An article in Bazaar from a few days ago: If you are married to a Trump Supporter, Divorce Them:
Supporting Trump at this point does not indicate a difference of opinions. It indicates a difference of values…You do not need to try to make it work with someone who thinks of people as “illegals.” Just divorce them
(If the author of this piece really doesn’t understand that the presence of someone in a particular country can be illegal, she should try to visit or move to France, Mexico, Canada, China, or India without appropriate documentation. Should be educational.)
We are now pretty far down the road, I am afraid, toward the politicization of just about all aspects of life in American society. Here is a collection of earlier links and comments on that topic:
Sgt Mom posted about the “Sad Puppies” affair: basically, it seems that the science-fiction publishing industry and its leading association and award structure have become highly politicized in the name of “progressivism”…in reaction, a contrarian movement arose called the “Sad Puppies” (there are also “Rabid Puppies”)…and these groups have been vitriolically attacked by some prominent members of the SF publishing establishment..
A very funny post about a very serious topic. Sarah Hoyt, herself a science fiction writers, tells of (and illustrates) some of her own experiences with the Science Fiction Writers Association.
What kind of things do you think they talk about at a convention of the National Art Education Association? Best ways to teach perspective and watercoloring techniques? How to explain Expressionism and Impressionism? Not these days.
“Political correctness” has become a serious threat to American society
What makes people want to live in a politicized society, and what is day-to-day life like once the complete politicization has been accomplished? In this post, I cite some thoughts from Sebastian Haffner, who came of age in Germany when the Nazi movement was casting its spell, and a vivid fictional passage from Ayn Rand, who grew up in the early Soviet Union.
Gleichschaltung. A word much favored by the Nazis, it means “coordination,” “making the same,” “bringing into line”…especially, in Nazi usage, “forcible coordination.” The orientation toward Gleichschaltung is very apparent in today’s “progressive” movement and today’s Democratic Party.
Prestigious Physics Professor Protests Politicization. Harold Brown, professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara, explains the reasons for his resignation from the American Physical Society.
Stasiland. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, author Anna Funder traveled to the previous East Germany to interview both those who had lived under Communist oppression and the perpetrators of that oppression.
The Nature of Dictatorships. Thoughts from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, maker of the excellent film The Lives of Others, which is set in Communist East Germany.
Prefiguring the Hacker…and the American Surveillance Society. A 1953 science fiction story, Sam Hall.
Eric Hoffer on the destruction of individualism. “Even in the freest society power is charged with the impulse to turn men into precise, predictable automata. When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker and that every device they employ aims at turning man into a manipulatable ‘animated instrument,’ which is Aristotle’s definition of a slave.”
Bitter Waters. A Stalin-era Soviet factory manager writes about his experiences. Describing the chaos into which the Russian lumber industry had been thrown by Soviet central planning: “Such is the immutable law. The forceful subordination of life’s variety into a single mold will be avenged by that variety’s becoming nothing but chaos and disorder.”
Rose Wilder Lane. The author and political thinker describes a debate she had with a Russian village leader, back in 1919 when she was still a Communist, about the centrally planned society. “It is too big he said too big. At the top, it is too small. It will not work. In Moscow there are only men, and man is not God. A man has only a man’s head, and one hundred heads together do not make one great big head. No. Only God can know Russia.”
The mentality of the totalitarian revolutionary. Thoughts from the Russian writer of Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak.
Life in the fully politicized society, continued. Even Maureen Dowd may be finding limits as to how much politicization of art she wants to see.
The bitter wastes of politicized America. “The best way to hold a large group of people together is to make them feel as if everyone else is out to get them. The most effective political adhesives are distilled from hatred and distrust. People who disagree with your agenda are “attacking” you or “robbing” you…When the government controls everything, there is no constructive relief valve for all this pent-up tension. It all boils down to a “historic” election once every couple of years, upon whose outcome everything depends. They’re all going to be “historic” elections from now on. That’s not a good thing.”
“But would you want your daughter to marry one?” Americans increasingly say they would be displeased if their son or daughter were to marry a supporter of the opposing political party.
Deconstructing a Nazi death sentence. The text of the justification for the sentence passed on three members of the White Rose resistance group provides useful insight into the totalitarian mind. (The link to the transcript in the post doesn’t work anymore; use this instead)
Defying Hitler. This important and well-written (but mis-titled) memoir deals mainly with the social environment in Germany prior to the Nazi takeover, but the latter part of the book demonstrates what life was like under a new totalitarianism that was rapidly tightening its grip. The section about the author’s fatherwho was given the choice of either endorsing political opinions he did not share or losing his pension and being reduced to destitution, along with his familyis painful to read and is unpleasantly reminiscent of certain recent events in America today.
The party of paranoia, racial obsession, and totalitarian thinking. Link to a post by Daniel Greenfield, aka Sultan Knish, in which he explains the nature of today’s Democratic Party.
I have leftist children of varying degrees and right wing children.
In a way, it pleases me that I raised them to think. They are all educated. The only one without a college degree has the nicest home. He is one of only two that own their home in California.
He is also the conservative.
I moved out of California last year but was back on business and had dinner with three of my kids and three grandkids. All are talking about leaving California when they retire and no longer need to stay for work.
Interesting times.
Thank you for the collection of links! Will make some good reading this evening!
Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” might be added to the list.
Also highly-related: Lexington Green’s post Iconoclasm
Also Rod Dreher. Note especially the quotes from Brendan O’Neill
I’ve read a couple of histories of Nazi Germany in the last year. I picked up a third – a famous one, “The Anatomy of the SS State” – and then put it down again. I’m Nazi’d out. You can have too much of a bad thing.
You’ve had one stroke of luck so far: nobody with charisma has become leader of the left fascists.
“You’ve had one stroke of luck so far: nobody with charisma has become leader of the left fascists.”
Yes. That “white supremacist” fellow has been involved in leftist activity before becoming a “right wing” leader
Is this a conversion as alleged or a “false flag” operation or an attempt by an unscrupulous character to put himself forward regardless of ideology.
Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kessler’s ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama.
At one recent speech in favor of Charlottesville’s status as a sanctuary city, Kessler live-streamed himself as an attendee questioned him and apologized for an undisclosed spat during Kessler’s apparent involvement with Occupy. Kessler appeared visibly perturbed by the woman’s presence and reminders of their past association.
And that is from, of all places, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard left source of rumor and agitation.
There is also confirmation of another bit of info on the driver of the lethal car.
he enlisted in the late summer of 2015. The Defense Department said he was only on active duty for four months and was let go “due to a failure to meet training standards in December of 2015.”
Ӣ Weimer said that Fields told him he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger and prescribed antipsychotic medication.
I had seen that information on another site. This is confirmation. His Army discharge may have been because he had concealed this information, a felony.,
Any history of anti-psychotic medication would be disqualifying for the military.
I hope Charlottesville gets their pants sued off. Something very sick happened there, and I’m not even talking about Nazi trash marching in America:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/police-response-charlottesville-trnd/index.html
Another protester, Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told CNN affiliate WCAV the police response to “Unite the Right” was different than at rallies he’s attended in the past. He said the police in Charlottesville were too far away to prevent any violence. “The police actually allowed us to square off against each other,” Newsome said. “There were fights and the police were standing a block away the entire time. It’s almost as if they wanted us to fight each other.”
Not going to happen. They will claim immunity. And get it. One of the consistent things, that is going to bring about wider violence, is that in Democrat controlled areas law enforcement is being used to back Leftist attacks on anyone they target. This will not stand unopposed forever.
>At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 were injured in Barcelona on Thursday when men rammed their van into a crowd of pedestrians at Las Ramblas, a popular tourism area in the city in northeastern Spain. The attack came five days after a man with white supremacist group ties was arrested for driving his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring multiple others.
>CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto said the “shared tactics” of the attackers in both instances was “alarming.”
>”In light of the uproar of the last couple days, five days apart you have a white supremacist in Charlottesville use a vehicle to kill, and here you have attackers at least following the modus operandi of terrorists using vehicles apparently to kill as well, and those shared tactics should be alarming,” Sciutto said.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/cnn-questions-barcelona-attack-copycat-charlottesville/
Everything for The Narrative, nothing outside The Narrative, blah blah blah.
Keep buying ammo while it’s cheap, folks.
“those shared tactics should be alarming,” Sciutto said.
Nothing about how the Barcelona attack shared tactics with other muslim attacks throughout Europe?
Either Sciutto is a complete moron or he thinks his audience is.
Remember when the FBI said that they had no idea why that Bernie Bro tried to massacre a bunch of Republicans, but it for sure wasn’t because they were Republicans, no way, no sir?
We are living in the stupidest of all possible worlds.
Scott Adams: How to know when you’re in a mass hysteria bubble
They may be called secular, but ideologies that form the focus and meaning for people’s lives are really religions.
Judith Curry (in re to physicist’s letter above)
So, the Durham statue was torn down by a pro-North Korean Marxist. Not surprising. The lack of any kind of proportionality makes the anger at confederate soldiers seem childish.
The Democrats will regret their embrace of ANTIFA and these violent Marxists.
Black state legislators are calling for assassination of Trump.
The black vice-Mayor of Charlottesville began the agitation about the Lee statue.
I wonder if MLK would approve of this tactic? Blacks are still 13% of the population,.
I will have to read this in more detail tonight but I can say that Stasiland is an excellent read – chilling stories of life in the DDR.
@ Mike K “Blacks are still 13% of the population,.”
The last statistics I saw were something like this: 65% white, ~20% hispanic (they’re their own race ’cause la raza tells us so!), 12-13% black, and the remaining 2-3% are other (i.e., not belonging to one of the groups listed). So, we’ve got a fraction of 35% of the population yelling and screaming about how evil whites are. Not sure how many of them know anything about history, but what they’re agitating for already exists in the world. That paradise on Earth is called Zimbabwe, and I’m willing to help each and every one of the crazy nutjobs pack for a one-way trip.
I was raised on the Upper West Side in the forties and fifties. There were a number of Communists in the neighborhood and these were people
who often had bitterness issues. Interestingly enough, they never called themselves Communists. The term of art was “Progressive”. Is
he “Progressive”? This had nothing to do with TR. Interesting how that word has come back for nastiness.
I would strongly reommend “Stasiland” and “The lives of others”