Neo-liberalism, as best personified by Reagan and Thatcher, is officially dead. Amen. But I’m not here today to bitch about zombie politics, although I loved Trickle Z and 30 Days of Right. Lately, it’s this Maddow-level-green version of liberalism that is really getting my goat. The issue with identity politics and all of its joyous facets isn’t new, but our society’s culture-warrior rot runs far deeper than I imagined. Today, a dysfunctional progressive movement is not in its infancy but has reached its misinformative years, which at least matches the emotional maturity of the average canceler. Cancel is an infection across the industrialized west as highlighted by Canada’s well-established racism tribunals and Japan’s Olympic committee’s recent decision to banish anyone who farted in public since 1972. If you don’t want to read my blog for sensitivity reasons, fine, but please spare me the fines. Look, I both understand and predicted an overreaction to all the horrors of MAGAville—or Brexitville, or all of the current global nationalistic horrors abound—but such a response must be grounded in constitutional principles. There’s no wiggle room here. It certainly seems like some libs want to ditch our founding documents because “Jefferson owned slaves, man.” You’re cancelled. I identify as an Ubermensch, but the term ‘Superman’ is acceptable. Mensch is German for ‘people,’ so use the word ‘Superman’ at your linguistic, or cancel-vulnerable, peril.

Here’s a question for our resident culture warriors: what exactly do you intend to replace the Constitution with exactly? The Oscar bylaws? The Real Housewives of NJ handbook? Excerpts from The View’s twitter feed? #CrystalEthics.

Is the US set to create similar Kindness Tribunals, packed to the gills with cancel-minded thought police? What is going on behind the scenes here? Republicans forever try to legislate a Christian morality and liberals are responding with some egalitarian version of compassion. Both are unconstitutional and less than helpful. The liberal version is actually more insidious as it intends to track all potential bias: implicit, explicit, conscious, subconscious, unconscious, real, REM, delta or imagined. Let’s add pre-cognitive, pre-formative, or even prehensile.

You’re ignoring Piaget, Erickson, Bandura, and the rest of our developmental psych friends. We learn through experimentation, which is why no one should ever dig in that dark spot in my yard where nothing seems to grow. Humans make mistakes, but we grow and we learn. And then we bury the bodies deeper. Aspects of this ‘woke’ movement not only ignores the foundations of our psychologists—developmental, depth, humanistic, etc—but it wreaks havoc on our founding principles. Wait, there’s more! It also leaves our meditation gurus and more integral-minded folks out in the cold.

Great. Burn down the religion, the history, the self-help, and the New Age section of our bookstores. And for what, to help the republicans win the midterms? Safe spaces are something valuable and needed, until abused. Great hobby you got there. Wait, are we boycotting Hobby Lobby or just the word hobby itself? Hmmm.

You’re also arguable hurting both the LGBTQ community and anyone on the road to self-improvement. Having an initial safe space in which to grow is imperative during part of our development (see: any child with a RAD disorder). And yet, staying in Plato’s cave throughout your entire tenure here on Earth seems like a terrible idea.

Here is Doshin, enlightened guru extraordinaire, paraphrasing Steve Lavine:

“Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. It leaves you frozen in fear. Unable to take risks, unable to try anything new, unable to learn from your mistakes. It’s a horrible strategy for human development or human growth. It just doesn’t work.”*

For anyone still confused, try these great reads: The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, Understanding Dukkha by Ajahn Chah, or, my favorite, The Ghetto Shaman’s The 4 Noble Dumpster Diving Truths. 

What’s your problem, Zano? People are just trying to defend a vulnerable group?

Can’t we defend them and keep our constitution? Or, do you want to ditch our founding principles for the needs of .05% of our population? Very anti-utilitarian of you. I know, I know, you think the founding principles themselves are steeped in racism. I get it. So you’re trying to meet MAGA halfway ….to a collective head injury status. Great plan.

Sorry, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, left, right, or center. Ottawa’s Bill C-16 commands citizens to address people by their preferred pronoun, if the US follows suit we are in big trouble. Wedge issues are real. Why give an inch to MAGA?

Anyone who is worried about this is a racist, Zano, period.

Yikes. You need to understand what the future might look like. You can get into trouble for anything deemed offensive, even a joke taken out of context. Someone’s else’s bad day can end your career. It’s also about what you’ve already said, so anyone willing to do the research can cancel anyone. Virtually no one is immune. I support the sensible parts of this movement, the ones grounded in constitutional strategies to move us away from racism and defend the vulnerable peeps among us, but Ditch.The.Overreach.

If established, such tribunals historically have a 99% conviction ratio, so if someone turns you in for any perceived pre-transgression, you’re not only cancelled but there’s more in store for you and yours. Good luck explaining your culture-felony to that lovely HR-Nazi back at home base paycheck. And you can’t sell pot anymore, kids, because it’s already legal. Damn. Never thought I’d be sad about that.

Here’s what’s coming next in Libsylvania:

The shaky ‘scientific’ conclusions of these egalitarian know-it-alls will be weaponized to root out pre-prejudices via their junk science. We are talking about fines and imprisonment on the legal/tribunal side, as a well as a host of vacuous HR-policies—complete with endless virtual-junk-trainings (VJTs)—on the professional side. Screwing up your personal and professional life …and all in the name of healing! Wow. How about working on this one first?

Snowflake, heal thyself

It’s already about perceptions, not reality, in the workplace. Have you noticed? So why not delve deeper into the dark subconscious of all our Human Resources? The right can keep mining our wetlands and national parks for fossil fuels, while our cognitive pioneers ignore all of this in favor of delving deeply into everyone else’s subconscious brains in search of evidence of pre-racist neural pathways. It reminds of that Tom Cruise movie where there’s precogs and pre-crime units mobilized to root out potentially damaging thoughts. Top Gun, yeah, that was it.

This is your answer to republican fascism, a liberal version? If there’s one oversight I made over the course of my 20 year blogging career, it’s giving way too much credit to progressives. The Majority-Minority Report? I remained focused on The GOP—speaking of which, post the general election, our top general apparently had to reassure China that Trump wouldn’t nuke them. And the General was lying because he didn’t necessarily believe that himself. Yeah …crazy me.

Meanwhile, every corner of psychology, self-help, new age, and therapy encourages a process centered on cleaning up one’s own act. We have laws to protect citizens already in place and any citational augmentation simply derails the self–cleaning-up-process. There is only one subconscious mind that matters, your own. This is not a hierarchy talking, it’s reality. You should listen, because if we lose the only relevant political party left in the US, We.Are.Toast.

How about I work on my own shit and you work on yours? I have a smidge of oppositional defiance and my spirit animal is Loki, so just let me do my thing and no one gets *cough* …well, most people won’t get hurt. I bought another bag of grass seed. Fingers crossed. Yeah, sometimes they end up in the lawnmower bag. Yuck.

During a recent conversation with an activist attempting to fight the gentrification here in Phoenix, she stressed the uphill climb for blacks to move into certain local neighborhoods. A noble cause, for sure. She said she went to a city planning meeting designed to address this issues with a recording device. The panel was uncomfortable with this, so I told her, “Good job, hold them accountable.” But then I added, “But I also understand how, today, during the problem solving process, anyone might feel self conscious about say something non-PC.” She didn’t like this response, but an environment of fear is already here. It takes guts to talk out loud, in 2021. This is chilling stuff for those of us who like to walk and talk while milling about this dimension. When the few smart people left in this country stop talking, it really will become MAGA v Green Meanies. Good luck with that.

There’s no rule about time-frames with regards to personal development, nor should there ever be. Dysfunctional green has no business pretending its an authority on all matters spiritual, social or otherwise. Hindering the developmental process is the opposite of fostering it. You are not only ignoring the key problems of our time, you’re creating new ones through your relativistic hubris. Oh, and I almost forgot, you also burned down the most important section of any bookstore, the comedy section.

[Saddles Ablazing joke removed by the management.]

Crap. Hey, let’s coin a phrase today: idiot compassion. Coming soon to identity politics near you.

 

• For this one I actually paraphrased Doshin paraphrasing Levine, so this is actually para-paraphrasing. And, since I consider myself a parapsychologist, just call me Dr. Para-para-para. My paralegal agrees.