At a family wedding recently, a cousin-by-marriage, on hearing that we had moved from a State of Virtue (Massachusetts) to a State of Deplorability angrily responded that he hoped we enjoyed living in a “fascist state”. (He is a retired vice president of NPR who used a massive inheritance to settle in an all-white suburb of D.C.)
A younger guy from New Jersey, without expressing any strong personal political beliefs, simply wondered aloud “How did Florida become so Republican?”
Another relative’s experience may provide the answer. He’s a 60-year-old ob-gyn physician who has carefully followed every aspect of Democrat dogma since childhood. The idea of agreeing on any political point with a Republican fills him with horror and he has always chosen to live in Blue states. Yet now he finds himself excommunicated from the Church of Righteousness because he holds the heretical belief that teenagers should not be provided with gender reassignment surgery.
I think that “Dr. Blue”‘s experience might explain what is happening on a broader scale in Florida. The Democrats nationwide have evolved faster than the Floridians who used to vote for Democrats, thus leaving behind Floridians who continue to agree with the Dogma According to Bill Clinton as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Consider that Bill Clinton’s economic policy reads a lot like today’s Republican stated policy, including cutting taxes on small business (though Republicans in practice, of course, are happy to cooperate with Democrats on massive deficit spending). Bill Clinton never proposed that student loan debt for college graduates be transferred onto the backs of working class Americans who never went to college. Bill Clinton never used the phrase “Latinx”. Bill Clinton never tried to force Americans to accept injection with an experimental drug.
At a local restaurant recently…
As we know in Calif*, the only fight today is between liberal & socialist democrats, not republicans. A republican hasn’t won the popular vote since 1988 & never will.
It is ironic that the real fascists were ardent supporters of state radio.
When their positions (or positions of other in-group members) are threatened, the virtuous lash out and apply their “fascist” epithet.
They (plural) know that they (plural) are getting irrelevant and Massachusetts may get irrelevant if they (plural) continue on their (plural) path.
It is preview of things to come. In Venezuella, communist dictator stole elections from socialist technocrat. I Soviet Russia, once Soviets took over, communists started persecuting wrong communists and wrong ment different things at different times, sometimes opposite things.
To paraphrase the well known Native American prophecy:
“When the last factory has been outsourced, the last plumber confined to a reeducation camp and the last farmer canceled, you will realize that that you cannot eat pronouns.”
Oreo has proven that you can, in fact, eat your pronouns.
https://www.newsweek.com/oreo-pronoun-pack-transgender-1447177
Steve: Thanks for this, it is a race to the bottom. Typical rainbow washing, this is the real face of the company:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/outsourcing-oreos-becomes-a-campaign-issue/
“In ten days, Michael Smith will lose his $25-an-hour union job at the Chicago plant that makes one of America’s favorite snacks: the Oreo. He tells CBS News the company did not give the 600 workers who will be laid off an explanation.”
The understanding comes gradually (if at all) for indoctrinated folks. Sometimes it’s precipitated by a series of events that shock them to their core, which gives them cause to pause and reconsider what they think they “know.”. For most people though, getting a grip on their own internalized propaganda takes a while and is somewhat dependent on IQ. “Dr. Blue” was finally confronted with something he couldn’t ethically countenance and that was a kind of turning point for him. Many others miss it and it takes a few sharp shocks for them to understand themselves. At that point they have a choice, and for a lot of them it’s the first good one they’ve made in their lives.
Not surprising the NPR guy thinks you’re a self-selected fascist prisoner. He’s an idiot.
Taking the larger view, you’re basically correct: Bill Clinton would have been a Centrist Republican today. The real cultural movement has been inexorably Left, because that’s what we teach people to think.
I used to get a big laugh out of professors at a law school I worked for when they talked about the “rightward shift” in the culture. These are people who think that showing an ID to vote is an irreparable harm when you have to show them to buy cigarettes.
> The real cultural movement has been inexorably Left,
> because that’s what we teach people to think.
But that is a tautology, no? The dominant culture, by definition, is the one that sets the tone for education and for everything else. The question is, why has it become dominant?
So far as I know, no past civilization ever shared today’s orthodoxies. You will look in vain for historical counterparts to today’s atheism, feminism, transgenderism, DEI and so on. Why did this enormous change happen at all, and only within the last few decades? There is a strange lack of curiosity here, both among the orthodox and the dwindling numbers who question it. It’s the biggest question in history and yet it’s hardly noticed.
@LP: I wouldn’t call it a tautology; instead I’d call it the “nodding in agreement network.” The best way to get rich in America now is to become an acolyte for one strain or another of Marxism. I thought Michael Moore was a flash in the pan when I first saw him. I took a law professor from UNC Chapel Hill to breakfast one morning and listened to her giggle about him and talk about how much she loved his “jokes.” “Oh, He’s Sooooo Funny!”
I never thought he was funny! I thought he was an asshole, and I told her so. She still made it through her vegetarian omellette and the discussion didn’t turn ugly…she was simply too delightful a person to allow that to happen and we changed the subject to something more important to both of us.
I don’t doubt that people have become stupider over the years. I see and hear it all the time from otherwise well-educated, credentialed people. I think of it as a disease of the mind, like some kind of neurological fungus.
Alex,
“The understanding comes gradually (if at all) for indoctrinated folks. ” – It cuts both ways, I was an active Republican until it dawned on me they only wanted us plebes to blow up balloons and be in photo ops, whereas the guys in $2000 suits were asked what they expected from the candidate. (The ultimate joke was on them, the party took their money and did as it damn pleased.) I wasted a lot of time and some effort editing a newsletter, but I was never fool enough to give them money.
That said, this current landscape is just bizarre: a choice between batshit crazy R’s and batshit incompetent D’s.
@Donald: Don’t get me started on the parasitic and destructive influence of paid consultant “suits” on our politics. Today is not the day. Later.
Alex, I think you’re still describing effects, not causes. There’s always been a “nodding in agreement network”, hasn’t there? In the past, it agreed (for example) that there are exactly two genders and distinct roles for men and women. Saying that today would probably get you fired. Conformity isn’t novel. What’s new is the transformation in what people are conforming to. I think this new orthodoxy of “woke” is the biggest issue in the world, so what caused it is a neglected question.
Something else interesting to me is that the woke don’t boast that they’re in possession of wisdom that’s new in all history. For example, past eras were so backward and hate-filled that they didn’t even attempt gender reassignment surgery for teenagers. The woke are perfectly candid about their superior wisdom over today’s ignorant bigots who are non-woke. But they don’t, as far as I know, take the obvious step of proclaiming their superiority over virtually everyone who ever lived before about 1950. Why not?
LP: After Occupy Wall Street the people who really decide things played a little divide-and-conquer to distract the masses from actual class warfare. They use different issues (#MeToo, #BLM, #Trans, #Ukraine, …) to keep the distractions novel at any given time.
So people fight virtual wars, which is facilitated by the fact that everyone is on the Internet the whole day.
It blew up because there are so many beneficiaries: Mediocre academics can get positions in toy subjects like CRT, consultants get rich. The destruction of the family benefits corporations because it makes further divide-and-conquer easier. Promoting BIPOC allows more outsourcing, which is the primary reason for Silicon Valley giants. Promoting undocumented immigrants ensures the presence of underpaid pool workers.
So we have a new sort of fascism (tightly coupled state/industry/rainbow religion), where dissenters are not put in camps (yet) but fired.
I think there have been similar periods in history. The 1920s have been a period of worshipping of all things exotic (seen, e.g., in expressionist paintings), deconstructionism, limitless sexual exploration (look at some pre-code Hollywood movies), cynicism, etc.
The difference is that the 1920s brought us Stravinsky and Beckmann as opposed to the complete degeneracy seen now.
Most importantly of course, in Europe at least socialism spread like wildfire after the October Revolution (I do not think we are in danger of that happening now, since there are no class warfare socialists left).
Two things:
1. As properly noted what used to be a left-of-center position 20 years ago now is solidly “conservative” as in “not progressive enough”.
2. Many of what is called “conservatives” are really Cuckservatives brainlessly supporting the “current thing” that MSM told them to, and hanging the flags with colors set by like-minded consensus – rainbow, blue-yellow or whatever – in front of their places of worship or living. I.e. those “conservatives” whom Steve Bannon calls SIMPs in this video … in all actuality, being a SIMP is a natural state of a Cuckservative.
https://gettr.com/post/p1ibul247d3
“fascist state”
Like “racist”, “fascist” now functionally means “something I don’t like”.
Changing definitions are part of the conversion process.
Sam: Your definition is completely false. “Racist” and “fascist” are adjectives to describe anyone who disagrees with Philip Greenspun. “Look it up,” as the kids say at the dinner table when they want me to find a fact for them (cue Senior Management taking the phone away).