1: Why Hasn't the Bubble Popped?
Every so often I realize that I have been “too naive” about something or other, and I vow to change, but never do.
This time the realization was prompted by my assumption that if/when the Blue team saw the cognitive degeneration of the President in a way that was undeniable, the bubble would pop. No one could deny the nakedness of the emperor, and this new shared consciousness would allow for something new to occur.
The savvy Blues would realize that the reality of his mental state had been deliberately kept from them by his handlers (whose identities can only be guessed), and that the legacy media institutions (which pride themselves on being the “check” against the government) covered for him.
They would wonder how it could have happened—how the media and much of the Blue political class could have gaslit themselves and others on this existentially vital issue. If the President has one job, they would think, it is to be ready and willing to act in a crisis. Regardless of the correctness of his politics, this man clearly cannot do that, and this fact was kept from us for months, likely years.
If the US was a company, there would be fury from shareholders and employees alike if it was revealed that the CEO was rapidly losing his cognitive abilities and the c-suite covered for him and lied about it for ages. But the US is not a corporation, and this is orders of magnitudes worse than a business scandal. It is a heinous and self-serving dereliction of duty—nearly treasonous.
But as the title of this post suggests, the bubble has not popped.
Yes, there are now calls from many for Biden to step down, but little introspection among anyone about how we could have gotten here to begin with. This means they are not to be trusted—they will not learn.
Those who have been keeping up with me know what I have to say about how this happened: The American left is deeply, dangerously isolated both ideologically and increasingly, socially. Despite the claims of right-wing culture warriors, modern cancellations have largely been a phenomenon of the left towards others dissenting liberals or leftists, and we are finally witnessing the consequences of this approach on the tribe as a whole: they have mutilated themselves. Having purged anyone capable of disagreement from their ranks, they are blind and helpless and likely to remain that way.
“Those who have been keeping up with me know what I have to say about how this happened: The American left is deeply, dangerously isolated both ideologically and increasingly, socially. Despite the claims of right-wing culture warriors, modern cancellations have largely been a phenomenon of the left towards others dissenting liberals or leftists, and we are finally witnessing the consequences of this approach on the tribe as a whole: they have mutilated themselves. Having purged anyone capable of disagreement from their ranks, they are blind and helpless and likely to remain that way.”
This is precisely correct. Thank you for articulating it so clearly.
"The American left is deeply, dangerously isolated both ideologically and increasingly, socially."
When the American Left converted en masse to the Social Justice faith it also adopted (mostly unknowingly) the habits of thought and behavior of the Social Justice priesthood aka the academic Left.
What's happening to the Democrats now reminds me a lot of the atmosphere in campus Humanities depts of the 1990s and of other "Left spaces" of the past generation or two, esp involving ideology and activism: a hothouse quasi-Maoist environment of constant accusation and recrimination where everyone has to walk on eggshells in case they say something politically incorrect, an intensely moralized and policed environment based on ideological purity and fealty, with the ideology itself being rigid, dogmatic, punitive and absolutely intolerant of dissent.
The main difference now being that these prior battles took place in classrooms and faculty lounges, but now the virus has escaped the lab and infects one of our 2 political parties and almost our entire thinking and culture classes.
I think ideological frenzies are similar to cult movements, where the True Believers will do or say anything in order to not admit that the cause they gave their lives to turned out to be false and destructive. In the case of the Social Justice Left (which provides the brains and cash for the Dem Party), only a massive social cataclysm or a massive electoral repudiation will snap them out of their ideological fever. We shall see which one hits them first.