The best criticism I’ve seen of post-modernism, specifically Michel Foucault’s flavour of it, comes from Karl Rove—former U.S Presidential advisor to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
In other words, by the time you analyze how power structures work, those in power change the reality of those power structures.
Which means by the time those who critique realize what’s happening, conditions change. It’s too late. With the time it took to analyze, you didn’t act fast enough to resist the “new reality”.
@atomicpoet
Fair, but I read that to mean that they were creating new realities on the ground that upset past frameworks for agreement or "reasonable compromise".
By the same token, George Floyd, BLM and MeToo did much the same. We live in a far different place than Karl Rove's 2003, and not all to his liking. Many (all?) of the "realities" they created were a miserable failure.
@Okanogen With all those examples you have of left wing “new realities”, I don’t think that’s the case.
George Floyd is dead. That is a fact. He was killed by the police. Progressives did not create this reality.
Same deal with BLM. The only reason it’s a debate is because certain people with power have created the conditions where Black lives are in question.
MeToo describes a common experience women have. This experience is not a fiction but a result of current power structures.
Okay, all these movements described what is happening. This is good. However, what has changed?
Well, George Floyd is still dead.
In regards to BLM, the right wing has redefined what it means and have hijacked the term “woke” for their own purposes.
MeToo was perhaps the most effective movement: Harvey Weinstein will probably die in jail. However, it ran out of steam due to having too much of a binary world view and being unwilling to engage with other marginalized groups. It also didn’t help that certain leaders, like Asia Argento, were definitely not the best spokeswomen.
But the problem is that, in all cases, the right wing has been able to hijack the narrative and peddle their own alternative “facts”.
@atomicpoet
There are stronger arguments than "George Floyd is still dead.".
Who cares if RW twist certain cultural movements to their purpose? They always were going to do that, and it hasn't necessarily worked out to be a winner for them. Right now they are at war with the most popular popstar in the world and they look ridiculous.
But my point was the "realities" they created were miserable failures. Iraq is not an ally, a safe beacon of democracy, Afghanistan is right back in Taliban hands.
@Okanogen None of that matters. You’re living in a world of facts. The right wing doesn’t care about facts, nor do they care about truths.
What they care about is winning.
Objectively speaking, whatever their grievances with Taylor Swift, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another mirage of a cultural war that exists to outrage. And while their followers are frothing at the mouth regarding this, that, and the other thing, the ones who hold power are manufacturing the next fantasy.
That is how the cycle goes. The right wing manufactures a crisis. The left wing analyzes it. And while the left wing is busy analyzing, the right wing rolls out their next crisis.
Now I’ve described how this works. Here’s the way to fix it: stop spending so much time on analysis, and instead act. Specifically, act by changing the rules of the game. Or better yet, play a different game all together, one in which they can’t win.
I’m not an American. But at least in my own country, we’ve been made a concerted effort to not entertain extremist delusions.
@atomicpoet don’t leave out the vogue for #LGAT scams, which encourage ppl to alter their own reality. #AlternativeFacts they are all the rage amongst the politics, business, and NGO types.
To answer this, I think we need to remember that Republicans gaslight, and will again in the future. They'll pretend that they are the norm, and everyone not with them is abnormal, and wrong.
They also project, which is more unpredictable, because it's from the Republican Id... like the Freudian Id, opposite the Ego. PizzaGate and the whole QAnon mass psychosis. Who knows what deviant, fetid, fetish fantasy will curdle and bloat with gas in that fevered Christofascist collective unconsciousness.
Just saying... we should be both afraid of very real zombies, and prepared.
And also, we should recognize that zombies are brainless morons, but not without guile.
@atomicpoet Asking them to debate, explain or otherwise to engage with us is wasting our time and energy participating in their plan. While we're busy telling them how evil their actions are and asking them far too politely to stop, they're continuing to do evil.
We need to stop reacting and start actively and aggressively moving towards our preferred outcomes. We've waited far too long for them to come around; it's never going to happen.
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