The Grand Unifying Theory of the two extremes is certainly the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, but the origin of THAT is simple Cluster B thinking.
Anyone in a relationship with a Cluster B soon realizes that they're in a zero-sum game: one can win only at the expense of the other, and the Cluster B makes sure you lose.
It's only a short hop from ME AGAINST THE REST OF YOU that is typical of narcissists to MY TRIBE AGAINST ALL OTHER TRIBES, that is also an emotionally immature, black-and-white narcissist construct.
The more clever Cluster Bs will devise an ideology as a means to enforce conformity and reduce resistance to the Cluster B's authoritarian control. The savage unpersoning that we've seen when people deviate from the herd is what any Cluster B female will do with friend groups in school or at work.
It's also the same dynamic that the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and Maoists used to dominate their respective populaces: there's the in-group, which is richly rewarded, and there's the out-group(s), which is viciously punished or murdered. Which group you belong to depends entirely on the whims of the dominant clique: any disloyalty or insufficient fealty to the core cabal results in swift retribution that ranges from mere internal exile to death by torture.
The particulars of the ideology aren't important -- Cluster Bs will push whatever idea they think is to their advantage, as long as it results in an in-group at war with out-groups.
Cluster B abuse is what we're fighting. It's what we've fought for the past 100 years. Only the flag designs have changed.
It seems like moving power from a ‘woke left’ to a ‘woke right’ is the beginning of a dialectic - how can we skip ahead to a synthesis that honors the best of our founding principles and values?
I agree with essentially everything you wrote, but (and this is a sidebar issue) I'm in that group of people who thinks the term "woke right" is a misfire. It doesn't identify or clarify the nature of the denizens of the very special idiot wing on the right (or wherever the hell they are), it doesn't limn their idiocy or motivations nor shame them (which I suspect is intended to be part of the reason for its use) and it's not edifying to anybody on any side. It's just dumbly topical, and kinda time-bound, in a non-useful way.
The word "woke" forcefully entered the English language lexicon in a chaotic, pear-shaped era because everybody and his dog knows what it means, or at least what know what the people using it think it means. It's a hugely useful word because it's shorthand for a tangible, identifiable complex of particular real-world behaviours and worldviews. There's nothing wrong, IMO, with having words that refer to one particular thing, and not to something else.
Lindsay says the wide rainbow of undeniable idiots parked somewhere the right are woke because they too believe that they've been awakened to a true reality and claim epistemic authority that they intend to use to advance their cause and silence others. What he's actually describing there, though, is the history of, the, umm, earth, from Saint Augustine and the Catholic Church to Mohammad and Hitler, and the current denizens of the goober wing of conservatism, and French nuns, and big sisters bullying their younger stepbrothers, etc., etc.
If someone wants to make the case that all these playahs belong in the "woke" category ("hey, look, everything is woke, everybody was woke, and even over there -- hey, lookit!") well, okay, I guess it's true that they were all awakened at some point to a new sets of ideas and a new worldview, but to me that would just be homonym abuse. It would be better to coin a new term that will resonate, and that people will use.
The Grand Unifying Theory of the two extremes is certainly the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, but the origin of THAT is simple Cluster B thinking.
Anyone in a relationship with a Cluster B soon realizes that they're in a zero-sum game: one can win only at the expense of the other, and the Cluster B makes sure you lose.
It's only a short hop from ME AGAINST THE REST OF YOU that is typical of narcissists to MY TRIBE AGAINST ALL OTHER TRIBES, that is also an emotionally immature, black-and-white narcissist construct.
The more clever Cluster Bs will devise an ideology as a means to enforce conformity and reduce resistance to the Cluster B's authoritarian control. The savage unpersoning that we've seen when people deviate from the herd is what any Cluster B female will do with friend groups in school or at work.
It's also the same dynamic that the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and Maoists used to dominate their respective populaces: there's the in-group, which is richly rewarded, and there's the out-group(s), which is viciously punished or murdered. Which group you belong to depends entirely on the whims of the dominant clique: any disloyalty or insufficient fealty to the core cabal results in swift retribution that ranges from mere internal exile to death by torture.
The particulars of the ideology aren't important -- Cluster Bs will push whatever idea they think is to their advantage, as long as it results in an in-group at war with out-groups.
Cluster B abuse is what we're fighting. It's what we've fought for the past 100 years. Only the flag designs have changed.
(This substack is dedicated to society-wide Cluster B abuse discussions: https://disaffectedpod.substack.com/ )
It seems like moving power from a ‘woke left’ to a ‘woke right’ is the beginning of a dialectic - how can we skip ahead to a synthesis that honors the best of our founding principles and values?
I agree with essentially everything you wrote, but (and this is a sidebar issue) I'm in that group of people who thinks the term "woke right" is a misfire. It doesn't identify or clarify the nature of the denizens of the very special idiot wing on the right (or wherever the hell they are), it doesn't limn their idiocy or motivations nor shame them (which I suspect is intended to be part of the reason for its use) and it's not edifying to anybody on any side. It's just dumbly topical, and kinda time-bound, in a non-useful way.
The word "woke" forcefully entered the English language lexicon in a chaotic, pear-shaped era because everybody and his dog knows what it means, or at least what know what the people using it think it means. It's a hugely useful word because it's shorthand for a tangible, identifiable complex of particular real-world behaviours and worldviews. There's nothing wrong, IMO, with having words that refer to one particular thing, and not to something else.
Lindsay says the wide rainbow of undeniable idiots parked somewhere the right are woke because they too believe that they've been awakened to a true reality and claim epistemic authority that they intend to use to advance their cause and silence others. What he's actually describing there, though, is the history of, the, umm, earth, from Saint Augustine and the Catholic Church to Mohammad and Hitler, and the current denizens of the goober wing of conservatism, and French nuns, and big sisters bullying their younger stepbrothers, etc., etc.
If someone wants to make the case that all these playahs belong in the "woke" category ("hey, look, everything is woke, everybody was woke, and even over there -- hey, lookit!") well, okay, I guess it's true that they were all awakened at some point to a new sets of ideas and a new worldview, but to me that would just be homonym abuse. It would be better to coin a new term that will resonate, and that people will use.