Thoughts on Postmodernism

Michael Smith
(/20/2015)

Warning – 1025 words of rant follow. You can only imagine what it would be like if Ole Miss had lost to Alabama...

I loathe postmodernism and it’s fraternal twin, deconstructionism - along with the low functioning idiots who are steeped in either or both. Both of these “philosophies” are based on the following:
• There is no universal or objective “truth”.
• History has no value in attempting to define “truth”.
• “Reality” can only be understood in the terms of the beholder – since “truth” cannot be objectively understood, it can only be experienced by the beholder and is therefore relative to that particular person’s point of view at that specific point in time and under those exact circumstances.

I have never heard of a more idiotic attempt to explain reality than this bunch of pseudo-intellectual crap.

As I read this, I get the image of a 32 year old Timothy Leary wanna-be career student, writing his doctoral thesis after inhaling a bowl or two to mellow out the harshness of the mind expanding LSD he just dropped – but it does explain a lot, like:
• Why “progressives” think that the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says (it is a “living document”, remember?).
• Why “progressives” pass laws that they selectively enforce and/or obey (drug laws, immigration).
• How “progressives” can hear radical Islamists make statements like “Death to Israel! Death to America!” and not take them at their word (remember, there is no objective “truth”).
• How “progressives” can hear radical Islamists make statements like “the Islamic Republic of Iran doesn’t want a nuclear bomb, we only seek peaceful energy production” and not hear the lie (again remember, there is no objective “truth”).
• Why “progressives” like Obama continue to suggest that his Marxist economic policies are successes in the face of objective data otherwise.
• How a “progressive” can believe that a “job saved or created” is a measurable metric.
• Why a “progressive” president can kill a pipeline project that would provide real jobs and access to cheaper energy in a time when we need both and say with a straight face that the unemployment insurance and regulatory processes will create more jobs than a new construction and energy project.
• Why “progressives” believe that man causes global “climate change” when the climate is not explained by the very models that are cited as proof and that weather can’t be used as proof of climate but weather events like hurricanes (after some of the quietest hurricane seasons on record) are proof.
• Why “progressives” believe that “green” projects like solar, ethanol, wind and wave are successful when companies are going bankrupt left and right as the federal funding runs out.
• Why “progressives” believe that intent to do something is equal to actually achieving something and good intentions count as much as actual results.
• Why “progressives” style themselves and their leaders as philosopher-kings and why a common retort is “I can’t explain it to you because you just wouldn’t understand” (which is code for “I don’t have a clue but I don’t want you to know that and I’ll never admit my ignorance so I’ll just keep talking.”)

“Progressives” owe their very existence to Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels also shared an aversion for history, writing:
 “In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”

So if one critically examines the past, the basis for communism – the antagonism between labor and capital – would be proven to be a fallacy by every individual who ever rose from poverty to wealth – people like Andrew Carnegie who came to America penniless and became one of the richest men of his era were living proof that Marx was wrong…so like the post-modernists and the deconstructionists, Karl and Friedrich just dispensed with the nasty business of history disagreeing with them.

I am stunned at the brashness of these so called “progressives” who engage in this absolute and total lunacy. At any other period in American history these people would have been laughingstocks and ridden out of town on a rail. I just want to slap the crap out of them and tell them to wake the Hell up. Life is real. Life has consequences and those consequences don’t believe in post-modernistic/deconstructionist twaddle.

There are real people being truly hurt by these dime store philosophies pushed by poseur philosopher-kings.

Post-modernists, deconstructionists and “progressives” are the creation of a successful and productive society. They exist as a luxury appendage to a society that produces more than it consumes, thereby providing the time and money for these “intellectuals” to tear down the very mechanism that allows them to exist. This type of reductive and destructive reasoning is totally worthless to society. It helps no one in understanding anything and serves only as a convenient excuse for the harsh reality of the world and the interactions of its inhabitants. These so called “philosophies are the result of individuals seeking to explain their lack of success, societal mobility and meaningful achievement in the face of the objective success of productive members of society. They are incapable of coming to terms with their own limitations; therefore they must construct an alternative explanation for their lack of tangible value to society through a system of pseudo-logic. The issue with this is that it has absolutely no basis in reality – similar to the theory of Marx and Engels that capital and labor have existed in an eternally antagonistic relationship.

These are the same “intellectuals” that can argue for days whether the color black is objectively racist depending on an individual’s perception of it at 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning but can’t place the simple and clear ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in context. There is no lack of clarity in this, no question that the Founders believed in objective and universal truths:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Having raised a family on a rural farm in Mississippi in the teeth of the Great Depression, my grandfather was an objective realist. In those days, there was little room for anything other than reality. If you couldn't eat it, live in it, or sell it for cash, it was a luxury. I know he would call postmodern/deconstructionist/”progressive” “philosophical” efforts “useless bullshit”.

You just have to ask yourself why are we putting up with it now?