Summary: It is a new chapter in our descent into ClownWorld, as the Left works to incite greater hatred in America – risking America’s social stability to gain more political power. Here are bulletins from the front lines of our political conflicts.
“When the men on the chessboard,
Get up and tell you where to go, …
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the Dormouse said.
— “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Starship.
As we travel deeper into ClownWorld (the final meme for America), the standard sources of analysis become tribal, mad or irrelevant. We must turn to people better suited for our new era. People like the novelist James Howard Kunstler. This post was built on insights in his post “The Yin and the Yang of It.” I just added a bit to them.
He described the next stage in the fracturing of American society. Each tribe has its own truth. The Founders feared the growth of factions above all things. Rightly so, since our strong cohesion has carried America through tough times and been our greatest strength. These show how the Left is throwing all that away.
Even the strongest diamond can be destroyed by blows on its fault lines. The Left will do that to America unless they are stopped.
A new New York Times
In 1901, at the 50th anniversary of its founding, the NYT said its “covenant” was “All the news that’s fit to print” (per BBC). But that no longer fits the NYT that joined “the resistance” (aka the “get Trump” mob) that published so much fake news about RussiaGate, that has made racism the primary lens through which to see American society (i.e., their 1619 Project: agitprop for the 21st Century), and has crafted a Leftist narrative to impose on the 2020 election).
But the NYT’s marketing department has found a solution. Last October their marketing staff rolled out The Truth is Worth It campaign. In the old days, NYT journalists chased news. Now they claim to deliver the “truth.”
Stoking racial hatred for political gain
“Resistance team captain Elizabeth Warren” spoke about the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, shot by a white policeman.
Another candidate for president, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) sent a similar tweet.
Obama’s Department of Justice determined that it was not murder. A grand jury agreed. Brown was shot after attacking officer Darren Wilson in his police car and grabbing for his gun.
What a cynical strategy, deliberately stoking racial antagonisms for political gain.
It is a plan others are following. The New York Times’s op-ed writer Gail Collins wrote “How to Torture Trump.” The Left will applaud (only criticism from within the tribe matters). That journalists ignore this destructive ploy shows their allegiance. Can we afford this?
Politicization of everything
The NYT reports the next step in the politicization of everything in America. Public disclosure of Trump donors was the beginning. Boycotts of Trump’s supporters was a logical next step. If this catches on, Republicans will reply in kind. More political acrimony in America: not going to help.
The big picture
This post looks at the Left. But the Right has also turned against us. See my posts about the right-wing, the alt-right, and the Republican Party.
The key to understanding our situation is that we’re in the midst of a broad collapse of institutions. This includes both Left and Right in politics, both of which have turned against us. For more about this see A new, dark picture of America’s future (esp note the links to other posts in the For More Info section).
Factions
Loss of America’s social cohesion has brought America to the brink several times. The Civil War. The massive polarization of the 1960s: bombings, riots, burning hatred along many faultlines. We survived both of those. Third time unlucky.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you found this post of use, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also see these posts about the Left-wing of our politics, about political polarization, how to reform America politics, and especially these…
- The secret reason for America’s white-hot political rhetoric.
- Jonathan Haidt explains America’s out-of-control polarization.
- About the polarization poisoning our politics.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The Democrats show us the politics of ClownWorld.
- Two levers to bring the Democrats victory in 2020.
Useful books explaining what happened to America
I have not found a good book explaining what happened to the Left, causing its hatred of America. These are the best I have found.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
Similar effects here in NZ. We once had no friction over race but now a sensitivity has developed. Racism is about behaviour, not effect. If it’s not about peoples actions, it’s not about racism. Some call ‘racism’ when the problem is about racial disparity. Differences in outcomes for different races cannot correctly be regarded as racism unless other logically possible causes are eliminated and racist behaviours identified.
https://wp.me/p51f0Y-96
Larry, I don’t find fault with much of what Kuntsler and yourself have presented here, but the Right have had its fair share of moments raising the ire of many for its own political gains. Nixon began the War on Drugs to divide and isolate the hippies and blacks to distract from his wartime atrocities in South East Asia, Reagan inflated wildly the abuse by “welfare queens” whilst subliminally insinuating racial undertones, and Bush the Elder topped all at the time with his Willie Horton ad. All this and more was cheered on by the Right’s cheerleaders in the media.
And therein lies the rub; Americans are now hopelessly caught in the 24/7 spin cycle of the Left/Right Media machine permanently set on Hatred that will eventually wash away our shared core values and dreams we once upon strived and fought for, for all.
Craig,
“but the Right have had its fair share of moments raising the ire of many for its own political gains.”
I totally agree! Thanks for flagging that. I’ve run posts making similar – and even more critical – posts about the Right. I focus on one side per post because otherwise they are too superficial or too long. See those about the right-wing, the alt-right, and the Republican Party. I should have mentioned that in this post. I’ll add a note in the For More Info section.
The key to understanding our situation is that we’re in the midst of a broad collapse of institutions. This includes both Left and Right in politics, both of which have turned against us. For more about this see (esp note the links to other posts in the For More Info section).
Elizabeth Warren’s original comment on the death of Michael Brown included the name of the policeman who shot him. That part she changed. I hope the (now former) cop sues her for that slander– especially if she is the Democratic nominee! But I can understand if he just doesn’t and just tries to continue a decent life, despite people like Senators Harris and Warren.
Peter,
Thanks for the additional color about that!
The Left has begun punching down, inciting mobs to chase little people with no ability to fight back. The Right has occasionally done this, but not to the same frequency.
This is very true. The institutions remain the same in appearance, but they become dysfunctional because of changes in attitudes towards them, and because of the use those with control make of them. We have a sort of feedback loop.
You can see it happening in the UK in the current paralysis over Brexit, where Parliamentary procedures are being used in ways that it never occurred to previous generations to risk, and as a result the popular esteem of it falls, and that in turn licenses further abuses.
The behaviour of the current Speaker is a classic instance of this. The misuse of the office by the individual is producing contempt for it, which then leads to defiance and ever more extravagant behavior by the occupant.
Like you, I can only classify the behavior of the left (both in the US and the UK) as showing a hatred of America (in the US) or of Britain (in the UK). In the UK, the change you describe in the New York Times has had its counterpart in the changes under Rushbridger and Katherine Vine to the Guardian. The Guardian started out with the slogan (attributed to its great editor, C P Scott that “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”.
This is now the paper that has a style guide which requires global warming to be referred to only as “global heating” and climate change only as “climate crisis”. It is the paper which omitted all reporting of the grooming and child abuse scandals in Rotherham and elsewhere because they were being carried out by gangs of the favoured ethnic and religious minority.
The Guardian has become an activist organization, whose chosen means of producing social and political change is via publishing what used to be a newspaper. The paper has become the house journal of the movement.
And yet, if you look at who is writing in and managing the Guardian (and the case seems to be similar for the NY Times) you find that its the urban white middle class. If you read the Lifestyle pages, you find reviews of bikes that sell for thousands, crazed and expensive exercise fads, even, recently, a piece about how difficult it was not to buy new clothes for a month. Not socially acceptable in our circles, you see. Recipes calling for exotic and expensive ingredients. For our dinner parties…
For years after Cameron had won an election, the Guardian carried, prominently displayed on its web site, a piece entitled something like, how did the Tories do it? The piece expressed the editors’ dismayed incomprehension that the country could somehow have a acquired a government that was not the Labour Party.
Something similar has happened to the BBC. If you happened to be in the country and watching during either the Cameron election or the EU Referendum, you’d have seen a similar shock and dismay spreading over the faces of the reporters as they realized that, incomprehensibly, the vote was going against them. If you ever listen to their call-in programs, you’ll hear endless bile against every speaker who dissents in the tiniest detail from the current liberal ideology.
Like you, I am puzzled and have found no explanation of where this hatred for the country and institutions which have brought up and educated these people, and which are now paying them very well to write this stuff, has come from. ‘Listen Liberal’ is very acute, but it offers little explanation of why.
It will not end well. The nuttier this stuff gets, the more it fuels the populist right. The combination is a real and growing danger.