Steve McCann – The breathtaking ignorance, unabashed espousal of authoritarian policies and nonsensical concepts by the current poster child of the American Left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a window into the end-product of the indoctrination and resultant mindset of a significant demographic segment of nearly two generations. While Marxist philosophy still undergirds this mindset, a uniquely American doctrine has become the tip of the spear in what will be a failed attempt in transforming the United States into a socialist nation.
Over the past 170 years, since 1848 and the publication of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Left throughout the world has succeeded in imposing socialism, and its offspring Communism, on various nations by fomenting and exploiting class antagonisms. This includes the United States where the American Left has successfully mainstreamed various programs with their roots in socialism, but the nation remains far from evolving into the socialist nirvana they envision. However, whatever degree of success the Marxist true believers have achieved has taken nearly a century to accomplish.
The current iteration of the American Left, while wallowing in their ignorance as to why American society is not susceptible to their siren song of socialism, has, over the past twenty years, grown exceedingly impatient and reckless, particularly as they assumed increasing control of the Democratic Party.
This impatience brought forth a new tactic to theoretically augment the less than successful class struggle stratagem. However, it is in direct conflict with the tried and true tactic of exploiting ever-present class antagonisms and is doomed to a cataclysmic failure. This uniquely American philosophy, first espoused thirty years ago on various college campuses, is referred to as identity politics and its corollary, intersectionality.
What is intersectionality? The underlying foundation of this addled thinking is one’s identity is defined by 1) current leftist orthodoxy and 2) their victimhood. The more victim groups one belongs to, the more valid their opinion and claims against the oppressors, who could be anyone but are primarily straight white males. Thus, patriarchy and white privilege have evolved into the most egregious sin against society. Ben Shapiro describes this lunacy as follows:
Intersectionality is a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to. At the bottom of the totem pole is the person everyone loves to hate: the straight white male. And who’s at the top? Well its hard to say, because new groups claim victim status all the time. No one can keep track.
A black gay and a Hispanic gay man may not belong to the same victim group racially, but they do belong to the same victim group on the basis of their sexuality. By focusing on where various victim identities intersect, intersectionality creates a united “us” versus “them” paradigm: righteous victims rising up to fight the oppressors, those dreaded straight, white men.
There is even a non-satirical website that calculates one’s intersectionality score in order to determine how much of an oppressor a person is. From the site:
Having a high intersectionality score doesn’t completely immunize you from being called an oppressor. You may be vulnerable to “weakest link” attacks–that is, being called an oppressor on any of the intersectionality factors by those disadvantaged in that factor. For example, a gay black man could still be accused of being a misogynist by women or a poor, immigrant woman could be called transphobic by a transperson.
We hope that this calculator will help fight ableism, ageism, anti-Semitism, biphobia, cissexism, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and discrimination (even prejudice) of all forms regardless of your race, country of origin, sexual orientation, (e.g. bisexual, nonbinary, intersex, lesbian, queer, transgender, or asexual)
Notice that this entire ludicrous scenario, not coincidentally, mimes the Marxian struggle of the lower classes being oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Except that at some point virtually anyone in society could be an oppressor. For example, any heterosexual white male or female in the lowest economic and societal rung of the ladder would be the unquestioned oppressors of a billionaire black transsexual.
Class distinctions or differences are thus rendered moot. The new American Left would acheive what Karl Marx dreamed about: a classless society. But what to do about all the oppression and intolerance?
Enter “Social Justice” as dispensed by the self-proclaimed enlightened, who conveniently will control all the levers of government. How would their version of justice be dispensed?
Since the central government will distribute and control all wealth, will there be one tax rate on millionaire Hispanic homosexuals and another on millionaire heterosexual white females? Does a black transsexual receive a larger guaranteed monthly income than a bisexual Islamic male? Perhaps the solution is to send all heterosexual white males and their heterosexual white partners or spouses to indoctrination camps for a year to atone for the sins of the past while seizing the bulk of their property? Would the length of time at these indoctrination camps and percent of wealth seized be determined by where one fell on the government oppressor scale?
That so many on the Left believe this idiocy underlies and illuminates the juvenile thought process and ill-education of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her millions of cohorts that dwell on social media. However, this groupthink and conformity is not limited to the millennial generation, as it includes nearly all the declared candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, a preponderance of the self-described mainstream media and virtually the entire higher education establishment. It also explains not only why the recent sophomoric and ill-conceived “Green New Deal” was gleefully published and promoted but also the permanent adolescence of far too many on the Left.
On the other hand, this unabashed and overt promotion of identity politics, intersectionality, social justice and megalomania has awakened a significant majority of Americans, many of whom have been previously sleepwalking throughout the past four decades, as to who and what the American Left is.
The myopic Left has pursued this course while ignoring a genuine class conflict that was brewing in the United States. The current social structure has evolved into a near impregnable three-tier structure in which the ruling class (which is dominated by the Left) sits astride the social order. The citizenry who provide the primary labor and resources for the economic engine of the country constitute the second tier. And, the third is comprised of those who have been betrayed by a self-serving education system and are conditioned to be totally dependent upon a government dominated by the ruling class.
Over the past thirty years, more and more wealth and power has been concentrated in the hands of the nation’s elites as wages, wealth and the standard of living for the lower classes remained stagnant or declined. In the past this would have been the perfect scenario for Marxist true-believers to make major strides in advancing a socialist agenda by exploiting class antagonisms.
Instead, they chose to cast those in the lower classes, regardless of race, religion, income or ethnicity as full or part time oppressors, or racists, or misogynists or an endless litany of other pejoratives. They have joined other elites in attacking organized religion, promoting de facto infanticide and endorsing unfettered illegal immigration while allying themselves with the super wealthy who finance this cultural and societal transformation agenda. In essence they have waged anundeclared civil war on the lower classes.
Donald Trump intuitively sensed that the antidote to this self-destructive agenda of the Left is a conservative brand of populism that not only emphasizes job and wealth creation for the lower classes, but actively and aggressively opposes the cultural Marxism promoted in the fevered precincts of the American Left. Further, he has forcefully acted on that intuition as president and is transforming the Republican Party into an entity that may well be ultimately identified by its support of reactionary populism. Which can be defined as promoting the economic well-being of the working class while protecting the cultural and societal foundations of the nation.
The Left, in their haste to transform the nation, has made a strategic blunder that will set them back generations. Thus, they have ensured that this will never be a socialist country.
SF Source The American Thinker Feb 2019