I Want a New Left

If This Is a Revolution, It’s Because of the Contradictions

This post is an interview with someone I’ve never heard of named Brian Eno, who apparently is a rock star from ages ago. Maybe it’s because he’s British that I’ve never heard of him. Anyway, he claimed that at first he was horrified by Brexit and the Trump election, but then he decided to look at it differently and decided that he and all his friends didn’t like it because they thought they were going to be running the revolution and instead it turned out to be other people. (“There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution.”) He is now ok with that.

But assuming this is a revolution that leftists aren’t a part of – and I’m not going to argue that it is – I think it’s because by now the Sixties worldview has run its course, and the contradictions are so glaring it’s hard to believe that leftists don’t see them. Ponder these:

• Environmentalism: The same people who insist that global warming is happening refuse to stop traveling by jet.

• Racism: A few black thugs get murdered by police, and we are supposed to believe there’s a huge problem. Meanwhile, lots of inner-city blacks get murdered by other blacks, but this is not supposed to be a problem.

• Feminism: Women march in Washington against Donald Trump, but never against the plight of women in the Muslim world. Feminists have actually been so successful in this country that they now dominate our colleges and universities.

• Bigotry: Elites insist that poor whites who voted for Trump are racist and sexist. The classist bigotry of the elites, which would have been unthinkable for leftists back in the 1930s, is never acknowledged. Moreover, although leftists insist we ought not to stereotype people, leftists are doing it constantly with Trump voters.

• Fascism: Leftists complain constantly that with Trump’s election we are seeing the rise of fascism, but so far the bulk of the violence is coming from the left.

• Day-to-Day Political Principles: Liberals and leftists flip-flop on these with astonishing frequency, yet seem unaware that they are doing so. When Trump suggested he might not accept the election results, Democrats were outraged, only to reject the results themselves after the election happened. Dissent was the highest form of patriotism under Bush, only to be considered racist under Obama. It’s now back to being the highest form of patriotism.

• Muslims: As I’ve pointed out endlessly, Muslims are generally opposed to liberal and leftist goals and have murdered plenty of leftists, yet liberals and leftists somehow can’t acknowledge these facts.

• Hating: Leftists hate as much as anyone, and maybe even more than everyone else, yet they keep accusing conservatives of being the haters.

• The Third World: The New Left’s view of the Third World is out of sync with its beliefs. It should think of the Third World as mostly a hellhole of sexism and homophobia, but instead it reveres it, basically because of the views of the Old Left, which the New Left has otherwise abandoned.

• World’s worst political entity: Obviously, the worst political entity in the world today is ISIS. It has enslaved women, thrown gays off of buildings, and slit a lot of people’s throats, as well as being a sponsor of terrorism elsewhere. Yet, the left clings to the idea that the U.S. is the world’s worst political entity and that its power must be reduced. For that matter, ISIS isn’t an isolated entity because for the last fifty years, ultraconservative Muslims have been pushing hard to get other Muslims into their camp; indeed, they want the whole world under their thumb. ISIS is just one manifestation of this push. Yet, somehow leftists haven’t noticed any of this, and are even willing to defend ultraconservative Muslims against their more liberal opponents (since they see the ultraconservatives not as conservatives but as the more authentic Muslims).

• Postmodernism. The same left that insists that global warming is a fact also insists that there are no facts.

• Social justice. There is still slavery in Africa, but the social-justice warriors don’t care. It’s not on their agenda. Closer to home, they don’t care about poor whites, either, nor about qualified Asian students being rejected by elite schools.

• Rebellion: The left acts as though it is out of power and continues to demand that young people challenge the system. This is about as out-of-touch as can be.

• The self-interest of the workers: When leftists these days say that workers are stupid and ignorant for voting against their own self-interest, it is leftists themselves who are the ones who are stupid and ignorant. For example, leftists imagine that unemployed coal miners in West Virginia, unemployed because of Obama’s war on coal, will somehow be better off voting for Hillary than Trump.

Why do liberals and leftists fail to see these contradictions? It seems to be because the media they read just don’t mention them. For example, elderly leftist professors who are in no hurry to retire are not a bit bothered by the fact that they are depriving young people of a chance at an academic career. They act as though there was a professor shortage rather than the exact opposite. How can they get away with this selfishness? It’s because the media they look at never talk about this issue, so they are calm in their minds about how long they can stay on. I suspect, then, that liberals and leftists who whine about global warming but who frequently travel by jet never get bashed for their habits by the media that they look at.

So, are we in a revolution? Or is this just a reversal of a pendulum that will bring us back to the 1950s? Or is it nothing but a little glitch that will temporarily slow the inevitable advance of leftism? Or is it the rise of fascism, as leftists insist? I have no idea.

Multiculturalists and Popular Music

I can’t imagine these songs (from the 1960s) being popular today:

• "Wooden Heart"

• "Volare"

• "Sukiyaki"

• "Guantanamera"

• "Al Di La"

What they all have in common is that they are sung partly or completely in foreign languages. Back in the 1960s, there were also various songs we already knew that were sung in Spanish by Trini Lopez. Then there was this song whose title is in Italian:

• "Cara Mia"

(There is also of course Ray Stevens’ "Ahab the Arab," which has some “Arabic” in it, though since I now know some Arabic, I have to say that it doesn’t in the least sound like real Arabic. Real Arabic emphasizes consonants, while Stevens’ Arabic consists almost entirely of vowels.)

This phenomenon seems to have died out once the 1970s came along. The only foreign-language song I remember from the 1980s was that stupid song about ninety-nine balloons, and even that I originally heard in English and not German. I don’t remember anything from the 1990s, and I’ve since stopped paying too much attention to the latest music, so I can’t say, but my wife says she can’t remember anything in a foreign language.

Why would this phenomenon die out? Is it that English has become so predominant that few songs are sung only in foreign languages these days? But one would think that the multiculturalists would resist that. (And one would think that the French would resist that, too. Back around 1980 I saw a French movie called Peppermint Soda which had French rock music in the background, none of which I had ever heard before.) Is it that one can easily hear foreign-language music on YouTube? But YouTube didn’t come along till fairly recently, so for a couple decades multiculturalists tolerated a music scene in which foreign-language music was absent.

It simply reinforces Mark Steyn’s claim that multiculturalism is less about knowing anything in particular about foreign cultures and is instead about simply feeling well-disposed toward them.

An Essay from an Old-Fashioned Marxist

Here. He bashes the “cultural” Marxists for abandoning labor and blames them for the global collapse of the left. I’ve often wondered if today’s leftists have even thought about what the left was like back in the 1930s, when it was basically all about labor. Do they have any idea of what it was like? Do they have any idea that leftists back then would have ostracized them?

There is also this essay, which was reprinted on Jon Ray’s blog Dissecting Leftism, but whose original source is behind a paywall. It’s from an Iranian woman who is critical of feminism’s stance on Islam:

The Left must change course in the Trump era and do more than march for women’s rights

By Rita Panahi, an Australian conservative journalist of Iranian origin

NO amount of marching, rioting, online activism or indulgence in paranoid fantasies is going to change the fact that Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States.

Taking to the streets with hordes of like-minded malcontents and screeching incoherently about imagined grievances might make Trump’s democracy-denying detractors feel better, but he’ll still be the leader of the free world.

It’s clearly going to be a rough four years for the political and media class, and even rougher for the millions of “progressives” from New York to Melbourne struggling to cope with reality.

In the last 48 hours we’ve seen protests around the world, from rioters who smashed windows and heads on inauguration day to the Women’s Marches, the biggest of them in DC yesterday.

It says plenty about the vacuousness of modern feminism that it was the “plight” of privileged, empowered American women that drew them out.

There have been no marches for the women of Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Afghanistan and many other parts of the world where females are victims of a systematic, brutal and unrelenting subjugation.

Only a movement that is intellectually and morally bankrupt would ignore the plight of genuinely oppressed girls and women to throw a gargantuan public tantrum because their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost an election.

Melbourne’s feminists didn’t bother marching to protest against the growing problem of female genital mutilation, despite a report this month that girls as young as five months are subjected to the barbaric procedure.

The Australian paediatric surveillance unit’s study was barely acknowledged by vocal members of the sisterhood.

In the US, a star-studded line-up of virtue-signalling celebrities led hundreds of thousands marching against Mr Trump’s politics of “division and hate”.

Madonna, in a profanity-laced speech to the huge Washington crowd, said she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House”. To call her speech pitiful would be a kindness.

Actor Ashley Judd likened Trump to Hitler before decrying the taxes imposed on feminine hygiene products — taxes that have been there throughout Barack Obama’s term.

The rallies have been called “democracy in action” but if the petulant demonstrators pulled their heads out of their collective backsides for a minute they might realise they’re the ones fanning the flames of division and hate.

Trump not only won the presidency but also secured the Republicans the Senate and the House of Representatives. Republicans now control a record number of state legislatures.

These are unpalatable facts for Leftists, but protests and public hissy fits won’t tip the balance of power in their favour.

If they want to counter Trump they must do better than enlist out-of-touch celebrities and activists to preach to the converted.

They need to stop allowing their movement to be taken over by the likes of Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour, whose main claim to fame is leading a successful campaign to close all New York City public schools on two Muslim holidays.

Sarsour is the type of feminist who defends Saudi Arabia and condemns the US. She has claimed that sharia law is “misunderstood” and has complained about “22 states” having “anti-sharia bills”.

The anti-Trump forces must also weed out their most violent and abusive members.

There were so many abusive tweets about Trump’s young son Barron after the inauguration that CNN anchor Jake Tapper implored people to stop the “odious, immoral and self-defeating” mockery of a child.

Can you imagine the reaction had Barack Obama’s daughters been subjected to such ugly invective?

The Left need to do better if they want to win back disillusioned voters. They need to tackle the big issues that matter to ordinary people — like jobs and law and order — instead of being obsessed with gender-neutral toilets.

There’s more to America than California and New York.

Labelling your political opponents racist, sexist, Islamophobic, transphobic and bigoted might be fun, but it no longer works. The Left has overused and misused those slurs so much they have lost all impact.

Let me add that it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that Linda Sarsour defends Saudi Arabia. What she has done is to point to one or two things that it does for women that we don’t. I don’t think she’s under the illusion that the entire package of things it does and doesn’t do for women is better than our package. She’s just taking a shot at the U.S. Still, could we count on her to prevent Islamification of the West? Almost certainly not.

Racist? Probably Not

Ha, ha, ha. In the first White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer overthrew tradition by refusing to call on the Associated Press representative first. (Who knew there were these ridiculous, traditional, and hierarchical rules regarding who gets to ask the first question which leftist-oriented publications refused to challenge?) Instead, he called on the New York Post, then the Christian Cable Network, then Univision, then Fox Business News, then American Urban Radio Networks (catering to blacks), and only then the usual heavyweights. Heh. See here. Trump’s administration is white supremacist? Really?

Why Is This Woman on a Plane At All?

By now, I assume most will have seen the video (here) of the woman who had come presumably from the women’s march in Washington and was flying home (or maybe to a funeral) who harassed the man seated next to her because he supported Donald Trump. She was subsequently kicked off the plane and had to endure the cheers of the other passengers as she was led out. She brought up global warming, of course. But why do people who believe in global warming travel by jet at all? They should have made a vow not to do it, except in dire circumstances, yet I know plenty of people like her who fly. In fact, they fly more often than most other people I know. Admittedly, they probably fly less often than business travelers, but the people I am thinking of are always jetting off to academic conferences and not thinking of the environmental consequences at all.

This incident, by the way, reminded me of something that was possibly similar. I’m pretty sure it happened before 9/11 because otherwise there would have been a lot more fuss. My wife and I got to the airport to fly somewhere and learned that someone together with their spouse had caused a huge fuss which had forced security to act. I can’t remember if they were kicked off a plane or if they had caused the fuss with the ticket agent (this was well before one could check in at a self-serve kiosk). Anyway, these two had been forced to sit on the floor somewhat out of sight, and I made a point of walking to where I could take a look at them. I was expecting a couple of tough customers, that is, people who looked (for example) like they were associated with organized crime. Instead, I saw a couple who looked very much like these two in the video. I’m not saying they are the same people, but rather that they were the same type of people. These are people you wouldn’t expect to get thrown off a plane because they are generally mild and well-mannered. However, the Sixties changed this type of person such that if they are on the left, they can be ridiculously abusive to innocent strangers.

I am sure that the woman in the video has not changed her mind about her behavior, except maybe to think that the airlines are fascist so that next time she'd better behave. I am also sure that telling her her behavior is counter-productive will have no effect.

Leftists "Punching Down"

In the ensuing discussion after the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, there was some liberal and leftist support for the victims, until Garry Trudeau came along and called what they did “punching down.” (That is, the cartoonists had mocked Muslims, and since we must regard Muslims as oppressed, mocking them was a no-no.) At the time, I pointed out (here) that leftists had never hesitated to “punch down” against Christian fundamentalists, but of course this observation had no effect on anyone.

Now we are seeing a vast amount of “punching down” from the left, since all the “resistance” against Trump is also directed at his supporters who, despite generally being poor, are considered so racist and sexist that they apparently deserve to be “punched.” First, it is hard to imagine any Trump supporter being swayed by any of the “punching down,” while on the other hand, those who supported Trump only reluctantly now seem to be more solidly behind him. Second, the continued insistence that those who voted for Trump are racist, despite evidence to the contrary, shows how unfair the left is. Third, calling them racist is nothing but stereotyping, which leftists had persuaded us was immoral. Apparently not.

I suppose we have to put up with the punching down for another four years. I hope it is so counter-productive that it will have to be done for eight years.

Hating Women

Feminists have long used the phrase “hating women” of people – generally men, but sometimes women also – who don’t accept feminism’s claims. The list of potential “sins” in this area is large. Here are some of them. Anyone who rejects abortion hates women. Anyone who would describe what a female politician, but not a male politician, is wearing hates women. Anyone who thinks that men and women are fundamentally different hates women. Anyone who thinks that women sometimes lie about rape hates women. Anyone who thinks of a high-school female as a girl rather than a woman hates women. Anyone who uses terms like “chick” or “gal” to refer to a woman hates women. Anyone who practices old-fashioned manners (like opening doors for women) hates women. Anyone who is Republican hates women. Any woman who just wants to be a housewife hates women, and so does any man who encourages her. Any American who didn’t support Hillary hates women. The list is endless. But somehow, men who think it’s permissible to rape women who are dressed “inappropriately” (meaning they are wearing just about anything women here in the West usually wear) somehow escape the charge of hating women.

And this makes feminism nothing but a joke.

Global Warming

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been in Houston the last few days. When I made plans for this trip, I thought it would be a welcome respite from winter, but instead the weather in central Ohio has been in the fifties and sixties the last few days and not the teens and twenties that I expected. Does this make me convinced that global warming is happening? Hardly. First, it’s just a little blip in what I’m sure will be the usual cold weather, and second, if global warming were really here, then Houston would have been hot. Instead, it was rather cool, in fact, not much warmer than central Ohio.

Televisions in Airports

I spent all yesterday traveling from Houston – I was there for a relative’s wedding – and while I don’t ordinarily mind sitting in airports, I do mind when they have televisions blaring. And that is what both Houston’s Hobby airport and Atlanta’s airport had. Even worse was that they didn’t have cartoons or sports or the weather on, but instead had on news stations that featured a certain political event. This went on for hours. As far as I could tell, no one was watching, though we were all forced to listen. At some point, I found some relative peace and quiet in a seat far from the television that had two couples near me with very young children. Yup, the potential for crying babies seemed better to me than having to listen to a television.

I thought that in this era of cell phones, people didn’t really need a television near them at all times since they could watch pretty much whatever they wanted on a phone anyway. So, why are these contraptions still in airports? Do they think no one likes to read? Do they think that anyone who isn’t reading wants to watch nothing but the news? Do they think any children who happen to be flying want to watch that stuff? I almost never watch the news. (As a result, I have no idea why liberals and leftists hate Fox News.) I prefer reading newspapers since, if I’m not interested in an item, I simply skip it. My parents watched the late evening news every night from the time I was a small child in the 1950s right up to their deaths. (Oddly enough, they never watched any morning news shows, nor the early evening national news shows.) They also subscribed to newspapers, for which I am thankful, but I just never figured out why they were so obsessed with watching the news.

By the way, the Columbus airport, which I finally reached about 8:30 at night, doesn’t have any televisions at any of the gates, and I’m pretty sure there are other airports that don’t have them either.

Intersectionality Stems from Parochiality

I’ve been struggling for years trying to figure out why anyone on the left would want to support people who are, objectively speaking, their mortal enemies. This column gives a bit of a clue. It is on the “intellectual” Judith Butler, whom you may have heard of because she “won” a contest a few years back for producing the worst prose for that year. Anyway, the column gives a statement of “intersectionality” which gave me a glimmer as to why anyone would accept it. Here is my idea about why intersectionality emerged: if you are running up against the same enemies in your struggles against sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc., and then you see their attitudes to Arabs, it makes sense to believe that there is just one big enemy out there and that it is white males of the First World (especially America). This is how Israel (considered by leftists as an extension of the West) gets demonized by gays, even though it is the most gay-friendly country in that part of the world. This is how the lawyer Lynne Stewart came to believe that Muslim men were somehow her allies in fighting sexism.

Needless to say, this is a very shallow and, I have to say it, parochial view of the world. Anyone who goes out into the world can see that Muslim men are quite sexist, as is shown by the existence of Saudi Arabia. Anyone can see that traditional societies, of which there are plenty in the Third World, are not very kind to homosexuality. Anyone who takes a little bit of effort can see that black males in this country are not that interested in supporting feminism. And anyone who has looked at the Iranian revolution should be able to see that Muslims are not exactly leftists’ best friends.

In other words, if you are fighting against sexism, you are fighting against males of every color and creed and nation; white American males aren’t your only enemy. In fact, your biggest enemies are in the Muslim world. If you are fighting against homophobia, it is also true that your biggest enemies are elsewhere. Anyone who actually has talked to or at least read the books of liberal Muslims and liberals and leftists from the Muslim world could have figured this out.

Intersectionality, then, is way out of touch.

Another column talks about Michel Foucault’s perverse support for the Iranian revolution. See here. Apparently, he believed that leftists in Iran weren’t as authentically Iranian as Muslims. (It’s hard to know how many liberals and leftists who have become Islamophiles hold this belief and how many came to hold it because of Foucault.) It is true that since leftism is generally a Western movement, then Iranian Muslims are more “authentic” than Iranian leftists are. But this brings problems very quickly. Does this mean that Muslims are more authentically part of the Third World than Hindus, Buddhists, or Daoists are? There are leftists who certainly talk this way, though as far as I can tell, they have no justification for believing it. And if the idea is to pick out victims of imperialism, then Muslims would hardly be one’s first choice, since they have been imperialists, while Hindus (say) have not been.

Why worry about authenticity anyway? Apparently, if you are concerned about treating the “Other” properly, then someone who is authentically part of the Third World is more likely to represent an “Other” than someone whose ideas have been tainted by the West. Yet, that likely means that they are horribly sexist and homophobic. So, either (1) you treat this “Other” as your best friend whom you must protect from those evil Republicans, but from whom you can never count on any support for some of your other causes, or (2) you spurn this “Other” at the risk of being somewhat “racist.” Given that some of these “Others” have killed quite a few leftists, the answer has to be the second choice