Too Divided To Stand: Election 2020 & The Future of America

(Insight)

By E. Kyle Richey

As the days pass the world waits on the ballots to be counted with fraud investigations beginning, U.S. court handling disputes, and protestors marching in the streets for their cause or candidate (or both); the very legitimacy of the United States government along with the Media and Corporate America now all teeter in the balance. Whoever is elected now enters a more susceptible environment, one that may no longer be able to sustain favor of a wary public. Radicals now seek revenge regardless of who is in office. If Trump is reelected there stands a good chance that radical leftist elements will bring fire to the streets. Should Biden obtain the Presidency, it is uncertain if Trump supporters or even if President Trump himself will stand down; or if Biden himself is mentally up to the task, begging the question, under the assumption that Biden is elected, did half of America actually just elect America’s first black female president? All of these concerns are being asked. Emotions have peaked. Late Modernity’s perpetual state is here. It may be time to consider a different way forward by first stepping back.

Twenty-Eighteen

On September 29, 2018 the following thesis statement was presented before professors at a university:

“Arising from identity-based ideologies, secular modern American colleges and universities have increasingly adopted identity politics into their institutional practices. This adoption has resulted in limited discourses and substantive debates between opposing ideological, philosophical, scientific, and theological systems and their claims. Such practices dilute knowledge which in turn reduces innovation, ideas, and the search for truth. Furthermore, identity-politics is beyond the walls of academia, influencing other public and private spheres. In the wake of these changes, a growing wave of opposition has formed, offering new ideas and possible solutions concerning identity politics. But are these solutions viable?”¹

That was my thesis.

In October of 2018 I presented my theory (a model built for higher education in mind) called: “Collision at the Intersection of Ideas: The Crisis of Identity in Higher Education“²

My argument was that identity-based politics or the ideological belief that a person’s identity whether based on race, gender, sex, age, or even areas of religion were becoming a point of irreconcilable contention within higher education to such a degree that it narrowed actual learning concerning facts, knowledge growth, and differing perspectives all at the determent of the core purpose that is higher learning. I defined Identity Politics from Francis Fukuyama’s book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment and a study by Marilynn B. Brewer titled, The Many Faces of Social Identity: Implications for Political Psychology (2001):

Individuals who, through their sense of identity, feel they are being alienated and demand recognition.³

To argue my thesis I had to present the structure of Identity Politics i.e. how it manifests in higher education, prove it existed within higher education, and present studies that demonstrated a conflict with the identity-based culture in colleges and universities (little did I grasp it was also in Christian colleges, seminaries, and churches at that point).

Using my definition of Identity Politics (IP) I proved actual mechanisms or tools within colleges that are utilized administratively by institutions of higher education including:

• Social Justice & Equity
• Hate Speech
• Micro-Aggressions
• Intersectionality
• White Fragility
• Trigger Warning’s
• Sanctuary Campus
• Safe Space
• Phobias (e.g. Transphobia)
• Sexism
• Gender Pronouns

Along with studies that conflicted with the established narrative that universities hold as their position in opposition to other varying opinions (here are some examples I presented at the time):

Microaggressions and Victimhood Culture

Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2014). Microaggression and moral cultures. Comparative sociology, 13, 692–726.

Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2018). The rise of victimhood culture: Microaggressions, safe spaces, and the new culture wars. [No city]: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lewis, H. R. (2007). Excellence without a soul: Does liberal education have a future? New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Lilienfeld, S. O. (2017). Microaggressions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(1), 138–169.

Group Polorization & Identity

Cikara, M., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). The neuroscience of intergroup relations: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(245).

Myers, D. G., & Lamm, H. (1976). The group polarization phenomenon. Psychological Bulletin, 83(4), 602-627. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.83.4.602

Gender/Sex differences between Males and Females

Crick, N. R., & Grotpeter, J. K. (1995). Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. Child Development, 66(3), 710–722.

Deaner, R. O., Balish, S. M., & Lombardo, M. P. (2016). Sex differences in sports interest and motivation: An evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 10(2), 73– 97.

LaFreniere, P. (2011). Evolutionary functions of social play: Life histories, sex differences, and emotion regulation. American Journal of Play, 3(4), 464–488.

Safe Spaces and Critical Thinking

Boostrom, Robert. (1998). ‘Safe spaces’: Reflections on an educational metaphor. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30:4, 397-408. DOI: 10.1080/002202798183549

Barrett, Betty J. (2010) “Is “Safety” Dangerous? A Critical Examination of the Classroom as Safe Space,” The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: 1:1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2010.1.9

Even in 2018 I could see the intersection between higher education and the workplace or in politics, but I naively believed that Christian Institutions could safe guard themselves from IP.

Within my thesis I wanted to show two important factors at play within and outside of higher education:

1) A “Conflict of Visions” as explained by Thomas Sowell; a vision being “our sense of how the world works” as Sowell elaborates “Visions are the foundations on which theories are built… Visions are very subjective, but well-constructed theories have clear implications, and facts can test and measure their objective validity” (p. 4).⁴ From Sowell’s perspective, the place of conflict comes at the degree in which a vision is constrained or unconstrained; the more constrained a vision the less willing the society or group or person is to act on an issue of importance precisely because that action may result in a reverberation of consequences larger than the original issue. For example, ending a ban on gay marriage. An action of this kind, right or wrong, has consequences in relation to those who oppose gay marriage and are at conflict with other LGBTQ issues beyond just marriage. We see this contention between people of faith and a secular view in terms of rights. Without going into that debate, the unconstrained vision says that this is an act of justice; everyone should have the right to marry whomever they want in the name of love or some ethereal concept. A very real point of contention therefore exists between the two visions and neither vision is always right or wrong, rather Sowell demonstrates the need for logic and facts regardless of a constrained or unconstrained vision. Sowell recognizes the imperfection of reason itself as well along with the real emotional and psychological factors that come with these debates or visions of conflict. Nothing is perfect and that is the point by Sowell. There are no utopias, only gulags when a sect moves toward their utopian ideal which will eventually fail.

2) A collision concerning a conflict of visions had occurred; a collision at the intersection of ideas. Fundamental positions are now incapable of coexisting in a liberal democratic society because identity based politics that liberalism and capitalism, neoliberalism, successfully forged. The beginning decay of Liberalism started at the wake of postmodernism in the late 1940s after a disillusioned populace survived WW2 going into the 1950s with a lost sense of trust in human institutions and a desire for more in life. Old bonds, already decaying, were rupturing by the 1960s and onward. By the year 2000 society had reached a kind of peak as cultures became too convoluted and ideologies had heightened to such a degree that society, or my original focus higher education, was no longer capable of maintaining a real viability: the ability to live, grow, and develop outside an increasingly narrowing scope of indoctrination. Now I did not go as far as calling it indoctrination then, however, I maintained colleges have increasingly deduced arguments to a place of irreconcilable differences or a place of “Us vs Them” mentality.⁵ Conflict had become a wreckage; the ivory tower was now a rubble (a paper I wrote in the beginning of my program).⁶

Visions are the foundations on which theories are built… Visions are very subjective, but well-constructed theories have clear implications, and facts can test and measure their objective validity – Thomas Sowell

By indoctrination I mean to suggest that institutions of higher learning, in order to preserve a status of legitimacy, had to follow and finally instill a progressive moral relativity that slowly influenced colleges which then exported those ideas back into general society. What I learned was that what happened in higher education was happening in the United States and throughout the west.

Today nearly every branch of government and workplace environment is subjected to a form of diversity, equity, and inclusion that goes beyond the boundaries of equality and merit and civil rights. Now a conflict exists to such a level that it slowly forced new convergences and divergences of groups; late modernity (1950 to the Present) was and remains a paradigm shift that now has liberal minded people either “moving” more toward the politically left or politically right; relgious beliefs are in the midst of a defragmentation as Christians and Atheists can more easily find themselves sharing similar social, political, and economic beliefs even though what roots them into their belief about abortion, gender, sex, or economics is not the same. Late modern society is rapidly diffusing but it won’t last forever because it is a paradigm shift, we are merely living in a point at which structures of authority, meaning, purpose, and legitimacy are all changing.

There are two layers concerning a principle of legitimacy as defined by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama: 1) “Legitimacy is not justice or right in an absolute sense; it is a relative concept that exists in people’s subjective perceptions” (p. 15)⁷ and 2) “A lack of legitimacy among the population as a whole does not spell a crisis of legitimacy for the regime unless it begins to infect the elites tied to the regime itself…” (p. 16).⁸ Fukuyama is directly speaking to strong-states, authoritarian states, in the latter point but the principle applies to a democratic society such as the United States.

All societies perform some kind of indoctrination in a general sense. But this was my first inklings of a radical leftist drive toward something entirely different than a “perspective” simply worth learning. No it was something much more. Prior to graduating it became clear that these beliefs aimed to throw Westernized, Christian believing, and anything considered “white” or “privileged” or “hateful” to the lions den. These were racist ideologs; Sowell’s worrisome quest-seeking Social Justice Warriors; Marxist at their core. That is not a political statement. These are real facts. Real people. Real radicals. However, after graduation it became readily apparent that QAnon conspiracies, the Alt-Right, Flat Earthers, and other far-right groups had left reality for an America that could be made great again if only they disperse “the enemy” at large.

Present Distrust

Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization. Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions. Potentially, they exist in every country and form the majority of those large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianisms (1951), p. 311

As it stands a vote for Biden or Trump, however unwilling the populace may have been in their desire to vote, represents a repudiation and judgment over the other. A Biden victory is a win against hate, racism, and evil Americanism; a Trump victory is a vanguard against Woke liberalism and Socialism. Neither the ardent supporter nor the wary voter can see past the conflicting viewpoints. They see only a necessary conflict; a good versus evil. Currently Trump voters fear voter fraud in Arizona, Michigan, and other battle ground states. Biden supporters see it has a necessary reckoning after Hillary and Gore. Speculation runs rampant as major news networks and social media censors information including providing their own fact-checking creating a narrative that spins further the chaos. All the while Covid-19 continually magnifies uncertainty. Life at the moment is an upward battle; a fog of present distrust hangs low. No one knows what to believe or why except they having an appetite for politics in the midst of difficult times. Arendt further states:

The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianisms (1951), p. 317

Trends of loneliness, narcissism, nihilism, and fear have been rising for decades according to sociologist like Robert D. Putnam⁸ along with a great moral and economic bifurcation of White America as demonstrated by Charles Murray.⁹ America is divided and divided absolutely¹⁰ to the point it is frustrating institutions within the paradigm shift of power and authority. Rod Dreher sees the writing on the wall from his publication of Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents to last night’s (November 5, 2020) blog article, A Divided Country:

Law and order is so fundamental to the conservative stance towards the world. Had the BLM protests not been violent, they would not have stoked the Right so much. This is something that progressives deeply need to understand. On the Right, it’s not reaction against racial justice protests; it’s reaction against violence, and the justification of the violence we heard from many on the Left in the media. Joe Biden’s criticism of the protesters did not ring true…

We are going to remain a divided country. The election solved nothing. The idea, though, that if only we could have gotten rid of Donald Trump, then things would heal, was always an absurd fantasy. We are a divided country because we have lost the core narratives that bound us: a shared Christian faith (however attenuated), and a shared commitment to the historical narrative of America as an imperfect country that always strives to make life better for the next generation than the one that came before it.

We can’t even agree on what America is for anymore.

A Viable Solution

The United States of America has a real solution to resolving the pressures at present, but it comes at the cost of surrendering (a virtue few have) at at time when surrender appears as defeat. It is a mechanism designed within the very fabric of American Constitutionalism. We risk balkanization or greater tyranny if we fail to make this decision. American’s who wish to protect liberty and freedom no matter their political or religious beliefs must re-embrace a Strong Federalism.

Returning power back to the States so much power in fact that the Federal government is paralyzed from enforcing further legal decisions on the states as it has been in the last one hundred years. Believe in high taxes, enormous regulations, and progressive laws? Move to California, Oregon, New York, or Washington state. Let states decide nearly every aspect of life, make their Constitutions have meaning and purpose again. Take elections away from the national pull that desires a single leader, a hero of hope and change. America must loosen its grip by giving power and authority back to the states at the cost of ripping out the cords of a broken federal government and it’s deep state.

Next Time: A Return to Strong Federalism: A Historical and Philosophical Argument for the States

References

¹ Richey, Edward K. 23 September 2018. Collision At the Intersection of Ideas: The Crisis of Identity in Higher Education. Thesis. University of Texas San Antonio.

² Ibid. Presentation.

³ Brewer, M. (2001). The Many Faces of Social Identity: Implications for Political Psychology. Political Psychology, 22(1), 115-125. Retrieved November 6, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3791908

⁴ Sowell, Thomas. 2007. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. NY: Basic Books.

⁵ Lukianoff, Greg., Haidt, Jonathan. (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

⁶ Richey, Edward K. 6 December 2017. An Ivory Rubble: Postmodernism & The Collapse of the Modern University and its Impact on Society. University of Texas San Antonio.

⁷ Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and The Last Man. NY: The Free Press

⁸ Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. NY: Simon & Schuster

⁹ Murray, Charles. 2013. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. NY: Crown Publishing

¹⁰ French, David. 2020. Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. NY: St. Martin’s Press

Totalitarian Incantations: Late Modernity’s Radical Manifestations

(November Issue 2020)

By E. Kyle Richey

Once pegged as special, a citizen, even if accepting sterilization, dropped out of history. He ceased, in effect, to be part of mankind. And yet persons here and there declined to migrate; that, even to those involved, constituted a perplexing irrationality. Logically, every regular should have emigrated already. Perhaps, deformed as it was, Earth remained familiar, to be clung to. Or possibly the nonemigrant imagined that the tent of dust would deplete itself finally. In any case thousands of individuals remained, most of them constellated in urban areas where they could physically see one another, take heart at their mutual presence. Those appeared to be the relatively sane ones. And, in dubious addition to them, occasional peculiar entities remained in the virtually abandoned suburbs. — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

History is rift with zealous idealist demented by their cause, their purpose, their reason for existence however unrealistic or distorted or false. Now once again they have successfully seized power, but this time on a global scale at a point when society has become interdependent to a fault. Science and technology, religion and philosophy, higher education and the workforce are all being highjacked to obscure even the transience of life into barriers of opposition and final judgement. Today it is the far-left: Radical feminists, LGBTQ activists, Queer theorists, Postmodernist, and Critical Race Theorists who adumbrate context, meaning, and purpose for their Identity driven nomenclature under a quasi-socialism; a merging of corporate and state, the real deep state, in the name of their religion, social justice, in order to recreate what humanity thinks, says, and does. 

It comes at an exasperating cost on humanity and it all comes from a well of desire to break free—the psyche. Late Modernity has spawned a permanent spirt of emancipation of postmodernism that deconstructs and liberates to the point that it is now inconceivable for the radicalized to not equate between the demands of liberation with that of an ensuing conflict between “good and evil” “us versus them” “they or them” attitude. They no longer recognize that their causes now enslave everyone including themselves. Blinded by identity Politics, a bubble within the brew of totalitarian reality, humanity is now caught within a perpetual state that modernity birthed and late modernity is only beginning to see its awakening after generations experienced it rather vicariously. 

Benito Mussolini argued that Fascism was foremost a spiritual exercise of the will of man to rise up and overcome: 

“Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it see not only the individual but that nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher line, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.” (Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, 1932)

Third-way politics, most notably Fascism, was perturbed by a leftist communalism from communist and capitalistic individualism. For Mussolini the concept of the State could override both by making it—the State—the sole proprietor of Adoration and Judgement; King and God; Lord and Master. Heaven and Earth were now the sanctuary of the mighty State to preserve the corrupted foundation of the Homo-Sapien. 

Leftist politics also looks to the State through means of socialism and communism in order to free the masses, as Karl Marx remarked “to develop in greater spiritual freedom, a people must break their bondage to their bodily needs – they must cease to be the slaves of the body. They must, above all, have time at their disposal for spiritual creative activity and spiritual enjoyment” (Wages of Labour). Redistribute wealth, turn the privately owned into public hands, erase race and class warfare through a great equalization, and provide material good and services from free healthcare to free housing.  

Radicals all march to their own heavenly drum of a utopia never too far off away.

Conflict creates the enigma necessary to achieve this spiritual hunger within the inner belly of male and female. Vanquish thy enemy, achieve victory. Myth has an essential role regardless of ideological sway. Rene Girard argued that the innerness of mankind, the myths that bind us, are a making of the violent for which the sacred is conjured. Roger Scruton in his book, The Soul of the World, explains that for Girard “scapegoating is society’s way of re-creating “difference” and so restoring itself. By uniting against the scapegoat, people are released from their rivalries and reconciled” (p.19). Radical ideologies mimic religions through similar ritualization, creeds, works, and demands on society. Myth and fact are dizzyingly intertwined to contextualize an oppressed and the oppressor. David W. Shenk, author of Global Gods, argues that sometimes ideologies become the new gods including Marxism and Capitalism:

[M]arxism provided a program for the unification of the entire global community within one universal philosophy and political system. Its competitor has been capitalism, which also claims to be the ideal good capable of saving the global community from poverty. These dual ideologies and systems tended toward absolutism which gave them an aura of godlikeness as powerful as the ancient and unchallengeable Marduk of Babylon or the god-king, Pharaoh, of Egypt (p.34). 

That duality of conflict is essential to understand. What I am arguing is that Modernity produced this perpetual state of conflict that has now morphed into a monster all together its own totalitarianism—a crony woke capitalism; neoliberalism; corporatism. The latest of spiritual awakenings intertwined to that of secularism and secularity; a projection of religion but the kind found within Fascism as described in an 1925 anonymous article published in a magazine for Italian fascist outside of Italy:

Reasoning does not communicate, emotion does. Reasoning convinces, it does not attract. Blood is stronger than syllogisms. Science claims to explain away miracles, but in the eyes of the crowd the miracle remains: it seduces and creates converts (Fascist Mysticism, Italian Fasci Abroad, Roger Griffin pp 54-55). 

What socialism offers is a materialistic promise for a very material world. Conversely,  capitalism offers materialistic hope. Hope is ethereal in nature, it requires great dedication. Promises though are tangible, they are material through in through. In an age that disavows Scripture, the material becomes ethereal. Ironically, socialism is more materialistic than capitalism because of its promises provide means and resources through goods and services. Nothing other than hope can be offered by capitalism. One must earn their land and fortunes. Crony capitalism however has distorted this hope as corporations and banks and private institutions run amok with government institutions. Corporations now utilize the State to their benefit on a globalist scale like never before in human history. What was once considered communal or sacred are blurred by the privatized and the secularized. Nothing is as it once was. Not even nature is safe. Nor is Capitalism. All that was once capitalist is increasingly untrustworthy due to an array of factors outside of its original intended design. Boundaries are continually being broken by technology, multinationals, global elites, and the beast we know as the Leviathan. Out of fear and misfortune the promises of socialism have never appeared better to billions of people starving for a promise of recognition and social justice. 

After World War 1, the economist Ludwig von Mises sought to explain a deeply rooted problem within modernity, “the socialist idea dominates the modern spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time” (Mises 1922, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, p. 15). Part of the modern spirit is the belief that the mighty individual deserves whatever it is they desire. This is Nietzsche “last man.” Modernity’s incantation of liberalism, capitalism, secularism, and socialism ultimately produced a society that sought the easy rather than the good life, the mundane instead of the truly spiritual and virtuous life; all the while demanding treasures once only belonging to kings, queens, and heroes. Nietzsche and C.S. Lewis share similar tones in their description over this last, much weaker human. “Men without chests” according to Lewis or “Hallowed chests” according to Nietzsche are descriptives of a culture lacking in virtue and honor, imagination and enterprise. It is the same side of the coin of greediness. Greed is not simply a capitalistic vice, but part of the DNA of mankind including the Marxist offshoot of Neo-marxism.

Admittedly much has occurred since Ludwig wrote those words, but wisdom has a way of redeeming itself through the actions of mankind. Take further Mises conception of Socialism: 

According to the Marxist conception, one’s social condition determines one’s way of thought. His membership of a social class decides what views a writer will express. He is not able to grow out of his class or to free his thoughts from the prescriptions of his class interests. Thus the possibility of a general science which is valid for all men, whatever their class, is contested… Thus Marxism protects itself against all unwelcome criticism… Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person. Few have been able to withstand such tactics (pp. 18-19).

This is equally true today of identity politics and postmodernism found in far-left minded groups and political organizations. Any form of opposition is pitted against being called sexist, racist, or diagnosed a Munchausen syndrome by proxy all of which seek to demean rather than provide substantive debate. Free speech has become hate speech by proxy of the groups feeling an inkling of disagreement. Words are being made meaningless; a girl is a boy as a boy is a girl and disagreeing means hate. Scales of privilege were formulated to weigh this new public morality. Higher education perfected these privilege scales of justice that now doctors must obey, students must profess, and corporations will enforce. Disobedience currently results in losing jobs and public humiliation. Yet if history is correct much worse will come. For now society will begin to be put under the restrictions of what I have titled as Progressive Pseudo Dominari of Terms, Ideas, and Practices: A Lexicon of Postmodern Irreality and Oppression. That long-winded title is partly to jest, yet sadly intentional concerning the dominari aspect. Ruling over mankind is a corporate culture mindset found in institutions of higher education, hospitals, governments, and businesses who have adopted these new set of rules. For now with little detail provided some of the terminology in which I am speaking of are cultural appropriation, microaggressions, gender pronouns, white fragility, inclusion, and diversity.

Out of this ill toward different viewpoints, the malaise of modernity created polarization. Unchecked polarization brewed the extremism now found in late modernity. Globalism under late modernity converged and diverged hundreds of belief systems creating a calamity of ideas. Unbeknownst or not, atheists and christians, liberals and conservatives, rich and poor are all finding themselves under a new umbrella concerning the ideas and practices of this age.

Take a look at the Cultural Marxist Movement of Black Lives Matter (now deleted) manifesto: 

The Black Lives Matter Global Network is as powerful as it is because of our membership, our partners, our supporters, our staff, and you. Our continued commitment to liberation for all Black people means we are continuing the work of our ancestors and fighting for our collective freedom because it is our duty. Every day, we recommit to healing ourselves and each other, and to co-creating alongside comrades, allies, and family a culture where each person feels seen, heard, and supported. We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate differences and commonalities. We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people. We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting. We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others. We see ourselves as part of the global Black family, and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black people who exist in different parts of the world. We are guided by the fact that all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location. We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence. We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered. We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts. We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise). We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to lead and learn (Black Lives Matter, What We Believe)

BLM, Mussolini, Karl Marx—they are not all the same by any means but they do all have this innate drive to exterminate the “enemy” at large that systemically oppresses their ability to engage fully all that life has in-store for their résistance à la révolution.  

Late modernity symbolize’s the archetype of a tyrant. Disturbingly tyranny comes in many forms concerning the new coming age. Hence statism, corporatism, and globalism as actors to this effect. Each of these institutions push a similar agenda onto the masses. Employees, citizens, or subjects must use gender pronouns, check their microaggressions, and obey the golden rule of Inclusiveness, Diversity, and Equity! It is no wonder that Jordan Peterson, Stephen Hicks, and James Lindsey see links between Marxism and Postmodernism because the lines have all blurred. And soon we will all become nothing more than blank citizens awaiting an opportunity to be free, for the tent of dust to disappear once more.

Totalitarian ‘Diversocrats’ and American Higher Education: A Review

(November Issue 2020)

By Kaleb ‘Kal’ Demerew

Mac Donald, Heather (2018). The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

The Diversity Delusion is a scathing critique of the politics, methods, and concepts that have informed contemporary diversity policy in American colleges. Mac Donald argues that diversity is fashioned into an ideology for coercing compliance, contrary to the spirit of a university education. In developing this argument, the author cites several quantitative studies and some notable case studies, centering on the identity politics of race and gender in college campuses.

Mac Donald develops her argument systematically, beginning with an assessment of diversity politics as a system that empowers pandering administrators to engage in thought policing on behalf of certain ‘preferred’ groups. This system is implemented under the guise of promoting ‘multiculturalism’, but in effect produces negative value judgments on those forms of knowledge and expression associated with non-minority categories such as males or whites. These negative value judgments are institutionalized through a group of administrators the author refers to as ‘diversocrats’. By silencing those they disagree with, the author argues, diversocrats claim to espouse postmodernism or relativism while actually imposing a form of totalitarianism (p. 20).

Mac Donald argues that totalitarian ‘diversocrats’ threaten the pursuit of humanities, truth, and science in university, promoting niche fields that provide narrow support to the ‘diversity’ project. Examples of this include the replacement, rather than supplementation, of classical curricula in classical rhetoric, oratory grammar, and literature with abstract study areas in fields like gender, race, and sexuality studies. For Mac Donald, this reflects a narcissistic turn, as these policies assume that students can only gain value by learning about things that they can relate to experientially. In the process, this approach may undermine the transmission of nuggets of knowledge considered more neutral, especially those in the humanities.

Finally, the author argues that diversity policies rely on falsehoods to pander to gender and racial identity politics. For instance, when it comes to race, diversity policies provided reduced nominal standards for less qualified minorities to access elite flagship state schools like UC-Berkeley and UCLA, through newly-adopted ‘holistic’ admissions criteria. Mac Donald identifies a number of faults with these policies, the most important being the proliferation of what she calls ‘victimology’. This concept relies on ‘mismatch theory’ and links obsessions with ‘microaggressions’ to a psychology of inadequacy created when students are admitted into colleges in which they are not equipped to excel. The real hindrance to URM achievement, according to Mac Donald, is an ideological rejection of cultural values pertaining to education, and a rejection of the meritocracy associated with bourgeois culture. Mac Donald also presents a historical case study of sexual promiscuity and the campus rape movement as another instance of diversocrat totalitarianism.

The Diversity Delusion is a bold and controversial assault on the campus ideology of diversity, but it is helpful to explore some of the weaker methodological choices in the book. While most case studies in the book focus on how diversity and identity politics play out in college campuses across the United States, these themes are also explored in the context of the corporate world and Hollywood. In other words, the book has a very broad focus. While this may help with reaching a variety of mainstream readers, there are times when it seems that the book’s central message is lost. For instance, Mac Donald devotes an entire chapter to a critique of the #MeToo movement in the context of Hollywood, and another to discussing the racial politics of policing. While it is clear that the author is trying to provide the broader societal context of diversity policy and identity politics in these chapters, logical connections to campus politics are not clearly made. The book would have thus likely benefited from the omission of these two chapters, in favor of a more singular focus on diversity ideology in American higher education. Still, there are a few instances when the college-corporate themes are connected more logically. For instance, Mac Donald projects skepticism about the notion that victimology proponents can ‘grow out’ of victim politics, since the same politics are increasingly being adopted into corporate diversity training programs (p. 22).

Along these lines, the organizational structure of the book also leaves much to be desired. Diversity Delusion is organized into four parts, the first on race, the second on gender, the third on university bureaucracies, and the fourth on the purpose of the university. A total of sixteen chapters constitute these parts. While the organization of chapters within the individual parts is logical, the book reads like a collection of essays at times and the thematic organization of the four parts is not always effective. Although the race and gender sections were likely provided first to entice mainstream readers, a more logical organizational scheme would likely move parts 3 and 4, on educational bureaucracies and educational theory, respectively, to the beginning of the book where they could provide some initial conceptual grounding. 

With all this being said, Mac Donald’s findings regarding the failings of counter-bourgeois culture, and the idiosyncrasies of diversity politics in college campuses are alarming. They present a challenge to liberal educators, who must balance any needs for inclusion with the realities of cultural difference as well as the preservation of curricula that have made American universities elite to begin with.  The most effective arguments in Diversity Delusion are those that present human stories that portray counterintuitive narratives to those espoused by diversity promoters. One particularly poignant case in this regard is that of Kashawn Campbbell, an affirmative-action admit at UC-Berkeley whose first-year GPA suffered as a lack of his academic preparation and inability to master even basic writing. While Campbell’s inflated grades in African American courses allowed him to continue into sophomore year, the experience took a mental toll, making him feel inadequate and unwelcome, although the university clearly skewed its admission standards in his favor. In the end, the cognitive dissonance resulted in Campbell’s attribution of his feelings towards racism and microaggressions, rather than his clear lack of academic preparation. This story is what pushes Mac Donald to decry, “[r]acial preferences are not just ill-advised; they are positively sadistic” (p. 61).

The driving theme in Diversity Delusion is that diversity promoters may continue to hold on to flawed ideas about minority achievement and culture, often with the best of intentions. While Mac Donald made these assessments in 2018, it is helpful to consider them today in the context of two controversial articles that have recently made similar assessments. First, Mead (2020) asserted that poverty in the United States has more to do with minority rejection of Western individualist cultures, than with systemic failures to accommodate diversity. Similarly, Wang (2020) relied on mismatch theory to argue that affirmative action discriminates against non-minority students with superior credentials, and even hurts talented minorities. Both authors cited academic data and published their findings in reputable academic journals, but both have since been decried as racists, subjected to severe academic discipline. Both authors have since retracted their articles, perhaps forcibly. The eerily similar trajectories of these two cases seem to support Mac Donald’s more concerning assertion, that diversity promoters may use totalitarian means to enforce their ideas on anyone who disagrees. At the very least, readers will likely question whether and why ‘diversocrats’ may want to promote every kind of diversity except the type that has to do with alternative viewpoints.

In the end, Diversity Delusion is crucial reading, both for campus diversity promoters and for anyone with more critical viewpoints on multiculturalism. The book will have limited appeal to policy-makers in curriculum and instruction, as issues related to epistemology and preservation of classical curricula are mostly left unaddressed. There is indeed a cursory chapter near the end exploring a subscription service known as the Great Courses, but it seemed that Great Courses found profitability outside the university system. The implication in Mac Donald’s review of this case thus seems to be that there is no solution forthcoming from within the academy, where postmodernism seems destined to reign. Still, it is not clear that the politics and curricular implications of diversity and victimology in college campuses were analyzed deeply enough in this volume to reach this disconcerting conclusion.

Additional References

Mead, L.M. (2020). “Poverty and Culture.” Society https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1. (retracted)

Wang, N. (2020). “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America From 1969 to 2019.” Journal of the American Heart Association 9(7). https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.120.015959.  (retracted)

PostModernity: A Perpetual State of Modernity

(Philosophical)

What I am presenting here is my oversimplified Theory of Postmodernism and Modernity.

Postmodernism, a terminology that requires no introduction for my present discourse, is a philosophical movement that has rooted itself deeply into every spectrum of academic discipline from which it has transformed the actions and beliefs within institutions of power from governments to corporations around the globe. Postmodernity—is the argued period in which we live within a postmodern society versus that of Modernity (1500-?). I join Jacques Barzun’s timeframe found within his book, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present (500 Years of Western Cultural Life). The Protestant Reformation changed the nature of power forever. Humanism and Protestantism shared a three-legged pedestal as Catholicism ruptured underneath the cataclysmic abrasion that has been festering decades prior to the Reformation. Modernity gains its preeminence from the idea that mankind with the use of science, reason, and technology can be improved at a nearly limitless potential. A product of thought that the Enlightenment took forth as their lamp for the future. While Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Zwingli believed that human nature was corrupt under the weight of sin that only Jesus Christ can redeem, it was their revolution that transferred the role of interpretation and potential over to the common. For good and for bad this set into motion our present state of late modernity—a perpetual state.

Perpetual State Theory

Simply put, I am arguing that postmodernism is a reflection of reality, not the actual source but a still water or a mirror that is reflecting the present state of the human mind. Modernity has not ceased to exist. Modernity has successfully entered into a warp state, a state of the hyper-real; hyper-individual; and hyper-sensitive. Postmodernism is the warp state of modernity. Modernity is a product of its own success which solidified four core essential elements of existence into the modern psyche: 1) Secularism; 2) Liberalism; 3) Socialism; and 4) Capitalism.

Out of this cycle, modernity was able to produce an unreal state of human existence outside the last five-thousand plus years of human civilization in only a short span of time. Capitalism slowly removed the old walls of government control and sustenance into a market state. Liberalism prides itself on the might of the individual. Socialism was and remains a reaction to both as it calls for community and regulation outside of a total free-market state. Lastly, secularism alone is not new, however, it gained popularity as cultures shifted from industry to post-industry and decadence. Science and technology play central roles in all four elements of modernity. Lastly, religion remains, almost as an antagonist, yet also a tool in the modern utilisation of puissance. Social justice, Critical Race Theories, Feminist movements, Gender studies are all examples of this layering of the Self as the quintessence of time and fortune.

Anti-liberty entities whether under the names of Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Maoism, or Totalitarianism; it changes nothing in that the present reality stands between two polars, a state of liberty or tyranny, liberalism or illiberalism. Social attitudes are now forced to conform under a perpetual state of flux. Late modernity has birthed neoliberalism, a merger between capitalism and liberalism, that can also include another ism—Corporatism.

Corporations are the High Churches of Modernity; the Cathedrals of yea or nay. Under a neoliberal market state the general public has great difficulty in explaining differences between private or public, real or fake, good or evil. Everything runs together into a stream of confusion at a speed that no single person can maintain without a collision, a collision of ideas and values and beliefs. This is now constantly happening as society is confronted with insurmountable conflicting differences; a wrecking of contradictions.

In a Secular Hyper-state, the only apparent resolution is a totalitarian reaction. Modernity cannot principally escape itself. There is nothing beyond Modernity except Pre-modernity. If liberalism and capitalism represent freedom then all other opposition is bound to represent oppression. Now that is not an absolute statement. There are “third-way” examples of communitarianism or another alternative of Theonomy that argue a way out of the cycle but truthfully they all fall prey to the dilemma of rights of the individual, liberty for all, and freedom without restraints (again not an absolute statement).

So what we are left with, I am arguing, is a discourse of conflicts: nature versus mankind; eat vegan or you are a horrible person; give up your religion; don’t tell me what to do; join the movement; hate speech… it all blends into an in-cohesive state, the perpetual state.