Oh, really?

[aadler]

 
Quote from an article I read today:

Conservatives are living fossils, trapped in a time when lying was considered a bad thing, taking other people’s property was a sin, spending money that doesn’t exist was a self-destructive folly, and believing you could “build that” was a sign of adulthood.

Today’s liberals —

(Oh, excuse me, they call themselves ‘progressives’ now, since decades of bad policy turned ‘liberal’ into an insult … which is funny, since the use of ‘liberal’ came about precisely because the Progressives of the early 20th century gave the label such a bad name.)

— today’s ‘progressives’ are so far advanced now beyond such antiquated notions.

Comments

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

The other thing in the article I'm not too keen on is this "Homo Cathodicus" proposition itself (and not just because the cathode-ray tube is quickly becoming obsolete :P).

The way I see it, he's using the standard tricks and gimmicks of postmodernism in an attempt to criticize... postmodernism. One of the chief failings of the postmodernists (and why I think they largely identify with the Left politically) is the tendency among them to believe that human nature is a fully malleable thing. At times, the author almost seems to be making that nutjob Jean Baudrillard's case for him, with his "real versus 'real'" analogy. I think Mark Steyn made much the same case here and here, more effectively without having to pretend that the postmodernists were right. Instead, he treats the people who openly believe in the postmodern "flexibility" of truth and human nature with what they deserve: gleeful scorn.

"Homo Cathodicus" doesn't really exist. Native to an understanding of consensus reality is the belief that everyone *actually lives there*, despite what various people might foolishly speculate out loud. We all need food in our bellies and roofs over our heads. Beyond that we seek out things like love, friendship, sex, attention, esteem, comfort, fellowship, entertainment, etc. The order we prioritize these varies from person to person, and how it all figures into our political calculations can be very complex. But this notion that half the country is now living in a constructed alternate reality is something I'd expect out of a co-chair of the Semiotics department at the local liberal arts college, not a "conservative" writer.

People may have made the wrong decision in the last election, but it was largely because they are inundated with bad information and frightening propaganda, not because they think Jacques Derrida was just the coolest dude ever.