New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 17
Woke Marxists talk endlessly about the need to “destigmatize” this, “normalize” that, “affirm” this other thing, and “celebrate” whatever they say is best. They want you to think that these things are all the same, though, and any one who doesn’t take the slider all the way from “destigmatize” to “celebrate” on any of their causes célèbre is somehow a conservative (or a bigot or a “Nazi”). In fact, these gradations are necessary to a healthy society, and their boundaries must be understood and maintained. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks down the relevant categories and gives concrete examples of things that belong and do not belong in each. His goal is to add clarity to all discussions made muddy, murky, and ultimately dangerous by Woke Marxist activism that benefits from blurring the lines and making those slopes slippery.
Additional episodes of New Discourses Bullets may be found here.
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9 comments
Being a homosexual is not normal but has been “normalized” due to a vote of psychiatrists in New York about 1971 or so. It is now “accepted” for monetary reasons however most males still find the real ‘creep’ factor but are now told to ignore or accept it. Do not. Simply accept the fact that homosexuals are ‘out’.
If you want to further refine this scale and add more gradient points, “uplift” and “center” (used here as a verb, like “to center black womex”) are two other weasel terms often used by the wokist evangelists and preachers.
The beginnings of government interference and control over education in the United States began with the influence of Horace Mann, who aggressively advocated and pressed for the establishment of government (public) schools that were to be funded by force, i.e, tax-theft–legalized theft, but theft nonetheless. He advocated the Prussian method of “education”, with its militaristic corporal punishments, rote memorization over understanding, and demands of unquestioning obedience to “authority figures” for the purpose of producing soldiers and factory workers who would immediately and mindlessly do as they are told.
Normailzation is an example of a word and concept that only gained meaning and usefullness fairly recently. Though a perfectly legitimate form based on the word “normal,” “normalize” did not come into wide use until the 1940s, and “normailzation” actually peaked in 1980.
I am familiar with this word from the technology of database design, and it also has statistics meanings. So here is an example of a technical word being appropriated by the social sciences for reasons that might be dubious. There are many such words.
The question of “what is normal?” borders on the profound, and is constantly on the mind of people like my current girlfriend. She wants to equate “normal” with acceptable or proper. I have never really had such a propensity.
In looking at the problem of Wokeism, we have to consider the aspects of it that are based on human history and experience and those aspects that are basically criminal. Wokeism harps on the fact that indigenous peoples were demonized during the era of colonization in order to justify killing them and taking their land. Indigenous heritage, they argue, should now be normalized, even celebrated, to compensate for that era of genocide. They then extend this line of thinking to argue that ANYTHING formerly thought of as “queer” should at least be normalized, if not celebrated. That might even include things traditionally considered to be criminal acts. Who’s to say what is criminal and what isn’t? In the absence of any agreed-upon method of determining this, they have leaned in the direction of total normalization of ALL human behaviors and identites. Thus we find them “crazy” and nihilistic. And many of them are.
What plays into this whole controversy, though, are the various real experiences of the demonized minorities in all their different forms. And I see that as a legitimate concern. No one wants to be hunted down and killed simply because they have some attribute that is considered abnormal, unacceptable, or bad. Should this include criminals? Of course most of us would agree, “no.” Yet it remains a fact that we have not solved criminality on this planet, and have no way to handle people who are addicted to it, much less people who fell into it by mistake. Trying them and sending them to jail obviously doesn’t work, except perhaps in a small number of cases.
And a critique of Wokism, though a valid warning to us all, does not solve the problems that the Woke want to solve, nor any, really, that anyone else wanted to solve. So while we continue to establish that Wokeness is not the answer, we need to find some answers, and soon, or populations may adopt Wokeness out of desperation, as they have adopted so many other terrible ideas in the past.
Homosexuals claim that homosexuality is nature, not chosen. Then they have parades to celebrate it, as if it’s an accomplishment. It can only be one or the other, not both.
What homosexuals celebrate is not their sexual orientation per se, but the fact that they are no longer closeted, persecuted, and treated as pariahs in society, and the liberation from those injustices is a legitimate cause for celebration. It is analogous to the celebrations that people of historically persecuted races and ethnicities (e.g Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, Chinese, Jews, Poles, Irish) engage in.
Really? I don’t think that’s what they’re celebrating. Have you even seen one of these parades? It’s about PRIDE, and showing off how superior they are compared to the rest of us.
pride (noun)
1: the quality or state of being proud: such as
a: inordinate self-esteem : CONCEIT
b: a reasonable or justifiable self-respect
c: delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship
parental pride
2: proud or disdainful behavior or treatment : DISDAIN
3: ostentatious display
Of course it’s about pride!! Pride is a celebration of accomplishment, of having overcome adversity, as many, many gays and the people to whom I referred in my comment have done. I aver that those who believe that pride displayed as a celebration of defeating adversity is “really” an expression of conceit toward, disdain of, and superiority over other people have self-esteem problems: adversities that would benefit them to overcome. Perhaps you despise pride because of religious indoctrination to which you were subjected as a child about the “7 Cardinal Sins”: greed; pride; envy; anger; gluttonly; lust; and sloth. Greed, envy, laziness and excessive eating (sloth and gluttony) have negative social, psychological, and existential consequences for those who engage in them; but pride and factually justifiable anger are positive, healthy emotions.
“…people who escaped Communism kept telling me that one of the characteristics of the totalitarian regimes they escaped was the State inserting itself between children and their parents. This is well known to historians, as a matter of fact. The theory was that the State is the true parent, and as such, needs to defend the rights of children against their parents, who are carriers of old, oppressive values. This was necessary to liberate children from the past, and from its evil values.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trans-totalitarianism-time-for-moral-panic/