What to Do When the World Turns Upside Down (Part One)
From Q Anon to "Blue Anon" political ideologies have morphed into their historical OPPOSITES. Why is this happening, how can we change this, and what does it mean for the future?
Judge a tree from its fruit; not from the leaves.— Euripedes
Throughout time, the test of a virtuous truth and reality lies in its “fruits” (life-giving thought, word, and deed)— what it produces— not in its “leaves”— what it presents (intention, image, and belief). These latter attributes, no matter how sincere, do not produce vital reality. In fact they can often promote cheap imitations of reality. This distinction between production and presentation is critical, because without this discernment, we are left wandering in a jungle of conceit often passing itself off as truth.
In the past two decades, the United States, and indeed the world has experienced the political version of a temperature inversion or a pole reversal. Up is down. Left is right. Black is white. We might not have yet arrived at Bill Murray’s “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria” but the beast of inverted morality definitely “slouches toward Bethlehem.” So-called conservatives have become anti-conservative, so-called liberals have become anti-liberal, so-called progressives have become anti-progressive, and so-called socialists have become anti-socialist.
This inversion of socialism, for instance, against the very side it should be representing was captured well in this sarcastic “headline” from the right-leaning satirical publication, The Babylon Bee:
The working class, the historical bread and butter of socialist activism, is now being trolled out and rolled out as “alt-right.” In New York Time’s “The Daily” podcast, coverage of the event involved whisperings of a malevolent element in the peaceful protest, yet no actual examples were produced except a couple random observations about a confederate flag and a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.” The overwhelming reality was one of and almost festival-like welcoming, a coming together of historically concerned conservatives and progressives over real, active working class support, and a certain desire to re-establish a society where people care about each other.
And what is meant by REAL progressivism? Isn’t that just subjective? No, it’s historical, and we should not surrender the noble tradition of political progressivism to a small cabal of zealots to suit their uninformed, neurotic tastes.
Neo-progressives (read pseudo/anti-progressives), in a style similar to neo-socialists, have created a fake, performative morality in place of prosocial commitment and action. Their symbolic efforts are directed toward changing the names of schools because of some politically-incorrect policy associated with the former namesakes (including incredibly Abraham Lincoln) rather than changing the injustices within these schools! Self-centered woke-ness, virtue signaling, representationalism have replaced truly needed courage, solidarity, and action.
Progressive mainstays I have worked on for decades—teaching and advocacy around anti-racism, multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion, and feminism—are now often deteriorating into shrill, removed, theoretical concepts. Victimhood and one-upmanship have replaced grounded, transformative, positive action. One need only to look at the rampant performative failures of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and so-called progressives in Congress to confirm this. All this is at odds with the very REAL progress and concrete successes of historical progressivism.
What have real progressives done? I had a discussion on this with my brother-in-law in an email exchange on January 14, 2022:
"Real" progressive movements were responsible for abolishing slavery, not just "reforming" it. Real progressive movements were responsible for getting the women's right to vote, not simply helping them "get more say". Real progressive movements got rid of Jim Crow laws, not simply making them kinder and gentler. Real progressive movements got rid of child labor, not simple having them work fewer hours.
These were direct victories over unfettered capitalism, not simply "reforms" or slight improvements. That is the difference between real progressivism and pseudo-progressivism. The former "real progressivism" fundamentally transforms the power base and relationships. The latter "pseudo-progressivism" re-arranges deck chairs on the Titanic into a more pleasing and bearable configuration, with the covert purpose to keep things the way they are (or near where they are) as long as possible. In short, pseudo-progressivism is crypto conservatism.
I saw the same eerie progression of liberalism into anti/pseudo/neo-liberalism with my friends on Facebook (before I abandoned Facebook as a corporate, virtual-reality propaganda and censorship machine). Ones who used to grieve and offer such strong sentiment for the civil rights of oppressed individuals and who shouted “my body, my choice” were now condemning these very principles when it came to vaccines and masks. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a slow-motion train wreck, and I was not going to go down without a fight.
Here is what I wrote on October 13, 2021 in one of my last compositions on Facebook:
I cannot take the hypocrisy any more. There was a time when liberal or progressive was identified with CARE for the little guy, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. Now, apparently that can all be thrown out the window in a mania not only to support corrupt multinational drug companies, but to FORCE even organ transplant recipients to receive vaccines.
Let me make this clear, YOU ARE IN NO WAY LIBERAL, PROGRESSIVE, OR CARING if you support vaccine mandates. ALWAYS, medical decisions that involve risk MUST BE LEFT WITH THE person whose body it is who makes the decision. We understand this with abortion. We understand this with surgery, and we had BETTER WELL understand this with an experimental drug.
"FREE AND INFORMED" decision, is standard. Right now, if you support [vaccine] mandates and are not strongly against them as a violation of our most basic human rights, you are indeed an unapologetic fascist, which is the merging of private corporations and government, under the ignorance of the manipulated and heartless public.
DO NOT LOSE YOUR HUMANITY to score a few cheap points or be self-righteous. You will follow the shame of the "decent folks" who want along with the KKK, the Nazis, and any other regime that determined they would take away the right to make the most personal of decisions. If you are howling about how Texas is taking away the right for a woman to make medical decisions over her body in the issue of pregnancy termination, then you better be howling just as loudly for that same woman if she does not want to be forced to take an experimental drug.
Have we lost our minds? Do you remember Tuskegee, where black men were purposefully infected with syphilis by the CDC and the US Public Health Service, and then left untreated to see what would happen? Do you remember our beloved FDR who interned over 120,000 Japanese [U.S.] citizens [and their Japanese-born parents] in concentration camps, much to his eternal shame.
I am appealing for sanity and actual HEART here, both in terms of courage to stand up to this medical tyranny, profiteering, and opportunism, and stand up for your fellow citizens NO MATTER WHAT THEIR POLITICAL AFFILIATION. The rights of every citizen count, and I will stand by every one. I am asking, with strongest of pleas for solidarity and care, for you to stand up as well.
This plea largely fell on deaf ears. I offered my phone number out to friends to talk about this. I never received a call. Reality and consistency of principle apparently had become inconvenient, or there was mania, or there was fear… but NONE of these reasons are sufficient to deny the humanity of another. Yet here we are.
I offered one more Facebook editorial on Oct. 31, 2021, which highlighted the apparent about-face. So-called liberals like Joe Biden were becoming authoritarian corporatist top-down right wingers in action, and conservatives like Florida governor Ron DeSantis were becoming “leftie” pro-civil rights activists:
And now it is redux 2021, with Biden an incompetent, arrogant, loser... doing everything he can to finish what Obama started and sell out America entirely to corporations. The infrastructure bill is a give-away to corporations with every meaningful popular reform stripped out.
Vaccine mandates were a massive overreach and a reversal of a campaign promise [of Biden’s]. The best thing that true progressives can do is simply non-violent civil disobedience to let the blame fall squarely where it needs to be: on betraying, corporate, neo-liberals. The Dem(ocratic) party has already been wiped out by this betrayal and they will likely lose 60-70 seats in the house and 5 in the Senate in November 2022.
Every core constituency (Black, Latino, young people, progressives) is turning on these betrayers. I will not donate a cent even to Justice Democrats as the party just needs to be blown up. When "liberals" like Noam Chomsky are preaching separating out the non-vaccinated and let them find their own food, and DeSantis is sticking up for the Constitutional right of civil liberties (unlike the ACLU), then we are living in an insane world.
When "Follow the Science" means slavish obedience (to) Big Pharma against actual science, it looks like liberals are having their "Read the Transcript" moment. We need to abandon both neo-cons and neo-libs and their corporate agenda. We need the courage to go on strike from this lunacy.
I was referring to the slogan by Donald Trump, shown on his follower’s tee shirts, to “Read the Transcript” of the Ukraine call where Trump was trying to leverage the Ukraine leader for political favors in return for military aid. When asked, none of the supporters, including the ones with the tee shirts had ever read a line of the transcript. The same performative delusion governs Q-Anon supporters, some of whom believe that Trump is secretly running the presidency today (along with the military) but is not responsible for the bad stuff (inflation, war-mongering, etc.). That’s apparently Biden’s doing.
Similarly, the “Blue Anon” (vaccine cult) liberals were insisting everyone “Follow the Science”, and true to form, NONE of them are following the ACTUAL science that shows 1) masks are largely ineffective at reducing Covid-19 spread, 2) that opening a window in a classroom is more effective than masks in preventing spread, 3) that vaccinations did NOT prevent a person from catching or transmitting the virus 4) that recent data shows the OPPOSITE, that vaccinated are now more likely to be infected than non-vaccinated, 5) and finally that natural immunity if FAR superior, by the CDC’s own data, than vaccinated immunity, to say nothing of 6) suppressed early treatments that could have saved many tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, including by just the addition of Vitamin D to people’s diets.
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In Part Two on Thursday, I will discuss “The Problem: Identity Over Reality, Culture Wars Over Connection,” and the “The Way Forward: Seeing the Genius in Each, Integrating the Best”
A good piece, Zeus Yiamouyiannis, and good on you for writing so bravely about it. I am witnessing the madness, hoping that it is only a phase for some rebalancing of power.
I wholeheartedly agree. This reality is absolute bonkers.