SJW Derangement Syndrome

How we lost some of our best thinkers to an obsession with the Far Left

I’ve noticed over the past couple of years the gradual capture of many intelligent, incisive public voices. Folks who used to take a stand for clear-headed rationality, with an underlying humanist commitment to the Enlightenment Project/Classical Liberalism, are now increasingly spending their time and focus relentlessly lamenting the excesses of the Far Left.

(whose blunders never cease!)

This is devolving from a passing shame to a critical tragedy.

Here’s why I suspect it happened, and why it’s so important to correct:

It all started back in 2016.

That’s when the world got a healthy dose of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

(to be fair, the dude is kinda deranged! So noting that obvious fact isn’t in itself a symptom of illness. Just ask all the decorated military generals who served under him).

But from that initial cataclysm of realizing there was A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL, we got the backlash response from the MSM (mainstream media for you non-Fox/Telegram types).

They collectively concluded they were getting their asses kicked by a dude who did not give AF about the rules.

So just as the wide-eyed participants in the Republican debates had realized too late (poor Jeb!), Progressive media and academia realized it’s impossible to win a fair fight against a guy who doesn’t play fair.

So they decided to abandon the rules and norms of Classical Liberalism like due process, innocence until proven guilt, benefit of the doubt, diversity of thought, mutual commitment to the American Experiment, etc.

In other words, the Left decided to play dirty too.

All of its vaunted ideals of inclusion, meritocratic competence, evidence, reason, decency, idealism, etc. went out the window, to be replaced by a noxious brew of victimhood, authoritarianism, and brittle reactivity.

(imagine here a few additional paragraphs I don’t have the heart to write, delineating how the fringe notions of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram Kendi’s AntiRacism landed like a staph infection in this festering wound, becoming fever-dream SJW Burn-it-all-Down Maoism)

Pretty soon, the inmates were running all the Progressive Asylums, from New York legacy media, to Ivy League universities, to D.C. NGOs (to most recently TED itself, as the Coleman Hughes kerfuffle revealed).

Since then, the Left has been cannibalizing itself from within, eating its best and brightest. It doesn’t appear inclined to stop until it totally collapses and rebuilds in some other form.

Which brings us to the Leftward-leaning members of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Because as far back as 2017 and accelerating at a frightening clip, that’s when the SJWs trained their sights on free-thinking “centrist” Progressive public thinkers and journalists.

It was, after all, easier (and far safer) to pick a fight with your big brothers and sisters who you knew wouldn’t play dirty, than to go toe to toe with actual Nazis and Death Eaters.

If the SJWs couldn’t change/save the world from Trump, Climate Change, Davos, the police, structural racism, and Covid, at least they could purge their own organizations into ideological purity.

That resulted in the defenestration of everyone from Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying from Evergreen University, to Bari Weiss from the New York Times, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone, Matt Yglesias from Vox, Jesse Singal from the Atlantic, and countless others.

But they all quickly realized that between a sympathetic listening tour on Tucker Carlson and Bill Maher and a few well-received tweets, they could leave behind steady paychecks and institutional backing for the entrepreneurial greener grasses of Patreon and Substack.

Where they thrived! Getting to write more often and freely about what they actually cared about, and getting more direct contact (and financial support) from an audience that actually wanted to hear what they had to say. No snowflakey college deans, gutless editors or other milquetoast middlemen clogging their feeds…

And this is where we conclude with the setup and get to the point of this essay.

That’s when this “Lefty IDW” got target-locked onto the excesses of the far Left. They stopped seeing the big picture that still desperately needs their insightful analysis.

Their fixation makes sense for three reasons:

First, those spineless fucks who had pushed them out of the places they’d built their professional careers had violated so many of the norms of decency and fair-play that you can understand these rogue intellectuals still having some scores to settle.

Second, it’s good form to critique your own side, more than the opposition.

After all, it’s the folks we share espoused values with that we want to do better.

It’s easy and predictable to oppose the Unite the Right ralliers, or the Jan 6 Proud Boys. You’re not likely to get too far in persuading them of much, though.

But it’s materially important that we figure out on the Progressive side of the fence whether it really is a better idea to defund the police vs. reform them, or whether we’re better off supporting equity of access vs. enforcing equality of outcome (that was the subject of Coleman Hughe’s ill-fated TED talk).

Or if it’s absolutely required for Extinction Rebellion to decolonize Africa before getting caps on carbon??? (true story). Or if psychedelics and raves really will save the world or just spawn a bunch of dithering narcissists…

And third, good ol’ slippery slope Audience Capture.

That’s when you jump into the Culture Wars with both feet, start beefs, hashtag big dogs, retweet and repeat the same kinda shit that made your post last week go viral. Before you know it, your profile and your earnings have all gone through the roof, even as you’re losing focus on the big picture. As one friend in this group once admitted to me, “everytime we step on a landmine, our audience doubles!”

So those three things–

• PTSD wounding from getting shivved by your own team

• an ongoing desire to improve the Progressive movement’s game cuz if they don’t they’re gonna get creamed (again)

• insidious audience capture

are 100% legit reasons to train the insights of these smart folks on their own team.

But in doing that, I’ve noticed that many of them are becoming Johnny-One-Notes, and losing perspective on the bigger forces and crises we face.

Whether that’s getting wrapped around the axle of the gender debates, or the imagined tyranny of fifteen minutes cities, or the latest absurd cancellation at a university, or the umpteenth policy failure due to internecine coups in the climate or social justice space, or the censorship at Twitter (oh how we long for those simpler days!) or the true likelihood of a Wuhan lab leak or…or…or…

But the problem with this kind of focus from smart people is the opportunity cost.

Because there really is no end to the tragic-idiotic list of Own Goals that the Far Left are scoring! If the Lefty IDW keeps fixating on these endless howlers, they’ll never alert their audiences to deeper issues across the global threat matrix.

As Napoleon was supposed to have said, “never interfere with your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

At this rate, MAGA could pack up, go home for an extended holiday, and come out to vote next November and take over the country without spending a bullet.

Which brings us to why this fixation of the Lefty IDW matters so much.

As utterly obnoxious, as philosophically hollow, as spiteful, strident and self-defeating as the Far Left has become, they’ve never been any good at exercising real power.

Sure, they can fuck up a tenure track professor’s dream of a meaningful career. They can Bowdlerize a journalist into submission and even exile. They can lead young people astray with ideologies of identity that don’t match reality. They can sabotage critical efforts at political and legislative change.

But really, they don’t have the backbone, focus, or strategic savvy to inflict much harm beyond those spheres. They’re mostly petty tyrants inside their own safe spaces.

They have limited will or capacity to take their fight to their true adversaries.

So unless we get a Che or a Mao rising up to rally the side, the Far Left in the U.S., for now, is far more an irritant than an existential threat.

Because if you’re ever in doubt about who controls the real power, remember that it comes down to two things:

Banks and Tanks.

Finance and weapons.

Whoever controls them, controls a society. Everything else is window dressing.

So for now, we should be paying much more attention to what’s on the docket for the 2024 Elections and what Trump himself has been clearly explaining is his agenda for a second term. “Gloves off” seeking retribution, dismantling federal agencies, imprisoning enemies, declaring martial law against opposition, and jettisoning most of the trappings of representative democracy.

Which if, you know, you reckon it’s time for that kind of a change, you might be rooting for! But it’s likelier to get us a Nero/Caligula situation than it is to get us an August Caesar.

If you were distracted by how far DJT got last lap, you might’ve missed how close he came to utterly breaking our Three Branch Government system first time out. Used to be, the thinking went, that the Executive could never get too dictatorial cuz the dignified Senate would remind him of who he really answered to, and if they failed, then the impartial Supreme Court would weigh in for posterity.

You remember: Checks and Balances!

But Twitter capture of the Republican base and the threat of “getting primaried” by MAGA challengers effectively brought Congress to heel, despite their private scorn for the man. Aided and abetted by a super cynical Mitch McConnell, Trump packed the courts to the gills with increasingly ideological and inexperienced judges (this is the single most impactful move they accomplished since the results will become settled law for decades to come)

His only mistake first term? Picking Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, and military generals and admirals “straight from central casting” to round out his team. He learned his lesson that men who’d served things bigger than themselves and bigger than him might bend, but would not break. Not when they had decades of distinguished careers and their own legacies to mind.

And remember, first time he got in he was just as surprised as we were! He was totally winging it. This time, he’s had four grievance soaked years to hatch his do-over plan.

So this time he’s abandoned any pretense and has a waitlist of sycophants, toadies and grifters who’ve been pre-selected for their compliance. Think Devon Nunes and Marjorie Taylor Greene rather than Mitt Romney and John Cain. We will end up with a Banana Republic that still preserves the shells of official functions, but without any of the substance or competence.

Again, you might be rooting for the guy! And that’s 100% your prerogative. But make no mistake, this is likely the closest we’re coming to the collapse of the Republic since the Civil War. If you feel it’s time, or if he’s championing values you deeply care about, then you might make a deal with this particular devil. But make no mistake: he’s not a conservative, or a Christian. And he’s not fighting for you.

Add to that what the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the ATF all agree is our number one terror threat: (HINT: it’s not woke Twitter)

The Christian Nationalist Alt-Right. These are the folks who control the majority of firearms in the country (it’s not just the tanks, AR-15s and hollow tips count too). They’re also responsible for the majority of domestic bombings, (remember Oklahoma). And the Bundys. And the Capitol.

This is a violent, ethno-nationalist movement, armed to the gills and training, preparing and desperately hoping for violent insurrection. There’s lots and lots of ‘em! And they answer to Trump’s dog whistles.

So, you know, sorry for the buzz shave and getting down into some layer of the political. I’m not here willingly. And I’m trying to keep my own opinions out of it. My point here is structural.

Like I said, you might be rooting for an American Christian Fascist ethno-state and think it’s high time we got there! Just know what we’ll be giving up to get it. Because we might not ever get it back.

***

Now, let’s pan out beyond even these bleak considerations to the wider world. Because this is terrain I wish our thoughtful public progressives would map and analyze a whole lot more.

As goes the U.S. so goes the world.

Strongmen and tyrants, from Bolsanaro in Brazil, to Duterte in the Phillipines, to Orban in Hungary, to Putin in Russia, to Erdogan in Turkey (to say nothing of Little Rocket Man) are all cueing off Trump and the erosion of the global order, rule of law, and democratic norms.

A world unhinged with Iran/Hezzbolah, China/Taiwan, and Russia/Ukraine threatens to destabilize a whole bunch of things, potentially critically.

Then there’s AI and our kicking/screaming/lurching steps into a post-employment future.

Then there’s, oh yeah! global overshoot, systems degradation, the collapse of a coherent unilateral draw-down carbon policy.

You know…

Things that matters way more than the predictably dumb shit some strident wokester spewed this week that I’m dedicating my Twitter thread to.

So I say to my Left of Center Independent Intellectual friends and colleagues…

Please, set aside SJW Derangement Syndrome, pick up your heads, look around, and put your considerable insight and rigor to something, anything other than Stupid Democrat Tricks.

The hour is late, our systems are broken, and we’re slip sliding towards Calamity.

The Fourth Estate, the realm of vigorous debate in the public square, is all we have to figure out who we are, and what’s to be done.

Together.

Let’s not lose sight of that in our subscription silos on Substack.