All the World’s a Stage

American Thinker

All the World’s a Stage 

for 

Left-wing Activism

Why doesn’t someone do something about left-wing activism?

I’d always comfortably assumed that, despite the clamor of LGBT activists, there were really very few gays and transgenders. But the Audacious Epigone says that studies show that in the 18-29 cohort 13 percent now identify as gay or lesbian and 3 percent identify as transgender. Oy.

Of course they do. Their diversity administrators and the activists are telling them, K thru grad school, that gay rights is exactly the same as civil rights by race and sex. And Obergefell says that gay marriage is equivalent to traditional marriage. Plus, gay is cool. What do you expect the kiddies to think?

Look, I’m all in favor of being nice to gays. But telling kids that gay marriage is the same as living as man and wife? Having a full-on Democratic presidential debate about gay issues? It’s getting close to a crime against humanity. But you’d better not disagree, if you want to keep your job.

Then we have the spectacle of a spectrum teen being used as a stage prop to push the end-of-the-world cult presently called Climate Change. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how this parallels the Children’s Crusade. La Wik:

A boy begins to preach in either France or Germany, claims that he had been visited by Jesus, who instructed him to lead a Crusade in order to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity.

A girl begins to preach in Sweden, claims she knows the science, that instructs her to peacefully save the planet.

The point is that, whether we are talking about a boy in 1212 or a girl in 2019, no boy or girl of tender age is thinking about saving Moslems or modern-day deplorables unless he or she is prompted by the moral campaigns of activists. And that goes for Joan of Arc. The climate change frenzy is getting close to a crime against humanity. But where is the notable or the politician that dares to oppose it?

Or homelessness. In Venice Beach, California, it is really getting out of hand. But what can you do after the activists have litigated

last year’s ruling in Martin v. Boise, when the Ninth Circuit held that punishing homeless people for sleeping on the street when there was no shelter available elsewhere violated their Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Or the Kavanaugh nomination. What do you do when the Dems and the activists get together to plunge a knife in a nominee’s back because he might be the fifth vote to reverse Roe v. Wade? And the media cheers it on.

I guess this all came together for me after watching Jordan B. Peterson being interviewed by a BBC North London luvvie over his 12 Rules. Was the luvvie interested in Peterson’s ideas? Oh no, he was all worried about the impact of 12 Rules on the left’s sacred agenda: the white male threat, equality, women’s rights, gay rights. He wasn’t really interested in investigating the issues raised in Peterson’s book, but in pushing back against Peterson’s critique of the left in the context of the threats from Trump, populism, and the alt-right. Why was the luvvie taking that line? Because left-wing activism.

But then I watched the BBC’s Andrew Neil gently suggesting to a young Extinction Rebellion activist lady -- who was wearing a tasteful pendant featuring the XR logo -- that the science, the UN’s IPPC reports, doesn’t agree with XR’s emotional appeal. So why don’t they just cool it and leave climate change to the adults? Sometimes the activists can go too far, even for North London luvvies.

What are we going to do about the activists? They are the tip of the spear of the progressive project and we don’t know what to do about them and how to counter them. The activists and their protests provide a moral framework, a decent drapery, to clothe the nakedness of ruling class power lust.

Now I have attempted to begin the task of dismantling the moral pretensions of the activism culture, and last week I hauled in Nietzsche to show that our modern activists are stage actors, just putting on political theater.

This is the way to understand our lefty activists, from AntiFa to Extinction Rebellion. AntiFa is acting out the idea of a street mob. But it is all just a show. Extinction Rebellion is going through the motions of a revolution to force the powers-that-be to get serious about climate change. But really, it is all theater.

They are merely actors acting out a show, and behind the scenes the real power players are the ones pulling the strings.

But we won’t put the lefty activists to shame until we turn up the lights on a new moral narrative that makes lefty activism look like back-street game of Three Card Monte.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get hisAmerican Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.