The Politicized Irrationalism at the Heart of Progressivism: A Case Study From the NYT

If you read this this with no thought at all...and you really, really want to believe it...maybe...possibly...this might sort of make sense. I guess...

   But this is really weirdly, mind-bendingly creepy. Overtly crazy? Subtly crazy? Just orthogonal to any reasonable point one might make? I'd have to think about it a lot more to explain it. The left's new buzzword/obsession-of-the-moment, "misinformation" woven in with its new hate-object of the moment, Elon Musk woven in with its favorite buzzword/obsession of the last couple of years: TEH WITE PRIVLIJ!!!!!!!1111... The Hot Air title really does capture part of the madness:  "Say, Why Didn't Elon Musk End Apartheid as a Teenager?" That really is what some of this lunacy boils down to. Another bit is in NYT's actual title:  "Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege." The suggestion seems to be that he gets no credit for leaving, and it either formed his consciousness, which is bad, or it didn't, which is also bad because reasons. Like, I guess, he was SUPER-privlij and so bad. Oblivious. God knows.

   It's this weaving of a semi-coherent tale, touching on the right buzzwords, and ending with a politically correct conclusion that is, IMO, characteristic of the postpostmodern mishmash and postpostmodern progressivism. This is the kind of cancerous literary method that has ruined the humanities and soft social sciences. I'm not sure I can think of a worse approach to reasoning to implant in the minds of the young. I really, really hate to both-sides it, because that's the only way you can criticize the left these days. But it reminds me of Rush Limbaugh's method--free-association filled with baroque epicycles, weaving in various conservative obsessions, eventually wending around to his preconceived conclusion: liberals suck in respect x. He didn't have a loony, repulsive lexicon of neologisms, though--I'll give him that much. The stupid terminology is like at least 10% of why people hate the left...

   Anyway. The story certainly isn't the most overtly insane thing I've seen from the MSM...but overtness isn't everything. It's notable for its particularly weird weirdness, and its illustration of popomo-prog methods of "reasoning."