Indignant Idiot Supremacy
The fake left won the culture, the fake right won the economy, both the economy and culture are now smashed beyond repair, in response both demand more of what already wrecked what all of us share
Hey folks!
Way back in the early eighties, when I first began to think of myself as a leftist, and not just a humanist, I had a few reasons which seemed clear and rational. In those days the left was the side with the most ideas for social and economic growth and human advancement, and it also had the best jokes – including the irreplaceably valuable ability to laugh at itself. It was the side which rigorously invited free and open debate, encouraged high scholarship from members, and welcomed all stories and types.
By contrast, we then saw a right which had held cultural dominance for so long it was in a state of advanced decadence and decay – no longer remembered the principle or energy which had won its place. In particular, we saw a run-down version of western Christianity which insisted it was fundamentally moral almost entirely because it had so long thought itself moral, it didn’t anymore understand that we earn that assertion (or do not) through our works, not just our nice words, let far alone self-centredness, contempt for others and arbitrary assumption of morality for “the us team.”
Many angry Christian responses to new leftist ideas at the time were somewhere on the scale from weak to laughable, because they began with that habitual assumption of ownership of morality, and relied on it so heavily that their justifications and ideas weren’t strong rigorous or fair minded at all. Just arrogant tribalism. As leftists we felt sure we represented smarts and principle both, because we always made an argument of broad benefit for not just our own tribe but also the struggling middle, rather than a blind and furious assertion that our tribe was superior and had power, so everyone else should just shut the hell up and obey!
Now before my chums on the right give up (thank you greatly for not doing so already) I have to point out several things that I was missing then, and some very sad lessons that I’ve been forced to learn since (lessons all of us might have learned, but many are still denying with all their might, even as they drown in the evidence).
The (fake, mob) left holds the high-ground in western culture, and has done for almost as many years as the right has held the economy (since Reagan). The modern left now asserts morality is their special thing, without being able to demonstrate or argue for it in any terms which make sense to those outside their exclusive club of sanctimony (especially when judged by effective results for human beings). The Middle are no longer the beloved masses, struggling to be free, improve their lot and the world as a whole. Now they are seen as complicit, privileged, and always – assumed enemies!
The intensity of gathered paranoia, nihilism, hatred for the world and themselves in the modern fake-left is shocking, overt, nauseating and terrifying – unless you are still addicted to the dogma and the indulgences (excuses for your own screw-ups) which your faith in your special superiority grants you. What I find especially depressing (but ought to have expected, really) is that those who have come to assert blind faith in their own moral superiority because of their own self-branding (rather than direct efforts for others, or sacrifices made on their behalf – both metrics where people from the right have always far outperformed) now consider themselves “The Real Left” when to leftists like me who insist principle humanity and compassion are ALWAYS infinitely more important than dogma and excuses, they aren’t smart, kind or sensible enough to even qualify for a leftist learner’s permit – and show no aspiration at all that they ever intend to meet even the most paltry minimal standards of ethics.
Standard One – you aren’t ever talking about the world, if you are obsessed by the importance of your own feelings. Learn about other people and make friends, get out of your own head, that’s the world.
Standard Two – listen at least twice as much as you talk. LOVE BEING WRONG – that means you are LEARNING. Nothing turns normal people off more than being lectured by imbeciles who are clueless and yet completely certain of themselves (the overwhelming majority who now self-describe as left).
Standard Three – keep listening respectfully to those who have earned it, keep showing skepticism to those who have not, keep studying and learning, so you keep better and more fully understanding that duty and freedom are the same thing. As you follow that path, you’ll keep finding more reasons and ways to get over your ignorant self, and keep getting closer to useful truth-in-common, which is where we humans have always gathered when we actually want to build good things for the future.
Now as usual, you may have noticed that the way I put that was itself non-partisan. Those who follow a religious path are also tasked to continually overcome their selfish petty selves, to lend strength to their higher aspirations and better qualities. They also work hard on recognizing the way duty and freedom converge, as we see more and more broadly (that is, outside of our petty selfish-selves) and work to become ever more useful to other real people around us, as well as our broader cause.
The weird thing is – the modern leftist caricature of religious people does not allow recognition or respect for any of this path of humility, scholarship, self-overcoming and service, though it remains one part (just not the loudest, nor that which is reflected on war-and-chaos promoting corporate media). Likewise, when sensible people on the right now think of the left they picture bratty ignorant lecturing idiots filled with dread certainty and absolutely unfounded assertions they are not even capable of considering rationally, let far alone proving, in any sense that would make sense to non-believers.
Then we throw up our hands, sigh, theoretically put up our best against their worst and say “See, I told you I was right.” Utterly infantile.
My wife and I first encountered political correctness way back in 1993, thanks to a formerly religious friend who was even more dogmatic and aggressive in her new ‘leftism’ than she was as a proselytizing Catholic (which was a lot).
She very angrily told me something I said wasn’t politically correct, and I laughed because she was so blindingly ignorant about the subject, that her critique was actually “I don’t understand that” but she could find no other way to express it, than “This is not in the rule-book I just now got, therefore das ist VERBOTEN!”
I tried to explain she was misunderstanding leftism completely. The point was to learn to think for yourself with principle foremost, so that you can apply this active dynamic thinking, to help things around you tend towards going better for everyone, instead of behaving badly for personal advance.
For my friends on the right – please take note – even if you haven’t seen any popular reflection of this in a couple of decades, the ideas of self-overcoming and service are a part of the true (not mob) left.
I am convinced it was this principle and humility in combination, around which the left and the religious were for many decades in the 20th century able to unite to win huge social advances for ordinary people (not just civil rights, the last battle won by this alliance, but uncountably many wins for workers and families before that, too).
But how much great work to advance society and thriving can be accomplished without humility or service in either faction?
Here I feel obliged to submit the horror-show fire-sale endless war 21st century as evidence – not freakin’ much, folks.
Body-bags is what we’re good at this century, filled with millions of ordinary people who never once threatened us at all.
And yes – super-wealthy evil people have spent at least three quarters of a century putting tons of money into the academic promotion of both fake leftism and fake rightism, to try to bend these forces into twin destructive (easily manipulable) mob movements, instead of genuine and important gatherings of citizen aspiration.
We can (and do) play the game of “compare our best to their worst” or we can slow down a tiny bit and notice – “Hey wait, rich evil scumbags are manipulating BOTH OF US – which means WE HAVE THE SAME ENEMY.” Might even call for a hmm.
That isn’t at all the same as saying we could become easy and effortless allies (and anyhow, we’ve been trained as individuals to insist on far too much righteous indignation, to help make such unity impossible, for as long as possible), but it is certainly a clue as to the real game which the false culture war is promoted, to hide.
Yes the right is doing dictatorship things, just like the left was under Biden, and the right before that under Trump, and the left before that under Obama, and the right before that under W, and so on. The last US president who actually tried to assert genuine sustained citizen and societal benefit ahead of the interests of the banks and the military industrial complex was John F Kennedy, and he lost that fight so hard every single jackass since has caved to the death-cult before they even really fought.
There are no exceptions. (even ‘cute’ Jimmy Carter had East Timor and El Salvador)
You want to insist your team are the good relentless mass-murderers for corporate profit?
Maybe don’t use the word good anymore for awhile. That word really doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The key problems around social organization and change are very basic and very old.
1) Humans love good ideas which make a positive difference in their lives.
2) Humans love simplifications and slogans, to codify subtler more difficult understandings.
3) Humans love to conform and feel powerful in large groups (though they’re also much stupider).
4) Humans love comfort, security, advantage and power, but many traditions disdain this, so they lie and pretend that what isn’t anything like virtue, is actually the new definition.
One of the funny things many younger people who are trying to find a path between mob-left and mob-right keep noticing these days, is a lesson I first discovered back in the eighties, when the left was on the back foot and Western prosperity was still widespread enough to have a widely pacifying (that is, generally happifying) effect.
Anger is a great way to bring in numbers for your faction, yelling together is great fun (in the same way as witch-burnings and public hangings were always extremely popular). Problem is, when you use anger to bring people into your team, you inevitably bring in a TON of people that nobody sensible would ever want on their side or anywhere near it. Cruelty-first types who deploy your team’s rhetoric to amplify the anger current and distract the whole side away from principle and humility.
This problem is actually so acute that I am compelled to admit one part of my nostalgia for the old early eighties left is that back when it had almost no power, it could afford to be scholarly, principled, and spend a lot of time debating how to be and do better. Because it hardly mattered what we thought.
What we should have been debating is – how do we hold on to our core values if we actually do manage to get somewhere? And even more importantly, what do we do if the most evil wealthy scumbags in the world scoop-up our dogma and repurpose it, to justify endless mass murder and make normal people angrier, less happy, less compassionate and infinitely stupider in every possible way?
Not saying that’s an easy (or even a clearly solvable) problem. But I still think it would have helped if we’d started working on it a half a century ago. The clues were all there, we just weren’t anywhere near paranoid enough! (hah).
One of the funny realizations which hits a lot of leftists and even non-partisan atheists (though most go on to use it for purposes of nasty abuse, rather than increasing their sympathy or insight) is that when Christianity started, it was a tiny group of very determined people who were widely hated and persecuted, but the genuine strength of their principles, their ideas and their self-sacrificial examples (and many truly great writers, ancient and more modern) helped them reshape the character of much of the world.
Now, I understand many of you will immediately jump to a standard (unfair cheap-shot) association often made by lazy emotionalists on the left, that Christianity has been the cause of war and violence for centuries. This is so commonplace that I must bring it up (apologies to those offended) because it gives me a chance to say something difficult – this whole idea is ignorant supremacist shit!
READ A BOOK (please). Ever heard of the Bhagavad Gita? An entire religious cosmology based on war. Ever study the Greek, Roman or Muslim empires? If you do, even a tiny bit, you quickly realize that CORRUPT POWER CAUSES WAR, and governments in power always profess a righteous code which helps to unify their people. Religion is not causal, it is coincidental. (and no, the arrogance of the west is not unique either, just our advantageously timed combination of guns and banking).
We can certainly say many true things about the extent to which Westerners feel strangely empowered to tell other people who live elsewhere how they should live (and this, as I have already noted, even though they are almost always much happier and saner people than we are, and with way less stuff).
This tendency toward preachy and violence enabling righteousness is indeed all about state evil and the most grotesque sorts of cultural hypocrisy. But as we all remember, millions of sincere atheist leftists came out to protest Obama and Hillary destroying the most powerful and prosperous independent black nation on the face of planet earth, Libya, which finally conclusively proved atheism doesn’t and can’t do that. Right?
Yeah, that death parade got crickets. Every single person who voted for Hillary voted YES to lynching black people, (not just the advanced civilizational state of Libya, but also the whole of Africa which has been dealing with shocking and sustained US and UK promoted terrorism, ever since) all the while thinking themselves “Anti-Racists.”
There is no such F-ing thing. Not here. An actual anti racist would say – Africa is for people in Africa to figure out and decide on for themselves. We are incapable of that stance – emotionally and culturally – both left and right in lock-step (yet again) feeling themselves opposed, but identical, fully certain and absolute slavers in mentality (still).
But again (I do keep saying non-delusional HOPE) the old left, which was about getting over yourself so we could see and learn from the world, instead of just reinforcing our own unfounded interior ideas and feelings, by talking only to those who only agree with us on the web (and pretending that is a full and rich social life, instead of a long slow funeral for our mind, heart and body) wasn’t like this at all.
What we were aspiring toward (before we captured the cultural high-ground, and thus became the most crucial cultural force for the powerful to corrupt) was more fairness, more understanding and more useful solutions, not one universal immaculate dogmatic and righteous code, from which all deviation must be punished. That’s back to dictator shit.
It is crucial (especially for my wilful bigot pals on the left) to understand that the Christian heart of the west has no less positive an aspiration of self-overcoming, increased humility, awareness and service.
The question isn’t which book are we reading from. The question is, are we determined to remain a childish narcissistic my feelings come first idiot for life (as many do), or are we working the humbler but also infinitely more rewarding path of loving and serving those around us, our community and the world, as best we can?
One of the most disturbing byproducts of modern imbecile partisanship (assertion of essentialist morality, rather than that earned through doing) is that it has been so artfully promoted for political purposes, that huge numbers have been actively campaigning against core principles, for more than a decade now.
The rare ornery people we in the west most badly need, to defend the remaining useful qualities of our public institutions (much reduced as they already are) from unstable money-men (and I include Carney, not one bit less than the far more obviously offensive Trump) were all driven out of public life and service by left-idiot mobs, serving big money Democratic (and Liberal) operators (and ultimately, big banking interests).
‘Me Too’ and BLM both expressly demanded punishment in advance of adjudication, repeatedly, effectively obliterating the presumption of innocence which has always been most importantly a protection for the weakest in society, and they also loudly asserted that collected demonstrations of mob anger should be more important to governments than the slow-grinding rule of law and due process. Many who are screaming outrage at Trump’s abuses are simultaneously still celebrating the protests of January sixth being turned into multi-year felonies. Way way way beyond stupid.
During our panicky politicized and unsound control-over-care response to the pandemic (I say that referencing the ACLUs own pre-pandemic paper, which perfectly describes and warns against every single abuse of power we witnessed, and also hundreds of silenced epidemiologists) every single young person in the western world was dealt life long irreparable psychological damage, even though the very first thing we knew about the bug was that it did four orders of magnitude more damage to the elderly, than the young (I mean that literally, I broke all the TO numbers down, elsewhere).
People who pretend debate must still not be allowed, and those who questioned things at the time were wrong evil blaspheming sinners, are actually insisting on a state policy of society wide child abuse, with no accountability. This is beyond disgusting.
Remember mocking those stupid people who believed in “Horse Paste?” Ha ha ha, what fools the media told you to think they all were – so ignorant and disobedient, smite them, smite smite smite!
Let me ask you honestly, did the same news that told you that, also tell you that Ivermectin won a lawsuit against the FDA for slander? And the FDA had to post a retraction and apology notice on their website for months? You were conned into saying – proven tested inexpensive medicine that benefits poor people around the world is stupid – because you were so stupid, you believed (also stupid) liars on the news.
It is also important to note that there really were multiple studies in poorer countries which showed positive effects using Ivermectin for treating early (especially deadly) variants. Some westerners argue that the Ivermectin actually cured other diseases they didn’t even know they had, and so the higher survival rate for those treated for Covid was kind of accidental – but please notice the CURED part!
Our news is bought-and-paid-for shit (yes, public media included. For the skeptical, please read into “properly educated people” in the sense Chomsky meant it). Most of us are now full-on emotionalist-tribalists. But all of us want better for the world, and we can all of us do better for the world and ourselves, only insofar as we can truly believe it is worth it.
Over the last decade I have written many hundreds of pages about matters historical, political, economic and military, but the piece of the puzzle we MUST solve, beyond any partisanship, and before claiming any sort of morality (and even then, let’s dance instead) is about hope for the future and love for our fellow humans. I identify the key to this as sourcing from gratitude, instead of bitterness. Perhaps you see the split differently, but I think you know the spirit I’m after, in any case.
Are we trying to make our anger manifest in the world? To smite nonbelievers (intersectional privilege) to bayonet-force behaviour on other countries and societies, which does not suit or appeal to them? (Liberalism as an obnoxious armed missionary)
Or – are we trying to figure out why this thing we have and are keeps being so ridiculously beautiful and full of possibility and potential and why random strangers keep giving us gifts we didn’t even know we needed but did and why the sun bothers rising every day, and spring returns, especially with every new generation of inspiringly wide-eyed hopeful and infinitely curious kids.
I miss the left that knew what love and community really was, and always cared infinitely more about them, than vengeance. (and yes, I have chums on the right who are no less frustrated by this embittered, furious, ignorant and dangerous moment).
What do you say we work on way more of that old upward for all spirit, and way less of our modern orthodoxy-insisting self-righteous bayonet-justifying smiting rhetoric?
And no, for those still locked into tribalism – I’m not saying capitulate. What I’m saying is ORGANIZE (already, geez-louise).
And no, you can’t ever do that usefully, without some serious getting the hell over yourself, first
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And now for another installment in the ongoing series of “wow, was that amazingly great timing, or what?” external referents. (The universe truly loves a try-er).
Here is something which was recently shared by Ian McGilchrist, one of the smartest and most deeply thoughtful people alive, (who has been deeply beloved on the left for decades, but is now suddenly facing many shrill attacks for simply continuing to be very clear, where it is very clearly called for).
And here is yet another superb piece from the insightful and courageous Alex Krainer.
This is also a great specific case and set of information to help me make that very challenging point I keep going after, about our fake culture war teams, and the real vast and evil anti-citizen games they are always designed to hide.
You tell me folks, would you instinctively pair Larry Ellison and Tony Blair?
(and if not, why not? Surely you’ve noticed by now that Blair turned Labour into the new anti worker Conservatives, just like Clinton saved the cold war from the jaws of peace, and in so doing turned the Democrats into the old war-first Republicans – no? Where you been, dude? We way out past that round of crazy stuff, now!)
Theranos explained (in itself, worth the price of admission - but better yet lessons!)
