Tag: Cultural Marxism

SubscribeStar Saturday: Moral Outrage about Moral Outrage

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Teaching is a profession that attracts complainers.  Teaching requires some risk-tasking, but it’s fundamentally a job for folks that want great degrees of stability.  When that stability is disrupted, teachers, being creatures of habit and order, get ornery.

That might explain, in part, the high turnover in the teaching profession.  We live in an increasingly disordered world, even in the classroom.  Part of that disorder is the assumption that children are somehow wiser and more morally pure than their elders.

That’s a notion that goes back at least to the counterculture movement of the 1960s (not to blame, pedantically and predictably, all of our problems on that misguided, suicidal decade):  the youth a moral vanguard, crusading against the long-established order and its absurdities.  The outraged shrieking of a youngling carries with it, the culture suggests, greater weight than the elderly master with decades of experience and accumulated wisdom.

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The God Pill, Part III

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I’ve written a couple of pieces (here and here) about the so-called “God Pill,” and specifically Roosh V‘s remarkable conversion to (Orthodox, it seems?) Christianity.  Roosh’s conversion, it seems, is quite sincere, and he’s put his money where his belief is by unpublishing many of his books dealing with “game,” the art of seduction.

Roosh wrote an essay about a month ago, “How I Turned To God,” in which he explains the events and influences that led to his conversion.  Roosh was the archetype of the atheist materialist:  an evolution-espousing microbiologist, who then began a successful—if only in the material sense—career as a professional Don Juan.

He literally had sex and wrote about it for a living.  As he writes, “How could a man who was so far from God come to have complete trust in Him practically overnight?”

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Lazy Sunday XLVII: Winning

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Need a soundtrack to go with all the winning conservatives are enjoying under President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson?  Download Contest Winner – EP for just a few bucks, or download the legendary title track.

As I wrote yesterday, it’s been a good week for populism and national sovereignty.  It’s easy to get caught up in the myriad defeats on our side, and it’s frustrating that we seem to rally only at the last possible moment to prevent total catastrophe, but it’s worthwhile to look back at our victories from time to time.

To that end, this edition of Lazy Sunday is dedicated to looking back at some conservative victories.  One of the pieces looks back at our greatest Secretary of State, who although was a part of the totalizing New England faction that dominates progressive thought today, also helped created our national borders with his diplomatic finesse.

  • “Independence Day” – This post was a brief celebration of Great Britain’s final exit from the blight that is the European Union.  Hip, hip, hooray!
  • “Trump Stands for Us” – This piece linked to an essay from my blogger buddy photog, “The Unique Value of the Trump Presidency“; both photog’s original and my commentary are worth reading.  There’s a popular meme that shows President Trump sitting sternly, pointing directly at the viewer, with a caption that reads something along the lines of, “They’re not after me, they’re after YOU; I’m just in the way.”  Boy, does that speak volumes.  As photog points out, President Trump truly does stand with us, the American people.  In part, he does that simply by not despising us the way our elites do.
  • “Mueller Probe Completed, Trump Vindicated” – Before the Ukraine impeachment hoax, there was the Russian collusion hoax.  How soon we forget.  While Mueller declined to write in his report that Trump could be fully vindicated, he also couldn’t make a case for Russian collusion.  Trump did nothing wrong!  After the Senate acquits GEOTUS this week, I wonder what scary Slavic country they’ll pick next.  Maybe they’ll allege that President Trump is in league with Viktor Orban in Hungary?  That would make me support him even more!
  • “#MAGAWeek2018 – John Quincy Adams” – A bit of an outlier here, but I wrote a fairly lengthy rundown of John Quincy Adams—probably our best Secretary of State, and one of our worst presidents—back in summer 2018 as part of #MAGAWeek2018.  JQA and his New England Puritan ilk can probably be faulted for many of the one-size-fits-all solutions progressives plague us with today (although he would have recoiled at what progressives want), but he was a genius in terms of foreign policy, and he was a sincere nationalist, in the best sense of that amorphous term:  he wanted to make American great, physically and economically.  It’s a worthwhile read to get some more insights into a largely forgotten historical figure.

That’s it for today!  Let’s keep winning in 2020, and KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Tucker Carlson’s Platform for Victory in 2020

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Tucker Carlson is the gift that keeps on giving.  In a segment from last week, the populist-friendly television host offered up a winning strategy for President Trump—and a warning.

In essence:  while economic numbers are very good, many of Trump’s base of supporters—the working and middle classes—are still struggling, or at least perceive that they are.  In a longer piece from Joel Kotkin (also on Carlson’s Daily Caller website), the author argues that the tensions between the Trumpian lower classes and the ascendant upper class is akin to the friction between the French Third Estate (the commoners) and the First and Second Estates (the aristocracy and the clergy) just prior to the French Revolution.

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Lazy Sunday XLVI: Man Time

The Portly Politico28 Comments

It’s been a big week for events in the manosphere.  Popular (and controversial) game pioneer Roosh V essentially ratified a decision from last year, and unpublished the remainder of his smuttier oeuvre.  At nearly the same time, the venerable Christian writer Dalrock announced the retirement of his blog, but after an outpouring of support (and shock), he has decided to leave the blog up, though he’s disabling comments.

As often happens on the blog, the unplanned, unofficial theme of the week became, naturally, the manosphere, and some discussion of its current state.  As such, this edition of Lazy Sunday looks back at some posts pertaining to that complicated, oft-misunderstand corner of the Internet:

  • “The God Pill” (and “TBT: The God Pill“) – This post was my attempt to provide a (very brief) history of the manosphere in the context of one of its Big Three, Roosh V (the others in the triumvirate are Rollo Tomassi and the now-deplatformed Chateau Heartiste/Roissy).  Roosh in particular underwent a lengthy transformation:  he embraced a life of casual sex and, not surprisingly, found it unfulfilling and empty.  He then descended into a period of despair (the “Black Pill”), but God reached down and scooped him up—thus, the “God Pill.”  It’s been remarkable to see Roosh confirm his newfound faith with the voluntary unpublishing of much of his work—a move that has not been without controversy.
  • “The God Pill, Part II” – This post picks up the thread from Roosh’s conversion.  He kept several of his “game” books in print, but the conviction of the Holy Spirit finally led him to unpublish the remainder, including his bestseller, Game.  It seems Roosh is really attempting to live his faith fully, but he will need our spiritual support to stay the course.  He’s apparently even asking readers to give him advice on how to support himself going forward.
  • “Reacting to Hysterical Reactions: Peloton Ad” – This piece was one of those throwaways I wrote hastily to meet my self-imposed daily deadline, but the media coverage of this Peloton ad really ticked me off.  I have no desire to spend $2000+ on an exercise bike with a video of a lesbian shouting at me.  But everyone—including our friends on the Right—were alleging this ad was proof of toxic masculinity and all the rest, simply because the wife is grateful for the gift (watch the ad in the original post).  Kudos to Dalrock, too, for drawing this one to my attention.
  • “Royal Cuckery” – Poor Prince Harry.  It’s amazing how an attractive woman can make a man throw it all away.  It’s also amazing how the quality of “attractive”—which necessarily has a “best by” date affixed to it—can cause an otherwise upstanding man to ignore all the other warning signs:  a broken home, a prior divorce, a woke outlook on life.  A big thanks to Free Matt Podcasts for sharing this post in his weekly roundup, too.
  • “Get Woke, Get Dumped” – This post was the contrasting companion piece to the Prince Harry one.  British actor Laurence Fox has taken the other route, and dumped his SJW girlfriend summarily.  He’s also sworn off women under 35—a dicier proposition, but understandable.  Younger girls have been so infected with and indoctrinated by wokery, it’s like talking to aliens.  There are obvious exceptions, of course, but those are called “unicorns.”

Well, that wraps up another beefy Sunday.  If those didn’t put some hair on your chest, there’s probably too much soy in your diet.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

The Creation of Culture

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The impeachment trial rolls on, and continues to be so boring, even the senators involved were falling asleep.  I have a classic Boomer colleague with whom I share a classroom, and he has been following the impeachment with rapt attention, periodically bursting into fulminations that “both sides have already made up their minds!  They’re not even listening to each other.”

He’s a sweet man, so I bite my tongue.  The reason no one is listening is because the whole thing is patently a sham.  The process isn’t being taken seriously because it’s been cheapened:  it’s merely a lurid attempt—the latest in a long series—to undo the results of the 2016 election.

That deep division is so predictable at this point that it’s not even interesting anymore, even if it remains important.  But rather than dwell on the fundamental division between two diametrically opposed philosophies (and, in many ways, theologies), I want to devote today’s SubscribeStar Saturday post to something more positive.

I’ve been pondering lately the ways in which culture gets created.  So much of our current political battles are really, at heart, spiritual.  They are also cultural.  In essence, some people are allowed to have culture; others—straight white Christian men, for example—are not.  Never mind that straight (and a few gay) white Christian men gave us the greatest works of classical music, notions of liberty and self-government, and all sorts of other wonderful cultural products.

That’s not to say that other people can’t create culture.  Not at all.  Simply saying that Aristotle was a great thinker doesn’t diminish, say, the accomplishments of George Washington Carver.  But if we’re allowed to celebrate Carver as a black scientist, why can’t we celebrate, say, Mozart as an example of the greatness of Western Civilization?  Indeed, the greatness of Western Civilization is that its principles may have started in Europe, but are, in fact, universal:  George Washington Carver was able to conduct his peanut experiments awash in the intellectual ferment of Western culture.

But I digress.  A good friend of mine has written an excellent collection of poetry, A Year of Thursday Nights.  The poet, Jeremy Miles, collected the poems as he wrote and performed them at a local coffee shop’s open mic night nearly every Thursday night for a year.  The work is a powerful example of how culture—and a culture—gets created.

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Lazy Sunday LXV: Techno-Weirdos II

The Portly Politico29 Comments

The New Year is chugging along, with Democratic primaries and caucuses mere weeks away.  Early voting has already started, as I noted yesterday.  “Tom Steyer’s Belt” continues to drive surreal amounts of traffic, which I suppose is one metric for the ubiquity of his ads.

Perhaps the greatest ally the eventual Democratic nominee will have is Big Tech.  We’re already witnessing the preemptive deplatforming of various conservative and anti-Leftist figures.  Attempts to weed out “fake” news—which to the Left is any news not reflexively critical of Trump—and to “fact check” conservatives are going to pick up as the election approaches.

Tech censorship raises a number of thorny questions that our traditional understanding of rights and obligations struggles to answer.  The question of free speech is particularly tricky, as it does seem that the monopolistic power—and the active collusion between them!—of Big Tech companies effectively strangles dissent.

That might be constitutional in a strictly literal sense—at least it’s not the government infringing on our rights—but it certainly violates the spirit of freedom of speech.  And, seriously, who doesn’t think the apparatchiks in The Swamp aren’t eagerly working hand-in-iron-fist with Google to keep tabs on us?

Does anyone have a copy of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act sitting around?  Maybe we should dust that off.  Trump would make a good trust-buster, as would Attorney General Bill Barr.  I’d sure love to see a political cartoon of the ursiline Barr swinging a club at a computer screen.

With that, here are two recent pieces I’ve written on tech companies and censorship:

  • “Free Speech in the Private Sector” – This post looked at a lengthy essay from science-fiction author Cory Doctorow, in which he argued that our traditional understanding of freedom of speech is insufficient in addressing tech censorship.  The old libertarian canard that “a private company can set whatever limits on speech it wants” is a worthy ideal, but when the “private company” dominates the public square and effectively makes some forms of expression or some ideas unspeakable, then do we really have free speech?
  • “Mailchimp Monkeys with Molyneux” – As if on cue, Mailchimp obligingly proved Doctorow’s point when it deplatformed Stefan Molyneux in a Twitter-induced panic.  Mailchimp might not be monopolistic in the way, say, Google is, but it’s all part of that cabal of freedom-hating e-litists.  Molyneux is a bit grandiose, to be sure, but he’s been maligned as being all sorts of unacceptable -isms and -ists that he simply isn’t.

That’s it for this week, folks.  Here’s to another week of selling our data to faceless technocratic overlords.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT: First They Came for Crowder

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It’s been a week for discussing tech censorship.  Yesterday, I wrote about Stefan Molyneux’s suspension from Mailchimp.  That was the result of deliberate misinformation and a handful of Twitter trolls.  It’s scary to consider that that’s all it takes to be deplatformed.

Such incidences are eerily, distressingly common.  Milo, Gavin McInnes, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones—all victims of Big Tech’s insatiable lust for virtue-signalling and social control.

This week’s TBT, then, looks back to Summer 2019, when conservative comedian Steven Crowder saw himself at the center of an on-again, off-again controversy regarding a mincing radical.

The great English physician said (I’m paraphrasing here) that we don’t need to be taught so much as we need to be reminded.  Crowder has endured with an excellent legal team, but it’s worth our time to consider the past (and present) battles in the ever-raging culture war.

Here is 2019’s “First They Came for Crowder“:

The big news in the conservative world this week was YouTube’s unceremonious demonetizing of Steven Crowder, yet another example of techno-elites censoring conservative and dissident voices.  Apparently, YouTube has somewhat reversed that decision if Crowder removes the hilarious “Socialism is for Figs” t-shirt from his website’s store (which, if that link is any indication, they have done).

The occasion for this deplatforming was a bout of limp-wristed hysterics from gay Hispanic (that’s a two-fer) Carlos Maza, a whinging, soyboy-ish fop with a penchant for calls of violence against conservatives.  Once again, loafer-lightened totalitarianism rears its fabulous head.

Maza argued that Crowder had “bullied” him in a series of sketches lampooning the sassy Latina’s emphatic videos for Vox.  As such, Maza demanded YouTube demonetize Crowder’s videos on its site.  When YouTube refused, Captain Canines led progressive journalists on a crusade against YouTube, claiming it didn’t do enough to protect LGBTQ2+etc. creators.

Please.  As Will Chamberlain writes in a piece on Human Events, Maza is one of the most privileged people on the planet:  he’s a flamingly gay Hispanic journalist.  Few people enjoy greater access to the full might and rancor of the progressive press (but I repeat myself) than this guy.

Crowder, on the other hand, has to hawk humorous t-shirts and hand-etched mugs to create a source of non-YouTube funding in order to keep his show going.  He’s been urging fans to subscribe to Mug Club for years for precisely this reason:  YouTube could pull the rug out at any moment (use promo code “Free Speech” for $30 off an annual subscription—that’s an incredible bargain).

YouTube brought in users with the promise of using their platform to make a living.  Now that they have a monopolistic market share of viewer eyeballs, they murkily shift their guidelines like a witch’s cauldron, booting conservatives for the slightest perceived offense.

Conservative content creators need reliable sources of funding to fight against the progressive media machine.  Steven Crowder needs your support.

And trust me—the mug alone is worth $70.

Mailchimp Monkeys with Molyneux

The Portly Politico3 Comments

I purchased a new vehicle a couple of weeks ago.  Since then, I’m seeing Nissan Versa Notes everywhere (and they are not terribly common).  We’ve all experienced this sensation before:  we learn a new word, for example, and suddenly we hear it spoken frequently, when before it went unheard.

That’s the phenomenon I’m experiencing this morning:  no sooner did I write about Big Tech’s crippling control over our freedom of speech, e-mail service Mailchimp unceremoniously dumped Internet philosopher and YouTube personality Stefan Molyneux.  Molyneux hosts Freedomain Radio, which bills itself as “the world’s number one philosophy show.”

I’ve listened to a lot of Molyneux’s videos.  He’s not my favorite commentator, and he can be a bit rambling (not that I can judge him too harshly for that), but his demeanor and style are endearing, and his output is insanely prolific.  Within hours of a major news event, he’ll have a detailed, lengthy video breaking down the relevant information.  On top of all that, he hosts a live call-in show, from which he’ll derive videos that often ninety minutes in length.  It helps that his callers often have entertainingly tragic problems.

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