The other turd stinking up the country in the 80’s besides the belief that “greed i$ good” was the MORAL Majority, remember? Morals are important, but who’s morals are we talking about? And there is a big difference between morals and righteousness. Morality is about society. Its important, but i hunger for righteousness. The Moral Majority made me sick. Made me want to sin just to get the taste back in my mouth. Phony, self-righteous asses.
It's true. I remember graduates of the NYU Business School waving dollar bills at their graduation in 1985. The whole decade was about making money. It was in that decade that conservatives amped up their praise of capitalism. Even such a conservative worthy as Paul Johnson called the super brokers on Wall St. "children of light" and whole generation of neoconservatives made it three cheers for capitalism. Michael Novak and his crew figured out that capitalism itself was virtuous. The crassness just reached its peak with Trump.
"I am actually far more worried about this kind of thing than the January 6 attack because there was zero chance that the yobs on the Capitol lawn that day were going to overthrow the government."
I used to be more blase about Jan 6 for the above reason (and from weariness/cynicism about the how Democrats have been using it to their advantage - felt more like performative outrage than anything). But recently I was talking to my oldest dd about basic democratic principles, and peaceful transfer of power came up. And I realized that the very act of trying to use force to overturn election results, even if it was doomed to fail, really *is* a major, big deal - democracies can't and don't survive when its people are willing to use violence to overturn election results. It's a major, major deal - I feel the symbolic impact much more now than I previously did.
It's a big deal. The ironic thing is that the people there had convinced themselves that they were acting to protect democracy and prevent the ratification of an illegitimate election result. There may be some hope in that: we haven't witnessed (yet!) a mob gathering to support a military coup and suspension of the constitution or something like that.
“they were acting to protect democracy and prevent the ratification of an illegitimate election result.”
Yeah. Sure. And John Wilkes Booth took a stand for the lost
Confederate States. My great great grandaddy saw the poor suckers who joined his “Patriotic” stand swing from the gallows. Booth thought he was protecting liberty. His dying words i believe were “tell my mother that I died protecting my country.”
It is a big deal, but Rod's correct that it was mostly mostly performative, like everything else on the Right. The Left isn't performative. When they riot, city blocks burn to the ground.
When conservatives take control of an institution, we want a free exchange of ideas. When progressives take control of the institution, they use it to crush dissenters. That's why we keep losing. That's what DeSantis (and Orban) do differently.
Ironically, I taught trade deficits today in my economics class. One of my goals of these weeks is to make sure my students won't be snowed by all the jargon that gets bandied around in that debate. It's a very simple concept: when you buy stuff from other people, they can use that money to buy stuff you make now (current exports); stuff you made before (assets); or stuff you will make in the future (loans). There is no 4th option.
I agree that if / when the dollar collapses the "jig will be up" as you say. But don't assume the collapse will be rapid. The British pound lost it's "reserve currency" status in 1945 and 70% of its value since then, but England is hardly a 3rd world hell hole today.
If the dollar collapses everything else will have collapsed already or be in a state of ongoing collapse. We'll be worried about a lot more basic things than the state of our 401ks.
I'm not saying the USD has "collapsed" (or will anytime soon) at all. I rather doubt that thesis and think there's way too much hyperbole about it.
Take a look at the chart I posted. Some currency collapses (Turkey, Lebanon) are rapid responses to a single event. My point is that reserve currency collapses occur in slow motion, since losing your "reserve" status and being replaced is a gradual process. It took 50 years for the pound to lose 70% of its value, but it DID lose 70% of its value.
A very minor point, but what does "There are now fat women in underwear ads" have to do with culture wars? How does this offend conservatives or anyone else? Take a look around America - there are a lot of overweight people, and clothing them is big business. Or is it that fat women aren't sexy enough for Hanania? Missing the Bali bra ads? I mean seriously?
It’s another in the continuing degradation of society away from the good, beautiful, and true. Just being exposed to viewing obese women splaying their legs on camera in an underwear commercial - I guess in the guise of exercise we’re supposed to believe the blubber is healthy fat - is probably enough to decrease the sperm count in any males subject to it. Same goes for the Lume commercials, where we get to hear a ‘doctor’ regale us with tales of female crotch stank. Or ads with men who impress us with imaginings of their smooth ‘manscape.’ It contributes to the en-crassening of society.
I sense that there is some unresolved puritanical “issues” going on with all this disgust of the body. Moslems and others have practice hair removal for ages. What’s the big deal? People should be healthy but also non-judge-mental about differing body types , exposed skin, and shaming women about crotch odors. This is the kind of church lady stuff that makes sane people avoid church like the plague.
With whining about female models who are not the right shape, the narrative seques from legitimate concerns about morality to mere whining about things with no moral content-- although if you think fat-bashing is immoral then the morality in that case is on the other side. (Som years back on Rod's blogged I mentioned being disdainful about obese but otherwise non-diabled people I'd seen on those motorized carts in Walmart-- and I was taken to task for my attitude being uncharitable for a Christian-- and my critics were right.)
Decadence has expanded to include a wider array of folks. Equity can mean equal opportunity evil doing, which is not what MLK sought. It's not really a moral improvement to put more minorities into the killing fields.
I agree. When Tucker Carlson went on a (month's long) rant about green M&M's being "woke" because it wasn't in high heels any more; or when people rant about "How dare they have a black Little Mermaid?" (look if it were really a mermaid, she'd be blue or green); or this - fat models in underwear commercials - well, you instantly lose a lot of people's attention.
Critical Theory has a sub-theory called Fat Studies (so coined by those who traffic in said so-called studies). It is the usual cultural Marxism dressed up into hierarchies of power and victim shaming. The big problem with it is that, like so much of the gender identity activism we see today, it is a big lie. Fat Studies will tell you that those who are overweight (we do not use the word "fat" anymore, which is why, for example, the word was cut from Roald Dahl's books) are "born that way." It completely ignores the scientific, medical, and biological truths about the harm caused to the individual by being obese. It ignores the choices and personal responsibilities of the individual. Even to raise such truths, or to advocate for such benign things as fitness and eating healthy will draw the ire of Fat Studies activists. You will be accused of victim blaming, or worse, in short order.
I suspect what Hanania was getting at was the notion that even underwear ads are now subject to the lies of Critical Theory. I don't really give a fig if an overweight person is a model in an underwear. But I do care if the reasoning behind it is to advance a silly, but harmful, agenda.
Fat people are "born that way"? In Paris four months ago. Was looking for them, the contrast between Paris and the US being what it is, and saw almost no fat people. The one exception that I recall: two fat women at an adjoining table in a restaurant, but, leaning closer, I discovered that they were English.
On the other hand, a friend who spent a month in the countryside of the south of France last year said that there are increasing numbers of the over-weight, something he attributed to the decline of the greengrocers, the butchers, the fishmongers in the smaller towns and their replacement by the supermarchés with their packaged fast foods which are increasingly bought.
Hmm... I seem to remember a lot of hostility among the conservatives at Michelle Obama's attempts to fight childhood obesity, from bringing healthy lunches to the schools to an organic garden at the White House. But now it's "woke" to oppose such efforts?
You miss the point. Intersectionality is saying that obesity is beautiful and is even denying its health ramifications. And I'll be the first to say that many of the conservatives criticizing Michelle Obama's healthy food efforts were being churlish or just downright stupid.
It was because of who the messenger was. Had Melania Trump done the same thing a large portion of the Democrats would have mocked it (and mockery always draws on some element of truth, so that doesn't really defend it) and Republicans would have praised it. The reason you can't keep up with it is because it's an example of the political cynicism of both political opinion leaders and their adherents who know perfectly well they're partisan hypocrites. Loyalty to political factions is to patriotism what idolatry is to religion.
Because it was a waste of both food and money when kids refused to eat it. We don’t live in France which is a much more cohesive society that rears their children in a more uniform fashion.
Have you ever seen a fat-assed evangelist berate women about wearing makeup or ranting about drugs and drinking? Nobody points out what glutinous, sugar-addicted piles of grease they are. Preach Christ and leave people the hell alone about their personal issues.
A better question is where are the fat men in underwear ads? To answer your question, advertising has long been used to tell us proles what sexy looks like. According to those who control the media and therefore the message, sexy used to be Marilyn Monroe. Now it's obese women, non-binary, queer or trans women and women of color. Personally, I'm against sexualizing any kinds of people, women included.
Huh, well, there you go. I guess you don't actually have to sell things to enjoy your luxury values. Although, as I said, I really do deplore the use of sex in advertising. In fact, I sometimes think advertising is one of the main causes of the decline of the west because it contributes so much to our culture's materialistic bent and loss of social trust, not to mention our ever increasing neuroticism.
One gets the sense that the woke don't mind the sexualization of women and children provided everyone else is sexualized too. Just like feminism in general, it gets pretty much everything bass-ackwards.
I'm old enough to remember when feminism was about being equal under the law and not using things like short skirts as an excuse for rape. Feminism was necessary to right some historic wrongs but they lost me when sex-positivity and slut walks became a thing. Now I don't know what it even means to be feminist. And yes, they want to sexualize everything, God knows why.
Women and men sometimes find each other sexy. Beware of people dumping their advice about sexuality on you when it is none of their business. Keep kids out of it. Beware of prudes and libertines alike. They have issues that are best kept to themselves.
Besides having no discernible sense of humor (which is a dangerous thing) it is very poor communication to just throw something against the wall and proclaim “gotcha!” without articulating exactly what you are saying and why.
Ill take a stab at deciphering your cryptology.
1.) JFK was unfit to be president because he could not be faithful to his wife and control his libido.
2.) we should not acknowledge that there was a time in American history when even Journalists had a sense of propriety and common decency about the office (as distinct from the man in the office) of Presidency and spared the public the trauma of having the president’s sins smeared in our faces and dragging the Republic into a self-serving pornographic game of “gotcha!”.
I don’t buy into the Camelot bs and I would expect friends and family to respect the man and the office sufficiently to leave private matters to the family.
This is what sane people do. They mind their own business. They dont presume to meddle in other people’s business.
You seem to have a strange preoccupation with other’s private lives, especially as it relates to sexual matters.
Kinda icky and church lady-like. Sometimes I would rather laugh with the sinners than wag fingers with the pious.
The point of using models in advertising is supposed to be to sell things. Women, especially, buy things because society has conditioned them to think they need those things to be attractive to others. Most women, even fat women, don't think fat women are sexy, so it's kind of pointless virtue signaling to use them in advertising. If that wasn't true there wouldn't be a gazillion dollar weight loss industry in the west. While it's nice, I suppose, that you like fat women, unless you buy a lot of women's underwear that doesn't really justify their use in underwear ads.
So fat women throughout history never needed to know where to buy underwear?
Also, i think people should be healthy and not prone to diabetes and knee replacements, etc. i cant do anything for people who loathe themselves. But the notion that fat women cannot be gorgeous is a very odd mindset in my view. Obesity is unhealthy. Fat can be beautiful.
I quit identifying as a Republican last fall, when there was the run up to the mid-term elections and how it felt more and more like two sports teams competing for some sort of trophy. There was so little talk of what direction the country would be going on, planning for fifty or a hundred years down the road, creating truly humanist solutions to things like crime, poverty, war, etc. It has always been "vote for us and things'll be great." Except, nothing gets fixed...just more promises. I'm not a Democrat, either. All they care about is Jan 6th, when it is like the smallest thing compared to everything else. We create millions of tons a waste a year, give lip service to the environment, can't balance a budget, don't respect real human rights, and so on. I guess call me a real progressive, not a rainbow flag waver who just kisses corporate butt behind the scenes. There may not be much hope of things changing, but at least I don't feel anxiety about elections, as it is clear how totally meaningless they are. Social issue wins are like arguing over who has what seat as the rowboat heads to the waterfall. If we cannot course correct as a civilization and species, no one is going to care at all about trans rights and what is being taught in school.
Yes, it's a foregone conclusion that absent a tsunami of public opposition coupled with elected officials who are willing to also be against it, that America's numerous wars of choice will be waged endlessly without interruption, no matter who we are allowed to vote for. I do not believe at all that Ron DeSantis will challenge a military industrial complex grown so important to the economy, which requires wars.
I'm independent, not a Republican. The traditional economic Republican can't really be effectively antiWoke, because so much of their corporate donor base is Woke adjacent. If push comes to shove, though, what's of overriding political influence is making war for profit. If Woke were ever to threaten that, it would be eliminated. Not going to happen, for they see Woke being spread by Western war making.
Rod, I agree with and greatly appreciate 95% of what you write. Heck, after Easter I will be leading a discussion of Live Not By Lies. (Those near Corpus Christi, feel free to message me.)
But the vast majority of those protesting on January 6th did so peacefully, and they were right in insisting that the rigged election not be certified, at least not before it was fully investigated. The harm that has resulted because Congress rubber-stamped it is immeasurable.
It was not rubber stamped. There was never any clear, convincing evidence of election fraud enough to overturn the results . It has been 2 1/2 years and still no evidence despite numerous lawsuits. Trump supporters just cannot accept that Trump lost - even when Republicans on same ballot won. Give it up. Trump lost. Move on.
Prove the fraud. Saying not legitimate just causes more crazies to think ok to attack the capital or poll workers such as the mother/daughter in Georgia who had to deal with death threats.
Molly - a Fox News contributor and editor at The Heritage on line magazine. Curious if Fox allowed her to repeat these theories on air while they are fighting the Dominion lawsuit.
I have been waiting for one shred of evidence for these claims. So far nothing but hyperbole has been submitted. What’s the big deal? If it was such naked fraud then counter-sue Dominion, pull out all the additional material and blow the lid off of this. Yet, every shovel full of dirt we dig up has evidence of inconclusive and false claims on behalf of the Trump team. Just look at Giuliani. What happened to that guy? He has turned into a craven, greasy weasel bag man.
The "Shadow Campaign" demonstrates that there really didn't have to be fraud. Setting up a cabal of cross-party elites to control elections is much more dangerous in the big picture than either small-scall fraud or small-scale rebellion.
I agree that the vast majority were peaceful on Jan 6. However, the criminality of Trump exhaustively outlined in the Jan 6 Report bares witness to a diabolical intent on the part of the Thug in Chief. Nobody is going to convince me that the depositions of his staff and others were fraudulent. He created a fiasco and just sat like an angry little baby refusing the nanny to change his poopy diapers while the capitol was raped by criminals. They had only fabricated speculation that the election was rigged. I watched every minute of the hearings and the preponderance of evidence is that the individuals who acted violently on the perimeter and interior of the capital deserve every ounce of punishment they got and that POTUS (who i prefer to refer to as SCROTUS) is soundly guilty of dereliction of duty to the United States.
Precisely. The problem is even alot of “religious” people do not really believe what scripture is declaring and part of the problem is that preachers lack the guts and brains to teach it. People get upset when they have to actually concentrate and then they stop attending church because it is no longer fun and entertaining.
I would not want to be those preachers when they are held accountable before God.
Trump IN HIS SPEECH asked people to go "peacefully and patriotically" to the Capitol.
The hearings you mention were a kangaroo court show trial for prime time. Pelosi expelled those Congressmen who would have asked inconvenient questions.
…so his staff, secret service, white house council, etc..they all lied under oath testifying what they saw and heard?
And what did the American people see and hear from trump for three hours hours while he rebuked his staff and sulked in front of the tv while animals ransacked the capitol.
I dont buy into the idea that you just ignore the record. And what kind of a zombie spell was placed upon those who testified? What did they have to gain other than the scorn of cult zealots?
Remember what tyrants tell people? Pay no attention to what you see and hear.
BTW, the record clearly demonstrate that it was POTUS himself, after being briefed about the presence of guns, gave to order to “remove the f-ing mags” (magnetic detectors to prevent firearms from getting close to the capitol building). Hmmm. I wonder why that would matter to him so much?
“kangaroo court show trial for prime time. Pelosi expelled those Congressmen who would have asked inconvenient questions.”
I hear this repeated almost verbatim from Trumpees. Almost like a memorized response to that talking point. Did you watch the proceedings? Did you read the report? Did you willingly expose your mind to the evidence?
Look, I’m getting sick and tired of your insulting attitude. I am not in the habit of watching kangaroo Court show trials. And I actually support DeSantis so apologize or get blocked.
Im sorry if you took my position as insulting. I cant do anything about the fact that this whole “kangaroo court” presupposition is an opinion that i personally think is baseless. I did not intend to insult you with an honest opinion. I hear that “kangaroo court” thing too often. Its kinda wierd.
What part of this is insulting?:
“Kangaroo court:
an unofficial court held by a group of people in order to try someone regarded, especially without good evidence, as guilty of a crime or misdemeanor.“
It was an official hearing.
It produced an 814 page document comprised of months of exhaustive materials open for all to read and formulate an opinion.
Did you watch the hearings?
Did you read the report?
Im just saying that all the people that tell me about this alleged “kangaroo court” never watched the hearing or read the report. Kinda weird. I am sorry that this upsets you.
And by the way, it was a show trial and Pelosi did kick out congressman who would’ve asked inconvenient questions. Why do you have such a problem with those facts?
I have no problem with any of that. I dont look upon the hearings as any kind of formal judgement. I wanted to know what the findings were. At least somebody made an effort to ask some hard questions from the people that were involved.
I eagerly invite anybody to produce hard evidence and testimony that none of these things happened and that the election was indeed stolen. Bit so far only shadowy figures on the grassy knoll and deep-state phantoms and wacky ghosts in the dominion machines and fox news being caught with its pants down.
I would expect Pelosi to play her nasty part as well. None of that can reverse what is as plain as day: POTUS is a crank and a big baby. So pathetic to listen to the president try and squeeze 11,000 votes out of Georgia on the phone. The actions of a desperate sociopath. Im sorry. No insult intended. My honest informed opinion.
<i>the unwillingness of the Right to defend our own beliefs is why we keep losing.</i>
This is because Republicans - whatever they say about cultural issues - are still ultimately motivated by special interests/big money. And big money utilizes cultural issues as a smokescreen.
A word about investing too much faith in DeSantis. I'm in Florida, and the state Legislature - where the GOP has a supermajority in both houses - talks a good culture war game, but it's all a smokescreen; they exist to do the bidding of the special interests like Big Sugar, big utilities, Disney, etc. My question about DeSantis always has been whether he's playing the same game, whether his culture war "focus" merely masks the REAL focus, putting more money into the deepest pockets.
Until and unless we have conservative legislators who care about cultural issues more than what the moneyed special interests want for themselves - we're spinning our wheels.
I don't see DeSantis as quite so deceptive as you make out, but I cannot see him not supporting the US war interests and the US military footprint and wars overseas. That's my major interest in policy, although I surely do loathe Woke probably even more than he, and I'd like to support that, but not at the expense of the insane deep state policy of conquering the world while eliminating commercial rivals.
Thank you for citing Hanania. He holds certain views (abortion, euthanasia) that Christians correctly find horrifying. But he is also intelligent and insightful on many topics.
The United States, in its political and cultural divisions, reminds me a good deal of interwar France of the Third Republic. See in particular Robert O. Paxton's "Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order" and his discussion of the social and political background leading to what became Vichy France.
The valorization of January 6 reminds me somewhat of "February 6," a much more serious event in Paris on that date in 1934 where far-Right mobs rioted against the left-wing government of the Third Republic. It is still argued as to whether this event amounted to an effort to overturn the state -- William Shirer among others considered the event to be quite serious. The event was widely condemned at the time, and was briefly a rallying point for the Left, but the rebels were lionized on the French Right. Being a "good 6 February man" (meaning part of what was arguably a real insurrection) became a job recommendation when Vichy France rolled around.
Evidently Daladier fired the director of the Comédie-Française because a production of Coriolanus was taken as incitement to riot. They order, said I, this matter better in France.
Tucker Carlson aired the footage from January 6 that shows the supposed "QAnon Shaman" being escorted peacefully throughout the Capitol building, where the police open doors for him, and once in the chamber leads a prayer for the Capitol police. This footage was withheld from the public, from the court, the judge and the defense. There are also unarrested and uncharged individuals clear identifiable, who are urging the crowd to become violent. Under oath, FBI officials refused to answer whether or not these were FBI agents provocateurs, avoiding perjury by making false denials. People who were not even inside and nonviolent are still being arrested, and people are held in poor conditions for a years in solitary confinement. The intent is to hold them forever until they make a guilty plea and move to sentencing. This is wrong on so many levels, that if one thinks it is OK then there is an emotional component distorting judgement, nudging the narrative from objectivity. The completely false claim continues to be made that 5 police officers were killed that day by the demonstrators. Not one. There were no fires, no guns. Evidence is that "deep state" players wanted to escalate and radicalize - there is no investigation of who was planting pipe bombs as caught by several surveillance cameras at political party headquarters - in order to make their own analogy to the Reichstag fire, to strengthen their own political position and destroy legitimate opposition, just as occurred other times in history. You think it can't happen here? If you are correct about all the other things you report - and you are - then of course it is as well. This is what living under lies looks like.
Rod said once that this country is trying to fit a politics-sized peg into a God-sized hole. And it's not nearly enough. Something from Orban neatly sums this up: politics can give us stuff, but it can't give us meaning.
I tell people I'm not political anymore, and my main effort goes into being a good husband and father. This jives with Mother Theresa's saying about how if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
I notice that you handwave away Beshear’s criticisms. Conservatives cry parental rights all the time, right up to the point where parents do something they disagree with. Then the state must intervene! It’s just like the self-serving arguments about states’ rights and subsidiarity which fly right out the window as soon as a city institutes something so trivial as a plastic bag ban.
Conservatives mysteriously always seem to forget to actually define their bogeymen, probably because then they’d actually have to argue rather than scare.
Mr Dreher does something similar by raging against gay porn in schools. Yet we see the books that Desantis wants to ban: basically anything that acknowledges that some people aren’t straight. You’ll forgive me if I find the definition of “porn” as slightly more elastic than an elephant’s garter belt.
The same goes for “woke.” What a meaningless term! And yet how useful as a certain kind of dishonest argument! What does it mean? Who can say? But whatever it is, it’s cataclysmic! End of civilization stuff—you read it here! The lack of definition is the point. It’s meant to communicate one thing and one thing only: they’re coming to get you!
Never mind that there may, in fact, be quantifiable instances of how institutions have been designed from the ground up to steer resources towards some people and away from others. Never mind that there might actually be cogent arguments against things like the incredibly corrupt private prison industrial complex. It’s woke! They’re coming to get you!
And that’s how you are frightened into perpetuating massive money grabs for the few on the basis of mass immiseration of the many.
Notice how the clerical sex abuse scandals have disappeared from the headlines? Ever looked at just who is actually perpetrating child rape? Mighty useful things, drag queens, if you want to direct attention away from such things. Just like the Satanic panic of yesteryear. But there are high horses to mount.
I suggest something of a longitudinal study. Let’s keep an eye on this kid that’s been marked out as a symbol of decadence here for five or ten years. I’m not a betting man ordinarily, but I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is: ten or fifteen years from now, that kid will be leading a supremely boring and unremarkable life, with nothing but the usual ups and downs we all face.
What's "ad hominem" about it? You just evince one of the primary characteristics of the woke, which is to pretend there is no such thing as woke. That and changing the subject. Of course in marxism there are no subjects, just oppression. It's a bit of a leap to go from the private prison system to suborning a little boy to dress up as a girl. Why, just look at what the State is doing in San Salvador!
Excellent! And thank you for the concise and clear response.
So, by “Marxist,” I’m assuming you mean the extension of Marx’s understanding of history as the struggle of economic class against class, classically the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie, or, in feudal terms, landlords vs. serfs or peasant tenants, right?
And there is something to this, right? I mean, Marxism oversimplifies things drastically, but we do see time and time again wealth and power concentrating in the hands of a few who exploit the labor of the masses. I mean, there’s a reason things like unions and union busting exist.
By the same token, race may be a wholly arbitrary human invention, but racism is a thing, especially historically but also today. And there are consequences that flow from that.
I think it’s also relevant that race was a Western European invention that’s furthermore peculiar to the post medieval period. Africans didn’t wake up one morning and decide they were black. Until Europeans came along they were Akan or Ewe or Mandé or whatever. Their identity as black or negro was forced on them by whites.
So it’s a bit much to talk about all of this categorization, especially with regard to race, as being a leftist thing. Whites created the categories. Whites enforced segregation. Whites exploited black labor in the form of slavery. That reality was built into the institutions whites created in innumerable ways. And now that it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable you want to handwave all that away and call it Marxism?
To the extent that CRT is about looking at the implicit assumptions about race that our institutions incorporate into themselves, it’s a useful exercise. To take one example, sunset laws have been and perhaps still are a thing. If you think that’s a valid thing to examine and fix, then congratulations! You support CRT.
We can and should argue over both the history of oppression and the details of how it may persist into the present. Not every claim of oppression is valid. Moreover, there are different ways we might respond.
But you cannot deny that the problem exists altogether.
"Postmodernism rejects innate human nature, objective truth, knowledge, reason, and the individual, replacing them with socially constructed identity groups, cultural and value relativism, ideologies, and indistinct categories. In doing so it has extended itself into unworkable nonsense. Wokeness is the application of this nonsense in real-world contexts, like publishing."
Unleashed how? Is anything happening today that wasn't part of human beahvior ten, ninety, five hundred, five thosuand years ago?
There are some new technologies to worry about, sure. Nukes could bring about death and destruction on a scale only the largest catastrophes of nature could surpass. And the darker possibilities of genetic technology are something to dread.
Well, "human behavior". How about sticking to America? How about forced down our throats by the federal government? Did Franklin D. Roosevelt appoint a drug-addled castrate in a dress to a sub-cabinet position in public health?
Interesting article. Cutting through the fluff, he apparently defines “woke” as: racism against whites, Asians, and Jews; drag queens “grooming” children (completely unlike how youth pastors do, apparently, since they’re not included); transwomen competing as women, instances of which can probably be counted on one hand; gender expression that is anything but manly men (like Trump!) and soft, delicate, tender women (like Lauren Boebert or MTG? I guess?); surgeons allowed to operate on children (I assume); conservatives having to deal with the consequences of their speech; history being re-examined and blind hero worship questioned; reparations; and a complete insistence that racism, while no doubt a horrible thing (especially when it’s against whites!) never had any lasting consequences or harms that we might consider addressing (unless it’s against whites).
Which is all “critical theory.” Got it.
That’s the definition. A hodgepodge of various right wing hobbyhorses.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are not enough hay bales in the Upper Midwest to construct so gigantic a straw man.
I applaud you for being a loyal foot soldier in protecting the narrative you most identify with, but up to a few seconds ago all our media-celeb lefties were loudly proudly "woke".
"Woke" used to be black slang, then got applied more recently to CRT and/or Critical Social Justice more broadly, which is how Marxism was rebranded after it fled to the academy to lick its wounds and repurpose itself as no longer dedicated to "the proletariat" and its wages but to "the marginalized" and their self-esteem. See, it aint that hard!
And the reason we spend most of our politics now on playing word games is because modern Leftism is rooted in the academy, is based on the manipulation of language and symbols, and the simple if nefarious idea that if you change how someone speaks you can change how they think and then change how they act & vote.
It is underhanded and juvenile, but I can't argue with the results.
"Woke" came from the cultural left as a shorthand term for what the academics call intersectionality. The right picked it up as a negative term meaning roughly "political correctness on steroids." Then the left started saying that the right invented it, and that the concept was non-existent anyhow.
I will bet against you. They are coming. There is a colossal re-set going on. Not by humans. These perversions are all preparation for the emergence of the false messiah in the form of puritanical humanists.
You keep throwing the world "conservative" around, could you clearly define it if you had to? Could most conservatives? Or would you just be throwing out a list of causes, talking points and positions? That doesn't make it a meaningless term.
Not that long ago there really were people self-applying the term "woke" and roughly it related to people who have become aware of a mass system of interrelated systematic oppressions against women and various minorities.
Well, no. Liberalism approximately means the rule of law, representative government, separation of powers, and respect for minorities. How this morphed into a cult for control freaks is perhaps best explained in this book, a classic, and an unread one:
I love Santayana, what a great writer and thinker, what a great sage. He is really the last 19th century European aristocrat of the soul, and maybe even (like his novel said) The Last Puritan.
It's a wonderful book, his last. Though he began gathering material for it while still at Harvard, it was published right before he died. It gives you the bends thinking of him contemplating the Korean War, like T.S. Eliot warning Russell Kirk off Buckley. Everybody who reads this blog should read DaP.
i downloaded and already started, the Preface is beautifully written, as usual:
"...if one political tendency kindled my wrath, it was precisely the tendency of industrial liberalism to level down all civilisations to a single cheap and dreary pattern."
I don't know if you've read his Soliloquies book, but that is my fave.
Control feaks gravitate to power like iron filings gravitate to magnets (OK, Im mixing up my forces of nature). You can find the type on the Right as well.
Liberalism certainly evolved, but the seeds of our current iconoclasm were present from the beginning. Locke is pretty clear about his dislike for constraints; he seeks to liberate people. This drive can be seen in another revolution: the French. They weren't big on any of the things you listed, but they were absolutely "liberal".
Some of the people associated with the French Revolution were classically liberal: Jacques Necker and his daughter Mme. de Stael. Lafayette. Arguably the Comte de Mirabeau. Probably the Girondists as a party. The Jacobins were not. Talleyrand was only out for himself. The Directorate was, at best, corrupt liberals not unlike our current financial elite. Napoleon-- well, if he was "liberal" then the word has no meaning.
Thomas Paine championed the American revolution with Common Sense and then did the same in France with The Rights of Man. He was also instrumental in writing the French constitution of 1791. The French revolutionaries (who would become the Jacobins) granted honorary citizenship to Paine, Franklin, Hamilton, and many other America revolutionaries because they saw the underlying philosophy of the two wars to be in sync.
Napoleon was the solution-of-last-resort to the excesses of the liberal revolution. That's what happens with most revolutionaries; they kill each other until the masses get so sick of it that they allow a strongman to take over to restore order.
You and I have talked about this before, Jon. I know you want to separate "Enlightenment liberalism" from the obvious lunacy of today, but the bright-line you're trying insert between them just isn't there.
The Jacobins were followed by the Directorate which was a gang of corrupt plutocrats wearing the liberty cap because it was good for business. They were decidedly unpopular with enemies to their left and right-- not to mention the large coalition of foreign nations fighting to roll back the clock before 1789-- and grab whatever they could from the French patrimony. Of course they turned to Bonaparte after he demonstrated his military acumen. And in time he made himself their master. Something similar happened in the English Civil War: Cromwell became them an of the hour. But unlike Napoleon Cromwell had scruples and beliefs in something other than himself.
Strange, how the difference between a virus and a vaccine is mere quantity, and the savior is a weaker version of the destroyer. I'm not sure if the analogy is perfect, but it does seem like people have trouble defining "wokism" because it is not a fundamental evil but an extreme position of righteousness. It is the natural outgrowth of a successful liberalism established and now going soft, forgetting itself, getting overconfident in victory. This liberalism itself stands on Christianity and the radical equality of the human soul. Hence, you could even say that wokism is to liberalism what liberalism is to Christianity, that classical liberalism itself is already a distortion, a corruption of something original, and wokism merely completes the process.
So, the real question: is there something tragic specifically about the Christian idea, does it contain the seeds of its demise, does it automatically create the preconditions for liberalism and democratization and does it inevitably follow the steps? After all, the equality of humans is an unreal idea, fully demonstrable as false on cold realist terms. But it is more attractive than reality.
How much of a logical leap is it from the absurd notion of equality to the slightly more absurd notion of equity? Furthermore, if someone is already emotionally committed to delivering equal justice for the correction of injustice obtained by violence, and also simultaneously stands for perfect freedom, then why not attain justice by violence? After all, if we are equals, and you dominate and dispossess me by violence, I have the ability to rectify the injustice on equal terms, and will logically take an eye for an eye.
The lesson: when Christianity is in any way transformed and "advanced" beyond its core teaching, it will turn into classical liberalism, then eventually wokism, then it will revert to pre-Christianity.
Some knowledgeable Catholics believe that the answer to this conundrum lies in the work of Rosmini, but I've never seen it fleshed out, and much of his work is hard to find in English.
For myself as an Orthodox I think Dostoevsky points in the right direction. Liberalism gets the Christian understandings of freedom and equality right, but starts to fall apart as soon as it separates these things from their root in the Gospel. Again, I haven't seen this really expounded upon, but would recommend Berdyaev's book on Dostoevsky as a great starting point after FD's work itself.
“Some knowledgeable Catholics believe that the answer to this conundrum lies in the work of Rosmini”. Everybody has an opinion. The answer is in the cross of Christ.
I realize you are of the intellectual class, a peer of media elites, if out of favor with them. As well, your writing is super-spiritual, with its expressions somewhat beyond experience and comprehension of most, and not even accessible to them. There's no sin in that, quite the opposit
However, it may be that you are alienated from ordinary working folks, whose central concerns are not precisely all of yours, even when there is overlap. Many are now convinced that the regular parties have exploited them and continue to do so. They are right! So who do many see as the outsider and loose cannon against the status quo. Now I didn't say as we helped clean up his home, the blind man listening to the Trump rally, I myself am a supporter of policies rather than over the top political speech. Yet I have worked as an auto mechanic and have been a computer engineer. Am I excluded myself from self-congratulatory highbrow discourse? Are the lowbrow wrong, or have they caught on?
RE: Donald F**k and the Joseph Goebbles Play Book:
Whenever sane people despair over the wasteful, self-serving and masturbatory imbecility of the Donald, I always have the same response: the diabolical power that he wields is in the form of the mob numbers raised on tv shows. He slip-streams right into the miasmic fog off-gassing above the effluvial bog of rotting America. He is a diabolical genius. He holds his converts in contempt. They are dirty ignoramuses to him and he laughs at what suckers they are to believe the naked lies that he dresses up as truth. Donald F**k doesn’t give a damn about them and he doesn’t give a damn about America. It’s all about him.
I will never understand how the same people screwed by the housing collapse in 2008 at the hands of the filthy rich, the same people who were saddled with the economic fallout, became enamored with a wealthy bullshit artist. Stunning.
This got me to thinking about a breakfast table conversation at the Disney household that I once read about. Walt and the kids were eating breakfast and his daughter asked him something along the lines of, “Daddy, I really like your movies but why do they have to be so corny?” His response was,”well, sweetie. You see, all across America millions of people are waking to a new day today. And do you know what? They all just LOVE corn.”
The Stanford abomination was the other side of the satanic pentagram. They are the people who look forward to branding all of conservative America as Trump “Deplorables”. They are licking their chops to clearing the deck so that society can be ruled by elites and their pacified little pets who do their bidding.
To call this all decadence is not sufficient. Both parties are meat puppets controlled by the satanic spirits which own them. For you cannot serve two masters. You serve the one or you serve the other. And we know the satanic qualities: lies, bickering, greed, callousness, stiff-necked, self righteous, rebellious, godless, back-stabbing, envy, strife, lust, murder, hate...”
Politics are needed to function in a free society. But I feel like what is going on has exposed politics as spent and hollowed out. It is a mere shadow game for what is revealing itself to be spiritual warfare. We need to continue to oppose the Woke for what it is: the rising tide of puritanical humanism as a mask on the face of satan himself and the spirit of anti-christ rising up.
Our job is to fight it, but scripture makes it perfectly clear: the anti christs will prevail and run the show just before the wrath of God finally blows. We are at that door now. So fight, but only Christ will stand victorious after the blood is up to the bridle of the horse. Not my words and not my personal interpretation.
I will continue to call Woke and Illiberalism what it is: the spirit of anti christ. I will oppose the rise of anti christ, but I would be lying if I said that I cannot wait for God to blow His lid and watch the shit will finally hit the fan.
“Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
20 For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”
"I will never understand how the same people screwed by the housing collapse in 2008 at the hands of the filthy rich, the same people who were saddled with the economic fallout, became enamored with a wealthy bullshit artist. Stunning."
Short answer: he was the only one who listened to them. Several books and numerous essays and articles have pointed this out. Whether he *actually* listened was at the time beside the point; the other candidates didn't even pretend to, and HRC ignored them purposely.
Note that I didn't say they were right, only that that was the perception: in sum, a bull-shitter who listens is better than someone who doesn't listen at all.
Sorry, but I heard it first hand. Although I live in a middle-class community several towns nearby, including the one in which my parish church is located, are a mix of rust-belt and rural/semi-rural populations, and I spend a lot of time there. I didn't vote for Trump, but I know why a lot of people did.
There are many reasons why they voted. Lack of a better candidate and desperation is a big one. Trump didn't see a wrong that needed to be righted. He saw an angle to exploit for his own glory.
"Donald F**k doesn’t give a damn about them and he doesn’t give a damn about America. It’s all about him."
Perhaps you are creating a caricature of the man, erasing his basic humanity a bit too sweepingly. Trump cares, in his own way, although I do recall the numerous articles during his initial rise trying to paint him as an irredeemable narcissist, having no true friends, and other such armchair psychology. Yes, Trump is self-absorbed and narcissistic, but so is Obama, and so are all of them. The elder Bush recommended a youthful Trump try his hand at presidential politics, but that was when Trump was respectable, I guess, for he has been pro-America and worried about foreign competition since the 80's, and making the occasional political noises alongside his tabloid life and multifaceted business ventures. Is he really all that exceptional? I don't see it. He's a successful American figure, period, and that comes with good and bad. But it's mostly good, isn't it?
Maybe it's better than the alternative.
For example, let's presume that you are pretty much right about everything, and Trump is a malign fraud. And let's also presume the next election:
His basic humanity is an unknown quantity beyond the kinds of evil that lurks in the heart of all humans. What I love about him is that he puts all his ugly out there unapologetically. Like i said, he does not concern me. It’s the millions who empower him even when he attempts to rape the election process for his own gain.
In 2016 and 2020 i voted for Winston Churchill. If DeSantis is not on the ballet i will vote for Churchill again. However, there is a chance that I will vote for Trump if I think it can push society over the edge and we can go at it bare knuckles. No chance that I would ever vote for Biden.
Just a short note. My old Orthodox priest told me that he thought Donald Trump had "the spirit of anti-Christ". Now, I'm not wise enough to discern such lofty things, but that got my attention. {the waaaay left seems to already embody that spirit. i'll cling to Christ's robe in these matters}
However, Trump is more like a hybrid of Huey Long, Mussolini, Billy Sunday and Roy Cohen.
Anti Christ will not have the appearance of darkness. He will appear as the man of peace, reasoning, fairness, science and rationality. Global power will be given to him by the nations for his astonishing ability to bring peace to the middle east. The false Messiah will appear as an angel of light. Trump is merely a devourer. A bullshit artist. A manipulator of the crassness of the working people that he disdains but finds power in their tragic lack of anything better.
A few years ago, Rod linked to a pretty wild essay about Trump actually being the incarnation of the Loki-spirit, the Norse Trickster. Maybe you remember it. I still think it might be the most accurate analysis of him.
Re: “importance of being moral”
The other turd stinking up the country in the 80’s besides the belief that “greed i$ good” was the MORAL Majority, remember? Morals are important, but who’s morals are we talking about? And there is a big difference between morals and righteousness. Morality is about society. Its important, but i hunger for righteousness. The Moral Majority made me sick. Made me want to sin just to get the taste back in my mouth. Phony, self-righteous asses.
Yep. I personally would prefer sitting at a bar talking to Larry Flynt that sitting in church listening to Jerry Falwell. Any day.
It's true. I remember graduates of the NYU Business School waving dollar bills at their graduation in 1985. The whole decade was about making money. It was in that decade that conservatives amped up their praise of capitalism. Even such a conservative worthy as Paul Johnson called the super brokers on Wall St. "children of light" and whole generation of neoconservatives made it three cheers for capitalism. Michael Novak and his crew figured out that capitalism itself was virtuous. The crassness just reached its peak with Trump.
Yep. What a nut house this world is. Self-made gods of madness.
Hey, Bobby. Thanks.
Yep. They laugh at the plebe suckers who they have convinced are “big rich daddy who will help me out.” Rubes and idiots.
"I am actually far more worried about this kind of thing than the January 6 attack because there was zero chance that the yobs on the Capitol lawn that day were going to overthrow the government."
I used to be more blase about Jan 6 for the above reason (and from weariness/cynicism about the how Democrats have been using it to their advantage - felt more like performative outrage than anything). But recently I was talking to my oldest dd about basic democratic principles, and peaceful transfer of power came up. And I realized that the very act of trying to use force to overturn election results, even if it was doomed to fail, really *is* a major, big deal - democracies can't and don't survive when its people are willing to use violence to overturn election results. It's a major, major deal - I feel the symbolic impact much more now than I previously did.
It's a big deal. The ironic thing is that the people there had convinced themselves that they were acting to protect democracy and prevent the ratification of an illegitimate election result. There may be some hope in that: we haven't witnessed (yet!) a mob gathering to support a military coup and suspension of the constitution or something like that.
“they were acting to protect democracy and prevent the ratification of an illegitimate election result.”
Yeah. Sure. And John Wilkes Booth took a stand for the lost
Confederate States. My great great grandaddy saw the poor suckers who joined his “Patriotic” stand swing from the gallows. Booth thought he was protecting liberty. His dying words i believe were “tell my mother that I died protecting my country.”
To be clear, you do understand, I hope, that I strongly oppose the January 6 attack.
It is a big deal, but Rod's correct that it was mostly mostly performative, like everything else on the Right. The Left isn't performative. When they riot, city blocks burn to the ground.
When conservatives take control of an institution, we want a free exchange of ideas. When progressives take control of the institution, they use it to crush dissenters. That's why we keep losing. That's what DeSantis (and Orban) do differently.
Ironically, I taught trade deficits today in my economics class. One of my goals of these weeks is to make sure my students won't be snowed by all the jargon that gets bandied around in that debate. It's a very simple concept: when you buy stuff from other people, they can use that money to buy stuff you make now (current exports); stuff you made before (assets); or stuff you will make in the future (loans). There is no 4th option.
I agree that if / when the dollar collapses the "jig will be up" as you say. But don't assume the collapse will be rapid. The British pound lost it's "reserve currency" status in 1945 and 70% of its value since then, but England is hardly a 3rd world hell hole today.
If the dollar collapses everything else will have collapsed already or be in a state of ongoing collapse. We'll be worried about a lot more basic things than the state of our 401ks.
Actually there are ways the dollar could collapse first, but the outcome would still be the same, at least for most of the world.
I'm not saying the USD has "collapsed" (or will anytime soon) at all. I rather doubt that thesis and think there's way too much hyperbole about it.
Take a look at the chart I posted. Some currency collapses (Turkey, Lebanon) are rapid responses to a single event. My point is that reserve currency collapses occur in slow motion, since losing your "reserve" status and being replaced is a gradual process. It took 50 years for the pound to lose 70% of its value, but it DID lose 70% of its value.
A very minor point, but what does "There are now fat women in underwear ads" have to do with culture wars? How does this offend conservatives or anyone else? Take a look around America - there are a lot of overweight people, and clothing them is big business. Or is it that fat women aren't sexy enough for Hanania? Missing the Bali bra ads? I mean seriously?
It’s another in the continuing degradation of society away from the good, beautiful, and true. Just being exposed to viewing obese women splaying their legs on camera in an underwear commercial - I guess in the guise of exercise we’re supposed to believe the blubber is healthy fat - is probably enough to decrease the sperm count in any males subject to it. Same goes for the Lume commercials, where we get to hear a ‘doctor’ regale us with tales of female crotch stank. Or ads with men who impress us with imaginings of their smooth ‘manscape.’ It contributes to the en-crassening of society.
Yes! I hate those Lume commercials! In addition to the grossness, they have the production value of a Skype call.
I sense that there is some unresolved puritanical “issues” going on with all this disgust of the body. Moslems and others have practice hair removal for ages. What’s the big deal? People should be healthy but also non-judge-mental about differing body types , exposed skin, and shaming women about crotch odors. This is the kind of church lady stuff that makes sane people avoid church like the plague.
Thanks for your advice but I’ll use my own judgement based on what I think it is; f’ugly and crass. No ‘shaming’ is involved.
Cool
Is it Christian to use profane cursing like "What The F--k"?
It's better than blasphemy.
It does use as a reviling curse the very means God designed for bringing new life into the world. Totally contrary to Rod's take on enchantment.
I didn't, I used an acronym, but since it offended you, I removed it.
Because it is, what it was.
Yes.
With whining about female models who are not the right shape, the narrative seques from legitimate concerns about morality to mere whining about things with no moral content-- although if you think fat-bashing is immoral then the morality in that case is on the other side. (Som years back on Rod's blogged I mentioned being disdainful about obese but otherwise non-diabled people I'd seen on those motorized carts in Walmart-- and I was taken to task for my attitude being uncharitable for a Christian-- and my critics were right.)
Decadence has expanded to include a wider array of folks. Equity can mean equal opportunity evil doing, which is not what MLK sought. It's not really a moral improvement to put more minorities into the killing fields.
I agree. When Tucker Carlson went on a (month's long) rant about green M&M's being "woke" because it wasn't in high heels any more; or when people rant about "How dare they have a black Little Mermaid?" (look if it were really a mermaid, she'd be blue or green); or this - fat models in underwear commercials - well, you instantly lose a lot of people's attention.
A lot of Woke, suddenly fall asleep.
Critical Theory has a sub-theory called Fat Studies (so coined by those who traffic in said so-called studies). It is the usual cultural Marxism dressed up into hierarchies of power and victim shaming. The big problem with it is that, like so much of the gender identity activism we see today, it is a big lie. Fat Studies will tell you that those who are overweight (we do not use the word "fat" anymore, which is why, for example, the word was cut from Roald Dahl's books) are "born that way." It completely ignores the scientific, medical, and biological truths about the harm caused to the individual by being obese. It ignores the choices and personal responsibilities of the individual. Even to raise such truths, or to advocate for such benign things as fitness and eating healthy will draw the ire of Fat Studies activists. You will be accused of victim blaming, or worse, in short order.
I suspect what Hanania was getting at was the notion that even underwear ads are now subject to the lies of Critical Theory. I don't really give a fig if an overweight person is a model in an underwear. But I do care if the reasoning behind it is to advance a silly, but harmful, agenda.
Fat people are "born that way"? In Paris four months ago. Was looking for them, the contrast between Paris and the US being what it is, and saw almost no fat people. The one exception that I recall: two fat women at an adjoining table in a restaurant, but, leaning closer, I discovered that they were English.
On the other hand, a friend who spent a month in the countryside of the south of France last year said that there are increasing numbers of the over-weight, something he attributed to the decline of the greengrocers, the butchers, the fishmongers in the smaller towns and their replacement by the supermarchés with their packaged fast foods which are increasingly bought.
Bingo. It's about intersectionality and the related linking of victimologies.
https://jamesesses.substack.com/p/paying-women-to-be-drugged-and-raped
Hmm... I seem to remember a lot of hostility among the conservatives at Michelle Obama's attempts to fight childhood obesity, from bringing healthy lunches to the schools to an organic garden at the White House. But now it's "woke" to oppose such efforts?
You can't keep up without a scorecard, folks!
You miss the point. Intersectionality is saying that obesity is beautiful and is even denying its health ramifications. And I'll be the first to say that many of the conservatives criticizing Michelle Obama's healthy food efforts were being churlish or just downright stupid.
It was because of who the messenger was. Had Melania Trump done the same thing a large portion of the Democrats would have mocked it (and mockery always draws on some element of truth, so that doesn't really defend it) and Republicans would have praised it. The reason you can't keep up with it is because it's an example of the political cynicism of both political opinion leaders and their adherents who know perfectly well they're partisan hypocrites. Loyalty to political factions is to patriotism what idolatry is to religion.
Well, I believed conservatives were stupid to criticize Michelle Obama for that. She did the right thing.
Because it was a waste of both food and money when kids refused to eat it. We don’t live in France which is a much more cohesive society that rears their children in a more uniform fashion.
Have you ever seen a fat-assed evangelist berate women about wearing makeup or ranting about drugs and drinking? Nobody points out what glutinous, sugar-addicted piles of grease they are. Preach Christ and leave people the hell alone about their personal issues.
Like who? Name them.
Ask the woke. They're the ones linking fatness and queerness via intersectionality. It's all about linking of victimologies.
They're not even victims. They're beating up on the normal, with special nastiness reserved for those who aren't wrongdoers.
A better question is where are the fat men in underwear ads? To answer your question, advertising has long been used to tell us proles what sexy looks like. According to those who control the media and therefore the message, sexy used to be Marilyn Monroe. Now it's obese women, non-binary, queer or trans women and women of color. Personally, I'm against sexualizing any kinds of people, women included.
I just saw one of those!
Huh, well, there you go. I guess you don't actually have to sell things to enjoy your luxury values. Although, as I said, I really do deplore the use of sex in advertising. In fact, I sometimes think advertising is one of the main causes of the decline of the west because it contributes so much to our culture's materialistic bent and loss of social trust, not to mention our ever increasing neuroticism.
Nothing wrong with offering useful goods for sale. It's the lying and pervasive deceptive manipulation now.
One gets the sense that the woke don't mind the sexualization of women and children provided everyone else is sexualized too. Just like feminism in general, it gets pretty much everything bass-ackwards.
I'm old enough to remember when feminism was about being equal under the law and not using things like short skirts as an excuse for rape. Feminism was necessary to right some historic wrongs but they lost me when sex-positivity and slut walks became a thing. Now I don't know what it even means to be feminist. And yes, they want to sexualize everything, God knows why.
Women and men sometimes find each other sexy. Beware of people dumping their advice about sexuality on you when it is none of their business. Keep kids out of it. Beware of prudes and libertines alike. They have issues that are best kept to themselves.
I would like to go on record to say that I am wildly in favor of sexualizing Marylin Monroe. Hubba.
Made my point about the JFK promiscuity coverup, with collusion of liberal media, the dynastic family and all the hangers on of Camelot.
Interesting. How so?
Dearest,Torquemada-
I see that you are a score keeper.
Besides having no discernible sense of humor (which is a dangerous thing) it is very poor communication to just throw something against the wall and proclaim “gotcha!” without articulating exactly what you are saying and why.
Ill take a stab at deciphering your cryptology.
1.) JFK was unfit to be president because he could not be faithful to his wife and control his libido.
2.) we should not acknowledge that there was a time in American history when even Journalists had a sense of propriety and common decency about the office (as distinct from the man in the office) of Presidency and spared the public the trauma of having the president’s sins smeared in our faces and dragging the Republic into a self-serving pornographic game of “gotcha!”.
I don’t buy into the Camelot bs and I would expect friends and family to respect the man and the office sufficiently to leave private matters to the family.
This is what sane people do. They mind their own business. They dont presume to meddle in other people’s business.
You seem to have a strange preoccupation with other’s private lives, especially as it relates to sexual matters.
Kinda icky and church lady-like. Sometimes I would rather laugh with the sinners than wag fingers with the pious.
So much for the theory that trolls won't pay to troll! LOL
So now you brand me as a troll as a way of positioning the argument?
Very disappointing.
When the argument hits a nerve then the tactic is to question motive. This is how they reveal themselves.
What the hell is wrong with fat women? Curves are gorgeous.
How much women's underwear do you buy?
I have no idea what you are talking about. My comment was about loving fat women.
The point of using models in advertising is supposed to be to sell things. Women, especially, buy things because society has conditioned them to think they need those things to be attractive to others. Most women, even fat women, don't think fat women are sexy, so it's kind of pointless virtue signaling to use them in advertising. If that wasn't true there wouldn't be a gazillion dollar weight loss industry in the west. While it's nice, I suppose, that you like fat women, unless you buy a lot of women's underwear that doesn't really justify their use in underwear ads.
So fat women throughout history never needed to know where to buy underwear?
Also, i think people should be healthy and not prone to diabetes and knee replacements, etc. i cant do anything for people who loathe themselves. But the notion that fat women cannot be gorgeous is a very odd mindset in my view. Obesity is unhealthy. Fat can be beautiful.
I quit identifying as a Republican last fall, when there was the run up to the mid-term elections and how it felt more and more like two sports teams competing for some sort of trophy. There was so little talk of what direction the country would be going on, planning for fifty or a hundred years down the road, creating truly humanist solutions to things like crime, poverty, war, etc. It has always been "vote for us and things'll be great." Except, nothing gets fixed...just more promises. I'm not a Democrat, either. All they care about is Jan 6th, when it is like the smallest thing compared to everything else. We create millions of tons a waste a year, give lip service to the environment, can't balance a budget, don't respect real human rights, and so on. I guess call me a real progressive, not a rainbow flag waver who just kisses corporate butt behind the scenes. There may not be much hope of things changing, but at least I don't feel anxiety about elections, as it is clear how totally meaningless they are. Social issue wins are like arguing over who has what seat as the rowboat heads to the waterfall. If we cannot course correct as a civilization and species, no one is going to care at all about trans rights and what is being taught in school.
Yes, it's a foregone conclusion that absent a tsunami of public opposition coupled with elected officials who are willing to also be against it, that America's numerous wars of choice will be waged endlessly without interruption, no matter who we are allowed to vote for. I do not believe at all that Ron DeSantis will challenge a military industrial complex grown so important to the economy, which requires wars.
I'm independent, not a Republican. The traditional economic Republican can't really be effectively antiWoke, because so much of their corporate donor base is Woke adjacent. If push comes to shove, though, what's of overriding political influence is making war for profit. If Woke were ever to threaten that, it would be eliminated. Not going to happen, for they see Woke being spread by Western war making.
Yep. Arguing over deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rod, I agree with and greatly appreciate 95% of what you write. Heck, after Easter I will be leading a discussion of Live Not By Lies. (Those near Corpus Christi, feel free to message me.)
But the vast majority of those protesting on January 6th did so peacefully, and they were right in insisting that the rigged election not be certified, at least not before it was fully investigated. The harm that has resulted because Congress rubber-stamped it is immeasurable.
It was not rubber stamped. There was never any clear, convincing evidence of election fraud enough to overturn the results . It has been 2 1/2 years and still no evidence despite numerous lawsuits. Trump supporters just cannot accept that Trump lost - even when Republicans on same ballot won. Give it up. Trump lost. Move on.
I am moving on. In fact, I prefer DeSantis now. But I will not pretend that was a legitimate election.
One can do those at the same time.
Prove the fraud. Saying not legitimate just causes more crazies to think ok to attack the capital or poll workers such as the mother/daughter in Georgia who had to deal with death threats.
Among others, Molly Hemingway documented the rigging of the 2020 election very well in her book Rigged. Not that you care.
Molly - a Fox News contributor and editor at The Heritage on line magazine. Curious if Fox allowed her to repeat these theories on air while they are fighting the Dominion lawsuit.
I have been waiting for one shred of evidence for these claims. So far nothing but hyperbole has been submitted. What’s the big deal? If it was such naked fraud then counter-sue Dominion, pull out all the additional material and blow the lid off of this. Yet, every shovel full of dirt we dig up has evidence of inconclusive and false claims on behalf of the Trump team. Just look at Giuliani. What happened to that guy? He has turned into a craven, greasy weasel bag man.
The "Shadow Campaign" demonstrates that there really didn't have to be fraud. Setting up a cabal of cross-party elites to control elections is much more dangerous in the big picture than either small-scall fraud or small-scale rebellion.
I agree that the vast majority were peaceful on Jan 6. However, the criminality of Trump exhaustively outlined in the Jan 6 Report bares witness to a diabolical intent on the part of the Thug in Chief. Nobody is going to convince me that the depositions of his staff and others were fraudulent. He created a fiasco and just sat like an angry little baby refusing the nanny to change his poopy diapers while the capitol was raped by criminals. They had only fabricated speculation that the election was rigged. I watched every minute of the hearings and the preponderance of evidence is that the individuals who acted violently on the perimeter and interior of the capital deserve every ounce of punishment they got and that POTUS (who i prefer to refer to as SCROTUS) is soundly guilty of dereliction of duty to the United States.
Precisely. The problem is even alot of “religious” people do not really believe what scripture is declaring and part of the problem is that preachers lack the guts and brains to teach it. People get upset when they have to actually concentrate and then they stop attending church because it is no longer fun and entertaining.
I would not want to be those preachers when they are held accountable before God.
Trump IN HIS SPEECH asked people to go "peacefully and patriotically" to the Capitol.
The hearings you mention were a kangaroo court show trial for prime time. Pelosi expelled those Congressmen who would have asked inconvenient questions.
…so his staff, secret service, white house council, etc..they all lied under oath testifying what they saw and heard?
And what did the American people see and hear from trump for three hours hours while he rebuked his staff and sulked in front of the tv while animals ransacked the capitol.
I dont buy into the idea that you just ignore the record. And what kind of a zombie spell was placed upon those who testified? What did they have to gain other than the scorn of cult zealots?
Remember what tyrants tell people? Pay no attention to what you see and hear.
BTW, the record clearly demonstrate that it was POTUS himself, after being briefed about the presence of guns, gave to order to “remove the f-ing mags” (magnetic detectors to prevent firearms from getting close to the capitol building). Hmmm. I wonder why that would matter to him so much?
“kangaroo court show trial for prime time. Pelosi expelled those Congressmen who would have asked inconvenient questions.”
I hear this repeated almost verbatim from Trumpees. Almost like a memorized response to that talking point. Did you watch the proceedings? Did you read the report? Did you willingly expose your mind to the evidence?
Look, I’m getting sick and tired of your insulting attitude. I am not in the habit of watching kangaroo Court show trials. And I actually support DeSantis so apologize or get blocked.
Im sorry if you took my position as insulting. I cant do anything about the fact that this whole “kangaroo court” presupposition is an opinion that i personally think is baseless. I did not intend to insult you with an honest opinion. I hear that “kangaroo court” thing too often. Its kinda wierd.
What part of this is insulting?:
“Kangaroo court:
an unofficial court held by a group of people in order to try someone regarded, especially without good evidence, as guilty of a crime or misdemeanor.“
It was an official hearing.
It produced an 814 page document comprised of months of exhaustive materials open for all to read and formulate an opinion.
Did you watch the hearings?
Did you read the report?
Im just saying that all the people that tell me about this alleged “kangaroo court” never watched the hearing or read the report. Kinda weird. I am sorry that this upsets you.
And by the way, it was a show trial and Pelosi did kick out congressman who would’ve asked inconvenient questions. Why do you have such a problem with those facts?
I have no problem with any of that. I dont look upon the hearings as any kind of formal judgement. I wanted to know what the findings were. At least somebody made an effort to ask some hard questions from the people that were involved.
I eagerly invite anybody to produce hard evidence and testimony that none of these things happened and that the election was indeed stolen. Bit so far only shadowy figures on the grassy knoll and deep-state phantoms and wacky ghosts in the dominion machines and fox news being caught with its pants down.
I would expect Pelosi to play her nasty part as well. None of that can reverse what is as plain as day: POTUS is a crank and a big baby. So pathetic to listen to the president try and squeeze 11,000 votes out of Georgia on the phone. The actions of a desperate sociopath. Im sorry. No insult intended. My honest informed opinion.
DeSantis 2024!!!
<i>the unwillingness of the Right to defend our own beliefs is why we keep losing.</i>
This is because Republicans - whatever they say about cultural issues - are still ultimately motivated by special interests/big money. And big money utilizes cultural issues as a smokescreen.
A word about investing too much faith in DeSantis. I'm in Florida, and the state Legislature - where the GOP has a supermajority in both houses - talks a good culture war game, but it's all a smokescreen; they exist to do the bidding of the special interests like Big Sugar, big utilities, Disney, etc. My question about DeSantis always has been whether he's playing the same game, whether his culture war "focus" merely masks the REAL focus, putting more money into the deepest pockets.
Until and unless we have conservative legislators who care about cultural issues more than what the moneyed special interests want for themselves - we're spinning our wheels.
I don't see DeSantis as quite so deceptive as you make out, but I cannot see him not supporting the US war interests and the US military footprint and wars overseas. That's my major interest in policy, although I surely do loathe Woke probably even more than he, and I'd like to support that, but not at the expense of the insane deep state policy of conquering the world while eliminating commercial rivals.
There is never going to be a politician, leader, minister, etc who isnt compromised. We are a species of monsters.
Thank you for citing Hanania. He holds certain views (abortion, euthanasia) that Christians correctly find horrifying. But he is also intelligent and insightful on many topics.
The United States, in its political and cultural divisions, reminds me a good deal of interwar France of the Third Republic. See in particular Robert O. Paxton's "Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order" and his discussion of the social and political background leading to what became Vichy France.
The valorization of January 6 reminds me somewhat of "February 6," a much more serious event in Paris on that date in 1934 where far-Right mobs rioted against the left-wing government of the Third Republic. It is still argued as to whether this event amounted to an effort to overturn the state -- William Shirer among others considered the event to be quite serious. The event was widely condemned at the time, and was briefly a rallying point for the Left, but the rebels were lionized on the French Right. Being a "good 6 February man" (meaning part of what was arguably a real insurrection) became a job recommendation when Vichy France rolled around.
Evidently Daladier fired the director of the Comédie-Française because a production of Coriolanus was taken as incitement to riot. They order, said I, this matter better in France.
Tucker Carlson aired the footage from January 6 that shows the supposed "QAnon Shaman" being escorted peacefully throughout the Capitol building, where the police open doors for him, and once in the chamber leads a prayer for the Capitol police. This footage was withheld from the public, from the court, the judge and the defense. There are also unarrested and uncharged individuals clear identifiable, who are urging the crowd to become violent. Under oath, FBI officials refused to answer whether or not these were FBI agents provocateurs, avoiding perjury by making false denials. People who were not even inside and nonviolent are still being arrested, and people are held in poor conditions for a years in solitary confinement. The intent is to hold them forever until they make a guilty plea and move to sentencing. This is wrong on so many levels, that if one thinks it is OK then there is an emotional component distorting judgement, nudging the narrative from objectivity. The completely false claim continues to be made that 5 police officers were killed that day by the demonstrators. Not one. There were no fires, no guns. Evidence is that "deep state" players wanted to escalate and radicalize - there is no investigation of who was planting pipe bombs as caught by several surveillance cameras at political party headquarters - in order to make their own analogy to the Reichstag fire, to strengthen their own political position and destroy legitimate opposition, just as occurred other times in history. You think it can't happen here? If you are correct about all the other things you report - and you are - then of course it is as well. This is what living under lies looks like.
Those who smashed property, shit on the floor, threatened the Speaker should be rightfully prosecuted.
Meanwhile, Kamala bails out violent antifa and charges are dropped for even worse.
Vote her out. Support legislation that clamps down on domestic terror. Antifa are bottom-feeder scum.
Also, let’s not forget about the people who drew blood. Lock them up.
In fairness, it ought to be noted that the Washington Post editorialized very well over the weekend on the Stamford mess:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/24/stanford-law-dean-free-speech/
With, erm, one cavil. Judge Duncan! Profanity! It recalls "HMS Pinafore".
Did you hear him – did you hear him?
Oh, the monster overbearing!
(He said "Damme"! He said Damme")
Don’t go near him – don’t go near him –
He is swearing – he is swearing!
I will hear of no defence,
Attempt none if you’re sensible.
That word of evil sense
Is wholly indefensible.
Go, ribald, get you hence
To your cabin with celerity.
This is the consequence
Of ill-advised asperity!
Old sign seen in a bar in Clarion, Pa. (working from memory here):
"Positively No Swearing! Not that we care a damn, but it plays hell with the customers."
Rod said once that this country is trying to fit a politics-sized peg into a God-sized hole. And it's not nearly enough. Something from Orban neatly sums this up: politics can give us stuff, but it can't give us meaning.
I tell people I'm not political anymore, and my main effort goes into being a good husband and father. This jives with Mother Theresa's saying about how if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
I notice that you handwave away Beshear’s criticisms. Conservatives cry parental rights all the time, right up to the point where parents do something they disagree with. Then the state must intervene! It’s just like the self-serving arguments about states’ rights and subsidiarity which fly right out the window as soon as a city institutes something so trivial as a plastic bag ban.
Conservatives mysteriously always seem to forget to actually define their bogeymen, probably because then they’d actually have to argue rather than scare.
Mr Dreher does something similar by raging against gay porn in schools. Yet we see the books that Desantis wants to ban: basically anything that acknowledges that some people aren’t straight. You’ll forgive me if I find the definition of “porn” as slightly more elastic than an elephant’s garter belt.
The same goes for “woke.” What a meaningless term! And yet how useful as a certain kind of dishonest argument! What does it mean? Who can say? But whatever it is, it’s cataclysmic! End of civilization stuff—you read it here! The lack of definition is the point. It’s meant to communicate one thing and one thing only: they’re coming to get you!
Never mind that there may, in fact, be quantifiable instances of how institutions have been designed from the ground up to steer resources towards some people and away from others. Never mind that there might actually be cogent arguments against things like the incredibly corrupt private prison industrial complex. It’s woke! They’re coming to get you!
And that’s how you are frightened into perpetuating massive money grabs for the few on the basis of mass immiseration of the many.
Notice how the clerical sex abuse scandals have disappeared from the headlines? Ever looked at just who is actually perpetrating child rape? Mighty useful things, drag queens, if you want to direct attention away from such things. Just like the Satanic panic of yesteryear. But there are high horses to mount.
I suggest something of a longitudinal study. Let’s keep an eye on this kid that’s been marked out as a symbol of decadence here for five or ten years. I’m not a betting man ordinarily, but I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is: ten or fifteen years from now, that kid will be leading a supremely boring and unremarkable life, with nothing but the usual ups and downs we all face.
Anyone want to bet against me?
"The same goes for 'woke.' What a meaningless term! And yet how useful as a certain kind of dishonest argument! What does it mean?"
It means approximately you, friend.
And that’s part of the problem. This isn’t about ideas, it’s about attacking people.
Let me put it this way: is it too much of an imposition to ask you to define your terms? Preferably without the ad hominem.
What's "ad hominem" about it? You just evince one of the primary characteristics of the woke, which is to pretend there is no such thing as woke. That and changing the subject. Of course in marxism there are no subjects, just oppression. It's a bit of a leap to go from the private prison system to suborning a little boy to dress up as a girl. Why, just look at what the State is doing in San Salvador!
I notice you are still evading the question. Define your terms, please.
The application of marxist categories of oppression to sexual, cultural, social, biological and physical issues. Have at it, Lysenko.
Excellent! And thank you for the concise and clear response.
So, by “Marxist,” I’m assuming you mean the extension of Marx’s understanding of history as the struggle of economic class against class, classically the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie, or, in feudal terms, landlords vs. serfs or peasant tenants, right?
And there is something to this, right? I mean, Marxism oversimplifies things drastically, but we do see time and time again wealth and power concentrating in the hands of a few who exploit the labor of the masses. I mean, there’s a reason things like unions and union busting exist.
By the same token, race may be a wholly arbitrary human invention, but racism is a thing, especially historically but also today. And there are consequences that flow from that.
I think it’s also relevant that race was a Western European invention that’s furthermore peculiar to the post medieval period. Africans didn’t wake up one morning and decide they were black. Until Europeans came along they were Akan or Ewe or Mandé or whatever. Their identity as black or negro was forced on them by whites.
So it’s a bit much to talk about all of this categorization, especially with regard to race, as being a leftist thing. Whites created the categories. Whites enforced segregation. Whites exploited black labor in the form of slavery. That reality was built into the institutions whites created in innumerable ways. And now that it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable you want to handwave all that away and call it Marxism?
To the extent that CRT is about looking at the implicit assumptions about race that our institutions incorporate into themselves, it’s a useful exercise. To take one example, sunset laws have been and perhaps still are a thing. If you think that’s a valid thing to examine and fix, then congratulations! You support CRT.
We can and should argue over both the history of oppression and the details of how it may persist into the present. Not every claim of oppression is valid. Moreover, there are different ways we might respond.
But you cannot deny that the problem exists altogether.
Here is a definition I found elsewhere:
"Postmodernism rejects innate human nature, objective truth, knowledge, reason, and the individual, replacing them with socially constructed identity groups, cultural and value relativism, ideologies, and indistinct categories. In doing so it has extended itself into unworkable nonsense. Wokeness is the application of this nonsense in real-world contexts, like publishing."
https://www.takimag.com/article/waging-war-on-woke/
Geoff Guff, who's been around Rods blog, on and off, for a good long while, is no more "woke" than Rod is a "theocrat" or you are a "fascist".
Unleashed how? Is anything happening today that wasn't part of human beahvior ten, ninety, five hundred, five thosuand years ago?
There are some new technologies to worry about, sure. Nukes could bring about death and destruction on a scale only the largest catastrophes of nature could surpass. And the darker possibilities of genetic technology are something to dread.
Old plus ça change Frazier. There's a kapo job waiting for him in the salt mines.
Well, "human behavior". How about sticking to America? How about forced down our throats by the federal government? Did Franklin D. Roosevelt appoint a drug-addled castrate in a dress to a sub-cabinet position in public health?
"'woke'” What a meaningless term!"
Funny you say that....
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/why-are-the-woke-suddenly-disliking
Interesting article. Cutting through the fluff, he apparently defines “woke” as: racism against whites, Asians, and Jews; drag queens “grooming” children (completely unlike how youth pastors do, apparently, since they’re not included); transwomen competing as women, instances of which can probably be counted on one hand; gender expression that is anything but manly men (like Trump!) and soft, delicate, tender women (like Lauren Boebert or MTG? I guess?); surgeons allowed to operate on children (I assume); conservatives having to deal with the consequences of their speech; history being re-examined and blind hero worship questioned; reparations; and a complete insistence that racism, while no doubt a horrible thing (especially when it’s against whites!) never had any lasting consequences or harms that we might consider addressing (unless it’s against whites).
Which is all “critical theory.” Got it.
That’s the definition. A hodgepodge of various right wing hobbyhorses.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are not enough hay bales in the Upper Midwest to construct so gigantic a straw man.
Well I wasn’t going to say that about the article, but I do agree with you.
“woke.” What a meaningless term!
I applaud you for being a loyal foot soldier in protecting the narrative you most identify with, but up to a few seconds ago all our media-celeb lefties were loudly proudly "woke".
"Woke" used to be black slang, then got applied more recently to CRT and/or Critical Social Justice more broadly, which is how Marxism was rebranded after it fled to the academy to lick its wounds and repurpose itself as no longer dedicated to "the proletariat" and its wages but to "the marginalized" and their self-esteem. See, it aint that hard!
And the reason we spend most of our politics now on playing word games is because modern Leftism is rooted in the academy, is based on the manipulation of language and symbols, and the simple if nefarious idea that if you change how someone speaks you can change how they think and then change how they act & vote.
It is underhanded and juvenile, but I can't argue with the results.
"Woke" came from the cultural left as a shorthand term for what the academics call intersectionality. The right picked it up as a negative term meaning roughly "political correctness on steroids." Then the left started saying that the right invented it, and that the concept was non-existent anyhow.
I will bet against you. They are coming. There is a colossal re-set going on. Not by humans. These perversions are all preparation for the emergence of the false messiah in the form of puritanical humanists.
Well, if you’re right about this being the end times, then our wager would be pretty meaningless.
Still, let’s define the stakes. What time frame? And how should we define the criteria for who wins the bet?
You keep throwing the world "conservative" around, could you clearly define it if you had to? Could most conservatives? Or would you just be throwing out a list of causes, talking points and positions? That doesn't make it a meaningless term.
Not that long ago there really were people self-applying the term "woke" and roughly it related to people who have become aware of a mass system of interrelated systematic oppressions against women and various minorities.
"These radicals have no respect for any forms, any hierarchies, any rules or customs that they dislike."
Liberalism = liberation from constraints and hierarchies. Why would we expect liberals to respect the very things they permanently seek to eliminate?
Well, no. Liberalism approximately means the rule of law, representative government, separation of powers, and respect for minorities. How this morphed into a cult for control freaks is perhaps best explained in this book, a classic, and an unread one:
https://www.amazon.com/Dominations-Powers-Reflections-Liberty-Government-ebook/dp/B077W67X6R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2NK8DCGCT1114&keywords=dominations+and+powers+santayana&qid=1679936054&s=books&sprefix=Dominations+and+Po%2Cstripbooks%2C65&sr=1-1
Thanks for that!
I love Santayana, what a great writer and thinker, what a great sage. He is really the last 19th century European aristocrat of the soul, and maybe even (like his novel said) The Last Puritan.
He is criminally underrated and under-read.
It's a wonderful book, his last. Though he began gathering material for it while still at Harvard, it was published right before he died. It gives you the bends thinking of him contemplating the Korean War, like T.S. Eliot warning Russell Kirk off Buckley. Everybody who reads this blog should read DaP.
i downloaded and already started, the Preface is beautifully written, as usual:
"...if one political tendency kindled my wrath, it was precisely the tendency of industrial liberalism to level down all civilisations to a single cheap and dreary pattern."
I don't know if you've read his Soliloquies book, but that is my fave.
thx again!
I'm not a fan of the Soliloquies, in fact, much too literary. He was born a philosopher, however.
You picked up that quote! Just you wait, it gets better.
i live for the literary!
but either way, excellent writing makes just about any philosophy or politics an enjoyable journey.
also, who writes that well nowadays?
there are very few living prose stylists (if any) on his level, and let's not even bring up the prose of our modern academy "philosphers".
Control feaks gravitate to power like iron filings gravitate to magnets (OK, Im mixing up my forces of nature). You can find the type on the Right as well.
of course, you'd be crazy to say otherwise...will to power and all that.
Liberalism certainly evolved, but the seeds of our current iconoclasm were present from the beginning. Locke is pretty clear about his dislike for constraints; he seeks to liberate people. This drive can be seen in another revolution: the French. They weren't big on any of the things you listed, but they were absolutely "liberal".
Some of the people associated with the French Revolution were classically liberal: Jacques Necker and his daughter Mme. de Stael. Lafayette. Arguably the Comte de Mirabeau. Probably the Girondists as a party. The Jacobins were not. Talleyrand was only out for himself. The Directorate was, at best, corrupt liberals not unlike our current financial elite. Napoleon-- well, if he was "liberal" then the word has no meaning.
Thomas Paine championed the American revolution with Common Sense and then did the same in France with The Rights of Man. He was also instrumental in writing the French constitution of 1791. The French revolutionaries (who would become the Jacobins) granted honorary citizenship to Paine, Franklin, Hamilton, and many other America revolutionaries because they saw the underlying philosophy of the two wars to be in sync.
Napoleon was the solution-of-last-resort to the excesses of the liberal revolution. That's what happens with most revolutionaries; they kill each other until the masses get so sick of it that they allow a strongman to take over to restore order.
You and I have talked about this before, Jon. I know you want to separate "Enlightenment liberalism" from the obvious lunacy of today, but the bright-line you're trying insert between them just isn't there.
The Jacobins were followed by the Directorate which was a gang of corrupt plutocrats wearing the liberty cap because it was good for business. They were decidedly unpopular with enemies to their left and right-- not to mention the large coalition of foreign nations fighting to roll back the clock before 1789-- and grab whatever they could from the French patrimony. Of course they turned to Bonaparte after he demonstrated his military acumen. And in time he made himself their master. Something similar happened in the English Civil War: Cromwell became them an of the hour. But unlike Napoleon Cromwell had scruples and beliefs in something other than himself.
Strange, how the difference between a virus and a vaccine is mere quantity, and the savior is a weaker version of the destroyer. I'm not sure if the analogy is perfect, but it does seem like people have trouble defining "wokism" because it is not a fundamental evil but an extreme position of righteousness. It is the natural outgrowth of a successful liberalism established and now going soft, forgetting itself, getting overconfident in victory. This liberalism itself stands on Christianity and the radical equality of the human soul. Hence, you could even say that wokism is to liberalism what liberalism is to Christianity, that classical liberalism itself is already a distortion, a corruption of something original, and wokism merely completes the process.
So, the real question: is there something tragic specifically about the Christian idea, does it contain the seeds of its demise, does it automatically create the preconditions for liberalism and democratization and does it inevitably follow the steps? After all, the equality of humans is an unreal idea, fully demonstrable as false on cold realist terms. But it is more attractive than reality.
How much of a logical leap is it from the absurd notion of equality to the slightly more absurd notion of equity? Furthermore, if someone is already emotionally committed to delivering equal justice for the correction of injustice obtained by violence, and also simultaneously stands for perfect freedom, then why not attain justice by violence? After all, if we are equals, and you dominate and dispossess me by violence, I have the ability to rectify the injustice on equal terms, and will logically take an eye for an eye.
The lesson: when Christianity is in any way transformed and "advanced" beyond its core teaching, it will turn into classical liberalism, then eventually wokism, then it will revert to pre-Christianity.
Some knowledgeable Catholics believe that the answer to this conundrum lies in the work of Rosmini, but I've never seen it fleshed out, and much of his work is hard to find in English.
For myself as an Orthodox I think Dostoevsky points in the right direction. Liberalism gets the Christian understandings of freedom and equality right, but starts to fall apart as soon as it separates these things from their root in the Gospel. Again, I haven't seen this really expounded upon, but would recommend Berdyaev's book on Dostoevsky as a great starting point after FD's work itself.
“Some knowledgeable Catholics believe that the answer to this conundrum lies in the work of Rosmini”. Everybody has an opinion. The answer is in the cross of Christ.
I realize you are of the intellectual class, a peer of media elites, if out of favor with them. As well, your writing is super-spiritual, with its expressions somewhat beyond experience and comprehension of most, and not even accessible to them. There's no sin in that, quite the opposit
e, and you surely have your audience.
However, it may be that you are alienated from ordinary working folks, whose central concerns are not precisely all of yours, even when there is overlap. Many are now convinced that the regular parties have exploited them and continue to do so. They are right! So who do many see as the outsider and loose cannon against the status quo. Now I didn't say as we helped clean up his home, the blind man listening to the Trump rally, I myself am a supporter of policies rather than over the top political speech. Yet I have worked as an auto mechanic and have been a computer engineer. Am I excluded myself from self-congratulatory highbrow discourse? Are the lowbrow wrong, or have they caught on?
High and low brows are wrong. Christ alone is right.
RE: Donald F**k and the Joseph Goebbles Play Book:
Whenever sane people despair over the wasteful, self-serving and masturbatory imbecility of the Donald, I always have the same response: the diabolical power that he wields is in the form of the mob numbers raised on tv shows. He slip-streams right into the miasmic fog off-gassing above the effluvial bog of rotting America. He is a diabolical genius. He holds his converts in contempt. They are dirty ignoramuses to him and he laughs at what suckers they are to believe the naked lies that he dresses up as truth. Donald F**k doesn’t give a damn about them and he doesn’t give a damn about America. It’s all about him.
I will never understand how the same people screwed by the housing collapse in 2008 at the hands of the filthy rich, the same people who were saddled with the economic fallout, became enamored with a wealthy bullshit artist. Stunning.
This got me to thinking about a breakfast table conversation at the Disney household that I once read about. Walt and the kids were eating breakfast and his daughter asked him something along the lines of, “Daddy, I really like your movies but why do they have to be so corny?” His response was,”well, sweetie. You see, all across America millions of people are waking to a new day today. And do you know what? They all just LOVE corn.”
The Stanford abomination was the other side of the satanic pentagram. They are the people who look forward to branding all of conservative America as Trump “Deplorables”. They are licking their chops to clearing the deck so that society can be ruled by elites and their pacified little pets who do their bidding.
To call this all decadence is not sufficient. Both parties are meat puppets controlled by the satanic spirits which own them. For you cannot serve two masters. You serve the one or you serve the other. And we know the satanic qualities: lies, bickering, greed, callousness, stiff-necked, self righteous, rebellious, godless, back-stabbing, envy, strife, lust, murder, hate...”
Politics are needed to function in a free society. But I feel like what is going on has exposed politics as spent and hollowed out. It is a mere shadow game for what is revealing itself to be spiritual warfare. We need to continue to oppose the Woke for what it is: the rising tide of puritanical humanism as a mask on the face of satan himself and the spirit of anti-christ rising up.
Our job is to fight it, but scripture makes it perfectly clear: the anti christs will prevail and run the show just before the wrath of God finally blows. We are at that door now. So fight, but only Christ will stand victorious after the blood is up to the bridle of the horse. Not my words and not my personal interpretation.
I will continue to call Woke and Illiberalism what it is: the spirit of anti christ. I will oppose the rise of anti christ, but I would be lying if I said that I cannot wait for God to blow His lid and watch the shit will finally hit the fan.
“Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
20 For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”
Ephesians 6
"I will never understand how the same people screwed by the housing collapse in 2008 at the hands of the filthy rich, the same people who were saddled with the economic fallout, became enamored with a wealthy bullshit artist. Stunning."
Short answer: he was the only one who listened to them. Several books and numerous essays and articles have pointed this out. Whether he *actually* listened was at the time beside the point; the other candidates didn't even pretend to, and HRC ignored them purposely.
He listened to them, thought about it and decided that they were stupid enough to vote for the tv guy on the Apprentice. Keep polishing that brand.
Note that I didn't say they were right, only that that was the perception: in sum, a bull-shitter who listens is better than someone who doesn't listen at all.
Sophistry.
Sorry, but I heard it first hand. Although I live in a middle-class community several towns nearby, including the one in which my parish church is located, are a mix of rust-belt and rural/semi-rural populations, and I spend a lot of time there. I didn't vote for Trump, but I know why a lot of people did.
There are many reasons why they voted. Lack of a better candidate and desperation is a big one. Trump didn't see a wrong that needed to be righted. He saw an angle to exploit for his own glory.
I would love to administer LSD to Trump and HRC and lock them in a room.
How would LSD change anything? Neither one is a paragon of perceptive (as distinguished from deceptive) reality.
I dont think i was seeking to change anything via LSD. I simply would love to dose both of them and lock them in a room together.
"Donald F**k doesn’t give a damn about them and he doesn’t give a damn about America. It’s all about him."
Perhaps you are creating a caricature of the man, erasing his basic humanity a bit too sweepingly. Trump cares, in his own way, although I do recall the numerous articles during his initial rise trying to paint him as an irredeemable narcissist, having no true friends, and other such armchair psychology. Yes, Trump is self-absorbed and narcissistic, but so is Obama, and so are all of them. The elder Bush recommended a youthful Trump try his hand at presidential politics, but that was when Trump was respectable, I guess, for he has been pro-America and worried about foreign competition since the 80's, and making the occasional political noises alongside his tabloid life and multifaceted business ventures. Is he really all that exceptional? I don't see it. He's a successful American figure, period, and that comes with good and bad. But it's mostly good, isn't it?
Maybe it's better than the alternative.
For example, let's presume that you are pretty much right about everything, and Trump is a malign fraud. And let's also presume the next election:
Biden vs Trump
How do you vote, and why?
His basic humanity is an unknown quantity beyond the kinds of evil that lurks in the heart of all humans. What I love about him is that he puts all his ugly out there unapologetically. Like i said, he does not concern me. It’s the millions who empower him even when he attempts to rape the election process for his own gain.
In 2016 and 2020 i voted for Winston Churchill. If DeSantis is not on the ballet i will vote for Churchill again. However, there is a chance that I will vote for Trump if I think it can push society over the edge and we can go at it bare knuckles. No chance that I would ever vote for Biden.
Just a short note. My old Orthodox priest told me that he thought Donald Trump had "the spirit of anti-Christ". Now, I'm not wise enough to discern such lofty things, but that got my attention. {the waaaay left seems to already embody that spirit. i'll cling to Christ's robe in these matters}
Always cling to Christ’s robe and never let go.
I can see how the priest could think that.
However, Trump is more like a hybrid of Huey Long, Mussolini, Billy Sunday and Roy Cohen.
Anti Christ will not have the appearance of darkness. He will appear as the man of peace, reasoning, fairness, science and rationality. Global power will be given to him by the nations for his astonishing ability to bring peace to the middle east. The false Messiah will appear as an angel of light. Trump is merely a devourer. A bullshit artist. A manipulator of the crassness of the working people that he disdains but finds power in their tragic lack of anything better.
A few years ago, Rod linked to a pretty wild essay about Trump actually being the incarnation of the Loki-spirit, the Norse Trickster. Maybe you remember it. I still think it might be the most accurate analysis of him.
https://thebaffler.com/latest/donald-trump-trickster-god
Very cool. Thanks for the link. Really appreciate it. I am relatively new here so i don't have a lot of past references to Rod’s postings.👍