We’re publishing today a piece by Dr. John Marenbon, who is a Fellow of the British Academy, Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy. It is a critique of the ‘New Normal’ that Dr. Marenbon argues has emerged in the past two years as “a set of views about discrimination, prejudice, culture and guilt” under which “white, heterosexual men began to be obliged to feel guilty for being themselves”. These views moved from “being the preserve of some in the media, politics and the universities to becoming, at least nominally, the accepted way of thought in public life in Britain and the West more generally”.
He distinguishes two intertwined strands of the ‘New Normal’: the social and the historical/cultural, both of which he says are pernicious and based on falsehoods. Here’s an excerpt:
The cultural strand was thrown into prominence in June 2020 when Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol removed from its plinth a 19th-century statue of the local philanthropist, Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the slave trade at the end of the 17th century. They then defaced it, rolled it through town and threw it into the sea. Although some politicians and commentators condemned the criminal violence of this action (others condoned it), there was hardly a voice among them in favour of retaining the statue, despite its status as a memorial to the historical culture (17th and 19th century) of Bristol. Indeed, in the wake of the Colston episode, statues countrywide became objects of suspicion, as the authorities quietly removed to the obscurity of museum storerooms those whose subjects did not meet today’s norms of behaviour. Slave-trading has come to be regarded as a communicable disease, infectious not just for hours and days but for centuries, if even the slightest traces of it remain on artefacts from the past. Thus the silver on Cambridge college High Tables has been summoned before commissions of enquiry, and items donated by students with families involved in the slave trade judged unfit for use. Even Scotland’s second greatest philosopher, David Hume, has not escaped: Edinburgh University’s ‘David Hume Tower’ has now been more prosaically renamed ‘40 George Square’ following the philosopher’s defenestration, on the grounds that he used racist language, by the appropriate cadres (the university’s Equality and Diversity Committee and its Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee).
Just as the social strand threw into prominence an organisation, Black Lives Matter, which antedated the events following George Floyd’s murder, so the cultural strand has given wide currency to a slogan, already popular among radical groups: ‘Decolonise the curriculum!’ Previously uttered as a complaint by student activists, this injunction has now set the wheels of university (and school) authorities in motion, and although they may be unsure about what it means, few in the arts and humanities question that it is a valuable aim, to be pursued without delay or reflection.
But is the New Normal really new? The discussion about discrimination, both sexual and racial, was already widespread in the 1970s, and since then thousands of pages have been written by legal theorists especially, but also by philosophers, on affirmative action. The beginnings of its cultural strand can also be seen half a century ago in the opposition to the Western Civilisation courses, which had been widespread in U.S. universities, and more widely in calls for curriculum reform over the last two decades.
As a collection of arguments, the content of the New Normal is indeed far from novel. What is new is that the views are no longer presented as arguments, to be accepted because they are rationally convincing or countered with other arguments and new evidence. They have become an orthodoxy, and are on their way to becoming an unchallengeable one.
Public dissent from this New Normal is rare. A few brave politicians have refused to take a knee. Others, and no doubt a majority of the public, including many of those who have publicly professed faith in the new gospel, are waiting quietly for it all to pass. The danger is that they are waiting in vain. A new dogma, which is accepted for political reasons and to avoid contention, though mouthed at first without conviction, rapidly acquires the familiarity of habit and in the end is accepted as unquestionable truth.
Worth reading in full.
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“Bread and circuses”. Worked in Roman times. Still worth trying today.
Let them eat Cake!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbq3kc29Tmg
Cake is a ‘made-up’ drug.
From the glorious days when the BBC countenanced such as Chris Morris being on air. His shows were side-splitting…
I can’t see a solution to the problems they have in the US with regard to the large population descended from slaves. I don’t know if they could have taken different steps and got a positive outcome, but I think it’s too late now. The genie is out of the bottle, and trillions upon trillions will be further frittered away until there is nothing left and the country turns into a miserable shadow of its former self.
Welfare destroyed them. Thomas Sowell very good on this. And on everything, truth be known
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIwkZYdSelE
Sowell is a marvel
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thomas+sowell+black+welfare
Insulting to men, especialy black men.
No stereotyping there then!
I don’t think it’s sexism at all, they can just see the flaky, inept, vacuous, useless sock-puppet for what she is. I’ve seen loads of famous people endorsing her, male and female, including Jon Bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder and some guy from Breaking Bad. The current and previous political adverts are cringey as hell, and who can forget the ‘White Dudes For Harris’ group and this seriously bizarre Demtard anti-Trump effort;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O14Z9f07iU
You can find the link to the current lametastic ad in the below article. It smacks of desperation and looks fake AF, see what you think;
”Democrats are rightfully panicked that even with the millions of illegals they are registering to vote, they won’t be able to cheat their way to victory in November. Most concerning of all to them is (Vice?) President Kamala Harris’ inability to draw male voters, so her campaign has desperately begun trying to win over a voting bloc the Left neither respects nor understands. This has resulted in cringe-inducing levels of pandering, including a new pro-Kamala political ad targeting men that is being widely acknowledged as “the cringiest political ad ever.”
Democrats adamantly insist that men are reluctant to vote for Kamala because they are locked into a longstanding, patriarchal, sexist mindset. This is the same excuse Hillary Clinton fell back on in her 2016 loss to Trump. “Yes, I do think [misogyny] played a role,” she told reporters after the election, adding that it is “very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically.”
[Fact check: false. Misogyny is not “very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically.” Hillary couldn’t become President not because she’s a woman but because she’s an unlikeable, power-mad radical and kleptocrat who reeks of contempt for America and its citizens.]
Sexism is not the reason Kamala can’t attract male voters. Even Republican men, whom the Left sneer at as misogynist troglodytes, would have no problem voting for the right woman for POTUS, but men won’t vote for Kamala quite simply because she is epically incompetent and unpresidential, among other weaknesses. Politics aside, she is just not a leader.
The Left has spent half a century or more emasculating Western civilization because traditional masculinity is the first and last line of defense against a totalitarian state. They have demonized manhood as “toxic” and raged that we are to blame for a “rape culture.” They have actively infiltrated and dismantled boys’ and men’s organizations like the Boys Scouts of America in order to eradicate male spaces. And now they unilaterally declare they have invented a new, more progressive masculinity as embodied by beta males like Emhoff and Walz and Tailgate Guy, and they expect us to vote them into permanent, one-party power with the lightweight diversity hire Kamala Harris at the helm.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-party-that-hates-men-begs-men-to-vote-for-it/
Mogwai, thanks for those links, I’ve been laughing for about 5 minutes straight at that cringiest ad ever and the replies on X. It’s beyond satire.
We have strenuous campaigns and legislation against smoking, we have puritanical mutterings about alcohol and yet TPTB seem to be falling over themselves to legalise marijuana. Can anyone explain why this is? Tobacco, Nicotine and alcohol are the appalling, dismal work of the devil and yet the candidate for the ”leader of the free world” is campaigning with the plan that a “national cannabis industry takes shape”. Can anyone explain what is going on?
Is it just that Kamala Harris sees herself as the opium of the people?
This is exceedingly simple. It’s all a matter of “what we want to consume” vs “what other people [we don’t particularly like] want to consume”. Eg, in my opinion, it’s a safe bet that a lot of the more absurd wokery, especially the obsession over use of language, comes mostly if not completely from people who are rarely, if ever, not stoned.
Weed is already decriminalised in many states, although still against federal law, an odd situation. We already know how this turns out: every public space in my city reeks of reefer all the time. Simultaneously, everyone’s been convinced that a 1 to 10 billion concentration of cigarette smoke in the air will kill you instantly. People are gullible and stupid.
People regularly stoned on cannabis become very lethargic and therefore easy to control.
Paraphrase of something I just read in a book written by someone with an Indian sounding name:
We were all convinced that alcohol was the white man’s secret weapon. Once the English start smoking Ganja like we do, their empire will be done for.
And just HOW is liyin Kamala going to get that past Congress?
Explains a lot about her presentation skills
She seems to have the opinion that black men just want to get stoned and their vote can be bought by the offer of ganja.
Tiny bit waycist …..
State financed drug dealing? Sounds like the perfect solution to the problems faced by the US and the wider world – but only if you have no functioning cerebral neurons! Step forward Kamala!
Now we know why she can’t speak in intelligent and coherent sentences and masks her ignorance with inane laughter!