Expanded from an email to the author of this article concerning the left-right paradigm of western politics.
Consider this, that it’s hard to quantify such distinctions today because there are no leftists in American politics or mainstream society, only competing shades of rightwing. If you’re not sharing in the blame and burden of a society then you are not sharing, rather are you taking away from it, as though any relationship might ever be sustainable without equal parts give and take. Every politico, every personality cult, special interest group and contributing member to society obsessing over their preferred exceptions being recipients for entitlement, privilege and luxury proves this. Justifications for owning multiple homes for example are no less callous than justifications for others having none. There is no such thing as rugged individualism within the confines of a society. Those are bullies, self-centered asses entitling themselves to the sacrifices of others without giving in turn.
I see leftism as about prioritizing the needs of others, and rightwing as about prioritizing self-enrichment. Even Pelosi said, how at the end of the day everyone (in DC) is a Capitalist. So then none of them can be leftist, not when bias, desire, fetishes, quirks, whims and wish-fulfillment matter more than the well-being of others. Actual leftists are too busy running soup kitchens to fund-raise for political ambitions.
In this sense, to be far-left would amount to absolute self-sacrifice, the textbook definition of heroism. Whereas to be far-right would be its polar opposite, self-serving in absolute terms by requiring others to do the sacrificing by lesser rights, resources or opportunities. A real leftist would want to feed and house every American, while rightwing rationalizes huge swathes of the population going without. American politics are altogether as uncomplicated as its predictable constituents. People hate when this is summarized so easily, but then I also see that every complication we meet with in life comes from some ego asserting its own thoughts and feelings as more important than the self-determination of others. Every complication arrives from ego, every social issue comes from ego, not its tools of racism or sexism or ageism, but the egomania rooted beneath them all. The root function of the celebrity is to lie, the root function of the politician is to cheat and the root function of the executive is to steal, but refrain from subscribing to any personality cult and this society and its culture have no time or space for you. None will ever charge ego as culpable of every crime or sin, because all care to pardon their own or whichever flatters their self-interest the most.
So that Birch definition in the text of conservatism as anarchism could not be more fanciful. Anarchists do not fight for the purposes of indoctrination or conformity, they fight against indoctrination and conformity, contrary to press releases from the offices of Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis. The prevalence of rightwing ideology across our citizenry means that to prove unable or unwilling to indulge the fantasies of others is signing one’s own death warrant. Nothing is more taboo no matter how many lives must suffer for it.
The people most vocal about how Christian they are obsess over all the people, places and things comprising creation they’d rather do without. The people most vocal about how patriotic they are summarize their political beliefs by insisting the country would be any better if subsets of the population sight unseen were canceled with lesser rights, resources or opportunities than themselves. Those most vocal generally, when and where they gripe and whinge about entertainment, lead a pampered lifestyle of luxury, privilege and entitlement. There’s no weaker, more hypocritical peoples in all of recorded history. It’s why they need all sacrificing to be committed by others, the same way that money is exclusively for those who cannot do for themselves, the way that wealthy require others to earn their profits just as they require others do their cooking and cleaning and child-rearing. Everyone else is made the human shield for those who idealize power fantasies over reality, when nothing necessitates settling for merely vicarious heroism proffered by the more promising fictions of church and state and pop culture but their own selfishness. Justifying anyone’s cosplay isn’t necessary were they able to justify themselves.
“Only the people I agree with are capable of greatness and the people I agree with are only capable of greatness” is the precise same mentality of the legislators downplaying or editing out entirely the contributions of black Americans from history books but somehow it’s totally cool for an entertainer to require pay to have their fantasies indulged. Referencing the modern reprisal of pulling a King James and rewriting the works of dead scribes, Salman Rushdie said somewhere recently that if a person doesn’t care for a book, they can always just read something else, yet everyone would rather believe themselves to be the singular audience and god forbid anything not be appealing enough. Those believing that cultural reappropriation is a thing are dandy about personalizing the passions of others when it is simply another form of authoritarianism, as though any of us has the right to remake the world into our own image,
Culture is a collective identity, informed by the personae of its contributing participants. In which case, culture can be shared or it can be repeated, but it cannot be stolen. Products can be stolen however. And the modern reversal where humanity defines itself by its fantasies indulged thus insuring that culture informs identity rather than the reality of versa vice, a strictly Capitalist and materialistic pathology for manufacturing demand to meet preordained goods and services as opposed to a naturalist system of producing supply to meet existing demand as exampled by barter and trade economics, means that a culture “stolen” is a threat only to the ego’s claim of ownership and nothing else. Because if a culture is concerned with limiting its beneficiaries and not expanding its beneficiaries, it’s no culture but a marketing scheme.
Canceling people is wrong for the same reason as is censorship generally. Nobody has to like a given person or their work, but nobody has to dislike that person or their work either, because self-determination being the most basic of human rights means that there is no such right for one to mandate the thoughts and feelings for another. By all means should we oppose anything lethal in society or its culture, but in all other matters beauty absolutely is in the eye of the beholder for nothing in all of existence is more subjective than love. Lots of online arguments in recent years over what constitutes the definition of fascism, I’d say the common attribute to every fascist in the world is the voice insisting what can or cannot be loved. Meanwhile in reality, nothing can be more useless than the thoughts and feelings and love you prize above all the rest. Of course everything breaks down when such nothings are expected to provide foundation to carry anything more than wayward breaths of air. Just as it will forever remain more sensible to never indulge any fantasy or personality cult, rather than depend on any one of them for anything consequential toward life itself. While rightwing lusts after supremacy and dominance, leftism compensates for it, avoiding power and authority everywhere but the inescapable battlefield and anyone to say any differently is misidentifying their self-interest as the will of the people.
While enriching the esteem of select others is without end, it actually would be easier to instead refocus toward keeping everybody alive, but each and every ego manufactures reasons against doing so. In an either/or option, all parties evidently prefer to continue having their time and energy and monies gone to their own bemusement than to humanitarianism, with whatever excesses they might claim past survival as well as outright living beyond their means for a matter so self-inclined. And so are they all rightwing.