Seminal Christian thinker, Francis Schaeffer, often said that “ideas have consequences.” The issue of course, is that good/bad ideas have similarly good/bad consequences. So, we face a familiar dilemma, especially when a culture or community or civilisation is on a dangerous path:
This helps us to focus the issue: we are looking at alternatives in a community where balances of power tend to lock in business as usual and tend to marginalise alternatives. So, we will have to look at power structures, polarisation and prudence in decision-making at policy level. Which, as a fairly simple framework, raises the concept of seven “commanding heights” mountains/pillars of influence that uphold and in turn are protected by a dominant worldview and cultural agenda:
At once, it is obvious that an entrenched policy and its associated dominant worldview will be very hard to change. That’s why it was said of new paradigms in science, that they progress one funeral at a time.
(All of this will be very familiar to design thinkers, who have experienced what cultural lockout and creation of a scientific counter-culture under siege looks like. Even, when it is blatant that we live in a cosmos with physics fine tuned in ways that set the stage for C-chemistry, aqueous medium, cell based life. Even, when it has been further obvious since 1953 that in the heart of such life we find alphanumeric, coded, complex algorithmic information in string data structures, working with molecular nanotech to build the workhorse molecules of life. Even, when we go on to discover inter-woven, overlapping code; a known high point of design. Even, when it is utterly implausible that such codes and associated execution machinery could come about by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Even, when — thanks to Venter et al — we know that nanotech design is feasible and we know the routine source of coded, complex algorithmic information and execution machinery.)
Here is an example of such overlapping code:
A first answer lies in the concepts, the Overton window and the BATNA negotiation power balance challenge:
A further key clue is to understand how Frankfurt School Culture-form Marxist thought — through so-called Critical Theory Studies — has come to dominate large swathes of the Academy. This has led to Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions” . . . as we mapped above, and thus also a strong pulling of the Overton window to the “Left.”
Wikipedia, inadvertently testifying against known ideological interest, helps us understand Critical Theory and its roots:
In sociology and political philosophy, the term Critical Theory describes the Western-Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt School, which was developed in Germany in the 1930s and draws on the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Though a “critical theory” or a “critical social theory” may have similar elements of thought, the capitalization of Critical Theory as if it were a proper noun particularly stresses the intellectual lineage specific to the Frankfurt School.[citation needed]
Modern critical theory has additionally been influenced by György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci, as well as second-generation Frankfurt School scholars, notably Jürgen Habermas. In Habermas’ work, critical theory transcended its theoretical roots in German idealism and progressed closer to American pragmatism. Concern for social “base and superstructure” is one of the remaining Marxist philosophical concepts in much of contemporary critical theory.[3]:5-8
Postmodern critical theory analyzes the fragmentation of cultural identities in order to challenge modernist-era constructs such as metanarratives, rationality, and universal truths, while politicizing social problems “by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings.”[4]
Notice, the post-/ultra- modern radical relativism, undermining of truth, intent of subversion and delegitimisation of what they differ with (shifting the Overton Window through “mainstreaming), thus reducing policy and issues to nihilistic power struggles to be decided — ironically — by their metanarrative:
Postmodern critical theory analyzes the fragmentation of cultural identities in order to challenge modernist-era constructs such as metanarratives, rationality, and universal truths, while politicizing social problems “by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings.”
If there are no truths, simpliciter, then, on what foundations can such a radically relativist analysis rest? If there is no self-evident framework of rationality, then why should we trust such an alleged analysis? If all is relativised, does not that include such “critical theories” and their claimed power to liberate? Speaking of, is it really sound to seek to liberate from truth, logic, established and even self evident first principles? Similarly, what happens when the agenda wraps itself up in a Scientific or medical lab coat?
Does that then make sudden, shocking sense of the tendency to accuse of a war against science and its alleged consensus? Especially, as we have seen as the current pandemic has unfolded? In particular, in reaction to the evidence that Hydroxychloroquine-based cocktails, if administered early enough, can be an effective treatment? Does that not uncomfortably echo the Climate Change debates and those over the design inference?
That leads the linked question of Left/Right politics in general.
To which, it is clear that the more or less socialist left has become a pole of politics ever since the French Revolution and anything that does not fit in with the current partyline or agenda items is deemed “right.” Since the rise of Nazism, there has been a tendency to smear the “right” as crypto-nazi or crypto-fascist. Including, perhaps especially, “Fundamentalist” Christians. In fact, however, Nazism and fascism were ideologies of the left (just, they were right of Stalin): National Socialist German Workers’ Party . . . what “Nazi” abbreviates . . . gives a clue or two.
Similarly, in the days of his Red Guards mob led coup and linked devastating Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 76, Mao viewed his fellow communists who were less radical than he as “rightists.”
We need to move away from the increasingly irrelevant and simplistic Left/Right models, where the left is the polar “centre” and whatever does not fit is marginalised and stigmatised as “the [crypto-Nazi] right.” I have suggested:
Let me add some background to the alternative:
Note, too, a classical tabulation on forms of regimes, IIRC, tracing to Aristotle:
David Horowitz has suggested an analysis of American politics that is worth pondering as 4th Generation Civil War begins to engulf the USA, with obvious Red Guards — and their shadowy backers — rampaging through the culture, almost at will:
In contrast to Europe, where conflicts pitted socialists against conservatives and often erupted in revolution and civil war, American politics [in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction] involved little or no social upheaval. Whatever divided Americans was not fundamental; elections were about nuts-and-bolts issues, not about the foundations of the republic itself.
Critics complained that the two parties were no more different than Tweedledum and Tweedledee and offered voters “an echo, not a choice.” But there was also a bright side to this political convergence: it reflected the common values and shared understandings of the American social contract. Elections may have lacked ideological drama, but the payoff was political stability and the sense of a common national purpose, which seemed well worth the price.
All this changed in the 1960s with the emergence of an ideological left in the heart of America’s political culture. This countercultural movement was socialist in content and radical in its approach. Its leaders styled themselves revolutionaries, turned their backs on democratic elections, and took their causes “to the streets.” They rejected the political parties, calling them pawns of a “corporate ruling class.”
Democracy, they groused, was a “sham.” But the revolutionary idea proved elusive in democratic America, and in 1972 the radicals of the 1960s abandoned the battle of the streets to join the presidential campaign of antiwar candidate George McGovern. In the aftermath of Watergate and the Nixon impeachment, they assumed a new role as the activist core of the Democratic Party.
As a result of these developments, today the Democratic Party draws its strength fr om the ideological left, a constituency composed of government unions, whose agenda is the expansion of govern-mental power, and organizations that grew out of the crusades of the 1960s and are driven by racial grievances, environmental radicalism, and campaigns for reproductive and welfare rights.Philosophically, the Democratic Party is now almost indistinguishable from the traditional left- wing parties of Europe that make up the “Second Socialist International.” [From, The Art of Political War, 2000.]
This picture, whatever its flaws in detail (and without endorsing Mr Horowitz across the board), seems a fair enough, rough summary of the roots and substance of the polarisation that is now spiralling down ever deeper into 4th Generation Civil War, complete with Red Guards. It came from the left, especially the Culture-form Marxist Left, with linked Po-mo influences. Similarly, given the dominance of US media and other cultural influences, this pattern is spreading globally. The radicals know that, that’s why the US is their chosen Archimedean point.
That is context, how can we respond to restore reason, prudence and soundness?
At this point, by counter-culture strategy that consciously takes a pivotal decision to put the first duties of reason — recognised as core, built-in law of our morally governed nature — to the centre of our thinking. Specifically:
We can readily identify at least seven inescapable first duties of reason. Inescapable, as they are so antecedent to reasoning that even the objector implicitly appeals to them; i.e. they are self-evident. Duties, to truth, to right reason, to prudence, to sound conscience, to neighbour, so also to fairness and justice etc. Such built in law is not invented by parliaments or courts, nor can these principles and duties be abolished by such. (Cf. Cicero in De Legibus, c. 50 BC.) Indeed, it is on this framework that we can set out to soundly understand and duly balance rights, freedoms and duties; which is justice. The legitimate main task of government, then, is to uphold and defend the civil peace of justice through sound community order reflecting the built in, intelligible law of our nature. Where, as my right implies your duty a true right is a binding moral claim to be respected in life, liberty, honestly aquired property, innocent reputation etc. To so justly claim a right, one must therefore demonstrably be in the right. Thus, too, we may compose sound civil law informed by that built-in law of our responsibly, rationally free morally governed nature; from such, we may identify what is unsound or false thus to be reformed or replaced even though enacted under the colour and solemn ceremonies of law.
Of course, such self-evidence by way of inescapability echoed in the promptings of sound conscience does not directly tell us where such come from, only that they are so established and central that they govern our whole rationality. Yes, reasoning itself is pervasively morally governed. Governed, by intelligible law, law that is built-in and attested by sound conscience.
That tellingly echoes a familiar source that is of course a major target for marginalisation. Such, by way of trying to taint and discredit the principal author, Jefferson (and thus to suppress Blackstone, Locke, Rutherford, the Dutch Declarants of 1581 and Duplessis-Mornay behind him without ever having actually addressed the substantial case). Yes, the US Declaration of Independence, 1776:
When . . . it becomes necessary for one people . . . to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, [cf Rom 1:18 – 21, 2:14 – 15], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security . . .
We find ourselves bound by built-in law, the law of our responsibly, rationally free, morally governed nature. Such law, credibly, traces to our source. Where, obviously — as non-being can have no causal powers — were there ever utter nothingness such would forever obtain. Likewise, circular retro causality where a not yet future reaches back to cause its own origin is just as absurd. Also, to traverse an infinite succession of finite stages [“years” for convenience] to reach here is an infeasible supertask, so an infinite causal-temporal past is also implausible.
So, we freely conclude, if a world now is, something always was, something capable of causing a world with responsible, rational, free (so, morally governed) creatures such as we are.
After centuries of debates on roots of moral government, we have just one serious candidate: the inherently good and utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. One, worthy of our loyalty and of the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good that accords with our evident nature.
That is the true root issue: ever so many today are committed to rejecting such a creator God that they will cling to the most patent of absurdities. This is a big problem.
We need to champion reason, soundness and prudence, recognising that we must stand and take blows and defeats now, if we are to be the good people in the storm if and when things go over the cliff. A grim task, but a necessary one.
Where, we must not shun to point out the absurdity of our civilisation’s current path. Even in the teeth of Red Guards and their mobbing tactics backed by nihilistic power brokers.
In my estimation, the next six to eighteen months will be crucial for our civilisation, if it is to avert needless catastrophe that will likely drastically curtail liberty under just law and government with the informed consent of the governed. Fourth Generation Warfare is often so subtle that it does not seem to be what it is, war. END
How can we handle issues and make big decisions (such as on ID, response to pandemics, ethics & epistemology etc) in a deeply polarised age?
–> the next 6 – 18 months are, credibly, a civilisation-level kairos, and on business as usual, we are headed over a cliff
F/N: Let’s continue with Horowitz, here, on rights:
This is crucial, as it redefines rights into a negotiated power settlement. Hence, the powerless — witness the ghosts of 800+ million of our living posterity in the womb, globally over 40+ years — have no effective rights. They exist at sufferance of the powerful.
If that does not outright shock and frighten you, it should.
This is nihilism, however disguised.
It is clear that the worldviews level issue is moral government and its roots, so roots of duty, rights and liberty thus justice. It is absurd for those to be deemed in effect a balance of power.
That is why it is so crucial that we learn afresh to recognise first duties of reason, built-in law (the law of our morally governed nature) and who built it in, God.
Absent a recognition of these, the spiralling 4th gen war in the US and its extensions across our civilisation will spiral out of any control into a 1990’s style Yugoslav — South Slav — federation breakup civil war.
Those are the matches that the Red Guards and their backers are recklessly, ruthlessly, foolishly playing with.
KF
PS: While I am at it, life is the first right; without it there are no further rights. So, instead of agit prop slogans tracing to falsified narratives of confrontations with the police in Ferguson, we need to return to the 2nd paragraph of the US DoI, 1776. This did not create rights, but acknowledged them as the charter of nationhood born out of secession in the teeth of a long train of abuses and usurpations. Where, further, “defund” [= abolish] the police is anticivilisational folly that implies handing over policing powers to the mob and to ideological secret police. No Prizes for guessing what Geheime Staatspolizeii . . . more or less . . . is abbreviated as. Those who refuse to learn from history doom themselves to repeat its worst chapters.
F/N2: A bit more:
The predictable result is to turn civil society into a deeply polarised contest to control levers that aggrandise fresh entitlements under colour of law crowned with the claim that they are “rights.” The predictable result is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Further to this as a right, properly is a binding moral claim to be respected, upheld and protected in certain ways tracing to the inherent worth of the human person, we cannot legitimately compel another to do the wrong or to uphold us in the wrong. No one can be compelled to taint conscience and soul to enable us. So, no right claim can be valid absent its manifestly being in the right.
KF
SNIP — insistent threadjacking after the warning in 6; content transferred here: https://uncommondescent.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=editcomment&c=707406
SNIP
RH7, this is not a thread about HCQ debates, please do not use it for further one sided newsclips. KF
Kf,
You as an author should have the ability to remove comments. You could then post them on another thread so they do not get lost.
SNIP
RH7, the effect was distractive especially as there is a clear balance of evidence of significant effectiveness. So, you are actually admitting to trying to dismiss a correct point with misleading unbalanced critiques. Given the sobering cost of our failures to address associated ethics, epistemology and decision theory, lives needlessly lost, I suggest you will be well advised to reconsider what you have done. This thread in the main is about a much bigger challenge, the ongoing down-spiral of our civilisation’s politics into the abyss, and the considerations that even at this late stage might help us recover before it is too late. KF
SNIP
RH7,
you seem to be insistent on threadjacking.
And that is driven by obsession with overturning actually solid cumulative evidence that HCQ+ cocktails work as effective treatments for CV19.
This threadjacking on a pivotal thread in the teeth of warnings to the contrary calls for strong action. This rides on top of by now dozens upon dozens of spamming posts by you across many threads that try to do the same, constituting enabling behaviour for suppressing evidence that shows what you refuse to believe. Namely, that there is good reason to accept that HCQ+ cocktails are effective treatments of CV19.
The needless controversy on this matter has likely cost too many their lives, through frustrating access to timely, cost effective treatment and painting a false picture of failure. In addition, ethical-epistemological failures have been entrenched through the gold standard fallacy that it is acceptable to deliberately give patients falsely labelled ineffective treatments in the face of a rapidly acting significantly fatal disease, in the teeth of clear evidence that observation of differences between business as usual treatment and reasonably credible alternatives not pivoting on mistreatment are good enough to guide sound decision.
All of which seem to be part of the polarisation of our civilisation.
Accordingly, I will now strip the comments above and transfer them to another thread, where those who are interested in such futile onward debates may pursue them to their hearts’ content.
KF
Jerry, I gave RH7 an opportunity to do better. This was ignored. I have snipped and transferred. Beyond this point, even though it forces me to put a strain on discussion here — doubtless an intent of thread jacking behaviour — I will take more drastic action. KF
F/N: It is worth the while to clip SEP on critical theory approaches; preparatory to addressing how history education is being distorted to taint a breakthrough in self-government, starting in 1776:
Of course, anyone familiar with the promises of radical revolutions since 1789 and their consistent result in reigns of terror, economic dislocation, aggressive war, mass murder, perversion of justice and policing systems, as well as general tumbling into tyrannies by autocrats and/or oligarchies will take the suggestions of opening up an ever brighter future with a grain of salt.
KF
PS, while I am at it, let me note from Plato’s Socrates, a classic warning on the dangers of democratic experiments informed by the failure of Athens. This is pivotal, as the key insight is that the American experiment the radicals now wish to taint and discrtedit provided the practical answer to this pivotal challenge of utter instability:
PPS: Cicero on Natural Law gives key background:
This is of course a key part of what I built on:
Background.
PPPS: Blackstone is further — and fairly direct — background for the US DoI, 1776:
F/N: I now add to the OP, a background framework on dynamics of Government that point to a very different spectrum as I already showed as an alternative to the increasingly counter-productive left-right spectrum.
F/N: Today, I remember Havel’s essay, Power of the Powerless, and especially the plight of the greengrocer:
These words and the wider essay are particularly relevant in a day when Red Guards again mob our streets and seek to force their agendas by intimidation and mob rule.
Where, as we are a symbol-using, symbol shaped race — yes, strictly we constitute one race, the human race — symbols that “must” be promoted and those the mobs demand suppression of are particularly telling.
We cannot say that we have not been warned in good time.
Those who refuse to learn from history . . .
KF
PS: Notice a trend?
PPS: John Gray of the UK in DM on Red Guards:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8537583/JOHN-GRAY-not-exaggeration-compare-methods-new-woke-movement-Maos-Red-Guards.html
>>Today, our universities are bastions of Left-wing, woke orthodoxy. Any dissenting voices – however mild in their beliefs – have to be silenced. And a growing number of schools are now joining universities in propagating this ideology.
‘Critical race theory’ – a sub-Marxist ideology in which ‘white privilege’ is invoked to explain all kinds of injustice – is increasingly being taught as part of ‘decolonising the curriculum’.
Indeed, no subject is immune from this re-education campaign in our schools and universities.>>
While he speaks of UK cases, he points to the US as epicentre and lists:
>>there is a witch- hunt which has seen leading figures driven from American institutions.
Last week, the senior curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art resigned, accused of ‘white supremacist language’ after he stated that refusing to collect white artists would be ‘reverse discrimination’.
And an opinion editor and writer at the New York Times resigned, citing ‘constant bullying by colleagues’ who attacked what they called her ‘forays into Wrongthink’. This reference to George Orwell’s novel 1984 – where people are punished for ‘thought-crime’ – is very telling.
What’s more, major American news providers and magazines are now operating a system in which staff are encouraged to snitch on their colleagues and denounce one another on Twitter.
This hounding of people is strikingly reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which convulsed communist China from 1966-1976 and wrecked much of what remained of the country’s ancient civilisation.
The only way someone accused of thought-crime could escape punishment was through public confession, ‘re-education’ and abject apology in so-called ‘struggle sessions’, in which they were humiliated and tormented by their accusers.
Tragically, the woke movement has reinvented this vile ritual, with teachers, journalists, professors and others seeking to hang on to their jobs by desperately begging forgiveness.
In some ways, today’s Twitter Maoism is worse than the original Chinese version. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was unleashed by a communist dictator, who used the upheaval to consolidate his power.
Conversely, in Britain and America today, our leading institutions have shamefully surrendered their own authority to a destructive ideology.
It is vital that this ideological rampage does not rage on for a decade as Mao’s did in China.
Otherwise we will find our freedom lost to a movement that aims to dictate how we live and think, and British civilisation will suffer irreparable harm.>>
Let us think very carefully about where we are headed.
KF
KF@18, I fully support the constructive criticism of any religion or atheism. It is only by this means that belief and religion can remain relevant. However, vandalizing property is not constructive criticism.
If someone wants to make the argument that the depictions of Christ are racist, I am open to their arguments.
Until very recently I argued that the depictions of Jesus were racist. Then I realized that after His death Jesus appeared and continues to appear to people as they would accept Him. That seems to be part of “made in OUR image”.
MMT,
yes, sound reform is an ever present challenge for any institution staffed by finite, fallible, morally struggling, too often willfully blind or ill-willed creatures. That is a constant of any human institution including the churches.
Sadly, that is not what we are dealing with here.
What we have is implied understanding that our civilisation was decisively shaped by the synthesis of the heritage of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome (with the River valleys behind, including the very mixed heritage of one certain Nimrod MacCush) presaged in the triple inscription over Jesus’ head on a cross “outside a city wall” as he suffered judicial murder at the hands of corrupt power elites playing dirty power games. Aramaic — Jerusalem, Greek — Athens, Latin — Rome. Guilty, guilty, guilty. But, redemption was literally hanging under the sign of guilt under false colour of law.
The hostility we see with the roaming Red Guards is to civilisation, and manifests utter misanthropy through Kafkaesque entrapment through demand for ever-perfect cradle to grave conformity to an ever evolving, incoherent party-line. So, one is always hopelessly guilty before the mob whose premise of judgement is that their accusation is proof and apology is confession; resistance or questioning is even stronger proof.
Heads I win, tails you lose and you cannot walk away. (sometimes, literally.)
This is the principle of soul-tainting, conscience squashing entrapment, hopeless subjugation and bully-boy domineering.
In that context, our civilisation is deemed the focus of ir-reformable evils and it must be crushed.
That is how every hero, every institution, our very words are now to be subjugated under, deconstructed by and changed at demand or whim of the Red Guard Mob, its backers and publicists.
It is not to hard to predict that soon, a critical mass will see that they have nothing left to lose and the surge of fight-back is going to be terrible. (Start with, the 1,000 yard, 6.5 mm veto.)
The next 6 – 18 months in the US — geostrategic centre of the civilisation — will be decisive.
And the Red Guards don’t realise they are expendable cannon fodder.
Oh what fools we have been to bring our civilisation to this sad pass.
KF
KF@22, I see current events as a positive. Not that I condone any violence, on either side. But I can’t think of any positive societal change that wasn’t the result of some level of civil disobedience. It is the civil disobedience that brings issues to the public’s attention and forces us to look at the issue more seriously than we would have under normal conditions.
Whether we look at US independence, the abolition movement, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the pro-life movement or the gay rights movement, they all involved civil disobedience and the breaking of existing laws.
The latest push to remove Confederate monuments and statues has forced us to look at the issue from different perspectives. Considering that many of these were originally erected in reaction to expanded civil rights in the south, I tend to side with having them removed.
MMT, we have an active, Red Guard fronted cultural marxist, anti-civilisation insurgency as street elements in a 4th gen civil war that is steadily becoming more kinetic. Of course, they ride piggyback on genuine concerns and issues, that is what marxists have done for 100+ years. I can support measured, reasonable reforms but never will I support marxist insurgency, I know too much history, I saw what they did to my native land, and the voices of the ghosts of 100 million victims of the all time most murderous regimes in history moan out warnings. If history seems unimpressive, simply look to Cuba and Venezuela in this hemisphere. We must not allow ourselves to be naive about what is going on. KF
PS: That you imagine it is a push to “remove” Confederate statues tells me you haven’t been paying close enough attention. There is a reason why abolitionists, former slaves, writers as famous as Cervantes [who was once enslaved himself], missionaries, saints, US founders and other noteworthy people, the police, anyone who challenges the radical agenda and even random people driving on the street or walking — in some cases with babies — are being targetted, not to mention businesses, police stations, govt offices, churches and even private residences too, targetted by Red Guards. The real target is our civilisation and constitutional, lawful self government. Wake up before it is too late.
As to:
I give you:
MMT, an odd passage, provenance not given. However, it might help you to know that I lived through a low kinetic 4th gen civil war tied to the Cold War’s 80’s peak, in my native land. Two interesting phenomena are, first, that there was in effect an implicit conspiracy of silence not to acknowledge it for what it was . . . only in recent years has that character been openly discussed. Linked, there is a characteristic pattern of processes and dynamics in such a no-front lines civil conflict that clearly tie to the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution. My general conclusion is that war under the nuclear shadow has shifted drastically, taking up some very old features and some new ones, with agit prop, street theatre, media amplification, narrative dominance and lawfare operations being central. KF
KF, that was written by the late John Lewis. A man who broke laws during the civil rights movement to advance equality.
MMT, Mr Lewis needs to be duly respected. However, civil disobedience is not to be equated to rioting or to Red Guard coup insurgencies as 4th generation war operations; something obvious since the 1960’s when Mao exploited youngsters to claw back power he lost by reckless and bbloody, failed initiatives . . . see the great leap forward. For simple instance, once a protest becomes violent and destructive, continued involvement of “peaceful” protesters becomes enabling behaviour, which is lawless. I think the root challenge is we are by and large insufficiently aware of relevant history regarding how unstable democracy is, and the implications of undermining key cultural buttresses. The implication is that triggering the threat or actuality of anarchic chaos pushes towards the vortex of tyranny, the common fate of radical revolutions since 1789. Those who open up that threat bear direct responsibility for enabling tyranny, and indirect responsibility for what it takes to fight back out of it again, copious blood and tears — witness Germany and Russia over the past 100+ years, noting the OP above. Worse, no reasonably democratic modern polity is locked against responsible movements of peaceful reform, so it becomes obvious that the sponsors behind red guard cannon fodder on the streets are interested primarily in radical power seizure by coup or subversion, not actually in resolving the issues and concerns they exploit. KF
KF, I guess that I am more optimistic than you. I prefer vandalism to violence. And peaceful protest to vandalism. However, there has never been change in society that wasn’t the result of protest. And there has never been widespread protest without some violence.
You have to keep in mind what the recent protests have been about. They were, themselves, the response to unjustified violence. Have they resulted in some vandalism and violence? Yes. But the vast majority have been peaceful. And of the ones that resulted in violence, how many of those were made far worse by the overhanded actions of authorities?
Since you have mentioned tyranny, how do you describe the use of anonymous federal agents stepping in without the approval of the state?
This is nonsense! What the Floyd incident proves is just the exact opposite. There are over hundred million police incidents each year ranging from traffic stops to people killing others.
Yes, the incident is real but is so extreme that is rarely happens. There was never anything justified as a result of the video except that there was one act of depravity using an approved method by the local police department. So one incident is proof that there is almost zero problem with policing. The actual incident was inaugurated by an African American police officer and witness by another minority police officer. Two of the four police officers in the Floyd incident were minority. Hardly racism.
This reaction has nothing to do with race or George Floyd. One can argue with a lot of backup evidence that the United States is the least racist society in the history of the planet.
When was BLM a big deal in the past? Answer: Four years ago during the last presidential election.
MMT,
vandalism is violence.
Violence here being the indefensible, unjustified use of force. There is just or excusable use of force, and there are accidents that can be hugely destructive — witness the fire that just gutted a US$ 4 bn vessel.
Perhaps, you mean that violence against private or community property or the commons is better than violence against the person.
That also fails, as one’s right to legitimately acquired property is a fundamental right, just as is one’s right to innocent reputation. This extends to the community, including the right to the civil peace. Willful vandalism, destruction of property, arson, attacks on peace officers and the imposition of mob rule are all threats to sound community order.
They also destroy tangible and intangible capital including social capital. That imposes all sorts of short term and long term costs and especially evaporated opportunities. For just one example, potential investors were just sent a huge set of messages, with more to follow.
There is a legitimate right of petition for redress, which implies peaceful protest. Where remonstrance fails, there is a right of revolution, where the general election is a means of revolution without bloodshed, bought at horrific price. However, those who take up a call to such take up enormous responsibilities for consequences. Including, that the history of radical revolutions since 1789 has been almost uniformly horrifically, needlessly bloody and tyrannical.
Even in the US case, a postponed issue, over 80+ years, was not responsibly handled and cost 600,000 lives. Yes, the first civil war [#2 is “already in progress,” at Bleeding Kansas stage . . . playing out in a 4GW pattern] was a postponed issue of the Revolution.
I again point to the OP above.
Those who refuse to learn from sound history . . .
And yes, the next 6 – 18 months will be pivotal.
KF
Jerry, I am satisfied that BLM is a classic largely Astroturf front operation, with Antifa much deeper than that. Both are being used as Red Guards, to trigger mob rule manipulated by culture form marxist operators with an anti civilisation agenda. What we see was in preparation with organisation, training, mobilisation, financing and logistics put in place for years; perhaps up to a decade. Parallel lines of action have been underway to corrupt the media, lawmaking, law enforcement, courts and education. History is being deceitfully rewritten to fit ideologies. The cultural buttresses that stabilise democratic self government are being undermined. They are playing 1984 newspeak language and symbol manipulation games and much more. KF
Kf,
There is a popular T-shirt now available that reads
Where can i get one?
Kf,
Just search for “make Orwell fiction again t shirt”
There are several results including Amazon. So pick the style you want. I don’t know about delivery time to the Caribbean.
F/N: As an illustration of the mentality and agit prop stratagems we are up against, kindly see Dr Willie Soon’s reply to a BBC journalist’s inquiry here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/13/bbc-asks-dr-willie-soon-to-respond-to-climate-conspiracy-claims/ Note the comments by informed experts on handling spin game slander media. KF
Jerry, thanks, I looked. Interesting, including the different takes on the talking point. KF
PS: Again, first duties of reason:
Oh, the irony — BBC on dealing with conspiracism https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-53395619/coronavirus-how-to-talk-about-conspiracy-theories