Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:45 amLook at all the great scholars gathered in front of Confederate statues espousing "replacement theory". Or is it pizza delivery drivers on strike? I bet a lot of pizzas didn't get delivered that night.
As you know (if you have bothered to read what I write) I place emphasis on seeing and understanding the
causal chains that have come to form our culture and our own operational ideology. My view, which is a form of activism because there is some intentionality behind the expression of it, is that the more and the better that we see these 'causal chains' the better and more clearly we will understand The Present.
I assert (it is a starting-point) that we are all in states of tremendous confusion. Here I speak about politics, the contemporary world, contemporary events, but also much else. What defines our present, according to what I see, is tremendous discord. But it is a confused discord very hard to make sense of. What 'clarifying statement' could we make about the social and political situation that would help us to better grasp it? The question becomes
What is going on in our present and why?
You bring up here (because the idea of a Great Replacement and Renaud Camus came up) the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. You have referred to it through a 'lens' or a perspective offered by the SPLC. What this means, and I believe this fair to say, is that the phenomenon of all that, say, inspired those who came to that rally is presented through a lens that establishes, as an
a priori, that all who came and whatever causes they were defending, were not merely 'bad' but also 'evil'.
If I say this, if I make this assessment, do you take it to mean that I believe they were 'good'? Curious, it seems to me, how in our present and within our selves perceptions of things, people, issues, problems, history -- all gets reduced to simplistic binaries. This is a critical statement. I am saying, I am proposing, that there is another way to look at these issues. I refer to it as 'distance' or 'a seeing from a certain remove'.
Is that recommendation a sound one, or is it, somehow, in itself, a 'bad' one or worse an 'evil' one? Let me be frank therefore: to take the position that I recommend is
suspect at best according to prevailing attitudes. At worst it is a form of either subtle (unstated) or overt (expressly stated) complicity in what is presented as 'bad' and 'evil'. So to see outside of the established binaries -- this is
good, this is
bad; this is
good, this is
evil -- is itself
a suspicious activity.
That is how things are set up
these days. Now, the next question is Why is that? And How has this come about? And further What is the function of establishing such a binary framing through which to see things and events?
I am pretty sure that you recognize what I am up to here and where this is going. And I am pretty sure that you yourself, Gary, see what I do, what I say, and the method I propose, as not being 'good' and likely as being 'bad'.
I also wish to suggest that dearest Iambiguous has clearly labeled me as 'bad' -- though he does not use that term. (He couldn't really given all his elaborate predications involving Dasein
etc.) -- because I resolve to 'stand back' and view things from a removed angle. This is
suspect and also
intolerable to him and I propose that we can ask a number of questions as to why this is so. But that is a matter for another conversation.
What I want to establish is that it is made impossible to discuss things (people, events, what is going on) in a calm, thoughtful, carefully and fair way when something that looks like 'political correctness' defines what we can see, what we can think, and what we can say.
Now with that said I must say that
it is all preamble. Meaning that the preamble has to be expressed in order to establish a ground upon which the topic -- in this case the resistance of people to the tearing down of Southern monuments by radical activists -- could be discussed. One is forced to outline all that renders such a 'fair' conversation
impossible has to be conversed first before one can even get to the meat of the issue.
What I wish to suggest is that it is as a result of this initial obstacle -- that even mention of an alternative view has been established as 'bad' as well as 'evil' -- has a particular but very real function: It is to keep any sort of open and fair conversation from occurring.
So here I could now make a statement as a way of illustrating what I mean. The SPLC has established the only view that a decent and 'good' (i.e. non-evil) person
can have in regard to the issue (of the Unite the Right Rally and the different groups who came to participate in it). No other view is allowed.
But here is the odd thing: You have merely *borrowed* as it were a structure-of-view that has been confected for you by someone else. You are certainly not alone in this!
I would circle back to my opening statement:
I assert (it is a starting-point) that we are all in states of tremendous confusion. Here I speak about politics, the contemporary world, contemporary events, but also much else. What defines our present, according to what I see, is tremendous discord. But it is a confused discord very hard to make sense of. What 'clarifying statement' could we make about the social and political situation that would help us to better grasp it? The question becomes What is going on in our present and why?
