I dunno.

Every time I try to read these sort of discussions, typically from the left but also just as typically from the right, I'm left with the impression that the author believes that there are Good People and there are Bad People. The Good People are oppressed or misled by the Bad People, who are overtly or covertly, consciously or unconsciously, acting for their own benefit, whether that benefit is defined economically, socially, morally, or psychologically. The author argues, or just simply assumes, that if everyone, who are obviously Good People, would put on the author's revolution's uniforms or at least act according to the author's dictates or suggestions or hints, everything would be good and wonderful, full of rainbows and butterflies, with egalitarianism and respect for all the Good People and the Bad People taught the error of their ways so that they became Good People. (Or at least put up against a wall and shot.)

The problem is, and I'm an old man and can say this from experience, that the whole argument, right from its assumptions, is a load of horse shit. There are no Good People. They don't exist. Or maybe they do exist, but they're like those fairies also called "Good People"; you call them that to prevent them from souring your milk and killing your goats. In actual fact, there are only Bad People. They're everywhere. That person you think is a good person? They're a Bad Person. It's Bad People all the way down.

You know the neoliberal left, that everybody hates and is clearly in the wrong in all situations? They weren't always the powerful political war-horse they are now. (One could argue that they aren't a powerful political war-horse now, but that's neither here nor there.) The Baby Boomers? They learned identity politics because they had to. They were begat into a time when your race or manner of speech or the shape of your nose defined a significant fraction of your destiny. Without them, the whole but it's really about economic inequality and opportunities or whatever would be laughably, pointlessly, silly: simply none of it would apply if you were black, female, Hispanic, southern European, a new immigrant, eastern European (I had to laugh at one Neo-Nazi a while back; judging by his name and look, he was a Slav. If you can't find irony in a Slavic Neo-Nazi, you've missed the whole boat.)...

And yet, the Baby Boomers are indeed rat bastards.

Have you heard of the Liberal's Lament? "Last guys don't finish nice." Those most in need of help are the least likely to look like they deserve it. Those miners and factory workers that the old-timey traditional liberals fought so hard for? Racist and sexist as fuck. Sure, some of the leaders believed, or at least acted, in equality across the skin-tones, but most didn't and the rabble were all rabble. They aren't all going to rise, phoenix-like, Eminem-like, and become wonders and paragons.

And so, whenever I see something about some group, left, right, or center, just needing a little reform or revolution to really fix things right, I am going to ask, "What will go wrong?" Because it ain't going to go right. It will end up badly, even if it succeeds, at least according to the next generation.

Sigh.

Cynically,

mcguire

"You do it. I'm bitter."