Some thoughts on my political homelessness, Part IV (Critical theories)

Another prime reason I’m now politically homeless is because of how so many people on my purported side of the aisle have enthusiastically, unthinkingly embraced postmodernism and its various critical theories. All of a sudden, everyone is falling all over themselves to mindlessly virtue-signal and deliver creepy, ritualistic mea culpas.

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I’ve been a passionate Native American ally since I was 5-6 years old. Native American rights, representation, and education are causes near and dear to my heart. Yet it’s never occurred to me to constantly prattle on about this or overstep my bounds as an ally who’s not actually Native American and wasn’t socialized in that community. To do so would be cheap, insincere virtue-signalling.

Before everyone rushed to make their social media profile pictures black squares in June, add the BLM hashtag, and start constantly talking about things like their support for Black-owned businesses, there was nary a whiff most of them felt so strongly about these issues! I’m far from the only one who suspects they just mindlessly hopped on a bandwagon because they saw everyone else doing it.

I’d take them more seriously if they’d demonstrated a longtime, consistent commitment to such issues, not only after they burst into the national spotlight and became a trendy cause du jour. In previous generations, people embraced environmentalism, anti-harpooning, and feeding starving African kids with the same short-lived burst of insincere intensity, and quickly moved on to the next big trend without a single backwards glance.

Critical theories have long since moved beyond the purview of out of touch academics in ivory towers. Even preschools are now adding mandatory training units and indoctrinating little kids with reified racial stereotypes. Many schools also have mandatory indoctrination sessions on the nebulous, pseudoscientific concept of gender, and since it’s bundled with anti-bullying awareness, parents are unable to opt their kids out of it.

I’m gobsmacked at how so many people on my supposed side of the aisle see nothing at all creepy about little boy drag queens, drag queen story hours at libraries, or the Q***r Kid Stuff YouTube channel geared towards toddlers. Would they also cheer on strippers and porn stars in full fetish gear reading to little kids or JonBenét-style beauty pageants for little girls?

This shouldn’t even be a right vs. left thing! This should be about plain common sense and understanding basic concepts of child psychology and cognitive development. It’s unreal that many people who’ve been solidly left-wing their entire lives are now called far-right conservatives for objecting to this.

You need to give your head a shake if you approach every single thing you ever do or say with the question “How does this help/hurt my xyz privilege?” It must be exhausting for such people to get through each day.

Speaking of, critical theory offensively claims the only reason people in a majority group ever help people in a minority group is to be paternalistic or advance their own privilege. What a giant middle finger to all the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives or were killed on account of saving Jews from the Nazis, to white lawyers and judges who helped to end Jim Crow, to white allies who were beaten, arrested, or killed for their Civil Rights activism, to men in government who finally did the right thing and passed hard-won legislation granting women the vote.

After all that beautiful bridge-building and all those decades of progress, society is now more deeply divided than ever. The worst racism, misogyny, and homophobia in years have been rebranded as woke and progressive. It’s now acceptable to demonise anyone who objects to the new groupthink. This has been a huge boon for real bigots, people who no longer have to hide their true feelings and can now freely express them under the guise of being good neoliberals.

They’re creating a boy crying wolf effect, making legit concepts into sneeringly-dismissed jokes due to constantly flinging these words and phrases about, and preventing serious dialogues about important issues.

My core political values haven’t changed, but the current mainstream woke groupthink ideology of the various leftist parties no longer represents who and what I am. Some things are too significant to agree to disagree about. I care about real issues which impact the poor and proletariat, not freaking pronouns and “microaggressions.”

Some thoughts on my political homelessness, Part III (Lockdown lunacy)

Another big reason I no longer have a political party to call home is because of my purported side’s views on this apparently permanent lockdown. Who are these people cheering on the end of normal life and snitching on anyone who hasn’t happily been locked at home for ten months and counting?

Yet again, this is an issue of class privilege and shining example of how the current public face of the Left is profoundly out of touch with our historic proletarian demographic. It’s easy for them to giggle about how it’s totes no big deal to work and go to school from home, only leave to buy essential groceries, and have no contact with anyone outside the house when they have lots of money in the bank, several computers, jobs with remote options, and huge McMansions with big yards.

How many poor and working-class people have regular, guaranteed access to computers or even smartphones? Some people have had to do college classes from their phones in parking lots, because they have no WiFi or computers. And forget about working remotely when your industry requires in-person work. How can people in mill towns or working retail perform those tasks from a damn computer?

Many of my K–12 classmates came from poor and working-class homes. Thus, their parents had far greater priorities than enriching educational experiences outside of school. When you live paycheck to paycheck and are exhausted by the weekend, you can’t take your kids to a museum or Ren Faire. Having a computer is a luxury. Many of my classmates went right into the working world after graduation, or attended local colleges with low tuition.

These weren’t people with the luxury of deciding between Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Bryn Mawr, or spending over a decade in academia studying Medieval French music. Being out of physical school for almost a year has taken such a toll on kids who aren’t from comfortably bourgeois families. How can we pretend Zoom school is exactly the same as bricks and mortar school?

Also, there’s a reason we rarely, if ever, see poor and working-class families homeschooling or unschooling their kids. That kind of requires at least one parent able to stay home all day, and that’s not possible when they need two salaries to stay afloat. Unlike bourgeois women, working-class women have always worked, even after marriage and kids.

My mother still regrets not working harder to find a way to afford to send me to a private girls’ school after sixth grade. I was certainly smart enough for a scholarship, and the worst of my Aspie issues were resolved by then. Instead I continued in the crappy public school system, which, despite some awesome teachers, wasn’t exactly the best place for intelligent students who wanted more out of school than the basics.

Anyway, so many self-identified U.S. leftists made no bones about supporting indefinite lockdown because “Hurr, durr, Orange Man bad!,” and thus they had to always do the exact opposite. If “Orange Man” was against total lockdown, then, by Jove!, they had to get busy promoting and instituting the most draconian of measures!

Anyone who dares object to such strict lockdown for any reason has been called spoilt, selfish, anti-science, a conspiracy theorist, a right-wing ideologue, and someone who wants to kill Granny. I’m none of those things, but I am deeply concerned about the effects, both short-term and longterm, this is having on the economy and people’s lives.

And how about the heartbreakingly higher rates of women and children being murdered by domestic abusers while in lockdown and unable to leave? Or mental health issues being exacerbated? People unable to pay basic living expenses? Loneliness and isolation, esp. among seniors? Necessary surgeries being postponed and sometimes leading to preventable deaths?

Scientific evidence is starting to come in proving the endless lockdowns in the U.S. and U.K. haven’t had the benefits they were touted as having. Indeed, it’s only made everything worse.

Normal life has to resume sometime. We can’t exist forever in an isolated virtual world, and lockdown hurts the poor and working-class most of all. Yet DNC and Labour Party brass have totally sold out this core demographic to look woke and appeal to blue-haired clowns.

Some thoughts on my political homelessness, Part II (Idpol and wokery)

A major factor alienating me from my purported side of the political aisle and giving me no party to call home anymore is the explosion of idpol (identity politics), SJWs, virtue-signalling, and wokery over the last four years. These clowns need to grow up if they truly believe anyone to the right of Antifa is a Nazi!

I’m really angry that these loons have made themselves the public face of the modern Left, despite being the antithesis of traditional leftist politics, and many of them admitting when pressed that they’ve never read any foundational books or writers from the various movements they self-identity into. Yet this loud, fringe faction has burrowed into government, schools, businesses, charities!

If only this were confined to hippie colleges and scattered weird businesses or organizations. No. Instead, this loud minority has managed to impose their cult groupthink on major schools, formerly respected organizations and professional businesses, serious newspapers and magazines, big-name writers, you name it.

This post would be thousands of words long if I listed every single person or thing they’ve managed to cancel, or went after with flaming pitchforks and are still ranting against for refusing to obediently roll over and tearfully thank Big Brother for stopping the beatings. All while believing they’re the moral ones on the right side of history, and nothing like Nazi book-burners.

Find me one pre-21st century person whose views, speech, thoughts, actions, and writings 100% conformed to contemporary values. Even the most radical people stayed within certain parameters, and may have had some views which were considered progressive in their era but are widely disavowed today. E.g., eugenics and Social Darwinism were quite popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, and twilight sleep birth was initially hailed as wonderfully liberating for women.

These constant mea culpas from people renaming buildings, book awards, and scholarships make my ass sick, as my late paternal grandpap would say. Was anyone pretending people like Woodrow Wilson had modern views and never did or said anything legitimately problematic, or lauding him for his racism? It doesn’t change their historical importance, no matter how many tantrums these blue-haired babies throw. Removing their names and images from the public eye suggests there’s something shameful, sinful, evil about them.

It really angers and frustrates me how these wokesters have thrown around certain buzzwords and catchphrases so often, almost always misusing them, that they’re now considered jokes and not taken seriously. E.g., triggers are certainly real to people with PTSD and traumatic experiences. Actual transphobia does happen. People can have internalized racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Privilege legitimately exists. Things can be truly problematic. Toxic masculinity refers to how rigid, socially-enforced stereotypes hurt men, as evidenced in their higher suicide rates and being less likely than women to get help for things like depression and anxiety.

But to trot these words and phrases out at every little thing that rubs easily-offended wokesters the wrong way? They’ve created a boy crying wolf effect and prevented serious, important conversations about bona-fide issues. Despite how loudly they scream, they do NOT represent the majority of real leftists!

We should all be positive ambassadors for whichever group(s) we represent. If the only leftists, conservatives, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Hindus, homesteaders, vegans, environmentalists, etc., you know or know of are loud fanatics who make everyone look crazy, now’s as good of a time as any to cross the aisle in good faith and get to know a wider range of people in that group.

Most people just want to quietly live their lives without making waves. Normal, everyday people aren’t newsworthy. You only get attention if you’re very out of the ordinary.

Everyone should make an attempt to follow or befriend people with radically different views. We needn’t agree with them or be converted, just learn where they’re coming from. It’s not healthy to exist in an airtight echo chamber where you’re never challenged.

Real leftists care about issues like a living wage, universal healthcare, educational reform, free or cheap college, and women’s sex-based rights, not navel-gazing bollocks like pronouns, made-up identities like skoliosexual and greyromantic, defending morbid obesity as totally healthy, denying the existence of biological sex, promoting prostitution as a fun career, and pretending random “people” give birth, menstruate, and have cervical cancer.

These blue-haired clowns need to GTFO with their woke groupthink and struggle sessions. I would say they have a mental age of twelve, but that would insult 12-year-olds.

Some thoughts on my political homelessness, Part I

Warning: Any nasty comments personally attacking me will be deleted and the commenters blacklisted.

This is roughly where I’ve consistently measured on the political spectrum since I was a teenager. Probably the only thing keeping me from being all the way to the Left is that I support the death penalty. However, despite my core political views remaining consistent, I’ve felt increasingly politically homeless over the last few years, and my alienation from my purported side of the aisle grows more and more each day. Many other lefties I know feel the same way.

I voted Libertarian in the 2020 presidential election, though I’ve always voted for the Democratic candidate my entire voting life, no matter how milquetoast and same as the old boss. I know a number of other alienated lefties who went Republican for the first time in their lives as a protest vote and/or because at least Republicans aren’t trying to legally replace biological sex with the nebulous concept of gender.

It happened on Biden’s first day, just as he promised for months. He signed an executive order allowing the disastrous, toxic self-identification policy several other countries now have, and which was thankfully soundly defeated in the U.K. recently. Goodbye to women’s sports, scholarships, homeless shelters, rape crisis centres, political shortlists, locker rooms, single-sex swimming pools, everything our foremothers fought so hard to secure.

No, this is absolutely NOT what real feminists ever fought for! We never wanted things like co-ed sports and changing rooms. And for those who, like clockwork, ask, “Hurr, durr, where are all the feminists?,” we’ve been fighting against this and raising awareness of these issues for YEARS! Many of us have been doxxed, no-platformed, fired, stalked, kicked off social media, threatened, you name it.

I’ll be getting into this issue in much greater detail when I resume my Gender-Industrial Complex series! So much has happened on that front since I did that 12-part series in 2016.

Because of the U.S. duopoly, many Americans, through no fault of their own, aren’t aware of the full political spectrum and all the various iterations of left-wing and right-wing beliefs. E.g., Bernie Sanders is considered a centrist in Europe, since things like universal healthcare and a living wage are just matter-of-fact social welfare policies which are proven to dramatically improve quality of life.

Some people are able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a success of themselves without free or cheap college education and at least $15 an hour, but that’s unfortunately not possible for most people. How can you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you haven’t any boots?

The loons in Antifa also are NOT even remotely representative of what real leftists are all about, just as people who bomb abortion clinics don’t represent most conservatives. People on both sides need to quit painting one another with such broad brushstrokes and assuming the loudest, most fringe elements speak for everyone.

I wish more liberals and conservatives both would engage in good-faith dialogue with one another, and actually LISTEN when someone explains why s/he came to have such political values, instead of just hearing and immediately reacting. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with their views or convert to their way of thinking, but at least make an attempt to understand that POV.

I’d be more than happy to explain how growing up poor and working-class led me to my views. Were my life circumstances different, I may very well have ended up conservative, centrist, or only moderately left-wing.

I agree with the theory that there’s been a soft coup in the Democratic and Labour Parties over the last few years, and an overall sea change over the last few decades. The party brass now speaks with such disdain about the proletariat, who traditionally formed their core demographic. These blue-haired fools need to get out of their cushy little bourgeois suburbs and ivory towers and see how we truly live.

I dare them to go to a mill town and announce their pronouns, demand people check their privilege, say they’re lithromantic greysexual moongender, call everyone bigots for understanding biological sex is grounded in material reality, and defend prostitution as an exciting career choice no different than any other job.

This is no longer the party of FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK. It’s been hijacked by clowns who don’t live in the real world. Until they kick out the loud woke contingent, I’ll remain politically homeless.

2020 blogging stats in review

My 2020 blogging stats, like those of last year, ended up a bit differently than they have for many previous years. My posts in my “A Primer on ______________ Names” series (which I’m long overdue to resume!) have been getting quite a lot of traction, to the point that they now occupy fully half of this year’s Top 10 slots, six more slots in the Top 20, and five additional slots in the Top 30.

This year’s Top 5 posts were:

“Favorite Decameron stories, Part I,” published 28 December 2011, at 2,284 views in 2020 and 8,151 total. This is my third-most-viewed post of all time.

“A primer on Russian names,” published 28 December 2012, at 2,018 views in 2020 and 11,814 total. This is still my next-most-viewed most ever. Were I writing it today, it would have so many more names. A lot of my posts in this series could benefit from expansion, which is why I’ll put them all together in a book when I finally post the last installment.

“A primer on Occitan names,” published 28 December 2016, at 1,236 views in 2020 and 2,785 total. This is now my sixth-most-viewed post.

“A primer on Tatar names,” published 30 June 2017, at 1,024 views in 2020 and 2,444 total. This is now my eighth-most-viewed post. Perhaps information about Tatar names is hard to find?

“Writing an arm amputee character,” published 27 October 2014, at 946 views in 2020 and 5,000 total. This is my fourth-most-viewed post ever, though a lot of people who find it are pervy fetishists looking for amputee porn, not sensitive, accurate information on amputation. These dudes are so pornsick they don’t bother looking at the preview text, just click right on that link. I’d love to see the looks on their creepy faces when they realise this isn’t a porn site!

Closing out the Top 10 were:

“A primer on Yiddish names,” published 27 January 2017, at 908 views in 2020 and 2,551 total. This rose one spot to become my seventh-most-viewed post of all time.

“Why I HATED The Book Thief,” published 5 August 2013, at 718 views in 2020 and 3,101 total. This is my fifth-most-viewed post of all time, and I still stand by every word ripping this insanely overrated garbage a new one.

***NEWSFLASH!***

It still sucks, bites, and blows! Like so many other popular books about the Shoah, it’s emotionally manipulative bestseller bait and Holocaust-lite for the masses, NOT quality, well-researched, historically-accurate literature for the ages.

“A primer on Georgian names,” published 26 December 2014, at 519 views in 2020 and 1,534 total. This is now my twelfth-most-viewed post of all time.

“No, I will not get sucked into the cult of Arbonne!,” published 13 December 2013 and partially edited from something originally written for my old Angelfire site in 2010, at 474 views in 2020 and 42,911 views total. Still my most-viewed post by a landslide.

Some months back, I discovered a couple of butthurt Arbot bullies tried to circumvent my closed comments to send their abusive, childish vitriol through the Contact Me form. Talk about obsessed losers who need a new hobby! They couldn’t even be original in their insults and ridiculous claims.

Keep weaving more ropes to hang yourselves, MLMers! Everyone with sense knows MLMs are pyramid schemes and very cult-like, and that its salespeople (whom I refuse to refer to by their goofy euphemisms like “presenters” and “coaches”) can’t handle criticism or even the mere word “No.”

“Ideas for an original WWII book,” published 23 September 2013, at 472 views in 2020 and 1,138 total. This is a new entry to the year’s Top 10 list, and is now my thirteenth-most-viewed post. WWII and the Shoah are such popular hist-fic settings, but a lot of people claim it’s the same story over and over again with different names and settings. Using a less-common premise and setting (e.g., a pacifist Mennonite family on the U.S. homefront, a neutral country like Portugal, soldiers in the China–India–Burma Theatre, refugees in Shanghai) will help to distinguish your story.

Two posts on my all-time Top 10 failed to make the 2020 Top 10:

“A primer on Albanian names,” published 7 August 2015, at 458 views in 2020 and 2,122 overall. It was this year’s #11 post.

“Favorite Decameron stories, Part III,” published 2 January 2012, at no registered views in 2020 and 1,794 total.

Yet again, my once-very-popular post “Twilight sleep” barely had any views, at just five. I still want to revisit this topic in a new and improved post.

Another once-much-viewed post, “Pet rabbits, chickens, and ducks should be for keeps, not just Easter,” remained in the Top 20 at #16. This is such an important cause for me, which I’ve deeply cared about for years, promote every Easter, and permanently have a link to near the top of my sidebar on both my blogs.