/lit/ - Literature

>>14285705
Chris Hedges

Any political philosophy that tackles the failings of democracy will explain culture wars

>>14285705
Anything about Weimar

>>14285749
>tfw you realize almost all of the problems of modern America are described, roughly, by Plato in the part of the Republic that deals with democracies

>They think they live in a democracy

>>14285705
Unabomber manifesto. It's more about technology but there are some good parts on leftists.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm

>15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

Try madness of the crowds. I have not read it but will.
>“If it is assumed that the primary purpose in life is to make as much money as possible, then it is indeed possible that having a child will constitute a ‘penalty’ for a woman and thereby prevent her from having a larger sum of money in her bank account when she dies. On the other hand, if she chooses to pay that ‘penalty’ she might be fortunate enough to engage in the most important and fulfilling role that a human being can have.”
― Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

>>14285802
This reads more like a post leftist critique of the left than any sort of based redpilled right wing take

>>14285802
boomer cringe
>>14285806
stemlet cringe

>>14285812
I literally don't know what you mean but it was written 60ish years ago.

>>14285802
Isn’t technological progress inherent to the Western capitalist mindset? There are traditionalist reactionaries surely but in a general sense accelerationism (or whatever you want to call antithetical to Ted’s ideology) is a logical conclusion to western and specifically American thought.

>>14285836
>capitalist mindset?
Did the ussr not make any technological progress?

>>14285842
I always read Ted’s critique of tech as a tech that is triumphant in its being inherently tied to a modernity (consumerism in economic), that in a way even the USSR’s “advanced” (for its time) tech was still somehow outdated by the pleasure tech and knowledge fetishism of the American proxies and doomed in that outmoded state of being...

>>14285842
He's implyint that progress is inherent to the capitalist mode of production so as to maximize profits, which in a sense is true, but at one point that progress will negate capital itself.
The USSR's progress was in a way initiated by Lenin's writings of developping the production through the transitional period, but post-WW2 USSR's technological progress was more of a reactionary fight to surpass the west rather than an inherently socialist endavour, had the USSR existed in a vacuum with no ideological opponent its progress would've been much slower.

>>14285793
>she thinks more democracy will get us out of the pile of shit that is democracy.

classic case of baseless leftist psuedo-science. literally only a woman could believe something this stupid. vapid cunt.

>>14285705
>the gigavirgin

>>14285862
Bootlicking moron. Why are you on lit if you can’t fucking think?

>>14285788
It's actually absurd. Even the founding fathers recognized explicitly how bad democracy was and somehow that was entirely forgotten

>>14285894
And here we have it.
The elites purposely chose the Roman model republic over democracy from the beginning.
Gradually opening up voting to people was actually just a farce. The people only get to choose from pre-approved elites.
This and the fact they’re all beholden to their wealthy patrons just seals the deal. This is an oligarchy and never a democracy. There’s no smoking gun proofs that the mechanics of a democracy has ruined your life.
ITS CAPITALISM

>>14285836
>Isn’t technological progress inherent to the Western capitalist mindset?
Progress has become the single most important driving value in the political philosophy of almost all societies since the Industrial revolution. It could be called inherent to the Western mindset, since it originated/accelerated in Europe. But it's not really a property of capitalist societies except that technology is pursued specifically for the benefit of capital. Other economies, especially the various nations industrialized under the leadership of socialist systems, thought differently of technological progress but pursued it just as keenly.

>There are traditionalist reactionaries surely but in a general sense accelerationism (or whatever you want to call antithetical to Ted’s ideology) is a logical conclusion to western and specifically American thought.
Accelerationism if anything is a Marxist meme which simultaneously tries to describe capitalism and also seeks to identify an end-point for it somewhere in the future. Right wingers have only really embraced something similar more recently in the same kind of fatalistic brinkmanship.

"How far can we push circumstances toward hell until..."
>things get so bad that people will embrace a communist revolution?
>things get so bad that we create a white ethnostate?
>things get so bad that humans are obsolete?

>>14285709
Good suggestion. “Empire of Illusion” captures a society going insane

>>14285950
>It could be called inherent to the Western mindset,
It is but an Enlightenment meme. Which is but a secularized medieval Millenialism. Waiting for the Reign of Christ the king on Utopian Earth with ever happy immortals, except no Christ this time. An AI, a Benevolent Communist State, whatever, anything but the Christ in this purely Christian notion.

>>14286040
>tfw every single one of these dumb memes is Protestant

The Reformation really was a massive fucking tragedy for the West, wasn't it?

>>14285926
>ITS CAPITALISM
Sure is.

>>14285705
American Affairs Journal is good

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/
If you have an apple product, you can read it for free on Safari Reader

>>14286047
Right wingers definitely don’t act as corporate puppets. Conservatism is the new punk rock. Based

>>14286046
And Protestantism was arguably enabled by the printing press, which is the only major historical analogue to the digital revolution we are living through. The meme has been going for a long time, anons... and the truth is that we are it.

>>14286047
kek'd
I tend to think that what we observe in the combination of social media and corporate hierarchies is a kind of synthesis of the worst stuff of communist movements and capitalist exploitation. You see these insane mob mentalities cloaked in noble causes that are not actually the emancipation of humanity but... oh, look, just faux revolutionary rent seeking for a bribable minority group. You also see the growth of information technology turning every single aspect of society into a producer of data (capital), which comes from society but is then privatized via labyrinthine legal agreements everyone mindlessly clicks through, and then used against people. Coming out of the Cold War it looks very Hegelian IMO...

>>14286068
But how could there be a synthesis if each communistic action is neutralized and actively converted into a capital notion - assuming the base function wasn’t always corrupted by the notion that these thoughts are influenced by a privatized platform like Twitter?

>>14285842
The Russians hate the West, the only reason they use technology is because they see it as the source of the West's economic and military supremacy. Same in China. You'll notice that both Russia and China were never really communist, it was/is just a front for their burning hatred of the West.

>>14286075
Communist action has always been defined by capitalism's form of existence and has almost no positive existence of its own, since it is a critique and not a prescription. It is a synthesis because it necessarily evolves with time. People think they are fighting capitalism and oppression even as they fall prey to it. The "SJW" is an unwitting neoliberal/new labour/non-leftist ideologically aligned with the most powerful governments, corporations, academic institutions, media organisations, etc. in the world. Only... their vision of humanity is formed by an idea of collective human groups that is partly informed by "marketing" (demographics, focus groups, categories of people that are exploitable for their votes and money) and partly ""Marxist"" (people who are fed a story that they are preordained to one day attain ultimate political emancipation... if only they vote or buy in the right progressive direction).

Organised revolutionary socialists, labour movements, trade unions, etc. have always been rent seekers on the growth/profit optimization algorithm of capitalism. They buy into the materialism but not the hierarchy. The difference now is that workers are not the revolutionaries anymore, and the story of communist revolution has been abstracted and reused across other categories... women, LGBT, races, refugees, and whatever other outsider has apparently revolutionary potential, moral agency, downtroddenness, or other signifiers of low or outsider status.

It's worse now though because "worker" was generic enough that it actually had widespread appeal. Many of these other categories are overoptimized for tipping democratic elections or finding niche markets. You only have to bribe a few people. They, unlike workers of yesteryear, don't have the collective will or leverage to bring economies to a screeching halt if they go on strike.

The Unwinding

Hillbilly Elegy

Achieving our Country by Richard Rorty was written in the 90s but was very prescient of what would soon take place

Also: >>14285709

Propaganda by Bernays.

>>14285926
>There’s no smoking gun proofs that the mechanics of a democracy has ruined your life.
*teleports behind you*

>>14286047
Cringe

>>14285788
Yeah it's artistic and beautiful in that way.

>>14285788
This

It's a fucking business. Americans are so overly satisfied that their lives got boring, which lead to an itch for trivial conflict. A booming market exists that sells political ideologies and makes millions off misguided idiots.

>culture war
>people disagreeing with each other in an open society which values freedom

democracy was good from the 50s-70s when there was a serious economic component to it
as we've arrived in a world where it's believed completely inappropriate for democracy to interfere with the economy in a meaningful way we've had to channel energies into something else. Much easier to get people to vote for you because they like X and hate Y than to actually have to find a better plan than your opponent to build 500,000 houses a year.

>>14285705
but that's about the extent of american "culture wars". if you have little to no culture what are you supposed to fight about?

>>14285793
This is hardly the issue. Instead, think of consent as something beholden to the whims of national security. We are test subjects, not debt slaves.

He already told you why. It all starts with education. When the academy fails, society fails, because it is full of idiots who think themselves superior and revolutionary.

>>14285926
Hahah. This is actually how you see it isnt it. Its funny how it is literally you, people like you, self important cunts whose vision does not stretch past their own nose. You can't even handle the notion that you create the misery in the world, can you? Its all. Your. Fault. Every bullshit agenda pedaled because some one bigger than you implored it, every gymnastic leap you use to justify your mind bogglingly stupid arguments is fed to you by an entity you dont even understand; yet their you sit utterly certain of yourself. You'll never truly grasp how much i hate you, and it would still be less than you deserve

>>14286999
It is the issue and we are debt slaves

>>14287694
This is actually how it is. I gave historical president right there, and you fall all over yourself with blame and insult. Why oh why do you defend them SO FUCKING HARD. You blind dumb child. Are you an indoctrinated NSA agent? It would make more sense, but you’re probably just some idiot that’s never worked a day in his life and listens to rightwing fog exclusively
You probably think liberals are commies.

Michael Malice - The New Right

>>14286266
dilate

>>14285793
He looks like a rejected bond villain in this pic. As if he's trying on a costume and just can't make it work.

plutodemocracy noun
plu·to·democracy | \ ¦plütō+\
Definition of plutodemocracy
: a democracy held to be controlled by people of wealth rather than by the common man

I remember my friend who could never afford food or luxuries claiming he was a “proud capitalist”. Not really relevant to this thread but it just reminded me of that.

>>14287740
>president
I spelled precedent, damnit!

>>14288196
All he needs is a hover chair and a silver persian cat

>>14285705
Culture of Critique, White Identity.

>>14285788
Pretty much any half decent philosopher can be applied in pretty much any context. Seeing as they try to describe what is. I would also say that Hobbes is pretty spot on.

>>14285816
>>14285820
Is he wrong tho? Personally, I’d replace power and success with perceived familiarity and causation. Power and success are relative terms that just describes the apereent “is” atm. I think the core is an over developt sense of what “aught”, a perfect form of you will. And the only thing to compared to this desired perfection is the current society. I’d say it comes down to railing against proximity, so that anything considered foreign is considered closer to the perfect form in this conception.

For example, if a social progressive was innindated in the culture of japan, they would probably be aghast at most of its history, not because it was violent, but because it was peaceful in its conservatism. Massive slave populations, extreme patriarchal rule, every type of ism on earth. But because these things were never internally intellectually questioned it is seen as idilic.

>>14286068
I think it’s the false pretense of dualism. That capital is the big bad or communalism is, etc. when these are not innate and non reducible concept in and of themselves.