En Garde in the bunker…
From the master Daniel Greenfield himself, culled from the comment thread: “Maturity requires responsibility. When people don’t grasp real responsibility, they take on fake responsibility, such as their imaginary insistence that their diet choices are dooming the planet“.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the worst Covid hysterics are now, unsurprisingly, the worst Russia hysterics as they have been manipulated and incited by the MSM like clapping seals. Some of us have noticed that they’ve no interest in what really caused this crisis, since to them it’s just a knee jerk reaction on their part – say the broader obsession with “safety-ism”, moral preening and virtue signaling, and thereby being totally orchestrated by an emotional MSM.
The drug of choice for Liberals has always been a crisis, and in case you’ve missed it, it still is. Cast your mind back somewhat and remember how crazy they went over Vietnam, a situation they’ve been using by jumping from one crisis to the next ever since. If there isn’t one, never fear, they will cause one to appear. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” after all, takes on an additional meaning now.
Aimless virtue-signaling run amok. Fortitude in the face of evil intent …
The broader “Hollywood” for example, works the same way. Small wonder that it was the left’s first target for control in America. The movie of the week is very similar to the cause du jour, to the end of which perhaps we should refer to leftists as the “Du Jourians”. Hip-hop!
People who desire to benefit from superficial involvement love the cause Celebre, a curious way to use a cause to reflect false virtue upon oneself; a facade, if you will, used to fool others on one’s hipness, popularity, or depth. Rather than the Du Jourians listed above, maybe we should refer to the leftists as “Cause Celebre-tarians”, the benefit of which would no doubt, find favor among all Libertarians!
Or maybe we should see the parallel between the Pied Piper, who lured the rats from an inflicted town, but when he wasn’t paid what he was promised, lured the town’s children away. Perhaps we should call leftists Pied Pipers.
Or we could skip the metaphors all together and call them what they are: evil liars who want to destroy anything and everything that is good by distracting everyone from their moral purpose by training us to jump whenever they tell us to, after submissively asking them, “how high?”
Too bad an essay so beautiful and psychologically insightful is describing our ongoing tragedy.
Daniel Greenfield, FrontPageMag: ‘The Frictionless Souls Addicted to the Cause’ …
What the obsession with the Ukraine war really says about Americans.
Ukrainian flags are flying on buildings across the country and Russian vodka is being poured into drains. Concerts are being canceled and books are flying off shelves over a cause that the vast majority of Americans would not have cared about and did not even know existed last year.
In a matter of weeks everyone has come around to having a passionate opinion on the subject.
And when the war in Ukraine has come and gone, some other cause will arrive to fill that void, and the outrage, blue and yellow flag waving, and all the rest of it will be gone with the vodka.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was perfectly timed to fill the emptiness left by the collapse of COVID restrictions. And what the reaction says about us matters more than what it says about Ukraine.
The desperate hunger for new causes is a spiritual vacuum. The Ukranians and the Russians believe in what they’re fighting for. We believe in the need to believe in something. The conflict over Ukraine stretches back centuries while our fervent investment in it goes back a few weeks.
It is quite likely that a few weeks from now we will be just as invested in something else. [-]
[+] … Politics provides them with external validation and internal purpose. To politically dissent is both the equivalent of losing their religion and their place in society. That is why cancel culture is dreaded at a psychological level, not just because of the loss of employment and educational opportunities, but because the affected party loses their society and their soul.
Herd behavior is a rational response to this threat. Virtue signaling protects their place in the herd. And offers a sense of temporary security in an extremely insecure sociopolitical order. [-]
[+] … The addiction to causes is, like all addictions, initially a rush only to gradually become unfulfilling, frustrating, and debilitating. The rage is the suffering of the addict who is increasingly unable to recreate the seeming purity of their initial political involvements except by upping the dose and escalating the emotional and physical violence of their commitments. Radicalization, like higher doses of any substance, don’t address the anhedonia of the abuser.
Every cause gives way to another cause and then the original cause is often forgotten, occasionally to be picked up later when convenient. When the cause has its moment, then it eclipses all others, and for a week, a month or a year, nothing else deserves to be mentioned.
The cause fills all the airwaves, swallows up all other considerations, and becomes the single greatest issue in the universe. And then a little time passes, and it’s forgotten and discarded.
The cause was never the true cause. It was only ever an effect. [end]
Full link below….
Aimless virtue-signaling run amok. Red States to nullify Federal Law?
Like many others, yours truly has been surprised by the repeated gullibility to conspiracy theories – (and it’s not just leftists who are gullible, either). All sorts of fakers and attention seekers have made use of people’s inner emptiness to aggrandize and promote themselves. Perhaps after all, we are herd animals. If we are, it’s inevitable that our herders will not have our best interests at heart. Moo!
But even the most powerful herders (mainstream media) are only human themselves. Removing their cattle prods of propaganda seems urgently important. But will immaturity and shallowness simply transfer the addiction to other false prophets?
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men – The Shadow knows! Aimless virtue-signaling run amok.
And on that note, time for today’s MAGA Pill – Still our warrior-President Donald John Trump doing his darnedest to make America GREAT again – MAGA! KAG!
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- Daniel Greenfield, FrontPageMag: The Frictionless Souls Addicted to the Cause
