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May 18, 2015
The problem with today’s progressives.
From the blog of Fredrik deBoer, an academic in rhetoric and composition, May 13:
Criticism of today’s progressives tends to use words like toxic, aggressive, sanctimonious, and hypocritical. I would not choose any of those. I would choose lazy. We are lazy as political thinkers and we are lazy as culture writers and we are lazy as movement builders. We ward off criticism of our own bad work by acting like that criticism is inherently anti-feminist or anti-progressive. We seem spoiled, which seems insane because everything is messed up and so many things are getting worse. I guess having a Democratic president just makes people feel complacent. Well, look: as a political movement we are in pathetic shape right now. We not only have no capacity to move people who don’t already share our worldview, we seem to have no interest in doing so. Our stock arguments are lazy stacks of cliches. We seem to want to confirm everything conservatives say about our inability to argue without calling other people racist. We can’t articulate why our vision of the future is better than the other side’s, and in fact many of us will tell you that it’s offensive to think that we have an obligation to educate others on that vision at all. We celebrate grassroots activist movements like Black Lives Matter, but we insult them by treating them as the same thing as hashtag campaigns, and we don’t build a broader left-wing political movement that could increase their likelihood of success. We spend all day, every day, luxuriating in how much better we are than other people, having convinced ourselves that the work of politics is always external, never internal. We have made politics synonymous with social competition. We’re a mess. Notable & Quotable - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at May 18, 2015 3:58 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
At least here, the progressives are consistent; their methodology for "fixing" problems is at least equivalent to their methodology for advancing the political cause. Here.
The way they want to elevate the status of minorities and homosexuals, is to make it socially non-viable to impose accountability on any members of those groups. The way they want to elevate the status of women, is the same. The way they want to win arguments, is the same, and consistent with what was described in this excerpt. Every single standard "met" by way of attacking the standard.
I wish it were that way everywhere else. That would mean left-wingers could invoke the same furious rage against terrorists that they invoke against right-wingers, funny thought, that.
And, it would mean they'd be about as successful at winning elections as they are living up to the promise of their agenda. So either our society would become truly harmonized and non-polarized, or else there would be about as many elected democrat-party-members as there are elected Whig-party-members.
"You may say I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one..."
Posted by: mkfreeberg at May 19, 2015 5:56 AM
Wow he thinks "Black Lives Matter" was grass roots? So he didn't see the news report where Soros spent millions on bussing people in, bail, housing, signs, etc?
Posted by: Christopher Taylor at May 19, 2015 6:58 AM
Microagression: A lilliputian force conjured by a lilliputian mind.
Posted by: BillH at May 19, 2015 7:01 AM
Some websites of the activist left are saying this particular minority has reached the point of diminishing returns and are, or are becoming, a loose cannon. For instance, the "hands up, don't shoot" faction is already being co-opted, their slogan is "arm up, shoot back," a sort of revival of the Deacons era except blatantly offensive. The anti-white street warfare is becoming unsupportable by leftist theorists as it is, one really high profile event could precipitate a significant change in public perception, the hard left doesn't want their fingerprints on it. And there's something called "negro fatigue" being discussed at the more intellectual racialist sites, both sides, meaning the issue in its entirety has worn out its welcome.
Posted by: chasmatic at May 19, 2015 9:19 AM
This is a crucial thing to understand, and it's at the root of why most limited-government "libertarians" have no choice but to accept the very premises every commie on the planet uses, and ultimately, when pushed to it, will soon enough start arguing just like a commie.
It's inevitable.
The root of the problem is laziness and dishonesty, both a product of two of the basest human emotions/motivations: fear and greed. To state it another way: humanity involves, most simply, the conscious and principled discipline and control of fear and greed, which one has no choice but to experience as a higher biological organism.
A good way to think about how the non-human homo sapiens response to fear and greed is that they seek to hoard profits and spread losses. The chief motivation is laziness and chief tool to satisfy all is dishonesty. The interesting thing about dishonesty -- self, other directed, and institutionalized -- is that the better one is at it (the more dishonest) the less detectable and more powerful it is.
What's interesting about laziness is how hard people work at not producing tradeable values. Consider a bum on the exit ramp day in, day out. I've seen some of them work their asses off at begging in the hot, cold, and rainy for years on end. How much easier it would be to work at a job?
It's the labor theory of value. The lazy look to a world where raw physical activity, disconnected from any other requirements, is of paramount value.
To look at it in its plainest form, there are those advocating that some fears are just too great not to force others to pay for general anesthesia, and the argument turns on which anesthesia and in what dosage is most "efficient" and "useful." Hey, maybe we can "privatize" the production and delivery of it, which still doesn't address the root laziness, dishonesty, individual responsibility or accountability.
Then there are those, "the nouveaux ancaps," who rightfully understand that you can't hold consistently to individualist principle and advocate any degree of state coercion, but have failed to understand that the state is an effect of a deeper problem (as outlined above). They think that you have to win friends and influence people by trying to explain that life would be so much better without the state.
But you can't truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn't matter what society "would be like" without the state.
It's not the issue.
The issue is that nobody has any right to chain me to their fears or satisfy their greed at my involuntary expense and anyone who thinks otherwise, even just a little tiny bit can just go fuck right off and there's simply no kind way to put that.
Posted by: ghostsniper at May 19, 2015 10:11 AM