The Nation as Family Metaphor

Keeping it Regressive - January 10 - 15, 2017

The week in regressive idiocy, at home and around the world.

First off, plenty of Stupid to keep Sargon of Akkad's blood pressure good and high, as always.  Including the hysteria over fake news - that failing pile of garbage, Buzzfeed, especially, and alleged Trump-Putin connections and collaboration.  Anti-Russian conspiracy theories worthy of peak cold war hysteria a-la General Ripper abound.

Elsewhere, the regressives are on the march, as always.

Transgender Uber Alles?  The fun a creative animator or visual artist can have with that one.  I sure hope this guy (or girl or whatever) doesn't try to use this reductionist power plus prejudice line of crap in a court of law.  Because when you're "marginalized", you never have to be responsible for your actions.

Suppose you had a chick who was so damaged and broken, for whatever reason, that her natural response to being called pretty by a male was disgust and to consider the remark offensive?  Psychiatric help would be the rational response.  Just as the rational response to flattery from a suitor you have no interest in might be something like, "thanks, but not interested mate," and everybody just getting on with their day.  

Count on Salon.com to come through with the regressive thing to do, and give the chick entry into the countdown of their year's best essays. Best?  Yikes, I'd hate to see their worst.  Be warned, it's a cancerous, cringe inducing foray into love, regressive left style.

I totally understand that it’s difficult to know when it is an appropriate time to give women sexual attention. The modern woman is baffling.

This is surprisingly untrue.  Women who are not insane or sold on ego-stroking feminism are not at all baffling.  Most will respond in either a "No thanks, not interested" or "your place or mine?" to an "innocuous" gesture like being called beautiful, depending on whether the trust level is there and the attraction is mutual and reciprocated. If buddy doesn't back off after being politely dismissed, than by all means, lay into him. Most of them will not feel "exposed, trapped, degraded and simultaneously invisible and on display" unless they had either been sexually traumatized somehow, or bought into an ideology, you know, one you might run into frequently on college campuses or social media, equating male heterosexuality with objectifying and hating women.  In which case, regressive left newsblogs like Salon will then also publish them, because degradation and misogyny is what men thinking women are pretty is all about, after all.

College chick does admit that "Telling a woman that you think she is beautiful can seem very innocuous; sometimes it is. Sometimes, it will make her day" but then goes on to also add that "All this depends on context and I cannot explain when it is and is not OK."  Stop and think about that.  Chicky herself doesn't know when it is and isn't okay, but she has no problem writing a Dworkinite screed on how very awful "dudes" are for not knowing themselves, and Salon.com figures that this is so good and positive attitude towards heterosexual relationships that they ought to publish it.  Presumably between some other progressive stories attacking the religious right's ostensibly prudish attitudes towards premarital sex, and a stories about how women have more sex drive than men and how very awful it is that their fellas can't, or have no interest in, satisfying them.  Gee, I wonder why?  Frankly, I can't say I blame them.

College chick does make some concessions, and admits that she struggles with "How am I supposed to reconcile wanting men to be attracted to me with not wanting to be objectified?"

The answer to that is actually pretty clear.  It's called not being a regressive left feminist.  But that would also mean chicky giving up her Victorian era sense of moral superiority over the bestial male of the species.  I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Keep it regressive, Salon.

It did not matter to Michael Jackson if you're black or white, but the same can not be said of fans of the T.V show "Urban Myths" including Michael Jackson's own daughter, Paris, when it comes to the portrayal of the late musician on that show.  That's because Sky Arts, that produces the show, hired a white actor - Joseph Fiennes - to portray Michael.  In as saccharine a display of pretentious faux anger as you'd ever find on Twitter - and given what a wretched hive of contrived offense that cesspool is, that's really saying something, Paris tweets, that she was "so incredibly sickened" by it and that "honestly, it makes me want to vomit." 

Are you sure you were not also literally shaking, Paris?  Literally, literally shaking?  In another tweet, she claimed that "it was obviously intentional for them to be this insulting" not just to Paris, but to her grandmother as well.

Michael Jackson, at least in his later years, was scarcely recognizable as black.  Paris herself certainly isn't.  The only race neutrality left these days would apparently be vain social media virtue signalling.

Grow up, Paris.  

And what of her father's legacy?  Was it insulting to him as well?  "See, it's not about races, just places - Faces - where your blood comes from, is were your space is, I've seen the bright get duller, I'm not going to spend my life being a color," is just so 1991, I take it?  

To CNN, to Twitter, to Paris Jackson and numerous fans of Urban Myths, that would seem to be so.

Good job keeping it regressive, everyone.

An age old technique for keeping attention away from your own misdeeds is to attack the misdeeds of others.   "A CIA analyst has lashed out at Hillary Clinton for deliberately distracting the public with claims that Russia hacked the election, claiming that she is covering up her own mistake of stealing the Democratic nomination away from Bernie Sanders."

"Former CIA analyst John Kiraikou says that Hillary Clinton’s election loss is solely down to the fact that she committed election fraud against Sanders and has absolutely nothing to do with Russia."

"Speaking on the potential threat to American democracy ensuing from perceived Russian hacking, Kiriakou said that such estimates do not hold up, adding that it would be only the case if “Russia or any other country had actually hacked… into voting machines or hacked into the Federal Election Commission.”

When in doubt, blame the Ruskies.  Is this the John Birch society of the 1950s here?  Or is it keeping things regressive by aping the far right yet again?

The Women's march on Washington planned to protest Donald Trump's inauguration is running into more criticism for its regressive tendencies.   Nothing says concern for women's rights quite like making common cause with traditionalist religious groups that require of women to "“loose-fitting, non-revealing clothing, known as hijab, or khimar” 

"According to CAIR’s guide for educators, Muslim boys and girls may not take same-sex communal after-sport showers, and that Muslim students should not be forced to participate in coed swimming classes. CAIR also insists that Muslims may not want to shake hands with teachers and administrators of the opposite sex – but as a “sign of personal modesty”. How does CAIR know what each Muslim is thinking when he or she refuses to shake a person’s hand? It could very well be out of condescension towards women – which is prescribed in the Quran."

"While the list of inconsistencies between feminists and Muslims can go on and on, the point of this post is to highlight the fact that the Women’s March’s cooperation with Islamic groups must be one-sided, as it is impossible that they both strive for equality between males and females. Feminist groups must learn about gender inequality in Islam before either immediately kowtowing to their demands out of liberal guilt, or before assuming that American-Muslim groups strive for Western values."

Bad as he is, does whatever menace Donald Trump poses warrant co-operation against something exponentially worse on all possible indices of progressive thought?  Since he's a white male, I suppose so.  The one thing about wearing hijab, though, is that those damnable white males won't call women "pretty" if they do.  That a woman being called pretty is a terrible thing worth declaring Jihad upon is something that, by the looks of things, Islamism and Feminism might actually agree on.  Perhaps it's not so unusual an alliance after all.

Until next week, keep it regressive everyone!

What Shall Be Our Mythology

New Feature: Keeping it Regressive

Nine days into 2017 and it's off to a regressive start.  As in, "we've learned nothing from Donald Trump's victory" regressive.  So I intend to keep a running tab of regressive B.S I hear about from various sources, and post them in periodic blog or even video articles.  Kind of like Sargon of Akkad's "This Week in Stupid," only more socialistic.  Democratic, alt-left socialist, of course.  Every week or so.

So here goes.

Apparently millennials are more comfortable with censoring speech offensive to minorities than older generations are.  The figures are higher among women, among minorities themselves and among Democrats.  Surprise surprise.  Worse news still is that the number is higher outside of America.

The vast majority of social media commentary on a Golden Globe nominated actor's speech thanking and praising his wife for her support was positive.  Not so with one feminist, who felt that it was sexist.  So the rational thing to do in response to this mature and thoughtful sentiment is obviously for the media to get out there - double time - and make sure she gets a column with which to express her proregressive and enlightened sentiments.  Don't you feel more educated and enlightened already?

Here's one that will make Trump's opponents feel that they are on the right side of history:

Many thousands of women are expected to converge on the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. Jennifer Willis no longer plans to be one of them. 

Ms. Willis, a 50-year-old wedding minister from South Carolina, had looked forward to taking her daughters to the march. Then she read a post on the Facebook page for the march that made her feel unwelcome because she is white. 

The post, written by a black activist from Brooklyn who is a march volunteer, advised “white allies” to listen more and talk less. It also chided those who, it said, were only now waking up to racism because of the election. 

“You don’t just get to join because now you’re scared, too,” read the post. “I was born scared.” 

Stung by the tone, Ms. Willis canceled her trip.

And good on Ms. Willis.  Can't say I blame her.  White women simply are not medal contestants in the Oppression Olympics.   Only the absolute MOST OPPRESSED get to protest against and oppose the power of the US State Department and corporate America.  Anyone less oppressed than a disabled transgenderqueer latinx womyn of color needs to just STFU and check their privilege.  Because that's how you build the kind of solidarity that overcomes differences, finds common ground and challenges the roots of corporate and state power.  Competitive identity politics, fostering resentment and militancy among minorities NOT towards the commanding heights of power, but towards those that have a bit more privilege than they do.  Because that always works out so well.

Idiots.  I'll bet Team Trump and the Cult of Kek don't know whether to laugh or cry.  And I can't say I blame them, because I don't know either.

Have any articles, stories or videos about regressive idiocy?  There's just so much, I can't keep track of it all myself.  Let me know in the comments section, and I'll try to fit it in a later installment.

Keep it phony, "leftist" America.  Keep it pretentious.  Keep it about your smug little ego.

Keep it regressive.

Socrates Discusses Identity and Class

A video to go along with Socrates Talks Class and Identity.

Leftist Objectivism

Now on Samizdat Broadcasts!

Socrates talks Class and Identity

A contributor in one of the Alt-Left Facebook groups posed this question:

I only ask that this post be used for actual Socratic self analysis and discussion of issues of patriarchy, institutional racism, ableism and all the isms and oppressed groups, from addicts to poor rural whites to militant urban African Americans. Why should you? Because do you want to be known as the leftists on the wrong side of history? No of course not. Which is why we must constantly critique ourselves, understand our biases, our ignorance (aren't we all pretending to be more educated about leftism even though many here have probably never read a single book by Marx & Crew?), and privileges and ultimately fight for left solidarity and the awakening of the intersectional proletariat. Because even the dogmatically anti-SJW must acknowledge that there is a very real split in the left about this now...and at a time when the far left is growing at an unprecedented pace thanks to Bernie, as well as needed more than ever because of Trump, can we afford to not talk about these issues and instead just create groups that are echo chambers for our beliefs? Shouldn't we attempt to find common ground with the angry radical SJW? For the movements sake we must exit our echo chambers and contribute to the public sphere of leftism.

Truth be told, I don't think that class and identity are so easily separated from one another. If one is to stratify a society, than one needs legitimizing rationalizations for why some people should own and administer the wealth and capital while others should be stuck doing the leg-work required to produce it.  This brings to mind the old Platonic notion of the "noble lie" - the notion of myths used by societies to legitimize their social structures, outlined in Plato's Republic.  Since the above post does specifically request Socratic analysis, perhaps I'll allow Socrates himself to explain:

Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. 

God has created some people to be superior to others.  The superiors have blue blood, or are God's chosen people, or enjoy the divine right of kings, or God removed man's rib and made from that a subservient help-mate.  As time went on, God didn't wash any more and so "science" took his place.  Some races of people evolved to be superior to others, or the like.  Then these fell out of favor in favor of "meritocracy" - some people just work harder or are naturally more gifted than others.  That explains the difference between billionaires and famine victims in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lies like this echo down through history.  Typically, the only thing noble about them is the strata of society the tellers of the lies come from.  This is the real importance of identity in a class hierarchy.  It is important to deconstruct the lie in order to legitimize a more just and equitable social order. To remake the social order without taking apart the lie that upholds it may distribute power and wealth more equitably, but remain unjust in that it allows old prejudices based on the lie to linger unchallenged and undermine the very egalitarian aims that drove the reformation of the social order in the first place.

The problem with identity politics, though, is that divorced from class analysis, it essentially mistakes the lie for the social structure the lie was told to legitimize.  An unjust social order left intact, the deconstruction of the old noble lie merely becomes a new noble lie all its own.  You could thus end up with a Republic wherein the silver people cast down the gold with the aid of the people of brass and iron, only for the silver people to become what the gold once were.  Or maybe the gold people are left enthroned but the silver, brass and iron people periodically trade places, and are more inclined to quarrel among themselves over who is more privileged and who is more marginalized than they are to actually try to change anything.

That seems to be the problem of the present era.

I just don't think common ground with the angry, radical SJWs is possible right now. The problem is the fanaticism and the "true believer" mindset.  This is also a problem with hard-line vulgar Marxist class reductionists, but they haven't really been the problem in the last generation. The IdPol SJWs have. Back in the days of the old left, the opposite was true.

So there's a lot of frustration with the SJWs now. I don't think this frustration always stems from a mere desire to retain privilege or out of bigotry and hatred towards anybody, though it no doubt does in some cases. But this is impossible to explain to most SJWs without them turning into bitter, caustic assholes. And this is the real problem with them. Their thinking is very closed and very circular. You can't discuss anything with them because their "marginalized identities" make them infallible. Any kind of relationship with them is impossible because they're completely incapable of seeing any kind of heterosexual or mixed race relationship in anything other than ideological terms. And they're not interested in discussing. They're interested in dictating. They're not interested in equality and solidarity. They're interested in supremacy and separation. Their levels of militancy and self righteousness - glorified in the culture of radical leftism, approach Jihadist levels. What common ground can be found with this?

SJWs ask of us how we're supposed to gain the solidarity of marginalized peoples without addressing their issues, but this question can also be put to them. How do you expect cishet white males to ally with marginalized groups who think that their status as victims makes it okay to shit all over, scapegoat and shame their allies all the time? If, after a decade of tumblr and buzzfeed, after a decade of shrill screaming over "white fragility" and "mansplaining" even white male progressives (let alone moderates and conservatives) are giving feminism and BLM the middle finger, well I can't say I blame them. The constant use of the term "entitlement" by the SJWs starts looking more and more like projection all the time to me.  

Which is not to say that white cishet male progressives are without sin vis-a-vis their more marginalized counterparts.  I would counsel no one to be blind in their self righteousness.  At times I really do think my race and my gender doth protest too much.  Would it really kill us to actually give IdPol theorists a fair hearing and consider what they say, from time to time?  And can we honestly call ourselves progressives if we don't?

I'm all for common ground, but this preoccupation with being the specialist snowflake in the drift and scoring gold in the oppression olympics since this apparently implies some kind of moral superiority sure the hell isn't going to succeed where class reductionism and overlooking racial and gender oppression has allegedly failed. Hell, SJWs turn on "white feminists," declare that black cishet males are "the white people of black people" and expel white cis gay males from LGBTQ caucuses for not being marginalized enough. And they talk to me of solidarity? Please. The self righteous and completely self absorbed obsessions with ideological and identity purity on the IdPol left is what drove many of us to think left wing politics needed a reboot in the first place.

Common ground can be had, but everybody has to do their part to make it happen. And honestly, I think class politics IS the middle ground. Class solidarity is a harsh taskmaster where identity is concerned - it leaves no room for racism or supremacist views. Solidarity will fail otherwise, as has happened to tragic results multiple times throughout history. I harbor no illusions that I'm going to have to band together with people of all kinds of racial, sexual or other backgrounds if I'm to have a chance against the powers that be.  There can be no first among equals if it is to truly work. There's a place for obstinate white cishet males to play the victim themselves, and that place is on the alt-right. And if you haven't noticed, we don't like them and they don't like us either.

Class based politics promise no panacea, but offer material improvements for all based on how far down the societal ladder they are. If the lower rungs have higher concentrations of women, minorities etc., then they will be the ones to disproportionately benefit. And maybe that's the best we're going to do for now. Where I see resistance to class based politics from IdPol radical leftists, I see a lot more concern with ego and being recognized as the specialist snowflake of them all than I see interest in actually overcoming anything, and that perhaps class isn't an issue to them because that's a form of privilege they have (having attended colleges and all) and aren't willing to themselves self reflect on.

In short, SJW narratives, no less than vulgar Marxist narratives, become not-so-noble lies all their own.