Sultan Knish
So after a long bout of mocking Mitt Romney for saying that he sought out
binders full of qualified female appointees, complete with protesters
outside one of his campaign offices dressed in binders, the appointed
hour came and the new cabinet of the man who was too good for binders of
women was white and male.
There was some awkward fidgeting in the media. A few suggestions that
maybe there should be a little more diversity. And that was followed by
the new official talking point that diversity doesn't matter, it's all
about the impact of the policies. Suddenly the Party of Affirmative
Action began making conservative arguments for merit and representation,
over racial preferences.
To some this was proof that liberals don't really believe in anything. And that's true and it isn't.
Modern American Liberalism is the movement of a wealthy white upper
class meant to suppress the working class and the mercantile class.
Think of it as the revenge of the barons against the merchants and the
wrath of the old New England elites against the Nouveau Riche. It
adopted the Jewish and Catholic immigrants who accepted its values and
codes. It even occasionally brings in more exotic figures, like Barack
Obama, so long as they have gone to the right schools and share their
values.
Liberals champion multiculturalism, they enact diversity requirements
and push through immigration, and then they send their children to
private schools and buy houses in white neighborhoods. They are mostly
unaware that they are doing this. They're just doing what comes
naturally. Like most people, liberals are most comfortable among their
own kind.
Their kind is not so much a racial group, as it is a cultural one. If
you've ever set foot in a liberal stronghold, then you can already
recognize the very expensive casual wear, the cars with progressive
bumper stickers, the beaming helicoptered children, the reusable bags
and the other markings of the American upper class. The one that may
spend 5 years slumming it in a big city, gathering tattoos and
experiences, before retreating to the traditional comforts of a posh
suburb and a high end do-nothing non-profit job.
They emphasize minorities, but most minorities, especially after the
passing of the melting pot that another generation of liberals
implemented, don't fit all that well into the cultural liberal
landscape. It's why Obama plays golf, even though he's bad at it. It's
why his campaign staff and his cabinet leans toward the same white males
who still run most things, including liberalism.
Liberals have varying degrees of awareness of this, ranging from
aggressive denial to passive denial, much as conservatives have some
degree of awareness that FOX News personalities are likely more liberal
than they pretend to be. And like most such conflicts, the information
gets filed away in favor of focusing on a more immediate problem.
The diversity that could be seen in a photo of Cheney on September 11 or
Romney's appointments are completely meaningless because you cannot win
an argument with a liberal by being more liberal than him. It's fun to
try, but it doesn't actually work for the same reason that you can't be
more Catholic than the Pope.
The liberal program is not just diversity. It's a grander and vaster
program. And those who promote the program can violate any single aspect
of it, without facing any consequences or contradictions, so long as
they remain valuable players.
Bill Clinton could act out the bad part in every sensitivity training
video. Obama can pay women less. Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton can make
racist jokes. Obama can govern through Executive Orders and start
illegal wars. So can any Democrat. None of that matters because they're
all plays in the big program. And the "Big Program" means a new world
with good stuff for all. Accomplishing it means ignoring the little sins
that would lead to any little person being lynched, jailed or
denounced.
Liberals are busy lining up to defend Chuck Hagel, a former Republican
who hated homosexuals, opposed abortion and on most issues, aside from
foreign policy, was fairly conservative. But that doesn't matter because
Hagel is now on Team Prog. Local interest groups may object, but the
liberal purpose in having Jewish or Gay or Female auxiliaries is so that
they can support the larger program. When they don't support it,
they're told to shut the hell up.
Conservatives can be more diverse than Liberals, but that won't score
them any points because it's not really about diversity. They can be
more Feminist or more Gay-friendly or more environmentalist. And they
will only be mocked for it. Because liberalism isn't about any of these
things, it's about the package deal. The only way to out-liberal a
liberal is not on any single value that he claims to profess, but on
every single one of them. And at that point you become a liberal.
The left does not have any fixed values. It only has values of
convenience. A conservative politician who has an affair is derided for
breaking with a concrete moral code. But no such moral code is there for
the opposite side. Not on any issue.
Radical groups cannot afford to be bound by morals. The 9/11 terrorists
went to a strip club. Al Qaeda and Hezbollah run drugs. But those things
are fine because they're working toward a big program. And when you
work toward the big program, the little stuff falls away. Like
everything else they do, it's just a little evil for the sake of a
greater good.
The American left is mostly legal now, but it thinks like an insurgency.
It keeps two sets of values, it lies to itself and to everyone else
about what it is and what it is doing. And those bad habits, garnered
from European radical movements have flowed into the cultural veins of
American liberalism leading to consistent inconsistency and showy
hypocrisy.
Like Communism, there is only one big program and no mandatory practices
that might get in its way. There are a billion rules, regulations,
laws, guidelines, mandates and assorted rubbish heaps of paper listing
the things that you are supposed to do and in what orders, but none of
it really matters except to the little people who are forced to obey.
Membership has its privileges. Not at the lowest ranks, but moving up
the ladder means that you are valuable enough not to have to follow your
own movement's idiotic rules. The peons may spend more than they can
afford to keep down their heating bills, but their betters take jet
planes around the world to lecture on the dangers of global warming. The
peons may worry over whether they have sufficient awareness of their
privilege, but their betters will make racist jokes and chase every
woman in the room.
Hypocrisy is the outcome, but in a totalitarian system it's also the
point. When there are too many rules, then power becomes the privilege
of not having to abide by them. And hypocrites are usually the loudest
shouters on any given issue, because loudly denouncing everyone else is
the surest way to advance up the ladder and to avoid being denounced for
their own shortcomings.
This pattern of hypocrisy is accepted on operational grounds. An
official position on sexual harassment is replaced with one that focuses
on the outcome of making feminist policies possible. An official
position on diversity is traded in, once again, for the outcome. And
under the rule of hypocrites, the outcome is all that counts. It's
always the ends justifying the means until it turns out that the ends
are power and the means are also power and the circle has closed itself.
Liberalism has a myriad of standards, but no single fixed standard. You
can be a liberal who has Nazi sympathies. You can be a liberal war
criminal. You can be a liberal racist. You can be a liberal rapist. You
can be a liberal polluter, profiteer, union-buster, abuser of employees
and assorted things of that nature and none of it ever flunks you or
your party or your movement because it's all about the ends.
What you cannot be, however, is more liberal than a liberal on any issue
because there is no such thing. The issue is a means. Diversity is a
means of creating a base that is dependent on the liberal elite and
loyal to them. So are unions, and just about every liberal policy there
is. And the means cannot be used to subvert the ends.
The diversity of Bush or Romney is viewed as a means, a collection of
tokens, because that is what it is on the liberal side. And even if
liberals believe that Bush and Romney are sincere about diversity,
diversity, a mere means, cannot be used to subvert an end, that being
the entire liberal program.
Republicans who try to adapt to liberal values are pursuing a dead end.
Liberal values only serve liberals, especially in the teeth of a liberal
media. They cannot be used to serve or promote someone who is not. And
consciously adopting those values and highlighting that adoption is a
dead end. It's worth doing if it's the right thing, but the other side
will just sneer and mock because values to them are not tests of
character, but weapons, a means of producing programmed responses.
Liberal values are not a creed, but an attitude. They are a manner and a
hipness. They are a matter of having read the right books and gone to
the right schools. They are not about what you do, but how you go about
doing it. They are a show of conspicuous morality made cool by the glare
of the flash. And the moment you think you know what their codes of
behavior are, they will change them to be even more progressive, because
the one thing that old elites stick to is finding ways to keep the
nouveau riche out.
Liberalism is not so much about knowing, as it is about not knowing. It
is about the knowingness of pretending to know more than you do. It is
about the empty gesture, the loud protest and the snide remark. It is
knowing that you are better than everyone else because of your humility.
It is about committing to something so big that nothing else matters
and so nothing else does.
You cannot beat a liberal with a liberal, just as you can't try to
outcool the sneering standing outside a 7-11 waiting for someone to come
by so he can sneer at him. Trying it, wastes time and cedes valuable
values territory to people who have none of their own. And like arguing
with an idiot, trying to win a values contest with someone who has no
values, only ends up making the man with values seem like a fool.
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