Comments by "LS O\x27Brien" (@lsobrien) on "Eric Weinstein Having An Episode" video.

  1. [The IDW's] self-indentified “centrist” fanbase repeatedly exclaim that they’re just a nice, rational group of guys responding to a chaotic world. And while your grievances are postmodern neo-Marxist inventions, all of theirs are genuine postmodern neo-Marxist impositions (evidence pending). They will never miss an opportunity tell the “coddled” masses that they really are today’s most sat-upon. Yet what else is their full immersion into the realm of “culture wars,” to the cost of recognising their material conditions, if not irrational? They spend their days trawling social media, looking to evidence their Stealers Wheel thesis, and don’t even begin to approach the very real policies and social arrangements which hold sway — and which have been, ever since Third Wayism, exclusively right-wing.²² They foolishly believe that their incessant online interventions, which invariably cite Reason, “evidence-based decision making” (absent of sources), and St Pinker, have any sort of effect. That those dreaded “both sides” aren’t just scoffing at these attempts to elevate triviality to the lofty heights of Civil Discourse. And that, possibly, they don’t just see “history’s pickpockets” for what they are. “And who are all these democratic moralists? Ideologists of intermediary layers who have fallen, or are in fear of falling between the two fires. The chief traits of the prophets of this type are alienism to great historical movements, a hardened conservative mentality, smug narrowness, and a most primitive political cowardice. More than anything moralists wish that history should leave them in peace with their petty books, little magazines, subscribers, common sense, and moral copy books. But history does not leave them in peace. It cuffs them now from the left, now from the right.” Leon Trotsky²³ Pointedly absent from their talking points is any examination of economics². Likely because the neoliberal economic system the Centre champions doesn’t withstand much scrutiny. In this, they have simply adopted a long-running practice of our compliant mainstream press.²⁴ So it goes: insist that advocates for trans-rights are one step away from enacting Maoist terror, and you can expect glowing coverage in the NYT. Float the idea that genetics might explain racially-skewed conviction statistics and, oh my, you’re well on the way to becoming an “unfairly maligned” intellectual martyr.²⁵ But put forward modest social democratic policies to counteract neoliberalism — the total commodification of all — and expect to be hounded by all corners of the media class, and denounced, by those very martyrs, as Stalin Redux.²⁶ (With regards to Trudeau, this Peterson tactic is bizarre. Outside of insisting upon the neutral “human” over “Man” he’s giving the centre right everything they want.)²⁷ This should remind us of Chomsky’s indespensible propaganda model: encourage a vigorous debate on a narrow set of mostly insignificant issues, while actively shutting down serious examinations of the prevailing ideology.²⁸ (But even if, somehow, the new charlatans were put on the defensive in a fundamental way, I suspect the best we’d get in return is, “this? This is not real Liberalism.”) Goya’s famous epigraph “the sleep of Reason produces monsters” can be read two ways. The less obvious one, the one New Atheists rather ignore, is almost certainly what the disillusioned artist had in mind. The self-styled partisans of The Enlightenment, then as now, so often disregard skepticism where they need it the most: in their precepts. And with this, Reason is their blindness.
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