Jordan Peterson with Russell Brand & Ian McGilchrist

[Heaven Swan]

I can't help think that if there are JBP supporters reading this thread, the chances of them posting are pretty slim. Is that the desired outcome and if so, why? A debate that banishes one side of the argument isn't much of a debate.

JBP is a fascist demagogue who will burn in Hell and his followers are all lemmings headed for destruction - not exactly conducive to a multi-leveled discussion of the guy, is it?

It's an indication of perspectives that are formed inside an ideological echo chamber, ironically the very kind of soft totalitarianism that JBP is railing against and that has led to there being such a massive upswelling of support for the guy. Do so many people at RI still associate irrational and violent intolerance and oppression exclusively (or even primarily) with the Right and not the Left? It just seems to be missing the mark by such a wide margin to pigeon-hole JBP and his followers this way. Even if it weren't wrong (it is, none of the JBP followers I know are even remotely right-wing or fascist-leaning), it's methodologically unsound to boot.

Supposing the guy were as bad as some people believe and his followers as deluded and as dangerous as they are making out. Isn't that all the more reason to attempt to understand what's occurring, to try and see things from their point of view and figure out what the appeal is, and then develop some more finely tuned and point-specific arguments to persuade them with? As opposed to deride, dismiss, and condemn them? As if that's an effective way to reduce the power and appeal of a dangerous mass movement, when, chances are, it has the very opposite effect.

Ever hear the phrase Know Thine Enemy? I recommend developing and applying the cognitive, discursive, and didactic equivalents of martial arts.

I didn’t call JBP a fascist as a lazy and generic insult. Fanatical anti-communism and insistence that women be confined to the roles of wife and mother (and whore on the side) are pillars of the fascist program and world view.

It’s not an ideological echo chamber. It’s called history.

My postings here are proof that I’m fed up with the left and recognize their failings. I’m seeking to understand the history and the current situation in order to find a way forward outside the left/right system that has clearly become dysfunctional. My observation was simply that JPB’s lazy embrace of fascist principles is destructive.

I agree that good can come of breaking down his discourse and understanding his appeal. But I'll leave that to you as you seem to have the required interest level. I on the other hand seem to have a visceral aversion to him, not to mention being bogged down with other activities and studies. So carry on.


“The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists.” Benito Mussolini

[Belligerent Savant]

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Happened across the following piece yesterday (the latest from JMG), which echoes some of guru's sentiment; it can be its own OP, but will share an excerpt here as it appears to be apt at the moment:

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-taste-of- ... -thoughts/

The Taste Of Another's Thoughts

(snip)

...the habit of reading through a thick screen of moral judgment. The political correctness of the left and the patriotic correctness of the right both mandate this habit, which is one of the ways you can tell that both movements are hostile to freedom of thought (as well as clones of each other, but that’s a topic for another time.) The reader who approaches a book this way sits in judgment over it, looking for something that can be twisted around into a confession of guilt; once this is forthcoming, the prisoner is dragged from the courtroom by a howling mob and ceremoniously burned at the stake. This is a great way to wallow in your own sense of moral superiority, and also a great way to avoid ever changing your mind, but it gets in the way of the spooky miracle of silent reading, the communion between your thoughts and someone else’s—and that’s exactly what it’s meant to do.

Is there a place for moral judgment in reading? Of course, but it comes afterwards, as you reflect on what you’ve read—and it may come after you’ve read the book two or three times to be sure you understand the unfamiliar sequence of thoughts you’ve encountered. The difficulty here is that your moral judgment may not be the one that your peers, or the authority figures you’re supposed to follow, want you to make.

As you compare the thoughts of the writer to your own habitual thoughts, you may decide that the writer’s ideas make more sense than yours did; you may discover that there’s some broader way to look at the world, in which there’s room for your thoughts and the writer’s thoughts to coexist; you may even find yourself veering off in pursuit of some half-glimpsed insight that contradicts both the book you’re reading and the ideas you’ve been taught, and following it may take you into intellectual territory no one’s ever explored before. None of these outcomes are acceptable either to the politically correct or to the patriotically correct, which is why both these dogmatic movements try so hard to slap moral blinders in place so that no one anywhere will take the liberty of thinking an unapproved thought.

We need unapproved thoughts just now. The approved thoughts, the right answers, the canned responses and parroted arguments are the things that have landed us in our present predicament. The insistence that there is no alternative, that the only acceptable choice is to keep on doing the same things and hope we get different results, isn’t going to lead us anywhere...

The taste of another’s thoughts, the stretching of mental perspectives that results from silent and solitary reading, is one of the tools we can use to move in a different direction.

[liminalOyster]

From a recent counterpunch piece, this Epcot styled boilerplate vision of fascism reminded me of this thread:

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that the Trump/Pence administration is no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of the Trump/Pence Administration while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging the Trump/Pence administration’s danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of the current Trump/Pence Administration.

Does this paragraph not read like it was authored by AI programmed to string together a bevy of revolutionary truisms input by 9th graders? As if each time it said "the Trump/Pence administration" it would sound slightly off, it's target obviously the result of a filled-in-blank?

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time thatJordan Peterson is no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of Jordan Peterson while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging the Jordan Peterson’s danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of Jordan Peterson.

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that Foucault studies are no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of Foucault studies while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging Foucault studies danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of Foucault studies.

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that TERFs are no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of TERFs while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging TERFs danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of TERFs.

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that The Establishment is no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of The Establishment while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging The Establishment danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of The Establishment .

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that Apu is no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of Apu while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging Apu danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of Apu.

Refuse Fascism’s goals are clear – Working with one voice but through many people and ideas, and through constant non-violent protest they work to wake up masses of people to take political action and to create change until such time that Hillary Clinton is no more. It is to stimulate those who do not see the true danger of Hilary Clinton while also sharing alternative narratives to liberate people from their comfort zone, tacit agreement, a lack of information or slumber. It is to enhance freedom while acknowledging Hillary Clintons danger not only to American civil rights and civil liberties, but to the rights of all people worldwide. A nation and planet endangered and destabilized by the actions of HIllary Clinton.

[guruilla]

You are onto something there LO. It's the rhetoric that reveals the agenda, not the specified target. Put in another way, what people (or bots) argue is less revealing that the way they are arguing it.

It’s not an ideological echo chamber. It’s called history.

Or is it an ideologically echoed version of history that pertains to your particular chamber? Again, the assumption is that there is only one true interpretation of history and that everyone who is intelligent, sane, and virtuous knows it, ergo anyone who doesn't agree with us is stupid, insane, and immoral.

This only works at all when there's some sort of consensus - but what if there are two consensuses? Then what? Does it come down to numbers? Liminal Oyster's instructive jest with the (possible) AI social justice program can also be extended to assembling facts to "prove" one version of history over another. Statistics are almost limitless.

I agree that good can come of breaking down his discourse and understanding his appeal. But I'll leave that to you as you seem to have the required interest level. I on the other hand seem to have a visceral aversion to him

There's nothing wrong with a visceral aversion or even in trusting it; but when it gets extrapolated out into claims about what history tells us or what's true or false, outside of the individual causing the visceral reaction, then it's a problem. For example, you say you're not interested enough in JBP to break down his discourse, yet your interest level is sufficient for you to have decided the fate of his eternal soul.

There's something off-balance in that - not to say Inquisitorial. I'm only pointing it out because it's a decent enough example of my earlier point, that "fascistic" tendencies are sourced far more in our emotional reactions to The Other, and our subsequent treatment of them, than in any political, social, or ideological positions we may assume. That latter stuff is pretty surface,IMO.

JBP's claim, and I think a major factor in his appeal, is that he is going beneath the surface of ideological convictions, into the psychological and mythical patterns that inform them (and society). And, as an example of something "objectively good" (worthwhile) that JBP has said, "People's beliefs aren't measured by what people say, but how they act."

This is demonstrably true, I think, and well worth thinking about.

Good JMG quote, BS.

[guruilla]

This power structure, which he allows lends itself to corruption and tyranny, is something that it seems to me Peterson sees as his purpose in life to preserve.

Along with his Darwinification (and hence inversion) of the Judeo-Christian ethos, this is the nub of my contention with JBP and it's a helluva nub. It's an outstanding example of his M.O. of correctly identifying problems in order to introduce illegitimate or erroneous solutions. The postmodernist/Leftist version of Patriarchal Power Abuse in the western social structures (at least as it eventually got popularized and crystallized as political correctness, ID politics, etc.) was so distorted, over-simplified, and over-compensatory (while at the same time missing or obscuring the deeper roots, such as organized child sexual abuse) that it eventually metastasized into a solution as problematic as the thing it was meant to address (same tyranny, new rationales).

Ergo, for JBP, there is nothing inherently wrong with Western hierarchies and we need to go back to trusting in institutions and the traditional value set that the evil postmodernist Leftists tried to undermine. Central to that is his own heartfelt belief that the western world is established on a competence hierarchical basis (meritocracy), ergo his own success within it is legitimate, i.e., consistent with his proselytizing about living a virtuous & responsible life and succeeding.

The good of JBP = he is holding the West accountable for its excesses and errors in ways that, once articulated, seem fairly self-evident to many people. The bad is that, IMO, he is letting himself off the hook by ignoring the many other ways in which the western capitalist system is accountable, ways the Left have tried and failed to address and from which he himself is now benefiting. He is the taskmaster calling people to responsible action, while not taking full responsibility himself. That means he is (likely) leading people into forms of belief and action that can only hit a wall - or a cliff edge - if pursued passionately enough.

All that said, if I had to choose between sharing an 8 X 6 jail cell with JBP or Brand, I'd go with Peterson.

[JackRiddler]

I can't help think that if there are JBP supporters reading this thread, the chances of them posting are pretty slim. Is that the desired outcome and if so, why? A debate that banishes one side of the argument isn't much of a debate.

First, the premise is false. Odds are they'd want to mouth off, and have so elsewhere on this board. You're doing something like half-and-half yourself.

But allowing your premise for the sake of argument, this reluctance would be the predictable outcome of reading all these people who have posted here, correctly assessing the real-existing JP for the simple twaddle he consistently says, the self-help scams he engages in, the pernicious impact he is having (thanks to the media who have adopted him laughably as a major intellectual), and the dick that he at least lets on he is. Tough shit. Like any other juvenile ideological-emotional fog, "JBP supporter" can be cured. It is not an essential or inalienable personal quality. There is no rule that one must cater it to here. It's not a demographic I care for in particular, so if they don't post, that's okay. We also don't have too many Ayn Rand fans, and compared to Peterson she's-- (well I was going to joke "a genius," but anyway) slightly less lightweight as a thinker. (Hm, scratch that, I think we've found the perfect analogue for disproportionate attention given to simplistic reactionary ideas presented as though radically new and courageous.)

Regarding the board, instead of worrying what JP supporters think (or Alt-Rights, or incels, or the kind of light-fasch types who think "SJW" is a legitimate thing), I'd be interested in attracting more women and more people from backgrounds differing from the norm here, and more people who are smart and take the "rigor" part seriously.

[Bryter]

And does anyone think the Times is misquoting him on this?

"He was angry at God because women were rejecting him," Peterson told the Times' Nellie Bowles. Minassian was a self-proclaimed "involuntary celibate," or "incel," and Peterson added that "the cure" for male-perpetrated violence "is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges."

Though I'm sure he prefers that it's enforced not by the state but by a church and villagers with pitchforks and stones. Then it's not wild youth individual violence but (male-led) group perpetrated violence. For a cause.

He wrote this by way of an explanation.
https://jordanbpeterson.com/uncategoriz ... -monogamy/

[JackRiddler]

At his explanation:

“Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy, as opposed to genetic monogamy – evolutionarily-dictated monogamy, which does exist in some species (but does not exist in humans). This distinction has been present in anthropological and scientific literature for decades.”

So okay, like I said: enforcement not by laws and states, but churches and pitchforks.

He may be right about what "biologically-oriented psychology" thinks, but anthropology over recent decades has been far more diverse in views.

.

[guruilla]

I can't help think that if there are JBP supporters reading this thread, the chances of them posting are pretty slim. Is that the desired outcome and if so, why? A debate that banishes one side of the argument isn't much of a debate.

First, the premise is false. Odds are they'd want to mouth off, and have so elsewhere on this board. You're doing something like half-and-half yourself.

But allowing your premise for the sake of argument, this reluctance would be the predictable outcome of reading all these people who have posted here, correctly assessing the real-existing JP for the simple twaddle he consistently says, the self-help scams he engages in, the pernicious impact he is having (thanks to the media who have adopted him laughably as a major intellectual), and the dick that he at least lets on he is. Tough shit. Like any other juvenile ideological-emotional fog, "JBP supporter" can be cured. It is not an essential or inalienable personal quality. There is no rule that one must cater it to here. It's not a demographic I care for in particular, so if they don't post, that's okay. We also don't have too many Ayn Rand fans, and compared to Peterson she's-- (well I was going to joke "a genius," but anyway) slightly less lightweight as a thinker. (Hm, scratch that, I think we've found the perfect analogue for disproportionate attention given to simplistic reactionary ideas presented as though radically new and courageous.)

Regarding the board, instead of worrying what JP supporters think (or Alt-Rights, or incels, or the kind of light-fasch types who think "SJW" is a legitimate thing), I'd be interested in attracting more women and more people from backgrounds differing from the norm here, and more people who are smart and take the "rigor" part seriously.

I rest my case.

At this point, the majority of the JBP supporters (i.e, those who like him and consider him of merit) I know of (mostly but not entirely via my sister) are liberal-minded, either professional or amateur parapsychologist or natural healers, and above average intelligence women.

You've been living in a dream world, Jack.

[JackRiddler]

"Liberal" doesn't mean much as a signifier nowadays but I have no reason to doubt your anecdotal collection of opinions from people you talk with about JBP. Most of the people I know never heard of him, and many or most of this large population might like some or much of what he says, since at base it's so conventionally conservative and based on nostalgia for shit that never was. Most of the people I've happened to talk with about him or exchanged with online (a small number) are women and don't like him. I guess you and I know different women. You should consider whether your sampling constitutes evidence of the groundswell you seem to imagine, this thing that we all must deal with. Corporate media and dedicated fan amplification on social media peppering the world with tales of his importance can make it seem that way, sure. Perhaps the right way to approach this is to see how he chooses to represent himself, and not worry so much about what people think. I see no reason to change my mind, or to think about him for much longer in the first place.

[guruilla]

Two recent articles, commentary withheld:

Salon: Jordan Peterson’s moment of fame — and the dangers of patriarchal pseudoscience

It’s important to note that “Intellectual Dark Webs” have existed as long as there’s been a society interlinked with science. There has always been an adversarial relationship between the unbiased accrual of knowledge for the sake of discovery and progress and the search for tainted “facts” meant to prove twisted hypotheses. Such intellectual expeditions have been carried out for any number of purposes, often in a quest for knowledge and often to prove ignorant racist worldviews, as was the case with craniometry or the bastardized popular versions of Charles Darwin’s theories.

The tradition of bad science, championed by scholars who either willingly or unwittingly set precedents for intellectualized racism, has been carried on by white supremacists who rebranded their hatred as “race realism.” Luminaries like Jared Taylor have actively continued the pseudo-academic farce by founding publications like American Renaissance and Occidental Quarterly, overtly designed to resemble and read like academic journals. Richard Spencer, who gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election as the (joint) inventor of the term “alt-right,” even founded his own white supremacist think tank, the National Policy Institute, which sounds and conducts itself like so many other political houses and lends his racism an air of borrowed intellectualism.
...
The success of the "alt-right" is predicated on this illusion. Just as people flocked to the ethos of New Age healing and conspiracy – William Cooper, author of "Behold, A Pale Horse," founded one of the precursors to the Intellectual Dark Web when he toured the country in the 1990s lecturing on aliens, the Illuminati and New World Order plots, topics he also talked about extensively on his alternative radio show, a forerunner to today's podcasts – the "alt-right’"s emphasis on “knowledge-based” racism provides its followers with a work-around for the cognitive dissonance that might have demanded they question the inherent ignorance at the movement's heart.
....
Those who buy into these mindsets are overwhelmingly insecure white men who feel they are failing for some reason and are in desperate need of professional help in turning their lives around. Instead of seeking out assistance, they spend their time and money on products designed to “scientifically” get them laid and change their lives.

This is where Jordan Peterson comes in. . .

This perspective amounts to a new brand of secular Christianity that appeals to men who question literal interpretation but still thirst for the benefits of orthodoxy. Peterson appeals to that thirst by parsing archetypes and suggesting that they hold knowledge of how the world should work, or that the world we know is in chaos because it has deviated from the world of ancient mythologies and, thus, its natural path.

In this philosophy, which Peterson likens to the symbol of the yin and yang, men represent the order of society and women the chaos of nature. The “hero” archetype we’ve all come to know is decidedly masculine, and he brings knowledge by braving the feminine chaos and returning it to order. If that sounds misogynistic, that’s only because it is. The traditions Peterson appeals to are decidedly patriarchal – it bears stating that women, in these texts, are often the downfall of men and are responsible for great falls of individuals and societies – a fact never addressed in his “studies.” What he is doing, essentially, is examining the construction of the patriarchy and justifying its existence by pointing out that it was built in the first place.

Frustrated men are being assured, by a credentialed academic no less, that their failures are not their own faults. It’s the chaos of a society unmoored from tradition or common sense. It’s “crazy, harpy sisters” and their “terrible femininity.” It’s Peterson lamenting that men can use violence to deal with men who don’t make sense, but, since we're not allowed to hit women, it’s up to “non-crazy” women to deal with their sisters by stepping in and saying “enough with the man-hating.”

Like any myth, this narrative is populated with heroes and villains. Certainly Peterson fancies himself a hero out of the antiquities. After all, he’s bringing the light of fire and wisdom to civilization like Prometheus, and his daily sufferings are much akin to Zeus’ curse of eternal consumption. The antagonists, as Peterson describes them, are “counter-civilization activists” engaged in a plot to overthrow the natural order of things.

Quillette: Jordan Peterson and the Failure of the Left

Although my newfound interest in Peterson might seem to put me in good company—he’s selling out 5,000-plus seat lecture halls regularly and 12 Rules for Life is now a #1 bestseller—this isn’t the case at all. On the contrary, it puts me into a pretty isolated, alienated, and uncomfortable position. The reason for this is simple: I’ve always identified strongly with the left-leaning side of the political and cultural spectrum. And, as anyone who’s been following Peterson’s bizarrely rapid rise to fame knows, his growing popularity has been strongly countered by progressive commentators, who keep sounding the alarm against him at increasingly higher volumes.

If you follow the news stream, it seems that virtually every right-thinking left-leaning (pun intended) journalist, blogger, and social media maven agrees: Peterson is an alt-right wolf in professorial sheep’s clothing, a self-serving charlatan who dresses up old-school misogyny, racism, and elitism in faux-intellectual, fascist mystical garb.
...
First, it’s unconvincing to everyone who’s not some sort of true believer or faithful follower (or, more cynically, a journalist looking to please an editor demanding yet another Peterson hit piece). No doubt, I’m not the only person who’s wondered what all the fuss is about, decided to take the time to listen to one of Peterson’s YouTube lectures, and come away feeling that the Left’s commentariat is trying to sell me a fake bill of goods. The gap between Peterson’s obvious intelligence and the Left’s scathing denunciation of him as an alt-right idiot is simply too large for many of us to ignore.

Second, the Left’s attack on Peterson is so unrelenting, so superficial, and quite frequently so vicious, that many of us who work and/or live in left-leaning social environments feel scared to speak up against it. We don’t want to alienate our friends, damage our professional reputations, or attract the attention of fire-breathing activists.
...
Given my life-long identification with the social democratic (or, in U.S. terms, left-liberal) side of the political spectrum, I’ve reflected quite a bit on why my response to Peterson seems so out of step with dominant left-of-center discourse. It may be that I’m actually not as alone as it seems. Although I can’t prove it, I suspect that there are many others who feel as I do but are keeping quiet, as they don’t want to risk the blowback that comes with countering the often frightening force of today’s ideological tides.

...
Specifically, I see him as part of a tradition of conservative political thought that’s deeply committed to trying to understand the fundamentals of what was classically called ‘the human condition.’ This is not the sort of conservativism that most Americans and Canadians think of when they hear the term ‘conservative.’ For example, it has no necessary connection to the sort of uncritical championing of corporate capitalism favored by conservatives today. Rather, it is concerned with issues such as the fragility of cultural norms that help provide individuals with a sense of purpose, and enable societies to remain relatively peaceful and functional.
...
I realize that Peterson has at times said things that I disagree with and might even find offensive. But I’m much more concerned with—and disgusted by—the endless stream of tendentious and dishonest articles from leftists critics that grab onto such statements and blow them out of proportion, while aggressively erasing everything else the man has ever said or done from the record. . . . Rather than meeting someone like Peterson with intelligent questions and challenging discussions, the Left prefers to hurl insults and champion trendy hashtags.

As far as I can tell, Peterson is willing to dialog with the Left. But the Left, on the whole, is not interested in anything but blanket denunciations.

[JackRiddler]

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The second item is a formula attack piece on an undefined entity projected as "the Left" for its attributed insensitivity to regular open-minded folk like the author. Not only is this capitalized Left not specified (despite the author's admission she is using a broad category) but not a single example of this Left's supposedly orthodox and unfair simplification and rejection of Peterson's works is mentioned, cited, quoted, linked, summarized or even hinted at. Most of it could be presented almost unchanged, making the same complaints about "the Left" and its treatment of ___ (fill in the courageous reactionary truth-teller winning the day's free media coverage as "controversialist"). We've seen thousands of these, it is a ritual that signals and endorses one's belonging to polite society and not to the "extremes" of the centrist horseshoe theory. It's a long tradition to attack "the Left" as out of touch with regular folk, again without defining "the Left," and assuming there is one big thing that covers all possible variations of it. Very usually this comes with a confessional tone of gee golly, this is hard for me to say and I feel so uncomfortable speaking my truth in the face of this relentless omnipresent unnamed orthodoxy, but as friend to "the Left" someone has to finally do it, etc. etc. As a formula, it is akin to the Standard Conspiracy Panic disavowal among journalists. Except the latter usually has a couple of (highly selective) examples to offer. This is methodologically an embarrassing zero for someone who adds her academic credentials at the end. It's really not that hard to shadowbox with the wall of your own room, is it now? It doesn't surprise me her Ph.D. is in Political Science, where one can (sometimes) get away with prejudicial abstract labeling of undefined entities presented as putative dichotomies, and avoid empirical study.

Now as part of this game (or conditioned response), guru, I'll suppose you'll sigh and pretend my response to this reading was all dreadfully unfair, close-minded and mean, and unworthy of consideration, and no wonder "the Left" isn't "winning" the hearts and minds of ______ (regular people, the Common Man, traditional ethnics, workers, women, Carol Horton, etc.)

Why oh why can't lamb and lion get along?!

.

[guruilla]

You do have an uncanny ability to prove my points for me, yeah.

[JackRiddler]

This is what's called "gaslighting," but I don't mind because it's the lowest form of such lazy thinking, capped with a dumb emoji; and more importantly, because there are other readers here. Also, it's infinitely applicable, like the hilarious bad boilerplate exercise posted above by BS.

"You do have a [thoroughly pedestrian] ability to prove [you are not being an honest actor in this discussion], yeah. "

And since you don't touch it, we can all assume you share that author's inability to even make clear what you are talking about when you mis-use abstract terms like her "Left." Obvious lightweight when challenged intellectually. Dare I say, snowflake?

Meanwhile, here's some truth that went missed upstairs:

Fanatical anti-communism and insistence that women be confined to the roles of wife and mother (and whore on the side) are pillars of the fascist program and world view.

Peterson's not a fascist, that would be a lot of work. Party building, marching up and down the square, running in elections, putting on boots, kicking people, all that. Right now, he's an entrepreneur in the self-help branch who's got a thing going, and who presumably doesn't see or care just how much his juvenile nonsense as the public intellectual (as crowned by the "liberal" media) is enabling the alt-right cultural effort. (Sorry if I haven't read enough of his wonderful academic work to get a more nuanced view, but one's presentations as a public speaker damn well count.)

.

[Jerky]

All that AND he's ,managed to sneak his long-ago established beyond a shadow of a doubt Eyes Wide Shut Romper Room obsession into the mix, too!

Ah, it's nice to have you back, Guru!

J.