Washington Post Agonistes
Before you accelerate into a curve, it is important to know if that curve is followed by a straightaway or it is just a segment of a death spiral.
I find it interesting that one of the American institutions that completely prostituted itself in pursuit of wokeness, a once venerable organization looked to by many for accurate and truthful reporting, is now being consumed from inside by the very ideology it championed.
It is that same tension between real concern and morbid curiosity people exhibit when passing a bad accident on the interstate. We don’t really want to stare but the debris field demands we look and after we pass, we generally opine about what happened and hope those involved survive.
The trials and tribulations of the Washington Post is a lot like that except for one thing – it is more like the one car crashes out on the flat, open highway where you wonder, just how in Hell they managed to wind up upside down in the middle of that field.
I really do hope the Washington Post survives, just like I hope CNN survives. America needs as many points of view as possible to keep us honest.
Yesterday, I pointed out how the purges of wokeness are like Stalinism - but it isn't even the collectivism part that is the issue, it is the fact that in collectivism and progressivism, dissent simply cannot be allowed.
F.A. Hayek, whom I quote often, noted this aspect in 1944:
“It is not difficult to deprive the seat majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian enterprise: ‘Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the staff.’”
In progressivism, as in Stalinism, there can be no disagreement with the leader, and in this case the progressives have unleashed a murderous, self-destructive, asymmetrical belief system that has taken the place of a leader.
You can call it wokeness if you like, but wokeness is just a tool of progressivism.
Wokeness (and the identitarianism it spawned) was a seductive, illegitimate, yet effective, way to shame, cancel and put down anyone who disagreed with the progressive agenda that masqueraded as a value system. Wokeness appeared to be the perfect weapon, the class struggle MOAB with the potential to penetrate deep through layers of concrete and blow the enemy out of the ground – it was perfect because it applied to everything and could be manipulated to change as the situations demanded – everything could be redefined in such a way that your opponent was always on the defensive.
But once let out, this tool cannot be controlled, it destroys everything it infects because nothing can keep up with its changing rules. It is a belief system so self-contradictory, the only way it can survive is if it sheds "principles" and mutates daily by adopting new principles that don't contradict – until they do.
Wokeness gives the feeling of speed and power, the wind in your hair, of accelerating toward a goal - but wokesters mistake those G-forces for progress when they are just a consequence of being caught in a corkscrewing death spiral headed for the ground.
Saul Alinsky never anticipated his “Rules” being applied internally, inside a movement, the contradiction of forcing your opponent to live up to his rules while being forced to live up to your own.
The only belief, principle or drive within progressivism that isn't time-limited is the lust for power.
Rather that fighting with facts, the progressives unleashed a genetically modified organism they thought would eliminate their enemies - but now they are realize it infects them, too - and they have no way to stop it unless they admit they are frauds and take an antidote created by their enemies.
If it isn't obvious by now, progressivism is terminal cancer – if not treated.
The Washington Post eating itself alive in real time is a perfect example.
To survive, the Post will have to admit they were wrong and wokeness and identitarianism are fraudulent.
They have to be “red pilled”.
Democrats should look at the torture of the Post Agonistes and see their future – but they won’t.
I already see the germination of the idea that it isn’t that the Democrats went progressive, it is that they didn’t go progressive enough. Signs say they will accelerate into the curve without recognizing that curve lacks a straightaway and is just one arc on a downward spiral.
It is a fate they clearly believe they can escape with enough velocity.
Color me skeptical and somebody please get me some more popcorn.
ABC is producing, directing, and broadcasting a carefully scripted and completely one-sided (though not as one-sided as the Schiff/Cheney Show Trial) prime-time special to demonize Trump on Thursday. The WOKE hope to keep their drones focused on 2020 as they prepare for the 2022 elections.
I'm not a rubber-necker. I only glance. The big pile-up is ahead still.