Of course it is. A little gander at the zombies around you lets you know that anything is possible these days.
1 mai 2018
-David Walsh, wsws.org
Back in the mid sixties, when I was in high school and the Women’s Lib movement was sharing the spotlight with the war in Viet Nam in our late night weekend discussions, I commented that I saw men’s liberation as being just as, if not more, important, in that with men running the place, any kind of peaceful, equitable, just world didn’t seem to be in the offing. That if Women’s Lib meant that women were going to be more like men, they were trying to climb the wrong ladder.
The article linked above brought that youthful evening back to mind. And while that comment may have been naïve and less than nuanced, I still consider the male ethos that has brought us Neo-liberal globalisation, ecocide, and brutal, endless neo-colonial war, just so they can be rich, must be recognised for what it is, and not held up as an example to be emulated. You’ve got to be a pretty sick puppy to write stuff like this:
She concludes, “I want to make the kind of money that allows me to jet to Mexico on a Tuesday, to meaningfully contribute to nasty politicians, to afford a shark of a lawyer if any man ever lays a finger on me again. If anyone calls that obnoxious, I want to do what men do, and shrug.”
Consider some women who have recently acceded to male (or near male) equivalency: Madeleine Albright, Hilary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland, Nicky Haley. Lovely bunch, that. Which is why it is so frustrating trying to talk to so many so-called “liberal” friends who still defend, tooth and nail, a psychopath like Clinton and, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, continue to believe that Russia, or China, or the beleaguered Syrian people under the “tyranny” of an optometrist are somehow threats to the well-being of the 99%, of which, though they may not believe it today, are definitely a part. Because they are still floating just above that no-man’s land, that “no-go zone” of poverty, protected as they are by legacy investments and a flippant ignorance of the world, distracted by a pre-adolescent culture of spectacle and narcissism, this issue-divided cohort, blind to its own superficiality and ultimate uselessness (except, perhaps, to the nefarious plans of our oligarchs), will probably be dumb-struck by the failure of their virtually constructed lives to protect them from their inevitable fall.
We can expect outrage and lots of temper tantrum foot stomping when their personal assistants (real or electronic) disappear. The former because they’ve joined the revolution (or gone back to their former countries, joining the people who stayed and fought the US there), the latter because the Net has been “temporarily” suspended or taken down by the government or by hackers who can no longer put up with the supercilious CEOs of the various (anti-) social media. They’ll find themselves wandering around in an unknown world of books, actual conversations, unable to photoshop themselves into their own meta-reality, having nervous breakdowns because someone might really see them for who they are. They might even have to talk to their neighbours.
Walsh comments:
As we noted at the time, that the Times should carry such an open appeal for women to be single-mindedly greedy and power-hungry and identified that program with contemporary feminism and the #MeToo movement was revealing. It was refreshing in the face of the innumerable attempts by the pseudo-left organizations and various commentators to portray the sexual misconduct campaign as something progressive.
Knoll takes this one step farther, by arguing that the appropriate response to sexual assault is to become rich, powerful and selfish.
The novelist passes on this repugnant view to her readers, but she did not grab it out of the blue. This is the product of decades of intellectual debasement in America, the creation of an anti-culture that bows down before money and fame. In fact, money is viewed as the antidote to every problem, the “truly creative power,” as Karl Marx termed it in 1844, “the general confounding and confusing of all things—the world upside-down—the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.”
The entire article is worth reading. Especially today, May 1st.
Granted, today’s the fifth, but who’s to say that the revolution has to have a precise date? It’s not like we’re going to go shopping for it.
Once. Again. 