The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Are you a Mean Girl, a Wimp, a Nerd, or a Thug?

From The American Reader:

In the realm of Ethical Solidarity, we have the conventional, mainstream Liberal Cluster: the belief in the underlying good faith of individuals and systems and the power of individuals to make free choices to better society...each citizen participates critically and rationally in deciding what is best for society, and comes to a superior agreement.

Also known as WIMPS. You are the most numerous but least confident faction of democrat. The rest are influential and confident, being 100% spoiled children of the bored upper-class. They are energetic, being close to the top, and believing they have birthright to be on top. You on the other hand, just want people to get along and do things that work. In short, you're a punching bag.

In the realm of Structural Solidarity, there is the Radical Cluster: traditional mass reform and revolutionary movements, from organized protest all the way to revolutionary communism. Here, the individual matters less than the forces of history, which drive large-scale entities (the proletariat, a vanguard party, etc.) to better society through radical changes in organization and politics. Those who do not trust wholly in historical determinism, societal power structures, or mass movements may opt for a more tempered form of radical belief such as anarchism or autonomism.

Also known as THUGS. You like forming mobs of minions, burning stuff, looting stuff, and chanting 3-word chants that rationalize burning stuff and looting stuff. You're a bit obsolete though, expecting the working class to be your minion. Unless you're an anarchist, then you're more than a bit obsolete.

In the realm of Structural Suspicion, there is the Theory Cluster, which emphasizes the need to do theoretical work to find out what is really going on underneath the surface of civil society and government. Suspicion mandates that those appearances are not to be trusted...

A.k.a. NERDS. You're a clever person who reads books so you've learned that our system will not let you fullfill your birthright to become Grand Poobah. You know that our system also seems to work well, on the surface. Reconciling these two facts would mean you cannot become Grand Poobah! Therefore something fishy must be going on! So you are going to boldly venture out and - who are we kidding! You will "explore" ideas and "discover" concepts, and you will write illegibly verbose manifestos for people who can't communicate beyond a 3-word chant.

And finally, the realm of Ethical Suspicion is the Moralist Cluster, in which we find much of online leftist thought and practice today. ...demanding of individuals that they comprehend the Structural framework, ["it's not my job to educate you"] struggle against it, and finally emancipate themselves from it [by dropping dead]....the callout, the act of finding fault and inadequacy in the words or actions of another, which, even when well-intentioned, nevertheless constitute a betrayal of leftist ideals. Indeed, the good intentions are themselves problematic since they, in their seeming innocuousness, may succeed in obscuring a malevolent force of injustice. The callout demands that the target rectify this mistake (and so doing, alleviate suspicion) by staging a public or semi-public admission of fault and aggrievement, and applying for absolution from a community of his, her, or its cultural peers.

A.k.a. she-bullies and Mean Girls. Your politics is a clucking henparty of gossip, high society scandal, emotionalism, social conformism enforcement, and etiquette policing/high society shibboleth fads. You're rich, blindingly white, have less real-world life experience than most toddlers, and are so out of touch that you think brown people want to be your minion.

...a burgeoning leftist movement that explicitly defines itself in opposition to liberalism, and indeed prefers liberalism as a target over, say, the right wing. This leftist movement, which organizes itself under terms like “social justice,” “anti-oppression,” “critical race and gender theory,” and “anti-racism,” critiques mainstream liberalism with the goal of exposing its contradictions, hidden prejudices, and empty promises.

So the Witch Party is now dominated by witch-hunters. I don't know what it's like to be a democrat, but it sure doesn't look boring.

Related: Figure out your politics with this questionnaire.

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

As for the Republican equivalents:.

Moral Suspicious: True Christians. Suspicious because we know that the Devil is everywhere and that most people are going to hell.

Moral Solidarity: Ideological conservatives. Extinct, except for David Brooks, and only liberals read him.

Structural Solidarity. NRA. Say what you will about allowing escaped mental patients to carry Uzis into bars, but you have to admit that the gun-nerds pay attention to laws and they organize stuff. Just look at Virginia where they've de-facto seceded again by declaring that Democrat laws don't apply to them.

Structural Suspicious: Libertarian economics nerds. Suspicious because they know that behind every soda tax is a road to serfdom being constructed. There's only about 100 libertarian economics nerds alive at any one time, but somehow they all get published.

[Dr. Anthony J. Toole]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

Brother - these categories are very important for keeping Democrats busy placing eachother in precise distinction from one another. I would imagine each box can be further subdivided ad infinitum, preferably over lattes at the Faculty Club.

In the meantime, the apartment dwelling worker bees have to keep dutifully showing up for their 8-6 shift at $11.75/hr to move animal carcasses around so imported Chinese guys half their age making twice their salary can do biology experiments that will improve the lives of millions millionaires who subscribe to top tier health insurance. If only these potential voters would pay more attention to which category they belong to, they might think to improve their own situation instead of voting for the guy who promises to twat the Democrat-subcategorizing pricks.

My goodness, the spirit took hold of me! Tis the season.

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

Here's a rant from a leftist that covers many of my points. He talks about his adventures trying to climb the pecking order of the "Theory Cluster" - the NERDs - but dropped out because he's just not that studious of a student:

I was in a number of reading groups from 2000ish-2004ish, studying the sacred texts - Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky and Gramsci and Althusser and Kropotkin and David Harvey and on and on. Eventually I gave up, for a few reasons. The first was that I just wasn’t a good enough student. I looked around me and saw all these guys who could quote chapter and verse of Proudhon or whatever, and though I was diligent and passionate I could never get to that level. Try as I might I could never keep my Grundrisse straight from my “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” And for everything I learned there was another something that, I would be made to understand, I didn’t know. I wanted to be serious, and I knew that to be serious was to be studious. But it wasn’t a race I wanted to run.

I didn’t think much of the finish line, by that point. I knew people (I know people) who just studied Marx like the Yeshivot studying the Talmud, study on top of study and seemingly for no other reason. They were dismissive of all actually-existing left movements and too pure to live. You couldn’t judge them on their actions because they had no action, only theory. When my time in the anti-Iraq war movement was over and I emerged from it, exhausted and spent, it was time to leave the temple for me too. I had had enough of the high priests.

That's all the left is: some people are just born students, and are good at being students. They thrive in their natural habitat: rooms filled with desks covered with useless busywork. They are good at being teachers pets, but like all pets, they cannot survive for long outside.

So what do they do? They form a gang. They conquer and weaponize all desk-jobs, starting with education and all information dissemination. Those who won the genetic lottery, natural-born-students are assumed to be some kind of master race. They send missionaries to colonize the world and crush those who fail to assimilate. And just what is this überlegene Kultur which has a manifest destiny to rule the world? The details change over the ages, but one thing is always consistent: the endless multiplying of desk jobs and useless busywork.

"The left" did not start with Rousseau or the French Revolution. "The left" is the same social phenomenon that gave us the medieval Catholic clergy. "The left" is an unreconstructed continuation of inquisitors discussing page 1000 of some tome of irrelevant dogma, finding a slight difference of interpretation, and them burning someone at the stake to save their soul.

But of course there are limits: For a start, most people would rather feel than think, and prefer shouting to reading. Also, there's the issue of "elite overproduction", which happens because a pecking-order of parasites finds it easier to produce desk-workers than invent new desk-jobs, so you end up with more leeches than veins.

This explains the "Moralist Cluster", which has now taken over:

I see ostensible socialists who think of it as this empty vessel of not-liberalism, whose socialism just is shitty Twitter jokes and broad assumptions about a postcapitalist world where they can just make webcomics or play Minecraft...

...socialism is some embittered grad school dropout doing irony at you, ladling out performative disaffection, making sure you all know that everything is expected by them, nothing exciting or surprising or scary...insults for days but no plan......a social culture of frustrated post-college urbanites who know little about left theory or practice and who use left politics as just another way to wage petty little wars of social status with their peers, and b) a set of ambitious entrepreneurs who milk that community for all its worth...

...army of frustrated would-be filmmakers/musicians/social media stars, doesn’t demand constructive insight but rather anger, formless and pointless and directionless...

[WWJDnow]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

There is only one kind of Democrat--a liar. Thank God we Republicans have Donald Trump, who is completely honest, as our standard bearer.

[Dr. Anthony J. Toole]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

What the left doesn't understand is passive income. They're stuck in their slave mentality where you "work" for food. This is typical unintelligent Marxist propaganda that keeps them forever running around the hamster wheel. The enlightened man steps out of this karmic circle with diversified portfolios and generational wealth. Worker ants scurry around tending our needs and in return we push them to become better versions of themselves - more efficient, less tiresome. Cheaper. Eventually they will do it just for a word of praise.

[WWJDnow]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

What the left doesn't understand is passive income. They're stuck in their slave mentality where you "work" for food. This is typical unintelligent Marxist propaganda that keeps them forever running around the hamster wheel. The enlightened man steps out of this karmic circle with diversified portfolios and generational wealth. Worker ants scurry around tending our needs and in return we push them to become better versions of themselves - more efficient, less tiresome. Cheaper. Eventually they will do it just for a word of praise.

Amen, Brother Dr. Toole! But I wish the Democrat party believed in working for food. They seem focused on taking money out of the hands of wealthy, white job creators and putting into the hands of lazy minorities.

[Dr. Anthony J. Toole]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

Amen, Brother Dr. Toole! But I wish the Democrat party believed in working for food. They seem focused on taking money out of the hands of wealthy, white job creators and putting into the hands of lazy minorities.

They argued against slavery but it made the trains run on time, but we didn't need trains because we had slaves carrying our stuff for free. Then Abraham Lincoln destroyed the economy by abolishing our heritage. Not a single slave allowed! It hurt small businesses and heritage, economy and... crime. We haven't recovered.

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

"The left" did not start with Rousseau or the French Revolution. "The left" is the same social phenomenon that gave us the medieval Catholic clergy. "The left" is an unreconstructed continuation of inquisitors discussing page 1000 of some tome of irrelevant dogma, finding a slight difference of interpretation, and them burning someone at the stake to save their soul.

This interested me. It suggests a 3rd axis which I've shown in pink (and highlighted the original two axes in green) and I imagined the categories changing with time. In the present day they're as described, assuming the model is correct, whereas yesteryear there were burnings at the stake, savage trepanning of the head, temple prostitutes of both sexes, chopping off of hands and other body parts, ridiculous theories such as communism and page 1000 of the tome you mentioned. Who knows what categories will fill out the chart tomorrow? I hope the following diagram puts the idea across.

?

The problem is that no model is complete. Page 1000 could very well be discussing how complex a thing needs to be before no model can be made that's less complex than the thing itself. When social engineers try reconstruction of the society that produced them, they overlook the fact that they themselves need to be included in the model. Marx and Engels, for example but probably less so Engels than Marx, did not accommodate the fact that they were essentially hothouse flowers and that Marx himself was the biggest nincompoop dilettante the world has yet produced.

And in that respect, Marxist dogma is very much like medieval Catholic clergy. Especially in the burning-at-the-stake department, except it was more shooting-in-the-head and general chopping. Same outcome, same reason, some animals are just that much more equal. I've shown three extra slices along the time axis. Let's say communism was invented on the middle of the three. If you were positioned on the earlier page, looking back at the guy in the yellow flames and how much progress was being made (textiles, mechanical tractors, rail travel) would you have foreseen commie mass murder of its own citizens?

But it was right there on the next page. What is there on future pages now that we could never anticipate? Some people think they know, they have their model and as soon as they kill off the heretics they will achieve paradise. And if you were medieval Catholic clergy, paradise for you was pretty much a reality. [and if you were a medieval architect (-ed.)]

[Johny Joe Hold]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

Robert Mohler, President of one of the Southern Baptist Seminaries, simplified all this. He told the Christian Leadership Conference Christians have to vote for Republicans. Anyone who votes for a Democrat cannot call himself a Christian.

Of course, all the liberals who claim to be Christians are complaining. They need to be shown the door.

Al Mohler suggests Christians who 'vote wrongly' are 'unfaithful' | Politics News (christianpost.com)

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: The 4 types of Democrat. Which one are you?

There are even places where Churchgoers say, “[quietly confident] Of course, I'm a socialist.” And I suppose any system of government could work if everyone agreed that was how they wanted to do things. Whether it then remained the system it claimed to be is a moot point when it broke down, everyone would get out and push (because they all agreed they wanted it to keep running) unless it was a boat I suppose.