[Tango-L] Style Wars: Truth and Truthiness

[jjg]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:22:52 -0800, Konstantin Zahariev wrote

Since I've got some time to kill...
> 
> --- begin ---
> 
> Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian
> leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers 
> submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them 
> too much leeway to do whatever they want [...]
> 
> Right-Wing and Left-Wing Authoritarian Followers
> 
> I call these 
> followers rightwing authoritarians. I'm using the word "right" in 
> one of its earliest meanings, for in Old English "riht"(pronounced 
> "writ") as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct, doing what 
> the authorities said. [...]
> 
> So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn't necessarily have
> conservative political views. Instead he's someone who readily 
> submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in 
> their name, and is highly conventional. It's an aspect of his 
> personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing 
> authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being 
> characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.
> 

This usage is in direct opposition to the much more usual usage of the terms
left and right to denote political bent. Using it in this way as well as
labeling it a "personality trait" looks for the world like you are rigging the
terms to make a moralistic pronouncement. Mutatis mutandi anyone not very
keenly aware of your definitions will understand that being conservative
(which everyone is about something) is a pathology. 

Generally nobody is across the board left or right, but some mixture; run down
a list of abortion, capital punishment, affirmative action, guns, pornography,
women's rights, gay marriage and the like and chances are excellent you don't
fall squarely anywhere.  This is why political parties in the US, at least,
have been getting shriller since they perceive that they are losing their grip
on their traditional constituents but have yet not assimilated why. I (and I'm
not alone) would point out that traditional political categories are pretty
much meaningless anymore, serving merely to label those we disagree with
before we dismiss them.

<snip/>

> I'm sure one can 
> find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist 
> in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America. 

Not really -- there are tons of the them and they generally work at
universities in the US. Most of them have tenure too. Democracies tend to
absorb their opponents rather than be brittle and have revolutions and while a
lot of the leftists in the 60's were moaning about "co-opting" (viz.,
co-operating with the Establishment) they completely missed the fact that they
were getting most of their wishes granted. This leads to rather bizarre
things, such as the Marxist academic literary critic who owns a budding real
estate business renting apartments to students. 

As for being a threat to Democracy actually a lot of recent trends at the
University are pretty inimical to democratic institutions. Look at
post-modernism and its various offshoots*. These have engendered a sort of
parallel universe where lit-crit types have their version of history,
economics and the like that are touted as simply being alternative
"narratives" to mainstream fields. Heck even the Sciences  have not been
spared this sort of revisionism. Witness folks like Bruno Latour (heavyweight
philosopher) proclaiming that all Science is simply an alternate belief system
and results (e.g. Gravity) are simply agreed upon by Scientists who may change
them for purely sociological reasons. He even went so far at one point to
wonder publicly how Ramses II could have died in 1200 BC of tuberculosis which
wasn't discovered until 1882. (?!!)

If you are interested, check out the book "Higher Superstition" (Gross &
Levitt) which chronicles a lot of this. A great book which is by turns funny
and alarming while being very engagingly written.

So getting back to truth and truthiness... There has been a great rise in
truthiness and a lot of it can be squarely blamed on instruction people have
been receiving in the Humanities. In such cases students have been so hobbled
by their instruction that they are simply not able to frame a coherent
argument nor evaluate one. The most important thing one could get from an
education, as one old Oxford Don said, was to "know when people are talking
rot." On that account, most universities in the US have failed spectacularly.

Yeah, I guess I'm pretty grumpy that a good, solid educational grounding has
gone the way of the dodo. 

Cheers,

Jeff G

* I'll spare you a run down in the main text, but most of these schools of
thought came into existence as extensions of Heidegger's philosophies (via
Derrida, Focault, Lacan) who was a bona fide Nazi (almost managed to be named
Hitler's Philosopher during the late 30's). These were strongly critical of
systems like Marxism and when many radicals found Marxism wanting, opted for
these instead. Having studied totalitarian systems and their thinking (great
place to start is Hannah Arendt's book on the subject) it is very spooky
listening indeed. Most of them reach the conclusion of the Nazis that the West
is the source of all evil in the world and on the verge of collapse. Most of
the knee-jerk anti-Western pronouncements you hear come from this camp. The
Nazis used this as an argument against Democracy which is an easy inference in
these systems, but one that most academic users of these philosophies tend to
shy away from. However, if your philosophical system undermines every tenet of
Democracy at every turn, what do you have left?