The Political Tide Is Turning And The Left Is Scurrying For Higher Ground

It is no coincidence that Disney gets hammered in Florida, CNN goes major management overhaul, and that Elon Musk takes over Twitter.  More and more corporations, institutions, jurisdictions, and media figures have had enough liberal cant and progressive arrogance and have found the political will to do something about it.  As much as the Left may whinge about the emergence of the radical deep state, the de-cancelling of Donald Trump, and the reconstitution of an anti-historical conservative movement thought to be dead and buried, there is no turning back the tide.

As usual the media leads the way – viewership, ratings, and market share have always been the bellwethers of social change in an America always sensitive to image and posture.  Bill Maher who in the Trump years was a shill for progressive radicalism, insulting to and dismissive of Republicans, and on the bandwagon trumpeting the New Age, calling out backcountry crackers, Bible-thumping idolaters, systemic racists, and gender ignoramuses, has changed his tune.  For all the the predictions of a compassionate, verdant, and inclusive future, the Left has been increasingly guilty of mock justice, summary execution of the nation’s best and brightest, and the intimidation of school boards, state legislatures, and corporations in a rush to judgment; and Maher is no longer giving it a platform.  The gender spectrum is a fictitious, comic book illustration of progressive intent.  There is no historical, Biblical, Koranic, Hindu, or Confucian mention of such empirical, biological distortion.  The idea of choosing one’s sexual identity from a Chinese menu of gender possibilities is absurd. 

The percentage of self-declared gay men and women in the country has never moved much above three percent and the slice of transgenders within it a mere fraction.  Yet the entire country has been hectored and hammered to believe otherwise.  Sexual diversity is the jewel in the crown of the Left’s politics identity even trumping race.  If the country can become universally gender free, the victory is far more transformative than even racial inclusion.  The vast majority of the population is not buying the progressive line, but because of the Left’s control of major media and Hollywood and their newly energized responsibility to speak out, they have been cowed into silent protest. In the Orwellian world of today’s censorious America, who has the temerity to speak out?

Despite the appearance of black actors and presenters on every television program, every news broadcast, every entertainment stage, ever movie, soap opera, and school ceremonies, blacks are barely ten percent of the population. Yet this progressive success has been Pyrrhic – because of the progressive howling about racism and police brutality, municipalities have defunded the police, given the ‘street’ cultural acceptability, and have given automatic clearance and exoneration of any black man engaged with law enforcement.  The American middle has had enough disingenuous tolerance of crime and incivility, and lionization of dysfunctional communities on the basis of cultural integrity and their history of racial oppression.

Despite a generation of women’s rights where corporate, academic, financial, and political doors have been opened wide, progressives have insisted on the necessity of protecting women from biologically predatory, abusive males.  Kangaroo courts have been set up in academia, and one whine from a female student about a ‘toxic environment’ can send ten male students packing.  All responsibility for actual sexual abuse rests with men.  Women will always be blameless no matter where they go, what they wear, how much they drink, or how they behave.  While few Americans retain the patriarchal attitudes of generations ago, and most have taken women’s premier roles in American society as a matter of course, people see the Left’s disingenuous neo-feminism as wrongheaded.  There is such a thing as propriety, sense, morality, and social judgment.  The Catholic Church, often parodied for its emphasis on ‘the occasion of sin’ is now looked at in a more prophetic light.

Perhaps the worst dereliction of democratic principles is censorship and the closing down of free speech.  The transformation of America into a progressive utopia, advocates say, is too important to be sidelined, diverted, or damaged by contrary opinion.  The progressive agenda of race, gender, environment, and ethnicity is ipso facto morally right; and any such sanctity should have no opposition, no nettlesome naysayers.  As a result free speech on the social media is a thing of the past.  Not only are public figures banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but ordinary citizens are called out for what the media’s ‘intelligent’ algorithms, programmed by liberal claques and worker bee software engineers deem ‘offensive’ speech. Such algorithms were never devised for subtlety, recognition of satire, humor, deliberate exaggeration.  Words, phrases, and sentences alone are enough to ban the user.

The American English language is being reformed along the same lines.  Grammar, usage, vocabulary are all passed through a woke, progressive filter.  More and more words are excluded from use, and the slightest, most incidental reference to banned usage will be called out, dunned, and punished.

The cancel culture is not only intent on cancelling free speech and reforming language but arbitrarily revising history in the most universal revisionist movement of many generations. It takes only a marginal, inadvertent ‘racist’ action on the part of American leaders and all traces of them are removed – statues, street names, schools, government buildings, nothing should remain.  Historical revisionists see history only through the lens of today, and if that lens is fogged by supercilious, subjective, and illogical judgment, history must go.

The State of Florida has taken aggressive steps to remove references to alternative sexuality and gender choice from schoolbooks. The classroom is the place for academic learning, not social reconfiguration.  If adults want to consider the remarkable propositions offered about sexual diversity and gender choice, they are free to do so; but the classroom should never be the laboratory for culturing radical, unproven, contentious sexual notions.  To the surprise of progressives who had come to believe that their vision of sexuality was both received wisdom and settled science, the people of Florida said no.  In so doing they were not announcing their homophobia, but confirming their belief in ‘the right time and place’. 

More importantly, these Florida voters saw that the schoolbooks proposed were not simply declarative reviews of the changing American populace, but had clear promotional agendas.  The lesson was not simply tolerance of the different other, but that non-heterosexual sexualities ought to be considered as a possible future.  The ideas of sexual fungibility and a ‘you can be what you want to be’ philosophy, implicit in the now disapproved curricula, were unacceptable, insidious, and wrong.

Elite schools like Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, have always educated the best and the brightest, and have awarded admission only to the very few who score highest on a one time only competitive exam.  Because the Jewish populations early in the last century and the Asian communities of today place an extremely high premium on education and academic performance, their children have been reared in an environment of learning and have been taught to learn and learn well from a very early age.  It is no surprise that Stuyvesant was overwhelmingly Jewish a few generations ago and is now similarly Asian.

In recent years Stuyvesant has come under increasing pressure to do away with the entrance exam because it is ‘racist’.  How could it not be, critics claimed, since no black children were ever admitted?  The school resisted, as did another premier school, Hunter. Administrators for both stated clearly that their system of competitive admission was democratic and offered opportunity to all.  If it rewarded those children whose background encouraged learning and academic performance, so much the better.  The schools could and should be role models for the rest of the city.

Harvard and Berkeley have come under similar criticism for what progressives consider a disproportionate percentage of Asian students admitted.  Harvard, denying its egalitarian roots, agreed and said that it would do what it could to redress the imbalance and give increasing preference to black applicants.  The case has gone to higher and higher courts, but the principle is still debated.  Most Americans hope that blacks will soon be able to accede to premier institutions without unfair support and affirmative action, but until they do, schools should be encouraged to bolster their academic reputation by receiving only the best and the brightest regardless of race.

President Biden has been advised by his inner circle to tone down the progressive rhetoric during this year of critical midterm elections.  They have listened to Maher, Florida, Stuyvesant, Elon Musk.  They have seen the fall of CNN and Disney, they have listened to the applause of Americans who have finally begun to speak out in opposition.  The Democratic Party, so delighted at first with the likes of the Squad and their profoundly progressive wing, are giving radicalism a second thought.  They are in trouble and there is not much time to backtrack, especially given an American electorate which can be fooled no longer.

Too little, too late, and the Republicans are shoo-ins in the Fall, and The Great Satan, Donald Trump, is in the wings for 2024.  It is only surprising that this now hurricane force blowback of progressive radicalism took so long to gain energy and power.