[b]Kurt Andersen
Even Paul Goodman, beloved by young leftists in the 1960s, was flabbergasted by his students in 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only the sociology of knowledge. They had so well learned that…research is subsidized and conducted for the benefit of the ruling class that they did not believe there was such a thing as simple truth.”[/b]
Okay, okay: guilty as charged.
Conservatives are correct in pointing out that the anything-goes relativism of the campuses wasn’t sequestered there, but when it flowed out across America, it helped enable extreme Christianities and consequential lunacies on the right—gun rights hysteria, black helicopter conspiracism, climate change denial, and more. The term useful idiot was originally used to accuse liberals of serving the interests of true believers further left. In this instance, however, postmodern intellectuals—postpositivists, poststructuralists, social constructivists, postempiricists, epistemic relativists, cognitive relativists, descriptive relativists—turned out to be useful idiots for the American right.
And look where we are now…smack dab in the middle of Trumpworld!
Neither side has been aware of it, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been wearing different uniforms on the same team—the Fantasyland team.
Hell, I was one of the quarterbacks.
Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the 1960s the atheist tyranny became official. In 1962 and 1963 the Supreme Court decided in two cases, with only one dissenter in each instance, that it was unconstitutional for public schools to conduct organized prayer or Bible readings, and in 1968 the court finally ruled—unanimously—that states could not ban the teaching of evolution.
Cue among others the Christian Nazis. You’ll know the ones. And perhaps sooner than we think.
You know how young people always think the universe revolves around them, as if they’re the only ones who really get it.
Or: You know how objectivists always think the universe revolves around them, as if they’re the only ones who really get it.
And not just the fucking Kids anymore.
If I think it’s true, no matter why or how I think it’s true, then it’s true, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Sure, and maybe it is just human nature.