David wrote:Where I start to have difficulties is this idea of having to go over to the side of the fundamentalist Christians, white supremacists and conspiracy nut-jobs that comprise most of the modern Republican party. Why does opposing one form of irrationality (i.e the militant political correctness) require one to lend support to another form of irrationality (the militant anti-intellectualism of the right-wing)? Can you help me out here? I don’t get this at all.
I'll attempt my own answer...
To 'help you out' would amount to helping you to address your own comprehension problems. To help out might mean holding a mirror up to your own self so that it could better see itself. To help out quickly turns into a laborous, complex effort to introduce a whole range of ideas which are new and unfamiliar to you, and to pull you into a conversation you are quite unprepared to have.
It is true that fundamentalist Christians, that is the classic form, operate within a closed idea-loop. Yet on the other side of that observation there are far more thoughtful and far-thinking Christians who are better able to reveal the essence of the Christian metaphysic. It could be said to be unwise to see things in terms of complete capitulation and 'going over to the side' of the Christians, but wise to understand those who live through that metaphysic and understand how they imagine the world and comprehend value and meaning. I think it is also wise to reduce the Christian metaphysic to a simple 'world-picture' in order to understand it. Taken at a metaphysical level (a Johannine synthesis) it is a model that can be seen as having a good deal of sense.
'Rationality' in the sense that you use the word, and your crude and even brutal use of reason as a club, is in my view part of your problem. It is interesting for me to notice that you regard Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as 'rationalist' when, as seems to be more true, they were intelligent men who resolved to give themselves over to 'irrationality' (as you might define it). The issue therefor of the conflict between the 'rational mind' and something more basic, more primal, more dangerous, but also more creative in the capacities of man, is a topic that is outside of your understanding. For Nietzsche that involved a comprehension of something primordeal, the will to power. For Kierkegaard a 'leap' into something other than the mere mind and its false understanding that it is the sovereign faculty. I have not gotten the impression that you understand how each of these figures was not 'rationalist' in the sense that you erroneously imagine.
Therefor, once again, to get to the bottom of the problem, one has to locate the problem in you, and then begin to investigate how it is that you have come to so many mistaken positions. One has to 'unravel' you.
It is a complete misapprehension to use the term 'supremacist' in the way that you are using it. By using it in that way you instantly step into misapprehension. In order to understand the position of race-realists and those who are opposed to the creation of enforced multi-ethnic culture, you will have to devote time to the study of their positions. But by using that term, along with 'racist' and 'fascist' you indicate having been coopted into a false-assertion structure. Once again, to get to the bottom of that problem one has to turn to you as problem. You become the problem that has to be worked on! And what has to be worked out is your misconception, your mischaracterization. Doing that, one will quickly notice how deeply enmeshed you are in a whole set of predicates and how intricately these are bound up with what I call 'hyper-liberalism'. You make yourself its spokesman and therefor you as problem have, one again, to be unraveled. This is time consuming.
'Conspiracy nut jobs', you say? Very well, surely there are erroneous conspiracy theories. But the larger issue involves something more important, more fundamental: interpretation of the world. To propose that *the world* is in truth an intricate web of 'Maya' and that deception is, as it were, the name of the game, am I describing a truth or am I indicating that I have a conspiratorially inclined mind? To propose delusion as a category, and to propose clear-seeing (whatever opposes delusion which is 'enlightenment' for you I gather) involves intricate value-assertions and entire metaphysical predicates as well as interpetive structures. These are, in fact, on the same order as that of the Christian with his metaphysical overstructure.
The problem with you, David, is now and has always been that you do not recognize your own determining, inner structures, and your religious insistance on your own grasp of 'ultimate reality' and 'the absolute'. These definitions correspond to the systems of those you critique! You are therefor just as much involved in them as anyone. I see you, right now, as emblematic of a man and a mind that is just on the point of approaching awareness. You correspond, as I see things, to a whole segment of people within hyper-liberal culture that now will have to confront and deal with deep-set and deeply-engrained misunderstandings about their world. This is painful no doubt. Perhaps they will succeed in not doing it. But crises tend to produce self-awareness.
Francis Parker Yockey is a theorist with
interesting critique of liberalism. Worth considering. The 'right-wing nuts' you refer to, in my own view, are beginning to become more aware and more understanding of meta-political issues. I recommend '
Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism' by George Hawley to better understand the crisis in America right now. (University Press of Kansas, 2016).