The other day Steve Sailer posted this video in one of his posts about steroid use in sports. I think steroids is a topic that proves his point about not noticing. That is, not noticing things that fall outside the official narrative is essential to the Left, or as I prefer to call it, the New Religion. The video is mostly the event, but the first few minutes help explain a different point I often make about the Cult of Modern Liberalism.
In 1976 I was alive and I remember those games. The only thing normal people discussed about those Olympics was the East German women. They looked like men. It was a running joke in the public about how the East German women had deep voices and hairy chests. Around that time, Saturday Night Live did a skit where they had a bunch of muscular hairy guys dress up in drag, pretending to be the East German women’s Olympic team.
Now, the stupid bimbo doing the commentary is what’s important in the video. Despite the rather obvious fact that the East German women looked like men and the public was talking non-stop about it, she blamed the poor US results on, wait for it, chauvinism! That’s right. The reason the US girls were getting clobbered by musclebound “women” from the Soviet block had nothing to do with steroids. It was America not letting our girls train properly.
We’re looking at 40 year old footage that would work just as well today. The narrative says women are victims of the Pale Penis People so that is the only possible reason why the women were losing to these deformed freaks from East Germany. Donna DeVarona could have just watched the East Germans shooting up and she would have not bothered to take note of it. Instead her head was awash in thoughts of the patriarchy.
It’s why I tend to reject Sailer’s reductionism. I don’t think there is anything conscious going on with Progressives. They did not think to themselves after the South Carolina shooting, “Hey, now’s the time to go after that flag and show those Deep South rednecks who’s boss!” 99% of them don’t even know why they are riled up over the flag, anymore than the looters in Baltimore knew why they were supposed to be angry. They just are, because that’s who they are.
The social justice warriors of today have roots that go back to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Those original settlers were not fleeing religious persecution and looking to build a land where people could worship as they chose. That’s revisionist nonsense. Those followers of Calvin were aiming to build a “city on a hill” modeled on specific religious beliefs and they had no tolerance for dissent.
That utopian fanaticism has been a part of Yankee culture ever since. It was at the heart of the abolitionist movement. It has been the animating force of American Progressives for over 100 years. The narrative we see in modern public discourse always ends in the same place, the city on the hill where all men are equal. It’s as much a part of the Progressive nature as any other biological feature.
That’s why the South Carolina shooting was a triggering event for a general assault on the South by Progressives. They have always been at war with the South. It is what, in part, defines them. They have been fighting the Cavaliers since the English Civil War, because that’s who they are. To acquiesce to that flag is, in effect, to tolerate people with whom they have been at war since there was a beginning.
Again, it is not a conscious thing. An Italian does not wake up in the morning thinking, “I have to remember to use my hands a lot in conversation because I’m Italian.” The black guy is not standing on the corner fondling himself because he thinks he has to in order to be black. It’s a natural instinct like a kitten chasing a ball of yarn.
Another aspect of Puritan culture handed down to Progressives is the inability to mind ones own business. We have the image of the crusty old Yankee staying on his side of the fence and his neighbor doing the same, assiduously not noticing what the other is doing. This, like other myths, is pure nonsense. The Puritans could not stop meddling in their neighbor’s affairs. In fact, it was required.
Collective guilt was a key component of Puritan life. A town or village would suffer if they tolerated just one sinner in their ranks. That made prying into the daily affairs of your neighbors a responsibility of everyone. If the whole village is going to be judged by the conduct of the lowest, then raising the bottom is a holy mission.
This is on display in the video. What the dumb twit is saying is that America is losing to these godless heathens from Germany because America has sinned. The sin in question is not investing enough in women’s sports, which is caused by the much more serious sin of chauvinism.
The Roundhead – Cavalier standoff has always been at the core of American liberalism. Feminism is just one manifestation. The SJW’s of today conjure nightmares of hyper-masculine evil males that largely resemble cartoon characters of medieval noblemen. It’s not a conscious thing. It’s just the long shadow of the past in which they are their ancestors were raised. It’s who they are.
“Those original settlers were not fleeing religious persecution and looking to build a land where people could worship as they chose. That’s revisionist nonsense. Those followers of Calvin were aiming to build a “city on a hill” modeled on specific religious beliefs and they had no tolerance for dissent.”
Yup, England was the most tolerant European country in the Late Midde-Ages period, in France, Spain or Italy these fanatical Protestant groups would have been burned alive.
The Netherlands was by far the most tolerant country in the world in the 16th and 17th century. The Puritans fled England for the Netherlands and found the tolerance unbearable. William Bradford wrote, “Our children are drawn away by the manifold temptations and licentiousness of that country.”
The Puritans left for American not to flee intolerance. They fled tolerance.
Fair enough. But this is at least the second time you call out the abolitionists. They cared about the injustice of slavery at a time when most Americans preferred to ignore it.
That care led to a bloodbath. Given the ~200 years of history prior to the Civil War in which Yankee lunatics tried to dominate the rest of the continent, it is not unreasonable to think the Abolitionists hated Southerners at least as much as they cared about slavery.
When the east Germans employed men in drag to help them win medals it was ‘for the glory of their country’ and not much to do with how the vast majority of east Germans were. That is the thing here: although most inhabitants of Leipzig wanted nothing to do with women with testicles, they had been told they would feel better if their nation won more than anyone else. So they went along with it, just as we go along with having anyone ‘bring us glory.’ That is why the left chooses insipid, lying, insincere and untrustworthy but idealistic people… Read more »
Funny, I looked up this video a couple weeks ago to make a point. I would like to make two pretty unrelated points 1. Swimming in the US in the early 70’s ( and way before that as De Varona, the blond babble-head next to Goudy could tell us from years of experience) and to this day is one of THE most equal sports around (well, unless you are a man trying to get a swimming scholarship at a D-1 school, then it would be better to be female). Water doesn’t discriminate and all the programs in the US were… Read more »
Good writing. The history of the U.S. is Virginia vs. Massachusetts. And that has not changed, even with the Mass. victory in the shooting war of 1861-65.