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Stay in Your Box!
Postmodernists see a society’s people as belonging to countless, walled-off tribes, incapable of understanding anyone or anything not of their own group. Reason and persuasion between people of different clans is impossible. All that is left is domination by one tribe over another — oppressor and oppressed.
While reality doesn’t yet come anywhere close to matching this model, the identity left is hard at work trying to reshape the country to fit this insane image.
Consider the way minority group members are routinely slapped down for voicing opinions that do not fit the left’s idea of what’s proper for their group to think. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams, and – most recently – Kanye West, are regularly labeled “Uncle Toms,” “Oreos,” and worse. Former Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has been shouted down for trying to tell her story and has been simply “disinvited” from speaking on campus.
The whole concept of “cultural appropriation” is little more than a way of attacking anyone attempting to look beyond his or her own tribe. God forbid that an Irishman be caught eating nachos on Cinco de Mayo or a Peruvian woman be seen speaking on a cell phone. Apparently, we’re all to become little more than stereotyped, cultural artifacts embedded in amber and placed on a museum shelf.
Yet another way to keep people in their place is to forbid “assimilation.” Even using the word is now declared a “micro-aggression,” as is the term, “melting pot.” In fact, the whole concept of micro-aggression helps create and heighten inter-tribal conflict and to foster a general environment of grievance.
Think, act, and dress as your tribe does – or, at least, in the left’s image of your tribe. Stay in the box the left has built for you. If the box doesn’t fit you, you’ll be remade to fit the box. Conform or else.
Published in General
The core idea of Marxism, that human beings can only be regarded as the substance that makes up a class, not as individuals with rights or dignity or value, is repackaged and remarketed endlessly. This is just another iteration.
Great, informative article, by the way!
Procrustes would approve.
Maybe we need to start repackaging and remarketing the ideas of freedom so that they speak to new generations of Americans.
Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond getting the barest necessities of life, no two have the same desires.Therefore the men who try to enforce, in real life, a planned economy that is their theory, come up against the infinite diversity of human beings. The most slavish multitude of men that was ever called “demos” or “labor” or “capital” or”agriculture” or “the masses,” actually are men; they are not sheep. Naturally, by their human nature, they escape in all directions from regulations applying to non-existent classes. It is necessary to increase the number of men who supervise their actions. Then (for officials are human, too) it is necessary that more men supervise the supervisors.
Rose Wilder Lane
Randy,
Interesting that you should bring that up. The Greek Hero Theseus encountered Procrustes. Theseus strapped Procrustes to his own Procrustean bed and did the ‘size adjustment’. The PC crowd is so deserving of such treatment. Perhaps it can be arranged.
Regards,
Jim
I’m not going to go off on a rant about the mischaracterization of postmodernism.
I’m not going to go off on a rant about the mischaracterization of postmodernism.
I’m not going to go off on a rant about the mischaracterization of postmodernism…
It already happens, naturally.
When the media hypes the progressive forces among the youth, the conservative/traditionalist forces amongst that same cohort keep working away, unsung.
e.g. Didja know that the Vietnam War was most supported by college-aged Americans, according to polls at the time? You’d never know by how the “student protests” were reported, but it’s true. The biggest opposition to the Vietnam War came from WWII veterans, but of course the media portrayed “old people” as the biggest warmongers.
The kids are always more hip to liberty than you realize.
Please explain. If I’ve gotten it wrong, I’d like to know it.
Like the PC crowd, I doubt Procrustes would approve the use of the bed on himself. Conformity for thee, but not for me.
By the way, I only know the story of Procrustes because Larry Niven wrote a story about Beowulf Schaefer being rebuilt from just a head by an autodoc. The ‘doc wasn’t long enough to restore his full height. I had to look up “Procrustean.”
Randy,
I recommend you check out Theseus. He is the Greek all-purpose Hero.
Regards,
Jim
Procrustes could not be reached for comment.
Killed the Minotaur, didn’t he? Maybe Medusa, too?
Randy,
Theseus, a busy guy.
Regards,
Jim
My best English teacher pointed out that Theseus is a thinking hero, as opposed to Heracles/Hercules who is all brawn and not much brain.
Well, he had to navigate the Labyrinth to get at the Minotaur.
I love the post and the picture with it.
This is a good point. It’s well established that Millennial value security over freedom. How do we sell them on freedom? I genuinely don’t know. I’m hoping that those of you with children in that generation might have some ideas.