Dear God why do I do this to myself? Well, it's sunday and there's barely anything else on. That's why.
Anyway, Piers Morgan had a debate 20 "woke liberals." It was cringe. Very cringe. Mainly on Piers Morgan's side. Like...when you make me agree with explicitly "woke" people this much, you're doing something wrong.
So...Piers was basically portraying himself as what liberals were before the left went bad. Hey, that's my line. And I agreed with the woke people 80% of the time on this one. Piers, you're basically a conservative. No, literally. Let's see why as I tackle the questions:
Claim #1: Masculinity has never been toxic
So, this started out a dumpster fire from the very first question. I'll agree that sometimes the concept of "toxic masculinity" goes too far, like, sometimes we just demonize guys for...acting like guys. BUT....yeah, it's a real concept. Men are expected to conform to traditional gender roles like being a provider, they are expected to bottle up emotions. They are gaslit by this toxic idea of what "masculinity" is and what traits they're intended to follow. And a few people mentioned that and stoicism, and he was like "what's wrong with stoicism?" Uh...the fact that rather than address the problems with systems we try to gaslight people into believing the problem with them and that they need more resilience? But in Piers' mind, resilience is good. Yeah. People should be more resilient.
And that's what I think is a huge difference between the right and the left. The right focuses on perfecting the individual, of the idea that the system isn't the problem, people are the problem, and people should be bullied into conforming to systems, systems shouldn't change to support individuals. For me, a "human centered capitalist", institutions are human creations, and we can change them to support human needs. So ergo, Piers is a conservative on this issue. Even if he's a "liberal", much like I discussed yesterday, he merely reflects a more moderate and nuanced version of conservative values.
And yeah. Just a side note, which is why im passionate on this discussion in particular, I'm going to be blunt. A huge reason why we still have to work our lives away is toxic masculinity. We have this idea that we have to "be a man", and that if you dont wanna spend your life working it away, you're not "manly" enough or "a real man" whatever that means. Efforts to reduce working hours led to the idea that spending time with your wives is too "womanly", don't you wanna be at work all the time doing MAN things? Ugh. No. F this. F you if this is your argument. I don't wanna "be a man." Call me effeminate, girlish, childish, all you want, I don't care. Screw you and the horse you rode in on.
Claim #2: Woke ideology is anti-liberal and fascistic
I mean, in a way it is. But not for the reasons piers mentions. A lot of woke people are illiberal. We see it with "metoo" for example. If a woman makes a claim, you HAVE to believe the claim or you're a bad person. They believe the legal system protects rapists. They believe anyone merely accused of rape or a sex crime should be cancelled, even if utterly deranged and diabolical people make up weird claims and incite random hate mobs. I mean, see what happened to Till Lindemann on that one. It's mob justice versus the rule of law. Innocent until proven guilty vs guilty until proven innocent. And the same with cancel culture. It's just mob justice. And mob justice is very illiberal.
Still, this topic got derailed pretty quickly. There was a discussion on DOGE with Piers believing that it was a good thing. he insisted that we lost the 2024 election because of trans issues when it was one of the lowest priorities Americans had. And this dude is OBSESSED with trans women in sports. Ugh. He was going on about how the Charlie Kirk assassin was woke and killed him because he was supposed to be a fascist. Uh....that shooter seemed...all over the place. Just not a very mentally stable person in general. But yeah he's going around acting like the left wants to kill people they disagree with. It's nuts. Again, he sounds like a right winger to me. He's a right winger, whether he admits it or not.
Claim #3: Gender neutral pronouns are pointless
Here he starts going on about how there are 74 pronouns including "astropronouns" and weird crap like that, and yeah, I admit that that stuff is weird, but let's face it, "they/them" is wierd? Really? The one liberal even pointed out how we refer to people by neutral pronouns all of the time. And we do. This isn't even controversial. "They dropped off the amazon package" today. You dont know if it's a man or woman so you say they.
Then he was bashing the LGBTQIA2S+ thing. Yeah. I kinda admit he has a point here. I remember it started out as LGB in the 90s. Then LGBT. Then LGBTQ. Then LGBTQIA. And now they're adding a "2S" for "two spirit". It does get ridiculous. Like, i admit, piers has a point in the extremes. Astropronouns are weird. Furries are weird, and he was literally ranting about furries at one point for some reason. And an acronym that is getting larger than most full words is ridiculous. Acronyms work best when kept to like 3-4 characters. Maybe 5, but beyond that, yeah. Just add a "+" and be done with it.
Anyway to go back to pronouns I do wanna touch on this one. Pronouns are mostly fine. I admit some trans people can get a little too overreactive if you misgender by accident, but to be fair some people are just jerks who will misgender you even if you ask them nicely like 100 times. And Piers is one of these people.
I'll break it down. Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder according to the DSMV. I know some people will resent me referring to it as a "disorder" and not an identity, but uh...shut up for a second, lefties. I'm trying to frame this in a way people understand. So...it's a disorder. People have very STRONG feelings like they arent happy with their gender and wanna be something else. And these feelings are so profoundly strong that these guys have super high suicide rates. However, there is a solution. If you treat the person like their preferred gender, and call them the right pronouns, it makes them feel better about their lives. So...just do it? Please? You're kind of a butthole if you don't. That's how you treat this specific mental illness. This weird conservative boomer mentality of arguing with them and telling them they have to be treated as their birth gender is ridiculous. And I get it, piers is this old school "liberal", basically a conservative by modern standards, more "classical liberal" than actually liberal. And yeah.
Does Piers have a point on the most extreme stuff? Yeah. But at the same time, the woke has a much larger point to make regarding inclusivity I think.
Claim #4: Cancel culture is real and a serious threat to free-speech
So...I actually would agree in principle. I admit, it's not the state doing it mostly (although some countries do criminalize "hate speech" and can get rather extreme about what's considered "hate speech", including the UK), but I kinda addressed this in point 2. It's illiberal mob justice. I'd argue the right is a far larger threat to free speech, but the "woke mob" does get out of hand at times. And while I will agree with the left, people refusing to buy products they don't want to buy isn't something we can regulate, I mean, it IS freedom after all, let's face it, the organized campaigns to "cancel" individuals do have an effect that are clearly intended to punish people for certain behavior.
I admit, it's not as bad as like open fascism or whatever, or the trump administration, or the right in general in recent years, it's kind of the implicit coercion of capitalism that they operate through, but still, it is scummy IMO and I like to reserve that only for the worst offenders.
Liberal Claim: Woke politics are a distraction from our common enemy, the billionaire class
And this is where Piers really goes mask off on being a right winger.
So...I agree with the premise. And I've long been a critic of democrats for ignoring class issues to promote "wokeism." And I admit, the conservatives making such a big deal out of culture issues is more important. And Piers generally agreed with it...until the discussion got deeper.
Piers started going on about trans women in sports and how would you feel if your daughter was an olympic athlete who got screwed by a trans woman, because "that's her livelihood." But gee....if we addressed the class politics, it wouldn't matter. As the liberal arguing with him mentioned, that's why we should try to improve the conditions of the working class. But then Piers started going on about how we need meritocracy and shouldnt strive for mediocrity and blah blah blah.
So..we need massive income inequality, and the masses to suffer....because they need to "earn" a living, and we need to inspire people to greatness. It's just unfair if that one person who happens to achieve "greatness" gets it taken away from them over the trans women in sports issue.
This is deranged, completely and utterly deranged. And this is where I'm full on F piers morgan. YOU ARE A CONSERVATIVE! Seriously, this whole debate, he's agreed with the right like 90% of the time, full stop. His idea of liberalism is free speech and rule of law, which guess what, any pre 2016 conservative supports too. Really. the fact that he cares more about some olympic athletes, but not improving the conditions of the entire working class, sickens me. In 2024, we had 592 athletes go to the Olympics. Whereas we got like 150 million people in the labor force right now. Again, only a conservative could have such a messed up set of priorities here.
Even if I am willing to be nuanced and admit that in some cases, Piers might have a point, because let's face it, i aint gonna die on the hill of some 20-80 issue where I'm on the unpopular 20% side of it, and i recognize the other 80% has good points, the fact that he cares more about this than working class issues really shows he deranged this guy is.
And then he starts going on about participation trophies like any conservative boomer. Like, what the hell, man.
Conclusion
I never had a high opinion of Piers Morgan. I mean, he's a CNN commentator, and CNN is a VERY centrist network with a very corporatist version of liberalism. But after this, I really think that Piers is a full blown right winger. He's obsessed with trans issues, culture war nonsense, and he very obviously doesn't give a flying fudge about the working class, which is one of my big purity tests for liberals. Again, remember what I said about how a lot of moderate libs are just ideological conservatives but they round off some of the sharp edges of the ideology a bit. Here, he doesn't even do that. He's some rich celebrity who makes his money by rage baiting lefties and making people fight on his show, and who, when confronted with literal working class issues, shows he doesn't care about the working class.
Again, you're a right winger piers. "Old school liberal" my ###. You literally have more in common with fricking Archie Bunker than you do with me.
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