PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST

 (A repost from several years ago with some minor editing)

Like a lot of people today on the right of the political spectrum, I often waver between the libertarian and conservative side of issues (they’re not completely the same). In the past I really didn’t care much about issues like abortion, trans rights, or drug use. I basically still don’t. I must confess however that the more the woke left pushes its agendas on the public and the more leftist-controlled power structures like google unjustly manipulate access to information, the more I find myself digging my heels in with the cultural right. It is of course a common tendency among most — a psychological principle — to hold one’s ground more strongly when the opposing views argument becomes a mere command to obey.

The firmest positions from the political right that I hold relate to the value of keeping government authority limited and power diffused. My greatest fear for the future is that statism will triumph and every citizen of the world will become a mere cog in a global bureaucratic wheel that constrains human creative expression and codifies stasis and submission. For the whole world to be like North Korea would be hell on Earth but for the world to be an embodiment of (congress woman) Maxine Water’s vision would be a close second (her authoritarian idealism would likely lead to a North Korea-type scenario anyway).

Beyond the political tug of war currently occurring in the west is something possibly even more dubious. Andrew Breitbart famously said that “politics is downstream from culture” — an insightful observation that recognized the role that culture plays in manipulating political thought. The right can pen articles and essays, speak at colleges (though that is easier said than done), and create blogs and Youtube videos. But, no matter how convincing one may be, impact will be limited so long as Hollywood, the music industry, education, and establishment news sources are dominated by the cultural Marxist menu of grievance.

Cultural Marxists’ belief, along with “progressives’,” have been the guiding force behind the West’s ever leftward momentum during the last half a century or so. Suffice it to say that Cultural Marxism is a philosophical belief system that sees the final advance of socialism most easily obtained through a direct attack on the daily cultural milieu we live within. A cultural Marxist will not bore their audience with lectures on “class struggle” or “dialectical materialism.” Instead, they may organize a march for a concocted crisis of oppression against a victim du jour (and their contrived gripe will be covered by the likes of CNN to their favor).

So we now find ourselves daily bombarded with whining concerns for the plight of the transgendered “LGBQxyz” community,” as if anyone really cares about their “victimization” or adoration. Some people have jobs and bills to pay. 

A half century ago, mention of alternative lifestyles would elicit a snicker and eye roll. To be sure, reaction would not be marked by “acceptance” but it wouldn’t be marked by “hate” either (and it rarely is today). The Cultural Marxist goal is to import as much rot and chaos to the body politick as possible and then paint all aspects of society as corrupt and in need of total upheaval for not accepting every possible choice of lifestyle. Then, they can insert the socialist “guardians” they fostered upon millions in the last century. One must remember that a socialist of any stripe ultimately seeks to control others (society at large). The means by which it gains that control is irrelevant so long as the goal is reached.

More than a few people have noted our own time’s similarity to Weimar Germany, a cesspool of decadence and cultural decay (with a few examples of creative innovation).  As a libertarian, I don’t care if someone is using drugs and I don’t like the idea of a threat of punishment if one chooses to. On the flip side I don’t think that dealers on street corners and addict parents are a good thing either. I don’t care if others think they are a different gender than their biology indicates. Where the march into Gomorrah becomes problematical is when “choice of lifestyle” becomes a strategy to disrupt societal stability. The famous Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” well depicts the negative course of civilization when it has lost any sense of moral bearing. The Romans — and history — could see the results of a civilization where the prime goal is indulgence and gratification at the expense of all that is innocent, pure, and dignified. Freud had hit the nail on the head when he noted that humans’ simple prime impulses were to seek pleasure and avoid pain. One could also note that an excess indulgence in pleasure often results in pain; physical, emotional, and societal. 

I’ve never been into religion at all and have always been annoyed by those who think I am in need of “[their] truth.” That said, I’m not so sure that the quiet family who goes to church on the weekend, prays before meals and vows relative adherence to standards of morality is such a bad thing when compared to “revolutionaries” dedicated to the overthrow of common goodness. The Jacobin alternative to stable living can be seen as even worse when one considers what occurs once they’re in power. There isn’t a single “revolutionary” movement that, upon destruction of their host body, doesn’t become puritanism on steroids. The Taliban outlawed music, the Soviets sought to eliminate any art form that veered away from “Soviet Realism,” and North Korea today is hardly a great place to go clubbing on the weekends (unless one is a high-level member of the “workers’ party”).

In a liberal republic, the traditionalist perspective (conservatism) is largely motivated by the expectation and hope that free choice will choose what is best for one’s self and others, but the lure of pleasure can blur the lines between good living and “fun” living. There are plenty of artists and Hollywood directors that will gladly romanticize a world of wanton decadence over one constrained by reason and moderation. The Hollywood left would have us believe the average family home is (or should be) like the one in the film, American beauty...or that it’s okay if it becomes so. In truth, humans have problems and purity is hard to come by but when everyone is on the Dionysian bandwagon, madness becomes a collective standard — never a good thing.

Hypocrisy is okay, within reason. Most people want a sane world with some constraint on the tendency of humans to do stupid things, or at least do things to unnecessary excess. And most people, at some time or other, want an extra cookie, bong hit, or glimpse of a naked body. 

It may be that sane people will just have to accept that the course of all civilizations eventually takes them down a road to self-destruction and we can only hope that our own lifetime doesn’t occur in such a period.

Maybe it’s okay that Donald Trump is a serial philanderer who also supports  patriotism and Christian traditionalists. The “hypocrites” may actually be the best among us, drunk on Saturday night and praying in church the next day. Better than living a “clean life” of self-deprivation in honor of an overbearing state or slouching toward Gomorrah only to find one’s self waking the next day in the gulag. 

# posted by Promethean Antagonist @ 9:03 AM