The Leftist Cycle of Intellectual Poverty

A smarter feller than myself once said that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket" (Hoffer).

However, our president is an exception to the rule, being that the Biden crime family began as a political racket, only to degenerate into the great cause of wokeism, identity politics, and "equity."

In fact, the tension in the left is between the racketeers and fanatics. Old school grifters like the Clintons never believed the left's BS, whereas the new generation of howling fanatics really does. 

These latter have spent their whole lives macerated in leftism, from the kindergarten of preschool to the kindergarten of college, and really believe their own nonsense. Truly, it is the organizing principle of their lives, and functions exactly like a religion. An especially exhausting religion.

Which is why no rational conversation is possible with these perverts. Disagreement with them isn't, like, just your opinion, man, but heresy, blasphemy, sacrilegious. It is over the line. Mark it zero. You're cancelled!

One of the ontological differences between left and right is that the former project agency and causation into the environment, while the latter experience the locus of control on the inside. 

You could say that this goes to the metaphysics of victimhood, in that the victim is by definition the passive subject of someone else's actions (or of some magical system such as  "structural racism," a leftist godwhistle that only the devout can hear).

Now, auto-victimization is obviously tempting, much more so if one is a loser. If you are a loser, then you have -- I suppose -- three main possible explanations, 1) you're just a loser, so deal with it, 2) it's someone else's fault that you're such a loser, or 3) bad luck. It takes a strong man to acknowledge options (1) and (3). But you are a loser, so naturally you'll gravitate to door #2. It's why the left was invented.

In short, "the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, and so on" (Hoffer). 

Indeed, Hoffer quotes an insultaining remark by Thoreau to the effect that "If anything ail a man," then "he forthwith sets about reforming -- the world."

You could say that this is Marx's eternal formula: I am a loser, therefore overturn the order of the whole durned thing.  

"It us understandable," writes Hoffer, "that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failures." But the tech overlords and woke capitalists who sponsor the Democrat party aren't exactly losers (at least in the financial sense). Why do they support and propagate this aberrant nonsense?

I can think of two main reasons, 1) power, and 2) envy insurance. The first is self-evident, while the second was discussed in the previous post, was it not? A wealthy celebrity or journalist is just a loser who got lucky, and on some level they know it. 

It's uncomfortable to be the subject of envy, so it is deflected by embracing leftism and projecting greed into us. This act of magical misdirection redirects the envy of the mob toward greedy and hateful deplorables, insurrectionists, white people, etc.  This ends in the ridiculous spectacle of fabulously lucky losers such as Michelle Obama or Colin Kaepernick blaming us for their bitter lives.

I guess it's flattering to be seen as having so much power over these people. And yet, the left has the power to cancel anyone at any time. 

About the religious structure of the left, Hoffer notes that "Every mass movement is in a sense a migration -- a movement toward a promised land." 

Boy and how! For life itself is a vertical adventure toward a promised land, except the left horizontalizes this into literal state of affairs that can be realized in this life. Apocalypse now.

Not only is this impossible, but it aggravates the very conditions that prompt the flight to utopia. Every leftist "solution" leaves a train of problems that provide the pretext for new solutions. Call it the cycle of intellectual poverty.

Why does the left hate freedom? It goes back to loserhood:

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.

It "is at the root of their discontent," for "unless a man has the talents to make something of himself," the freedom to do so is just the certainty of failure. Thus, just as the left practices a "repressive tolerance" in which mere tolerance isn't tolerated, so too does it help its dependents be free of freedom. 

Now, what are we supposed to do with the left side of the bell curve? Obviously, no amount of legislation or social planning can eliminate the lower half of any quality, whether it is intelligence, creativity, income, looks, talent, whatever. And very few people are in the upper or lower half of every quality. Most everyone is good or bad at this or that.

This gets into a large subject, but a good start would be minding your own isness and not comparing yourself to other people, because if you do, you'll always feel like the good Lord gypped you. Aw, fuck it, man. Lets go bowling.