As reported by The Blaze on Dec. 31, a couple of days earlier in broad daylight at a busy intersection in N.Y. City, a gang of young cyclists, without provocation, savagely attacked a BMW stopped in traffic. The vehicle was sporting physician’s plates and was occupied by a White male and older female clearly terrified by the assault. The thugs pounded on the car’s hood and slammed their bikes into its doors, one of them ultimately putting his foot through its windshield. Some in the onlooking crowd actually cheered. This is not hearsay. It was all caught on camera. It turned out that the driver of the car was treating his mom to a tour of the city’s wonderful Christmas decorations.
Now to an old White fogey such as myself, this would seem to have been a disgusting display of unprovoked savagery. But to a member of the Woke Generation, it might actually make some sense. After all, the BMW clearly indicated that its driver was a person of some affluence and the Left has been implying for years that all Rich People are A-holes who don’t give an F about anyone other than themselves. And of course the occupants of the vehicle were White, and as Academics, the mainstream Media, “Anti-Racists,” the “1619 Project,” Critical Race Theory, Oprah Winfrey, the Obamas, etc., etc., etc., have made quite clear, all White people comfortable in their “privilege” are, whether they know it or not, Racists. So why not terrorize a vehicle clearly symbolic of the oppression which is the source of all Evil in the contemporary West?
Do I know this was the mind-set of the thugs? Obviously not! But this Blog is entitled “the politics of hate” because the Left’s fundamental currency is Hatred, the cultivation amongst those who feel “marginalized” of the spurious belief that their condition is always someone else’s fault, indeed that they are always the innocent Victims of the wealthy, the powerful, the successful. It is the gross simplification that has inspired thousands of predominantly young people, both Black and White, to vandalize Urban America’s streets over the last several months, convinced that they had every right to do so. It is a mind-set utterly antithetical to that Rational Self-Awareness which would seem to be essential to a truly Moral Mode of Being.
Ayn Rand believed, with Socrates and the philosophers of the Enlightenment, that Man’s Mind is his defining characteristic and his chief vehicle to that Objective Reality which exists with or without his consent. Her Objectivism is of course hated by the Left as it impugns that all-forgiving Relativism which gives every Civilization and indeed every Individual the right to wallow in the conviction that their Ideas and Values are as legitimate as all others. For Rand, Reason is integral to the very notion of Morality. To the Woke Left, as manifest in the writings of a multitude of “Anti-Racists,” LGBT Activists, Feminists, etc., it is a tool of the White, Patriarchal West.
In the blog entitled Western Liberal Guilt, I mentioned my book whose central Idea is that it was the 19th Century Romantics who, loathing the Rationalism of the Enlightenment, introduced the ludicrous notion that Man’s feelings, his intuitions, his imagination, might lead him to the truth. The result was a century rife with cultural icons who were more often than not self-indulgent, drug-addicted, syphilitic adolescents, “intellectuals” for whom Reason and the Rule of Law were anathema. Such is the sensibility that re-emerged at Woodstock. Such is the sensibility of the Woke Left! “Progressives” love to cite that small percent of Christian Fundamentalists who think the universe was created in six days as evidence of “conservatism’s” disdain for Science. But whereas 99% of the “conservative” pundits I admire are decidedly rational and scientific, the Left, fundamentally rooted in Irrationality, gleefully abandons Science whenever the feelings of the “marginalized” demand it.
In our contemporary world, Reality can be whatever you want it to be. And so, for example, Nancy Pelosi has just decreed that in the upcoming session of the House of Representatives, gender specific pronouns will no longer be tolerated. Moms and Dads will be referred to simply as parents, Brothers and Sisters as siblings. That the Evolutionary Norm for the propagation of the species is clearly the so-called Binary Gender Paradigm is apparently irrelevant. Being Gay or Transgender is now no less “normal” than being Heterosexual. I am in no way seeking to instigate hatred against anyone of an alternative sexual identity. But the denial of Objective Biological Realities out of deference to the feelings of those who might feel slighted by such is surly a recipe for the complete moral/intellectual collapse of a Civilization.
Clearly inequities of various sorts infect every social/political domain. But these are hysterical times in which any transgression by the member of a “ruling elite” is immediately deemed to be evidence of the corruption of his/her entire class. Reason be damned! The Individual be damned! I cannot tell you how often I have read that Black people can’t possibly be Racists! Really, are the True Believers of the Left, those whom I would contend are a species of Religious Fanatic, actually that stupid?
Could it be that Socrates, 2500 years ago, was wiser than Marx? Could it be that the cult of Victimization endorsed by the Left is a recipe for intellectual/moral disaster? Could it be that what is presently defined as “tolerance” is actually an endorsement of wide-spread adolescent self-indulgence? Could it be that those such as Bill De Blasio who chose to decrease funding to the NYC Police by approximately 1 billion dollars, are simpletons of almost unimaginable naivete? Could it be that the political Left knows next to nothing about Human Nature ?