She develops wonderfully a thesis I have tried to develop: There is no necessary (or even probable) link between intelligence and correct political understanding. Bush was an intelligent president. All the attacks on his intelligence were (I'll use the terrible word) objectively reactionary.
Carrol
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb
> Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 8:43 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; lbo
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Check your privilege?
>
> had anyone figured out why this might be so?
>
> It seems very similar to a certain left tendency to be exceedingly angry
> toward people who aren't on board the leftist clue train. They tend to go
> on and on about how fat, stupid, lazy, and greedy USers are for instance.
> If they'd only get a clue and get on board the leftist klew train, all our
> problems would be arighted. Everyone would be fighting the revolution.
> There's a kind of mean spirited bitterness, a tendency to belitte, attack,
> shame, ridicule with a specific focus on attacking their physical being
and
> tastes. It's sort of a "*I* figured it out you lazy fucks, why can't you?"
> sentiment, with the implication being that the people who don't see the
> light are morally culpable.
>
> the tendency seems to assume that getting on board the leftist klewtrain
is
> the act of morally righteous individuals.
>
> I used to see this hatred and anger from a sect of radical/cultural
> feminists of the sort where all oppression is rooted first and foremost in
> the sexual domination of women by men. All forms of what they called
> hierarchy flowed from that basic condition.
>
> At any rate, I suspect the problem tends to lie in their tacit theories
> about how social change works: they tend to see it as something special
> individuals make happen.
>
> This tends to flow out of the tradition of critical race theory, doesn't
> it? I have read up on it in years, bt I seem to remember that there was a
> strain of thought where it was expected tat you were supposed to renounce
> white privilege. For instance, I remember one radical feminist telling us
> that she married a black man in order to give up white privilege. how that
> worked, I wasn't sure, but she was serious as a heart attack about it and
> did it as part of some wider 70s countercultural movement with which she
> was associated for awhile.