Tuesday, June 09, 2020

On the Acceleration of Politico-Cultural Insanity

The previous post ended with the question: "how did the obvious become controversial, and how did such anti-human buffoonery become the conventional wisdom of the media-academic complex?"

Exactly which anti-human buffoonery? There's so much of it, the average person is unable to distinguish between the shallow and trivial buffoonery of academia vs. the genuinely important and revolutionary buffoonery that threatens -- or promises -- to undo the cosmic progress of millennia.

In nearby Santa Monica, for example, progressive rioters can destroy in a weekend what had been taking years for progressive politicians to destroy.

And the discernment is only more difficult if one has attended college, since college is precisely where explicit indoctrination into the religion of radical secularism takes place.

Sr. Dávila says something to the effect that for most adults, their intellectual capital consists of a modest inheritance or small lottery won in adolescence. Think of someone like, for example, Obama, who hasn't taken a new cognitive imprint in 40 years, and still thinks and speaks like a stoned college student -- or worse, a sober college professor.

(Did anyone see the Laurel Canyon documentary on Epix? One of the most interesting things about these seedy musical legends is how every single one of them passionately believes the same vaporous cliches at 75 they did at 20!)

An added complication is that in recent times the harmless buffoonery is transitioning to destructive buffoonery at an increasingly rapid clip. In other words, moral and intellectual insanity are redefined as sanctity and political correctitude so quickly, who can keep up? Most people are unable to discern exactly when to denounce themselves, or even to conduct a daily ideological inventory to know what to denounce.

I, for example, still believe in tolerance, merit, and racial colorblindness. But all of a sudden, such beliefs are the quintessence of hatred, oppression, and "white privilege."

Similarly, it took a few years for the redefinition of marriage to go from the lunatic fringe to mandatory acceptance and celebration. Afterwards it took a month or so for the insanity of transgenderism to go from profound irrelevance to The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time. But it has taken only a week for police defunding to go from unthinkable to un-vetoable in Minneapolis.

At any rate, your common sense doesn't deceive you: the madness is accelerating. Indeed, even my 15 year old notices it. He's nostalgic for simpler times, when he was 11, and the politico-cultural insanity seemed a little more treatable if not curable.

For there is no human -- let alone political -- cure for this spiritual malady, in part because the very essence of the disease is the conviction that politics can cure it -- which in turn is the essence of leftism itself.

What I mean to say is that the left specializes in politicizing the existential and even ontological, which is why Progressivism Inc. will never go out of business, because existential and ontological problems will by definition always be with us.

To cite only the most obvious ones, there is and always will be economic scarcity, the infinitude of desire, the unavoidability of sexual differences, the ineluctability of the Bell Curve (e.g., half the population is always of below average intelligence), inequality of outcomes, the terror of freedom, the mystery of existence, the inevitability of death, et al.

Me? I'm not a misanthrope per se. Rather, I just have high standards. Leftism can only succeed if we 1) eliminate all standards, 2) pretend human nature doesn't exist, 3) and empower the state to cure the incurable.

Back in the old days of the blog, puns would spontaneously and intrusively pop into my noggin. I think I mentioned that nowadays -- no doubt because of the influence of brother Dávila -- aphorisms come in unbidden. I'm not saying they're as good as his, but the post has to end somehow.

Just as leftists who love mankind in the abstract hate and mistreat actual people, those who love blacks in general hate blacks in particular and do them great harm.

If there's something more ecstatic than violence rendered legitimate by belief in a lie, Satan kept it for himself.

Thankfully for the left, there is nothing in the Constitution about separation of idols and state.

The left would be far less influential if its ideas were sane.

Look on the bright side: if they defund the police it will be the first time Dems have ever ended a government program.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The left would be far less influential if its ideas were sane.

If that one doesn't damn humanity, it's future and the prospects for our own children, then no other aphorism can. It claims that your average person being influenced is an irrational nutjob.

On another blog chock full of political philosophers, the problem of authoritarian enablers has repeatedly come into play. The general belief there is that most people want to be controlled, preferably in ways suitable for them, by some tribal-sanctioned alpha. And worst of all, the material or metaphysical philosophies of any tribe is irrelevant.

Pushing that kind of person to go against their innate temperamental drives will only coerce them into conflicting tribes, regardless of political philosophy, led by a controller which they believe to be suitable for them. And with power games rewarding who they usually do, bad things happen to the enabler at the end of the day. Regardless of political philosophy.

Maybe sinning isn't just rationalized evil, it's rationalized stupidity as well.

Gagdad Bob said...

Definitely: the whole man is fallen, not just will and sentiment but intellect as well.

Anonymous said...

One general idea is that all organizations from which material power and material benefits can be taken, will always degrade into crony corruption. And then some kind of reformation/restoration/revolution is needed to throw the bums out to get things back to ‘saner-more-normal’.

It seems that leadership elites of such organizations always fall to some kind of resource pathology, like the wine connoisseur who comes to embrace MD 20/20. As for the supplicants, they’re something like boiled frogs.

julie said...

The left would be far less influential if its ideas were sane.

Yes, unfortunately.

Gagdad Bob said...

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

And every cause or institution that isn't explicitly conservative eventually devolves to braindead liberalism. Including, of course, the Republican party.

julie said...

Indeed. I've been registered as an independent pretty much from the start. Not because I'm a libertarian or a greenie or anything, but because I always knew the Republicans, being human, would sooner or later screw over their constituents just like any other party does. Though these days I'm less inclined to think of them as the Stupid party, and more like Evil-Lite. By and large, they support everything the Democrats do, just slower.

Anonymous said...

I want them to defund the police in their blue meccas. I want them to reap what they have sown, to be burned by the fire they stoked. I want them to realize, to their horrified astonishment, that their virtue-signaling and pandering isn't the shield they thought it was.

I watched a video today from enriched, vibrant Ireland, of a teenage boy being stabbed by "future lawyers and doctors." He lay there helpless, his girlfriend laying on top of him to shield him from the attackers. More blows came anyway.

I'm done with even trying to feel charitable. I may damn my soul for the hate in my heart, but I can't accept this. May karma visit the woke; may she visit good and hard.

Cousin Dupree said...

Might as well defund gravity and jump off a high rise.

Anonymous said...

That’s some nifty aphorismizing!

>>Look on the bright side: if they defund the police it will be the first time Dems have ever ended a government program<<

They’d make up for it by heavily funding grief counselors.

Well, the Loons can’t undue all the past’s spiritual progress, tho I don’t doubt they’ll try. They’ll do, have done, a lot of damage, but the fire always springs up somewhere and travels about on a current the Loons don’t know exists. Also, evil kills itself off eventually; this seems written into the program.

I’ve been reading a bit of the historian A. Toynbee, a guy who took his history spiritually. The upshot - all civilizations get born, flourish, then decay and die, everyone of them, no exceptions, including ours, despite the Loons notion that our age somehow broke from the cycle and is soaring toward Progressive heaven forever. We’re really in the Serious Decay stage now, bordering on Complete Collapse. But here’s where it gets interesting - during the Decay/Collapse period, there is always the beginning of a new spirituality, which is really a new way of perceiving religious traditions. It might take centuries for this new spirituality to “find itself”, but it invariably happens. Toynbee went as far as to believe that that was the very reason history featured cycles of civilizational birth/life/death, to give birth to new spiritualities, religions.

He may have been on to something. In any event, no getting away from it; the best we can do is cushion the fall, and that’s not nothing. Holding on to our spiritual bearings at this time is definitely not nothing, in fact, for us as individuals, it’s everything.

Anyway, for me at least, taking the long view, the cosmic view, helps.

Will

julie said...

There will always be a remnant. It is up to each of us whether we are part of that remnant or not.

Anonymous said...

Julie, yes, but I think, pray we’ll be more than a remnant. If central authorities do break down - and they’re basically the ones who purvey the Loon anti-philosophies - we’ll be thrown into localized fragments whereby we can decide for ourselves where we want to go, what we want to be. In any event, there’s too many of us for the Loons to overcome. And we’re willing to fight. I don’t think the Loons comprehend this, which will be to their ultimate disadvantage.

w.

julie said...

I hope you are right, Will. In fact, I think you probably are.

That, and we are praying now more than ever. Some may think prayer counts for nothing. They are wrong.

Anonymous said...



You folks are upset because order is breaking down. But it shouldn't take much imgaination to understand that it is breaking down because it is fundamentally unjust and people just aren't going to put up with it any more.

I know, the real problem is black-on-black crime. You should really read this:
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21280643/police-brutality-violence-protests-racism-khalil-muhammad

I wonder if it's possible for anybody here to acknowledge the simple fact that blacks have been shat on by the United States for hundreds of years and might have legitmate grievances, even if rioting is a poor and destructive way of expressing them?

Anonymous said...

I’ve seen the video of Daniel Shaver, white guy, held at gunpoint and begging for his life before being shot to death by American police, for being fool enough to point his air gun out of a hotel window. I think his shooter was acquitted. IMHO, citizens should stick to the subject and keep the police protecting and serving all of us according to strict rules of conduct. Especially these days, when the level of citizenry angst is so high.

People still debate over whether FDR was a true progressive, or just trying to save the capitalism which had made him rich. Others say that the horrors which came from WWII and the Soviet bloc was what restored the natural cultural balance between power elites and the worker rabble.

Part of me believes that most of the partisan angst comes from people knowing at some level, that it’s now that time in the normal anacyclotic cycle that we throw the bums out to restore what worked better for the previous generation.

Of course some people are still living well and getting rich. But even they know that being one serious illness away from bankruptcy, wasn’t a “normal” thing in their parents’ generation. Something about normal functional capitalism has gotten broken and should probably get fixed.

But most anxious people turn tribal, so tribal that they can’t put their finger on what’s gone wrong. Some of my proof comes from the wild political pendulum cycles we’ve been seeing of late. One year Dubya is our hero with 90% approval, the next we hope for Obama to change, the next we Tea Party Obama’s people outta there. And then nobody wants to be with her, status quo Hillary, and throw their lot in with Bannon's more populist pick, Trump.

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