American "Liberals" Are Dangerous Dimwits

[DotCommunist]

this is the best bit tbf:
"The most significant development in the past 30 years of liberal self-conception was the replacement of politics understood as an ideological conflict with politics understood as a struggle against idiots unwilling to recognize liberalism’s monopoly on empirical reason"

second only to the quite awesome Forbidden Planet reference slyed in there

 

[J Ed]

this is the best bit tbf:
"The most significant development in the past 30 years of liberal self-conception was the replacement of politics understood as an ideological conflict with politics understood as a struggle against idiots unwilling to recognize liberalism’s monopoly on empirical reason"

second only to the quite awesome Forbidden Planet reference slyed in there

While this sort of attitude is obvious in Britain, particularly amongst the more vocal self-defined Remainers, it is so obviously far more embedded within American liberalism. I wonder, why is that? Just further down the road of neoliberalism than we are?

 

[DotCommunist]

could be many things but one that springs to ground is educational gap, the smart young pros of the dem party who had been able to afford college gaining more and more blithe unthought of sense of superiority to those poorer voters and their interests then becoming marginalised...of course tuition fees both in labour conception and tory hike were ideologically designed to fuel a similar situation. Whatever economic reasoning they sold it to themselves as, its class war. Too boiling to think hard, might come back on this after the Chase. Its certainly a question that hadn't occured to me before wrt the uk/us differences

 

[DotCommunist]

'to mind' not 'to ground'

 

[danny la rouge]

this is the best bit tbf:
"The most significant development in the past 30 years of liberal self-conception was the replacement of politics understood as an ideological conflict with politics understood as a struggle against idiots unwilling to recognize liberalism’s monopoly on empirical reason"

second only to the quite awesome Forbidden Planet reference slyed in there

Enjoyed the Forbidden Planet reference (I've been shoehorning 50s sci fi references into posts for years!), but got quite tired of the extended Freud metaphor. But the idea of the patronising liberal belief in its intellectual superiority is a good peg to hang an essay on. Enjoyed it.

 

[DotCommunist]

interesting to hear our Mensch mentioned as on the 'left' albeit as a crank. Threw me a bit lol

 

[DotCommunist]

weird niche she has carved out

 

[danny la rouge]

interesting to hear our Mensch mentioned as on the 'left' albeit as a crank. Threw me a bit lol

I read that as saying she was part of the last ditch attempt by Managerial Liberalism to reassert itself against the global right and global left.

Yeah, some of it didn't really work. Still a good read.

 

[danny la rouge]

Yeah, I'm still reading it that way:

"Managerial liberalism is doing what any superego must under severe stress: continue, against all hope, to assert control. Yet, faced with an ascendant global right and a resurgent global left, its correcting and corralling impulses have gone haywire. It becomes frenzied, elevating cranks like Louise Mensch in a last-ditch effort to reestablish its authority, shouting this is not normal this is not normalinto a void."

 

[J Ed]

I read that as saying she was part of the last ditch attempt by Managerial Liberalism to reassert itself against the global right and global left.

Yeah, some of it didn't really work. Still a good read.

Actually I'm not so sure, welcoming figures like Mensch and Garland is exactly what the En Marche project in France is about and what centrists here would also love to do.

As for Mensch being on the left, what is interesting that she has adopted and re-purposed a lot of the methods used by Clintonites during the Dem primaries to race bait those to their left from the left. So, for example, she will talk about privileged white men smdh *beyonce gif*, she will post up pictures of the Obamas smiling in the same cult of personality way that Clintonites do. She will also talk about how awful and racist it is that Muslims are blamed for terrorist attacks especially since in reality those carrying out the attacks are actually Russian agents who are posing as Muslims.

 

[Spymaster]

There is nothing whatever Israel could do that would satisfy you.

And that is anti-semitism.

Ahhh, the old 'you got me there so you're a racist/anti-semite/liberal/nazi' ploy!