The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 15
We are witnessing the birth of a new national mythology in America, and it is not good news. Imperfect as it was, the old one was better, warts and all, and it needs to be fought for. This new mythology turns the story of America on its head, positioning it not as having been born in the pursuit of freedom and liberty in 1776 but in slavery and evil in 1619. It has mainstreamed itself since the 1960s but especially over the last five years as it used Trump’s presidency as a foil to legitimize its pseudo-real description of America for millions, and now it has gained the beginnings of cultural hegemony (which it is already abusing). This magic narrative has been and remains the key to their power.
This new mythology is using its own narrative about Trump’s presidency and, especially, the events that took place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a pivotal moment in its story arc, where it finally gained the upper hand on more than 400 years of evil and could usher in a new world order based on equity, guaranteed by the “perfected” state apparatus and its corporate partners (especially in tech). The thing is, while the real American story genuinely is the story of freedom, this new alternative, of “liberation,” is based not in truth but in alchemy, and like all such regimes, it will therefore end in catastrophe. Lead, as it sees our history, cannot be changed into gold, as it views our future through its manic utopian lenses, and drinking potions of cinnabar will not make people live forever but will slowly poison them into madness.
Join James Lindsay as he tries to make sense of the events we have been watching unfold over the last few days and years, relying in an unexpected way, if you’ll believe it, on the postmodern philosophers who in some ways saw this danger first.
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9 comments
Paige-
Was your invocation of the phrase, “Moi aussi” meant to be ironic? You could have written “So do I”.
That might be a little less pompous. Tous fait.
So much long-form has made us commenters a bit pompous. Moi aussi.
“So much long-form has made us commenters a bit pompous. Moi aussi.”
Some of us were like that from the start. It’s a blessing and a curse.
The old mythology was an ideal to be striven for. Granted, along the way, human action often fell short of this ideal, but that is judged to be a failure of execution and not a failure of intention. Notice that, when leftists decry America, their criticisms focus on the execution failures, while holding up the intentions as the positives. For example, the Civil Rights Era was inspired by Southern Democrats’ failure to recognize that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
The new mythology is basically a smug, cynical sneer asserting that Americans—white Americans, in particular—are no damn good, and that nothing will redeem them.
James-
‘… It has mainstreamed itself since the 1960s’…’
There is nothing new under the sun.
I suggest your US historical timeline is too narrow. In recent American history, I peg the beginnings of “where America is now”(my term) around the time of Teddy Roosevelt. It was then that Progressivism began in earnest. Wilson supercharged its progression. FDR did the same and so on. Progressivism turned into Social Justice…
At the heart of the above mentioned notion is a deep and abiding belief that others need to be looked after and told what to do by smarter, more competent people. This, of course, is coupled with a strong desire to acquire and retain power.
In the end, all humans are flawed creatures who all too frequently allow their emotions to control their lives. It usually doesn’t end well.
Wilson was a Progressive in his day, and like the Progressives of his day, he was a racist, (supported the KKK, screened “Birth of a Nation” in the Whitehouse), and a eugenicist.
While modern Progressives would reject the KKK and eugenics, they still seem to carry vestiges of their old beliefs in things like claiming that minorities can’t easily get photo ID, need affirmative action to succeed, etc.
I wonder if they want to have an easily led underclass, or do they want to eliminate them and only have elites? The whole climate change thing sees humanity as an existential threat. I could see them trying to reduce the population to a very small number of elites served by robots.
Mind you, I’m talking about the people at the top who make policy decisions, not the Progressives in the street.
The Globalist Elite Master Race of Soros, Schwab, Gates, Zuck-Besos, BlackrockFink, etc. and their aristo hench-tyrants Macron-Moloch, Bergoglio-Baphomet, Biden-Baal, etc. masturbate daily to the 2013 movie “Elysium”, their Globalist fantasy Triumph of the Swill.
Globalist prag-puppet-potentate Her Royal Highness The Pussy Dictator, Corruption Flunkey and Ruler for Life of the Imperial Globalist Serf Colony of Canadodoland, Empressa Justinienne SoyboietteTruedodo-bin-Castro the First douches her ass with peasant’s tears while she proclaims, “Let them eat imitation seal blubber.” (C-Dodoland’s new national dish made with imported maggots.)
Globalist Elites are confiscating trillions while laughing contemptuously at their lowborn serf’s impotent tears.
If you work as one of the Elite’s Lackeys then you’re laughing along with them (while stuffing your bank accounts with conscienceless quisling payola). But if you’re a Serf whose ass is bleeding raw from being ass-rammed by Globalist arrogance, then get angry.
Get very very angry.
Not smarter, merely more educated and in their arrogance and narcissism confused education with intelligence.
A penny dropped listening to this podcast. Maybe it went the wrong way but ISTM..
James said that the CRT crowd out-and-out don’t believe in goodness or goodwill. It’s one thing to think everything is a power game, but it’s something more to translate that into thinking that there’s no such thing as goodwill, except as a self-delusion. They hear “human rights” and they think “what’s the scam?”
Liberalism collapses when tribalism breaks the body politic up. This current wave of cancellings of individuals and platforms is naked tribalism. Tribes unapologetically have double standards. A tribe has its religion and it isn’t interested in getting converts. Its strength is in its purity. Within, there’s no secular space. Man again becomes pre-modern, part of a sacred world that’s heavy with hierophanies.
Goodwill is nothing if it is transactional. (It’s the residue after subtracting self-interest. The Marxists do have a point..) If not believing in goodwill (ie being a conventional tribal type of person) is a defining feature of this tribe, then the tribe will have to purge itself of its contradictions, among which are its inclusiveness of all the ‘marginalised’, and things like human rights. It has to eject the deluded principles that formed it.
Liberals have been blasé about mass immigration because they’ve been blind to tribes, with which the world is quite full. They assumed that tribalism was weak, and assimilation obvious. They are now being swept from their own institutions by the tribal peoples they invited into them.
The alternative way for the rest of the population, the non-CRTs, non-Leftists, which reaches beyond tribes and believes in goodwill, which produced the Individual and Liberalism – is Christianity, the non-tribe (at least in theory). Or alternatively again, whatever works, white nationalism, technocratic peonage, or the bronze age mindset. Whatever system people go to will need its own repressive tolerance: Liberalism has to be purged.