Resisting center-right indoctrination

Note: I am still figuring out how to best use this thing as a platform. Most of my stuff here will be private but when I write something purely political, I will likely leave it public. If you want the whole thing, I’m a cheap date. If you don’t, hope you get something useful out of this post anyway.

One of my pet peeves in the national anti-genderloony conversation right now is the way everyone blames the left for everything shitty going on. I point out, to no avail, that the United States hasn’t had an organized left for many decades and they certainly are not writing or enacting national policy — shit, they’re lucky if they can get elected dogcatcher. In the past I’ve written some on the subject of what “left” and “right” mean, and I need to do it again because I zerged that post, but suffice to say for now that what passes for a “left” in the U.S. is the Democratic Party, which is politically center-right. If you ever wondered why they sound so much like Republicans in terms of what policies they actually support and enact, that would be why. They’re basically Republicans who don’t go to church or who pick the most milquetoast, low-standards, permissive religion or denomination possible.

(I’m not Christian and I don’t actually care, but I have a personal history in that religion and I know what I’m seeing.)

Given that we don’t have a functioning, actually influential leftist party, you would think that we had some truly leftist voters supporting the Dems anyway, since even a center-right party is closer to the left than the Republican Party tends to be. We probably do have them — I used to be one of those, in fact — but in order to find and associate with them, we must be discerning.

For starters: Anyone putting out a meme like this, unironically, is not a fucking leftist.

“But Dana,” you’re saying. “What’s wrong with this list? Looks pretty leftist to me.”

Glad you asked. The sentiments are not wrong per se, but this is all code and twaddle. I will explain why, item by item.

You read books, and don’t burn them.

Center-rightists are convinced, or at least want to convince the public, that America is banning and burning books. I don’t doubt that every now and again some lunatic group holds a book-burning session, but it’s not a regular thing — and book bans are not constitutional, hence not legal.

These people act like no one is publishing graphic novels depicting explicit sex scenes and aimed at the “young adult” market, meaning teenagers, meaning minor children. When I was looking that up just now to provide you the link, I saw an argument that it’s aimed at the 18-and-up market. But I will tell you right now, and this is an absolute fact: I have seen this book offered in literal CHILDREN’S BOOKSTORES. One, anyway, in Delaware, Ohio. It was in the front window. There is no way that was a one-off experience or an outlier, because other people have found it in school libraries too.

We have the right to curate what our kids read. We have the RESPONSIBILITY to do that, actually. And especially in school libraries, where we can’t wander through the stacks with our kids every time they visit and pay attention to what they’re getting.

More broadly, just because it’s in a book doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile information. I have read some real crap over the years that I can’t believe trees were murdered for. We have a real problem in our culture with our worship of the written word and we refuse to develop discernment about it. I’m not even talking about in a moral sense. I mean being able to filter out blatant lies and disinformation and bullshit, really. We’re really bad at it. (Which just makes it all the more important that we mind what our kids read, because the younger you are when you acquire a piece of information, the more likely you will believe it’s true.) If we’re such a “rational” species, I’d love to hear a reasonable explanation for this.

Which takes me to point two.

You embrace science.

No one embraces science. People embrace information they agree with whether it’s “science” or not. If we embraced science, we wouldn’t be at eight billion worldwide and the planet wouldn’t be fucking burning. Next fucking question.

(If that was too flippant for you, you haven’t been paying attention to the bullshit they’ve been shoving down our throats in the name of “health” — no, I do not mean COVID — and “gender identity.” Oh my god.)

You are willing to change your mind when new information becomes available.

This sounds good, right? Nice and high-minded? Rational, even?

Just because “new information becomes available” does NOT mean that information is accurate or truthful. If you immediately believe a piece of information just because it’s new, you are not “woke,” you are a sucker.

It goes back to the D word again. No, not that D word. Discernment. And I don’t mean you tip your head sideways and look at it again and then believe it. I mean you make an intellectual fucking effort to figure out whether there’s evidence to support it or whether it even makes sense.

Being willing to change your mind in the face of additional evidence is a commendable trait, yes. Just make sure you evaluate that evidence first.

I will add: Another one of my pet peeves is this weird habit we have all picked up of referring to a wrongheaded idea as “old-fashioned” or “outdated.” If it’s true or morally right, it doesn’t matter how old it is. If it’s false or wrong, it doesn’t matter how new it is. Age literally does not matter here. When did we invent the wheel, again? Nobody knows. It’s been a long time: we’re talking thousands of years at least. You would still drive a car or ride a city bus, right? Okay. Stop being afraid of saying “right and wrong” and “correct and incorrect.” Those are what are actually at issue here.

You understand that most issues aren’t black and white.

Again, this sounds nice and high-minded. It’s probably even true. The problem here is that some people who say this want you to pretend that a black-and-white issue is not a black-and-white issue. They want to knock down your boundaries or force you to lower your standards.

This is related to the previous item. Don’t just take someone’s word that an issue is “not black and white.” Practice… here we go again… discernment and investigate the issue for yourself. That is, if you aren’t already perfectly aware of what the issue is about and what’s at stake. And if you are informed about the issue in question, don’t let anyone gaslight you.

You believe in true equality for all people.

First off, a leftist believes in liberation of oppressed peoples. Or more accurately, a leftist understands that liberation is necessary if oppressed peoples are going to acquire the ability to fully meet their own needs. A leftist does not stop at the milquetoast buzzword equality.

Secondly, if a person has not progressed far enough in their own politics to understand that liberation is necessary and is still at the stage of aiming for “equality,” the phrase “I believe in equality” more than suffices. That the person is referring to equality for all human beings is implied, and every listener understands this.

The extra emphasis in the words “true equality” and “for all people” means that the speaker isn’t really interested in full political liberation for all people who respect one another’s human rights. Rather, the speaker wants you to defend people who violate social mores and allow them to mistreat other people without negative consequence.

Specifically, these days, anyone who utters the above sentence is trying to get you on board with “drag queen story hour” and the commission of fraud on legal documents and the invasion of and theft of women’s resources and allowing men to go into women’s restrooms and wank in the mirror so they can upload the video to OnlyFans or Pornhub. That’s not equality. That’s oppression of women and children. Call bullshit on it early and often.

You like to share.

Nothing wrong with sharing.

But as in sex, if it does not involve enthusiastic consent — or, better yet, enthusiastic initiative, meaning it was your idea and not asked OF you — it’s not sharing. It’s theft.

You embrace cooperation.

Same deal. This cannot always or mostly involve other people demanding it of you. If people are demanding cooperation from you, it’s not cooperation, it’s submission.

This kind of thing is why center-righters like the term equality better than the term liberation. They don’t want you free. They want everyone equally miserable. Equality requires you to submit to demands for sharing and cooperation. Liberation means you get to decide for yourself whether you share or cooperate.

You respect others’ rights.

Absolutely we should respect others’ rights.

All too often, center-righters call privilege “rights.”

A good metric for figuring out whether what’s being asked for (or demanded) is a privilege or a right: Will the person die, suffer health damage, or have their freedom limited without reasonable cause if they are deprived of whatever it is?

This is in the same vein as the “true equality for all people” bullshit a few entries back. It’s from the same people with the same motivation behind it. No one has the right to commit fraud or to compel someone else’s speech or to act out fetishes in public. Never feel bad about pointing that out, either.

You believe culture and the arts has [sic] value.

I have always tended toward the artistic, and even back in the ‘90s when I was in high school we saw what happens when schools cut arts funding and put it all into sports. It ain’t pretty. So I feel this one in my gut. I get it.

But again, anymore this sentiment is being voiced by people who think we’re supposed to put public money into stupid shit like duct-taping a fucking banana to a fucking wall. There was an example from the aforementioned ‘90s that was even worse and actively disgusting. Meanwhile normal artists (and writers) go begging if they can’t go viral, and these clowns bleating on about arts and culture will cancel them in point-five seconds if these artists (and writers), say, know what a woman is.

Next time a Democrat tries to guilt-trip you about supporting free expression, look them in the eye and smile and say, “Even for terfs? You first, sweetie.”

You care for the planet and all its life.

bahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry. This will never not be funny. Anyone claiming to be “environmentalist” or to be “green” or to care about the earth who also still buys into industrialism is either stupid or lying through their fucking teeth.

But getting you to expend all your political energy being an apologist for the modern Industrial Age is rather clever. It means you’ve got nothing left in you to spend on figuring out how to live without industry.

There are a lot of us who would just walk away from it right now if we were guaranteed an alternative community we could escape to. We can’t create one because everyone’s too busy screaming “I don’t WANNA live in a cave” to pay attention to the actual arguments.

If you think the Democratic Party gives one single fuck about saving the planet, you’ve never seen this. Go read that whole site, including the book it’s based on (it’s linked there for free), and get back to me. I’ll bet money I don’t even have that most of you will get a few pages in, freak out, get angry, call me a fanatic, and go right back to business as usual.

On a less-strident note, how many people pushing “environmentalism” or who agree it’s a good idea even take care of their local environment? I will tell you straight up, I have never been good at this. I’m actually closer to it now than I have been at any point in my life previously, but that’s only been true for the past two-thirds of a year, and I am fifty-one years old now. You can’t just think about doing this stuff and then get high on the endorphins. You have to actually act. Consistently. Doing things that actually work.

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But woke mind virus definitely works as a label for center-right indoctrination. They want to control the thoughts and mental habits of as many people as possible as quickly as possible for the maximum power grab. And they want to keep you trapped in the realm of thoughts and feelings because if you get lost in your own mind, you are sitting on your ass not doing anything and therefore not being a threat to their system. This is why we have such an emphasis on “wokeness” rather than ACTIVISM, which word implies you have indeed elevated from said posterior and intend to engage in real-world, physical behavior. It’s only an implication; lots of people think they are “activists” when all they really do is talk shit. (Again, I’m fairly guilty of this myself. Though I like to think my talking at least brings awareness to more people. That used to be true, anyway.) But the words we use do matter, because they shape the thoughts of the people who hear and read them, and thinking is the first step in doing.

And doing is in the material realm, and we are right back to leftism (remember: political materialism!) again. If we are going to revive leftism in the West and accomplish something with it, it’s time to climb back down out of our own heads.

Don’t be “woke.” Actually wake up.