What goes around, comes around.

During the recent online culture wars, and their spillover into campus and protest politics, feminists have tried to embrace transgression with the Slut Walk movement and sex-positive pro-trans, pro-sex worker and pro-kink culture that was central to Tumblr. However, like the right, it has run up against a deep philosophical problem about the ideologically flexible, politically fungible, morally neutral nature of transgression as a style, which can characterize misogyny just as easily as it can sexual liberation. As Lasch understood, for progressive politics anti-moral transgression has always been a bargain with the devil, because the case for equality is essentially a moral one.

Equally hated and loved critic Camille Paglia argued that de Sade’s depiction of human evil as innate was a form of satire directed against the Rousseauist tradition, from which contemporary feminism springs. De Sade’s work famously features sexual violence as well as abhorrence for family and procreation, instead creating a violent transgressive sexuality based on the values of libertinism and individual sovereignty. [...]

That the transgressive values of de Sade could be taken up by a culture of misogyny and characterized an online anti-feminist movement that rejected traditional church-going conservatism should also not be a surprise. The Blakean motto adopted by the Surrealists, ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’, dominance as sexual ‘sovereignty’ and the freeing of the id from the constraints of the conscience have all descended from this transgressive tradition. Just as Nietzsche appealed to the Nazis as a way to formulate a right-wing anti-moralism, it is precisely the transgressive sensibility that is used to excuse and rationalize the utter dehumanization of women and ethnic minorities in the alt-right online sphere now. The culture of transgression they have produced liberates their conscience from having to take seriously the potential human cost of breaking the taboo against racial politics that has held since WWII. The Sadean transgressive element of the 60s, condemned by conservatives for decades as the very heart of the destruction of civilization, the degenerate and the nihilistic, is not being challenged by the emergence of this new online right. Instead, the emergence of this new online right is the full coming to fruition of the transgressive anti-moral style, its final detachment from any egalitarian philosophy of the left or Christian morality of the right.

Excerpt, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right, by Angela Nagle. pp. 38-39.

Related

• The Unflattering Familiarity of the Alt-Right in Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, by Park MacDougald. New York Mag 07/13/17.

Charles Taylor on Modern Humanism and Social Justice

... A third pattern of motivation, which we have seen repeatedly, this time occurs in the register of justice rather than benevolence.We have seen it with Jacobins and Bolsheviks and today with the politically correct left and the so-called Christian right. We fight against injustices that cry out to heaven for vengeance. We are moved by a flaming indignation against these: racism, oppression, sexism, or leftist attacks on the family or Christian faith. This indignation comes to be fueled by hatred for those who support and connive with these injustices, which, in turn, is fed by our sense of superiority that we are not like these instruments and accomplices of evil. Soon, we are blinded to the havoc we wreak around us. Our picture of the world has safely located all evil outside us. The very energy and hatred with which we combat evil prove its exteriority to us. We must never relent but, on the contrary, double our energy, vie with each other in indignation and denunciation.

Another tragic irony nests here. The stronger the sense of (often correctly identified) injustice, the more powerfully this pattern can become entrenched. We become centers of hatred, generators of new modes of injustice on a greater scale, but we started with the most exquisite sense of wrong, the greatest passion for justice and equality and peace. [...]

The blindness is typical of modern exclusive secular humanism. This modern humanism prides itself on having released energy for philanthropy and reform; by getting rid of "original sin," of a lowly and demeaning picture of human nature, it encourages us to reach high. Of course, there is some truth in this, but it is also terribly partial and terribly naive because it has never faced the questions I have been raising here: what can power this great effort at philanthropic reform? This humanism leaves us with our own high sense of self-worth to keep us from backsliding, a high notion of human worth to inspire us forward, and a flaming indignation against wrong and oppression to energize us. It cannot appreciate how problematic all of these are, how easily they can slide into something trivial, ugly, or downright dangerous and destructive.

A Nietzschean genealogist can have a field day here. Nothing gave Nietzsche greater satisfaction than showing how morality or spirituality is really powered by its direct opposite—for example, that the Christian aspiration to love is really motivated by the hatred of the weak for the strong. Whatever one thinks of this judgment on Christianity, it is clear that modern humanism is full of potential for such disconcerting reversals: from dedication to others to self-indulgent, feel-good responses, from a lofty sense of human dignity to control powered by contempt and hatred, from absolute freedom to absolute despotism, from a flaming desire to help the oppressed to an incandescent hatred for all those who stand in the way. And the higher the flight, the farther the potential fall.

Charles Taylor, A Catholic Modernity?: Charles Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture pp. 32-33 (Oxford UP, 1999)

J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy"

J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is an engrossing memoir from a hillbilly of Kentucky, born in abject poverty and a host of unfortunate, even toxic childhood circumstances (abandoned by an absentee father, raised by a drug-addicted mother with a-perpetual-revolving door of stepdads and step-siblings), who manages to elevate and make a better life for himself -- thanks in large part to his grandparents (providing a source of familial stability that his own parents could never afford); the cultivation of discipline and self-reliance through a four-year stint in the Marine Corps and the subsequent pursuit of a degree at a state college and eventual acquisition of critical but elusive "social capital", mentors and connections afforded by Yale Law School.

To his credit, while mediating the diverse worlds of his "hillbilly heritage" and the social elite (to which he now immerses himself with some degree of success, howbeit without its challenges) he never repudiates or abandons the former, regarding them with sympathy and understanding and loving them in spite of their flaws. He is cognizant of how many fortunate variables fell into place to give him a chance to transcend his environment:

There was my grandparent's constant presence, even when my mother and stepfather moved far away in an effort to shut them out. Despite the revolving door of would-be father figures, I was ofen surrounded by caring and kind men. Even with her faults, Mom instilled in me a lifelong love of education and learning. My sister always protected me ... Dan and Aunt Wee opened their home when I was too afraid to ask. Long before that, they were my first real exemplars of a happy and loving marriage. There were teachers, distant relatives, and friends. Remove any of these people from the equation, and I'm probably screwed.

Vance's analysis of his white working-poor class and upbringing offers much food for thought and, I think, offers provocative reading for liberal and conservative alike.

For example he is sharply critical of the lack of agency ("a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself") that charactizes so many of his kind and sets them back; a propensity for blaming the government for their ills and succumbing to Internet-born conspiracy-theorizing ("this isn't some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy; this is deep skepticism of the institutions of our society"). However, the right itself is complicit in this evasion of self-scrutiny and responsibility with the increasing suggestion that "it's not your fault you're a loser; it's the government's fault."

Conversely, without ever mentioning Donald Trump by name, J.D. Vance's book also received reknown for offering a sympathetic-yet-critical glimpse into the minds of those who cast their vote for the populist candidate. And now, in the wake of the 2016 election, those inclined to (foolishly, I believe) blanket-label and dismiss "middle America" as a bunch of racists will hopefully be challenged by Vance's account. Consider, for example, his penetrating analysis of his people's perceptions of Obama and the root of antipathy towards him:

The President feels like an alien to many Middletonians for reasons that have nothing to do with skin color. Recall that not a single one of my high school classmates attended an Ivy League school. Barack Obama attended two of them and excelled at both. He is brilliant, wealthy, and speaks like a constitutional law professor -- which, of course, he is. Nothing about him bears any resemblance to the people I admired growing up: His accent - clean, perfect, neutral - is foreign; his credentials are so impressive that they're frightening; he made his life in Chicago, a dense metropolis, and he conducts himself with a confidence that comes from knowing that the modern American meritocracy was built for him. Of course, Obama overcame adversity in his won right -- adversity familiar to many of us -- but that was long before any of us knew him.

President Obama came on the scene right as so many people in my community began to believe that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them. We know we're not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for our teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose); in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with. Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren't. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we're lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn't be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it -- not because we think she's wrong, but because we know she's right. [...]

I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the "Obama economy" and how it had affected his life. I don't doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he's made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.

In the end, while the content of this book does makes it timely reading in the wake of the 2016 election, there is also plenty of wisdom afforded by Vance's biography that I believe it would engage any open-minded reader, regardles of political affiliation.

Further Reading and Discussion

• Trump: Tribune Of Poor White People J.D. Vance's Interview with Rod Dreher. The American Conservative 07/22/16.
• Culture, Circumstance, and Agency: Reflections on Hillbilly Elegy, by Aaron M. Renn. City Journal 08/23/16.
• The Lives of Poor White People, by Joshua Rothman. 09/12/16.
• The Original Underclass The Atlantic September 2016. "Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has."

Throw the Bums Out.

So Trump's wife, claiming she wrote her speech "with as little help as possible", fabricated portions of it from Michelle Obama's DNC Convention speech 8 years ago:

Of course it's a big deal at the present moment, but then how quickly we forget …

Obama's 2008 plagiarization of Deval Patrick's 2006 speech, without rightful attribution:

Addendum: DailyWire.com points out:

Obama later acknowledged it would have been better to provide attribution to Patrick in his speech when the Clinton campaign called him out on it in 2008, but deflected the blame onto her, saying: "I noticed Senator Clinton, on occasion, has used words of mine as well."

Patrick attempted to exonerate Obama by saying "he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama's speechwriters" in the previous summer, but ABC News pointed out at the time that Obama used the "Just Words" passage before the summer of 2007.

Biden's much-more-serious plagiarism scandal from the late 80's, for which he had to drop out of the race (I even remember that, being a little tike at the time):

And hell, we are in all likelihood about to elect, as "the lesser evil" (I use that term loosely), a candidate that has repeatedly demonstrated her capacity to fabricate, with a straight face, "recollections from memory" that bear little or no relation to reality whatsoever -- but for which the media, as well as her supporters, demonstrate a remarkable and to my mind, outstanding, capacity to forgive and forget:

And the potential "First Man"? -- well, one has only to resort to Google to plumb the depths of his falsehoods.

Meanwhile, Hillary's leading GOP contender demonstrates a no less tenuous relationship with the truth:

So by all means, let's get all up in arms about Melania Trump for the moment, but methinks if we're still getting hysterical about this 2-3 days from now, it's a case of overkill.

Face it. They're all quite capable of plagiarism -- and committing worse crimes against the truth, and we're all falling for it.