It’s jarring when, at a dinner gathering or small social event, you encounter a mind that conceives reality in a way so utterly, radically, axiomatically alien that you cannot believe you both could possibly inhabit the same objectively existing world. This happened to me recently at a friend’s house.
The person in question — a friend of my friend’s — was a professor at a small state college. In quick succession he asserted as facts that there was no such thing as human nature; that nothing is innate or inherited; that “freedom is a myth”; that that we were already irreversibly doomed to “climate catastrophe”; that the only just society would be that which abolished the “myth” (he liked that word) of equality of opportunity, and committed itself instead to guaranteeing equality of outcomes; that complete equality of outcomes could easily be achieved by “nurturing” alone, and would require no hobbling of exceptional or talented people (because they don’t exist); that anyone could be a Newton or a Mozart — and if they couldn’t, well that doesn’t matter anyway, because if some people do seem to do better at things we value (like, presumably, physics and music), the answer is to stop valuing those things, and to value other things until everybody is equal.
There was much, much more. I could hardly get a word in edgewise; also mentioned were guns, “MAGA”, “Trump”, and “Trumpsters”. When, trying to change the subject, I mused for a moment about huge things that we had never foreseen when we were younger (thinking, in that moment, of technological changes like the Internet and social media, which have had enormous effects, and which nobody saw coming), what came back was ” like the Storming of the Capitol”.
It gave me a frisson of horror to realize that for there to be so little overlap in the most basic assumptions about the foundations of reality meant that one or the other of us must almost certainly be insane. (I can’t imagine that an actual extraterrestrial’s mind could be any more completely, incomprehensibly alien.) Not only did this man’s axioms seem to me to be utterly, demonstrably, and self-evidently at odds with the plain reality of the world, and with all of history and human experience, but they were not even consistent amongst themselves; I couldn’t conceive of a theoretical model that could splice them all together.
In social intercourse these days what strikes me, again and again, is the extent to which folks just assume that their axioms — which of course they must know are in fact highly controversial and rejected by at least half of their fellow citizens — are shared by all decent people, and so they needn’t bother with any caution about giving offense. It’s like the way that nobody in Boston takes any care not to offend visitors who might be Yankees fans — because after all, how could any decent person be a Yankees fan? There was a time in America when in casual social settings people were careful not to bring up controversial topics like religion and politics, precisely because it was more important to get along: because there was a feeling that whatever our differences about such matters might be, there was more that united us than divided us, and that it made life better for everyone, ourselves included, if we made an effort to be civil, to tolerate differences of opinion. That this is no longer the case shows that something else has come along that we think is more important: something basic, something existential: something worth hating for.
At the risk of repeating things I’ve been saying for years — I’ve been at this so long now that at this point it’s hard not to! — what’s clear above all is that every aspect of American life is now framed in terms of an unbridgeable chasm between Us and Them, and that what matters far more than finding some modus vivendi with the other side is simply to crush them, to push them out of power, to subdue and humiliate and silence them. Both sides now look at the other this way (though I will say that much of the Right would, even now, still be content simply to be left alone), and at this point I suppose they are probably right to do so: because living together as a nation requires an irreducible minimum of commonality, and of mutual tolerance, that just doesn’t seem to be there any more. We live nowadays in completely different models of moral, social, historical, philosophical, religious, and even “scientific” reality — and each team believes that for the other, obviously false, model to have its hands on the levers of power would be the end of everything good in the world.
How can we still call this a “nation”? How much longer can this go on before it all goes kablooey?
16 Comments
This is no longer an argument (if it ever was); it’s a war. It’s been a war for quite some time now, although only one side’s been fighting.
It can go on until either irreality and oppression have won outright — the friend of your friend is well on his way to this — or until those of us who just wanted to be left alone realise that we aren’t going to be left alone, and aren’t going to win by arguing the facts either.
Either we fight back as if this were a serious matter with lasting consequences, or else before long the friend of your friend will get to make our decisions for us.
Of course, I think you know this.
Malcolm it sounds like your friend’s friend has already fallen into the chasm and can’t imagine a way out. It is true, we are at war. This is beyond partisan warfare and very far into ideological warfare and even ideological elimination. Logic and facts won’t get it done. Calling them leftists, far left, radical left is a waste of time. They have only one name ‘Democrat’. Know the enemy, his name and his methods and goals. We give them cover when we attack adjectives that suit us to describe them. Make Democrats confront their own. They are not kind to each other if even a whiff of impurity is detected. They never have been.
Forgot this:
“The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. The moment the Men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these Men who wanted to be left alone, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy… but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.”
– Author Unknown
Don’t forget to tell him that he should divide his salary with people that are on welfare, so this equality of outcomes is closer. God, how I hate these pompous, hypocritical, sanctimonious morons
First of all, I don’t believe this land is a nation anymore. There is no common ground, just power relationships and transactions. In the case of this knucklehead, he is superior to you. That’s why he is able to be an asshole. Power has no consequence other than silent hate by the subject and spitting into the master’s soup. As a person who lives in the South, we’ve been subject to this sort of behavior for years–particularly from Boston people–they look down on us. We’re stupid. We’re racist. College professors are the worst as they are protected and therefore can have luxury beliefs that are at odds with real life. It is interesting to see they are directing their poor behavior at other Yankee whites–this must mean their world is narrowing. The outsider reality is penetrating what used to be ideologically safe spaces.
Locust Post, you wrote:
You might enjoy this essay by the great Forrest McDonald, which ends as follows:
Also:
I fear that there is a well of bitterness in the soul of my friend’s friend. He is in his early sixties, although he looks older; he is a scholar of the life and times of a 19th-century American author, once renowned, but whom few now alive have read; he works at a small New England college, teaching a student body comprising mostly dullards and midwits who couldn’t manage admission to a more prestigious institution, who sit in his classroom merely to tick off a box in their requirements for graduation, and who will likely forget everything he’s told them by the time they receive their diplomas. The ideas he expressed so irritably must, I think, have been nursed only in solitary brooding, or the yeasty gloom of a liberal-arts-college faculty lounge, as they would dry up and blow away in the light of serious critical examination.
So: “superior”? Meh. I’ll get by.
Whitewall,
Thanks for that quote. Reminds me of Kipling’s poem The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon.
Imnobody,
Wish I’d thought to — although honestly, that conversation was going nowhere from the start.
Malcolm, I didn’t mean he is superior, he just thinks he is. I believe part of this comes from envy; you know the old saw, “people that can’t do teach”. And another part comes from suffocating media narrative that says “leftie good, righty bad”. At least he didn’t need to talk slow to you. I guarantee that if this knucklehead ran into me and learned I live in the south he would start talking slow and loud…
Curious about one thing Malcolm (though I’d be tempted to wager I’d be correct).
This perfesser fellow, an only child correct?
JK,
I bet you’re right. I’ll find out and let you know.
Update: two sisters.
Ninety percent of American professors imbibe this hooch to one degree or another. Some down 180 proof shots, others sip it with a mixer, but the hooch and its effects are nearly universal. The futility of this particular scholar probably inclines him to the strong stuff, but he’d be considered a very sound chap by nearly every professor I know.
Both Left and Right are now aware of the divide, but their hopes for the future are very different. Most people on the Right fantasize about a return to normalcy, whereas no one on the Left would consider a return to any status quo ante. Our goal is survival, their goal is victory–kind of like the difference between South and North in the American Civil War.
This fellow was holding forth in Massachusetts, and he might have been more circumspect in Texas or Idaho; but no matter the state in which one speaks, circumspection is now a watchword of the Right. This shows who has the whip hand and it is deadly serious. There are still places where an American can boldly contradict a man under the influence of the hooch, but no place an American can do this freely and without risk.
JMSmith,
Just so, and that is why we lose. I posted a link to Amy Wax’s interview a few days ago, and in it this brave woman gave a cri de coeur asking why more sane people in academia — in particular, tenured professors toward the end of their careers, who have the perspective to see the crisis most clearly, and have the least to lose — don’t stand up to help her. Our cowardice is our shame, and will be our death, and our legacy.
Malcolm
Cowardice may be a bit too strong although I understand your point of view. Please refer to Whitewall #2, a quote I have seen attributed to Solzhenitsyn. Many do not forcefully object because they know the reaction to which open, effective resistance to the progs will inevitably lead. They are reluctant to “make the jump” because they know what they will possibly be forced to become. I am reminded of the role of Gibson in The Patriot. Not to say that I know the answer, but many are not ready to throw caution to the wind and reap the whirlwind that will come. Prof Smith is correct in the survival vs victory analysis. I can only pray that potential resistors will realize that the time for choosing will never get better. If we don’t resist soon, even survival will not be an option.
I’m an extremely small potato in the academic stew, but I’ve learned that speaking out is always futile and often dangerous. I spoke out against dropping the GRE, for instance, the only effect being that this small potato became a small pariah potato. I spoke out against building a monument to a demonstrably false Woke myth on campus. The monument was built and this small tenured potato nearly lost his job.
Wax is a big potato, so she can take her case to the media. Small potato and ineffectually harumph at faculty meetings and vent their frustration on blogs.
JMSmith,
In other words, we’ve already lost.