Not exactly the kind of content that is typically posted in this thread, but I think it's always interesting to see what kind of rhetorical loops people will go through to justify, at least to themselves and each other... well, all those obviously "crazy" reactionary beliefs that typically land here. I'm not supposed to be on these forums anymore, but I stumbled upon that blog by accident while searching for "chemtrails can melt steel beams" jokes, found a few things that tickled my mind, and had no idea where else to post them.
The point is not Trump, but the fact that though the ruling class pushed Western Civilization aside, it did not replace it with any cultural hegemony in the Gramscian-Machiavellian sense. Rather, by pushing P.C. defined as inflicting indignities, the progressives destroyed the legitimacy of any and all authority, foremost their own…
What is to be done with a political system in which no one any longer believes? This is a revolutionary question because America’s ruling class largely destroyed, along with its own credibility, the respect for truth, and the culture of restraint that had made the American people unique stewards of freedom and prosperity. Willful masses alienated from civilization turn all too naturally to revolutions’ natural leaders. Donald Trump only foreshadows the implacable men who, Abraham Lincoln warned, belong to the “family of the lion and the tribe of the eagle.”
In short, the P.C. “changes in law and public norms” (to quote Galston again) that the ruling class imposed on the rest of America, rather than having “gradually brought about changes in private attitudes across partisan and ideological lines” as the ruling class imagined (and as Gramsci would have approved) have set off a revolution—of which we can be sure only that it won’t be pretty.
In short, people should rally behind a strongman to oppose social change and save society from its "progressive elites"... because these elites lost their legitimacy by forcing social change upon the people, which left a power vacuum that could be used by a strongman to take power. Since revolution is supposed to be ugly, any crime or injustice perpetrated by the new regime should be regarded as morally justified by the exceptional circumstances, a necessity to prevent a crumbling society from spiraling into an ugly free-for-all. Or, even shorter still: right-wing authoritarianism is justified because it is unavoidable, and unavoidable because it is justified. Did I get it right?
Still, I have to give that to them. If only my degenerate leftist mind could truly embrace the refinement, nay, the
majesty of this statement, if only I could grasp and accept its full implications, all of them, no matter how circular or myopic or hypocritical or contradictory they are... then all of those beliefs that I've previously described as "crazy" would become as natural as two plus two making five:
The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.
Okay, let's drop the sarcasm. I have a particular fascination with the ambiguous and counter-intuitive. Subverted dichotomies, false equivalences, hidden complexities, paradoxical dualities, opposition to tribal thinking, the inherent subjectivity in the study of thought processes, the blending of personal qualities and social descriptors that are supposed to be antithetical... all those things that seem to fly in the face of the our tendency to pursue comprehension through categorization and compartmentalization. As such, being a "mystic" of sorts, not only do I find this statement incredibly insidious in its anti-intellectualism, it feels almost like a
personal insult. The gaps and overlaps that can be found between seemingly contradictory notions should be a motive for intense reflection, for a deeper exploration of those twilit areas of conventional thought. Not a lame excuse for intellectual abdication and the unquestioning embrace of the arbitrary. A seeming contradiction is likely to contain more information than the two initial "facts" ; it should be the focus of attention, not just "taken along" as an afterthought.
Incidentally, the blog is basically what you would expect from a typical twenty-something tumblrina, for the most part. Reblogging posts relevant to her fandoms, asking for people to ask her questions then answering to them, the occasional comment about her private life, you name it. The one major difference is that the good intentions, the social awareness, the tinge of genuine compassion that can be found even among the most frothing SJW... those things are completely absent here. In their place are lots and lots of old-timey, religious and
fascist right-wing populist ~aesthetics~. So much for letting the selfish, dogmatic and bigoted Baby Boomer generation die off.