The Incoherence of the Left

I’ve seen this one coming for a while, though I’m far from the only observer of modern society to note the inevitability of internecine strife within progressivism.

The social liberal is, after all, a profoundly incoherent creature in hot denial of the reality that any genuine claim to the benefits he or she seeks to extract from society can exist only on the basis of Judeo-Christian principles he or she despises.

That is to say, when you reject the existence of a creator and therefore the value of individual men and women to him, you lose your rational basis for the ever-increasing list of “rights” to which members of oppressed or marginalized groups claim to be entitled.

When each of these rights finds its rationale in scripture and its mode of conveyance to others in the generosity of hearts devoted to God, the structure of society may remain somewhat stable — even in a fallen world.

But when such rights multiply uncontrollably and find their rationales only in the conflicting whims of allegedly persecuted subclasses, the only possible result is increasing in-group nastiness. And we get to watch as the various claimants to social justice one-up each other in the hope of winning the “most victimized” sweepstakes.

So, yeah, seen this one coming. Still, being the sort of person who constantly says “I told you so” doesn’t help anyone, and it certainly doesn’t get you invited to dinner.

So today we get actress Rose McGowan and author and multiculturalism acolyte Bret Easton Ellis attacking homosexuals for being either insufficiently feminist or insufficiently sensitive to the feelings of the increasingly-homicidal advocates of Sharia law.

McGowan: “Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so. Women, by-and-large, have very much helped the gay community get to where they are today. And I have seen not a single peep from these people, who supposedly represent lesbians as well … when the equal pay act was shut down by Republicans in the Senate. There is Sharia law active in Saudi Arabia, there’s a woman who’s about to be stoned — I have not heard [AIDS activist] Cleve Jones discuss her, and nor will he.”

Ellis: Gays who boycott the hotel chain owned by the Sultan of Brunei (where homosexuality became punishable by stoning on April 22 this year) are “delusional idiots” engaged in a “form of narcissistic, self-victimisation, gay insanity” based on a misunderstanding of Sharia law.

So we have — if we can keep it straight (so to speak) — a progressivist man bashing gays for bashing Muslims who want to stone gays, while right beside him a progressivist woman derides Muslims for stoning women and trashes homosexuals for failing to embrace the latest feminist political hobby horse.

Astonishing that you can get the two of them into the same room to be interviewed in the first place.

Just a one-off, you say? Oh no. Same news week, ongoing theme. You have no doubt by now heard of the YouTube video sensation of the current millisecond. That would be a two-minute clip of a Jewish woman being sexually harassed (in some instances debatably, in others undeniably) while walking the streets of New York City. The video is currently up around 30,000,000 views.

So is the media in a frenzy over the video because of the sexism and objectification of women so blatantly on display? That would be far too simple. No, it’s the “racial politics” and even anti-transgenderism of the video that are most offensive: 

·         Black author Roxane Gay: “Like, she didn’t walk through any white neighborhoods?”

·         MSNBC’s Chris Hayes refused to air the video because in his estimation white men were not portrayed engaged in what he perceived to be their fair share of sexual harassment. Wait ... this is bad in what way exactly?

·        The Nation’s Aura Bogado: “[The video] makes it appear as if men of color are the perpetrators of all that is bad on this planet, which can only be balanced with the exigent need to therefore save white women above all else.” She thinks the video ought to be reshot with a “universalizing” cast, focusing on, “say, a black trans woman.” 

National Review’s Charles Cooke summed this nonsense up beautifully:

“As it has grown in popularity, the video has been transformed into a blank canvas, onto which America’s brave advocates of hyphenated-justice have sought to project their favored social theories.”

Basically, the pursuit of social justice has become a cacophonous litany of aggrieved, competitive bleating, each victim group seeking to out-whine the others and willing to hurl former allies under the bus in a heartbeat to make a political point.

Reason, logic, the benefit of the doubt, simple common sense and consistency are the real victims here. Put simply, the Left is incoherent.

But this willingness to see morality unrecognizably distorted and set at cross-purposes to itself out of allegiance to special interests should come as no surprise to those who have read the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah spoke in a very different historical context, but what he said remains undeniably applicable today:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

(Isaiah 5:20)