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yellingmetatron · 4 years

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I Just Need to Get This Out (Political Content Warning)

Now more than ever, I am going to be avoiding politics on Tumblr. This is, with any luck, the last political post I will make on my blogs. It is meant to serve as an explanation of why I’m going to be a lot less tolerant of political content on roleplaying blogs. TL;DR, I don’t fit in on the right or left and I’m fucking tired of seeing politics everywhere. I deal with it at work, and I deal with it at home. I don’t want to deal with it here. I’m going to start unfollowing people when I see it. That doesn’t mean our friendship is over, it doesn’t mean we can’t RP. But I’m so tired of it all. If you want the long explanation, keep reading.

From about middleschool to shortly before the election of the current president I considered myself an ardent conservative. Listing out a lot of my positions, this might have seemed not to be the case: I’m not religious (try as I might to be so). I’m pro-LGTBQ+. I’ve always been a proud member of what Rush Limbaugh used to call the Wetland Gestapo. I think anthropogenic climate change is a real thing. I want pot legalized. I think military interventionism is a mistake in all but the rarest situations (granted this is a more recent position). I think the welfare state is necessary and in places ought to be expanded. I am enthusiastic about multiculturalism. On the other hand, I am pro-religion despite not being religious, and feel religious conservatives shouldn’t be compelled to violate their own religious beliefs as long as it’s not hurting anyone (and my definition of ‘not hurting anyone’ seems to be a bit broader than most progressives). While I’m not anti-union, I think that unions can be corrupt as any other institution, particularly at a national level, and that the Left is too inclined to overlook that. I’m solidly pro Second Amendment. I consider illegal immigration a bad thing (mostly because it’s an excuse to exploit the poor and undocumented). I think “states’ rights” is not just a dogwhistle term for racists, but something that really does need to be taken into account given the way the American republic works. I could have expanded the above to paragraphs, but they’re already ungainly and, I’m sure, a pain to read through. Where am I going with all this? Well, first I wanted to establish that I COULD consider myself “an ardent conservative” while holding a lot of varied opinions (like literally everyone on the planet has). Secondly, I want to establish that I hold all of the above views, and have for some time, while bearing a specific label—right winger. I’ve ended up rejecting that label, and rejecting what for want of a better term I’ll call “the conservative movement”, but my positions haven’t changed. And, most importantly, stopping thinking of myself as a conservative DOES NOT mean I’ve come to think of myself as a progressive. Let me try to tell a story. I’m decent at stories. Metamun in middle school and high school was a lonely creature. He was sick a lot, and pretty socially awkward, although he could make up for it by being funny and knowing some trivia. But he mostly kept to himself. Since being on the bus made him sick (it was at a time of life when people experimented with scents that screwed him up at close quarters) usually his dad picked him up after school. That’s where Metamun picked up his politics, those drives home with dad. Dad listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh, and so Metamun did too. Metamun was already sort of inclined to conservatism—he had a pessimistic view of the world, distrusting the US government and feeling that people ought to be able to protect themselves (i.e. own guns). Rush did not convert Metamun, but he did affirm Metamun. He didn’t usually say anything that seemed greatly outrageous to Metamun. (Mark that “usually”.) Now, as Metamun was living in suburban New England, it happened that conservative politics did not go unchallenged as they might have, say, farther south. To Metamun it seemed as though he was in a tiny minority, especially where authority figures were concerned. Looking back he’d realize this wasn’t the case— particularly not in terms of his actual views. But remember, Metamun didn’t get out much. And furthermore, although he considered himself conservative, he found he usually didn’t like the company of conservatives— they tended to be less interested in the things he was, like books and acting. So most of his friends and acquaintances tended to be, if not self-identified progressives, at least the kind of people who sneered at conservatives and made the obligatory comparisons of Bush II to Hitler. Because that was who Metamun dealt with day-to-day, he was left with the impression that this was the norm for the society he lived in. Most of what was on TV, with the exceptions of Fox News and South Park, seemed to confirm this. And so Metamun became genuinely terrified of people learning that he was not like the majority. Being homebound so often, Metamun spent a lot of time online. That did nothing to lessen his terror. Lonely as he was, Metamun went looking for conservative blogs. Pajamas Media was the big one, but there were plenty of smaller ones. One important thing he learned was that post 9/11, there were a lot of people who sort of fit his description—socially liberal, but mistrustful of leftist politics for various reasons. Ex-leftists. Neo-Cons.

One important factor was patriotism: It seemed like all progressives genuinely hated the United States on principal. Unflattering and quite often spurious comparisons to other countries seemed to abound on the Left. One of Metamun’s new acquaintances explicitly wrote on their blog that they’d always wondered how the Right “co-opted” patriotism before concluding the Left simply threw it away. This acquaintance, a gay Seattleite, would be a touchstone for Metamun’s sense of political self for some time. During the Tea Party era, the Right genuinely felt more fun and open than the Left. Metamun still felt like an underdog, but also like he was part of a ragtag resistance movement with real emotional bonds. And yet, even with all that, his prime political emotion was fear. (Mark the recurrent theme of fear.) Some of you might see the shape of this narrative and guess that Metamun was fed a steady diet of paranoia by nasty wingnuts. Yes and no. The conservative blogosphere was a scary place—it told him that his basic values were under constant assault. That some of the “basic values” in the package were not actually his was beside the point, because Metamun just generally hated the thought of State force being used to coerce people into violating their own principals. Metamun was happy to fight for values that were not his own, on that account. It did bother him, sometimes, the assumptions conservatives made, but by this time he had gotten used to thinking of himself as a minority, so the majority being different wasn't so jarring. Of course there would be a few differences of opinion. But the Right accepted those differences in the way that surely the Left would not. And he knew that this was true, because he’d seen it with his own eyes. The Left was VICIOUS to conservatives, sometimes in a very personal way. In some ways, sick and often absent though he was, Metamun still got the basic high school experience as he watched insults and worse fly fast and thick. Leftists expressed GLEE at any conservative misfortune. They made absolutely insane comparisons between conservative pundits and Nazis. “Republican” was a punchline to very cruel (and sometimes racist and sexist) jokes. Sometimes they seemed to outright lie. Metamun remembered a novelty song about Satan claim he was “in all Rush Limbaugh’s rants”, and Metamun KNEW that was untrue because he’d been listening to Rush for years and couldn’t recall the man even referencing scripture outside of holidays. Metamun heard people casually cite Glenn Beck as routinely opposing gay marriage when Metamun had heard the man himself arguing that the government shouldn’t even be involved with marriage (and thus that it couldn’t compel churches to validate gay marriages, sure, but that seemed a separate issue). But it was watching his conservative friends’ comments sections and twitter feed that solidified the image of progressive-as-persecutor. It was blatantly apparent that these people hadn’t come to engage, they just wanted to take potshots. Ad hominem abounded, total lack of reading comprehension was displayed, and just general delight in cruelty was rampant. He was particularly appalled by the treatment of minority conservatives, who received all sorts of abuse based on race, sex, and orientation. Something that stuck with Metamun for years was watching conservative women get rape threats, death threats, and admonitions to kill themselves. One of his best friends got such an admonition in response to mentioning on twitter it was her birthday. That was it. Nothing political. Just excitement for a special, personal day. And none of his Leftist friends seemed to understand what their own wing was doing. They talked about the Right doing such things, which baffled him—he’d never seen anything like that, or, if he did, it was only once or twice and never anybody HIS friends actually associated with. Every movement has a few bad apples, right? (Mark the irony.) It didn’t help that once, depressed, Metamun DID admit on twitter that he was a conservative, and moreover that he was afraid people would stop being his friends over that. He promptly lost two friends. When he asked a third friend if they could please ask if he’d been unfollowed on purpose, they said they’d do it. And then THEY never talked to him again, even when he reached out. He was convinced the only reason he didn’t lose everybody was that they hadn’t all seen the tweets—he deleted them quickly. So there Metamun was: Lonely, convinced that even if he didn’t line up perfectly with conservatism that at least conservatives accepted him, and very angry at the Other Tribe that was so cruel and callous to him and his friends. But he was starting to grow up, and as he did he began noticing certain discrepancies. Now and then the movement that was supposed to have a Big Tent felt oddly crowded. People sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way. Metamun particularly hated it when the term RINO got thrown around, because he was all too aware that might apply to someone like him. Then there was the lack of nuance. He slowly came to realize people on both sides of the aisle would sometimes use “nuanced” as a snide insult. When the Dalai Lama described himself as anti-capitalist Metamun was disappointed, but understood (and also His Holiness was on record as saying when someone’s shooting at you it’s reasonable to shoot back, which Metamun thought made up for a lot). He did not expect certain conservatives to not only sneer at His Holinesses “nuanced” relationship with capitalism (accepting material support to fight against Mao) but actually accused him of being a PRC puppet. What? Hadn’t they read anything about the man’s life? Or his own writings? Yes, he’d tried to work with Mao, but that fell through because Mao hated religion unequivocally—how could any religious leader work with that? Why were they jumping to such insane conclusions? This wasn’t what conservatives were supposed to do! There were a thousand other cracks in the façade, but two stand out. First, Metamun admitted to a dear friend, full of apprehension, that he voted for Mitt Romney. And not only did she not cut him out of her life, she explained WHY she wouldn’t do that. Metamun was elated but also very confused—this wasn’t how the script in his head went. He was admitting this because the pain of keeping a secret was too much, and he fully expected to pay a price for that. He was (and remains) a drama-addled moron that way. He was also a creature who put a lot of stock in narrative, and this narrative was nothing like he expected. Next, Metamun himself cut two friends out of his life over politics—years apart, but the number is important. The first hurt, but felt very justified. The second haunted him. Metamun was easily haunted, but by this point he’d started really struggling with intrusive thoughts. Around and around they went in his head, and although there was extreme, maddening monotony, now and then he’d see angles he’d missed before. The number was important. Two friends he’d definitely lost (he was never really sure of the third). Two friends he’d rejected. Why did he reject them? Because he figured they’d hate him if they knew he didn’t agree with them. He figured they had made their positions so strident that it was just inevitable that they would cut him out if he didn’t cut them out first. And he realized, stupidly, after years of realizing nothing, that maybe that’s exactly how the people who left him had felt. Oh, perhaps they didn’t. But what if they did? What did that say about what, ultimately, they had in common? We’re getting closer to the present, so I’m going to start talking about myself in first person again. I recognize this version of myself more easily. As time went by I grew more and more jaded with American conservatism, but I still thought of myself as a conservative. A lot of people were like that, children of the Tea Parties who had thought that the Right was the only alternative to all the abhorrent things we saw on the Left. But familiarity breeds contempt, and soon we were well acquainted with abhorrent things on the Right. It seemed as if there was a rot spreading, something that had started as a speck and was now growing. The spirit of fellow feeling was starting to evaporate. There were a few things going on, but by this point I was barely paying attention to any of them. I hadn’t looked at a conservative blog in years. I didn’t listen to Rush. The fracture of American conservatism could probably be better documented by someone who still gives a damn, but we all know what was the final crack in the glass. Donald Trump’s candidacy split the Right seemingly overnight, and not neatly down the middle. The big question is, of course “love him or hate him”, but even people who don’t go to those extremes get caught up in the animosity. This, really, was when I couldn’t call myself a conservative anymore—no, not because his election was an indictment of conservatism, but because as the jagged rift grew, I suddenly realized that literally everything that scared me about the Left was present in the Right, both the MAGAheads and the Never Trumpers. All the bile. All the cruelty. All the callous disregard for our shared humanity. All the absurd stereotyping and reductionism. Everything I’d seen on the Left that made me feel that the Right, imperfect as it was, was my only refuge, was suddenly EVERYWHERE, from quarters I’d thought were safe. A lot of my conservative friends were hit even harder than I was; a few people desperately tried to reconcile people who had once laughed and dined together, but were now swearing never to speak again, or worse, verbally assaulting each other on a daily basis. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was not the way we were supposed to work.And then, at last, I realized that the only reason I was just seeing all this awfulness NOW was because it hadn’t been directed at me and mine in the past. And here we come to the main point I want to impress on everybody who’s bothered to read this far: My short-sightedness was in no way unique. We always try to show our best face to our friends—and to our Tribe. We are thoughtful and considerate of people on our side. We roll our eyes at the people on our fringe—silly things, aren’t they? Imagine someone taking them seriously. Our enemies do not see our best face. They see our war face. We fight them tooth and nail. We exult in their defeats, which become our triumphs—somehow. And we see this horrible, poisonous crest at the top of their wave that threatens to engulf everything—their fringe. A leftist is not going to be threatened and insulted for being a rightist—at least not consistently outside of “purity” arguments. A leftist will be more cognizant of the threat posed by rightist fringes, because those fringes are not attacking the Right, per se. And you know, this goes for all conflict. You don’t see a problem as clearly if it’s not directly shoved in your face every day. And you will become convinced that the problems that ARE shoved in your face every day are the only ones really getting worked up about, because everything else seems so ephemeral. I read people scoff at their own fringes—“Oh, nobody REALLY believes that stuff, and people who complain about it are just showing their white fragility/race baiting/gay agenda/whatever the key phrase to stop critical thought is in a given situation”. Guess what? Those fringes are constantly needling at the other side. THEY are what is representative of your tribe to the Other Tribe. They are loud, and they are cruel, and ignoring them because the other guys “deserve it” or you hope “now they’ll know how it feels” is fucking insane. And yes, one of the reasons the Other Tribe sees it so often is that they go looking for it, but they go looking for it BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF IT and they want to make sure they know what it’s up to. The only thing worse than seeing the devil is losing sight of the devil. I’m no longer a conservative because that ideology is poisoned by hate. But I didn’t become a progressive, because that ideology is also poisoned by hate. Or maybe both ideologies have actually been abandoned, and now we just have two flavors of hate in opposition to each other. Please believe me, I do not WANT to be apolitical. Everybody hates the apolitical—we don’t even like ourselves much. And anyway, I’m one of nature’s conformists; I like belonging to a group. But at this point committing to ANY political movement feels like I would be sacrificing my integrity. And I would not want to be part of a movement that accepts people without integrity. I call myself a localist these days. Something risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb came up with. Keep power close to the ground, don’t try to manage everything from the top down, resist interventionism in communities where you don’t have skin in the game. Not aiming for a world without blowups, but keeping them at a smaller scale than we currently experience. Forget fussing over socialism and capitalism; both are bad at large scales. Both can work together at smaller scales. The false dichotomy is a tool of tyrants. I want my country to get better. But that’s not going to happen until people admit there are malicious, corrupting forces even in their own Tribes. It’s not all the Other Tribe’s fault. I still see people I love treating other people I love as subhuman. And when I point this out, tentatively, people nod their heads and tell me I’m correct and then go back to thoughtless hatred. What I want people to understand, please, is that I want nothing to do with political mass movements. It’s all about different flavors of hatred. It’s all about hurting people. It’s all about hypocrisy and cruelty. Fuck it. I am going to try to be a good person without hitching my ego to too many abstractions. I am going to try to make the world around me a more pleasant place, and I am going to do that without giving a fuck about whatever sacred cows the Left Tribe and Right Tribe are busy genuflecting to. So. I’m going to work harder not to deal with it here.

#out of voice #this is really just a personal political essay #it's not funny and it's not thought provoking #i've just been sitting on it for years #i don't fit in any political clique and i no longer have any desire to do so #block this tag if you don't want to see politics #update: maybe i just won't come back to tumblr #but this would be a decent epitaph

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anniekoh · 4 years

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elsewhere on the internet: talking about racism

This set of articles has been languishing at the back of the queue for three years!

Political Correctness Wanted Dead or Alive: A Rhetorical Witch-Hunt in the US, Russia, and Europe

Anna Szilagyi (2016, Talk Decoded)

Possibly the most common way of attacking political correctness, is to label it “tyrannical”. Covert speech strategies may also support this construction. For instance, anti-PC politicians often utilize adjectives for fear (including “afraid”, “frightened”, “scared”, “terrified”) to describe how PC affects the behavior and feelings of people. The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage claimed: “I think actually what’s been happening with this whole politically correct agenda is lots of decent ordinary people are losing their jobs and paying the price for us being terrified of causing offence.” Suggesting that the British are “terrified” because of political correctness, Farage urged his listeners to think of PC in terms of intimidation.

At the same time, the fearsome vocabulary provides a background for anti-PC populists to present themselves as “brave” and “courageous” “saviors” of their “victimized” societies. The next quote by Nigel Farage exemplifies this trend: “I think the people see us as actually standing up and saying what we think, not being constrained or scared by political correctness.” In a similar fashion, Geert Wilders declared: “I will not allow anyone to shut me up.”

Why White People Freak Out When They’re Called Out About Race

Sam Adler-Bell (2015, Alternet) @SamAdlerBell

Sam Adler-Bell: How did you come to write about "white fragility"?

Robin DiAngelo: To be honest, I wanted to take it on because it’s a frustrating dynamic that I encounter a lot. I don’t have a lot of patience for it. And I wanted to put a mirror to it.

I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.

Of course, it functions as means of resistance, but I think it’s also useful to think about it as fragility, as inability to handle the stress of conversations about race and racism

Sometimes it’s strategic, a very intentional push back and rebuttal. But a lot of the time, the person simply cannot function. They regress into an emotional state that prevents anybody from moving forward.

...

RD: I think we get tired of certain terms. What I do used to be called "diversity training," then "cultural competency" and now, "anti-racism." These terms are really useful for periods of time, but then they get coopted, and people build all this baggage around them, and you have to come up with new terms or else people won’t engage.

And I think "white privilege" has reached that point. It rocked my world when I first really got it, when I came across Peggy McIntosh. It’s a really powerful start for people. But unfortunately it's been played so much now that it turns people off.

The Language of “Privilege” Doesn’t Work

Stephen Aguilar (2016, Inside Higher Ed) @stephenaguilar

I believe that “privilege” is a sterile word that does not grapple with the core of the problem. If you are white, you do not have “white” privilege. If you are male, you do not have “male” privilege. If you are straight, you do not have “straight” privilege. What you have is advantage. The language of advantage, I propose, is a much cleaner and more precise way to frame discussions about racism (or sexism, or most systems of oppression).

... does giving up a “privilege” seem incoherent? It might, because generally privileges are given and taken by someone else. They are earned, and are seldom bad things to have.

Now try shifting your language to that of advantages. Ask yourself, “What advantages do I have over that person over there?” That question is much easier to answer and yields more nuanced responses.

Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality

Bim Adewunmi (2014, New Statesman) @bimadewunmi

“I wanted to come up with an everyday metaphor that anyone could use”

“Class is not new and race is not new. And we still continue to contest and talk about it, so what’s so unusual about intersectionality not being new and therefore that’s not a reason to talk about it? Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so obviously it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don’t ourselves experience.”

...

“Sometimes it feels like those in power frame themselves as being tremendously disempowered by critique. A critique of one’s voice isn’t taking it away. If the underlying assumption behind the category ‘women’ or ‘feminist’ is that we are a coalition then there have to be coalitional practices and some form of accountability.”

The Persecution of Amy Schumer: Political Correctness and Comedy

Teo Bugbee (2015, Daily Beast)

We have developed highly advanced ways of recognizing and articulating when we feel offended, but very few ways of making something productive out of our own hurt feelings.

I’ve questioned if my choice to overlook what’s hurtful in Schumer’s comedy for the sake of what’s insightful is a sign that I’m complicit in the faults of white feminism, not valuing the importance of others’ feelings on this matter enough. This argument of apathy gets used often on social media to raise awareness around issues of race, sex, gender, and other topics surrounding justice and a need for change, and it is often useful, but it can also be a blunt instrument. Where I’ve landed for the moment is that not all marginalized people feel the same way about every issue—even on social media, but especially outside it—and asking everyone to respond in the same way to the same joke takes a simplistic view that flattens the complexity of marginalized communities just as much as it does the white, cisgender mainstream.

However, if we’re going to ask audiences to keep in mind the multiplicity of responses that a person might have to a work of art before they attempt to control someone else’s opinion, then it’s only fair that comedians follow the same rule.

What’s Wrong (and Right) in Jonathan Chait’s Anti-P.C. Screed

J. Bryan Lowder (2015, Slate)

One of the main problems with the constellation of leftist ideas he bemoans is that many of the people who use them most loudly do so out of context. Concepts like “microaggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and “mansplaining” originally had specific meanings and limited uses, often within the academy. They described or were meant to address specific situations or phenomena, and more important, they were intended to function as diagnostic tools of analysis, not be used as blunt, conversation-ending instruments. Believe it or not, most of these “PC buzzwords” are actually useful from time to time: “Straightsplaining” is a real (and very annoying) thing, and it’s often a productive way of thinking about an interaction. But it’s also not always a useful or fair way to characterize a disagreement between a queer person and a straight interlocutor. Precision is what’s needed.

Additionally, though it is impossible to say this without sounding condescending myself, a lot of the abuse of PC rhetoric comes from young college students who have not yet grasped the difference between a measuring tape and a sledgehammer. Of course, given that contemporary mainstream politics offers little for those hopeful souls who want to make truly radical change in the world, you can’t really blame them for gravitating toward a mode of critique that at least feels somewhat empowering. Here, first-year, is a framework by which you can reveal the (screwed-up) hidden structures of the world and use your newly honed textual close-reading skills to mount offenses against those structures—go for it. What works on a novel doesn’t necessary translate to a complicated, changeable human being, though, so it’s no surprise that the deployment of microaggression and cissexism and other social justice lingo can sometimes come off as strident and simplistic. It often is.

But then, so is crying that only Reason can save us from the illiberal wolves waiting in the wings of our great system, which has a “glorious” history on social justice, by the way.

Want To Help End Systemic Racism? First Step: Drop the White Guilt

Sincere Kirabo (2015, thehumanist)

The point of identifying and exposing inconsistencies within the social systems and cultural norms of the United States isn’t to make whites feel guilty, but to garner greater empathy that will inspire change. The main problem with white guilt is that it attempts to diminish the spotlight aimed at issues germane to marginalized groups and redirects the focus to a wasteful plane of apologetics and ineffective assessment.

This is why some don’t like discussing racism, as those more sensitive to these matters sometimes allow guilt to creep into their thought processes, effectively evoking pangs of discomfort. This can lead to avoidance of the primary issues altogether, as well as the manifestation of defense mechanisms, including denial, projection, intellectualization, and rationalization.

Many are acquainted with the concept of Catholic guilt. Catholic doctrine emphasizes the inherent sinfulness of all people. These accentuated notions of fault lead to varied degrees of enhanced self-loathing. I liken white guilt to Catholic guilt: both relate to a sense of inadequacy emanating from misguided notions. Though the latter is anchored in an imagined source, they both speak to feelings of remorse and internal conflict that does the individual having them no good.

Keep in mind that the call to “recognize your privilege” does not translate to “bear the blame.”

#racism #intersectionality #political correctness #social justice #linguistics

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angrybell · 6 years

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Nationalism According to Donald Trump

By Emina Melonic| November 2nd, 2018

Freedom of speech is under attack both in the United States and in Europe. Naturally, language—the basis of speech—is bound to change organically over time, but today there are efforts to change it in artificial and forced ways. What we say (and ultimately what we think) has become an occasion for control and policing, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s short story, The Minority Report, in which people are arrested for “pre-crime” thoughts. It may seem strange to reference science fiction to illustrate a point about the current totalitarian experience but, given the Orwellian reality in which we now live, such references make complete sense.

Examples of this kind of tortured language are all around us. Most recently, the European Court for Human Rights ruled that defaming the prophet Muhammad is not protected speech or expression. The case was brought before the court by an Austrian national identified only as “Mrs. S,” who was fined for comments a court deemed disparaging of a religion (in this case, Islam). She suggested Muhammad was a pedophile because the Koran details his marriage to his third wife, Aisha, who went to live with him when she was 9-years-old.

Mrs. S took her case to the European human rights court, but the judges did not rule in her favor. Mrs. S’s “right to freedom of expression,” the court said, cannot be rendered more important than “the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and [the decision] served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.”

I’m not interested in delving deeper into the history of Islam or the life of Muhammad, nor do I wish to discuss whether Mrs. S’s statement is valid, especially since we don’t really know the full context and facts of her case. What is important here is that the European court has put the “feelings” of a group of people over and above the rights of an individual’s expression of thoughts.

Forsaking Cherished Identities, Abandoning Freedom

How did Austria and many other western European countries get to this point? Simple: they have forsaken their own national identity in order to accommodate certain religious sects that, for the most part, operate in ways that are incompatible with Western values. This is a direct consequence of choosing globalism instead of their own sovereign and national identity as their guiding principles.

Thankfully, the United States has not fully entered this phase of political and cultural existence and seems to be resisting efforts to drag us there. Still, we do see assaults on free speech and the forceful shaping of language, the sole purpose of which is to serve as a handmaid to leftist ideology. Most recently, the horrific massacre in Pittsburgh has caused some to seek to politicize this mass murder, insisting that language they dislike was the direct cause of the atrocity. Some went as far as to blame Trump for the massacre labeling him an anti-Semite despite the fact that he is one of the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish presidents in recent American history.

To destroy Trump, the Left has twisted the language, in particular focusing on Trump’s outspoken attack on globalism and his embrace of nationalism. According to the Left, when Trump speaks against globalists, he is really speaking against Jews.

Another recent example of speech suppression involves an American scholar, Yoram Hazony, who complained he is no longer allowed to use words such as “globalist” and “nationalist” because they are just “dog whistles” for something evil and nefarious. Essentially, Hazony is being told what he can and cannot say. When someone imposes on our speech and gives us a directive about the “appropriate” way of speaking, they affirm only one thing—that we, ontologically speaking, don’t exist, or at the very least, that we don’t deserve to exist.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Any intelligent and clear thinking person can see the utter illogic in all of this. But such ludicrous statements should not be ignored. They warrant a discussion of what globalism and nationalism really are, especially in the context of Trump’s recent assertion that indeed, he is a nationalist.

American Identity Is Real—and It Isn’t Globalist

For the globalist Left, any mention of the word “nationalism” immediately is translated into National Socialism. According to the reductio ad Hitlerum argument, if you call yourself a nationalist, you are a white supremacist intent on destroying anyone who doesn’t fit that category. But it isn’t just that which differentiates globalists from intelligent people who embrace their national identity.

The globalist ideology relies on fluidity, primitive emotionalism, mediocrity, and a complete erasure of borders, both physical and metaphysical. It relies on control of the people, on eliminating differences between people and cherry picking as to who qualifies to maintain their difference and who must be erased from existence. It is a collectivist and totalitarian phenomenon that denies the wonder of life as well as the possibility of human flourishing. For this and many other reasons, true American identity is not globalist and never will be.

We struggle with the concept of nationalism, mainly because, historically, we associate it with the schemes of a megalomaniac bent conquering of the world. But the assertion of one’s identity that is connected to the ethos of a particular country (be it America or other nations) is completely the opposite of the left’s vision of Hitlerian nationalism. Indeed, only an authentic embrace of American nationalism can (and did) stand against such a twisted outlook.

What’s happening, in fact, is that real Americans are fed up with being told to decrease or feel ashamed of their existence and presumably disappear altogether. They are tired from constantly being put in a defensive posture against the inane and false statements which are constantly thrown at them. They are frustrated that they have been thwarted in their attempts to live fulfilling and successful lives by people who put the interests of non-citizens over and against their own.

Trump clearly has recognized this and because of this recognition, he has been labeled a nationalist in the blinkered meaning of the term propagated by the left. Is he a nationalist then? Trump explains: “I’m somebody that loves our country. When I say a nationalist, I don’t like it when Germany is paying 1 percent of GDP for NATO, and we’re paying 4.3 percent. I don’t like that.” Trump escapes any kind of already formed political definitions, and so we have to look at what constitutes nationalism according to Trump.

What Trump Means

There are three main elements of Trump’s conception of nationalism: sovereignty, excellence, and human potential. Without understanding each of these elements, it is impossible to understand Trump’s presidency.

Sovereignty, of course, has to do with independence, which is the most fundamental American principle. This concept goes against globalist principles of fluidity, sameness, and open borders. To the globalist, borders don’t matter because they want to erase the lines between countries and ensure the weakening of America in favor of the brotherhood of humankind. And yet, without clear borders, no country can be defined and thus no citizen can claim his or her own voice. As Hannah Arendt writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “To abolish the fences of laws between men—as tyranny does—means to take away man’s liberties and destroy freedom as a living political reality; for the space between men as it is hedged by the laws, is the living space of freedom.”

The next two elements—excellence and human potential—go hand in hand and are at the center of Trump’s thought and how he approaches statesmanship. Trump doesn’t subscribe either to conservatism or to liberalism as traditionally understood in American politics, and this is one of the most confounding characteristics of the Trump presidency. Not only has Trump unmasked American and world politics to expose their ugliness and corruption, he has chosen to focus on American excellence and potential rather than be the lord of the swamp. This focus on flourishing and success have been at the core of Trump’s being since even before he decided to run for the presidency—almost all of his interviews, particularly from the 1980s, involve some talk about realizing individual and American potential.

Of course, he puts American interests first—as any American president should do. “I am the president of the United States,” Trump said recently in one of his rallies. “I am not the president of the globe.” What’s more, this America-first approach involves the American people as a whole and more importantly, as American individuals. Foremost on Trump’s agenda is to create an environment in which every American is invited to succeed. But that takes responsibility on the part of every American, something the globalist Left is afraid to acknowledge because they deny the potential of so many individuals and instead point to a politics of victimhood which, naturally, empowers them as caretakers.

By affirming the importance of and responsibility for individual excellence in all Americans, Trump is attacking mediocrity—a trait widely embraced by leftist ideology. The more mediocre the masses, the better they can be controlled and repeatedly made into victims who, ultimately, need to rely on the state for any kind of assistance, including tips on how to think. For the globalist Left, the strong are not supposed to be the model for the weak or to encourage them to get out of the doldrums and into the world of personal freedom and responsibility. On the contrary, for them, the unapproved strong are supposed to slip into weakness until they disappear into the mist of mediocrity.

Trump is a man of action and because of this, he is not interested in “politcking” and ideological posturing. He brings something different to the American presidency, something which is urgently needed today. What kind of precedent he is setting remains to be seen. His actions against the absurdity of our times are louder than any statesman’s words. Trump is a man whose actions are born of his Americanism or, if you prefer, out of thoroughly American instincts. He is not moved by the force of post-modern shifting of reality. He understands the potential and the right of all Americans to comprehend and act upon reality as it actually presents itself. And what is more American than this?

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elizabethleslie7654 · 7 years

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America’s Fake Right

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The Republicans are conservative in name only.

by Boss Zogg

The desires of Republican base voters have been stymied repeatedly since the Tea Party movement gained a public profile as a reaction to President Obama’s Obamacare debacle of 2009. So why have the Republicans, who were elected to put the brakes on the progressive agenda, been feckless, even when they control the Presidency and both houses of Congress?

The problem with the American right is that it sees itself not as a traditionalist, reactionary force blunting the “long march” of Cultural Marxism through the institutions, but as the true liberal 19th century egalitarianism. In essence, their argument is, “We’re better leftists. Those rascally Democrats are still the real racists. They divide people by race, sexual orientation, and gender. Did you know Robert Byrd was in the Klan?”

Thus they geld themselves before the battle even begins. The tenets of the progressive are accepted as the parameters of the debate. Hyper-individualism and tabula rasa theories of human behavior are the ideology of both parties. The Democrats preach it, the conservatives help implement it and call it “our values,” because it seems reasonable when compared with the latest social justice crusade being screeched by obese, gender-fluid blue haired harpies. Besides, if they didn’t go along, the media would call them bigots. Select your ad hominem based on the situation: Nazi, homophobe, anti-Semite, etc.

This is how we get a right that claims it is the true heir to the legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Kang, a man who was known to be an abuser of women and a communist agent. This is how we get a right where Ike is a hero for forcing White and Black schoolchildren together at bayonet point to the detriment of both communities. This is how we get a right where sodomite marriage is celebrated by the likes of faux-conservatives such as David Brooks who claim it is a pro-marriage policy.

The leftward slide down the slippery slope continues. “Conservatives” conserve the latest Marxist innovation, tepidly resisting the next, until that becomes “our values.” It is this mental rut that the opposition to the left cannot pull out of. Never mind that the progressives don’t actually believe much beyond expanding their own power, as long as the mostly White opposition can be shamed into using individualism as a survival strategy, victory is just a matter of time and demographics. Apparently Mitch, Paul, and the boys haven’t gotten the memo that the modern left has moved to identity politics. The Revolution is permanent. The Republicans are a few years behind.

The mainstream right fails time and again with their tired bromides about how they believe in human equality more than the left, failing to learn that they will never out pander the left. It is big news if a Republican presidential candidate can break ten percent of the Black vote. The Republican Party has a religious belief that if we cut taxes and end the left’s plantation mentality of the welfare state, Africans will take us to Mars and beyond. It’s in the movies. It has to be true!

That Blacks had better social outcomes in the bad old days before the War on Poverty and affirmative action seems like an easy attack for the right to make at that point, but the cucks will never touch it. That would open them up to one of the aforementioned ad hominems: the right secretly longs for Jim Crow, maybe even slavery! White Sooopreeemist!

If the peasants ever get tired of this lose/lose situation, the right’s party bosses and “true conservative” commentariat never do. It’s the path to respectability, social acceptance, and, of course, shekels. If we lose our nation and our people are wiped out by hostile elites and their compliant “new Americans,” so what? We’re just individuals who will be dead before any really bad stuff happens. Besides, did you see that based Black guy in a MAGA hat? Liberals BTFO!

One can be forgiven for giving up on the American political system. Trump was traditional America’s “Hail Mary” pass. If he’s done a fraction of what is needed to pull the U.S. out of its nosedive, we haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s too much to ask of one (highly flawed) NYC billionaire. Maybe the kernel of our own destruction is contained in our own founding. “All men are created equal” is a romantic notion, but not one that comports well with the hierarchical reality of the natural world. Whether the founders were hypocritical White supremacist slave owners or whether they were flawed but still great men of the Enlightenment, it probably doesn’t matter. The American Empire and the lies on which it is based will end. It is our job to lay a foundation for a more just world in the aftermath.

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