White Privilege and Free Will

I never watch CNN -- I prefer MSNBC for high-spirited liberal lunacy -- but I happened to have CNN on when Trump finished his speech last night in Arizona. On comes the bewildered face of CNN anchor Don Lemon, who at first seemed a little hesitant from all the triggering. Then he says of the president:

"He’s unhinged. It’s embarrassing." The speech was "without thought," "without reason," "devoid of fact," and "devoid of wisdom." "There was no gravitas. There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else" (sic).

Let's see: unhinged, embarrassing, without thought, reason, fact, or wisdom, lacking in gravitas, and prone to externalizing blame. CNN! Which is just a metonym for the left.

Isn't projection interesting? It's phenomena like this that first got me interested in psychology. My favorite subject was always psychopathology: there are so many interesting ways for the mind to go off the rails.

In fact, one reason why psychology has become so shallow and boring is that so much fascinating deviance and pathology has been normalized. Indeed, it is celebrated.

We'll get back to Thomas in a couple of days. I only have a little time this morning, but I'm reading an excellent book on the pathologies of the left, a collection of essays by Kenneth Minogue called Liberty and its Enemies.

Some of the essays were published as long ago as 1961, but Minogue clearly saw what was coming. He accurately prognosticated the death spiral of liberalism due to its being hijacked by the left -- that "the era of classic liberalism was an interim between the old monarchical orders and the emergence of a new, threatening age of minute bureaucratic regulation" (from the introduction).

It's sobering to realize that liberalism is over, but I don't see it coming back. Yes, we can preserve little islands and outposts of resistance, but it seems to me that the culture at large is lost. European culture certainly is, but they're just the leading edge of the disease process.

Nevertheless, to paraphrase the poet, "we fight to keep something alive because it is worth keeping alive, not because we expect a final victory." So be a happy warrior and just keep ridiculing these assouls until ridicule is finally outlawed.

The death of liberalism only shows that you can drive human nature out with a pitchfork, but it always comes roaring back. And human nature is, unfortunately, drawn more to security then freedom. Given a choice, the inferior man -- and certainly the horde -- will always choose the latter. It is the main reason why the left wants open borders: in order to import hordes of inferior men who don't want freedom, but rather, freedom from freedom. Or, they want to feel "free" while being dependent. That's the best. I remember it well. I think being 17 years old was the Best Year Ever.

(BTW, the reference to inferior men has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but is just a fact -- as the president rightly says, "they're not sending they're best." Furthermore, his suggestion that immigration policy should revolve around our needs was met with the usual howls from the usual suspects. Rather, immigration policy should be driven by the left's need for fresh victims.)

Classical Marxism divided the world into economic classes. As such, the individual not only disappears, but his being is determined by economic factors. Yesterday we spoke of the distinction between rebellion and inversion. Marxism is a cosmic inversion, because it places existence (economic class) above essence (the unique individual).

Contemporary leftism is just an iteration of this perversion; instead of being solely determined by economic class, people are determined by their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. If you are white, you have White Privilege. If you are black, you are an oppressed victim. Again, you are determined by the group to which you belong. Not only is freedom eliminated, but free will.

But not so fast! Notice the sleight of hand: authorized victims of the left do not have free will. Rather, they are wholly conditioned by circumstances and "root causes," so It's Not Their Fault. Not so for beneficiaries of White Privilege: they not only have free will, but a malevolent free will that creates and oppresses victims.

Thus, only white people have free will. Hey, don't blame me. I'm not the racist. The left is.

As Minogue says -- in 1961 -- "The delinquency of victims is an index of the extent of their suffering." Notice how the president got in trouble over just this question: Antifa and BLM are violent thugs, but their thuggery is only a measure of their suffering and victimhood. Not so white supremacists: they freely choose their evil.

Well, which is it? "a logically consistent environmentalism" effaces the distinction: "either we are all the products of our environment, or we are not. Similarly, the rich are free to mend their ways," while the poor aren't. Never mind that the majority do. They're just the millions of exceptions that prove the rule.

So, like the president, I condemn both sides for choosing evil.

But as Obama's spiritual mentor once said, the white man's greed rules a world in need. This is another way of saying that people without free will are oppressed by people with it.