Are right and left in agreement to demoralize us?

First a note for book lovers: Across all of January, the Uplift Storm Trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore & Heaven's Reach) will be on e-book sale for $3.99. Alas apparently not on Kobo or Barnes & Noble. But a crazy good deal on Amazon. Do you want adventure? With some science and great alien races? I got em here for you! And... oh... what savings!

Now...

== A fanatical cult keeps growing ==

Christopher F. Rufo recently published "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything," arguing that America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of the 1960s radicals, "disguised in benign-sounding language like diversity, equity and inclusion"

There are so many refutations to this bald-faced blather, but the simplest start with:

Who has benefited? Until the first “Supply Side” bills under Reagan, the U.S. middle and working classes shared in every advance in the American economy. Ever since those successive Supply Side ‘reforms’ - first Reagan's and those of Bush and then Trump - working Americans have fallen ever-further behind the top 1%, but especially the aristocrats and inheritance brats of the top 0.01%.  Wealth disparities skyrocketed to French Revolution levels. That is, until 2021 – when the Biden+Pelosi bills reversed those trends ... a little.

So who ‘took over’ America, judging by those who benefited? Casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks, “ex” commissars in the Kremlin and members of an incestuously parasitical CEO caste. 

The 'left’? Puh-lease. Oh, sure, there does exist a far-left wing of ditzy, sanctimony-junky yammerers, bent on trashing their own side's credibility, delighting Foxites who nightly point and cry: "See? ALL liberals are like THAT!!"  A lie, but effective...

...at distracting from the disproportionate outcomes of each side. Like the nearly universal rule that the US economy does better during Democratic administrations.

So let me reiterate that not one positive outcome prediction ever made by Supply Side promoters - re deficits or industrial investment or economic growth - ever came true. Not… one… ever. And I have had standing wager offers on the table for a decade.

If any of the followers of Milton Friedman and that ilk had a sliver of dignity (or manhood) or fealty to scientific method, they would eagerly accept my offer of wagers over that devastating assertion.  They would try to prove me wrong.

But a cult is a cult! “Trump advisers plot aggressive new tax cuts for second White House term.” 

Six thousand years of rule by inheritance brats and high level cheaters never accomplished (combined!) 1% as much as the FDR generation did, by raising up the working class into a prosperous middle class... plus using anti-trust etc to spur fair competition. Adam Smith - who denounced aristocratic cheaters as the main enemies of fair competition - would today be a flaming Democrat.  

Mr. Rufo’s entire movement has been taken over and suborned by those casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks and “ex” commissars who own the GOP. And who subsidize his yammers.

== How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement ==

A somewhat less-wrong rightist screed is Fredrik deBoer’s book, “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.” The assertion - in this case somewhat defensible - is that liberal movements seem to be driven nowadays more by sanctimony than by achieving actual, pragmatic outcomes for the poor, or oppressed, or for the Earth. Or for posterity.

“Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.... For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete.” 

Above all: sanctimony-driven activism extolls purity of dogma and proper incantations over incremental progress. (Hence ignoring the incredible accomplishments of the Pelosi 2021-2 Congress.) It encourages disdain for the legitimacy of allies who might not adopt – or agree with – every polemical litmus test. And the electoral results are devastating, as attacks on allies weaken the very coalitions that must be broad enough to achieve working power.

Dig it folks. As much as it hurts - the guy is generally correct. Liberalism is bleeding away Hispanics and Blacks and many others who are sick of being told what to believe, by smug patrons who should instead be listening.  

Indeed, you start to see why the Mad/Treasonous right has survived and even flourished, despite their utterly disproved policies and long-expected demographic collapse. 

It also fits and explains the most bizarre-ingrate rightwing trend I have ever seen, a full-court press campaign to discredit the universities that were the topmost investment of the GI Bill generation. The very institutions that actually Made America Great.

Oh, the Confederate madness WILL pass away into discredited insipidity, the way it did in most earlier phases of America’s 250 year ongoing Civil War. 

But it would have happened long ago, except for the sanctimony fetishism of our own mad wing.

== Will this too pass? ==

Some things just explain themselves.

Much has been said about the role of fear in propelling our social and political problems. It was much discussed in The Postman, where I projected fear as the last straw that triggered violence and the Great Collapse. Still, hardly anyone – even anthropologists – offer deep perspective on the big tradeoff underlying it all. Closest was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I cite here, in Altruistic Horizons: Our tribal natures, the ‘fear effect’ vs. inclusion… and the end of ideologies.”

“Private jets cause 14 times more pollution than commercial flights. But now momentum is building around the world to rein in billionaires and make them pay for the destruction they're causing. Add your name to demand taxing private jets, and share this widely!”  

I would in fact go much farther! There should be a target date for a worldwide convergence to demonstrate at every private jet terminal, with placards shouting Get Back Into First Class! Let’s see them denounce that as ‘commie!’

Of course this is also a result of the apparent determination, by a microencephalic, flattery-lobotomized aristocratic caste, to revive the concept of Class War, that had been thrown in the dustbin by the New Deal reforms. (Engendering a calm and spectacularly productive middle.)   

In their drive (though they seem too dumb to realize it) to resurrect Karl Marx, today’s moronic oligarchs actually seem to believe their best path to restoring feudalism will be to wage all-out war against … nerds! Yes, those geeks who know stuff. Those who daily craft miracles and advances that stand a real chance of saving the world.

Alas, the spoiled, prepper-lord oligarchs have an unexpected ally -- Hollywood -  whose relentless series of downer stories do not have the salutary effects that I described in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood - warnings that can be acted upon and save us all, as 'self-preventing prophecies.  

No, So many of today's movies are despair cult stuff. Take so many recent flicks, like Leave the World Behind, which is all about demolishing all hope or confidence. Attacking even any remaining scintilla of a notion that millions of skilled people might cooperate to save something worth preserving...

...like a civilization that - for all of its flaws - has been very good to us.