Aside from the fact that I need to watch every penny I spend and he is a billionaire, Elon Musk and I are barely distinguishable. In a recent post on X, Musk cited his views on the major issues of our day, insisting they were utterly, rationally, “centrist” and in no way warranted being disparaged as “right wing.” It is the point I have been attempting to illustrate throughout these hundreds of blogs.
As “liberals” are the dominant force in both the Media and Academia these days, they have infected public discourse with the biases of their dementia. In our dystopian culture, therefore, “conservatism” has come to be associated with the Right, as if it represents a deviation from the Rational Center. Ironically, of course, it is the Left’s mindless submission to Sentiment that is in fact irrational and actually a form of fanaticism! The term “far-right” is equally duplicitous in that those who really are racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc., have nothing to do with mainstream “conservatism.”
As I have pointed out repeatedly, the Left is rife with those who have repudiated Reason as just a Western fixation. The teaching of Science and Math in our schools, for example, is regularly cited as an example of White Supremacism. “Intellectual” John Ralston Saul spends an entire chapter in his book “Voltaire’s Bastards” denouncing the shortcomings of Reason. But it is incontestable that the abandonment of Reason in favor of Feeling leads inevitably to Chaos, to a world of self-centered children whose “feelings” of victimization have utterly warped their vision of Reality. Absurdly, “progressive” cultures have come to lionize those so inclined while demonizing their critics, those intent on a rational consideration of the many factors, historical, biological, etc., which have shaped our contemporary world. The political Left, this is to say, in deference to the stereotypes born of its devotion to Identity Politics, literally loathes the complex facts of Objective reality. In his post on X, Elon Musk describes this perspective as the product of an “anti-civilizational woke mind virus.” I absolutely concur.
What, he asks, is racist about the belief that America’s borders need to be secured against the intrusion of millions whose very numbers debilitate the government’s already pathetic inability to provide for its own citizens? And is “conservatism’s” preoccupation with Law and Order an indication of its lack of empathy for the “disenfranchised” or simply a matter of common sense? Ought the safety of decent, law abiding citizens to be compromised by a legal system which customarily releases recidivist criminals, drug addicts and the mentally dysfunctional into their midst, or is the Left’s approach to the Law literally insane? No less absurd, Musk contends, is the anti-White racism being stoked amongst people of Color by the simplistic neo-Marxist narrative that has come to dominate our culture. The notion of the “systemic racism” of the U.S., for example, indicts millions of decent White people who have never entertained a racist thought in their lives.
Musk sees himself as a legitimate “anti-racist” because Reason rather than Skin Color is the ultimate arbiter of his valuations. For genuine “conservatives” it seems self-evident that one’s Identity in no way validates the integrity of one’s views. Blacks can be racists. Gays can be mindlessly self-indulgent. Women can be callously manipulative. Morality transcends Identity. Predictably, ironically, the Left’s abandonment of a Rational, Moral perspective leaves it unable to defend itself with any degree of integrity. Rather than analyze the complexities of any given issue, it consistently resorts to the same tired slurs: misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, far right, populist, etc., etc..
As an example of his “centrist” perspective, Musk cites his outrage with the Trans community’s attempt to assail 10 and 11 year old school children with issues of gender ambiguity which they are clearly too immature to process. On Canada’s Juno awards show last night, Elliot Page slammed Alberta’s Danielle Smith for her recent legislative edict forbidding the initiation of gender altering procedures on kids of a certain age. Gee, are both Smith and Musk motivated by hatred of transgenders or by a loving concern for children whose lives could be utterly devastated by the wrong decision? It’s a complex issue but we both know haw much of the “woke” Left will respond, as complexity doesn’t really suit its juvenile approach to Reality.