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We face more dangers—perhaps greater ones—than the coronavirus. Both the US as a community of people and its economy are under dangerous assault by forces of our own making. This article focuses on the threat to community. A future article will address the threat to the economy.
Here are three examples of what has happened to the United States as a community of people:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/03/06/feminists-under-attack-from-the-new-victim-group/
In the first link above a college professor who emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union as a young woman describes the Sovietization of America. She doesn’t mean that the economy has been communized or socialized. She means the rise of denunciation in place of reasoned discourse.
Education has become the home of wokeness and Identity Politics. These ideologies allow “people to hound and persecute with impunity. People love it because it allows a little person to completely destroy somebody who has done something great. This is very human. Once you have removed any moral or religious obstacles to that behavior, what’s to stop anybody?”
On her campus, “We have this bias response team that prowls the campus looking for signs of non-compliance. We had the same thing in the Soviet Union. Right now they’re on campus, but eventually, they’re going to be in every workplace. If you have everybody in your workplace trained in diversity, then you can treat your workers however you like.”
In the workplace as well as in the educational system, the culture created by diversity and sensitivity training turns co-workers into enemies. “Either they can get you in trouble, or they are out to destroy you with an accusation. It destroys all sorts of communities – friendship, families, church communities. When you set people against each other, they are much easier to control. This is what it was like under totalitarianism.” But in the United States, the conformity is not being imposed by the government. It is the offspring of the leftwing that abandoned the working class, peace, and empathy for others. You can read this story in Diana Johnstone’s brilliant memoir of our time, Circle in the Darkness ( https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Darkness-Memoir-World-Watcher/dp/1949762130/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Diana+Johnstone&qid=1583598456&s=books&sr=1-1#customerReviews ).
The college professor says that in the “Soviet Union when you were a student and assigned to write a paper, you knew that the thing to do was to go straight to the correct books in the library and copy the relevant articles, word for word, with no deviations. That was your paper. When my family left, we arrived in Canada, and I entered the university there. When I was assigned my first paper, I found it impossible to believe that the teacher really did want me to think for myself. It was an incredible feeling! To think about something, and to say what I really thought about it! It was so weird, but so liberating. Now, I’m seeing young people who are just like we were in the Soviet Union. They are afraid to think for themselves. They only want to know what the “right” answer is, and repeat it. It’s depressing.”
She mentors early career academics, but the graduate students are not capable of producing scholarship. Instead they turn in “collections of woke slogans.” She says the students don’t even understand what she wants from them. “It seems like all they get in the schools is dogma. They have no real knowledge of anything – they just repeat slogans, and when you ask them to explain it, they turn blank.”
The American educational system has become a place where people are afraid to express opinions and debate issues. The slightest wrong thought or word can bring denunciation. They fear being marginalized, cancelled as a person, turned into a pariah. “If somebody departs from the dogma, even by an inch, that person is an evil, hate-filled bigot.”
She says it wasn’t this way 10 years ago, but quickly spread in academia and now the workplace like a virus among the population.
The second link above shows the consequence of decades of teaching American blacks to hate American whites. This highly destructive teaching of hatred is now being further institutionalized in the American educational system by the New York Times’ 1619 Project. After the experience in Russia and China of communists teaching people hatred of capitalists and the bourgeoisie and the hatred of Jews generated in pre-WWII Germany, why does the New York Times and the American Left want to repeat the experience here?
The third link shows that not even well-organized feminists, an influential victim group, are immune from woke attacks from the Identity Politics that enabled the feminists to rise as a denunciatory force. Live by the sword and die by the sword. This seems to be the future of America.
The liberal attack on religion did not liberate people or their consciousness. The attack liberated evil from moral control. In a multicultural society, the danger is apparent.
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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/03/06/feminists-under-attack-from-the-new-victim-group/
Ruskin College was named after John Ruskin. https://www.ruskin.ac.uk/about-us/our-history/
Ruskin was the mentor of Cecil Rhodes. Why are there Swastika and a Menorah symbols chiselled onto Ruskin’s headstone?
Abolish the [unconstitutional]Dept. of Education. Get the US Federal Government entirely out of ALL “Education” [i.e. brainwashing], from pre-school through to University level.
Fantasizing about new laws/curriculums to be enforced/voted on by politicians [ie lying scumbags] , is a complete waste of time, a mugs game for terminally naive idjuts.
Regards, onebornfree
What I think is amazing, is that there are so many examples of woke insanity, that there can be whole blogs, video channels, etc. whose purpose is to document them, daily.
The sheer ubiquity of wokeness is indicative to me that what we are experiencing is an agenda coming down from the highest levels of the corporate deep state.
Consider the transmania. I believe, in the case of “gay rights”, “minority rights”, “women’s rights”, etc. a case could be made that these were mainly, or at least partially, ground up phenomena, but perhaps with some elite prodding and nudging. After all, there are large constituencies in the west that benefit from each of these “movements,” and in prior years/decades they presented what appeared, at least on the surface, to be reasonable demands.
To me, however, the transmania is qualitatively different. This group is such a small minority of the population, something like 0.3%, that most people have never met one. As such a small minority, it is inconceivable to me that they would be capable, on their own, of gaining their current level of attention from the media, government and schools, in such a short period of time. The fact that every blue team debate mentions these people is insane, as they are clearly not a voting bloc capable of moving any elections. So what’s the point?
Moreover, if it were just the media and politicians talking about these invisible people, that would be one thing. But as the link here and many other examples indicate, “protecting” these confused individuals has now become yet another means by which to ruin the life of any individual who does not completely submit to the demands that we reject basic human biology, common sense, and the structure of the English, Spanish or any other western language. It has become so ingrained in the institutions that this insanity even extends to the medical world, where a doctor who counsels a “confused” young person to not mutilate their body risks ending their career.
There is nothing natural or grassroots about any of this. Now, if the transmania was confined to the US, or the UK, or Sweden, you might be able to chalk it up to a case of run-of-the-mill hysteria. But the transmania has gripped the entire western world. No westerner is safe anywhere. And it is in violation of numerous other elements of wokeness. How has it come to be that trans rights, trump (hint hint) women’s rights in sports, and yet the feminists who have so much power everywhere are powerless everywhere? How has it come to be that people from Latin America are expected by the woke to trash their language in favor of “Latinx,” and the woke don’t fear accusations of racism?
What is going on?
The transmania has to be the most blatant case of 2+2=5 that I have ever seen in my life, and the purpose is the same. It is part of the transnational oligarchy’s agenda to completely shut down freedom of expression everywhere, to get people to self-censor on everything, to understand that having any natural thought of their own is dangerous, and to simply accept whatever they are told, without questioning it. The transmania is the spear of the most totalitarian agenda that the world has ever seen and it is being pushed under the mask of “liberalism.”
Two of the most damaging slurs is accusing a person of being a racists or pedophille. If proven both accusations will ruin a career and never allow the person to get a job. Someone who is a racist as well as a pedophille is double bad. Racists can be cured by having a positive relationships with blacks. But the pedophille can never be cured. Some have agreed to have one testacle removed so they can return to conventional sexual activity. Psychopathic Pedophilles with two testicles continue their vile practices until arrested.
The Democratic Party has degenerated into something grotesque. The degree of dishonesty in Russiagate is astounding. Most if not all the Republicans are now on board, but the Democratic Party began this orgy of dangerous and destructive lies. Combine that with the mania for identity politics and the push to not only accept various types of sexual deviance, but to glorify them. It’s not enough any more to be ‘tolerant’. Trump may be stupid, but at least he is a recognizably normal human male. I think that is most of his appeal.
“Combine that with the mania for identity politics and the push to not only accept various types of sexual deviance, but to glorify them. It’s not enough any more to be ‘tolerant’. ”
Im willing to go as far as “tolerance”, but ill be damned if i’ll “glorify”. Tolerance because there are LOTS more bigger fish to fry (& anyway, im simply not interested). But “glorify” ? WHY ? I simply can not imagine why such a minority should be glorified & raised to some idealised level ? Its beyond ridiculous. And as many rightly point out, dangerous for its vicious censorship aims.
concise, But incomplete by a factor of ten.
my colleges and I at my institute concur…
maybe u were pressed for time?
seems much,much worse to me.
Peace,Love Life
Thanks for being here.
So “hatred of jews” is a tyranny driven meme? Will PCR do anything and everything to cover for them?
Most people from the former Soviet Union as well as Eastern Europe have already been inoculated against that deadly disease known as cultural Marxism.
Tens of millions may have to die due to COVID-19, with the globohomo NWO suffering decades of depression, but, at the end of the day, such a pandemic might, with the help of our Creator, bring about the return of Logos and put an end to this shit. There is a silver lining to everything.
The problem with wokeness is that folks fail to appreciate how woke reasoning works and what it privileges. In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Aristotle teaches that there are essentially three forms of proof: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is credibility. Pathos is emotion. Logos is reason. In the “Ethics of Rhetoric” conservative scholar Richard Weaver looked at argument sightly different. Weaver was critical of what he called “argument from circumstance,” which is roughly equivalent to Aristotles pathos. Weaver said the best (and conservative) style of argument was what he called “definition,” or argument from first principles.
Weaver, however, is too narrow because he ignores ethos. The late Douglas Walton, a Canadian argumentation scholar, explained about logical fallacies that they exist as a matter of degree not kind. Ad hominem, or an attack against the person, is just an attack on credibility gone too far. If we were to discuss the Corona virus, clearly a doctor has more credibility than a lawyer. It would rise to ad hominem, in Walton’s terms however, if a doctor was said not be credible because he belonged to a fraternity in college was there are pictures of him doing beer bongs. That criticism may speak to the doctor’s character, but not to his medical ability.
Wokeness privileges credibility. A woke critique of the Corona response would say the problem is the doctor is not a person of color, so does not understand the experience of people of color. A woke critique would say the doctor is heterosexual, those looks at the world in a heteronormative way. In a woke world, ethos predominates.
Ultimately wokeness is self-defeating. If a woke person argues that a white person has not lived the black experience, by the same terms, a black person has not lived the white experience. Indeed, you witness this all the time when persons of color suggest that discrimination against Irish, or Catholics, or Italians, or devout Christians is not pernicious and real. Indeed, wokeness explains this problem of the woke being solipsistic because by definition of wokeness a woke person cannot understand those experiences lived by others.
Wokeness arises because in American capitalism in particular, the corporate person (those who manage corporations) have for decades striven to have no affinities but those that create profit. Stripped of affinities and living in the antiseptic corporate world they escape those experiences. They embrace wokeness as marketing. Increase the pie sell more product. Hire the most talented woke people first because you see you will be required to hire the woke at some point, may as well scoop up those who have actual skills.
The key to moving to a post-woke world is learning how the woke think and why it ultimately self-destructs.
I don’t think PCR is covering for anybody. Whether or not (((they))) are to blame for the state of the world right now, making (((them))) the focus of every single article written by every single dissident voice is tactically stupid.
This is true for several reasons:
Want we want is for more and more people to “wake up.” But across the general population and within each individual, there is mixed consciousness. Even within the segment of people open to dissident views, there are those who are wide awake on the (((issue))); there are those who are in the middle/transitioning; and there are those who are still stuck in the matrix on the (((issue))), but who have decent positions on other matters. Given that there is a diversity of opinion within our target audience, there needs to be a diversity of delivery styles, tailored to where people are at.
If every dissident voice were to focus every article on (((this group))), then a large number of people will be tempted to go back to sleep. Our community would be painted as a monolith that is uninviting to all but the fully initiated. That doesn’t help.
I cannot read the inner workings of Dr. Robert’s mind. Neither can you. Neither do I care to. But, given that much of the population, and perhaps a preponderance of Dr. Robert’s audience, are less woke than you or others, it behooves him to address them where they are at. And if that means showing them that normal white people are being made into “the hated (((blanks)))” of the 21st century, then by all means, let’s do it. Even if we accept a revisionist history of the mid-20th century, it can be tactically useful to use enemy memes against them.
I can testify to this perspective from my own experience. I have been reading PCR for a very long time, and I am not old. When I first discovered PCR, my views were very far-left. I found his points of view in the early years of the W administration to be very good, and they are even better now. But in reading his articles I came across one that he wrote in the 1970s/80s that was sympathetic to Pinochet and critical of Allende. I didn’t like it. But I didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water; I realize(d) that people can be wrong on some things, right on others, and what is important is whether people can think for themselves and adjust their perspectives in response to the arrival of new information.
Moreover, if PCR or other voices had been harping on the JQ, I would have been disgusted at the time and tuned out. Waking up is not always immediate. Sometimes we hit snooze, once or twice or thrice. It makes finally getting out of bed a little easier.
A couple other things:
There are, if you can imagine it, other topics to discuss. The JQ, all day every day, is tiresome.
The powers that be seem to be getting increasingly censorious and punitive. Constantly talking about (((them))), might be very unwise at this point. It might be time for more and more guerilla-style discourse.
Last thing: I have been thinking this for some time, and it was nice to hear it a few months ago while I was listening to a certain, since purged, YT channel. The host said that (((they))) conquered us through our own sin. At the end of the day, Lucifer and his children do nothing but tempt us with the pleasures of this world. When we succumb to the temptations we prove that we deserve the consequences. By now, we are so deep into the bowels of hell that the only path is to bear our crosses.
Very well written. This is very painful to read but absolutely true.
Trying to work out what this implies. Refuses to rape black kids?
There’s gonna be whole lotta shit kickin goin on out there if these ninnies don’t learn to STFU! Full shelters and whole new grave yards will be the end result. Unless of course Robot Women reach a new level of sophistication.
Insanity has always been a notable presence in America.
Here’s an essay I wrote some years ago when a serious scientific study confirmed that America had a notably higher rate of mental illness than many other countries.
I’ve long attributed it to the big strain of Puritanism, a religion which very much attracted the unbalanced.
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/insanity-in-america/
Do you think the alleged Left allegedly abandoned the principles that define progressive socialism arbitrarily? Are we perhaps forgetting Lenin’s maxim that state control will not be complete until the state controls what appears to be its opposition?
What better way to channel the naïve revolutionary enthusiasm of young people into something non-threatening to power, and which has the bonus of further dividing and alienating people who ought to be natural allies.
The idea that morality depends on religion is an old chestnut long since thoroughly debunked. A morality based on fear of punishment or anticipation of reward, as Christianity is, is not morality at all. It is merely self-interest. Unlike Jesus, who issued absolutist commandments, a true moral teacher invites dialogue and does not fear debate, and makes the case for how the behavior he or she advocates enriches the disciple’s life in the here and now.
This statement might have some bearing on puritanical Christianity. As John Chuckman points out in the post above, mental illness in America often stems from “the big strain of Puritanism, a religion which very much attracted the unbalanced.”
Traditional Orthodox Christianity is based rather on communion with God through faith in Jesus Christ. The Christian does good, not from reward, but from the love of God, moving within him by the Holy Spirit. He avoids evil because God hates sin. He extends charity because he not only loves his neighbor; but in serving a cup of water to the thirsty, he serves it to Christ. Simple goodness done in the Spirit of God is the highest morality. God nourishes this Way through the Gospel and sacraments in His body, the Church. The Christian’s reward is his praise of God: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matt. 5:16 NKJV. It is not “merely self-interest,” but God-interest.
Is this true for someone who is not a Christian? Does one have to be Christian or have “faith in Christ” to do goodness in the Spirit of God or is doing goodness in the Spirit available to anyone regardless of how they feel or how think about Christ?
Does God only act through the Church, the nourishment of the Way you mention, or can someone outside of the Church and without the sacraments find nourishment in a different Way, an Other Way, that also leads one to the simple goodness of a “highest morality”? Or is the superlative there strictly exclusive, and so there are no comparable moralities to the highest morality of being in the Spirit?
Also, suppose someone tells you that not only are you God, but the one whom you think is most unlike God is God, and even goes on to say that that you are that, that rock, that cloud, that period at the end of a sentence, that petal on the rose, that woman who prays to Christ, that Christ who dies on a Cross, all of that which you think is not you is you. How do you take such a person’s claims and what do you make of it?
Thank you for thoughts and looking forward to more.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591
Thanks for your very thoughtful questions. They are the sorts of questions that brought me to the Orthodox Christian faith.
No one knows where the Spirit begins or ends. We know where the Spirit is: the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, which Christ sent upon the Church on Pentecost Sunday. But we do not know where He is not.
So I believe when people, even those who may not believe in Christ, do good, they may participate in some form or degree in the Spirit of God. I believe, though, since Christ is the fulness of God in the Christian’s life, the greatest good is done in Him.
Confucius, Lao-tzu, Buddhism, and Zen, all of which I esteem, helped bring me to the Orthodox faith. It seemed to me that Christ was the Incarnation of the noble Way they espouse. Nevertheless, while it seemed the Eastern religions taught beginning steps to God, they did not teach the fulness of God, which is in Christ only. The fulness of Truth is found and nourished only in the Gospel, the Church, and Her sacraments.
The S. Korean cult leader in the news recently believed he was Christ. A member who followed him became known as a super-spreader, because for weeks she refused to be tested and spread Corona to many. Exalted beliefs of oneself can lead to disaster.
All human beings are sinners. God is sinless. Therefore man is not God. But man partakes of God because he was created in His image. And in Holy Baptism, through the death and resurrection of Christ, he partakes of the Spirit of God. This is the joy of the Christian: we live in Christ in the surpassing abundance of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father. We do so through Christ’s saving act of mercy on the Cross, which we contemplate through Great Lent and this Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas. A blessed Lent to all.