The Powers That Be
The Democrats are currently lost and leaderless, floundering in a paradox of their own creation.
This will last for a season, but will not last forever.
In the short term, the Dems cannot admit that they themselves are the Powers That Be against whom they stand in eternal rebellion, proud as Lucifer.
They cannot admit, even to themselves, that their policies and condescending narcissism are unpalatable to the coalition of oppressed minorities they claim to champion, for the simple fact of reality is that those minorities are not oppressed.
Our laws are fair and neutral in this regard, and do not impose any burden on any minority due to race, sex, or accident of birth. Indeed, in this nation, since 1960, formal laws and informal practice alike particularly favoring minorities, affirmative action and so on, have granted them special privileges in hiring, school admissions, government contracts.
The news slants stories to favor and flatter felons among them, even to a dishonest degree (see George Floyd v George Zimmerman for example).
The dispossessed in this nation are not dispossessed.
The Democrat political theory is to side with the non-conformists against the establishment, to side with the outsiders against the insiders, to side with the meek and dispossessed against the rich and powerful.
But in the Clinton years and in the Obama years, the Dem party made common cause with the rich and powerful, and formed a plutocratic totalitarian military industrial censorship socialist complex that successfully replaced the establishment with an establishment of their own.
And they demanded total, rigid, and mindlessly zealous conformity to the last jot and tittle with every dictate of the ever-changing dogma of political correctness.
The demand for conformity contradicts the pretense of being non-conformist, and the demand for representation of minorities contradicts the reality of the Dem being the Establishment.
They themselves are the Powers That Be they risibly claim to be fighting.
This paradox cannot be resolved. They cannot admit they were wrong, nor change course. They cannot acknowledge that a healthy majority of the minority has voted for their political opponent, who is a populist, who represents them, and represents the interest of the common working man. To acknowledge reality would be to explode their current political philosophy.
This in nowise means they are defeated. We are dealing with a mind virus, a cult, a social neurosis, not with a political party.
In the short term, the Dems are in confusion. They will double down and redouble their hysteria and fanaticism. In the short-term, they will lose elections and lose popularity.
In the long term, the shadow will take a new shape and rise again. Woke is cultural Marxism, which is a type of Gnosticism. It operates by the posture of eternal rebellion against order. The rebellion always selects someone to be the downtrodden whose caused is to be championed against the Powers That Be.
Each iteration of Neomarxism, Marxism, or Gnosticism has a different binary pair of victimized downtrodden and oppressive Powers that be.
For the feminist, male oppresses female. For the race hustler, white oppresses black. For queer theory, heteronormativity oppresses gay. For Marxism, the bourgeoisie oppresses the proletariat. For Nazism, Jew oppresses Aryan. For the Gnostics, the demiurge oppresses the enlightened.
In this generation, the justification for rebellion is Wokeness, which is to say, special awareness of otherwise invisible systems of oppression which exploit the downtrodden: dog whistles, glass ceilings, microaggressions, systemic racism. Wokeness is a magic that sees the invisible.
Now that Wokeness is losing its prestige, another binary pair of oppressor and victim will be found. Since the choice of oppressor and victim is arbitrary, and unrelated to reality, what names will be assigned to these roles cannot currently be predicted.
But it will happen.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
