when he defined man as "a rational animal."
It continues to astonish me that contemporary culture, so attached to relativism as its foundation, is also obsessed with taking the moral high ground as the foundation for status and power. Thus it manages to be both jawdroppingly decadent and hysterically puritanical at the same time.
The most obvious pathology is that "truth is relative" but that "racism is absolutely the greatest evil in history."
Since victim-status is the gold standard of the Liberal moral economy, status is gained either by belonging a Specially Designated Sacred Victim Class (Blacks, women, LGBTs, immigrants, etc.) or by appearing to champion such groups, even if one's own combination of status, wealth and power clearly marks you as a success.
Best example. While Liberals/Progressives cry out about "the One Percent" and their "disproportionate" wealth, embodied in the huge salaries of corporate or financial executives, the huge salaries, status, luxurious lifestyles and self-indulgences of entertainment celebrities and sports stars pass without criticism. Hollywood types smartly take a supportive stand on behalf of the SDSVCs --while making sure their mansions and jets keep them at distance-- while most of the sports types are People of Color, and therefore exempt (unless Republican) from critique.
Hollywood studio and corporate media executives, who are corporate executives no less than the presidents of banks or manufacturing companies, share the immunity of the Brangelinas of this world and they happily make movies in which the Rich (Gentile) White Guy is the villain, while cashing the huge compensation checks that are their due.
---
---
No comments:
Post a Comment