Time To Get Mad At Yourself

You may recall that Bari Weiss as the NYT opinion writer and editor hounded out of her job for not being woke enough for her collogues. Hardly a conservative, she has nevertheless been adequately red pilled out of what passes for polite society on the left. Her latest and last provocation was the left’s reaction to October 7th. 

When antisemitism moves from the shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the surrounding society or the culture or the country. It is an early warning system—a sign that the society itself is breaking down. That it is dying.

It is a symptom of a much deeper crisis—one that explains how, in the span of a little over 20 years since Sept 11, educated people now respond to an act of savagery not with a defense of civilization, but with a defense of barbarism.

At some point classic liberals must reach the point where they can no longer cling to the left’s baseless allegations, misdeeds and outright lies.  That’s the difference between classic liberals and the new Bolshevists; the former can be persuaded by unpleasant facts and truths while the later continue to ignore the inconsistencies out of existence.

Do read or watch Ms. Weiss’s speech to the Federalist Society national lawyers convention. Ilya Shapiro calls it a “speech for the ages.” Will it wake people up? Some, other classic liberals who’ve allowed themselves to slumber in the postmodern cult of nihilism for too long.

At first, things like postmodernism and postcolonialism and postnationalism seemed like wordplay and intellectual games—little puzzles to see how you could “deconstruct” just about anything. What I came to see over time was that it wasn’t going to remain an academic sideshow. And that it sought nothing less than the deconstruction of our civilization from within. 

But sadly not the bulk of the credentialed but ignorant mass products of the woke system of American “education” will heed the obvious call.

It seeks to upend the very ideas of right and wrong.

It replaces basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. 

And there you have it: the idea of meritocracy on which America was founded and thrived has been replaced with entitlement by reverse birthright. And all this in the span of just a couple of generations.

So we either let the heathens and rapacious animals take over the earth or we fight them now, before their critical mass makes it impossible. Bari calls her comrades, left and right, to fight with her. The clues are everywhere now: the half-baked theories based on half-backed science more interested in social engineering than truth i.e. climate warming. Or the even more half-baked theories based on more half-baked ideologies such as critical race theory and ESG. Or flat-out crackpot theories of a gender/sex fluidity that has brought us to cross-dressing teachers and transgendered story “ladies” exposing children to deviant behavior as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Not to mention the conversion of children to whatever the opposite gender is and casual, non-parental approved, gender reassignment.

Such lunacy – the destruction of civilization in the name of a tyrannical New World Order – is, I fear, a nod to humans willingly embracing idiocy, gullibility and reluctance to make waves. 

So what do we do?

First: look. We must recover our ability to look and to discern accordingly. We must look past the sloganeering and the propaganda and take a hard look at what’s in front of our eyes.

Look first at what just happened. At the barbarism that Hamas carried out.

Look at the reaction to it. Take stock of how profoundly the lies and the rot have traveled. How badly the forces of civilization are faring in this battle. How it is the most educated, the most pedigreed who have become the most morally confused.

Time to stop blaming the bat. Clearly it’s the pitchers.

Early November Mist