The Truth About Radical Christians
Some of the comments on YouTube concerning this spoof were from people who did not know it was a spoof, or who nodded and agreed that "USA does have a real problem with christian identity groups and superpatriot groups committing terrorism ( Read more... )
Pierre Trudeau coined the phrase "sleeping with the elephant" to describe Canada's experience of being America's national neighbour; i.e., no matter how benign the elephant you still watched its movements very nervously. It occurs to me that this could extend to an additional metaphor for the conflict: Even if you have a lot of poisonous snakes in your town, it's not unreasonable to think trying to kill them by starting an elephant stampede is a counterproductive strategy.
(I would have more sympathy for this viewpoint if the people arguing it, to extend the metaphor, didn't also furiously resist any attempt to lay traps {someone innocent might step in one}, observe the snakes to find their nests {that might violate some innocent lizard's rights}, or destroy the nests once found {those nests are on someone else's property}.)
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When in fact, just in identity-politics leftism, you've got sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, heternormativeness, and classism, as concerns. And the relegation of economic concerns to the Far Left is absurd; moderate liberals are going to be concerned about a mix of economic egalitarianism and reasonable concerns about racism, sexism, and homophobia, plus secularism, without being Marxist or otherwise extreme... and even people further to the left can usually juggle more than one more extreme lens at the same time.
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I think Mr. Wright's point would probably be that the issues you all identify as separate concerns actually, in practice, all turn out to be superficial variant labels for one basic underlying drive: the overthrow of one particular group seen as the source-of-all-evil Oppressor.
Viz. the general lack of attention or concern on the Left for, say, the sexism or homophobia in young black machismo culture or many Third World cultures, or the misogyny still prevalent in a significant portion of gay men, or the fundamental incompatibility of Muslim shari'a law with the Western model of women's rights. None of these things are seen as a concern compared with the need to destabilize and diminish the perceived dominance of the White Straight Male Christian Upper-Middle-Class Patriarchy.
Mr. Wright's use of the "racism" label to identify this drive just seemed to me to be using the most common form of it as a shorthand label for the whole.
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The "lack of concern" is false; concern with women under sharia or black homophobia is there. It may be not as consistent, or as visible; some leftists may get distracted by multiculturalism. But the condition of women in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, or the obscene anti-gay laws in Uganda? Yeah, we care.
OTOH most politics is local, and the various things you list, while bad, aren't primary practical problems for an American liberal, especially a white one. American women, gays, and blacks all still face problems, despite improvements, so leftists aren't going to stop fighting for their rights.
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It would not do to be seen to betray the movement. The line is thin and everything on the other side is enemy; there is no forgiveness for those who stray over it. The shunning is immediate; only rapid self-criticism and abasement can help, after a suitable period of penance - and that only if the transgression is not too great.
Yes, the condition of women in Saudi Arabia or gays in Uganda is not optimal; so far we are on safe ground. We can care about them - it is all very right. BUT we cannot forget the "but", or "OTOH".
Imagine that we proposed some concrete measure to give meaning to our care; some boycott in the grand tradition of boycotting South Africa. It is not too much - South Africa was far away also.
Imagine that one of us - not me, surely - suggested eg stopping all immigration from Arab countries until Islam changes their misogynist attitude; a moderate sanction, one can say.
On second thought, perhaps better let us imagine no such things; in fact, I disagree with that idea myself already.
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Coincidentally I ran today across this which seems far more to the point. Lind notes that just as the GOP is currently an uneasy alliance of neoconservatives, libertarians, and the religious right (with their own subdivisions; evangelicals have little love for Mormons or Catholics), so the Democrats can be seen as neoliberals, New Dealers, and Greens.
And, I'd note, other divisions among activists based on primary (not sole) concern: women's rights, gay rights, trans rights (sometimes at odds with gay activists), health care reformers, prison reformers, drug legalizers, labor activists, civil libertarians... No tiers, no single movement, just people, with overlapping concerns and a loose alliance, but also differences, if only in priority.
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The lowest tier (we can call it exoteric tier) is scientific - but it is about scientism, not science. Those are economists, Darwinists, etc. They are allowed to attack religion, esp. creationism. Economists have the important function of proving why the leadership must get more money. They are divided into two groups: free market, which wants to give money to banks, insurers etc, and socialist, which wants to give money to the government directly.
The second tier is about morality. It is a specific kind of morality, however - Utopian morality. This tier, in contrast to the exoteric first, is firmly esoteric. It was traditionally represented by Churches - Pietists, Universalists etc. At present, it is still religious on the Right Wing, but on Left wing it was very successfully secularised into enviromentalism, antiracism, feminism, and other causes.
The morality of the tier is utopian, because its starts with the assumption that Reality is fundamentally NICE. All people are equally talented, all religions are deep down the same, and are about progressive improvement of society (this is religious version, of course), punishment is entirely unnecessary, etc. Anyone who tries to oppose that vision of morality is immoral. The superiority of the Utopian Morality tier to the Scientism tier was proved decisively in a brave experiment by Watson, atheist discoverer of DNA. He ignorantly suggested, that in his amateurish view DNA made some people less intelligent; what is worse, those less intelligent people had often black skin. Obviously, any suggestion that Reality is not Nice is ipso facto pseudo-science, and must be treated accordingly. Sound scientific arguments, primarily a witch-hunt in mass-media and cutting off his funding, made Watson see the light, but it was too late for him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/science/19watson.html
http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=77
On the other hand, Larry Summers proved to be an astute politician, and despite his mistaken suggestion that there is few female geniuses in mathematics because there is few female geniuses in mathematics, by immediate and heartfelt self-criticism and support of Obama he managed to restore his good name. But feminism is as nothing compared to antiracism, so his sin was not so bad.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/01/19/harvard_womens_group_rips_summers/
Both those tiers are self-refuting. Scientism has no way to prove that scientific method is correct, and Utopian moralism has no way by itself to decide what is really Nice and would made a Nice Utopia. That is why Conservatives, who generally dislike thinking, are entirely satisfied with them.
The third tier, although much less known, is the basis on which this whole construction is based. I call this tier Gnostic. It is often called postmodern, poststructuralist, deconstructionist etc. It is rather difficult to understand it, since it protects itself against the criticism of profanes by using obscure language. But when translated into plain English, its message is surprisingly simple.
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A good starting point to understanding the third tier is an astoundingly insightful article in Economist.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108593
The idea of progress
Onwards and upwards
Dec 17th 2009
THE best modern parable of progress was, aptly, ahead of its time. In 1861 Imre Madach published “The Tragedy of Man”, a “Paradise Lost” for the industrial age. The verse drama, still a cornerstone of Hungarian literature, describes how Adam is cast out of the Garden with Eve, renounces God and determines to recreate Eden through his own efforts. “My God is me,” he boasts, “whatever I regain is mine by right. This is the source of all my strength and pride.”
Adam gets the chance to see how much of Eden he will “regain”. He starts in Ancient Egypt and travels in time through 11 tableaux, ending in the icebound twilight of humanity. It is a cautionary tale. Adam glories in the Egyptian pyramids, but he discovers that they are built on the misery of slaves. So he rejects slavery and instead advances to Greek democracy. But when the Athenians condemn a hero, much as they condemned Socrates, Adam forsakes democracy and moves on to harmless, worldly pleasure. Sated and miserable in hedonistic Rome, he looks to the chivalry of the knights crusader. Yet each new reforming principle crumbles before him. Adam replaces 17th-century Prague’s courtly hypocrisy with the rights of man. When equality curdles into Terror under Robespierre, he embraces individual liberty-which is in turn corrupted on the money-grabbing streets of Georgian London. In the future a scientific Utopia has Michelangelo making chair-legs and Plato herding cows, because art and philosophy have no utility. At the end of time, having encountered the savage man who has no guiding principle except violence, Adam is downcast-and understandably so. Suicidal, he pleads with Lucifer: “Let me see no more of my harsh fate: this useless struggle.”
The writer shows a series of failed utopias. and solutions to all problems:
- changing language,
- nationalism and Nazism (which are, of course, one and the same). (incidentally, I think this is a first mainstream acknowledgment of Hitler as a progressive).
-socialism and collectivism under the command of elightened elite
-science
-economic growth (money does not give happiness).
And, at the end there comes the final, SUCCESSFUL and right utopia - what I called above Utopian Moralism.
Now, it is easy to notice that the whole history of Western civilisation is a series of attempt to build utopia. Those utopias are growing more and more dangerous, separating the Western man from authentic being. This is (of course, very unclearly - it is a point of honour) explained by Heidegger in "The Question concerning technology"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology
http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html
It is also explained much more clearly, and quite independently, in an important essay of Matt Beck:
http://manofthewest2000.blogspot.com/2009/03/leibnizian-rebuttal-to-kurzweils.html
You must remember that Heidegger is very much right. West IS suffering from serial utopianism, and it MUST be stopped before it destroys the world or it itself. The problem is quite difficult - but the solution of the Third Tier is simple, if radical. The western civilisation must be destroyed, and destroyed totally. Language must be made meaningless - in fact, it must be proved to have been meaningless all along. Technology must be used to destroy technology, by way of poetry - see Avatar, a successful application of that theory.
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In addition, it does not have to rely on fickle ethusiasm. Even amongst true believers, few would be willing to make sacrifices merely in order to destroy. There were some Nihilists, but they were earlier, when ideology was much more potent; and anyway they were Russians.
But the postmodern solution is better. It does not require any sacrifices at all. It gives the elite justification to do what it wants to do anyway.
You want to steal billions and destroy the national economy in the process? Gaia sic vult!
You want to block the possibility of advancement for lower classes, so that your children have the monopoly on power? It is your holy duty to ensure the equality of outcome for all lower classes, so that they learn that they are not better than the Other. Your children must, on the other hand, learn in an elite school, because they can understand the Higher Knowledge of the Source of Reality.
http://www.ramakrishna.org/catalog/archive/Upanishads1_month.htm
You need to lie? Both lie and lower truth are social constructs, and neither has anything to do with the Gnosis, Direct Experience of Being.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-americas-edge
"Fortunately, starting later in that decade and continuing through today, America seems to have renormalized to some degree. Many of these trends - particularly the spike in crime - reversed course.
The new normal, however, is different from the old normal. To begin with, certain strands of the old bourgeois consensus have frayed, and others have simply disappeared, at least for some parts of the population. The wealthier and better-educated segments of our society, for example, have re-established the primacy of stable families and revived their intolerance of crime and public disorder. But they have combined this return to tradition with very non-traditional attitudes about sex, masculinity, and overt piety.
More important, while affluent and educated Americans are returning to the traditional family model, the poor and less educated are not. The gap between rich and poor today is also a gap in cultural norms and mores to a degree unparalleled in our modern experience. ...
As the lower classes in America experience these alarming regressions, wealthier and better-educated Americans have managed to re-create a great deal of the lifestyle of the old WASP ascendancy - if with different justifications for it. Political correctness serves the same basic function for this cohort that "good manners" did for an earlier elite; environmentalism increasingly stands in for the ethic of controlling impulses so as to live within limits; and an expensive, competitive school culture - from pre-K play groups up through graduate school - socializes the new elite for constructive competition among peers. These Americans have even re-created the old WASP aesthetic preference for the antique, authentic, and pseudo-utilitarian at the expense of vulgar displays of wealth. In many cases, they live in literally the same homes as the previous upper class."
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Fair enough; I apologize if I implied that I thought you personally did not care -- that was presumptuous and condescending of me. But I still think you gloss over the internal contradictions and conflicts of progressivism more easily than they deserve.
For one example, the people who are most concerned about the condition of women in Afghanistan have a distressing tendency to be the very same people vigorously campaigning to remove the only force in the area willing to actually protect and improve that condition, the Western military presence.
Or take the homophobia prevalent in black culture -- has anyone ever argued that affirmative action opportunities should be denied to a candidate if he's shown to be openly homophobic, or has a gay white man ever claimed a black co-worker's promotion over him to be socially unjust homophobia rather than socially just affirmative action?
When women's rights conflict with blacks' rights, or gay rights (a phenomenon I'm told by my wife is called "intersectionalism"), who wins? Most progressivist answers I've heard tend to fall back on an arbitrary assessment of perceived priority in context -- i.e., deciding on the basis of which group's needs seem greater right now, rather than on the basis of what's fair and just for the individuals involved. I have yet to be convinced that social justice can be achieved via multiple injustices for individuals.
And all too many progressivists seem far less concerned with such possibilities than they are simply with saying, "That's not important right now, we still need to Stick It To the Man!" Continuing the fight becomes more vital to their identity and purpose than winning it ever could be -- which is a very human trait, and not exclusive to progressivists at all; the Pharisees and Sadducees had their own versions of this flaw.
(As do I. I can't tell you how many arguments I've belaboured past their point of usefulness out of sheer stubbornness. Which is something I should take to heart right now, I think.)
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Not that I know of. I'm not sure that they should have.
Most progressivist answers I've heard tend to fall back on an arbitrary assessment of perceived priority in context
Like what?
And all too many progressivists seem far less concerned with such possibilities than they are simply with saying, "That's not important right now, we still need to Stick It To the Man!"
Well, "all too many" is kind of vague. Certainly there are liberals and leftists on the net whom I think have poorly thought out positions, or are even stupid. Reading the comments at dailykos would probably turn up a bit, or more recently people who've seemed to care more about punishing the insurance companies rather than getting health care for all as quickly as possible. But that'd be like judging conservatism/right-wingers by the comments at freerepublic, or libertarianism by the arguments of some 19 year old Objectivist rather than by those of Hayek.
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I am simply puzzled by this line of argument. All of these concerns are either types of racism, or are attempts to fit other social concerns into the pattern of racism, that is, making any issue into an issue of civil rights.
This seems to support rather than detract from my original statement that you found so risible. Perhaps I should have defined my terms. I did not mean that Leftists think about nothing other than racism -- I meant that racism is the model they use, the filter by which they analyze problems, the standard and yardstick they use.
As evidence whereof, I can point to my own experiences. When I wrote an article expressing contempt for political correctness, I was called a racist. No other evidence was adduced to support this remarkable accusation aside from the fact that I support opposed the unchastity and irrationality of the so called sexual revolution: nor did I regard that reaction as atypical of the Left.
I can also point to members of Congress who called Republicans racists for opposing socialized medicine, and so on.
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