I know you may be sick of hearing about the Covington affair, but please read what VDH has to say about it
Victor Davis Hanson sums up what we now know about the Covington Lie, as he terms it [emphasis mine]:
The entire psychodrama boiled down not to what the facts on the ground showed, but rather who each party was perceived innately to be…
Progressives, NeverTrumpers, identity politics activists and associated social justice warriors all rivaled each other to see who might be the first and the most venomous to indict, try, and metaphorically execute the cookie-cutter whites and privileged…
The key in these Internet lynchings is to get in first and worst—and keep at it. Yet, in French Revolutionary street style, the initial outraged tweeters and posters were almost automatically seen as passe in a nanosecond: Dox the boys. No, write their school to abort their careers. No, go to their schools and protest at their homes. No, punch them. No, burn them alive. No, stuff them into wood chippers…
We have been here before, from the Tawana Brawley farce and the Duke Lacrosse myth to the Ferguson “hands up, don’t shoot” and the University of Virginia fraternity rape yarns—and dozens of staged truth-to-power race and gender mythologies in between. And we know that past purveyors of those lies, whether Al Sharpton, or the Duke faculty, or Rolling Stone, were hardly contrite, but rightly assumed that because such fantasies could be true in a racist society, then they should have been true–and damn the bothersome facts.
Hanson writes that defamation suits for this sort of thing are few and far between, and mostly ineffective. They certainly haven’t stopped this sort of behavior so far, that’s for sure, although I do believe that in this case the suits will be filed and have at least a chance of being found for the plaintiffs. But even so, I doubt it will stop the next similar campaign by the Twitter mob.
Hanson is correct in identifying this m.o. as being of some antiquity; just say the words “Al Sharpton pushes the Tawana Brawley accusations.” It’s all part of the long slow grind by the Alinskyite left, which has—as Hanson later points out—been quite effective:
The progressive cause feels it is close to victory. Big money is now hard left…Universities, the media, Hollywood, professional sports—they are all now progressive. The 2016 election is seen as an aberration, a road bump on the path to utopia. From now on the Left feels it has the material resources and informational clout to construct any reality it wishes. We can see that clear enough, from Phillips’ apologists who never backed down, but instead insisted that the kids’ faces and “attitude” nonetheless exuded privilege and thus culpability.
I hate to be so pessimistic, but that is my strong sense as well. The left smells conservative blood everywhere, and they are in a feeding frenzy. Gaining the House in the 2018 election has been part of what has engendered such a heady feeling on their part, and the ongoing sequential arrests in the Mueller investigation feed the beast as well.
One necessary development for all of this to succeed was the work of academics (including many feminists both inside and outside of academia) who made sure to drive home the message that objective evidence-based logic is an oppressive ploy by white male patriarchy, and that it can be discarded in favor of emotional perceptions combined with racial and gender identity claims [see NOTE below].
Or, as Hanson puts it:
Higher truth is fact free and deals with cosmic justice: people of color confronting whites. End of story.
[NOTE: I noticed some of this elevation of personal feelings over objectivity back when I was in graduate school during the early 90s, as I described here. I didn’t know exactly where it would lead, and at the time I was still a liberal Democrat, but it shocked me and I felt it was a very ominous sign. Here’s the story:
…[T]he young women in an undergraduate class I was required to take for my Master’s—–a class which, being in the social sciences, consisted almost entirely of women—–were virtually all in favor of a definition of actionably offensive speech that went something like this: “speech that offends any person in the subjective sense, rather than speech that is in fact objectively offensive.” In vain I stood up in front of the 100-or-so students, most of them around twenty years younger than I, to ask what the limits of this might be, to suggest that it was wrong to allow the most sensitive among us to dictate what was unacceptable, and to speak up for free speech in general. I was met with uncomprehending stares and impatient dismissal, a fossil in my own time.
I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Not one person appeared to agree with me, or if they did they weren’t saying so publicly or privately. And the professor, a woman just a couple of years younger than I, was clearly on their side. I have never forgotten it, and although at the time I didn’t put it in a political left/right context (that came later), I realized it was a frightening development and it made me feel very, very uneasy and quite alone.
That happened over 25 years ago.]
[ADDENDUM: And the #MeToo movement is part of the elevation of emotion over facts; see this.]
And the professor, a woman just a couple of years younger than I, was clearly on their side. I have never forgotten it, and although at the time I didn’t put it in a political left/right context (that came later), I realized it was a frightening development and it made me feel very, very uneasy and quite alone.
And then you became a Republican. For me it was talking an Economics class in college, about 1959. I doubt an Economics class in 2019 would bee of any use.
Mike K:
It took me over 10 years and a lot more thinking and reading to turn to the political right. At the time that incident happened, I didn’t see it as a left-right issue. I wasn’t especially political, and I didn’t put it into it a political context, nor was I aware of the history of how such thinking had come about. I’d been away from academia at the time for 20 years.
It was a very memorable incident though, and it made a deep impression on me. Not only did I feel totally alone, but I was surprised that no one had agreed with me (at least, publicly and vocally, or even privately and vocally; perhaps some agreed in secret, but if so even then they were afraid to speak up).
Years ago I read a book on the psychological origins of political correctness and the author pointed out that when you become PC you have to deny reality and live in fantasy land. He also pointed out that the PC believe they are victims of oppression and persecution. This may be because people living in fantasy land perceive reality as oppression and persecution.
I have a minor in sociology (whatever that is?) that I though would go well with my BBA in management. I was older, about 26 years old when I went back to finish college after four years of Army and this was in the early 1970’s. I took a class about race and ethnic relations which the teacher at time, a total looney tune was telling us that it was all misguided perceptions that various races existed and prejudices caused by white peoples fears. I had lived for three years in Germany and tried to explain that some different nationalities identified themselves with their own countries in spite of what she wanted to think about all mankind. I also stated that folks in Northern Europe tended to have lighter hair and fair skin and those further South like in Italy tended to have darker complexions and hair and even in different parts of Germany locals have their own look. The professor went nuts on me because I was a racist even when I had worded my phrases that it was just a personal observation and I was told that was not up for discussion.
I was a bit annoyed at the whole situation, spoke to another Sociology professor who had become a friend and he gave me excellent advice. He told me it would be best for me to go grovel a bit and thank the lady prof for setting me on the right path and then feed her what she wanted to hear and get an A for the semester because she was an easy A for those with right thoughts and she loved to mess up grade point averages for those who were morally wrong prejudiced people who might deserve to make a C. I received an A for the class and never looked back, and that was in the good old days.
So-called “identity” politics a.k.a. diversity or color (i.e. unprincipled) judgments that denies individual dignity and intrinsic value under the State-established PC (politically correct, politically congruent, politically convenient, progressively confused and corrupt) Church and Twilight Amendment to The Constitution.
No one should tire of hearing about this. It marks a watershed moment in increasing leftist hate. They must pay and be shamed into civility. They came for white men, then women and now kids.
neo: Great story … which I don’t mean disparagingly.
I too have gone up one-to-many against the comrades, when I didn’t realize I was no longer a comrade.
______________________________________
kumrads die because they’re told)
kumrads die because they’re told)
kumrads die before they’re old
(kumrads aren’t afraid to die
kumrads don’t
and kumrads won’t
believe in life)and death knows whie
(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance
every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love
–e.e. cummings
_________________________________
It may not be as simple as that and cummings had his own antisemitism with which to contend.
Still the old boy was on to something.
“Lord of the Flies”…
…with no adult.
The hatefulness and the absurdities upon which it is built are frightening and dismaying — at first. But watching that Gillette parody video that Mike K posted on the prior Covington thread reminded me of something. They are unbelievably silly.
If you turn your head one tiny fraction, everything becomes comical. The colossal silliness of that oh-so-serious TV newswoman talking about how standing is aggressive…. c’mon, no sensible American can take that seriously for two seconds. The people who still do are so dumb, and they half-know it, so that once they see a few more people mocking the idiocies, they will mumble an objection and maybe glare a little, but even those dopes will drop the pose when they realize everyone else finds it laughable.
Someone commented about Venezuela — dictatorships look impervious to change until five minutes before they collapse.
It’s the same thing here. That little bit from the half-crazed Black Hebrew Israelite — c’mon, he was funny in his weirdness and I think he knew it himself. He loved having a bullhorn or whatever microphone he was using. “Peckerwoods!” He was out of the 1940s. I found him endearing in his own wacky way, grumbling and faking some threatening persona that was as far from his country-boy beard as Moses is from Curly Joe.
LOL.
It’s not only white people they go after — the black kid from Covington got even worse hate from the Black Hebrew Israelites, and just check out what the Lefties say about black conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson, or Tim Scott, to say nothing of bloggers like Diamond and Silk, Kevin of Kevin’s Corner, Anthony Brian Logan, or the Walk Away Movement.
I’ve been out of town again & not paying much attention here…so if this is already buried in a thread somewhere already…I apologise…but I do like Sarah Hoyt & I do think she’s onto something here.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/01/26/rules-of-the-game/
She’s asking the hard question of lefties…Do you really want to play this game of “destroy righty whitey”? Do you really want to loose the dogs of war on high school kids who are minding their own damn business? Do you really want to lie your way into a cage match with people who are mighty tolerant up to that point that their kids & livelihoods are threatened & then just may lock the cage with you trapped in their with them?
I’ll quote her final paragraph:
“Because it’s way later than you think.
Once the game starts, you can’t back out. And there is no arrow of history. There is no scripted end. That only happens in your head, and the world is not inside your head. You can choose to look outside your head, question what you’ve been told, engage real people. Or you can carry on in this path with the understanding that people not inside your head get a say.
So again, are these your rules? Is this the game you want to play?”
You discovered something was wrong…
had a feeling this train had no brake…
and as is normal, everyone is left to the fate of the movement
Funny….
The ladies neutered all discussion like “the reserve of intelligence”, demographics, inconvenient medical facts, legal, etc. – and spent a whole branch of science trying to prove feminisms correct… taking over whole area of inconvenient medical areas where they can always conform and get along….
the infinite goof: they self exterminated their privileged existence and future power away, and have been fighting every battle and every side so long, they are fighting cross purposes, and cross benefits, and are quite confused at some really contradictory contradictions… hmmmmmmm
– George Orwell…
putting aside the fact we forget that in his society (like ours now?) sex was dangerous
[Isnt that what was applied to frat houses, kavenaugh, etc?]
as far as the women who looked back at you neo? Orwell had that covered too…
The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. 1984
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
? Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“No social stability without individual stability.”
? Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
[and no individual stability if no familial stability, right? just asking]
the really hysterical thing is that there is not even a way to have a discussion over things as the ladies in that class and later classes made such a mish mosh mess of the science area, no one knows if a point proven is really proven or not, and yet, its interesting to see how much its used in law, and policy, and to undo other sources…
oh, ya cant even discuss causes unless they are acceptable…
so, no way to fix things in no mans land…
Lincoln, commenting on the degradation of the concept of liberty, said, “When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy”. As with so many things, Mr Lincoln saw things so very clearly.
“‘From now on the Left feels it has the material resources and informational clout to construct any reality it wishes. We can see that clear enough, from Phillips’ apologists who never backed down, but instead insisted that the kids’ faces and “attitude” nonetheless exuded privilege and thus culpability.’
I hate to be so pessimistic, but that is my strong sense as well. The left smells conservative blood everywhere, and they are in a feeding frenzy.”
Respectfully I must disagree. I see the same frenzy, but I smell fear. They have all the money and yet they aren’t winning. For instance, more young people are pro-life. There’s a long-running General Social Survey (GSS) that is taken every two years that has asked the same abortion related questions since the early 70s. It asks whether abortion should be legal option: 1) if the woman is raped, 2) if there is a strong chance of a fetal defect, 3) if the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s health, 4) if the woman is low income, 5) if the woman is unmarried and does not want to marry the man, and 6) the woman is married and does not want more children.
This is a survey widely used by social scientists (if you believe the social studies approach any semblance of science). During the 70s, 80s, and 90s young adults were more likely than any other age group. But after y2k things shifted and young adults were less likely than any other age group to think abortion should be legal under the same circumstances.
But maybe I’m more optimistic because I have to be. I did, after all, join the Navy.
“What, are you suggesting we go to sea riding a sweating armpit full of explosives and fuel that can go off at any second, and if the explosion doesn’t kill us we’ll be stranded thousands of miles from land in a desert filled with water we can’t drink because it’s so salty if we drink it we’ll actually get more dehydrated, then drink more, leading to brain damage and death, and we’ll be surrounded by large predators known as sharks which will kill us outright or bit by bit? Where do I sign up for that!”
I added the sweating arm pit part in tribute to the great Native American Nathan Philipps. Who when he wasn’t a “Recon Ranger” was a refrigerator mechanic. And here’s where I get serious. If any of you reading this were refer mechanics, or really any kind of electrician, you have everything to be proud of. Because every man no matter if their service considered them “special” or not knows just how miserable it is to go without working refrigeration in the God awful places we had to sweat and stink through summer.
Neo, you just posted about a law that New York state passed in case Roe v. Wade was reversed. I ask you. If the left really thought it was on the ascendant, would they pass such a law?
Next hegelian battle cuing up…
Feminism vs another culture
“If a woman gets raped walking in public alone, then she, herself, is at fault. She is only seducing men by her presence. She should have stayed home like a Muslim woman.”
– Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan, Professor of Islamic Law, Saudi Arabia.
not to mention all kinds of new trends
An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established. The perpetrators, usually mothers, consider it a traditional measure which protects girls from unwanted male attention, sexual harassment and rape..
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Now that the feminists of western civ have invited all kinds of interesting people, hegel has been real busy. turns out that now they have done what they were told to and believed what they were told to, the reality is a bit more uncooperatively troublesome… (not to mention the laws preventing full reporting in their press… )
I was initially shocked by the level of implacable rage I feel over the Covington smears, but I’ve realized why. It’s because there is now no question that they are coming for my kids…MY kids. Specifically, my white, Catholic-private-school educated son. He’s a smart, funny, quirky, creative young man and has always had the sweetest, purest heart (not just my opinion) and none of that would matter one bit to those who would seek to use, dehumanize, and destroy him. If caught in this scenario, he would probably freeze and smile and look unsure and try not to be antagonistic to an older dude getting in his face with a drum—-and his life as he knows it would be forfeit if the wrong picture went viral. What would stop my rising rage at those who speak of punching my son in the face, of ruining his life–my CHILD–and feeding him into the wood-chipper? What would I not do to protect him?
RigelDog, you do realize that you and your kids are only white as long as you and they are Christian. You could be a Zulu from Zimbabwe and if you’re Christian you and they, sir, are white.
On the other hand, you could be Ibrahim Hooper. A blond, blue-eyed Canadian of Scandinavian descent who converted to Islam and became the national communications director and spokesman for the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). He automatically became one of the sacred Brown other.
Your choice, my friend.
Steve57: They are definitely coming for the Christians, too, and color is no protection. Being a swarthy-complexioned Jew (which is my husband’s ethnicity but not religion) means you are also “white.” It also means that my husband and our kids would be on Hitler’s list but who has time for such niceties when people like us are obviously “Nazis” because we support free speech?
VDH states, “The reason so many lynchers did not apologize is because their targets were guilty of who they were, not what they did.
True, we are guilty because of who we are and what we support.
VDH asserts, “The progressive cause feels it is close to victory.
They are ever closer to a confrontation they cannot win. They think that they can vote away our inalienable rights. They think that our desire to preserve the Republic will remain, even after they have eviscerated our Republic. They think we will “go quietly into the night”. They are gravely, fatally… mistaken in that delusion.
“This may be because people living in fantasy land perceive reality as oppression and persecution.” Ray
Indubitably so. People who seek to forcibly impose their fantasies upon others, eventually encounter the most unpleasant of realities.
“They must pay and be shamed into civility.” Ken
They are incapable of shame because their ego finds shame intolerable, which is why virtue signaling is for them an existential imperative. It is why they crumble into acquiescence when criticized by the mob.
My back-to-school story isn’t as good as yours, but…early on, I realized how different we were, when I went back after 20 or so years.
We read in America Lit, a true account of enemies taking babies out of mothers’ arms and dashing them against rocks. The day after, talking before class, I said to a girl “I had a hard time finishing….the part about the babies.”
She looked at me with total lack of comprehension and after several seconds said, “It’s only a STORY.”
I only realized then how desensitized people had become since the first time I was in school. Have noticed it since then– all the books winning awards from school librarians feature graphic violence…in one, a transgender (yes) had his lacy skirt set on fire by a POC boy, and they became friends. Lots about the burned kid in the hospital. In another, a girl’s father had put her face against a hot stove as a child, to teach her to be “tough,” and one side of her face was all melted.
It’s like, it’s not lit now, if it’s not graphic. I find it disgusting for elementary school kids to be exposed to such ugliness and cruelty. But in an age of 9-yr-old drag kids — part of why I now despise the left I was once part of.
Steve57:
Yes, they would pass it. The law takes effect whether or not Roe is overturned. It takes the place of the previous NY law.
If SCOTUS throws the decision back to states, the new NY law would stand. But if Roe is never challenged, the NY law is compliant with it and extends it in NY. So the law works either way.
ken on January 28, 2019 at 5:21 pm at 5:21 pm said:
No one should tire of hearing about this. It marks a watershed moment in increasing leftist hate. They must pay and be shamed into civility. They came for white men, then women and now kids.
* * *
Geoffrey is correct that the left cannot be shamed (the right-wing h8ters have apologized for their defection; there is no guarantee they won’t defect again unless they are shamed into pretending civility).
But – yes – no one should tire of hearing about this: it was a watershed moment for at least some people; it ought to become a tipping point for many more.
justStoppingBy on January 28, 2019 at 9:31 pm at 9:31 pm said:
My back-to-school story isn’t as good as yours, but…early on, I realized how different we were, when I went back after 20 or so years.
We read in America Lit, a true account of enemies taking babies out of mothers’ arms and dashing them against rocks. The day after, talking before class, I said to a girl “I had a hard time finishing….the part about the babies.”
She looked at me with total lack of comprehension and after several seconds said, “It’s only a STORY.”
I only realized then how desensitized people had become since the first time I was in school.
* * *
This is oddly incongruent with the wilting snowflakes, who need safe rooms to protect them from nasty evil conservative speech.
The only thing consistent about the left’s useful idiots is their inconsistency.
Death penalty for heinous killers, bad; abortion of babies, good.
Taking care of beloved pets, bad; grilling dogs to make a point, good.
Wolf-whistles on the street, bad; Fifty Shades of Grey and Game of Thrones, good.
etc etc etc
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6626065/Sydney-children-left-terrified-PETA-protesters-pretending-barbecue-dog.html
RigelDog on January 28, 2019 at 8:49 pm at 8:49 pm said:
…If caught in this scenario, he would probably freeze and smile and look unsure and try not to be antagonistic to an older dude getting in his face
* * *
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/319993/
Go to the link to see the associated pictures of another older dude harassing teens.
It wasn’t called “smirking” by the left back in the day.
Another bit of good thinking from Jaltcoh, even if he is a leftist most days; also in line with my comment about the inconsistency of the left.
https://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2019/01/amid-all-talk-about-how-covington-story.html
Hanson’s article at American Greatness was acccompanied by one of Roger Kimball’s posts, which quoted his own first reaction to the Covington Melt-down, and a post by Mark Steyn, both of which remarked, essentially, that Sandmann and the other boys had nothing to apologize for.
This excerpt is along the lines of the “watershed” comment above, which will only happen if we don’t let the bigots (which they are, left and right) drop this story down the memory hole.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/26/a-better-guide-than-elite-opinion-is-public-revulsion-at-it/
As to the reconsideration of PC by the bigots (left and right), I’m not holding my breath.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/27/adults-are-cannibalizing-the-covington-kids/
And just because National Review was one of those childish groups of adults:
https://medium.com/@dmaxashman/national-review-self-destructs-over-covington-catholic-483529d416bd
Whatever happened to Don’t Be Evil?
Just redefine evil.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/google-may-face-rico-defamation-lawsuits-due-to-splc-partnership-lawyers-say/
(Well, the SPLC does correctly define the Black Hebrew Israelites as a hate group, but even a stopped clock is right once a day.)
VDH and Neo are right to fear the Long March Through The Institutions is near its culmination and triumph.
Neo, usually pretty optimistic and inclined to give the Adversary the benefit of doubt, now says, “I hate to be so pessimistic.”
“I hate to be so pessimistic, but that is my strong sense as well. The left smells conservative blood everywhere, and they are in a feeding frenzy.” (–neo)
Respectfully I must disagree. I see the same frenzy, but I smell fear.
Steve57: That’s my take as well.
True, the left has the high cards when it comes to the media, tech, Hollywood, academia and big money. Plus the House since 2018. But for all that Trump was elected and is still President, though not without all-out resistance.
The left can “create any reality it wants” but it doesn’t fool everyone. The moderate media backtracked on Covington after the longer video came out. The Rolling Stone UVA story was publicly debunked and RS paid out a hefty sum. And so on.
In the meantime liberal media outlets are dying, non-STEM college courses are dying. Colin Kaepernick isn’t quarterbacking anywhere and NFL kneeling appears to be over.
I think the left has hit its high tide and they are desperate.
But they have the means to cheat at the elections.
And the motivation.
And—best of all!—it works!!!
It’s proven to work time and time again. (Hillary didn’t push it as much as she could have because she didn’t have to—she was a shoo-in….)
Electoral fraud (yawn) will again be used by the Democrats to distort, warp and pervert elections in the future…unless something can be done to stop it. (IOW, to put teeth back into the voting laws.)
To be sure, anything attempted to “put teeth back into the voting laws” (AKA to uphold the law) will be viciously and hysterically attacked by the Democrats as a fascist, racist, deplorable—TRUMPIAN!!— attempt to “distort, warp and pervert elections” by denying “THE PEOPLE” the vote.
Count on it.
Related:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/texas-says-58000-non-citizens-cast-ballots-in-2018-elections/
And this is (together with post-election “vote harvesting”) CAN ONLY BE tip of the iceberg.
It is a mistake to think of this as left/right.
It’s a cult. The Cult of Critical Theory. And it’s the most successful cult in history.
It’s a cult because it actively damages people’s self image, or finds people whose culture creates damaged self images, and patches them together with the ideals of Critical Theory into a quasi-human. A quasi-human who cannot think outside of the realm of Critical Theory without risking the destruction of their own psyche. This explains many things, including their desperate need to eliminate contrary opinion.
Even those on the right who came grew up in feminism, raised by damaged parents, reared in public schools, who miraculously end up right-leaning are tainted … their minds incapable of objectively evaluating certain ideas.
It’s important to understand this … that it’s not left vs right. It’s a viral cult. The fight must be different.
Or the fight will be over.
Theophany here is right, it’s a mistake to think of this in terms of Left/Right. The Left/Right distinction in and of itself is anodyne, it’s just about political horse-trading between the classes.
The really dangerous element is ideology. In the early 20th century it was ideologies that took indifferently from Left/Right tropes (Fascism was invented by former Marxists, So-called “international” Communism was almost functionally indistinguishable from Fascism in terms of nationalism, hierarchy, cult of personality and militarization).
Now the descendant of those ideologies is a cult, plain and simple. The cult of political correctness, the cult of Cultural Marxism, the cult of Critical Theory, the cult of Postmodernism, the cult of Intersectionality, the cult of Feminism – call it what you will, they are all the same thing. But its not a Left/Right thing in any meaningful sense, because the cult is totally in bed with crony capitalists and big business – they are all part of the same stupefying, life-choking phenomenon.
Where before the effects of the PC cult’s ideological ancestors threatened only limited, national regions with conformity, boredom and mass murder, now it’s a transnational, global phenomenon, that’s going to turn the entire world into a charnel house if it’s not beaten fairly soon. And the window of opportunity is narrowing.
It’s going to take something more than talk to stop the Left. Be prepared to show them your teeth, not your belly. Remember what the Jews always said about how things would have gone if every German Jew had met the SS men at the door with a pistol and ready to shoot. Remember what Solzhenitsyn said about those who cowered in the face of the NKVD and how they got what they deserved because they didn’t love freedom enough.
Most of all, know who is in your local SS. Know your enemy, because he will certainly know you–and your family.
It’s a cult. The Cult of Critical Theory. And it’s the most successful cult in history.
Theophany: I dunno. Islam has had a good run and communism really kicked ass in the 20th C.
Cult is a tricky word. Whether one wishes or not to call Christianity a cult today, it was a fringe group in 50 AD with peculiar beliefs compared to the Roman mainstream. Although Christianity was a demanding religion compared to paganism, it triumphed and changed world history.
Things don’t always run downhill. Not even communist countries teach Lysenkoism anymore. I rather suspect today’s Critical Theory nonsense will end up on the ash heap with Lysenko.
Cult.
Ideology.
Yes, all very true.
To put, perhaps, a finer point on it, what we are currently witnessing—and embroiled in—in large part due to the ubiquity and instantaneity(?) of “social” (heh!) media (should be “anti-social” media, certainly, perhaps even “ultra-destructive media”) is the brutal Ideology of “Virtue”….which could just as easily be described as the Cult of “Virtue”.
And since “virtue” in this case is ever mutable (involving ever-changing hierarchies and newer and newer “flavors”), no one, ultimately, is safe…. Except those with the power to enforce the “hierarchy (or flavor) of the month”.
“Morality”, “goodness”, “decency” and “Truth”—all brutally enforced by bullying, by threats, by intimidation:
“…a [Birkenstock] stamping on a human face, forever.”
In simpler terms, a hate-fest motivated and inspired by “virtue”, a hate-fest that has been weaponized and accelerated, spread globally and intensified by the Internet and social media.
But then we’ve seen all this before. More correctly, we’ve seen the poisonous, debilitating, inhuman—ultimately murderous, either of body, or reputation, or soul— phenomenon; but not the extraordinary speed with which it can be spread.
The Cult is Statism.
Kinda sounds like Satanism.
Huxley, Islam is not comparable because the psyche-disabling brainwashing primarily happens in the jihadis. In the Critical Theorists, it’s intrinsic to the entire belief system, and acceptance of any part of the belief system is self-reinforcing and spread within one’s own mind (in other words, the physical stuff we see in the bullying, etc. is a symptom, not a vector.) Truly viral.
Frankly, I would not be surprised if the lessons of MK-Ultra as researched at Harvard were not utilized to extend the reach of the original Frankfurt School CT.
God, I sound like a nut. Cassandra the nut.
Democrats used tribal-racist feelings as part of the Ku Klux Klan to lynch blacks.
Today, Dems us tribal feeling as part of their PC-Klan to e-lynch their various targets of opportunity.
They suffer from Democrat Derangement Syndrome.
Yes, they’re a cult, of various types. VDH says it was a techno lynching. How did the PC queers take over the word “gay”? But agreeing, in use, on the terms they wanted to use. With their Dem media, academia, and deep state supporters.
How to fight it? One important step is to recognize it, and name it, and name it well. Note that the 2003 coined Bush Derangement Syndrome is no longer useful, except to compare with Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s the same disease which is driving the techno e-lynching of the PC-Klan — we should call it Democrat Derangement Syndrome.
When it flares up over Kavanaugh, and the assault-lie, now in the Covington lie, and even the day before there it was a Mueller investigation lie.
We should call these flare ups something descriptive and consistent – Dem Derangement Syndrome. Which Reps can suffer from, too – like at Nat Review. And when whoever suffers from it promotes a lie, or retweets a lie, they are damaging reality. And their on-line mob – the PC-Klan. Ready to do an e-lynching of some non-PC person.
They hate normals. See Kurt.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/01/28/what-will-it-take-to-make-you-understand-and-accept-that-they-hate-you-n2540309
We need to peacefully resist, fight back with words. Defining terms is key to winning arguments.
Dem Derangement Syndrome, DDS. PC-Klan. e-lynch / e-lynching.
The left does indeed feel like it is winning — despite that they don’t control the White House, the Senate, or the Supreme Court, or many legislatures… or much of anything in reality.
The reason for this is that they do still control The Narrative, and they have increasingly discovered that they can always brazenly lie with impunity. They will never pay a price for simply making things up, and discussing those things for days. By the time they are unequivocally exposed, the lie is ancient history, because they have come up with three other lies during that time.
They are the ones who decide what happened this morning, and yesterday, and in 2016. This power does not always immediately translate to legislative power, but they are confident it will eventually. It’s nice to control the present moment, but if you don’t yet, being able to control every moment in history leading up to it is a nice thing to fall back on.
On terminology, I like “Covington lie” more than “Covington affair”. And calling each of these Dem dishonest smears an “x lie” will assist normal folk in understanding how the Dems keep lying.
Plus, when the Dems come back “Trump is so often lying…” one can ask – like what? I actually don’t know what Dems think are his “biggest” lies.
None as bad as this Covington lie, as far as I see.
Great column by VDH, and yikes, Neo, that story is depressing!
One thing I’ve noticed recently (though maybe it’s not such a recent trend?) is that the people who were so quick and so committed to demonizing the Covington Catholic students have already decided white, heterosexual men are useless at best, a menace that needs to be removed at worst.
Read these tweets by our young journalist set, compiled last summer when Sarah Jeong was hired, and it is no surprise that they jumped on the “death to the smirky white dude!” social media bandwagon with enthusiasm. It’s already a given in their worldview that the whites in any confrontation are the bad guys and the non-whites are the good guys.
*Warning: some crude language in the tweets. Also, it’s a really depressing read!
“Buzzfeed is racist”: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1033547403620757504
“Sarah Jeongs tweets about white people”: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1025792822467801088
Plus, when the Dems come back “Trump is so often lying…” one can ask – like what? I actually don’t know what Dems think are his “biggest” lies.
What I have found, from both parties’ Trump haters, is that disagreements are what they call lies. I finally left Patterico’s blog after ten years because he is a full-on Trump hater and anything that disagrees with him is a “lie.”
It’s not just Democrat politicians. My sister has a lawyer friend who was going on about the Covington boys and, when she objected to the characterization, was unfriended.
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For a group that personalizes so much, it is amazing how the leftists and the less vigorous “progressives” ignore the ramnifications of the ideas that they embrace. Trash white men, historical and present-day…you just trashed my father, grandfather, uncles, husband and sons! Are you kidding me? These people are my most treasured on earth. The former, nurtured and directed me and were responsible for my very well-being and handed down the framework of priniciples upon which I stand and base my life. The latter, are the very people I nurtured and handed down the truths and virtues that I received. Early on, when I would listen to the so-called feminists putting down men, I would pray my sons would never marry anyone that believed or spouted such stupidity. Thankfully that prayer was answered.
Hope hangs by a single thread; and that is the nature of pendulums.
The Left is pushing the limits. So will the metaphorical thread break, or will the ideological pendulum reach a natural limit and swing back?
Neo could give us some cause for optimism by documenting her own experience in which she recognized logical fallacies and faulty facts, and resisted the tide that flowed to the Left. Optimism is tempered by knowledge that young people today have been willfully kept ignorant of so many critical subjects, and lack the philosophical foundation and historical context to think through conflicting ideologies. (Mallard Fillmore, as thoughtful as any current philosopher, observed that “the youth love Socialism even though they cannot define it.) And the Left is much more aggressive in persecuting any who stray from their definition of ideological purity. So, I suspect that the country will have to sink into the mire a bit more; then, hopefully, will find the national will to climb out.
I finally left Patterico’s blog after ten years because he is a full-on Trump hater and anything that disagrees with him is a “lie.”
I’m surprised he didn’t lecture you on alternative medicine. Man’s a Dunning-Kruger exemplar. (I was banned by Patterico about 4 years ago).
The significance of the Covington imbroglio is that a great many liberals have a venomous reaction when the Benighted refuse to offer gestures of deference to the mascot groups of the Anointed, thus denying the Anointed’s status allocations. I’d like to see more refuseniks like the Covington kids, causing educational administrators as much indigestion as possible.
New info! — See that 16 y.o. Nick has crooked teeth. When I was 16 with teeth like that, I also smiled with my mouth closed. It probably looked like a smirk to some people (I thought more sardonic).
http://bannedinformation.com/covington-libel-attorney-announces-potential-lawsuit-targets/
I’ve added a copy to my own blog, too (They hate normals):
https://wordpress.com/post/tomgrey.wordpress.com/230
Added here because I haven’t seen any stories address the state of Nick’s teeth, but three of my four kids need braces, like I did and also my wife. People’s smiles are influenced by the state of their teeth.