Beauty and Success Are Bourgeois Values and Must Be Crushed

 

Exhibit 1. The Miss America pageant is eliminating beauty as a standard for deciding who will win its contests. In other words, the entire competition comes down to who gives the best “I will work for world peace and uphold the values of the Miss America pageant” speech.

The competition would focus more on the contestants’ talents, intelligence and ideas. “We are not going to judge you on your outward appearance,” [Chairwoman Gretchen] Carlson, who was Miss America in 1989, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday. “We are moving it forward and evolving it in this cultural revolution.”

Interesting choice of words, “Cultural Revolution.” The last “Cultural Revolution,” the Maoist one, was also purging individuals who didn’t fit it with a leftist’s ideal society. And the death toll was in the millions. But as the left says, “If you make an omelet, you need to break some eggs.” (The eggs are human lives, the omelet is socialist utopia, in case that wasn’t obvious.)

Exhibit 2. The German Government, or at least, it’s left-wing, is considering using taxpayer funding to create pornography for feminists. The key part of their plan is that porn should feature ugly people and lectures about gender role. I am not making this up.

A group of German legislators who are aligned with the majority government, are pushing a law that would require the German people to fund the creation of anti-sexist pornography that features “fat, skinny, young and old people.”

Germany’s state run television networks ARD and ZDF would then broadcast the adult films to fight sexism on the ground.

Germany’s younger legislators believe that “mainstream porn generally shows sexist and racial stereotypes in which consent is not a theme and certain ‘optimal’ body types are made as standard.” Mainstream porn also fails to show responsible use of contraception, they argue, and fails to model adequate communications strategies between the two (or, really, several) partners.

So, just like sports in America have become a conduit to deliver social justice lectures, German pornography must now also service the cause of social indoctrination. And the indoctrinated message must be “

Beyond those two examples, the idea that no one should be special is pervading the entertainment media. Star Wars: The Last Jedi made this clear with its whole “Anybody can be a Jedi” theme.

There are shades of Harrison Bergeron … the classic Vonnegut short story in which the “Handicapper General” hobbles the able-bodied, masks the beautiful, and blares loud radios at the intelligent to keep them from thinking…. so that no one can be stronger, better-looking, or more intelligent than anyone else. That is how they achieve the ideal Utopian “fairness” that the cultural left claim as their Holy Grail. In the real world, they don’t need to use weights or masks, just constant attacks on achievement and celebrations of mediocrity.

The social left is obsessed idea that nobody should feel bad about themselves for being less attractive or less capable than anyone else. Funny thing, that idea is pretty central to the Judeo-Christian ethic that the social left professes to despise. And Judeo-Christianity was doing a pretty good job of teaching it without taxpayer funding or Government imposing mediocrity by Bureaucratic Fiat.

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  1. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Kephalithos (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment): They seem to be on a mission to knock everyone down as if equality means spreading the misery around equally.

    Meh. This only applies to resentful dorks — those who wanted to claw their way, lacrosse stick in hand, to the top of the social pyramid. But only a fraction of the ex-high-school-dork population truly cared about “being popular.” Most of us didn’t give a darn; we were oblivious, or else we shrugged our shoulders. We found better uses of our time than preening or descending, locust-like, upon the city’s tanning salons.

    I have a theory that much of the “bullying epidemic” would die away if only people realized that public-school social life doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. It’s a fiction. A chimera. A sad, bland, banal approximation of an actual community. But it colors people’s perceptions of the world, and, too often, it ruins them.

    All hominids care about status all the time. I think public school is so intensely miserable because the status is separate from merit and effort and decency.

    • #61
  2. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    I’ve always taught my daughter that the Left is made up of the dorks who didn’t sit at the popular lunch table in high school.

    The policy gnomes at AEI and the egg-heady intellectual types on the right probably weren’t at the popular table either.

    I didn’t say no conservatives were outcasts in high school. I said that many liberals, especially the ones who promote certain lefty causes, were, and that their high school scars are what drive them. I’m thinking of causes such as anti-bullying, giving trophies to everyone, and allowing everyone to be a cheerleader.

    • #62
  3. Eridemus Coolidge
    Eridemus
    @Eridemus

    public-school social life doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. It’s a fiction. A chimera. A sad, bland, banal approximation of an actual community. But it colors people’s perceptions of the world, and, too often, it ruins them.

    I’m still trying to sort it out since I have had to conclude that some conferred myterious class status and social intelligence skills do influence one’s general success at “selling,” even something like engineering services, explaining why some offices get work and expand and others struggle. It’s sure as heck not the consumer’s ability to judge math and computer drafting skills. But on the other hand, if one lags in those mystery areas (or the invisible barriers are just too high) then said dork MUST double down on technical skills to at least be of value in the mid ranks of any chosen career path and raise more workers to replenish the ranks and keep this values messed up world running.

    • #63
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