Posted on 07/10/2021 8:23:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“What happened to you?”
It’s a question I get a lot on Twitter. “When did you become so far right?” “Why have you become a white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic eugenicist?” Or, of course: “See! I told you who he really was! Just take the hood off, Sully!” It’s trolling, mainly. And it’s a weapon for some in the elite to wield against others in the kind of emotional blackmail spiral that was first pioneered on elite college campuses. But it’s worth answering, a year after I was booted from New York Magazine for my unacceptable politics. Because it seems to me that the dynamic should really be the other way round.
The real question is: what happened to you?
The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so. And, yes, some of the liberal critiques of a Fox News hyped campaign are well taken. Is this a wedge issue for the GOP? Of course it is. Are they using the term “critical race theory” as a cynical, marketing boogeyman? Of course they are. Are some dog whistles involved? A few. Are crude bans on public servants’ speech dangerous? Absolutely. Do many of the alarmists know who Derrick Bell was? Of course not.
But does that mean there isn’t a real issue here? Of course it doesn’t.
SNIP
What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.
(Excerpt) Read more at andrewsullivan.substack.com ...
It is the communist ploy of pitting groups against each other.
For starters, I disagree with characterizing these radical fools as “America’s elite.” Being rich, famous or going to the “right” school does not make one elite in any real sense of the word. The sports world defines elite solely in terms of accomplishment. The rest of the world needs to follow the same standard.
But these groups should be pitted against one another, to some extent.
Folks bring up ‘defund the police’ as the main cause for cops leaving. Yes. For cops leaving that is a huge piece of the puzzle. But so are retirements. Another piece, never talked about from what I can tell, no one wants to be a cop. That trend started long before last summer and the riots.
One of the main reasons, the demographic of people needed to join and maintain the ranks of police and fire departments, is the same demographic that is now and was last summer, running around the US destroying it.
The Left caused that.
The Right and Left have never been more against one another. Even when the Right somehow ‘WINS’ something, it still loses.
Immigration. President Trump did a marvelous job with it. Could have done much more had he had some help from Congress. But, the taxpayer still paid and continues to pay. Causing more of a divide.
Geez, Andrew, what did you expect?
Dear Woke neighbor wondering why I look like I’m so far to the right.
I’ve not changed.
It’s you that has changed.
It’s you that see’s so little of the old extreme Left as being extreme to you any more. You’re proverbially like that marching band in Animal House that was led off to the Left into a dead end alley and now y’all are bunched up at the end still acting like you are where you should be, even as some of you angrily accuse those back on the street of being Right wing extremists.
You didn’t dive all at once into the cesspool of the Left, but were led along in stages ever deeper into the muck, often just going along to get along. But however gradual, the process wasn’t pretty and the end results are far from the improvement you probably think it was.
This Sullivan helped bring this coup and totalitarian mindset in to existence.
The glimpse in to the trendy and faddish world of the liberal is frightening in how the group think works.
These people have too much time on their hands. Too much time for “deep thoughts”. And not enough time in real life.
“Liberalism leaves you alone.”
“Liberalism will let you do your job, and let you keep your politics private.”
What a maroon.
It's tripe: "Does that mean we should support an increasingly nihilist cult on the right among the GOP? Of course not. Does it mean we should ignore its increasingly menacing contempt for electoral integrity and a stable democracy?"
“Why don’t you blindly follow what all the “cool kids” are saying and doing??”
At the end of the day, Andrew Sullivan is a self-described gay Catholic. He is a citizen of the lost world, in a nutshell.
Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
Psalm 53:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity;
there is none who does good.
Nuanced, indeed.
I think the change is part generational and part where the new elites come from as opposed to where they came from in previous generations. The politics of middle America and small business has not changed. The politics of the lower class has not changed. The change is in the elite upper classes of the super rich, celebrities and sports figures. Their views dominate the media and what passes for cultural norms.
The old corporate elites had worked their way up from often low level jobs. Today’s billionaires seem to have been catapulted to their positions without any slow seasoning process. The digital information age as created this.
“The reason “critical race theory” is a decent approximation for this new orthodoxy is that it was precisely this exasperation with liberalism’s seeming inability to end racial inequality in a generation”
Could it be that the reason there is “racial inequality” is because races are not equal?
Could it be that Occam’s razor applies here - that the simplest explanation is the correct one?
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