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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

"Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality."

Nietzsche described and intuited the Social Justice project (for lack of a better term) as another of the results and consequences of "the death of God"—how instead of collapsing into amoral nihilism, culture and politics would become even more centered around morality, esp for the moral priesthood and moral entrepreneurs in the intelligentsia.

I don't think there's any denying that there's an intense and punitive moralism at the base of our modern Left politics—moral policing around language (pronouns etc), moral contagion (everyone denounce the people who won't wear masks! suddenly instantly switched to everyone denounce white supremacy! as the herd shifted), moral pollution (cancellation, refusals to talk to certain people in case they are "normalized") and what used to be traditional political concerns and debates around govt policy transformed into an arena for moral exhibitionism—we must defund the police and open the borders and allow tent camps in public parks, all because criminals/migrants/the unhoused are sacred victims who all good people worship and adore.

I have friends and family all over the political spectrum, and my feeling is that maybe the main difference today bw liberals and conservatives is that conservatives usually get their religion elsewhere whereas for liberals, POLITICS IS THEIR RELIGION. Our "symbolic capitalist" class may see themselves as atheist materialists but they crave the sacred as much as anyone and Soc Just is their sacred project—a neo-communism where "marginalized identities" replace the proletariat, and who they lead to a new society based on "socialist liberation".

I don't think losing one election is going to change this. Left-moralism seems to be a permanent aspect of Western liberalism (it is sort of a permanent opposition and Church of Transgression centered in academia) and maybe the best we can hope for is that it transforms from something socially toxic (dividing us all by racial markers and oppression scores) and becomes something actually tangibly helpful.

Thanks!

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Feral Finster's avatar

Good luck getting anyone on Team D to acknowledge any of this.

If the educated are good at nothing else, they are good at manufacturing narratives that support their priors, aka "cognitive dissonance".

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