A few months ago, fool that I am, I accepted another invitation to join a Facebook group.Yet another of a multitude of Facebook pages which discuss politics. These have blossomed like algae in the political hot waters since the presidential primaries.
I used to naively think that following one of these Facebook pages was kind of like going over to someone’s place for cocktails. Civil chatter. Usually boring. The occasional dry zinger delivered deadpan over a dry martini: stirred, not shaken. Seldom interesting. Nope: wrong, doofus. It’s like going to the most terrible bar you’ve ever been to and somehow not having alcohol has made people behave even worse. Rudeness abounds. The experience has become like the mob scene at the funeral of Julius Caesar. It’s an inchoate mass of like and dislike which seldom acquires the shape and direction of discourse. Thought and argument are often reduced to that Twitter like medium, the meme, or animated cartoon figures meant to convey some kind of FEELING or EMOTION. Poor Caesar doesn’t get buried and is beginning to stink to High Heavens.
Yesterday in a thread, right out of the blue, a self-identified “dom” and expert on BDSM took it upon himself to explain “consent” as a key principle in the ‘BDSM community.’ What the hell that had to do with the post I’ll never know. That comment soon developed into one of those drive-by opinions. You don’t see them coming. You know, like walking downtown in a foot of grey slush and some asshole whips around the corner and covers you in it.
These opinions spin in ever-increasing velocity around the self-anointed and rise in pitch like someone has been sucking bigly on a helium teat and then some kind of shit flies everywhere.
The SExpert posted a link to what he said “gives him nightmares.” The link was an article about state sponsored terror: torture, murder, bombing, war, etc. The SExpert is very much against these abominations.
With both BDSM and state sponsored terror, APPETITE is unleashed. With BDSM, according to the SExpert, it’s permissible because consent is given.
The SExpert’s Facebook page reveals a male nurse who is “a politically active, highly Liberal progressive” (I’ve figured out what “highly Liberal progressive” means) and that he’s “trying to make a positive difference in the world.” He supports Palestinian independence and has a Palestinian flag posted etc. You can’t make this stuff up. He is “woke.” A Bona Fide Progressive.
Militant Muslims call America the “Great Satan” and believe it’s a decadent society. Many respected academic commentators contend Western society is fallen into a terminal decadent stage, including for example, the late Jacques Barzun.
Remember the SExpert’s nightmare? Here’s another nightmare: It’s the SExpert BDSM “dom” gaining consent from a Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian, Afghani, Yemeni, etc. who has been previously tortured, bombed and terrorized. The now consenting masochist, who formerly experienced the unleashed terror of torture, agrees to be leashed and tortured by the SExpert.
The SExpert does not connect the practice of his peccadilloes with the terror unleashed upon people by various states worldwide. It’s like the SExpert has two different people inhabiting one body with the same APPETITE and each does not know the other is there. The SExpert is a neoliberal faux progressive who is a consenting yet unknowing participant in the rituals of the Culture of Cruelty. He’s part of the disease. Anything goes because everyone is, first and foremost, consuming or being consumed in the Republic of Fun.
It often seems that “progressivism” has deteriorated to simply mean unfettered individualism in a consumer society. The individual chooses which group to identify with in a crude marketplace of desire, likes, dislikes etc. Feelings. Nothing left but feelings. The complex and humane concept of community has been reduced to a marketplace of competing political identities, winners and losers. And the SExpert becomes a priest in a base ritual portraying winners and losers.
This is the real triumph of neoliberalism. It’s the no name brand of political economic philosophies and it’s crept up around us unknown and replaced humanity with an Invasion of the Body Snatchers Pod People APPETITE. And most don’t even know it. We become part of the disease.