I am so pleased with my notion of the left as a Great Reaction -- socialism is neo-slavery, welfare state is neo-feudalism -- that I keep wanting to add more fuel to the fire.
So, yesterday I thought: what about "activism?" How does that fit into the scheme of things? What kind of neo- is it? Of course, I didn't have an answer, not right away.
But then the answer came to me -- in another proof that the Freud-Jung notion of the unconscious has real legs.
Here it is: Activism is neo-knight-errantry. As in Don Quixote and tilting at windmills.
And the more I think about it, the more I know I am right. Activism is Don Quixote on stilts -- I mean Rocinante.
The joke about Don Quixote is that its hero had spent so much time reading "chivalric romances" that he imagined himself to be reviving that ancient way of life, wandering the world righting wrongs and saving damsels in distress. So, says La Wik,
So there is a double joke with Don Quixote: he's all revved up about a fiction which was itself a report on a fictional Golden Age of a ruling class righting wrongs instead of merely running their feudal fiefs and keeping the serfs in their place.
See how this applies to our activist friends? The conceit among our activists is that they are revolutionaries, in the mold of those famous revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848, sallying forth into the world to lead "the workers" or "the marginalized" to justice. Because the injustice!
But the reality is that every lefty revolution has lead straight to injustice, do not pass Go, and to death, and killing, and starvation. That is what you young heads full of mush want to model your lives upon?
And there is another thing, that I symbolize with my maxim: the middle class is not that interested in power.
If you form a movement, or even a minor political group, and you petition our modern middle-class governments for a redress of grievances, chances are good that the political system will try to "do something" for you. That is how we got the whole bloody welfare state costing 35 percent of GDP in taxes. People want free stuff, and the political system responds to them.
Notice that the left does not believe in the redress of grievances, not when it's the bourgeoisie or toxic white masculinities.
But think about the current situation from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. All this free stuff is poison to us. Apart from the fact that it is all based on force, because government is force, there is the soul-destroying stupidity and inefficiency and inability to adapt that applies to all government programs. Yet we put up with it. And we believe in live and let live, not in punishing Christian bakers.
So why do we need activists to lead the downtrodden and fight for justice? The answer is: we don't. Because middle-class government is a government of laws, not of plunder, or it would be if the middle class had its way. If someone has a genuine grievance, then middle-class people will give him or her a hearing. That is the record of the last century, subsequent to the moment when the middle class got the vote and replaced the old monarchical and feudal governments.
The point of the old notion of chivalry, I imagine, was the need for young aristocratic blue-bloods to think up something glorious, something a little more glorious than administering their boring aristocratic agricultural fiefs. That is why, I presume, as late as the time of Henry VII in England in 1500, they held tournaments, where aristocratic hot heads could tilt lances at each other, riding expensive horses and wearing expensive plate armor, while the ladies watched in terror. Merchants need not apply.
Same thing today. Activists fret and strut their hour on the stage, reading the historical romances of Marx and Zinn, and imagining themselves like the revolutionaries of a former age bravely out-daring the dangers of the time (only they would not be quoting Shakespeare). But today's activists are not brave rebels: they are the little darlings, the scions of the ruling class. And Marx and Co. were not brave revolutionaries either. Sure, Marx got kicked out of Europe for his doings in 1848, but he didn't get sent to die as a slave laborer in the Kolyma goldfields. He lived out his life in London, bonking the help, writing books, and supported by his rich kid friend Engels.
The fact is that our lefty activist friends want to take us back to a time that never was. Revolutionaries are not noble activists; they are murderous thugs.
So, yesterday I thought: what about "activism?" How does that fit into the scheme of things? What kind of neo- is it? Of course, I didn't have an answer, not right away.
But then the answer came to me -- in another proof that the Freud-Jung notion of the unconscious has real legs.
Here it is: Activism is neo-knight-errantry. As in Don Quixote and tilting at windmills.
And the more I think about it, the more I know I am right. Activism is Don Quixote on stilts -- I mean Rocinante.
The joke about Don Quixote is that its hero had spent so much time reading "chivalric romances" that he imagined himself to be reviving that ancient way of life, wandering the world righting wrongs and saving damsels in distress. So, says La Wik,
Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story.Of course, the chivalric romances -- like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and Parzival -- were, even in their time, highly romantic notions of the life of the aristocracy. The whole point, I imagine, was to make the feudal lords feel good about the purpose of their life on Earth. Heck, they were not mere armed looters and plunderers, but noble do-gooders, riding around the country righting wrongs with sword and spear in the name of the lady-love whose scarf they displayed on their helmets.
So there is a double joke with Don Quixote: he's all revved up about a fiction which was itself a report on a fictional Golden Age of a ruling class righting wrongs instead of merely running their feudal fiefs and keeping the serfs in their place.
See how this applies to our activist friends? The conceit among our activists is that they are revolutionaries, in the mold of those famous revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848, sallying forth into the world to lead "the workers" or "the marginalized" to justice. Because the injustice!
But the reality is that every lefty revolution has lead straight to injustice, do not pass Go, and to death, and killing, and starvation. That is what you young heads full of mush want to model your lives upon?
And there is another thing, that I symbolize with my maxim: the middle class is not that interested in power.
If you form a movement, or even a minor political group, and you petition our modern middle-class governments for a redress of grievances, chances are good that the political system will try to "do something" for you. That is how we got the whole bloody welfare state costing 35 percent of GDP in taxes. People want free stuff, and the political system responds to them.
Notice that the left does not believe in the redress of grievances, not when it's the bourgeoisie or toxic white masculinities.
But think about the current situation from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. All this free stuff is poison to us. Apart from the fact that it is all based on force, because government is force, there is the soul-destroying stupidity and inefficiency and inability to adapt that applies to all government programs. Yet we put up with it. And we believe in live and let live, not in punishing Christian bakers.
So why do we need activists to lead the downtrodden and fight for justice? The answer is: we don't. Because middle-class government is a government of laws, not of plunder, or it would be if the middle class had its way. If someone has a genuine grievance, then middle-class people will give him or her a hearing. That is the record of the last century, subsequent to the moment when the middle class got the vote and replaced the old monarchical and feudal governments.
The point of the old notion of chivalry, I imagine, was the need for young aristocratic blue-bloods to think up something glorious, something a little more glorious than administering their boring aristocratic agricultural fiefs. That is why, I presume, as late as the time of Henry VII in England in 1500, they held tournaments, where aristocratic hot heads could tilt lances at each other, riding expensive horses and wearing expensive plate armor, while the ladies watched in terror. Merchants need not apply.
Same thing today. Activists fret and strut their hour on the stage, reading the historical romances of Marx and Zinn, and imagining themselves like the revolutionaries of a former age bravely out-daring the dangers of the time (only they would not be quoting Shakespeare). But today's activists are not brave rebels: they are the little darlings, the scions of the ruling class. And Marx and Co. were not brave revolutionaries either. Sure, Marx got kicked out of Europe for his doings in 1848, but he didn't get sent to die as a slave laborer in the Kolyma goldfields. He lived out his life in London, bonking the help, writing books, and supported by his rich kid friend Engels.
The fact is that our lefty activist friends want to take us back to a time that never was. Revolutionaries are not noble activists; they are murderous thugs.
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