It's so far past time to stop that stopping now won't make any difference. Even if the loudest and most respected voices (whoever they are) called for a stop (and they won't), the new talking point would be exactly as authentic and convincing as the old one: "you'll never be not racist, because I say so". Yawn. Perhaps some decent and si…
It's so far past time to stop that stopping now won't make any difference. Even if the loudest and most respected voices (whoever they are) called for a stop (and they won't), the new talking point would be exactly as authentic and convincing as the old one: "you'll never be not racist, because I say so". Yawn. Perhaps some decent and sincere people were temporarily bamboozled by this shuck but most of it has been imposed by Kafkaesque HR depts, tenure committees, ESG extorters, and randos; its greatest impact has been to destroy credibility/respect for all who demand everyone else parrot these absurdities and kowtow to skin-based authority.
Keep lecturing or stop lecturing; no one outside the echo chamber cares in 2024, viz. reaction to the latest journolist memo, "everyone not on our team is #weird". I mean, 'weirdo', does even a 5th-grader consider that an insult anymore? And coming from progressives, well. Sure, purple furry with a mutilated dragon tongue - tragic if you label Rs #weird! Right on, dude wearing a dress to flash your genitals at four-year-olds, you're clearly the authority on super normal, well-balanced, ho-hum mainstream non-weirdness. Freak-flag-flyers -- join that team or you're #SoWeird, man. Another cunning plan not thought all the way through.
In the grand scheme of things, the problem with progressives is literal obsession with making the personal political, thus politics consuming all. (Totalitarian is the technical term.) Nowadays there seems to be no capacity on the left to recognize any distinction between personal and political, or private and public. The backlash will be unpleasant for everyone, yet they seem determined to make it worse.
And all this DIE crap is being heavily promoted by the most widely read and powerful progressives. Robert Reich basically gloats about white people being replaced in this article.
I'm right there with you. I voted for democrats for my first election in 1992 all the way through 2020. But I work for a large organization and have been forced into so many struggle sessions and forced to swallow so much absurd white guilt narratives that I've decided my vote should be for my own interests instead of the interests of others. I'm a middle-aged, middle class white man. I do not come from prosperity, but from the bottom 2% of the economy. It took me well into my 30s to have any stability in my life at all, and I'm not apologetic for any successes I have achieved. They were hard won. I just voted in my State's primary on tuesday, and it was all for Republican candidates. Even ones that I did not like. And I voted against the democrats. Even ones that I did like. Because as a whole, I am their enemy and they've told me it enough times that I now believe them.
It's cult behavior and self / status protection. People lower on the totem pole cannot let themselves face the mental disintegration of letting any beliefs go, regardless of reality, so must turn ever-more insular to reinforce their mutual 'safety'. Any chink in the armor shatters everything. That's one reason specific words and chants catch on like lightning with them, become creepily uniform, and freakishly insistent. (I mean, there is nothing threatening about "all lives matter" but it became 'red flag to a bull' in a flash. That's bizarre.)
The prominent progs are parasites on top of this mass of fanaticism (again: cult) and have even more at risk, psychologically and in terms of deference & income.
This dynamic among the progs is one reason (but not the only one) I suspect we are at real risk of going back 150-300 years to literally stringing up at least local ringleaders, which will not exactly lower the temperature. People glamorize resistance but it's very very messy and no one should be eager to slide down that slope. Not Gregory Peck in the catacombs (even that was messy) but Reign of Terror and Thermidor reaction. (We're already past throwing open the Bastille.) I'm past patience with instigators who yearn for Year Zero, to unleash every hellish aspect of humanity. They'll be sorry, but so will we.
It's so far past time to stop that stopping now won't make any difference. Even if the loudest and most respected voices (whoever they are) called for a stop (and they won't), the new talking point would be exactly as authentic and convincing as the old one: "you'll never be not racist, because I say so". Yawn. Perhaps some decent and sincere people were temporarily bamboozled by this shuck but most of it has been imposed by Kafkaesque HR depts, tenure committees, ESG extorters, and randos; its greatest impact has been to destroy credibility/respect for all who demand everyone else parrot these absurdities and kowtow to skin-based authority.
Keep lecturing or stop lecturing; no one outside the echo chamber cares in 2024, viz. reaction to the latest journolist memo, "everyone not on our team is #weird". I mean, 'weirdo', does even a 5th-grader consider that an insult anymore? And coming from progressives, well. Sure, purple furry with a mutilated dragon tongue - tragic if you label Rs #weird! Right on, dude wearing a dress to flash your genitals at four-year-olds, you're clearly the authority on super normal, well-balanced, ho-hum mainstream non-weirdness. Freak-flag-flyers -- join that team or you're #SoWeird, man. Another cunning plan not thought all the way through.
In the grand scheme of things, the problem with progressives is literal obsession with making the personal political, thus politics consuming all. (Totalitarian is the technical term.) Nowadays there seems to be no capacity on the left to recognize any distinction between personal and political, or private and public. The backlash will be unpleasant for everyone, yet they seem determined to make it worse.
And all this DIE crap is being heavily promoted by the most widely read and powerful progressives. Robert Reich basically gloats about white people being replaced in this article.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-147018640
This kind of attitude turned me from being a hard leftist to a hard rightist.
I'm right there with you. I voted for democrats for my first election in 1992 all the way through 2020. But I work for a large organization and have been forced into so many struggle sessions and forced to swallow so much absurd white guilt narratives that I've decided my vote should be for my own interests instead of the interests of others. I'm a middle-aged, middle class white man. I do not come from prosperity, but from the bottom 2% of the economy. It took me well into my 30s to have any stability in my life at all, and I'm not apologetic for any successes I have achieved. They were hard won. I just voted in my State's primary on tuesday, and it was all for Republican candidates. Even ones that I did not like. And I voted against the democrats. Even ones that I did like. Because as a whole, I am their enemy and they've told me it enough times that I now believe them.
It's cult behavior and self / status protection. People lower on the totem pole cannot let themselves face the mental disintegration of letting any beliefs go, regardless of reality, so must turn ever-more insular to reinforce their mutual 'safety'. Any chink in the armor shatters everything. That's one reason specific words and chants catch on like lightning with them, become creepily uniform, and freakishly insistent. (I mean, there is nothing threatening about "all lives matter" but it became 'red flag to a bull' in a flash. That's bizarre.)
The prominent progs are parasites on top of this mass of fanaticism (again: cult) and have even more at risk, psychologically and in terms of deference & income.
This dynamic among the progs is one reason (but not the only one) I suspect we are at real risk of going back 150-300 years to literally stringing up at least local ringleaders, which will not exactly lower the temperature. People glamorize resistance but it's very very messy and no one should be eager to slide down that slope. Not Gregory Peck in the catacombs (even that was messy) but Reign of Terror and Thermidor reaction. (We're already past throwing open the Bastille.) I'm past patience with instigators who yearn for Year Zero, to unleash every hellish aspect of humanity. They'll be sorry, but so will we.