Strange Bedfellows or Hegelian Dialectic?

[nikolai_42]

Okay...I may not be able to live up to the promise of the title, but it captures the essence of my question.

No one will deny that there is deep division in this country - at least in the political realm and in the eyes of the media. Maybe the division is simply between traditional American values (within a reasonably liberal range of thought) and revolutionaries that simply want to stir things up - change for the sake of change or something deeper? On the one hand, there is a push to eradicate distinctions of class, race - and even gender. There is - in that sense - a call for unity.

But is it really bringing unity or is it engendering anarchy? Witness the self-contradictory desire of a generation that holds self-expression and individual "right" as the highest good (a grotesque caricature of the American individualistic soul) but considers discrimination of nearly any form an outrage. Offense has taken the place of disloyalty and dishonesty as the greatest public sin. Justice has become an almost indefinable concept such I suspect you would get a radically different definition depending on who you ask. Justice is now meaningless.

There are legitimate cries for justice of those who are real victims, but they are heard amidst the loud clamor for everyone to be recognized for who he/she/it is. It's the realization of the '60s rejection of authority and enshrinement of "up with people". Or, rather, "up with me (and whoever I say I am)".

So what I'm trying to figure out is if this is natural foment born of spiritual darkness or if there is something that is intentionally being manufactured to paint a picture of something that is not there - or at least not to the degree we are being led to think. I'm not talking some grand conspiracy. Rather, is there a concerted effort to change the spiritual and moral landscape of the nation or is it just (d)evolving naturally because of the spiritual bankruptcy of so many? Maybe that's a distinction without a difference...I don't know.

Consider the recent school shooting in Florida. No sooner have the bodies been cleared and the nation starts to really process what happened, than students call for gun control now. They want an answer to the problem and it has to come sooner rather than later. Fair enough. My first response is that victims make great advocates but lousy legislators. They are too emotionally invested to create laws that consider the issue from all angles. And still-maturing High School students doubly so. But discussion is good (so long as it is open, honest, and not automatically dismissive of certain views). What do they want? They want much stricter gun control. The logical outcome is confiscation (eventually). There are only two things that stop school shootings - either the perpertrator is incapable of getting a gun to begin with or someone (maybe several someones) on campus are also armed and can bring a swift, proportionate response. Given the apparent hostility towards the NRA, I don't think this group is predisposed to consider the latter. They may not advocate confiscation right away, but their quick response indicates they have something in mind. Something radical (or the problem will just continue). There are laws on the books and if they were enforced, maybe these shootings would diminish (in number and severity). But I'm pretty sure they aren't acting so quickly to promote enforcement of existing laws. I haven't heard that call from them (yet). The bottom line will be to leave protection almost entirely to law enforcement. They are trained to handle weapons and have the ability to act quickly, effectively and lawfully (never mind that that the gunman in this case was reported - to the FBI - over a month prior to the mass shooting, and police have made many trips to his house). Since government is going to protect us, we would expect a fairly uniform response from the left side of the aisle, right?

What about Black Lives Matter? No friend of the NRA, I think they would have serious misgivings about giving more power to the police. It's maybe ironic that they should, logically, support a stronger 2nd amendment. Certainly, if the core of their existence is true to their origins, then they are not going to be in favor of giving the police more power - nor even the status quo. But to be fair, this is more of a revolutionary movement than the students in Florida are (at least so it appears). But it remains that they are on the same side of the political coin but pushing in the opposite direction. While not directly antithetical in aim, BLM and the Florida students (to be consistent) should be at cross-purposes. One should be pushing for more police power, the other should be pushing for less (again, if they are consistent).

So is this thesis and anti-thesis, in a sense? I don't know. But it is two radically different approaches and views that are (in the end) serving the same end - the tearing down of old structures. This is not an essay on who's right or why we need more weapons for citizens - this is pointing out that there is something else going on that is either the product of abject confusion or is more purposeful (even if not directed by one person or group) ideological thrust in one direction - away from the Constitutional and moral foundations that established the United States of America.

 

[The Barbarian]

Well written and perceptive in many ways. The triumph of individualism hasn't come yet; there's a constant play of the American notion of the individual as his own master, against the American notion of a standard of behavior.

Which is fine with me. It's healthy. Things swing back and forth. Currently, we're swinging toward authortarianism, but there's a healthy resistance to that; I expect that a more libertarian society will exist in a few years.

The division of America is mostly political. Culturally, we've become more tolerant, more diverse, and less bigoted. The recent flare-up of white supremacists and alt-right authoritarians is a failing reaction against the left/libertarian idea of Constitutionalism.

As one religious conservative admitted a few years ago, they lost the cultural war. Even on the right, you see far more regard for religious, sexual, and cultural tolerance.

Politically, we're more divided, because Gerrymandering made there fewer and fewer districts where moderates could win. It was mostly intended to produce more republican extremists, but it has the effect of also producing more democrat extremists. Most people think that fair redistricting would primarily mean the republican party would decline. In fact, it would mostly mean more moderate republican and democrat officials would be elected.

In a few election cycles, the republican party, freed from its dependence on Gerrymandered districts, would again be competitive.

Much of what ails America, including Trump, would go away if every person's vote counted the same.

Dialectic is a healthy, even necessary thing in a free society. Ending the practice of drawing district lines to favor one party or another will always enable that process.

 

[7djengo7]

Strange Bedfellows or Hegelian Dialectic?​

The phrase "Hegelian Dialectic" came to my mind when I saw this website (conservativefiringline.com) celebrating this woman's message:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1666749494552322048

I'm all for everybody criticizing and opposing the colossal spectacle of irrationality, degeneracy and perversion called "transgenderism" that has relatively recently been promoted very conspicuously, loudly, and obnoxiously before the public eye. The woman in the video says some things which could not fail to resonate powerfully with rationally-thinking people.

Yet, what is she really doing in her video? It looks to me that she's trying to bamboozle people into imagining some sort of vast distance/difference between the scandal of perversion called "transgenderism" and the more historically known-about scandal of perversion called "homosexuality". She's attempting to build bridges between the crowd who push for public affirmation, nay, glorification of the abominations of Sodomite culture in Western civilization, and those of us who not only refuse to give such affirmation, but who also call such abominations what they are. She's trying to entice us to become co-belligerents with the "homosexual rights" cult by playing the "the enemy of your enemy is your friend" card.

I've often wondered about the freakshow stuff we've been having regularly shoved in our faces for a while (like the Dylan Mulvaney scandal, cross-dressing freaks reading to children, etc.), wondering if some or even most of it is staged in accordance with a design of thereby achieving a more ultimate, longer-term outcome. I've seen the images of cross-dressing freaks and thought about how easily they can take off the makeup, long hair, and inappropriate attire at will, after the cameras are off, and until the next occasion they are needed as props.