Your Crap

In my recent "Rush to the Middle" post I decried agendas of the far left and far right in the USA. Though my views haven't changed much over the years, because of shifts in national politics my views have gone from being moderate-libertarian to far left to now center left (and are epitomized by capitalism-saving policies such as universal health care and universal income.) When I called the agendas "your crap" in the above post, I insinuated that the far left and far right agendas were basically the same thing. And that's exactly what I meant. 

 First let me define what I mean by far left and far right. If you can't vote for Biden because he's "republican lite", then you are far left. If you hold your nose and reluctantly vote for Biden your are moderate enough to be considered center left. If you hold your nose and vote for Trump because you can't handle what the left has been up to lately, you are center right. However, if you enthusiastically support Trump, or think that Trump should have more than two terms, you are far right. In other words you don't have to be a full blown communist or white separatist to be far right or far left, you just have to be really enthusiastic about Trump or so enthusiastic about Sanders that you are threatening within a month of the election to not vote for Biden. Let's look at what is the crap flowing from the far right, and then the crap flowing from the far left, so that I can tell you exactly why it is the same crap. 

First the far right bemoans the loss of a Christian America. But this specific brand of Christianity isn't the Black Church, it isn't Catholicism as is practiced by most Latinos, and contrary to popular belief it is most definitely not LDS. The Christianity they are talking about is primarily White and mostly North American, and has historically been very hostile towards other religions such as Catholicism, LDS, Islam and eastern religions. The white separatists I have talked to aren't anti-people-of-color, what they want is white-affirmation, "we want a world safe for white children." The so called loss of Christianity on the right is not much different.

Second the far left seeks for the English language to change in order to affirm minority groups, especially African American and LGBT. This is startling at first to those like me who are extremely concerned for our heterosexual male black friends who are at high risk to be brutalized or killed by law enforcement, because most of those black victims are straight and male. But now with a scortched earth victories in the supreme court on both abortion and gay marriage, where else is the far left to go with their culture war? 

But as one of my center left friends has pointed out, "equal rights for _______ is not _________ affirming." So for example, "equal rights for White Christians is not White Christian affirming." As we can see with this example, this affirmation seeking is essentially asking for a form of supremacy. If American Christianity needs to be preserved through legislation, that is clearly legislating white supremacy. This is the problem with the "your truth/my truth" or "your lived experience" verses "my lived experience" of post modernism, is it validates personal prejudices based on personal experiences, and thus validates racism in general. This is evident in both the far right and the far left right now.

The right was infiltrated by the cancer of post modernism in the George W. Bush years through that president's total reliance on Orwellian language, or what he called "truthiness." But now the far left seems infiltrated by the same mentality, unable to commit to vocabulary needed to form coherent policy. If "toxic masculinity for her may be different than what toxic masculinity for me," then toxic masculinity isn't really anything at all, because for words to be meaningful, they have to mean something. Policy is built on words, no words = no policy.

All of this extremism is very destructive for our democracy, and empowers villains like Trump who thrive in these chaotic circumstances. The far left is perfectly fine with Sanders branding himself as a "socialist," a word the far left fully understands alarms over 50% of the voters in the USA, and distinctly calls for a different form of government than what we have now. Likewise the far right sees the safety of fetuses as more important than a stable democracy. What they both fail to understand is their extremist views are only possible because of our democracy they have such contempt for. If the constitution fails, it is likely that whatever follows will not support the freedom of speech that make their extremist views possible.