(Boris asks..)
Honestly, how in the world did the same-sex marriage happen to appear on the left-wing agenda in the West? Don't they have other things to worry about? It appears to me that this speaks of a serious ideological crisis the Western left are in. Convince me otherwise.
Boris, I share your sentiments.
The way I read this development in the West originates in the nature of rebellion and change during the Post WW2 period of America's growth. As you can imagine there was a certain arrogance that America rightly drew from its victory in Europe and a set of elites quickly formed. The younger Baby Boom generation, to its credit saw some of this as stifling. Nobody wanted to grow up in a Cold War world. But they incorrectly blamed all of their parents shortcomings for everything wrong in the world, and like never before the American Establishment was blamed for everything. The emergence of a genuine Left never really happened, but Marxist ideology was the only framework upon which elements of rebellion and revolution in miniature grew up.
What was truly original and genuine was the counter-culture. So the American Free Speech, Free Love, Drug Consciousness, Women's Rights, Environmentalist, Civil Rights, Pop Art, Black Nationalist, Chicano Pride and Gay Pride movements all gathered force during the 1960s under the broad Anti-American protests against the War in Vietnam. We have had wars before and since, but never had there been such resonant ferment for change. How much of that was actually, genuinely aiming for Marxist revolution - not much at all. It was only culturally coordinated, not ideologically sound. And yet no doubt, true Marxists took advantage.
My opinion is that this counter-culture, this rejection of nationalism, is the only way most Americans who are not technically educated in the hard sciences know how to organize their sentiments towards improvement of society and the world. They begin with a rejectionist premise and devalue all of the social rules that have evolved in the West before the end of WW2. There is a generation of academics whose joy is revisionist history, and their intellectual framework is the language of French deconstructionists and post-modernists. They have made a fetish of 'other' identity and rejected most forms of conformity. They seek to elevate the abnormal and question the normal. I see them as cultural relativists.
It is thus a convenience that their interests are served by a Socialist state whose rejection of religion and celebration of the common man fulfills Marx's historicism. If the state can provide, then traditions and culture are of no use.
So under the guise of 'social justice' and 'equality' they have sought to give radical autonomy and authority to anyone who is willing to question American tradition and even the Constitution itself. They have repainted America's exceptionalism in the same tiresome diatribes of 'sexism' , 'racism' and now 'homophobia'. These are their transparent weapons of shaming, shunning and silencing. They are Leftists of opportunity, rallying behind candidates 'of color' and advocates of 'victims' of all sorts, who use 'social justice' as a figleaf for whatever government actions they see fit. This brings us to the very edge of fascism in America - a kind of 'whatever works', 'pragmatic' policy with none of the benefits of evolved political philosophy. True Marxists have never been fooled by candidate Obama, but those who would take their tired counter-cultural ideas to the next level seized the day. Now all criticism of America's first black President is reduced to 'racism'.
America still possesses millions of patriots whose fidelity to the Constitution is unshakeable and whose resistance to the Orwellian levels of doublespeak now accepted as legitimate politics remains strong. But there is no simple way to coordinate their efforts and sentiments. I believe young Americans are impervious to the political overproduction of the 'Left' baby boomers and will see nothing special or energizing about the non-idelological counter-cultural identity politics of their grandparents. In a shrinking economy, they understand and value family and well-thought out structure. The personal failures which mark today's victimology does not stir today's youth to great sympathy, and they are not so eager in a post 9/11 world to trash their homeland.
As you can see, these identity politics have made millions of Americans insular and naive. They have impressed themselves with their ability to aggregate votes and support candidates here at home. The provinciality is stupefying. The great writer Aldous Huxley said 'an intellectual is someone who has found ideas more interesting than sex'. By that standards, we have few intellectuals left, because in America the standards of decency have dropped abysmally. We have more teenage venereal disease than almost ever in our history, and the single mother is yet another abnormal made to be the new 'normal'. Here we have someone defending left politics and exemplifying interracial sex as the great benefit. It is no wonder that such people have no vision in foreign policy and are apt to disengage America from the world. They are navel-gazers of the first degree and that is why they allow great failures of industry, education and economic solvency. They do not wish to elect leaders who solve real-world problems, they wish to elect leaders who make nice speeches and blame others and cry in public.
The average American is encouraged to think street culture is legitimate and that family traditions and obligations are irrelevant and outdated. They are encouraged to seek sexual liberation at any cost, and to put the value of the life of animals and plants above that of human beings. Such are the people who can listen to rebellious rock and roll into their 50s and 60s and find the very perversion of homosexuality to be inherently interesting. But it is not homosexuality itself, but the socially transgressive political activist sort designed to make everyone else uncomfortable that these people seek out. Think about it. These activists are exploiting the sex lives of their fellow citizens in order to make a swipe at everyone else. Pathetic, but effective.
I live in a country where people are afraid of sugar, and brag about the fact that they are building hospitals instead of steel.
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