MUST-READ Contemporary Progressive-Left Crazy in Yet Another Nutshell: Zeeshan Aleem, "How the Populist Left Has Become Vulnerable to the Populist Right"

Matt Taibi is incredulous.

As well he should be.

This right here really is a kind of instant classic. The contemporary crazy left in (yet another) nutshell. Not the hard philosophical left. There's no mumbo-jumbo about gender identity nor the oppressive essence of "whiteness," nor the social construction of math, nor any of that end of the crazy. This bullshit is all about how liberals who now criticize the left are evil and crazy and...and I want to stress that I am not making this up...:

"...funneling people from leftism to authoritarianism."

That's just a subtitle. So probably written by some jerkweed English major from Smith or whatever. Here are direct quotes from the essay itself:

   We’re seeing the formation of a pipeline that circumvents the center altogether — and directly connects left-wing to right-wing populism.
   A group of journalists and media personalities who once were at home on the far left has formed a niche but influential political subculture that encourages leftists to abandon leftism for the populist right.

   Assumption that need not be stated:  left: good, right: bad. Populism is good if it's on the left, bad if it's on the right. 

   But the subtitle really does capture one of the central delusions of the contemporary left: that it, somehow, is opposed to authoritarianism. Read through the nauseating Zeeshan piece to find out that the right and left are both, y'know, imperfect with respect to free speech! But, with respect to positions like open borders and "social inclusivity," the right is a bunch of Nazis, Tucker Carlson is a "white nationalist," and so on. It's the old lefty bullshit: there are only two kinds of issues: the ones on which the right is Nazis and the left is our savior, and the ones on which, y'know, we could all do better...though the right is still really worse. (Yes, yes, this same bullshit shows up on the other side, too...but it's become so fucking nauseating on the left that I can't be bothered to both-sides it right now...)

   Anyway.

   Nobody's funneling anybody "from the left into authoritarianism." The contemporary left is authoritarianism. Totalitarianism, actually.

   But this is a trope that the left has been playing for years: as they become more crazy and repulsive, they repel more people. Those so repelled have only three options:  (i) shut up and play along. (ii) Criticize the left from within--or nearby. (iii) Go over to the right. Very many choose the first one. If you choose the second, you will be vilified and cancelled--there's nothing the radical left hates more than a liberal. Except: a liberal they can't control. For many people, that leaves the right. And the right is basically the only place where one can now speak the truth about the whole gamut of lefty crazy from BLM to CRT to LGBTQRSTUV... Those who are constitutionally incapable of just standing by and oohing and ahing over the Emperor's new clothes almost have no choice but to go right. The cognitive dissonance of looking right at Bruce Jenner and proclaiming him a stunning and brave realio-trulio woman is just too much for some of us. We just aren't built that way. We can't look at cow and call it a horse. We can't pretend that universities are burbling cauldrons of racism. We can't stand among the cultists and play along as they worship the UFO beings or whatever. 

   Ok, I can't think about this anymore right now, not even to try to make some kind of point in conclusion.