Thread by @EveKeneinan

Today I woke up thinking about why the Left regards “cultural appropriation” as a kind of SIN.

It would be easy to make the case that a rigid monoculture isn’t optimal. That would be something stable but stagnant. We like stability but not stagnation.

The left HATES “cultural appropriation” because an “APPROPRIATION CULTURE” is the HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE to Leftist “multiculturalism.”

It is actually the optimal situation, and the Left requires a constant stake of societal sickness, being a purely a negative or anti- phenomenon.

The Greeks were an APPROPRIATION CULTURE. While remaining thoroughly Greek, they grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down: sculpture from Egypt, the alphabet from the Phoenicians, astronomy from the Babylonians … and IMPROVED them all.

AMERICAN CULTURE, with its old “melting pot” ideal was an APPROPRIATION CULTURE.

“Chicken Tikka Masala” is now one of the top BRITISH FOODS in the world.

They even eat it in India now, or so I hear.

If you had Pizza and Margeritas for the 4th of July, you’d be fine. You’d be having AMERICAN foods.

It is obvious to all that Leftist Identity Politics requires FACTION or TRIBALISM to exist. Because Identity Politics is not an established route to POLITICAL POWER, the majority of those who play the game of Identity Politics have NO DESIRE to END the factionalism/tribalism.

Political philosophers since Plato and Aristotle all the way up through Hobbes and Locke and the America Founders had a HORROR of factionalism, because IT IS WHAT DESTROYS NATIONS.

Cf. Federalist 10

America was largely DESIGNED to avoid FACTIONALISM. It is why we are a FEDERATION to begin with. The idea was that California could go INSANE and not take the other states down with it.

This changed when the Supreme Court started acting as a super-legislature.

Abortion? Imposed nationwide upon the people by the SCOTUS.

Gay Marriage? Imposed nationwide upon the people by the SCOTUS.

Legalized Marijuana? Oh, we seem to be handling THAT as the Founders intended, state by state.

The SCOTUS idea that it is an “undue burden” to move to another state to live under laws you like better is idiotic.

That possibility is a FEATURE not a BUG of the American system.

And THAT was in the 1700s! Today, moving states is almost trivially easy.

POLL: Americans:

Have you been a resident of more than one US state?

We don’t want a stagnant, insular culture, but we don’t ALSO want a multicultural hot mess that breeds tribalism and faction and leads eventually to civil war and the nation tearing itself apart.

We need a hegemonic culture that appropriates good things form other cultures.

In railing against “cultural appropriation” the Left is really attacking the idea of CULTURAL HEALTH.

The WANT a sick culture. If things are going well, the Left literally has no justification for its existence.

The PRIMAL ERROR—the πρῶτος ψεῦδος—of the LEFT is the DOCTRINE OF HUMAN PERFECTIBILITY.

This allows the Left to point to the various evils that ALWAYS exist in society and DEMAND revolutionary change to “fix” them, although they NEVER get fixed.

Crime, for example.

“Let’s fix crime!” sounds like a good idea in the abstract, doesn’t it?

Who could be against THAT?

Okay, but how are you going to do THAT?

“Let’s eradicate poverty” also sounds good.

We’ve had a war on for how many decades now?

How’s that going?

As Voltaire said (and wasn’t the first to say, but I haven’t traced the origin):

"THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD.”

We can and should keep evils like crime and poverty at as low a level as we can manage, but expecting their eradication is INHUMAN and INSANE.

We need to learn to LAUGH AT and DISMISS Leftists when they reach the point of saying “Things are GOOD, but let’s radically screw with the system, because things are not PERFECT.”

I shouldn’t need to add, but do, that accepting the Leftists “tear it down” idea DOES NOT result in the PERFECT.

It DOES usually manage to FUCK UP the GOOD though.

*cough* *Venezuela* *cough*