[This series starts with the Introduction]
Part V: The Continuing Assault on the Father
In my series on PC & Defects in Reality Testing (which starts with the Introduction), I described how Political Correctness rests on a denial of any differences between the sexes and a resultant denial of the necessity of the father. Specifically, in Part IV, I described how building philosophically on Post-Modernism and Deconstructionism, the early feminists used derivatives of primitive splitting to divide people into oppressors (white men and their equivalents) and victims (women, minorities, and their equivalents.). In Part V I expanded on the idea and described its (mis)use on the modern college campus:
PC "splits" the world into those who are modeled after the idealized woman, who has rebelled against her oppressor and seized power for herself (at least in Academia), and those who are modeled after the "oppressive white male." The beauty of the system is that it offers false power to all who can claim to have "victim" status. This can be anyone who is not an "oppressive white male."
Once male attributes have been devalued, a liberal assault on the authority structure could be justified, indeed mandated. Again, during peace time the social experiment is harmless to society as a whole, though individuals certainly suffered. [There is a growing body of evidence that it is boys who are most in distress and at risk in our culture, not girls. This has yet to be addressed by our Universitariat.] Once we realized we were at war, post 9/11, we suddenly found ourselves in need of many of the male attributes that had been viciously devalued by the extreme feminists through the PC movement. We needed men's strength, aggressiveness, courage, honor, all the traits that have been mocked and sneered at for the last 30 years by those who arrived in the MSM, Academia, and Politics, from the "counter-culture" of the '60's.
In Part VI I described the difficulty a patient had in his therapy when unable to reintegrate such split representations; within a transference relationship he suffered severe distortions in his sense of reality. Kind and fair bosses were seen as tyrants, and worse, he provoked their aggression at himself. He had a mental model of the world that required that all authority figures be seen as tyrants and until he was able to recognize his active role in evoking and provoking such behavior in others, he could not see that he was mis-perceiving important parts of reality. I then showed how this worked in a more general sense:
And this brings us from the particular to the general. Political Correctness requires that those men who have been successful in our culture be seen as "oppressive white men". Any facts that do not fit into the basic structure of the model have to be rejected. Better yet, incorrect thoughts are simply ignored or dismissed. [Emphasis added-SW- We can see how this works today in the continuing requirement that Iraq be treated by the media and most Democrats as if it continues to be a disaster, even while the nation votes for a third, and most important, time.]
By using the language of deconstruction, the PC movement insists that reality is merely a construct (this is clearly analogous to transference) and that those in power create the construct and impose it on others. This is the equivalent of Mr. A's father insisting, while he hit him, that it was all for his own good. Mr. A, just like a society in thrall to Political Correctness could either believe his own experience or accept the authority (who he depended on) and deny his own perceptions. The only way to avoid constant internal tension would be to stop seeing those things that do not fit the acceptable model. Mr. A could not see that his bosses were not tyrants. For a very long time he could not see that I was not a tyrant. Political Correctness has stunted our social conversation about race, abortion, sexuality, and the dangers we face in an often hostile world. As long as we cannot allow ourselves to see, we have no chance to change dysfunctional structures.
No one likes an authoritarian father; no adolescent likes to hear "No". We would all prefer our father to be loving and kind and make few real demands on us. The authoritarian father was an easy target for caricaturization by the wordsmiths. Their vision of the world, a Utopian vision of noble savages at peace and at one with nature and his fellow man, had no room for militaristic and paranoid men who would compete, fight, and make enemies.
The late 60's was a time when the call to "challenge authority" was at its height. No authority could tell the Narcissistic "me-firsters" that there was any pleasure they should fore-go or any responsibility they should shoulder. The primary goal was for everyone to "do your own thing." Paternal authority had no place in such a schema. At the same time, a nurturing maternal state was required; after all, if everyone was going to do their own thing, who would make sure there was food and shelter for all. The Democrats adopted this approach as an essential part of their political culture. Since the Vietnam war and its aftermath, when Democrats cut off funding for the South Vietnamese military (they weren't pure enough to satisfy the demands of those who expected perfection) and then averted their eyes as 2-3 million people were murdered by totalitarian Communists in Vietnam and Cambodia, the liberal goal has been to shift money from the military to the entitlement side of the ledger.
Bill Clinton was the most successful Democratic politician since the 60's and a prime example of a feminized politician. He had no understanding or appreciation of the military (that quintessentially male activity of playing with high tech toys, blowing things up, and shooting guns) and didn't see its necessity in a world in which we "had no enemies, only friends we hadn't talked to yet." Clinton's Presidency was a party, where no one would feel they couldn't compete (any inequalities could just be legislated out of existence, often by the judiciary, which is the fundamental instrumentality of affirmative action) and where the government would promise to take care of all our aches and pains (he "felt our pain", after all, which is what a good mother does when she kisses a boo-boo and makes it all better).
Few paid attention when Islamists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993; when they did a better job of it on 9/11/01, we were forced to pay attention. George W. Bush, frat boy, drinker in his youth, inelegant mangler of polysyllabic linguistic formulations, an object of derision for his religious faith, found it within himself to rise to the occasion. He rallied the country and held the nation together. Even the most liberal among us (with the notable exception of the blame-America left, exemplified by the luminaries Michael Moore and Ward Churchill) supported going into Afghanistan; however when Bush followed the logic of the intelligence data, made the choice of an overall strategy for confronting and defeating Islamic fascism, and went into Iraq, this was too much. If Iraq was a necessary war, it meant that the threat was much greater than the kinds of police actions which could be kept out of sight and out of mind; it meant we were in a long term battle which would require the services of the Paternal protectors, the very military which had been cut to the bone and demoralized in the Clinton years and treated as an unnecessary anachronism.
The battle continues to rage. Only if Iraq proves disastrous and Americans are still dieing there in the fall of 2006 will the media and the Democrats be seen as successful in continuing to depict the war as a quagmire and a fiasco and that is the only way the maternal party has a chance to regain power. Things look grim indeed for the children of the Utopian fantasy world of 60's Narcissism; the Iraqis are already voting and seem to have a great thirst for democracy. Furthermore, in probably the best indicator that we are winning, the refugees from Iraq (and Afghanistan) have been pouring back into their native country since the United States and allied coalition invaded. The dream of the left is dieing; they must regain power in order to sustain their rapidly decaying vision of a(n illusory) Utopian world without anger or male, testosterone fueled fighting.
(Note that their rage is perfectly justified because in their minds it is always in response to provocative attacks from the right, even if the attacks have to be completely imagined first. Their use of projection is completely unconscious and/or denied.)
Thus the assault on the father must continue; it is a battle to the death. Only one world view can survive the confrontation with Islamic fascism, which is why the left considers the Republican party a greater danger than Islamic fascism.,
[Of course they don't even recognize any threat from their spiritual allies, including communist remnants (Castro, China; consider how lax the Clinton White House was about security viz a viz China in their last days, ie, Sandy Berger), and revenants (Hugo Chavez.) ]
In the next installment of this series, I plan to describe a possible scenario in which the left and the maternal party wins and the havoc that is likely to follow such a Pyrrhic victory.
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