It's a Marxist society.
Posted on 08/13/2021 6:26:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Contrarianism has run amok in the United States. It is a byproduct of moving into postmodernism. Instead of focusing on what is true, we now all focus on our personal truths with no regard to actual truth. If we believe it is true, then by God in heaven it is true!
Combine that with our increasing divisions as a society, and many people's truth is now based on being exactly opposite their opposing tribe. Everyone prides themselves on their individual thought when really their thoughts are not individual but based on tribal consent. No one sees it that way, but it is that way. People gauge what they think is true based on what everyone else in their tribe says is true and decide they too have, independently and uniquely, arrived at the exact same conclusion.
Each person, a master of his own destiny, does not even realize he is in a herd. One could reasonably conclude that if buffaloes or lemmings could speak, each one would claim it chose to go in that direction all by itself -- the direction in which literally every member of the herd is going. There is, after all, safety in numbers and if everyone else in the herd is headed in a direction, you will probably head that way too.
The United States is now fairly evenly divided, and no one trusts institutions. The media has destroyed its own credibility. The bureaucracy can be bullied by special interests. People are too cynical to trust politicians. So, they trust their friends and the communities that they have increasingly built, online or through political interaction, to look and think just like themselves. The result is now a handful of groups that claim independent thought, expert input and political power at different levels, but remarkably stake out positions exactly opposite the other groups.
The actual independent thinker tends to be increasingly isolated and, as everyone wants to belong to a community, often must make compromises to fit in. But most people do not want to ride in turbulent seas, so they go along to get along within their tribe. That is an important distinction because there are those, on both sides of the political aisle, who rock the boat. If your tribe is committed to rocking the boat, calm seas are your turbulence.
Unfortunately for the country, this has left us largely without good ideas and sound public policy. Each tribe wishes to be contrary to the other tribe. Not too long ago, if one of America's political tribes staked out position X, the other tribe most assuredly would stake out X plus 1 or Y. In other words, they would call for something more fully than the other side or different from the other side, claiming their different way was a better way.
Now, each side has chosen to be an opposite. Instead of pushing Y to challenge X, the opposing tribe pushes minus X, the exact opposite. One side has embraced vaccines, so the other side refuses to get them. When former President Donald Trump was in office, Democrats cast doubt and aspersions on the vaccine and Operation Warp Speed. As soon as President Joe Biden was elected, Trump supporters became the loudest skeptics of the vaccine.
As Republicans showed sound science that children are not the spreaders of the coronavirus and should be able to go to school without masks, Democrats rushed to do the exact opposite and insist on masks for children, even outdoors. What one side advocates, the other side must repudiate. There can be no nuance and damn the person who charts a middle or alternate path.
This will not last. X plus minus X equals X minus X, which equals zero. Both sides cancel each other out. It is basic math. The side that ultimately wins is going to be the side that charts a different path, not a contrary path. We need some alternatives now. Both sides seem to be out of any ideas except: Whatever one side is for, the other is against. That provides no path forward for any of us.
Erick Erickson. A charter member of NeverTrump.
Erick Erickson says we need to all get back in line and march the straight and narrow with the Uniparty like good little conformists, with nice guys like himself leading the way, of course.
I know which “herd” I am in, and I know who my shepherd is, and He is truth.
The rest of them will find out their “herd” on that day.
Oh look, little Erick's pantsie-wansies are on fire!
It's a Marxist society.
Of course, it's liberty and Freedom of choice. but the mandates, not unless the provide a mountain of irrefutable evidence AND prove the source was Wuhan and hold China accountable.
Erickson makes another dull observation. The left’s vehement hatred of us is obvious and their threats to wipe us out grow daily. What’s the middle path to that reality?
Erickson is a member of the “can’t we just get along party”. Good luck with that.
Not buying it,
First off neither buffalo nor lemmings run off of cliffs unless someone is urging them on. In this case the Left for which nothing remains of the old extreme Left that’s extreme to them anymore (and it’s a lot of them), having a fully advanced form of Cultural Marxism is now simply mad.
Do I have to justify that statement?
This is worse than what I’ve called being Keystone Keynesians — bad times demand spending while good times are an opportunity to spend more — which really started to show itself cancerous after Democrats, fearful that Reagan would even attempt to cut spending, changed budgeting rules to a form of base line budgeting that assumed across the board increases, recast cuts in the rate of growth as “spending cuts” etc.
Instead of merely being spendthrift loons like too many Republicans, Democrats are all that (in spades) and much more.
So why would someone presume there is value in getting along with Democrats? This isn’t about tribalism so much as it’s about those that want an America vs those that want a Revolution. It’s beyond tribalism just as the Left, now embracing transgenderism, is literally beyond gay, in that only gay is now passé.
Pity the actual RNC Republicans are too often useless backstabbing weasels who want to get along with Democrats rather than actually oppose them at every turn.
Saving America might make them unpopular with people who would never vote for them anyway, with people already eager to believe any accusation against them is serious even as they refuse to acknowledge evidence that can be given when it’s one of their own.
“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
No, there is only one version of the truth.
One question is how we got here. Another is what do we do now. He’s better on the first question, but doesn’t offer a serious answer to the second.
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