Deep Diving: Identity Politics
I'm just throwing this out there, hoping for some feedback on the matter of identity politics. I just ordered and await delivery of a book just recently published entitled Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. Here's more-or-less a synopsis of the book:
[video:https://youtu.be/dE8p-mcFdNg]
My main problem with his analysis is that he doesn’t name what ever it is he’s criticizing. I’d call it neoliberal global monopoly capitalism. While he seems pretty adept at tracing the origins of critical theory, he doesn’t seem to have much of a grip (maybe he does, but he doesn’t let on if he does) about the historiography and diversity of Marxist thought. To be sure, not all Marxists are advocates of identity politics/identitarianism. See, for example this usually excellent sub-reddit called StupIDPol: Marxist critique of essentialism
(Just click on it to take you there, I hope).
And it annoys the hell out of me in that he seems to categorize neoliberals (whether they own up to it or not) like Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility) and Ibram X. Kendi (author of How to Be an Antiracist) with the originators of Frankfurt School Marxist critical theory (Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno) way back to the immediate Post-WWII era.
There also seems to be some connection between Lindsay's immediate cohort group (his co-author and a few other folks) and Peter Thiel. I can’t say that their “project” is funded by Thiel but the connection is pretty clear between the authors plus Peter Bogoshian via Bret Weinstein – Eric Weinstein – Thiel. If these names are unfamiliar, I suggest you look them up.
Anyway, hope everyone survived the November silliness and the continuing plague of Covid 19. Any feedback on the current wave of blowback to identity politics will be appreciated.
Comments
Idpol seems like just another divide and conquer strategy
Expounded by all of the usual bad actors.
Push-back by the fringe punditry becomes
another diversion, IMO. Tough to sort out after a
certain fashion. If we reject the premise (Idpol means anything)
and focus on impoverization by the wealth class, much is distilled out.
good luck
question everything
Also, what do youse make of "the post left"?
Just curious if you've even heard the term???
Even though they don't in all cases pigeon hole themselves in such a category, I'd include the likes of:
Aimee Terese
The "What's Left" podcast
The Bellows
Anna Khachiyan
There are more but that's a good start to try to come to some kind of grip about this phenonemon which has grown among folks who were mostly Berners but now seem to be completely or nearly completely cynical about politics.
IDPol has the same problem as any label.
It's a lazy attempt to pack a lot of ideas into a tidy little package consisting of a few to several letters. It's not only an impossible task but is without defense against those who will fluff the label and those who will tear it down. I have no use for labels except maybe starting a conversation about the ideas underlying a label.
My political thinking can't be pigeonholed. I'm all over the place. I suppose being completely apolitical for the first 40 years of my life had something to do with it. Since then every label - left, right, Dem, Rep. liberal, conservative, socialist, marxist, etc. - fails to appeal to me in total. Some of the ideas associated with each of them have been or are appealing and seem workable although many of the more appealing don't seem to have any way to work. In most of those cases, as mentioned somewhere on C99 recently, human nature is the barrier. Specifically, self interest is a powerful basic characteristic wired into us. Self seeking can be controlled and suppressed individually but will always be a default position. Pogo was right. "We have met the enemy and it is us."
I find discussions like this essay and many others very interesting but in the end I don't find much practical utility in them. Oh, I do see some terrific ideas to consider and am offered good reading. That's why I keep coming back. It's that in the end without some power to do anything with the content other than hold bits up to wonder at (My pretty!), it's not a particularly useful beyond educating and changing me.
Please, Wally, don't take what I wrote as criticism of your work. It isn't. You wrote a good essay with things to chew on. Actually, I probably showed that I'm another data point in support of your observation about the growing number of political cynics. I've always been this way. Politics solves nothing. Only people working with other people ever have a chance to solve problems or build good lives.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Building a "good" life
I think it's possible to aspire to live a "good" life and we probably more or less agree on what constitutes a "good" life.
Having become fatalistic re. any long term possibility for any of us developing the kind of critical mass with the hegemonic power needed to effect the kind of change that might ensure the prospect of good lives for my progeny beyond a couple decades, I sadly but stoically don't think working with other people at this point helps either, aside from keeping us from going utterly bonkers. Acting in self interest is not that bothersome a concept or way of life to me. Acting in self interest is not necessarily equatable with selfishness, though, in the sense of not caring about humanity. I'm more bothered these days by "woke" folks who act like they have no self interest and are consumed by virtue signaling how good they are.
Then again, some folks will no doubt argue that politics is all about "people working with other people (towards) ever hav(ing) a chance to solve problems or build good lives.
All I'm aiming at now is some self reflection and clarification of thought. Yea, we often wind up going round in circles:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_e-RQZVwxg]
I can't argue with a single thing you just wrote Wally.
Self interest is a survival imperative so, no, in and of itself there is nothing wrong with it. When it has grown like on steroids as it has the past several decades where practically everyone is only interested in "me", it is a problem. Humans haven't survived and developed without forming cooperative societies. Without other people we're dinner. Yet, here we are with too many (most?) Americans who don't give too shits about anybody but their select group. They're willing to kick, claw, and toss overboard anyone who isn't like them to get whatever they want. What they're entitled to. Our appetite for more, NOW!, is voracious. The result is that our idea of the good life is badly distorted.
I didn't realize just how screwed up we were until we chose to life in a far simpler place. Most everything that is available to people in the first world is available to us. We live very well with no needs unmet. Neighbors can't all say that. The difference is that they have or can get what they need and have much more than I had before leaving the US. They have family, friends, and neighbors who will help when they are in need. It's called community. It's more class conscious but not in the toxic way I saw up north. Like in the US, the people who have a smaller sense of community tend to be more affluent. (Then there are expats like the two 'Muricans I was close to while getting lunch for my son who are already pissing and moaning about Biden and fucking libs. sigh. We're a plague.) I guess like you I'm saying that the individual concept good life might be part of the problem.
One thing I also know from many discussions is that none of them expect government of the elites and politics will solve their day to day difficulties in life. They're too busy working hard and having fun. I also know that if the state were to break down they would be the survivors. It's a bitch having to eat money.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Some of us burned out Berners
have developed a shield to avoid more disillusionment
it may be cynicism or reality awakening
regarding the sham of the democratic process
as practiced by the US duopoly
question everything
Meanwhile, in the halls of power....
https://www.theonion.com/biden-announces-secretary-of-health-and-human-s...
EDIT: Oh, hey, this is even on that subReddit!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
And we can now expect at least four more excruciating years
. . . of Kendi and DiAngelo and other diversity "experts" reaping the benefits of Biden's victory:
-- from a House Democrats press release back in June here.
Indeed, now with Biden, we have reached the promised land! Everything will be fine!
That's what REALLY scares me
Somebody needs to call them out for the complete and utter worthless frauds they are, NOW, before they do more to erase the last 300 years of progress than the GOP ever could.
The cudgel of "authority" is LITERALLY all they have - supremely ironic given that their entire ideology is based in the rejection of that very academic authority. They've got, and are, NOTHING, and it's long past time they were treated as such.
How long did Joe McCarthy's reign of terror last?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
from your caucus clown: There is a tiny itsy bit of difference
between a male and a female, but that's so unimportant that any ID-iation of it is pure bullock.(I looked up this word and am not sure it is a fitting one).
Is your ID a good one? Mine is utter bullshit. PS Deep diving is not my thing. I am scared if my head is under water.
Have a good one.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I'm rather cynical,
simply because I see that no matter what the issue at hand is, capitalist win.
This current pandemic is a perfect example. "Oh, we must save the economy". Well if you don't have people to buy and sell goods and services, what would be the point? Well, from the capitalist point of view, to pick up assets left by the dead on the cheap. In the last 8-9 months, over 100,000 business have gone out of business permanently.
The looming eviction crisis will provide a plethora of cheap assets I'm sure BlackRock will pick up for pennies on the dollar. They made out like bandits, like taking candy from a baby in 07/08 crisis picking up millions of homes, for pennies on the dollar.
This guy Peter Boghossian, I never heard of him before this essay. His "Academic hoax", to me is hilarious and exposes the lack of ethics and critical thinking in Academic research review.
From InsideHigherEd.com
The "hoax", from the same source, different article:
Peter Boghossian considers himself a Atheist. I'm of an agnostic bent, to use a label. I find no "evidence" of god's existence but the lack of evidence is not "proof". There is a cornucopia of evidence for Evolution and the big bang, but what was before the big bang, and what is on the other side of the Cosmic Background Radiation from the big bang? If all matter was condensed down to a pin point in size before the big bang, what was all around it? Cosmic soup?
People with a different skin color than me, are just that, people. What does skin color have to do with anything? On the EM (Elector-Magnetic) spectrum, white is the absence of all color, where black is the inclusion of all colors. Which color, would be more inclusive? Color does not define a person, but their words and deeds do, imho.
What was the 1st thing banned in the bible? The Tree of Knowledge. Is it any wonder that those who grew up inculcated and immersed in religion are rather ignorant about most aspects of life?
[video:https://youtu.be/RPKqh9hWsBI]
I'm rather cynical, because we haven't found any other "intelligence life" in the universe, because, well, intelligent life tends to kill it's self off, as we are a perfect example of that playing out right now. While I have no evidence to support that theory, it just seems logical from our own example and extrapolating that outward.
One example of my "theory" might be from the WSWS
What defines humans as the most intelligent species on this planet? We seem to be the only ones killing, raping, hoarding, waging wars, because, ya know, profits. How is any of that "intelligent"?
[video:https://youtu.be/Lh9k6rtBNuE]
Nice essay Wally.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
Blowback aganst IdPol
Bogosshian, Lindsay, and Bret Weinstein all claim to be "left of center" but I haven't seen much if any critique of capitalism in their work. Lindsay is also on record as voting for Trump. Bogosshian rants a lot against Antiifa, a criticism which is in my mind justified but not without an attendent critique of capitalism which seems to be sorely lacking at least in his tweetery. And Bret Weinstein (known for his involvement in the debacle of Evergreen State College) is the brother of Eric Weinstein who is a right hand guy of the very right wing Peter Thiel (who founded and got super rich selling Ebay). I'm not including any criticism of Lindsay's Cynical Theories co-author Helen Pluckrose's involvement in the anti-IdPol project coz I really haven't found any thing "problematic" about her work, but I haven't looked all that thoroughly.
@Wally Capitalism now days is
Capitalism now days is viewed, imho, as some form of religion, and any critique is a form a heresy, T.I.N.A. and all that.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
@Wally Pluckrose really is
Pluckrose really is fairly liberal. Always has been, it's who she is.
Thanks, good to know.
There's a bunch of panel discussions on the topic with her in them on YouTube.
"Bad faith" - well that's rich
These pseudointellectuals have been acting in the absolute worst of faith every single step of the way; it's their basic MO, the only reason they've gotten away with what they have.
I loathe these 5th-columnnists beyond words; they have singlehandedly revived and vindicated the Right. At least folks like Richard Spencer have the integrity, self-awareness, and (undeniably) courage to be open about what they are.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Spencer came out for Biden
Pretty weird. I forget what his rationale was . . . I don't think it was a matter of Spencer trying to besmirch Biden by dirtying him up with his white supremacist support.
I actually heard about that
I think he basically just said Democrats have their shit together better than Republicans.
The realignment is nearly complete....
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I hear ya...
I just thought it was funny (in an ironic way) his "hoax" was accepted by elite academics for serious peer review.
One would think that a research paper with "dog rape culture" in the title or abstract somewhere would at least provoke a google search or set off bullshit detector alarm bells.
Or, at the very least, take it as satire. And then have some fun publishing a rebuttal by using the very same technique as a retort.
So, at least both could have some fun and laugh at themselves for taking themselves so seriously, and have the intellectual honesty to recognize the flaw in the academic review process the hoax exposed.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
That was the point of the hoax
These are obvious successors to the Sokal Hoax (https://www.amazon.com/The-Sokal-Hoax-Shook-Academy/dp/0803279957), and the point was much the same: The fact that they didn't react as you say pretty much proves that their entire field is a fraud.
Humorlessness alone should be considered a supreme warning sign of pretty much everything bad; we need to start treating humorlessness as a literal psychiatric pathology with its own DSM entry, at least on par with so-called "Dark Triad" behavior. That could be the start to nipping a lot of true evil in the bud.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I'm still wondering though. . . and Arendt?
. . . that aside from the likes of DiAngelo and Kendi being grifters if the likes of Bogosshian et. al. might be, too. I see the latter just as critics of the left without an accompanying critique of the duopoly and the system of global corporate monoply capitalism which it serves. I see the left splintering more and more after there seemed to be at least the start of critical mass with the advent of the Bernie movement but that's come and gone. Peoples' Party? Well, we'll see how all that pans out. Yah, so I'm still extremely pessimistic but for whatever reason don't feel melancholy about it. I do stop by to look at stuff on C99 now and then and notice that Arendt hasn't reared his or her head since way back when. I hope he or she is ok. Anyone know? In any event, hang in there, y'all!
Arendt was banned IIRC
over a year ago.
It's good to see you again, Wally and I hope you won't be a stranger.
Arendt was banned?
Yea, I just looked and it seems the Rubicon was crossed mid-April of 2019. Seems I was in the thick of it although I couldn't find any formal notice of banishment from JtC, just sort of something where it seems that's what happened. I often disagreed with what I considered Arendt's deadendism and argumenative style but I never called for him/her getting tossed. I might call for myself being banned for my own deadendism now, so I'll be moseying on soon enough if not right now. Oh well, hope you are doing well, Snoop. It's been quite a year.
Thanks, Wally
This has been the year from hell in many ways. I sure hope next year is better and I doubt I’m alone on this.
There was no formal announcement. I got an email from him and he said he had been.
Be well.
If you have Arendt's email . . .
. . . let him know that I've messaged him via C99. Seems he's still a member. I guess you're not misgendering him if you've been in correspondence. I don't really care if he comes back to C99 or not, I'd just like to toss some stuff around with him about the origins of critical theory and how it's morphed into what some call "grievance studies."
It is about policy not identity
but identity is all the dims offer....from not Trump to Biden's most ethnically mixed cabinet of corporate warmongers ever assembled. Identity is a distraction, IMHO.
Good to "see" you back around the site again.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Political Pet Rocks
In the mid 1960's, after the civil rights movement stalled with the assassinations of left of center politicians there arose the hyphenated -Americans..... African, Italian,Chinese, Korean, Native, etc. etc.. Each group had demands for their own to address grievances. It pretty much divided and conquered democrats, diluting their unity.
Tom Wolfe had a book "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Chic_%26_Mau-Mauing_the_Flak_Catchers
that pissed off both the radical chic and the mau mauers. The liberals were clueless, thinking they could cocktail party their way into revolutionary bona fides, and the hustlers cynical, who felt they could exploit the libs pathetic feint toward equality.It seems pretty much the same thing, except more rigid and refined today. The biggest harm was the making of the leftovers, the mutts who couldn't fit into the hyphenators groups were mostly tagged white and racist.
Of course with the womens movement that distilled it down to white men as the sole problem for everything wrong that ever existed. I think that was Trumps strength, tapping into the "leftover mutts" resentment at being leftover mutts.
The funny thing
. . . is that a lot of the Mau-mau-ers today are woke white women liberal diversity "experts" like DiAngelo. Wait, isn't she appropriating blackness for her own personal financial benefit and thus doing exactly what she is railing against????
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/jzj2vf/antiracism_icon_robin...
Tom Wolfe, feh.
Can't say I'm into it. A writer who adopts a cool style and writes about hip people only to despise them and adopt the most quotidian conservatism against them. In real life he was a "Southern gentleman," or so they say. Love this detail from the National Review's obit:
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Didn't read much
past his "The Right Stuff", but for the NYC at that time, and the John Lindsay era, he was pretty good at calling out where liberalism was flailing.
Hey Wally, long time no see
I was just thinking about you recently, believe it or not. I remembered you saying that if Bernie lost the nomination you were going to quit politics. I thought it's been a long time since Wally has been around, maybe he really did quit politics. I'm glad to see you are still alive and kicking.
Thanks for bringing this essay, it's a topic I do find interesting. I've been reading Andrew Sullivan again lately, since he got fired from whatever major media he was working for and moved to Substack. So his splash was all about how he got fired for not following the party line about 'wokeness' and identity politics. His new blog was to make a stand for speaking your mind even if you don't follow the herd. He rails on and on about "critical theory" and all that is wrong with it. He's done some excellent articles on this subject recently, and has actually made me understand it in a new and more detailed way than I did before. Then from there I've read other excellent takes on where this trend has taken the democratic party totally off track and why they are losing elections across the country.
So recently Bill Maher on his show decided to talk about this, and apparently he can do so without getting fired or 'cancelled' due to his heretic thinking. A lot of people won't like this clip, for several different reasons... remember he is a democrat and very anti-trump but in this one, once he gets past the early swipes at trump, he totally destroys the dem party's bullshit "woke" approach that has taken them over and is turning voters away, and will lead to more losing if they don't drop this crap. Anyway, you might enjoy it, as this is a non-acedemic dissection of "critical theory" and the impact it is having on regular people who have never heard that term, but they know bullshit when they hear it.
[video:https://youtu.be/SgrZAPUvKyA]
Well, I have quit electoral politics
. . .and depending on how you define politics, maybe the whole enchilada as well. Now that the craziness of the election is over, I just felt the need to muse and get some feedback on the emergent blowback to IdPol which has long and still remains a thorn in my side -- not so much the emergent "movement" against it as IdPol itself. I'm just trying to figure out if the former is being financed by right wingers and why especially because IdPol in my view doesn't help the Democratic Party. It seems to me that right wingers would want to promote IdPol in the Democratic Party so it continues to divide itself up into factions. I see that Asians and Latinos have been thrown out of the POC designation now that BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) seems to be the preferred terminology of the woke.
I did read that recent Sullivan article. He obviously isn't all that critical of capitalism, either.
I thought this article by Nathan Robinson was somewhat more balanced although parts of it rub me the wrong way, too: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/in-defense-of-social-justice
And yea, I had seen that Maher clip which blew my mind, especially coming from him, being such a Democratic Party denizen as he is . . .
I think the Dems did this to themselves, without any help
from right wingers. Watch the Bill Maher clip, he talks about how one TV personality had to grovel/apologize and was under threat of being fired because he said that it does not make sense to allow a 3-year-old to make a life decision on what gender they are. Cue the pitchforks and calls for beheading! Transphobic! etc... Another is an AZ latino congressman who tells dems to stop using the term Latinx, because no one has heard of it and when they do, they don't like it.
This mindset has taken over current acedemia (according to Andrew Sullivan; I wouldn't know personally, as I haven't been near a college campus in decades) but it seems to have gravitated from there in the democratic party's upper echelons. I don't see that right wingers have any hand in this. Not that I've come across anyway.
Thiel scares me
I think he has a hand in all this but can't pinpoint any financial support from him for it aside from the connection of Bret Weinstein's brother to him. Money makes the world go round and I gotta wonder how the anti-IdPol movement has otherwise been picking up steam. Maybe it's just a matter of people being fed up with it but I imagine too that we won't be seeing so many "woke" demonstrations against racial injustice now that Biden has been elected. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see what happens after the inauguration (I don't buy any of the Trump coup stuff -- sounds just like more of the Russiagate silliness to me).
Bill Maher raises an interesting quandary
He's always been a proud standout standard-bearer for anti-PC, yet he's also decided he's a neoliberal - and he associates the "woke" cancer with us Berniecrats/DemExiters.
Well, if antidisestablishmentarian neoliberals like Maher don't like or lay claim to "wokies"...and WE don't...where the hell are they and their support coming from???
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Exactly!
Wokeness is certainly an industry to itself and will really be pigging out once Biden gets in office. I am so glad that I am retired and don't have to go to any more diversity seminars where I kept getting my bosses and woke co-workers pissed at me for raising issues of class.
I've watched the clip twice now, and
he does not even mention "Berniecrats/DemExiters" at all, so I don't know where you are getting that from.
He is very clear that he is talking directly to the democratic party. I'm guessing you didn't watch the clip and are reacting to things you think you know from the past.
Maher has long been hostile to Berners
It's not a stretch to suggest that. But yea, truly amazing that Maher so clearly spoke out and criticized the Dems on the issue of IdPol wokeness.
ah, well I don't often listen to him,
and I don't watch his show or follow him closely, that's for sure. I watched this clip because of the topic. I don't judge this current commentary based on his past, especially since I am largely unaware of it.
I was interested in what he says in this particular clip about wokeness taking over the dem party and how that this costing them dearly with voters. I found that to be interesting regardless of his entire past history.
I admit, I didn't watch the clip
I was speaking from what all he'd said prior; if maybe he's turning a leaf, that's great.
Is the clip *worth* watching? Will it give me reason for hope/relief/a remedy for the last 5 years of brainwashing, NOT just give me more reason to be angry/scared/despondent? I have to protect myself. I am so worn out. Imagine NOT BEING ABLE TO PUT THIS SHIT OUT OF YOUR MIND AT ANY TIME SO LONG AS YOU ARE CONSCIOUS, 24/7, FOR THE BETTER PART OF A DECADE - and before I had that problem with this, I've been having the same problem with other things, going all the way back to 2004.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
No Moonbat. Watching Bill Maher rant won't help you
It's merely interesting (to me anyway) in terms of the discussion of identity politics and 'wokeness' and what that means right now. I am not someone who has time to follow these arguments in great detail all the time. I have heard of 'wokeness' of course, but really never grokked what it meant until recently.
As for your long term situation, I certainly cannot help you, nor will any online political discussion or whatever. If you want to stop obsessing and stressing about it, my only advice is to just stop watching and reading about it. If you cannot do that, then you may need supports or help from a real life person or persons. I wish you the best.
I'm trying to do that
I realize the Internet is far more problem than solution; I just have so little else.
The problem with 'stop reading about it' is that it doesn't help; it's already in there, and it's basically taken on a life of its own, like a computer virus - it doesn't need reinforcement. It endlessly reinforces itself, and my ONLY hope is an external solution. I've spent nearly half my life living my own worst nightmare, and it only ever gets worse.
EDIT: I DID just watch that clip, and I'm glad I did! That DID help me!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
You are right and I should have thought of that
It is useless to say to just stop doing something. How dumb of me. My apologies. What that was supposed to suggest, is that whatever the thing is that is stopped, you must replace it with something new. That is the real crux of it. You have to replace the code you want to eliminate with new instructions. It can't just stop. That is true. The mind has to run something, all the freakin time. Don't I know it.
So my revised advice is: first, just think that thought. "I can reprogram this code." It is possible to do. Then spend some of that brilliant intelligence you wield so easily on looking into how to do this There are multiple ways so it depends on you what is the best way for you. Then spend time thinking through as fully as possible, what do you want to run instead? What would you prefer to spend your mental energy on? Do these things for awhile, and you can change your mind. Accepting the idea that this can happen must be your first step to finding a way out. Otherwise your mind is closed to any solutions that may be out there waiting for you.
Edit to add, re your addition: I am truly delighted that watching the video helped you! That is awesome, though I wonder in what way... but feel free not to say. I'm just a curious type.
Here's what I hate most of all about all this:
PRESUMPTION OF GUILT.
It seems to me that that became the norm starting with #MeToo. We should start by attacking that fundamental shift, and settle for nothing less than the total restoration of the "golden thread" norm.
Presumption of guilt - and the judgment of unique individuals as anything other than unique individuals - are the heart and soul of fascism. If you embrace these, you are, by definition, a fascist/racist/sexist/etc.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
It's like original sin to the woke
Their dogmatic ideological presumptions are essentially religious-based in the worse sense.
Thing is with the woke who still act like the living dead, you're never forgiven and forget salvation. The best you can hope for is for them to devour you so you can be just like them.
I have mixed feelings
It's both a relief and anything-but to hear someone else say it, especially after hearing so many people just dismiss it as "right-wing hysteria".
Dear god, though...they really are the goddamned Borg (or worse! At least the Borg don't manipulate you or lie about their intentions). Why didn't anyone stop them before now?!?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Horkheimer and Adorno do not belong in the "identity politics"
category. Especially not Adorno. Adorno's philosophy can be said to have an anti-identity politics -- he was primarily interested in the extent to which real things and real people escaped our identification of them.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
But they did originate critical theory
. . . which other people have now claimed to adopt in one way or another, no matter how disingenuous their intent and effort. Horkheimer and Adorno were involved in a project to address the matter of why no socialism. Present day critical theorists don't seem to be all that concerned with class and even less with Marxist revolution and socialism. The new woke breed often criticize Marxists who continue to place their faith in the working class for being "class reductionists." I've seen a few hilarious twitter accounts playing off this nonsense with names like "ass deductionist" and "class seductionist," Of course, there were/are Marxists who might be considered "vulgar economic Marxists" but they've been pretty much ridiculed by other Marxists who consider "intersectionalism" in the context of the relationship between base and superstructure.
since socialism and marxism are not mainstream
concepts, they are bandied about with ridicule and skepticism. It can make a grown mind cry.
There are many valuable ideas which, in another culture, could be developed into a working
hypothesis of how things could be, in an enlightened society. Perhaps another argument in
favor of considering the 'possible' outside the restricted norm (without negative feedback).
question everything
No socialism because culture industry.
That is, if you want to start with the famous work that Horkheimer and Adorno wrote together, the Dialectic of Enlightenment. With the culture industry, the cultural glue holding the system together becomes stronger. Marx, in the 19th century, suggested socialism or communism as an "opposite" to the capitalist system; in the 20th century Joseph Stalin, the older contemporary of Horkheimer and Adorno, claimed to be Marx's heir but organized the "development" of Russia by importing industrialization plans from the United States through Armand Hammer. The culmination of this was that during the Cold War one could live in industrialized big cities and be exposed to Communist or capitalist propaganda from mass-media organs depending upon where one lived. "Even the aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system," Horkheimer and Adorno wrote (120). Amusingly enough, one of Stalin's earliest roles as a Bolshevik was by being the editor of the newspaper Pravda. It was this sort of historical development which prompted Horkheimer and Adorno to write Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1944, then to revise it in 1947 and give it its current title.
If they were around today, Horkheimer and Adorno wouldn't support "intersectionalism," for the same reason they didn't support the student movement of the Sixties in West Germany where they both lived during the Sixties. In the reality they described, all opposition is ultimately meant to strengthen the system. Now, if you want, you can historicize them as writers inhabiting a particular historical timespan and two particular places (in exile in the United States in the Thirties and Forties, or in western Germany before or after Hitler), whose theories belong to those times and places. But equating them with intersectionalism is just nonsense.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Marxists other than Horkheimer and Adorno
. . . have since used what they have termed intersectionalism, in what I think is a better sense of the term, considered in the context of the relation between base and superstructure. While I do think the theoretical work (if that's what it can be called) of some of the more woke folk who claim to be Marxist (or not) is nonsense, I wouldn't completely consign the concept to the dustbin of history. Edit/add: Then again, maybe we have reached the end of history as far as I'm concerned. At any rate or circumstance, I really don't see any opportunities opening up for the type of change I'd like to see. On the bright side, perhaps I'm myopic.
Interesting story about Armand Hammer in case you never read about it . . . . that baking soda box with the arm and hammer logo? I'm not sure which came first, that or the logo of the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon of which Hammer's father Julius was also closely associated. He was actually very close to Lenin, too. I'm not sure how long he or Armand stuck it out with Uncle Joe. Armand turned out to be a staunch Republican who supported Richard Nixon but also later Al Gore. See: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-10-27-bk-58288-story.html