4 ms·

> I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this. I believe the current generation has a good take on this: when your identity becomes enmeshed in a po

> I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this. I believe the current generation has a good take on this: when your identity becomes enmeshed in a political religion, the creation of differences is mandatory to support your vision. This necessity of finding a cause or something to believe in—the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil—will exist in perpetuity on the left. If there are no baddies, they must be created. The origin of "the left" in America is a road through the Darwinian origins of Progressivism which, along with its gross support of racial anthropology, believed in a better class of men to administer a society they believed incompetent. It then moved down the meandering corridor of postmodern Marxism in academia which took as an article of faith that dishonesty was required for social change. We're now at the weapons-grade, enriched version of that belief with Wokeness where the adherents privately believe they are better people, qualified to manage society's past ills but then publicly disown the idea when confronted. Unless the cultural left in America wants to disown over a century of believing they are superior, the orthodoxy is here to stay. There is no difference between Wilsonian progressives and the modern day woke other than transparency and visibility into the worldview.

onphonenow 5y ago
"the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil" I would argue this motivates a fair bit of the hard right too. Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors), take the law into their own hands (bombings etc). Same thing with the "stolen election". I'm not speaking about the merits of either of these issues, just that they serve to drive a similar situation on right.
- abernard1 5y ago
  > Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors) This has been Christian doctrine for 2000 years: they didn't "come up with it." It's in the Didache, which is a first century document and puts abortion in the same category as pedophilia. In contrast, there will never be a point where the left stops finding new niche epithets and specialized victims/oppressors because the Hegelian worldview requires it. A mere 10 years ago, the idea of TERFs or people oppressing others because they didn't include pronouns would be unthinkable. Once that bridge is crossed, more bridges will inevitably need to be created. We live in a world where the left thinks thousands of unarmed black men are killed every year, when the number in 2019 was... 14 [1] This same worldview thinks that there's a mass of white supremacists seeking to take over the country, and yet, where is the mass number of crimes that we hear about? If they were there, don't you think we'd hear about specific cases on the news, given that literally half of all unarmed black men killed by police made national news? [1] https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-ho...

onphonenow 5y ago

"the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil" I would argue this motivates a fair bit of the hard right too. Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors), take the law into their own hands (bombings etc). Same thing with the "stolen election". I'm not speaking about the merits of either of these issues, just that they serve to drive a similar situation on right.

abernard1 5y ago
> Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors) This has been Christian doctrine for 2000 years: they didn't "come up with it." It's in the Didache, which is a first century document and puts abortion in the same category as pedophilia. In contrast, there will never be a point where the left stops finding new niche epithets and specialized victims/oppressors because the Hegelian worldview requires it. A mere 10 years ago, the idea of TERFs or people oppressing others because they didn't include pronouns would be unthinkable. Once that bridge is crossed, more bridges will inevitably need to be created. We live in a world where the left thinks thousands of unarmed black men are killed every year, when the number in 2019 was... 14 [1] This same worldview thinks that there's a mass of white supremacists seeking to take over the country, and yet, where is the mass number of crimes that we hear about? If they were there, don't you think we'd hear about specific cases on the news, given that literally half of all unarmed black men killed by police made national news? [1] https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-ho...