In my idea of the German Turn I argue that the Germans, starting with Kant, have redefined the world on the basis that we cannot know things in themselves and, moreover, cannot definitely proclaim the one and only meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" for all time.
In other words, although we humans are eternally trying to figure out the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything," our latest wizard wheeze on the subject -- whether the idea of the gods on Mt Olympus to Jesus Christ dying on the Cross for our sins or Nietzsche's Zarathustra chappie, or Martin Luther King Jr's faith that the arc of history is moving towards justice -- is merely the best we can do to figure out the impenetrable mystery of our lives and the universe -- for now.
But we humans are forever tempted by our human conceit to proclaim The Truth for all time and to impose The Truth upon our fellow humans -- in their own best interests, of course. Any such effort I regard, in my wisdom, as a Wrong Turn.
And the worst of all is the secular religious faith of our lefty friends, that the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" can be found in the application of left-wing politics and political power for the noble and just purpose of bending the arc of history towards justice.
I say that in their sanctification of politics and political activism, our lefty friends have made a Wrong Turn that will lead to nothing but misery and death until it collapses on account of its errors, its crimes, its conceits, its lies, its internal contradictions and its butcher's bill.
In the first place I believe it is an error to imagine that politics can do anything to create justice. Politics and government, in my understanding, are only useful in rallying humans -- men -- to defend the homeland against an existential threat like Mongols and Nazis. Thus did Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt understand the political as the question of the enemy, with whom conflict is possible.
As soon as the existential threat has receded, then government turns to the business of loot and plunder, or injustice, straight up. You can dress up your loot and plunder in all sorts of fetching costumes, and declare moral emergencies such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, but loot and plunder is loot and plunder.
Our lefty friends instinctively understand this; that is why they always declare a moral emergency to justify their use of politics and force. But it is all a lie.
I say that the left's Wrong Turn is manifest in several identifiable movements. The first is what I call the Activism Culture, that proposes political activism as the highest and best way to live, fighting for the oppressed. I say that activism is a new form of the medieval romance. Back at the end of the Middle Ages the upper class -- including upper class women -- created the idea of the noble knight that used his martial skills to save helpless damsels from a fate worse than death. It was the historical role of Miguel Cervantes to satirize this upper-class conceit in Don Quixote. Now we have educated-class youth practicing a new knightly romance imagining themselves as "allies" rescuing "oppressed peoples" from the clutches of "white oppressors." Only the Age of Revolution is over.
Activism Culture has developed a specific subculture, Allyism, that experiences the world as the moral interaction of "oppressed peoples, their allies, and white oppressors."
The second is what I call Little Darlings. The modern justification of political power is based on the neo-medieval romance and its noble succor of the helpless victims of the time, the damsels in distress. Today the romance of rescuing damsels in distress has faded somewhat, and so our rulers have invented new helpless victims to succor. I call these helpless victims Little Darlings. Don't be a Little Darling, any more than a young woman should become the little darling of some rich Uncle Sugar. Sooner or later Uncle Sugar will tire of his little darling, and sooner or later the ruling class will tire of its latest helpless victims and go find some more. This has been the fate of the white working class, once the eternal love of the educated youth. Now the Little Darlings are People of Color. There are also fake victims such as educated-class feminist women and educated-class homosexuals and the various LGBT quarterings.
The result of these two Wrong Turns is what I call the Great Reaction. I say that the Activism Culture and its worship of Little Darlings has resulted in a Great Reaction, a lurch back to the primitive, for
Socialism is a return to slavery; the welfare state is a return to feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance.
And so on. It all comes down to Curtis Yarvin's maxim, that
There is no politics without an enemy.
I say that, instead of strutting and fretting its hour upon the stage of politics, our educated class should be turning inward, examining its assumptions, its beliefs, its conceits in an arduous journey into the underworld of the unconscious. And those not up to the terrors of the journey into the unconscious should just shut up and, like Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, live an unhistoric life, a hidden life, and be content, in the end, to rest in an unvisited tomb.
Next step: Left's Wrong Turn Table of Contents.
