Angelo M. Codevilla Scores Again

[4est_4est_Gump]

The notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself. Because all progressives, Communists included, claim to be about creating new human realities, they are perpetually at war against nature’s laws and limits. But since reality does not yield, progressives end up pretending that they themselves embody those new realities. Hence, any progressive movement’s nominal goal eventually ends up being subordinated to the urgent, all-important question of the movement’s own power. Because that power is insecure as long as others are able to question the truth of what the progressives say about themselves and the world, progressive movements end up struggling not so much to create the promised new realities as to force people to speak and act as if these were real: as if what is correct politically—i.e., what thoughts serve the party’s interest—were correct factually.

Communist states furnish only the most prominent examples of such attempted groupthink. Progressive parties everywhere have sought to monopolize educational and cultural institutions in order to force those under their thumbs to sing their tunes or to shut up. But having brought about the opposite of the prosperity, health, wisdom, or happiness that their ideology advertised, they have been unable to force folks to ignore the gap between political correctness and reality.

Especially since the Soviet Empire’s implosion, leftists have argued that Communism failed to create utopia not because of any shortage of military or economic power but rather because it could not overcome this gap. Is the lesson for today’s progressives, therefore, to push P.C. even harder, to place even harsher penalties on dissenters? Many of today’s more discerning European and American progressives, in possession of government’s and society’s commanding heights, knowing that they cannot wield Soviet-style repression and yet intent on beating down increasing popular resistance to their projects, look for another approach to crushing cultural resistance. Increasingly they cite the name of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), a brilliant Communist theoretician for whom “cultural hegemony” is the very purpose of the struggle as well as its principal instrument. His writings envisage a totalitarianism that eliminates the very possibility of cultural resistance to progressivism. But owing more to Machiavelli than to Marx or Lenin, they are more than a little complex about the means and are far from identical with the raw sort of power over culture enforced by the Soviet Empire or, for that matter, that is rife among us today.

My purpose here is to explain how progressives have understood and conducted their cultural war from the days of Lenin, and how Gramsci’s own ambiguous writings illustrate the choices they face in conducting that war in our time and circumstances—especially with regard to political correctness in our present culture war...

Warning to Progressives and Liberals, this is a very long and hard read and honestly, I don't think that you are up to it...


http://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=8932



PS: To the Clinton voters, this is the most likely explanations as to why you lost the election and will keep continuing to lose until you return to sanity.

This is why we need that return:

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...ight-tim-ryan-nancy-pelosi-radicalism-balance

 

[Ishmael]

Leninist Russia no less than various Western democrats have tried to eradicate religion, to make it difficult for men, women, and children to exist as families, and to demand that their subjects join them in celebrating the new order that reflects their identity. Note well: cultural warfare’s substantive goal is less important than the affirmation of the warriors’ own identity. This is what explains the animus with which progressives have waged their culture wars.

The use of that particular word, in that sentence says a large part of it. Any careful reading of Marx indicates much the same, there will be the 'ruling' class and then everyone else (proletariat). And that is pretty much how it's worked out in practice for those nations that wanted to go full blown Communist. Or you could just read H. G. Wells, "The Time Machine." The eloi and the morlocks. Of course in the real world the eloi would have to labor for the morlocks.

In order for the ruling class to create the 'perfect proletariat' they have to structurally destroy existing social norms. Dependencies created and enforced. The 'Company Store' writ large while allowing the lumpen all sorts of totally inconsequential freedoms.

Unfortunately for the 'progressives' people tend to like their particular culture and will only allow themselves to be pushed (ordered) so far before they push back. Further, the laws of demographics work against them as well. Even the Romans were painfully aware of the relationship between the welfare state and population decline. A phenomena that absolutely requires the wholesale importation of undesirable cultures. The recent election and what is happening in Europe are the outward, and wholly expectable, results of such policies.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Italexit might be next...



Okay, that passed spellcheck. It must mean something more than I intended.

 

[Ishmael]

Italexit might be next...



Okay, that passed spellcheck. It must mean something more than I intended.

Romanian for 'italics' maybe?

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Romanian for 'italics' maybe?

Ishmael

I notice that I have no takers on this.

Who knows? Maybe the election results are beginning to sink in. Love stinks and truth hurts...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Romanian for 'italics' maybe?

Ishmael

Are Italics relocated Gypsies?

 

[contrifan32]

I notice that I have no takers on this.

Who knows? Maybe the election results are beginning to sink in. Love stinks and truth hurts...

Its early, the basement "apartment" is cold and dark this time of the year.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Its early, the basement "apartment" is cold and dark this time of the year.

... and lonely.

Even mom won't come down.

She voted for Trump to create the jobs that gets the weasel out of her house...

 

[Ishmael]

I notice that I have no takers on this.

Who knows? Maybe the election results are beginning to sink in. Love stinks and truth hurts...

Just an observation here, but it seems to me that the liberals, the pack mentality liberal, spends most of their time criticizing and denigrating others. They don't spend a great deal, if any, time looking into their philosophical mirror. So when you hold the mirror up to them they are really unprepared to render a response.

Love him or hate him, at least P P Man would engage in reasoned debate if you could challenge his mind.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

... or catch him sober...

 

[Ishmael]

... or catch him sober...

I suspect that towards the end that had more to do with pain meds than drink.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The worst thing for Liberals, is that they seem to be so shell-shocked that they no longer want to participate in political discussions, so the only ones making reply are the really virulent forms of their polity which is certainly not going to start pushing the pendulum in the other direction.

We heard for so long, how damaged and tarnished the Republican 'brand' had become, but now that the tarnish is on their spoons (so to speak) they are allowing the most radical among them to define them instead of polishing out the tarnish.

So many were so giddy watching the RINOs being shamed into disavowing Christians...




Just some thoughts before bed.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I suspect that towards the end that had more to do with pain meds than drink.

Ishmael

True...



REDRAVE was far more entertaining.

 

[Ishmael]

The worst thing for Liberals, is that they seem to be so shell-shocked that they no longer want to participate in political discussions, so the only ones making reply are the really virulent forms of their polity which is certainly not going to start pushing the pendulum in the other direction.

We heard for so long, how damaged and tarnished the Republican had become, but now that the tarnish is on their spoons (so to speak) they are allowing the most radical among them to define them instead of polishing out the tarnish.

So many were so giddy watching the RINOs being shamed into disavowing Christians...




Just some thoughts before bed.

It appears that they've decided, at least for the time being, to double down. Pelosi re-elected as lead democrat in the house and Ellison as DNC head? My only thought on their motives are that they're betting that Trump is going to be such a fuck up that the electorate is going to come stampeding back to them no matter how looney they get.

And as I said before, "If you thought the liberals were whacky when they held power, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It appears that they've decided, at least for the time being, to double down. Pelosi re-elected as lead democrat in the house and Ellison as DNC head? My only thought on their motives are that they're betting that Trump is going to be such a fuck up that the electorate is going to come stampeding back to them no matter how looney they get.

And as I said before, "If you thought the liberals were whacky when they held power, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Ishmael

I remember 2000-01...

To quote BTO, You ain't seen nuttin' yet...

 

[Ishmael]

True...



REDRAVE was far more entertaining.

His letters to the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun read like his posts here. I suppose that even the Las Vegans needed humor too.

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

Just an observation here, but it seems to me that the liberals, the pack mentality liberal, spends most of their time criticizing and denigrating others. They don't spend a great deal, if any, time looking into their philosophical mirror. So when you hold the mirror up to them they are really unprepared to render a response.

Love him or hate him, at least P P Man would engage in reasoned debate if you could challenge his mind.

Ishmael

You and your halfbreed halfwit buddy forfeited the right to serious discussion a long time ago....

Show me Ishmael calling someone a nigger.

Oh I did bro. LT to be exact and on several different occasions. I did it for a specific purpose, and I'm sure you can figure out what it was. <snip>

I call him a nigger all the time. It's funny to watch him turn purple and start spitting...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

His letters to the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun read like his posts here. I suppose that even the Las Vegans needed humor too.

Ishmael

lol...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

... the only ones making reply are the really virulent forms of their polity which is certainly not going to start pushing the pendulum in the other direction.

...




Just some thoughts before bed.

 

[Ishmael]

In case you missed some of these. the guys not even in office and the insanity percolates up daily.

We get to leave.

First off someone should tell the ignorant bitch that we AREN'T a democracy, we're a Republic. But I have to admit that there are parts of CA I'd love to see leave the Union. And then I'd look forward to their trying to negotiate a trade deal with Trump.

Then there's this;

States Rights


That's right, a fucking liberal arguing for 'States Rights.' It's like, "Wow, look what the Constitution says!" After having spent the better part of the last century either ignoring it, or trying to bypass it, they now think it means what it says? Whatever did happen to that 'living' document?

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Clearly they have the right to ignore Federal Law when they conform to Progressive positions...