Leftists these days love to brag about their "values". Well, their values include suppression of free speech, a rigid cancel culture utterly devoid of wisdom or nuance or forgiveness, an assumption that they are the smart ones and everybody else (from the working class to prior generations) are idiots who need to be suppressed rather than heard, etc.
AnnaLynne McCord is obviously a fool but her silly publicity stunt and silly 'ideas' are not any stupider or more self-indulgent than the political musings of Sean Penn, Samantha Bee, Mark Ruffalo etc etc or any of the other of political sages amongst our showbiz betters, and her 'poem' is not any worse than the work of the lionized Amanda Gorman (who seems like a lovely young woman but whose poetry can most charitably be described as hmmm...unripe).
The social media age is an age of perpetual panic and mass conformity, where everyone in any public capacity absolutely MUST offer their opinion on every issue du jour (no matter how inappropriate or ill-informed). And as we all know there is only one Resistance (TM)-approved opinion on every issue (unless you're a Deplorable), which means that every politician, actor, pop star etc in the western world competes to say the same exact thing just with different emojis.
(And they can't abstain because 1) it's bad for your brand; and 2) some twitter snoop might notice your silence and accuse you of Violence.)
Between the Trucker convoy and now the Ukraine invasion, what we are witnessing is the elite class, who live almost entirely in the realm of the virtual and symbolic, being forced to deal with that unpleasant monster called Reality...and as we can see, their only response to any and all challenges is some sort of infantile tantrum.
I found myself recently in a lively pub filled with working class conservatives, Republicans, complete with a Cuban emigre and a smarmy businessman turned politician and it was… inspiring. There is so much life and positivity beyond the shallow breathing ranks of the neurotic professional and managerial elite. There is a vast political realignment going on that is neither one thing nor the other. I, like you am a creation of the left so there are moments where I just have shut off all the old prejudices and be open to the possibilities.
An important point to keep in mind, as you mentioned, the old categories of Left and Right no longer apply as we are living in a world where "Right is Left, and Left is Right." When you say you are of the Liberal Left, I suspect you are talking about classical Western liberalisms which was the product of Enlightenment Rationality. If by Liberal Left you meant classical socialism and communism, that too was a product of Enlightenment Rationality.
The enemy of all human civilizations today is Nihilism masquerading as "Western Liberalism." The scope of the conversation is worthy of book length analysis, but in a nutshell there are foundational concepts that connect Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Wilhelm Reich, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, Foucault, Derrida, and the American Democrat Party with Social Democrats in Western Europe and the Davos crowd. That connection is the rejection of truth and rationality.
That is why the Davos crowd in Europe and North America can look at you with a straight face and tell you that mathematics is racist. Basically what happened was that the 1960s "counter culture" was a rejection of classical liberal rationality in favor of an irrational world where truth is what each individual says is truth. Those ideas captured Western universities from the 60s through the 80s permeating the brains of the graduates of Western academies in the media, film, entertainment industries and onto Wall Street and finally the American military. None of this will change until Western universities reverse the tide of Nietzschean nihilism and its derivatives in favor of Enlightenment rationality.
As for Ukraine, the heart of every rational human being goes out to the suffering of all those killed on both the Russian and Ukrainian side. Once again, a rational non-nihlist review of history tells us that Moscow became the seed of modern Russia only after the Mongols invaded and destroyed Kiev, the birthplace of the Russian people. It's only natural that Russians would feel threatened by an American establishment (i.e. the Democrat Party and the Republican Party who are Democrats masquerading as conservatives) that has demonized them for the past ten years.
It is also natural that Russians would not want the irrational Western thought to permeate Ukraine, the birthplace of Russia, and seep its way into Moscow and St. Petersburg. Perhaps Russian men don't want to become eunuchs or be forced to accept a future where we are all transgendered. Ultimately, that is the ONLY thing the "West" is exporting today!
Thank you! What happened with the Boomer counter culture is very interesting to me -- I think it had a malign influence to a degree that is very under-appreciated. It's something I think about a lot.
I'm so happy I found you, this post really resonated with me. My story is very similar, I was always 'a bit of a leftie' (according to my friends) and always supported Labour. I was always passionate about causes and making the world a better, more just, place. And I still feel that I am 'old-school labour' Yet somehow I'm miles away, or on a different planet completely, to what's considered left wing nowadays. All the things that were considered to be more left/liberal (anti-globalisation, anti-big business, sceptical of big pharma etc) are now considered to be right-wing/alt right. I feel that the old values of the left (equality, workers rights, women's and girls rights..) have been replaced with a hierarchy of rights (depending on what's trending on Twitter right now) and moral relativism. This new labour/liberalism doesn't seem to care about the working man, in fact it looks down on them for not being woke enough. And cancel culture with its online witch hunts has reduced every issue into for/against, good/bad, with no room for manoeuvre or nuance. It's really disturbing when I seen how things like Brexit has divided people, too, with a friend of mine admitting he no longer talks to those who voted Brexit. and another friend who did vote Brexit is treated like a social pariah, even within his own family. This is what has alienated me from the left, and why I find myself in a political no-man's-land, wondering what happened! Reading your post, and the comments below, just gives me hope. Thank you!
I'll try this again (my previous comment I posted the other day mysterious vanished). Jenny Holland is a very good writer. Her piece begs the question: Why is she "not right-wing"...?
Well I guess you'd have to define right-wing! If you mean "freedom" "bodily autonomy" "anti-corporate monopoly" and "believes in reality" then, yeah. I guess I am. If you mean right-wing in the old sense of the word then no. Culturally, I'm still a leftie! 🤣
I didn't know Nicolle Wallace was in the Bush admin. She describes herself as a 'former self-loathing Republican' so I'll hand it to her for finally coming to her senses...which I would do for any 'former self-loathing Democrat' and Goddess knows the left is better at self-hating than the right.
Not with ya on the Trucklodytes. They are pretty much loathed throughout Canada because a pandemic is serious shit, and they were a bunch of whiny little snowflake crybabies carrying on about Fascism when they would have shat their tighty whiteys if they'd ever had to face Hitler. They were rude, loud, violent, and harassing. The people of Ottawa are traumatized by their shit. And while it's arguable whether they were *about* racism and Nazism, they certainly got infested later and they did nothing to stop it. Many of us won't shed a tear for these selfish mothertruckers tantruming because they weren't allowed to spread a virus. The fact that had Trudeau caved to their demands they STILL wouldn't have been allowed to cross the border because the Americans wouldn't have let them. So, it's *arguable* they weren't initially about racism and Nazism, but it's also pretty arguable that this had nothing to do with vaccine policy, and it looked rather a lot like a bunch of similar whiny spoiled overprivileged brats who tried to overthrow a government last year because they didn't get their way during an election.
And they say *women* are too emotional and irrational to hold public office.
Otherwise, though, you nailed my sentiments on what's wrong with the left. I too am tired of hearing 'patriarchy' blamed for everything when it's not 'white supremacy'. The left has lost its damn mind. I'm not a white supremacist by birth, I AM a woman by birth, and 'critical theory' is looking more fundementedlist than Christianity these days.
A lot of us out right with you in this "evolution" . . . is that we're "older and wiser", and the liberal left was always like this, or have things really changed that much. Certainly, the 20-year-old's of today seem just as enamored with 2022's version of it as we were in 1990 or 2000. I dunno, but yes, today's left-liberalism looks nothing like the one that I think I was raised in.
So excellent. Jenny - you have such a sharp ability to write what many are writing and say what many are saying but in a completely unique manner. I really look forward to your articles. Do I pay for this subscription? I better get on that!
Just saw this. Aren't we in the strangest upside-down, inside-out, wrong-way-around moment ever? A gift and a curse to be alive and aware today.
Your Did-I-Just-Read-That-Correctly moment was with the actress. Mine is right here on your comments thread.
Someone's lengthy comment and perspective about our (Canadian) Freedom Convoy in Ottawa earlier this year, is completely unrecognizable to me. Commenter and I were living in parallel realities on every single point. Year 2022 is the year of polarization.
Commenter saw, heard, and followed entirely different humans and events than I saw, heard, and followed. Funny and crazy times.
Hi, Jen. Really liked this piece, but I must make one correction: I did not meet your dad when I was visiting Dublin as part of a Trotskyist summer camp. I went to one of those camps on a soggy bog in England 3 years before and found it insufferable. Already living in Paris, I hung out with some French kids there, eventually becoming a French Trot -- in a lot bigger and much more sensible group. Members even dressed well and the women wore make-up! One fine day some Irish Trots showed up, and I wound up putting up all five of them on my floor. I met my future husband while visiting one of them, who had become a friend. It was in a very interesting bar, not really artsy. But it did cater to the (at the time very small )group of Dublin misfits, piss-riden has-beens, the odd ex-IRA man, the literary set, homosexuals, Trots. Your dad, my friend told me, was part of the literary set. I was never given to ideological purity, and your father soon mocked my political activism, such as it was, right out of me. Un abbraccio, Mom
Another stunner, Jenny.
Leftists these days love to brag about their "values". Well, their values include suppression of free speech, a rigid cancel culture utterly devoid of wisdom or nuance or forgiveness, an assumption that they are the smart ones and everybody else (from the working class to prior generations) are idiots who need to be suppressed rather than heard, etc.
AnnaLynne McCord is obviously a fool but her silly publicity stunt and silly 'ideas' are not any stupider or more self-indulgent than the political musings of Sean Penn, Samantha Bee, Mark Ruffalo etc etc or any of the other of political sages amongst our showbiz betters, and her 'poem' is not any worse than the work of the lionized Amanda Gorman (who seems like a lovely young woman but whose poetry can most charitably be described as hmmm...unripe).
The social media age is an age of perpetual panic and mass conformity, where everyone in any public capacity absolutely MUST offer their opinion on every issue du jour (no matter how inappropriate or ill-informed). And as we all know there is only one Resistance (TM)-approved opinion on every issue (unless you're a Deplorable), which means that every politician, actor, pop star etc in the western world competes to say the same exact thing just with different emojis.
(And they can't abstain because 1) it's bad for your brand; and 2) some twitter snoop might notice your silence and accuse you of Violence.)
Between the Trucker convoy and now the Ukraine invasion, what we are witnessing is the elite class, who live almost entirely in the realm of the virtual and symbolic, being forced to deal with that unpleasant monster called Reality...and as we can see, their only response to any and all challenges is some sort of infantile tantrum.
Yes. I agree with everything you say. All of the media elites are now the same as the TV host in the Hunger Games. It's grotesque.
I found myself recently in a lively pub filled with working class conservatives, Republicans, complete with a Cuban emigre and a smarmy businessman turned politician and it was… inspiring. There is so much life and positivity beyond the shallow breathing ranks of the neurotic professional and managerial elite. There is a vast political realignment going on that is neither one thing nor the other. I, like you am a creation of the left so there are moments where I just have shut off all the old prejudices and be open to the possibilities.
You have hit the nail on the head with the phrase "the shallow breathing ranks of the neurotic professional and managerial elite."
Thank you for this wonderful analysis Jenny!
An important point to keep in mind, as you mentioned, the old categories of Left and Right no longer apply as we are living in a world where "Right is Left, and Left is Right." When you say you are of the Liberal Left, I suspect you are talking about classical Western liberalisms which was the product of Enlightenment Rationality. If by Liberal Left you meant classical socialism and communism, that too was a product of Enlightenment Rationality.
The enemy of all human civilizations today is Nihilism masquerading as "Western Liberalism." The scope of the conversation is worthy of book length analysis, but in a nutshell there are foundational concepts that connect Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Wilhelm Reich, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, Foucault, Derrida, and the American Democrat Party with Social Democrats in Western Europe and the Davos crowd. That connection is the rejection of truth and rationality.
That is why the Davos crowd in Europe and North America can look at you with a straight face and tell you that mathematics is racist. Basically what happened was that the 1960s "counter culture" was a rejection of classical liberal rationality in favor of an irrational world where truth is what each individual says is truth. Those ideas captured Western universities from the 60s through the 80s permeating the brains of the graduates of Western academies in the media, film, entertainment industries and onto Wall Street and finally the American military. None of this will change until Western universities reverse the tide of Nietzschean nihilism and its derivatives in favor of Enlightenment rationality.
As for Ukraine, the heart of every rational human being goes out to the suffering of all those killed on both the Russian and Ukrainian side. Once again, a rational non-nihlist review of history tells us that Moscow became the seed of modern Russia only after the Mongols invaded and destroyed Kiev, the birthplace of the Russian people. It's only natural that Russians would feel threatened by an American establishment (i.e. the Democrat Party and the Republican Party who are Democrats masquerading as conservatives) that has demonized them for the past ten years.
It is also natural that Russians would not want the irrational Western thought to permeate Ukraine, the birthplace of Russia, and seep its way into Moscow and St. Petersburg. Perhaps Russian men don't want to become eunuchs or be forced to accept a future where we are all transgendered. Ultimately, that is the ONLY thing the "West" is exporting today!
Thank you! What happened with the Boomer counter culture is very interesting to me -- I think it had a malign influence to a degree that is very under-appreciated. It's something I think about a lot.
I'm so happy I found you, this post really resonated with me. My story is very similar, I was always 'a bit of a leftie' (according to my friends) and always supported Labour. I was always passionate about causes and making the world a better, more just, place. And I still feel that I am 'old-school labour' Yet somehow I'm miles away, or on a different planet completely, to what's considered left wing nowadays. All the things that were considered to be more left/liberal (anti-globalisation, anti-big business, sceptical of big pharma etc) are now considered to be right-wing/alt right. I feel that the old values of the left (equality, workers rights, women's and girls rights..) have been replaced with a hierarchy of rights (depending on what's trending on Twitter right now) and moral relativism. This new labour/liberalism doesn't seem to care about the working man, in fact it looks down on them for not being woke enough. And cancel culture with its online witch hunts has reduced every issue into for/against, good/bad, with no room for manoeuvre or nuance. It's really disturbing when I seen how things like Brexit has divided people, too, with a friend of mine admitting he no longer talks to those who voted Brexit. and another friend who did vote Brexit is treated like a social pariah, even within his own family. This is what has alienated me from the left, and why I find myself in a political no-man's-land, wondering what happened! Reading your post, and the comments below, just gives me hope. Thank you!
Thank you Nicky! It means a lot to hear that, as a writer but also as a person who has felt totally unmoored by all this too. ❤️
I'll try this again (my previous comment I posted the other day mysterious vanished). Jenny Holland is a very good writer. Her piece begs the question: Why is she "not right-wing"...?
Well I guess you'd have to define right-wing! If you mean "freedom" "bodily autonomy" "anti-corporate monopoly" and "believes in reality" then, yeah. I guess I am. If you mean right-wing in the old sense of the word then no. Culturally, I'm still a leftie! 🤣
I didn't know Nicolle Wallace was in the Bush admin. She describes herself as a 'former self-loathing Republican' so I'll hand it to her for finally coming to her senses...which I would do for any 'former self-loathing Democrat' and Goddess knows the left is better at self-hating than the right.
Not with ya on the Trucklodytes. They are pretty much loathed throughout Canada because a pandemic is serious shit, and they were a bunch of whiny little snowflake crybabies carrying on about Fascism when they would have shat their tighty whiteys if they'd ever had to face Hitler. They were rude, loud, violent, and harassing. The people of Ottawa are traumatized by their shit. And while it's arguable whether they were *about* racism and Nazism, they certainly got infested later and they did nothing to stop it. Many of us won't shed a tear for these selfish mothertruckers tantruming because they weren't allowed to spread a virus. The fact that had Trudeau caved to their demands they STILL wouldn't have been allowed to cross the border because the Americans wouldn't have let them. So, it's *arguable* they weren't initially about racism and Nazism, but it's also pretty arguable that this had nothing to do with vaccine policy, and it looked rather a lot like a bunch of similar whiny spoiled overprivileged brats who tried to overthrow a government last year because they didn't get their way during an election.
And they say *women* are too emotional and irrational to hold public office.
Otherwise, though, you nailed my sentiments on what's wrong with the left. I too am tired of hearing 'patriarchy' blamed for everything when it's not 'white supremacy'. The left has lost its damn mind. I'm not a white supremacist by birth, I AM a woman by birth, and 'critical theory' is looking more fundementedlist than Christianity these days.
A lot of us out right with you in this "evolution" . . . is that we're "older and wiser", and the liberal left was always like this, or have things really changed that much. Certainly, the 20-year-old's of today seem just as enamored with 2022's version of it as we were in 1990 or 2000. I dunno, but yes, today's left-liberalism looks nothing like the one that I think I was raised in.
So excellent. Jenny - you have such a sharp ability to write what many are writing and say what many are saying but in a completely unique manner. I really look forward to your articles. Do I pay for this subscription? I better get on that!
Thank you!! That is very kind of you to say and I really appreciate it.
Just saw this. Aren't we in the strangest upside-down, inside-out, wrong-way-around moment ever? A gift and a curse to be alive and aware today.
Your Did-I-Just-Read-That-Correctly moment was with the actress. Mine is right here on your comments thread.
Someone's lengthy comment and perspective about our (Canadian) Freedom Convoy in Ottawa earlier this year, is completely unrecognizable to me. Commenter and I were living in parallel realities on every single point. Year 2022 is the year of polarization.
Commenter saw, heard, and followed entirely different humans and events than I saw, heard, and followed. Funny and crazy times.
Thanks for your writing!
Hi, Jen. Really liked this piece, but I must make one correction: I did not meet your dad when I was visiting Dublin as part of a Trotskyist summer camp. I went to one of those camps on a soggy bog in England 3 years before and found it insufferable. Already living in Paris, I hung out with some French kids there, eventually becoming a French Trot -- in a lot bigger and much more sensible group. Members even dressed well and the women wore make-up! One fine day some Irish Trots showed up, and I wound up putting up all five of them on my floor. I met my future husband while visiting one of them, who had become a friend. It was in a very interesting bar, not really artsy. But it did cater to the (at the time very small )group of Dublin misfits, piss-riden has-beens, the odd ex-IRA man, the literary set, homosexuals, Trots. Your dad, my friend told me, was part of the literary set. I was never given to ideological purity, and your father soon mocked my political activism, such as it was, right out of me. Un abbraccio, Mom