Indeed, theocrats never debate. See Judith Butler who never debates any critics; only calls them "fascists." I wrote an essay "How Does One Become Woke? A Tale of Two Friends" and invited the friend in question--a student and defender of Butler who works for an elite magazine--to a public debate. She declined, and, as answer, started a t…
Indeed, theocrats never debate. See Judith Butler who never debates any critics; only calls them "fascists." I wrote an essay "How Does One Become Woke? A Tale of Two Friends" and invited the friend in question--a student and defender of Butler who works for an elite magazine--to a public debate. She declined, and, as answer, started a thread on Bluesky where her many followers told her how great she is. Her reaction--going to the Bluesky to get sympathy and "you are so great" comments exemplifies perfectly who these people are: intellectual dwarves incapable of a rational, sustained debate. Authoritarian, yet insecure minds in need of protection (hence their "safe spaces").
Judith Butler is a fraud and a charlatan and she isn't a scholar with ideas but a guru/politician with dogma and disciples.
America, being the land of opportunity and re-invention, has a rich history of famous charlatans, from Joseph Smith and other entrepreneurial messiahs to snake-oil salesmen and traveling carnivals to 70s cult leaders to 80s televangelists—and these famous frauds and con artists teach us a lot about each era and its beliefs and values.
That Butler and her "gender is performance" ideology (which is somehow both obvious and stupid) is supposedly one of the great thinkers of our time tells us more about modern America than any academic study could—about the marriage (performed in California) of therapeutic self-help and radical politics, about how Leftism has mutated from a concern for workers and wages to an upscale bauble designed to make insecure children feel righteous and holy, to America's bottomless narcissism and our preference for romantic fantasies and imaginary "identities" over facts, to how Utopian politics has become a secular religion based on the worship of a Sacred Victim, and lastly to how our academic and cultural institutions have been captured by alchemists who've never left campus but who think reality can be rearranged by a heavy application of obscurantist jargon imported from France.
Of course these people can't debate—cult members don't debate, they only worship their leader and attack evil outsiders. And none of this changes just because the guru has a PhD from Berkeley and speaks perfect Parisian patter.
America, most especially California, will always have an endless supply of insecure lost souls looking for someone to simply explain the world in black/white terms and to convince them that they're an enlightened cohort chosen to change the world and bring about some combo of Utopia and apocalypse, and there will always be a guru waiting somewhere to gather them into his/her (their?!) flock.
I was a Lit major at a snooty college way back in the 1980s so I've been watching this creature called Theory from the days of its American (re)birth to its current conquest of the globe and almost every Western brain.
If you had told me back then that Crit Theory/Soc Just would be the first great new religion of the 21st century, I would have have never believed it....But never underestimate a committed band of zealots who want power and are determined to get it.
Same here. I would have never imagined in the 90s when "theory" was all the rage in America's elite universities that 3 decades later the fad would take over the entire society and become the new religion--even though the conformism of the theory-oriented people was a warning sign.
Indeed, theocrats never debate. See Judith Butler who never debates any critics; only calls them "fascists." I wrote an essay "How Does One Become Woke? A Tale of Two Friends" and invited the friend in question--a student and defender of Butler who works for an elite magazine--to a public debate. She declined, and, as answer, started a thread on Bluesky where her many followers told her how great she is. Her reaction--going to the Bluesky to get sympathy and "you are so great" comments exemplifies perfectly who these people are: intellectual dwarves incapable of a rational, sustained debate. Authoritarian, yet insecure minds in need of protection (hence their "safe spaces").
Judith Butler is a fraud and a charlatan and she isn't a scholar with ideas but a guru/politician with dogma and disciples.
America, being the land of opportunity and re-invention, has a rich history of famous charlatans, from Joseph Smith and other entrepreneurial messiahs to snake-oil salesmen and traveling carnivals to 70s cult leaders to 80s televangelists—and these famous frauds and con artists teach us a lot about each era and its beliefs and values.
That Butler and her "gender is performance" ideology (which is somehow both obvious and stupid) is supposedly one of the great thinkers of our time tells us more about modern America than any academic study could—about the marriage (performed in California) of therapeutic self-help and radical politics, about how Leftism has mutated from a concern for workers and wages to an upscale bauble designed to make insecure children feel righteous and holy, to America's bottomless narcissism and our preference for romantic fantasies and imaginary "identities" over facts, to how Utopian politics has become a secular religion based on the worship of a Sacred Victim, and lastly to how our academic and cultural institutions have been captured by alchemists who've never left campus but who think reality can be rearranged by a heavy application of obscurantist jargon imported from France.
Of course these people can't debate—cult members don't debate, they only worship their leader and attack evil outsiders. And none of this changes just because the guru has a PhD from Berkeley and speaks perfect Parisian patter.
America, most especially California, will always have an endless supply of insecure lost souls looking for someone to simply explain the world in black/white terms and to convince them that they're an enlightened cohort chosen to change the world and bring about some combo of Utopia and apocalypse, and there will always be a guru waiting somewhere to gather them into his/her (their?!) flock.
I've reflected myself on all of the above. Very well said. Yes, you expressed perfectly my own thoughts on this topic.
Thanks!
I was a Lit major at a snooty college way back in the 1980s so I've been watching this creature called Theory from the days of its American (re)birth to its current conquest of the globe and almost every Western brain.
If you had told me back then that Crit Theory/Soc Just would be the first great new religion of the 21st century, I would have have never believed it....But never underestimate a committed band of zealots who want power and are determined to get it.
Cheers!
Same here. I would have never imagined in the 90s when "theory" was all the rage in America's elite universities that 3 decades later the fad would take over the entire society and become the new religion--even though the conformism of the theory-oriented people was a warning sign.
wow great insight - thank you.