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Our Tribal Enemy Is Getting Stupid on Purpose
Richard Fernandez has remarked that the old left offered visions of a shining future of wealth and health for all in a socialist/communist utopia. In stark contrast, the modern left promises that we will feel perpetually guilty for the alleged crimes of our forbears, ride only bicycles, eat bugs, shiver in the winter—and learn to like it. He wondered if the seemingly eternal leftist temptation can survive if it has been reduced to telling the truth about itself.
How does it persist, especially in its current increasingly absurd form? As the litany of spectacularly stupid policies, gross failures, and silly ideological fetishes grows, why does anyone still align or identify with that set of inclinations?
We are witnessing a sacrificium intellectus on a massive scale as a new tribe slouches toward a replacement of religion as well as the elimination of the western intellectual heritage.
Who are these people and how did they get that way? Liberals are not organized around ideological positions anymore, so many positions are selected to serve tribal needs in the moment. We are not looking at people organized around older revolutionary ideas about actual oppression or actual injustice. This is something quite different.
Nate Silver, among others on that side, has admitted that loyalty to spectacularly wrong but militantly enforced notions like the theory of a natural (non-lab) origin for the COVID-19 virus was driven solely by a perception that the “wrong people” disagreed. It was pure tribalism as it was with all the various unjustified COVID mandates, absurd energy policies, bogus “science” about transgenderism, and divisive and factually wrong notions about race. Membership, loyalty, identity, and signaling within the tribe über alles.
This new phenomenon is not just the same tiresome narcissism of the 1960s. Denigrating all that preceded us, many Boomers bought into a silly self-congratulatory notion of youth. As an added bonus (or was it the goal all along?), decrying tradition, religion, culture, and heritage meant that those entities no longer had the moral standing or power to interfere with smoking dope, eschewing the draft, and getting laid. However, with the exception of a few tenured radicals, most of the rest of us “sold out” and did pretty well under Reagan. But the separation from traditional morals was not healed. In particular, the non serviam regarding sexual matters persisted.
The growing absence of substantive values is now called “tolerance.” The new upscale white leftist tribe is quietly (even if reluctantly) obedient to the demands of men wearing dresses and race hustlers, but gets loud and openly hostile against pro-lifers, traditional values asserted at school board meetings, and flag-waving patriots. The most powerful political and ideological movement in America is, in its essence, a tantrum to establish moral autonomy away from our rich American, Judeo-Christian cultural heritage.
The new tribal entity shares most of the same enemies list as traditional Marxism (church, family, property rights, constitutional democracy, etc.). But any recognizable revolutionary impulse is oddly tempered by a presumption that if the whole edifice is torn down, that would somehow be OK because one can still work from home and various diplomas will somehow guarantee an income and membership in a protected class. The weird mindset of immunity is shared by the entire tribe, from the super-rich at Davos to baristas with PhDs. Neither the effects nor any accountability for bad policy and wrong-headedness will ever come their way.
If the normals were to continue to endorse the kinds of opinions that accrue from common sense, experience, and culturally acquired wisdom (conservatives tend that way), then will the new tribe feel compelled to counter with increasingly dumb ideas and intensified fantasies of hordes of MAGA-hatted, Confederate flag-waving orcs in the hinterlands merely awaited the command of their Führer to arise? Apparently so.
For technological reasons alone, this ought to be a golden age for the USA. But instead, we mass-produce unhappiness and implement almost suicidally stupid policies. Almost by self-definition, the new tribe has made itself hostile to much that is good and true. Trying to accommodate their comfort levels and keep reality at bay is literally killing America. How much pain will be required to break up the tribe?
Published in General
re HR, it is unfortunate what is going on…I have known HR organizations which were very helpful to management, to employees, and to the overall spirit of the organization. The dominance of HR by ideology will surely…in addition to its malign political effects and in some cases the loss of customers…act as a downward pull on productivity and economic growth.
Like so many other things these days.
Open question. VDH, among others is surprised it has reached this level of damage.
What seems really strange is the positioning of tech moguls who achieved their wealth through competitive entrepreneurship but where that wealth is now being used in support of tearing down just about everything. How do you understand this behavior?
Yes but I think it could be simplified:
We have recently eliminated our DEI Staff because we realize that if you go “woke” you go “broke”. If we go broke none of our DEI measures matter. What matters is hiring and retaining the best customer service oriented personnel we can find and making our customer’s experience so good that they keep buying our goods/services. That way we don’t go broke and we all have a job.
Guilt and/or feeling that they are “paying off” the wolves that would devour them.
I think @KeithLowery nailed it with his abuse victim analogy a week or so ago in his post The Burning Bed. Fear of being guilty of wrongthink keeps their heads on a swivel and once they are part of the enforcement shaming mechanism they’ve made their bones. It’s hard to turn around and admit you’re wrong.
It’s going to take a right with vision and policies that actually wants to run the government instead of endlessly complaining about its size with no action. And we need to scuttle the gatekeepers of this endless catalogue of “intellectual” trash that endlessly prophesies that government sucks, and then they prove it by being in charge and removed for the left and their insanity.
Perhaps they think they deserve it as well.
Ash Wednesday was last week, and an insightful blog post examined the surprising popularity of this tradition:
The demographic groups that embrace the Left are the very groups of people least likely to practice Christianity. They feel the weight of sin in their own lives, but looking around on social media gives the misleading impression that all their peers are thriving, happy, and successful.
Do not underestimate the appeal of the new Woke religion and its message of original sin (slavery, white privilege) and personal sin (carbon emissions, consumption). We are all sinners in the hands of an angry Woke God.
Because that means they can avoid responsibility for their lives not going well?
As usual, tearing things down can happen a lot quicker than building them up.
Both. And because it has no direct affect on their lives.
Maybe so far. But if they bring things down to the extent that – for example – most/all general commercial aviation stops, their private jets won’t be usable either.
I waiting and cannot figure out why they don’t do it. Also people would crawl over broken glass to patronize such a company as a way of upvoting.
The woman who revealed her ‘not so secret’ gay agenda at Disney and spoke of ‘queering the children’ is still there!
Which means that Disney fears firing her or Disney agrees with her.
I don’t see any other option.
Why not both? Embrace the power of “and.”
Well, they are somewhat related, although I suppose not quite mutually exclusive.
If they agree with her, they wouldn’t WANT to fire her, so no “fear” enters into it.