Why Hello, internet people!
REJOICE!
TODAY IS THE BEST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!
Intro:
It's long been the purview of this blog/podcast to bring light into the darkness and to educate the masses. But I know the quest for TRUTH always brings enemies.
But in these turbulent times, the search for truth is more critical than ever.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
America is in crisis.
If you ask Americans who their philosophical heroes are they are more likely to report Jordan Peterson, Oprah or Joe Rogan as an answer than Socrates or Ben Franklin. That's because Americans have no idea how philosophical theory effects their lives. Americans would rather take advice from a former game show host than explore the works of a brilliant thinkers.
But philosophy is important. It affects your life more than you think. For instance what does a bunch of German philosophers from the 1840's have to do with problems in American today?
Well for about 2 centuries those philosophers has been warning us that the West is over. The empire is done. Frederick Nietzsche (your morose teenager's favorite philosopher aka the guy who said "God is dead!") predicted exactly what would happen to society when the American style of living predominates {the End of History.}
Unhinged:
You might ask where can we find political answers to our problems when the ideas within the extreme left and right seem unhinged: either crazy or broken? The extremes within the Intelligentsia have put forth ideas that are beyond problematic, they are out-right dangerous; meanwhile, those extreme ideas are beginning to gain widespread acceptance outside of their communities. It's why I've been talking about the most bizarre ideas in our culture so much. Those ideas are taking root and I believe you must be warned about this danger, so we can take action!
THE END OF HISTORY
After the fall of Communism a number of elites were lulled into to accepting Fukayama's proclamation that we were living at the End of History. However; most of them interpreted his ideas incorrectly. They forgot his emphasis on the Last Man. We are the last Men at the end of history.
But first. LIKE most interpretation of Fukayama we thought the riddle of history had been solved for us. Liberal democracy and some kind of market capitalism was the solution to the riddle of societal organization.
According to Fukayahma we no longer need to worry about building institutions. Democratic Institutions maintain themselves. We don't need to enact laws to protect democracy. Democracy is self-renewing. In the modern capitalist society we don't need to think of our neighbors as fellow patriotic coutrymen. Libs worry that Patriotism is colonizing, tyrannical, and ethnocentric. All we NEED to do is isolate ourselves at home and buy whatever makes us happy on Amazon. The engine of economic cooperation will be the ties that bind us together.
FAILURES FROM THE LEFT & RIGHT
Critics & pseudo-intellectuals like myself have failed to understand the most important function of culture, which is to to build a workable society. Instead we focused on reforming our shortcomings so much so that our cultural foundations themselves became the subject of great debate.*
In that debate the right's claim to moral superiority was destroyed by (objective) progressive moral reforms; while the right's ability to rule democratically was undone by massive demographic shifts in the country. Demographic shifts that resulted in a reactionary turn to populism within the right.
The debate for ethics on the left was won by those who use post-modernism & critical theory in order to deconstruct the patriarchial & white supremacist power structures of the status quo. But instead of building a new society from the ashes of deconstruction all the left did was replace 'the white male patriarchy' with anti-racist and anti-male slogans. The new slogan of the democratic party should be, "don't worry about addressing wealth inequality" or racism when Amazon has a 'lift all black voices button!'
So what kind of new society do we want to build? I don't know yet, but if you ask my leftist friends they'll probably mumble something to you about inclusiveness. Nice slogan. But what does inclusiveness mean when in practice our society is self-segregating more and more?
On one hand the left offers the destruction of traditional society and the deconstruction of our ideals, but with the colapse of Marxism it no longer offers real solutions; meanwhile, the right's only response to emerging crisis is to show its new ideas are nothing other than it's old ideas, a return to Authoritarianism.
System Failure: it's the end of the world world as we know it!
The collapse of industrial society was predicted in the 1970's by MIT super computers. The only thing the computers got wrong was the time line. MIT predicted 2040. Unfortunately, the collapse time-line is accelerating. With global warming, destruction of the middle class, pandemics, war in Europe, and supply lines shattered.You don't need to read about a woman could make a million dollars in a year selling her farts in a jar to know we are years ahead of the 2040 supercomputer schedule.
How'd we get here? The West is the middle of an economic collapse the likes of which it has never known. It is fully unprepared for the ramifications.
Repressive Power vs normalized Power
While undergoing a legitimation crisis.
Morality falters during the colapse of society.
It is a crisis of knowledge. [epistemology]
Right uses post modern epistemology without knowing it.
The last man
Expect to see the poor and even your middle class lifestyle decline. I'm not just talking about your income or wealth. Though that will happen {especially} for single men and women. America ran on low wage jobs and human exploitation. But the great resignation is taking care of that. Don't expect staffing levels to return quickly. Do not expect the supply issues to correct themselves. And expect business to take advantage of inflation for profit growth.
A crisis of being.
But I'm also talking about the things that make life worth living. Like your ability to make connections to family and friends.
The ties that bind us together are being broken. I lived through the stagflation and malaise of the 1970's, but something feels different from even that period. In the last year alone in the USA we've had 100,000 drug overdose deaths. We've had 20,000 murders. And that rate increased by 30 percent! Along with 45,000 suicides (and the numbers are just climbing for people of color.) The unemployed and homeless population have exploded. In my city alone rent for 1bedrioms average more than $1600.00 and the number of homeless increased by 400% in a year.
Part of the reason for these numbers is that economy is collapsing for working people and the middle class. Rent is too high. All the good blue collar jobs have been shifted overseas. The disparity between the rich and the poor is now higher than ever. There is a growing gap in who trusts their neighbors. We don' trust or like our neighbors anymore.
Our culture has grown increasingly coarse and individualistic. We have been slowly tugging at the threads of society and it's unraveling.
The left's answers to our problems feel like nothing more than shallow sloganeering, rather than system building. While the answers on the right verge on facsism and a cult like admiration of authoritarianism. When combined with a heavy mixture of libertarian/surveillance capitalism that has run amok, well friends, you can forsee the danger that portends for yourselves.
CHALLENGE FROM THE RIGHT: FACSISM WILL COME DRAPED IN THE FLAG.
Unlike many of my fellow critics who now attack the left, but only give lip service to correcting the problems on the right, I will tackle the problems I see on the right before dealing with my concerns with the so called 'woke' left.
THE WHITE POWER STRUCTURE IS ATTEMPTING TO HOLD ON TO POWER AT ANY COST, IT WILL COST US DEMOCRACY
You don't have to be following all the shenanigans the current Republicans are doing to know that they are on pace to destroy democracy. And you don't have to be versed in the awful history of our country to recognize that democracy in the USA never really meant democracy for all.
We ought to be familiar with those fights by now. Women and minorities have been agitating for full citizenship since the republic's founding. They have made great progress, but there are always counter revolutions and reactions with any victories.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE RIGHT?
When we look into the problems on the right they are obvious, easy to enumerate, and straight forward to diagnose. Though the obstacles they present to us may be insurmountable.
These people have no shame...
Turns out we can no longer hold conservative Americans accountable for what they believe. Because instead of standing for something all they've become is the anti- Democratic party. So we can't engage in debate with the right to complain that they have abandoned the so called American way of life.™ Folks on the right no longer believe in democracy. They BELIEVE that democracy has failed THEM. And they believe that authoritarianism is the only way to save "America" from itself.
The right's resurgence in authoritarian and fascist beliefs along with the development of a troubling new religion in Trumpism led to an attack on the basic institutions of our democracy. An attack that... (when)... it prevails will be an existential threat to our way of life. (In a future post I will go into greater detail about how serious the Republican attack on democracy really is.)
The cliff that the right's contempt for democracy is pushing us towards is a Silent Totalitarianism© advanced by the purveyors of surveillance capitalism & anti-democratic forces within the Republican Party.
In addition to trying to destroy democracy there's another problem with the right. The cult of Trumpism. A new RELIGION that isn't so much based on Trump the actual existing man, but based on the conspiratorial thinking that he inspired. Why not the man? First, Trump is an obvious conman. As Sam Harris once said, "Donald Trump is a stupid person's idea of a smart person and a poor person's idea of a rich man." How the right has allowed itself to become infatuated with such an obvious self-angrandizing narcissist is beyond me. Inexplicably the apotheosis of Trump doesn't just come from his supporters.
In some cases religious leaders with real followings have proposed that Trump is the second coming. Some people are convinced that the creator of the universe is either using Trump to jump start the end times or suggesting that Trump might himself be God. That idea is bereft of any common sense. But the intelgensia on the right have pushed that idea and now metaphorically believe the Earth is flat and feel compelled to steer us over the edge.
How to defend democracy
Much of the new Trumpism sounds insane. I can't imagine Bob Dole being a Q-anon follower or regarding Donald Trump as the literal second coming of Jesus Christ. But the Republican tent no longer houses men of stature like Bob Dole. Instead we have men like Trump & his sycophants.
Despite the clownish behavior the right presents an absolute danger of destroying our democracy. In oder to defend democracy against the asymmetrical warfare that the right engages upon we need to do the following:
- Abolish the Electoral College
- Pack the Courts
- Pass Voting Rights Bill
- Charge violent demonstrators from Jan 6th and imprison them.
- Charge Trump with incitement
- Remove congressmen that aided or supported inserection
- End the Fillabuster
- Add District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states
- Felons automatically reinstate their right to vote after prison
WOKE JUST IN TIME. What's wrong with the Left?
Those of us on the left got our wish. For decades the left has pushed for the destruction/deconstruction of power centers. Now we've got front row tickets to the decline of America.
Why is leftist culture involved in the rot of the core of our country? Was it the ideology, stupid? The left has been accused by the right of being overly sensitive. In response to their new found sensibilities the left has erected safe spaces while political correctness has increased so much that the right wing suggests that college is nothing more than indoctrination for students from conservative homes.
Though I think the indoctrination criticism goes too far, the safe spaces and trigger alerts are stifling debate on college campuses. We are raising snowflakes that have abandoned the left's commitment to defending free speech. The left no longer tolerates any speech it disagrees with, and it wants to silence and punish speech that questions it's post-modern foundations.
Many critics of the left contend the left has it's own new religion- one of identity politics or "wokeness." It's cancel culture is the blasphemy of the middle ages and public humiliation & scorn are its new weapons.
In one case that seems quite egregious to me a professor at Portland State, Peter Boghossian, resigned over what he termed was retaliation for his efforts to bring controversial speakers to his campus & his punishment for submitting a number of hoax papers reminiscent of the Sokal Affair.
THE DISINGENUOUS LEFT
The left wants radical and fundamental change to society and since the fall of Marxism has been unable or unwilling to have an honest conversation with the country about what it really wants.
For instance when feminists talk about the wage gap they tend to use the tactic of blame don't explain. The standard talking points about the wage gap between men and women gives the impression that women are underpaid for the same job. Feminism insists on making the wage gap appear to be the 'purposeful' discrimination of men being paid higher wages for similar job duties with similar experience when in fact most feminists know this isn't true and they know exactly why the wage gap exists.
The wage gap exists because women work fewer hours than men. They choose (or are forced to choose if patriarchy still exerts that kind of power) jobs that pay less on the wage market. Women decide to have babies and when they do they often quit their jobs to perform the unpaid labor of childcare. I'm not suggesting that taking time off after birthing is not a bad thing. Indeed families should be able to do this. But this requires an extirely different approach than the USA capitalist economy is built on. As a society we should ask the hard questions about the costs associated with raising families and how it should do it.
But just asking those kind of questions to leftists rather than agreeing with them about patriarchy gets interpreted like literal violence engaged in the culture wars to leftists. Further, they think we can't win those arguments over the right. But I think the left is wrong. We can win those arguments and we can do so without demonizing the other side.
So what's the problem with a little fib like "the wage gap is caused by outright discrimination?" For one, if the 78 percent wage gap isn't actually caused by outright discrimination then the proposed solutions to the problem won't be effective. The paycheck protection act won't fix enough of the wage gap (which is estimated to be caused only around 5 percent.) We also don't get to be heroic fighters against oppression, nor do we need to accept or be accountable for our own collaboration with the status quo. Just being female makes us victims and heroes all at once.
Violence and CAUSATION?
Whats the cause of patriarchy?
THE POST MODERN CHALLENGE FROM THE LEFT
THE PROBLEMS WITH POST MODERN THEORY
One dimensional
Socrates vs sophists
Anti science
Anti free speech
Anti reason
Anti-men
THE 'PROBLEMATICS' OF THE LIFEWORLD: Why your life doesn't make sense anymore.
I've always been fascinated by human behavior. When I was a child I wanted to be a neuro-psychologist, but then I learned that one needed to understand math at a very high level. So I gave up on that dream, just like Freud did, and I turned to reading countless books on psychology and sociology by people who can do math to satisfy my curiosity.
Should we be using theory to interpret our ordinary interactions with society? Instead of saying my mother loves me should I bring up attachment theory? Should I discuss Freud's psychosexual theories or explain my mother's connection to me as a result of evolution convincing my parents to spread her genetic heritage?
I imagine that most ordinary folk hearing these questions probably think that idea absurd if not a little silly. But if we were to take that set of ideas and apply it to power structures like say the Patriarchy or White Supremacy you would get an extremely different reaction from the radical left.
For the left it's impossible to have interactions that aren't viewed through the lens of some power dynamic.
Fart girl
Plato vs the sophists on justice
* Functionalism as a theoretical perspective can not be ignored.
Break the glass. It's time to squash the system.
No religion. Kill the humans
What's Left? The Last Man.
Selected bibliography:
