Wow. (And, remind me not to piss you off. ;-))

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/11/conservatism-is-the-real-resistance/
Mark Bauerlein – February 11th, 2020

If you ask conservatives what they stand for—I mean genuine conservatives, not libertarians who were aligned with conservatives long ago because of a shared anti-Communism even though their social beliefs were wholly liberal—here is what they will say: “God. Family. Country.”

Yes, it’s that simple. Conservatives want a churchgoing public, stable families, and national identity. Limited government, low taxes, free markets, and deregulation are secondary commitments.

Establishment Republicans didn’t understand this, which is why they underestimated in 2015 the appeal of Donald Trump.
…
Liberals hated him for it, but that was no surprise. Conservatives have felt liberal malice for a long, long time, ever since the 1960s when the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, and a culture of general irreverence laid waste to those three conservative idols.

“Idols” kind of undercuts his argument, but not many people use language with the same precision that Peterson does.

What conservatives believed were rock-solid foundations turned out to be fragile and crumbling.

It’s not hard to see why conservatives floundered and compromised as the movement progressed. For every William F. Buckley, Jr., who diagnosed and battled the tide of History, there were thousands of conservatives who were befuddled and paralyzed by the assault on things they had honored but took for granted all their lives.

Who could imagine that God, family, and country had to be vindicated? That was like defending food and water.

Ever notice that the Left sometimes attacks your food choices?

This counterculture poured over conservatives like a tidal wave, washing away the trinity of God, family, and country. The revolution didn’t bother with tax rates and trade talks. Abbie Hoffman and Gloria Steinem understood very well that the roots of conservative order lay elsewhere, and that if you could tear them out, then the nuts and bolts of policy and politicking would shift forever in the progressive direction.

Very perceptive.

This is the irony of #TheResistance. November 9, 2016, was another conservative victory, but the trauma it caused went way beyond previous progressive disappointments such as the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014. The Left knew that those older setbacks might prompt secondary conservative actions regarding taxes and budgets, but they would leave the three idols alone. Paul Ryan wasn’t going to challenge the sexual revolution, and Republican senators weren’t pushing an America First agenda.

But the Left’s instincts were correct. Trump was different.

President Trump, indeed, would bring the battle of Left versus Right down to the foundations. He would step right in front of the 50-year freight train of Women’s liberation, the Black Panthers, flag-burnings, and Roe all the way to Obergefell and Black Lives Matter and gender identity in Title IX. And so he did, pulling gender identity right back out of Title IX, nominating anti-Roe judges, hugging the American flag, setting tariffs and building some walls, and proclaiming “All lives matter!” and “Merry Christmas.”

For leftists and liberals to claim the mantle of resistance to these actions, however, is to ignore a half-century of steamrolling and bulldozing and trampling conservatives underfoot.

The standard scenario for every bully when the victims finally fight back.

Progressives own academia, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, public schools, the art world, mainstream media, human rights commissions and other state and local bodies oriented around identity, and human resources in corporate America and medical care. For them to assume the same title as French men and women who battled Nazis is ludicrous.

The labels should be switched. In truth, the election of Donald Trump was the veritable act of resistance in our time. Liberals and leftists warn of his tyranny and paint feverish visions of dictatorship, but they are the ones who have behaved as if they were an occupying army, expelling conservatives from cultural, media, and educational institutions as soon as they gained a majority of positions.

The anti-Trump resistance deserves another name: #TheReactionaries.

They believe they are always moving, ever pursuing social change, pushing for more reform, more correction. But having conquered so much of American society, they are, in effect, a mighty status quo. They want things to stay the same. It’s been going their way for so long that they magnify the slightest dissent into a scandalous foe. And when that dissent touches the core of God-family-country, they resolve that this foe must be put down immediately.

They have turned social media into a surveillance apparatus, and they are willing to ruin careers and incite mobs and boycotts in the course of defending their half-century hegemony, and when they succeed they publicize that triumph widely. It is just as important to intimidate the whole populace as it is to punish a guilty individual.

These are not the tactics of a resistance, which historically is always in danger. Resisters need to hide, but one could walk into any store in a pro-Trump district wearing an anti-Trump t-shirt and not expect violence. But try walking three blocks on 14th Street in Manhattan with a MAGA cap on your head and see what happens.

for they are more aware and suffer awareness…

Doctor my eyes… was I unwise, to leave them open for so long – Jackson Browne

This makes me think of another man who we lost… and is mostly forgotten and brilliant in a different way… Spalding Gray

First of all, you have no idea what the wife wants in terms of making it public or not making it public.

My understanding of the situation is that Peterson became incapacitated and basically disappeared from view. He has a ton of people who admire and care about him, as well as being used to his being a near-constant online present in terms of his videos, Those people were distraught and worried. Whoever made the decision to go public – and I’m going to assume, without knowing if it was the case, that Peterson himself agreed to do it for the sake of his followers – that person probably did it because of feeling a certain obligation to let them know why Peterson was so silent for so long.

In addition, his daughter – whatever you may think of her – is faced with the prospect of losing both parents almost simultaneously. She is only 28 years old. That’s a big big deal. Not all that many people would be able to hold it together under those circumstances. Fortunately, most people don’t have to because they are not faced with that situation.

“It does seem that the Left does have a tendency to be filled with a white hot hate for those they look upon as their inferiors. I wonder why this is so?”

Because they are temperamentally incapable of leaving anything or anyone alone and recognizing boundaries: i.e., a moral gap between their subjective urges and notions, and the lives of the others whose attention they demand.

This, because apart from self-regard, “community” is the only religion or meaning imparting framework which the sons of bitches have to their existences. In their intrinsically meaningless world, all meaning is found in inclusion, identification, and participation in the “creative” project they imagine their lives to be.

In the endless vacuum of space and time, they only exist insofar as they are noticed and appreciated – read “affirmed” or any other similar term – by others. The attention of others and the consciousness of others of them, is what makes them “real” to themselves, for whatever moments it is that they “grace” the realm of being.

They need an audience. So you join in, on their terms, or else …

That is why they are so affronted by those who are indifferent to them and to their conceits.

It looks like Sartre tried to play a variation on this theme, but wound up in the same psychological place nonetheless. Being is “real” for them, only insofar as someone is conscious of them. And since God doesn’t exist, you are going to have to do, and you had better meet expectations or else.

There is no joy when anyone suffers addictions or the necessary withdrawals…not even those with whom we disagree. There is no larger demon than mental illness and the associated medical treatments that at times seem to do more harm than good.

And for good measure I am deeply saddened by Rush’s diagnosis & pray for his healing too…The Medal of Freedom was justly deserved.

It does seem that the Left does have a tendency to be filled with a white hot hate for those they look upon as their inferiors. I wonder why this is so?

Cicero: I imagine one’s mileage may vary. “The DTs are treated with benzos” is a non-sequitur which doesn’t prove anything with respect to withdrawal.

My sister has been a full-blown alcoholic for twenty years or so. She’s actually been sober most of that time, but her backslides were ferocious. She’s been sober for two years now. Fingers crossed. But she can’t kick the Klonopin.

Issan Dorsey, a gay American, became the third roshi at the SF Zen Center. He had led a colorful life in the Castro with lots of drugs including meth. But in his case it was xanax that hooked him and he found it excruciating to quit, worse than the others.

I’ve known a fair number of alcoholics and drug addicts. Whatever Jordan Peterson is going through sounds beyond anything I heard of their withdrawal stories.

Watch them. Look at how she dresses to spruik. Imagine you are interviewing a potential employee and invoke relevant critical faculties.

I wish the guy well, but looks like family unit is a Grade A Clusterfuck. Let’s see: Wife gets terminal diagnosis and husband and daughter both ramp up their dramas. Could it be that they’re both running a Country Mile along de Nile?

Not a Pretty Sight, any of it. No excuses their having turned it into a public soap opera and extremely disrespectful to wifey who after all is the one who has to do the dying in short(ish) order.