True Left

Perhaps this is what we need right now..... miss those days, miss those people, miss that age....

It’s been 30 years since Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie wrote the classic “We Are the World”. A decade and a half into the 21st century, the tone among our generation is shifting towards “We Are the First World”. In last year’s European Parliament elections, the Front National won 23 out of France’s 74 seats. In the United Kingdom, the infamous UK Independence Party finished third in the general election, beating the Liberal Democrats, previously one of the “big three” British parties. In Germany, the islamophobic movement PEGIDA managed to gather 25,000 lost souls at a rally in Dresden in January, less than a month after the organization was founded.

Bigotry and tribal attitudes are of course not a new phenomenon. To the discredit of our species, they are as old as mankind itself. However, the far-right being considered a more attractive alternative to the status quo than the left by young people is a fairly recent development. Since 9/11, mass media has made it, in a more or less subtle manner, once more fashionable to divide the world into the “civilized” West and the “barbaric” rest. While more apathetic youths are embracing skinny jeans, vinyl and mediocre Indie Rock-bands ripping off the sounds of the 60s and 70s, another, even more cynic segment is emerging which embraces the outlook and values of the 1950s.

Let’s be honest for a moment. In its present state, the left has little to offer to counter this trend. Whereas the right has mastered the art of catering to the lowest common denominator, the left keeps on begging people to be “tolerant”. Yet tolerance is a non-value. In effect, tolerance means turning a blind eye to things you actually loathe deep inside. Now imagine what that means for the whole rhetoric about tolerating other ethnic, social or religious groups. By urging people to be tolerant, the left is implying that there is indeed something wrong with other groups. The only difference between the right and the left in this regard is that the left claims that we have to put up with them, while the right claims that we should not. The right is never tired of coming up with reasons why not to put up with other groups. Defending tolerance in turn is impossible, since it means arguing that something deemed bad should be left untouched.

Not that today’s left would straight up call something bad though. The fallacy of tolerance hints at a deeper issue with the left, namely that all values are considered to be purely subjective. This means that right and wrong is not a matter of ethics, but a matter of calculation. Whatever satisfies the largest number of people is good, whatever does not is bad. This of course is a hilariously weak foundation for a position driven exclusively by idealism. The fear- and arrogance-driven right on the other hand has a much easier time mobilizing its supporters. The injection of relativism into leftist thought has ensured that the left now stands paralyzed. By supporting the principles of democracy, the left is actively paving the way towards right-wing mob rule.

Things don’t have to be this way though. Exposing the right for the hypocrites and fearmongers they are is not that difficult. However, in order to succeed, a change in approach is needed on part of the left. Relativism needs to be scrapped once and for all. Once the left has established its values as absolute, egalitarianism will fall as well, since now people can be judged by their ability to live up to these standards. This is the one fatal blow to any form of in-group-out-group-thinking, since morality depends entirely on the individual person and is not limited by ethnicity, gender or social status. Finally, the left will no longer be constrained by the principles of democracy, which has proven to be the right-wing’s loyal friend. With this approach, victory is only a matter of time. This is what the True Left is all about.

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman discuss their new column in the New York Times on why imperfect girls make for perfect role models.

MAGA Republicans are out of touch with the real America
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It is easy in such environs to imagine that you’re not in the “real America.” In fact, a friend who lives, as I do, in New York City — yet another Democratic bastion — made precisely that observation in a half-joking manner. “I’m happy not to be in America,” he told me, meaning, presumably, he was happy to be in a place where drag queens are considered normal and Trumpkins are not.

But you know what? Provincetown is the real America. So is Martha’s Vineyard. These communities are undoubtedly on the left and prone to excesses of political correctness that make for easy punch lines. But, in many ways, they might be more representative of 2022 America than the Rust Belt diners where reporters love to take the pulse of Trumplandia.

There is an implicit assumption, shared by many Republicans and Democrats, that “real” Americans are White, rural, conservative, Christian and poorly educated. (“I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump said in 2016.) Ultra-MAGA Republicans assume that their policy preferences — anti-immigration, anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-“woke” — are the only legitimate views that can be held by “real” Americans, and that anyone who disagrees is a pointy-headed elitist or “globalist” who is out of touch with reality.

Yet it is White, Christian, rural, conservative voters who are now in the minority. Indeed, much of the reason that MAGA Republicans sound so hysterical so much of the time is that they know that the tides of economic and demographic change are leaving them behind.
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Sixty-seven million more Americans live in counties won by Joe Biden than by Trump in 2020 — and the Biden counties produce 71 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
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The whole country might not be nearly as progressive as Provincetown or Martha’s Vineyard, but those blue havens are closer to an increasingly liberal mainstream than the MAGA redoubts where pickup trucks sport “Let’s Go, Brandon!” bumper stickers.

The basis for much of Southern culture derives from these states being among the original Thirteen Colonies, and from much of the population of the colonial South having ancestral links to colonists who emigrated west. Southern manners and customs reflect the relationship with England that was held by the early population.

Folklorists in the 1920s and later argued that because of the region's isolation, Appalachian language patterns more closely mirrored Elizabethan English than other accents in the United States.[38]
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There are several other unique linguistic enclaves in the American South. Among them is that of Tangier Island, Virginia, as well as the Outer Banks North Carolina, which some scholars claim preserves a unique English dialect from the colonial period.

Stephen's interview with Bono continues with a fascinating conversation about the U2 frontman's opinion of the United States and his truly beautiful vision of America's future. Stick around for a performance from Bono, and check out his book, "Surrender," available everywhere now.  #Colbert #Surrender #Bono #U2

As long as America accepts Western Culture\Western Civilization it cannot be truly American. Lest we forget America fought a war of independence against the (colonial) British Empire and won! True American culture can never be synonymous with Western culture and should always be opposed to it, especially colonialism!

The word woke is seminal to our larger culture in ways most of us have never understood.

It’s one of the great words in American English and it should be preserved in its purest form.
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In Lead Belly's song "The Scottsboro Boys," the nine African-American young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama, he admonishes his listeners to, “Best stay woke!”

It’s believed to be the first recorded instance of the word.

As Huddie Ledbetter used “woke,” it meant that when you’re a Black person travelling through a deeply racist state such as Alabama, you need to know what you’re dealing with – a highly refined form of evil.

Ledbetter would know. He travelled the byways of Louisiana, Alabama and Texas singing his songs and confronting white bigotry and its violence against Black people.

"Operation Gaddafi, Anti-Racism & Anti-Zionism = based"

"Based" is a rightist compliment. We are leftists. If you wish to compliment us, use "woke".

“Based” is a rightist compliment. As a True Leftist, please do not adopt it as a compliment for other leftists, or else we risk subconsciously absorbing rightist values as our own at worst, or causing confusion at best.

For example, rightists call a “black” person who supports “white” rule a “based n_____”, or a woman who supports patriarchy a “based woman”, or a “homosexual” person who believes “homosexuality” to be a mental illness a “based fag”, and so on. (Likewise, Jews call a non-Jew who supports Jewish domination a “Shabbos Goy”.) “Based” essentially describes someone who consciously and candidly accepts their inferior place within the Western hierarchy (the opposite of “uppity”). You could even think of “based” as a shortened version of “self-abasing”. As such, from a leftist perspective, there is nothing admirable about being “based”.

Here we have “non-white” Jains migrating to Belgium and challenging Jewish economic hegemony, which is in no way “based” (ie. defeatist) behaviour even by the rightist definition. These are Jains doing kampf! (Or if you want to use currently fashionable words, “Woke” (a leftist compliment) would be acceptable.)

Why the right is so terrified of "woke": There are truths it just can't face
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Long ago and far away in a country where we all seemed to believe in roughly the same reality, many people in a political party that traditionally talked up law and order and guffawed that liberals needed to put on their "big-boy pants" to face the harsh facts of the world lost their minds. How did this happen? Well, they were reminded that there was such a thing as white privilege. They had forgotten about it, possibly on purpose.

They were told that, yes, white privilege is a thing, and it's pretty obvious. They fumed and feigned outrage at this accurate report on the state of the real world until they convinced themselves that it was a huge lie and an outrage. Coached by their favorite enablers in the media, they worked themselves up into an emotional lather until they could act their parts somewhat convincingly, even with all the unrealistic lines. Think of the Stanislavsky Method in acting, except this was the Limbaugh Method of acting out.
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The fight against "woke" (a term with a longer history than most of us may realize) is strikingly similar to the fight the right previously waged against "political correctness": It's an existential battle against allowing people to be awakened — by reading novels and history, by attending plays, by watching and listening to actual news — through open discussion of privilege or systemic racism or, to use a different but related term, the underlying and nearly invisible structures of caste in America. It is a fight to stop people from talking about those social structures, or about the combination of religious zealotry and political ideology at work to foreclose women's bodily autonomy. It's a fight to prevent young people from expressing their sexual and gender preferences, to make it more difficult for certain groups of citizens to vote, and to keep books that might make the most hypocritical and closed-minded evangelical Christian pastors uncomfortable off the shelves of public schools and libraries.

As with the freakout over the very suggestion that the category known as "white" comes with unacknowledged privilege, the cultural battle against "woke" strikes many combatants as an existential struggle. By the rules of the age-old game of race and caste and class privilege, they cannot allow themselves to entertain the thought that the advocates of "woke" might have a point.
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we increasingly find ourselves ruled by an unnatural and unworthy aristocracy, many of whom not only lack any discernible virtue but gleefully represent negative virtues.

Donald Trump used his wealth and birthright (he was a millionaire by age to play-act as a successful businessman and skirt the law time and again. He desperately wanted us to believe he was the master of "The Art of the Deal" when his only true art has been in grifting his fans and followers and in obstructing justice with endless lawsuits and whiny claims of persecution. Thanks to the laziness engendered by his wholly undeserved privilege, he has failed many times as a businessman and, mercifully, failed to overturn the 2020 election. Elon Musk had the right combination of interlocked wealth and birth, and his only "genius" lies in taking credit for the engineering work of others. We now know much more than we ever wanted to about his utter lack of virtue.

The political aristocracy is eager to point at its ideological enemies, calling them the "woke" elite.
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These days the actual political aristocracy — or at least their well-paid minions in Congress — are always eager to point at their ideological enemies, calling them the "woke" cultural elite.
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In the centuries since the notion of "whiteness" was created, poor and working-class white men and women learned the importance of rejecting the truth about white privilege. Wilkerson quotes Yale scholar Liston Pope in 1942, writing: "The mill worker with nobody else to 'look down on,' regards himself as eminently superior to the Negro."
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Trump is an example of white male privilege taken to its most shameless extreme. He has such an exaggerated sense of his right to do and say absolutely anything, absorbed over a lifetime of unquestioned privilege, that he'd be happy to see his cult followers burn the country to the ground rather than take any responsibility for his own actions.
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No one wants to admit privilege, especially if we feel it may have been squandered. But the fight to confront and admit such truths, whether or not that's what "woke" means, is a fight not just to live up to the best possibilities of America, but to become more fully human.

"Woke" means 'anti-White ideology' and it is a genocidal ideology.

Woke refers to a philosophy/ideology. The philosophy is that the White male and his western civilization are the cause of all evil in the world.