A telling paragraph from The Free Press’ dive into what happened to PayPal. The short version is that it became another woke company committed to the same things the entire establishment is.
It was not a conspiracy. Democratic officials were not colluding with the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and owners of legacy newspapers and cable networks and studio chiefs and university presidents. It’s that, in a matter of a few months, maybe a year, they had all embraced the same leftwing identitarianism, the same slogans, the same hashtags and pronouns, the same statistics, the same talking points, and they reinforced each other, and they made it exceedingly difficult for anyone to challenge the new orthodoxy.
We’ve seen in the #TwitterFiles that it was a conspiracy. But many of the conspirators didn’t think that they were conspiring.
No more than parent groups, legislators, officials and assorted companies thought that they were ‘conspiring’ in the 80s when they were trying to limit the distribution of obscene materials to children.
That the wheel has turned and there’s a similar alliance to promote obscene materials to children reflects a change in social values, but not a universal one, rather a narrow one that is mostly confined to elites.
And that gets at the heart of the Two Americas crisis.
The Left has successfully warped the country, but its overall institutional capture successes were focused on using education and culture to capture the elites. And the elites are, for the most part, captured, especially on a generational level.
The elites are ruthlessly and unthinkingly enforcing their value system, even as it changes from year to year, and its absurd paradigms on the country.
They live in enough of a bubble that they don’t think that they are out of step with anyone except maybe a few ‘rednecks’ somewhere in ‘flyover country’ whom they’ve learned to despite as part of their tribal cultural indoctrination.
This sort of thing is oppressive when it’s done by a majority to a minority, but it’s being done by a minority to a majority. And yet the minority has been convinced that it’s a majority because it wields so much power within its echo chambers. That power, produced by massive centralization, is at the heart of the problem.
And many conservatives are coming to realize that.
A country controlled by a minority elite that is out of step with the people and yet insists on regulating them is a tyranny, no matter whether the nature of that tyranny is political, cultural or economic.
Freedom comes from independence. As long as America is dominated by a leftist oligarchy, it can never be free.
How did Christianity and Islam begin? With a tiny minority. How did Marxism begin? With a tiny minority. It is the intellectuals, the prophets, the philosophers, the theoligians, of a religion or a philosophy that begin it, teach it, disseminate, indoctrinate it, promote it, and maintain it.
But here’s the thing that no devout Christian or Jewish conservative wants to understand, Judeo-Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism. But Marxism is a fish out of water, its moral-political code of altruism-colectivism can not be sustained without a mystical, supernatural, religious base. Marxism is preparing the way BACK to religion, back to the tyranny of a religious theocracy. Back to a religious Dark Age.
“History [for good or evil] is made by minorities—or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here, it is not quantity, but quality that counts (the quality—and consistency—of the ideas one is advocating).” – Ayn Rand
Established orthodoxies require a class of regulators. Religions don’t start as orthodoxies.
The pertinent question here is how did Marxism go on the offensive against Christianity? By claiming it was an opium designed to promote the interests of an elite class. The pertinent topic here is elitism not your ideas about how to create a better bread of intellectual elites to spearhead the sort of movement you could approve of which you’ve already repeated a million times.
Rand’s movement already had its heyday amongst a strong contingent of the Silicon Valley crowd and other prominent movers and shakers so if Rand’s ideas are top shelf why are we here?
Maybe all we need is more repetition?
Thanks Una, I assume this is the real Una, it seems some troll has been using your name in some other threads?
What you need is to understand. Atlruism-Collectivism is the heart and core of monotheistic religion and Marxism. Marxism simply strips away the explicit supernatural elements of Altruism-Collectivism and replaces God and a supernatural after-life with a mumbo-jumbo of pseudo-scientific gibberish.
But Altruism-Collectivism can not be sustained on secular ground, it is a fish out of religious water, and to survive must be re-integrated into a supernatural, mystical, religious, metaphysics and after-life Utopia.
Name me one famous, prominent, or influential Silicon Valley executive who has EVER publicly proclaimed himself an Objectivist and is fighting for Objectivism in the public square? There are NONE.
And you KNOW IT.
Why are we here? Because Objectivism is that revolutionary. Because Ayn Rand’s moral code of rational selfishness is a historical, paradigm shift.
Because Objectivism is fighting 5,000 years of deeply entrenched, profoundly primordial, mysticism.
5,000 years, or more, of the Altruism-Colectivism premise.
“In the history of mankind it is earlier than we think” – Ayn Rand
Fed Chief Alan Greenspan a close personal friend of Rand, Travis Kalanick (Uber), Peter Thiel (Facebook investor), Kevin Systrom (Instagram) amongst many others are people who have been deeply influenced by Rand’s ideas. Whether they conform sufficiently to your particular standards of Objectivism I don’t know.
What I do know is that Rand’s guess about where we are in history is as good as anybody else’s. What proclamations like, “In the history of mankind it is earlier than we think” are about are what proclamations are usually about. Ideas people would like to promote.
Alan Greenspan not only betrayed Objectivism and Objectivist principles he betrayed the principles of Capitalism and a Free Market economy.
Greenspan walked away from Objectivism some fifteen years before he ever became Chairman of the Fed. He sold his soul and lifetime of education, knowledge, and intellect for power, wealth, and social status. Now the haters of Objectivism and CAPITALISM declare him a perfect example not only of the evil of Objectivism but the evil of FREE MARKET CAPITALISM!
As for the others, I simply don’t know enough about them, their knowledge of Objectivism, their understanding of Objectivism, or their fidelity to Objectivism, to say anything about them. But I will write their names down and see if I can find out anything about them and their alleged dedication to Objectivism. If their anything like Alan Greenspan that dedication will amount to ZERO.
Paul Ryan is another example of someone that the haters of Rand and Objectivism proclaim as an advocate of Objectivism when he in fact thoroughly and publicly repudiated and rejected Objectivism and unequivocally proclaimed himself a Christian opposed to Objectivism.
When I was a young student, I naively believed the claims of the left to represent the cause of free speech, which is enshrined in the founding documents of America, the Declaration, Bill of Rights, writings of various founding fathers, etc. And of course Tocqueville. But now it seems that something was wrong there. Perhaps the left simply used free speech as a tool on their march through the institutions. Now we do not need free speech, we need woke speech, leftist clapping seals parroting whatever they hear from leftist politicians and on leftist media like CNN and MSNBC. Like Hitler getting to be chancellor by playing the democracy game until he could discard it when he had the power to do so. Or like the pigs in Animal Farm, who discovered that all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal. Now we know.
the Left was interested in free speech as a mechanism for disrupting society and protecting their own speech when they were in the minority, now that they have power, they want to suppress dissent
that’s how it’s always worked
That’s an excellent general rule for understanding their demands.
Islam is playing the same games now, working on us based on our religious tolerance.
Historical honesty defeats such efforts.
What happened to Mister Rushdie was business as usual.
Looks like you’ve got that figured out now.
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
“unthinkingly enforcing their value system”
Now, that’s an excellent point. I know some of them, fine people with noble aspirations and intentions and loving hearts, with advanced degrees, but not thinking. I think they get weeded out of degree programs that require the critical thinking required for higher math, though I know a lot of crazy mathematicians, some of whom are communists. On the other hand, chess was an important factor in bringing down the USSR, so there is something there, as chess requires critical thinking. Even though a lot of chess players are pretty crazy also.
Well, the non-elites had the chance to deliver a stinging rebuke to the elites a bit over a month ago. But what did they do with the opportunity? What are you going to do with an electorate like that?