In the Blog entitled The Rule of Law, I mentioned that the Left is informed by two utterly contradictory views of Human Nature which render all its valuations absurd. On the one hand, as suggested by the writings of Darwin, Marx and the Post Moderns, we are power driven monsters seeking to dominate if not destroy the “other.” This definition is used to explain the behavior of Capitalists and indeed post-Enlightenment Western Civilization in general which invokes Reason, Efficiency and Structure to justify its sordid agenda. On the other hand we are told by Pearce, Haidt, Rifkin, Saul, etc., that we are basically empathetic when not forced to be otherwise by a cruel, cruel world. While every moment of every day suggests we are neither one or the other of these simplistic inventions, indeed that we are complex beings whose capacity for understanding and volition can render a myriad of subtly distinct moral orientations, the Left, while constantly celebrating its intellectual sophistication, consistently views the world precisely in terms of these stereotypes.
Radical Feminist literature over the last 70 years, ignoring both the exigencies of historical context as well as the complex realities of biology, suggests all of History, including that of Western European Man, to be a never ending tale of misogyny. Those Renaissance artists who appeared to idealize women were actually trying to keep them politically impotent. Those Medieval European nations which sent out armies of young men to be slaughtered by whatever invading horde from the East, kept their women at home not out of reverential love but out of a condescending arrogance. That both Socrates and Plato wrote feminist treatises over 2000 years ago is apparently irrelevant. I realize I am over-simplifying, but every onslaught from the political Left does the very same, reducing complex moral issues to simplistic polarities. Hence the contemporary movement to defund the police, the ludicrous assumption being that they are “systemically” corrupt while those opposing them are the sweet,”innocent” victims of oppression.
Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany’s July 24th response to those “progressives” who stood with Portland’s protesters, those like Nancy Pelosi who referred to the federal forces sent in to quell the chaos as “stormtroopers” while another referred to them as little better than the Gestapo, was both courageous and effective. While Portland’s Democratic Mayor was apparently comfortable in describing the previous 55 days of dissent as both justified and relatively peaceful, McEnany presented a video clip proving the very opposite. While the fires, explosions and beatings depicted were certainly incriminating, the video ended with a truly ignorant young woman screaming that she hoped someone would kill the fucking families of those who were arresting her. Such is the moral/intellectual degeneracy of the Left that it supports obnoxious simpletons such as she while implicitly demonizing all those who would uphold the Rule of Law as mere agents of oppression!