Hopeless hapless combat
Robert Reich points out that the Republican party veered into incoherence when it tried to combine libertarianism with cultural conservatism.
That kind of incoherence is inevitable though, when you have on the one hand two political parties and on the other hand more than two political philosophies or orientations or whatever you want to call them. It applies just as much to the Dems – they’re way too conservative on most issues for my liking, but they’re all there is.
The party line became confused, its message garbled, its purpose unclear. It thereby created an opening for a third and far angrier phase, centering on resentment and authoritarianism.
Or centering on whatever exactly it was that they saw in Trump. Greed? Conceit? Cruelty? Rage? Pussy-grabbing?
Enter Donald Trump, the con artist with a monstrous talent for exploiting resentment in service of his ego.
Trump turned the Republican party into a white working-class cauldron of bitterness, xenophobia, racism, anti-intellectualism and anti-science paranoia, while turning himself into the leader of a near religious cult bent on destroying anything in his way – including American democracy.
I think that’s pretty accurate. Trump doesn’t really have any politics, he just has that urge to be the worst loudest guy in the room.
What we are seeing played out today in the contest for the speakership of the House involves all of these phases – what remains of the small-government establishment, the cultural warriors and the hate-filled authoritarians – engaged in hopeless, hapless combat with each other.
Cheery stuff.
I’m feeling politically homeless myself. The two major left of centre parties in Canada, the Liberals and the New Democatic Party (NDP) are both captured by trans ideology, apparently in the false belief that this is the correct, “progressive” stance. The Liberals are too business cozy and happy-clappy let’s keep doing what we’ve always done but paint it green, to do much seriously about the environment (but still better than what the conservatives would do), and the NDP (the party that Morgane Oger is/was connected with on the provincial level in British Columbia) isn’t about to come to power nationally, and I would never vote Conservative unless all the other options open to me were farther right still. Unfortunately it’s the lunatic right wing parties, correct for the wrong reason, that oppose genderism. Whaddyahgunnado?
not Bruce, I think that sort of homelessness is ubiquitous among leftists who think poverty, war, and the environment are more important than personal pronouns.
By the way, if anyone asks, my personal pronouns are I/Me/Mine (with a nod to George Harrison).
I think almost everything is more important than personal pronouns. How did the effing trans cult get attached to the left anyway, compelled speech is more of a far right thing, as is misogyny.
Oh yeah, they think trans is a sexual orientation so they attached themselves to LGB. Look how many people are fooled by that one.
Trans “rights” give a superficial impression of being “progressive,” and for some, that’s enough. I think they fell for the whole “oppressed minority” thing, not looking deeply enough to see it’s mostly white guys driving it and benefitting, who are certainly not “oppressed.” The compelled speech and misogyny are unfortunate consequences we are supposed to ignore. The thing with appeasing the trans ideologues and their allies is that governments don’t have to do very much; most of the burden falls on others. It takes less actual effort to look like you’re “doing something” about trans “rights” than trying to tackle “poverty, war, and the environment.” The political cost is negligible, since rightists are going to hate trans “rights” anyway (which tells some lefties they must be doing something correct), and most lefties aren’t going to vote for right wing parties in punishment. It certainly suggests a foul mix of cynical opportunism, lack of forethought, and contempt for women.
The left has always had a lot of misogyny; it’s just now it’s okay. They have given themselves permission to express hatred toward women, as long as they couch it in trans language.
The women who worked in the Civil Rights movement encountered a lot of misogynistic crap from the leftist men; that’s one reason second wave feminism got its start.
The Right holds and grows its political following by appealing to the collective ego of said following, and its aspirations for ever-increasing dollops of whatever. Probably the most powerful catch-phrase in American history has been ‘Manifest Destiny,’ and probably the single most useful theory for the understanding of it all has been the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932.) Americans praise themselves every time they sing their national anthem: “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / o’er the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave?” As do the Brits with their ‘Land of Hope and Glory.’ (Tarnished somewhat by such things as the slave trade and Empire.)
Trump and his MAGA dovetail neatly into all of that, except for those who aren’t buying it. And though it is increasingly disconnected from the real world, MAGA would appear as safe a bet for the avoidance of nuclear Armageddon as any. After all, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was brought on by a Russian czar-bureaucrat (Khruschev) seeking to bluff and try-on the most liberal US President since Lincoln. Had Kennedy been a Trump, with the mind of a toddler and a playpen full of nuclear rockets, Khruschev would have scrapped the idea straight away. Of that I am sure.
I think that this is a good working model. The left and right both had a lot of misogyny (because they’re part of the world, and the world is built on male domination and exploitation of women). The left had a rhetoric of human rights, and this rhetoric got in the way of justifying misogyny. On the other hand, the right had a rhetoric of might makes right, whoever gets to the goal first is justified in doing so — and this narrative supports misogyny. So the right didn’t need to invent something to justify continued misogyny, whereas the left did.
I wonder if the trans activists have as much support as they want us to think. The other day I made a post at talk.origins that I feared might stir up a storm of indignation from the trans lobby. I wrote
It did attract one critical response, which was only somewhat hostile. Otherwise silence, at least until today. Apparently no one else was horrified at the suggestion that it might not be a good idea to encourage young people to think they can choose their sex at will.
That’s a very elastic metric. If everyone supports you, then you’re not a “marginalized, oppressed minority.” Also, if everyone supported you, you wouldn’t need to advance your agenda through backroom deals and institutional capture, and then hold your ill-gotten ground through bullying and intimidation. I think they have a lot less support than they do when they’re saying “The vast majority of people support Trans Rights,” and a lot more support when they claim to be completely powerless victims of continuous, transphobic violence, and barely hanging on to even the most basic human rights that everyone else enjoys. They want it both ways, always.
This elastic standard also applies to their view of those who oppose or resist their demands. TERFs are a fringe minority of crazy bigots that is best ignored, and at the same time, just moments away from launching Trans Genocide. TERFs are cowardly nobodies, but the mere presence of just one on a website, or in a room/campus/city/nation/continent renders the space so violated unsafe, and puts all trans people at risk of harm. TERFs, whether speaking, writing, or silent, will drive any trans person hearing, reading, or just nearby, to suicidal ideation. And trans people and their allies are famously so completely powerless that they have no recourse but to ban, threaten, and violently prevent TERF talking points from being heard or read by anyone, anywhere. That is if the government, or the police, or the courts, or political party, or media outlet, or town council, or student council, or sporting body, or library, or ticket vendor, or venue management, or website haven’t already done it for them.