the war had ended and probably as no coincidence when the horrible Second Ku Klux Klan emerged can have this message for a black child:
This man is a hero for defending the enslavement of your black ancestors with the expenditure of great treasure acquired from your ancestors' toil and plenty of cannon fodder of poor white rendered into pawns in the defense of chattel slavery. White Southerners still recognize the Confederacy as a noble cause and might even consider putting you, a black person, back in the appointed place in which they once had your black ancestors.
...Even if the stereotypical heritage of Southern blacks is still artificial (read David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed for that observation, and Hackett-Fischer recognizes slave-descended culture as extremely creative and thus meritorious as that heritage is completely separated forcibly from any African heritage), it is as valid as yours.
For the sake of us all those statues need be removed.
Of course the West is in the middle of a cultural collapse. This is the essence of what the Unravelling is. It's the death of the old First Turning culture, which then must be replaced with something, but there's nothing to replace it with. A Crisis is then necessary to reform society and create a new culture.
The last Awakening was in my mind the most intense we've seen in our history, and it's led to a unusually extreme unravelling. What you're seeing all around us is cultural collapse, you just don't recognize it as such. This is because you, and liberals in general, misinterpret everything going on as some sort of step in the direction of liberalism.
Liberals see the Black Lives Matter movement and they think it's a liberal movement. They think it is about standing up for black lives. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with that. It's part of the general effort going on to break society down. The media carries out a continuous nonstop drum beat of "racism racism racism racism" all day every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, to turn people against each other. The message is non stop, whites are racist, whites are racist, whites are racist, the problems of blacks are caused by racism, racism is the worst thing in the world, whites are racist, blacks can never get ahead, the U.S. is racist, whites are privileged, the police are racist, and so on and so on endlessly.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and other western nations are probably the least racist countries in the world, at the least racist time in modern memory. But you would never know that to watch or read the news, as reporters scour the country looking for any misconduct by a white policeman against someone black, or any white person to have inappropriately called the police on someone black.
Why would a society carry out such a self destructive and self loathing campaign as this? None of this is in any way intended to help black people (or other racial or religious minorities), it is intended to keep them feeling angry and helpless. Telling people that all their problems are caused by someone else, and that this group has all the power over them and is evil and destructive, all of this disempowers people - as it's intended to.
Meanwhile, liberals mistake all of this for some legitimate attempt to help blacks and to improve society. "Black lives matter", who could disagree with that? Racism is bad, and police brutality is bad, and people communicating about their issues is good, it all sounds so liberal, if you aren't paying attention to the bigger picture.
To address one of the other points, you say, "the Left (as you describe them) is using the tools of Western civilization against a would-be tyrant who shows little influence upon his life from the glories of that civilization". I'll repeat my statement that you, as a liberal, mistakenly believe that the conflict going on in society is between the liberal left and the authoritarian right. Meanwhile, what's actually happening is an ever growing authoritarian left bent on destroying society, versus an authoritarian right which is just about to conclude that seizing power and arresting all their political opponents is the only way forward. With liberals in the middle between the two, thinking they're the left.
The insanity you see on the right is one side of the coin, matched by the insanity of the left.
You will never move forward by defeating Trump, because we've reached a point of collapse. There is no return to stability. Every move by any side destabilizes the whole system further. Attack Trump successfully, and you strengthen the left, which further strengthens the resolve of the right. If Trump wins the election, the left will come back and attack 10 times as hard, and states may begin openly defying the federal government. If he loses, he may likely attempt to seize power.
I can't predict how all of this is going to turn out. But you will never understand anything that's happening if you mistakenly think that the left is liberal, and if you fail to see the ever spreading cancer that has taken over much of leftist thinking.
