Send help. Reading this was a relief from the rage that’s tangible online. It’s uncomfy, which means it’s legit. I found this to be oddly therapeutic. But I also love a good mirror that sparks reflection about one’s own beliefs.
Thanks Nicole, I'm glad you found it sparks reflections. Could obviously write another whole essay on the malevolent nature of Trumpism, but my worry is that unless there is a tough, honest conversation among American liberals about how to make the Democrats into an attractive political party, rather than a social movement of niche interests, then this is a cycle they're doomed to repeat. And that prospect is terrifying.
The irony of left/liberals (and those who I would for the most part align with) not being able to see anything outside of their own lens and frame of reference.
"The last two weeks have left me fairly convinced that there will be no reflection or soul-searching among American liberals."
Where do you go when every single input and piece of evidence—the people you know, the things you read or watch, the self-reinforcing and self-policing bubbles you live inside, your entire conception of life and humanity and its history—tell you that you reside at the apex of Mt. Morality, that you and your tribe are the literal incarnation of enlightened universal compassion, and that the only possible reason anyone could disagree is if they're either stupid and/or evil, a benighted bigot enslaved by "false consciousness"?
As stated in the piece, all this ideological brain rot and sanctimonious certitude is the result of American liberals adopting postmodern post-Marxist Crit Theory as their sacred ideology, which in turn has led them to adopt all the typical Leftist patterns of thought: the replacement of free thinking with recitations of dogma, an obsession with ideological purity and the stifling of dissent and hounding of heretics, and a romantic conception of the superior virtue of the oppressed, who cease being human and become fetish objects.
There's always been this inherent contradiction or weird cognitive dissonance in the acolytes of Social Justice (for lack of a better term) since they turned the Academy into Foucault's House of Power and Oppression and began their conquest of culture: one one hand their patron saint is someone who denied any morality as having a fixed basis, seeing it all as schemes for the top dog to control the underdog, and demanded rigorous genealogies of every settled norm or tradition, mixing Marxism and Nietzscheism into a single foul stew where the answer is always Nothing Exists but Power and Oppression; yet on the other hand, after drinking deeply from these waters of moral nihilism or agnosticism, what they've concocted is an intensely moralistic movement, where every person, place or thing, living or dead, and every single social event, from shopping to fucking, needs to be scanned with an intense moral X-Ray, with any violation deemed a hanging offense. They've somehow taken a highly amoral philosophy and transformed it into a ruthless moral buzzsaw! And like most people backed into their beliefs by social pressure, they never will and never can see this.
So, yes, as you say, there is absolutely no hope of any kind of reckoning or reformation of America's offical thinking classes and the party that represents them—they would rather lose every election than admit that their sacred ideology makes them seem both toxic and deranged, not to mention condescending. They might equivocate or gaslight or deny or pretend to acquiesce, but they will never change.
Your point about the contradictions at the core of the postmodern/post-Marxist belief systems speaks to the underpinning reason why it always produces such a garbled, incoherent ideological mess, which is the complete absence of sound epistemology. Because they view contradictions as a feature, rather than a bug, they're blind to the incoherence their thinking results in.
At least the French postmodern/post-structural/post-Marxist thinkers thought they were operating from some epistemic basis, the hyper-relativity and subjectivism was purposeful, but as you point out, essentially amoral and "anything goes" (not surprising then that they all got together to pen a letter justifying sex with minors).
The addition of this intense moral purity element into these ideologies, I believe, is derived from their infusion with American Puritan Protestantism. Of course, American Progressives all think they're secular/atheists, but in substance, they're not; they've merely replaced an identifiable Godhead with their new conception of the Sacred, i.e., fetishised Oppressed groups.
Add Foucaldian relativism to American fire-and-damnation Protestantism, and I think this is why, whatever the cause or issue, it is always American Progressives that react with the most hysterical, unhinged, toxic "purge and purify" convulsions. The moral nihilism of Foucault et al. became the cultural nihilism of the American Progressive Left.
When the hothouse flower of French Theory was replanted in American universities, it took a collection of poses and provocations designed by Parisians who were just trying to find new ways of being edgy Marxists/Maoists like all the other cool kids and rooted it in soil that was both much more Puritanical and entrepreneurial. And voila! you have a new priesthood of transgression, who are like the mad offspring of John Calvin and Hugh Hefner. So "Nothing is true and all is permitted" became their new sacred slogan, except the one thing that was absolutely forbidden was disagreeing w them in any way.
America has always been both highly moralistic and highly hedonistic, as well as the most commercial culture ever created, thus you need to hustle and sell to get ahead, even if your product is just a new special blend of Marx/Freud/Nietzsche that makes everyone sick but makes you rich and powerful. We are also the land of the traveling preacher and the televangelist, all of which went into creating this new yet old Protestant offshoot called Social Justice. God, faith and religion have always been major American profit streams, even when dressed up in fancy foreign jargon.
Cheers and thanks! Always look forward to your posts.
Hi Alan. Could not agree more with all of that. The progressive left are utterly incapable of the required level of self reflection. Doing so would require a confrontation with their own narcissism resulting in a total collapse of their sense of self because it’s so tied to these ideologies manufactured in university campuses.
It seems pretty clear that the incubation of Progressive bullshit is almost entirely attributable to American universities. I imagine the disconnect will continue.
If you want to jump off a bridge, read this thread a friend sent me about University of California San Francisco's curriculum for medical students - yes, medical students - which devotes more time to "racism, ableism, and patriarchy" than anatomy and describes "objectivity" as a characteristic of "white supremacy culture".
The problem is normal American liberals won't stand up to this shit and call it what it is.
Ten days later and I'm still hearing the phrase "Harris ran a flawless campaign" used to genuflect at the beginning of every podcast trying to come to terms with how they could possibly have lost.
There was a moment a couple of years ago when President Biden invited Dylan Mulvaney to the White House during the same week that normies were getting yelled at on Twitter for having some concerns about men breast feeding infants. Without Harris having some kind of disavowal of these things that almost seem like a fever dream now....there was never going to be a win amongst working class people for the democrats.
Yeah, Dems seem very intent on reinforcing that narrative. I've also spoken to several of my American left-leaning/liberal/Dem-voting friends, and what is mindblowing is how completely unaware and in pure denial they are about the relationship between their party and Progressivism as a socio-cultural movement. They're convinced its all just Right-wing "misinformation". I'm now more convinced they're destined to learn nothing from this defeat, because they just flat out refuse to address the mess under their roof.
Sooner or later, the Dems are going to have to reckon with the progressives' influence on public perceptions of the Democratic Party. And "poison" is not too strong a word to describe the effects of progressive ideology on how many normie voters view the D party.
They desperately need this reckoning. I've had so many of my more centre-left/classic liberal American friends plead a degree of ignorance to the association, either believing that it is all just Right-wing misinformation or that the party doesn't hold specific policies on certain issues. And yeah, the Right does jump all over cultural issues, but only because it is put out there in the first place by the Progressive Left. To many normie voters, the Dems are the party of gender woo and junkies crawling city pavements. They have a serious PR problem.
Brilliant read, Alan, and highly appreciated, thanks a lot! I feel that your comprehensive and thorough analysis might be a hard pill to swallow, and I totally get that; but, it's now maybe even more important to seriously do so! Thanks a lot, again, for your (humble) voice of reason and reflecting.. (if that wording makes any sense, which I hope)
Thanks Mel! It is a hard pill to swallow as much as write, naturally the inclination is to emphasise the dangers of Trump with a second administration where there are far fewer checks and balances against his malevolence. But this is an issue with the Western Left generally that has bothered me for a decade; why they keep losing to people/parties that, on paper, they "should" beat based on what they're offering, but can't...and the reasons they keep repeatedly losing, they refuse to grapple with because of the said ideological straightjacket.
Thanks a lot for your reply :) I totally get that it must have been a hard pill also to write, even "just" reflecting on it; one more reason I really appreciate these essays of yours.. And yes, totally agree: It's obviously "an issue with the Western Left generally", and that is really scary!
Trump is unfit for office (in fact he tried to override the 2020 results through a fake elector scheme) but the Democrats thoroughly deserved to lose this election.
The reasoning of why they deserved to lose is independent of Trump's fitness, which is the point. Again, your dislike/disdain of Trump is not sufficient reasoning to reject those points.
Analogy to Hitler and NASDP is especially relevant, given how both were boosted by the 1929 depression.
The Social Democrats also abandoned the German working class by focusing so much on the land reforms regarding the Junckers' entitlements. Etc. etc. etc.
I take the point, but the substantial differences between political systems limit the analogy, as do the reasons for the SDP courting the old elites, which was somewhat of an uncomfortable alliance motivated by the SDPs desire for stability in the fledgling Weimar Republic. Weimar's parliamentary system - indeed any parliamentary system - isn't a good comparison for the U.S.
I think the reasons for the SDP allying with the landed and military elites are, importantly, very different to why/how many formerly centre-Left parties - not only the Democrats, but we saw this with New Labour in the UK and some European parties - moved from the working class, which was based on the flawed assumption that they could court college-educated urban professionals while the working class would stay put.
Essentially, gambling that the working class would never take their vote anywhere else. That gamble hasn't paid off, and as a result, they're left with the urban educated professionals, but not the working class.
There is nothing contrarian about the points made; Trump winning doesn't retrospectively invalidate any of the arguments, most of which have been critiques of the Democrats and American liberalism since 2016. You're disagreement ≠ contrarian. Happy to link to any number of non-contrarians who argue similarly, several of who are Democrats.
I didn’t make a point about the essay itself but merely about the psychological mechanisms about why you hold the views you do. Note also I didn’t call you a contrarian.
Also, you constantly speak in terms of “democrats”, “American liberalism”, “the Left” and other identity markers (as if it was clear what these meant) instead of substantive issues and ideas. That itself is a reason not to take your post seriously.
The piece you linked to clearly defined its construct as a form of contrarianism.
"Democrats" was uppercase throughout, indicating the Democratic Party. "The Left" is self-explanatory for a political essay, and also uppercase to avoid doubt. "Liberal" is the term of art vs. "conservative" in America.
And these were referred to in the context of substantive ideas and issues pertaining to the loss of the working class vote, the politics of identity vs. class, and the role of "shadow party", which were supported by facts and data.
Now, you're welcome to disagree with the interpretation of those facts/data and their meaning but do so in good faith rather than link to specious speculations about "psychological mechanisms", which you have no idea about.
Any number of commentators also feel that the Democrats strategy since 2016 of courting college-education urbanites while assuming the working class would have nowhere to go has been a disaster.
Send help. Reading this was a relief from the rage that’s tangible online. It’s uncomfy, which means it’s legit. I found this to be oddly therapeutic. But I also love a good mirror that sparks reflection about one’s own beliefs.
Thanks Nicole, I'm glad you found it sparks reflections. Could obviously write another whole essay on the malevolent nature of Trumpism, but my worry is that unless there is a tough, honest conversation among American liberals about how to make the Democrats into an attractive political party, rather than a social movement of niche interests, then this is a cycle they're doomed to repeat. And that prospect is terrifying.
You called this from the beginning 😂👏
The irony of left/liberals (and those who I would for the most part align with) not being able to see anything outside of their own lens and frame of reference.
"The last two weeks have left me fairly convinced that there will be no reflection or soul-searching among American liberals."
Where do you go when every single input and piece of evidence—the people you know, the things you read or watch, the self-reinforcing and self-policing bubbles you live inside, your entire conception of life and humanity and its history—tell you that you reside at the apex of Mt. Morality, that you and your tribe are the literal incarnation of enlightened universal compassion, and that the only possible reason anyone could disagree is if they're either stupid and/or evil, a benighted bigot enslaved by "false consciousness"?
As stated in the piece, all this ideological brain rot and sanctimonious certitude is the result of American liberals adopting postmodern post-Marxist Crit Theory as their sacred ideology, which in turn has led them to adopt all the typical Leftist patterns of thought: the replacement of free thinking with recitations of dogma, an obsession with ideological purity and the stifling of dissent and hounding of heretics, and a romantic conception of the superior virtue of the oppressed, who cease being human and become fetish objects.
There's always been this inherent contradiction or weird cognitive dissonance in the acolytes of Social Justice (for lack of a better term) since they turned the Academy into Foucault's House of Power and Oppression and began their conquest of culture: one one hand their patron saint is someone who denied any morality as having a fixed basis, seeing it all as schemes for the top dog to control the underdog, and demanded rigorous genealogies of every settled norm or tradition, mixing Marxism and Nietzscheism into a single foul stew where the answer is always Nothing Exists but Power and Oppression; yet on the other hand, after drinking deeply from these waters of moral nihilism or agnosticism, what they've concocted is an intensely moralistic movement, where every person, place or thing, living or dead, and every single social event, from shopping to fucking, needs to be scanned with an intense moral X-Ray, with any violation deemed a hanging offense. They've somehow taken a highly amoral philosophy and transformed it into a ruthless moral buzzsaw! And like most people backed into their beliefs by social pressure, they never will and never can see this.
So, yes, as you say, there is absolutely no hope of any kind of reckoning or reformation of America's offical thinking classes and the party that represents them—they would rather lose every election than admit that their sacred ideology makes them seem both toxic and deranged, not to mention condescending. They might equivocate or gaslight or deny or pretend to acquiesce, but they will never change.
Great piece! Thanks!
I always appreciate your input mate!
Your point about the contradictions at the core of the postmodern/post-Marxist belief systems speaks to the underpinning reason why it always produces such a garbled, incoherent ideological mess, which is the complete absence of sound epistemology. Because they view contradictions as a feature, rather than a bug, they're blind to the incoherence their thinking results in.
At least the French postmodern/post-structural/post-Marxist thinkers thought they were operating from some epistemic basis, the hyper-relativity and subjectivism was purposeful, but as you point out, essentially amoral and "anything goes" (not surprising then that they all got together to pen a letter justifying sex with minors).
The addition of this intense moral purity element into these ideologies, I believe, is derived from their infusion with American Puritan Protestantism. Of course, American Progressives all think they're secular/atheists, but in substance, they're not; they've merely replaced an identifiable Godhead with their new conception of the Sacred, i.e., fetishised Oppressed groups.
Add Foucaldian relativism to American fire-and-damnation Protestantism, and I think this is why, whatever the cause or issue, it is always American Progressives that react with the most hysterical, unhinged, toxic "purge and purify" convulsions. The moral nihilism of Foucault et al. became the cultural nihilism of the American Progressive Left.
good points!
When the hothouse flower of French Theory was replanted in American universities, it took a collection of poses and provocations designed by Parisians who were just trying to find new ways of being edgy Marxists/Maoists like all the other cool kids and rooted it in soil that was both much more Puritanical and entrepreneurial. And voila! you have a new priesthood of transgression, who are like the mad offspring of John Calvin and Hugh Hefner. So "Nothing is true and all is permitted" became their new sacred slogan, except the one thing that was absolutely forbidden was disagreeing w them in any way.
America has always been both highly moralistic and highly hedonistic, as well as the most commercial culture ever created, thus you need to hustle and sell to get ahead, even if your product is just a new special blend of Marx/Freud/Nietzsche that makes everyone sick but makes you rich and powerful. We are also the land of the traveling preacher and the televangelist, all of which went into creating this new yet old Protestant offshoot called Social Justice. God, faith and religion have always been major American profit streams, even when dressed up in fancy foreign jargon.
Cheers and thanks! Always look forward to your posts.
Hi Alan. Could not agree more with all of that. The progressive left are utterly incapable of the required level of self reflection. Doing so would require a confrontation with their own narcissism resulting in a total collapse of their sense of self because it’s so tied to these ideologies manufactured in university campuses.
It seems pretty clear that the incubation of Progressive bullshit is almost entirely attributable to American universities. I imagine the disconnect will continue.
If you want to jump off a bridge, read this thread a friend sent me about University of California San Francisco's curriculum for medical students - yes, medical students - which devotes more time to "racism, ableism, and patriarchy" than anatomy and describes "objectivity" as a characteristic of "white supremacy culture".
The problem is normal American liberals won't stand up to this shit and call it what it is.
https://x.com/aaronsibarium/status/1858567041760018781?s=46
…manufactured on university campuses.
Ten days later and I'm still hearing the phrase "Harris ran a flawless campaign" used to genuflect at the beginning of every podcast trying to come to terms with how they could possibly have lost.
There was a moment a couple of years ago when President Biden invited Dylan Mulvaney to the White House during the same week that normies were getting yelled at on Twitter for having some concerns about men breast feeding infants. Without Harris having some kind of disavowal of these things that almost seem like a fever dream now....there was never going to be a win amongst working class people for the democrats.
Yeah, Dems seem very intent on reinforcing that narrative. I've also spoken to several of my American left-leaning/liberal/Dem-voting friends, and what is mindblowing is how completely unaware and in pure denial they are about the relationship between their party and Progressivism as a socio-cultural movement. They're convinced its all just Right-wing "misinformation". I'm now more convinced they're destined to learn nothing from this defeat, because they just flat out refuse to address the mess under their roof.
Sooner or later, the Dems are going to have to reckon with the progressives' influence on public perceptions of the Democratic Party. And "poison" is not too strong a word to describe the effects of progressive ideology on how many normie voters view the D party.
They desperately need this reckoning. I've had so many of my more centre-left/classic liberal American friends plead a degree of ignorance to the association, either believing that it is all just Right-wing misinformation or that the party doesn't hold specific policies on certain issues. And yeah, the Right does jump all over cultural issues, but only because it is put out there in the first place by the Progressive Left. To many normie voters, the Dems are the party of gender woo and junkies crawling city pavements. They have a serious PR problem.
Brilliant read, Alan, and highly appreciated, thanks a lot! I feel that your comprehensive and thorough analysis might be a hard pill to swallow, and I totally get that; but, it's now maybe even more important to seriously do so! Thanks a lot, again, for your (humble) voice of reason and reflecting.. (if that wording makes any sense, which I hope)
Thanks Mel! It is a hard pill to swallow as much as write, naturally the inclination is to emphasise the dangers of Trump with a second administration where there are far fewer checks and balances against his malevolence. But this is an issue with the Western Left generally that has bothered me for a decade; why they keep losing to people/parties that, on paper, they "should" beat based on what they're offering, but can't...and the reasons they keep repeatedly losing, they refuse to grapple with because of the said ideological straightjacket.
Thanks a lot for your reply :) I totally get that it must have been a hard pill also to write, even "just" reflecting on it; one more reason I really appreciate these essays of yours.. And yes, totally agree: It's obviously "an issue with the Western Left generally", and that is really scary!
Trump is unfit for office (in fact he tried to override the 2020 results through a fake elector scheme) but the Democrats thoroughly deserved to lose this election.
Great reasoning right there.
The reasoning of why they deserved to lose is independent of Trump's fitness, which is the point. Again, your dislike/disdain of Trump is not sufficient reasoning to reject those points.
Social Democrats also deserved to lose against Hitler.
Argumentum ad Hitlerum. Don't be a sophist.
Analogy to Hitler and NASDP is especially relevant, given how both were boosted by the 1929 depression.
The Social Democrats also abandoned the German working class by focusing so much on the land reforms regarding the Junckers' entitlements. Etc. etc. etc.
I take the point, but the substantial differences between political systems limit the analogy, as do the reasons for the SDP courting the old elites, which was somewhat of an uncomfortable alliance motivated by the SDPs desire for stability in the fledgling Weimar Republic. Weimar's parliamentary system - indeed any parliamentary system - isn't a good comparison for the U.S.
I think the reasons for the SDP allying with the landed and military elites are, importantly, very different to why/how many formerly centre-Left parties - not only the Democrats, but we saw this with New Labour in the UK and some European parties - moved from the working class, which was based on the flawed assumption that they could court college-educated urban professionals while the working class would stay put.
Essentially, gambling that the working class would never take their vote anywhere else. That gamble hasn't paid off, and as a result, they're left with the urban educated professionals, but not the working class.
Yep, the TL;DR of the essay basically!
This essay is one of the worst examples of Intellectual Hipsterism. Please also profess your belief in God and perfect your hipsterism
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism
There is nothing contrarian about the points made; Trump winning doesn't retrospectively invalidate any of the arguments, most of which have been critiques of the Democrats and American liberalism since 2016. You're disagreement ≠ contrarian. Happy to link to any number of non-contrarians who argue similarly, several of who are Democrats.
I didn’t make a point about the essay itself but merely about the psychological mechanisms about why you hold the views you do. Note also I didn’t call you a contrarian.
Also, you constantly speak in terms of “democrats”, “American liberalism”, “the Left” and other identity markers (as if it was clear what these meant) instead of substantive issues and ideas. That itself is a reason not to take your post seriously.
The piece you linked to clearly defined its construct as a form of contrarianism.
"Democrats" was uppercase throughout, indicating the Democratic Party. "The Left" is self-explanatory for a political essay, and also uppercase to avoid doubt. "Liberal" is the term of art vs. "conservative" in America.
And these were referred to in the context of substantive ideas and issues pertaining to the loss of the working class vote, the politics of identity vs. class, and the role of "shadow party", which were supported by facts and data.
Now, you're welcome to disagree with the interpretation of those facts/data and their meaning but do so in good faith rather than link to specious speculations about "psychological mechanisms", which you have no idea about.
Any number of commentators also feel that the Democrats strategy since 2016 of courting college-education urbanites while assuming the working class would have nowhere to go has been a disaster.