Sayet, Green, Winchester, Rand
Ever since seeing Evan Sayet’s seminal lecture on the Regurgitating the Apple (introducing ideas later explored more fully in his book THE KINDER-GARDEN OF EDEN), I have been longing to find an elegant explanation for the myriad, complex, and bewildering paradoxes and self-contradictions of Leftist thinking.
In particular, I wonder why, in the arts and entertainment, my own field, Leftists were once able to produce serviceable stories, or even great, but now are no longer.
Allow me to offer some short quotes or observations, attempting to sum up an admittedly complex topic.
The first is from Evan Sayet himself:
If they weren’t so dangerous and destructive, one could smile and pat the Modern Liberal on the head and tell him how cute he is and go on about the business of being an adult. But he is dangerous and destructive, with the True Believer’s very purpose being the total destruction of everything that God and science-most obviously Western Civilization-has ever created. …The Modern Liberal will invariably and, in fact, inevitably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.
The second is from Steve Green
The guys who sank four Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway were not obsessed with the proper pronouns. The guys who keep driving their naval vessels into other ships are.
A third comes from conversation with our own Nate Winchester, which I will only sum up here, necessarily losing some nuance.
Marxism entails man becoming his own god. All constraint is oppressive and must be torn down in the revolution so man can obtain true freedom.
Love is a constraint. By love connections are formed between people and chains are bound upon a man. If reality and hunger constrain and bind the socialist such that he cannot realize his desires, how much more the love and connection of parent to child? How much more constrained are you from realizing your pure perfect vision if you’re concerned about the health and well being of your offspring?
Modern Leftists are not doctrinaire Marxists — most have not read Marx and are not doctrinaire anything. But, like the agnostic raised among Christians who absorbs as unexamined assumptions the theological dogma of the sacredness of life and the dignity of the poor, the Cultural Marxist absorbs as unexamined assumption the hellish theological dogma of self-actualization and self-apotheosis.
Nate Winchester uses LAST JEDI as an example. Here I will quote him directly:
“The entire plot of the movie hinges on and revolves around Luke’s mishap with his nephew. Now we have a problem in that Luke Skywalker – who gave Darth Vader, his father, every chance at redemption even after the guy had done real, horrible things, turning around and killing his nephew because of “potential” horrible things the kid might do. This makes no sense.
“Yet there is one very simple, very obvious solution to this – give Luke a wife and children. Everyone would understand that it is very different to put yourself at risk vs putting your wife and kids at risk. Having a vision of Kylo hurting them and you could understand how Luke would waiver and stumble if even for just a split second.”
He goes on to say that the Culturally Marxist hero, like the Gnostic of old, must have no connections to anyone nor anything. Hence the Marxist hero version of Luke Skywalker is living in a monastery, doing work as he pleases, but has no family and no friends. Even the scene of him mourning over Solo’s death was cut from the movie.
In the climax, Marxist Luke leads revolt against the oppressive systems, and he does it in a completely unrestrained form, ultimately “vanishing” — just as the perfect Socialist man would do, having become his own god.
Luke serves no purpose and is no use to anyone. He does not even lay down his life to save others. He sheds his life because he needs it no longer. He needs nothing.
It is difficult to grasp how childish and stupid this all is, how ugly and how unappealing.
But to the Woke Left, the very thing most repellant to wholesome mind — a life of meaningless selfishness culminating in a pointless but voluntary death — to their sick holds beguiling allure.
Storytelling requires drama, and drama requires conflict between two things of great import, dreams, needs, loves, fears.
In a simple adventure story, the hero loves his life but risks it for the greater good. In a simple romance, the heroine yearns for marriage but fears rejection or falseness.
Achilles loves war, but rages at being belittled. Odysseus loves home, but his boasts at besting the monstrous offspring of a god brings down a curse. Lancelot loves Arthur as a brother and Arthur’s wife not as a sister. And so on.
But in the worldview of Cultural Marxism, the superwoman loves no one and nothing but herself.
Choose of any of the many acts of vandalism done by Woke writers to any long-standing and long-beloved hero or heroine from popular entertainment.
The first thing to notice is a sense of ingratitude: the woke character is always in a posture of rebellion never in a pose of piety. No thanks is ever owed to another, ever, for any reason.
No teacher teaches them; the student already knows more than the master, more than the lore-books. All she needs is to believe in herself, and to cease listening to her detractors, invariably male. All she need do, to seat herself above the throne of the Almighty, is to recognize her own inner divinity. This is why all minor characters who laud and flatter her are righteous, and all who instruct or criticize or question her are reprobate.
Second, no character is chivalrous. None displays any pity, sympathy, military courtesy, or sense of honor toward any foe or rival. There are no complex characters in the Marxist world. There are no tragedies in the Marxist world, no heroes undone by their own flaws, no rivals nonetheless admirable. There is only the righteous and the reprobate locked in a remorseless Darwinian struggle for survival with no rules of engagement and no possibility of quarter.
Consider, for example, the words from the Strong Female Character from a show which stands in the same relation to LORD OF THE RINGS as THE GOLDEN COMPASS stands to Narnia:
Please consider what sort of worldview promotes or proposes this to be one and the same with a character who, in a later age, is tempted by the One Ring, which grants absolute power, and instead reconciles herself to dwindling, diminishing, and going humbly into the West, and remaining herself.
(Hint: it is the same worldview which promotes or proposes that Mopey Skysulker, who out of fear that Kylo might perhaps one day do something bad, will not cherish any hope of redemption for Kylo, is one and the same character as Luke Skywalker who cherished such a hope about his dark father, a man involving in murdering worlds and torturing princesses, despite the counsel of wise ghosts and sage mentors, cherished so strong a hope for evil’s redemption that he was willing to disarm himself in perfect faith.)
In Christian philosophy, an act is evil not merely due to intent nor outcome, but also due to its character. Hence, torturing captured enemies, even when done for good reasons leading to a good outcome, is forbidden, because it demeans the sacred image of God seen in all men, including enemies.
There are certain things in Christian stories the hero cannot and must not do, or else he is not a hero. Such as, for example, knifing a chained prisoner.
It is far different in Marxism, which is materialist version of Gnosticism. No act is good or evil, because all facts are merely the opinions of the strong meant to oppress the weak.
Hence, the good or the bad of any war crime depends solely on “who” and “whom.”
The selfsame infinitely reprehensible act of torture or genocide committed by the reprobate against the elect is allowable, even laudable, when committed by the elect against the reprobate.
There are no moral questions in Marxism, no moral qualms. The only questions are “who” and “whom.” Who is doing the act and to whom?
If elect harm the reprobate, the act is good, no matter what it is; if reprobate hinder the elect, the selfsame act is bad.
This is why it is vain to point out the hypocrisy of the Left. Hypocrisy is not an unwanted side effect of their worldview: it is the whole point and sole point.
If judged on the merit of their works, or on the purity of their faith, they would be condemned.
The only way to escape condemnation is to judge oneself always the winner, even when losing, and to judge rivals always losers, even when winning.
They crave hypocrisy as a drunk craves the bottle: to blot out otherwise intolerable self-awareness.
That is why Joe Biden is said to have “won” the last election, despite receiving fewer correctly-tallied votes. The irregular, illegal, and openly fraudulent votes, as many as were needed, were also tallied to produce the preordained outcome.
He did not win by any merit, by any will of the majority, by any legal right, by any constitutional voting process, but because he was of the Correct Party.
That is why opposing voter fraud harms democracy only when it opposes the outcome ordained by the Correct Party.
Knowingly and falsely accusing a true vote result of being due to treasonous fraud and collaboration with enemy foreign powers not only helps democracy, it is democracy, for it ensures the majority, and the legal due process, do not hinder the correct outcome desired by the Correct Party.
Right and wrong, legal and illegal, true and false, all these things mean nothing.
Only Who and Whom mean anything. To accuse them of hypocrisy is to accuse a fish of bathing. To accuse them of lacking self-awareness is to accuse the plant of standing still.
Truth wounds them, so they flee it. Reason bedevils them, so they avoid it as vampires avoid the crucifix. Beauty brings torment, not joy or wonder, which do not exist in their world. Their cosmos is false, irrational, ugly, and their stories reflect their cosmos.
Another quote, this one from Ayn Rand:
They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.
Final comment:
The cause of this mental confusion is spiritual sickness.
Leftists are quite deliberately, and by design, strange, creepy, confusing and eerie people. Such is what happens when you sell your soul, lose your reason, kill your unborn children, sexually mutilate your born children, forget which sex you are, and you lie about everything you do and say and think, and lie and lie and lie and never cease to lie.
It is what happens when, being godless, for love, comfort, guidance, and salvation, one turns to little gods, as to Eros, to Mammon, or to Caesar; otherwise named the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of the world.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
