The Left Ruins Everything It Touches.
That's quite the charge. Let's look at the three things this article is characterizing as 'everything'.
Art.
Now, I'll be the first to tell you I have little use for modern art, politicized or not. I've written of that disdain here. I'm going to once again quote John Michael Greer, because this is oh so true for me:
Any art form has a certain amount of notional space to it, and each work done in that space fills up part of it. Before you’ve filled up the space, innovation works more often than not, but after the space is full, innovation just generates noise. That’s why the history of every art gets sorted out into a period of exploration, when you succeed by trying new things, and a period of performance, when you succeed by doing old things very, very well. If you keep on trying to innovate when the notional space is full, the results are either going to be derivative or unbearable, and either way they’re not going to be any good, because the good options have already been taken. (The Archdruid Report, July 6, 2016)
Note: "for me". While part of me will probably forever remain convinced that there is no artistic value in things like this, and further that anyone who can find artistic value in things like this is really just trying to tell you how smart they are and how stupid you are...I've been known to be wrong. Often, in fact. I'm a male AND a husband...being wrong kind of goes with the territory. And I don't actually know much about modern art, which makes my judging it perhaps a tad hypocritical.
I DO know a little something about modern art MUSIC...and (sigh) I find much of it, per Greer above, unbearable. Classical music post-about 1950 has splintered into a multiplicity of different schools, and the one thing most of those schools have in common is that they've broken with the most basic elements of 'traditional' music like melody. (Yes, yes, I know, any three notes can be a melody, but ...ugh....)
Or how about minimalism? Try this on for size.
The thing is, atonal music is still music. Reich's 'clapping music' is still music (and an absolute beast to perform). Something like the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is distinctly unpleasant to listen to, but then, atomic bombs are distinctly unpleasant.
Maybe even silence can contain music of a kind...
The more I listen to modern music (certain schools of it, at any rate), the more I can...almost...appreciate it. Actually, there are more than a few pieces I really like. Like the Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a listen just to marvel at how much abuse a piano can take--and I'd strongly encourage you to stick with it). Or there's Suicide In An Airplane, which actually does sound like suicide in an airplane.
So, given all this, I shouldn't dismiss modern art out of hand. If art speaks to the viewer, it's art. What it has to say may not be pretty. So what?
The politicization of art--hell, that's been a thing as long as there's been art to politicize. I'm positive that Lascaux Cave Art had its factions of critics. But what, exactly, is "leftist" art? The National Review cites this example:
Last year, New York City’s famed Guggenheim Museum featured an all-gold toilet bowl into which visitors were invited to relieve themselves. As the exhibit was titled “America,” one could then literally urinate and defecate on America. Why not?
This, of course is a blasphemy against the patriotic correctness of the Right, every bit as much as, say, Roseanne Barr is an affront to the political correctness of the Left. It's also rather prescient of Trump's "shithole countries" remark -- the dark and infuriating irony being that America really IS a shithole country. (Don't believe me? How else would you characterize a country that separates children from their parents and holds them in concentration camps?)
(Jesus, I scoffed that it couldn't possibly get this bad. They're just getting started.)
Point being, yeah, I could take a shit all OVER America just lately. And so that art has something to say, and it says it unmistakably. And rather than criticize things like those concentration camps, they criticize the art. Talk about missing the point.
___________________
Boy Scouts are another thing the Left has "ruined". Guess how they did it? By including girls.
Wow. Toxic female cooties all over the Scouts, how horribly inclusive.
They said marriage was ruined when the gays got the right to marry. Now they're saying Scouts is ruined because girls who want to learn the same skills the Boy Scouts learn can do so. Any time some unwanted class of person is (gasp) included, that's "ruination".
Thanks to the Left, the Boy Scouts, one of the most socially and morally constructive organizations in America, is no longer the Boy Scouts.
Nope. It's just the Scouts, open to all, every bit as 'socially and morally constructive' (I guess -- whose morals?) as it ever was, just including those uppity females. Wouldn't right wing women -- I know they exist, Sarah Palin is a thing -- welcome the chance to get in on this moral construction?
Finally, Miss America. (I miss America, too.) No more swimsuits. The horror. The horror.
This really makes me think P!nk. The Miss America pageant is now about the "hopes and aspirations" of the contestants. Hallelujah. Maybe from now on we can be spared cringeworthy displays like this one.
THE STUPID IT BURNS IT BURNS GET IT OFF ME
I really need to deconstruct this point by point.
Feminists hate the fact that “society” places greater importance on female beauty than on male beauty. They blame this is on “sexism,” “misogyny,” and “patriarchy.” But of course, it is nature that made humans this way (among peacocks, it’s the other way around).
Let's flip our society around and make it matriarchal. While I have no doubt Mr. Muscles O' Greasestain would feature prominently, I highly doubt his twelve-pack would be demanded of all men by most women, the way most men demand all women to be thin. And by the bye, National Review, thanks for calling me unnatural. Feels good.
I don't know how many times I've said it, but I'm going to keep saying it:
Think of the best Christmas present you ever got in your life. Something that made you cry, you loved it so much. Got a picture of that thing in your mind? Yes? Okay. What was it wrapped in?
Don't remember? Don't care? That's how I feel about bodies. -- Ken Breadner
That's female bodies to be clear: but I know that if I were gay, it'd be the same thing with male bodies. There is SO much more to a person than their skin and hair colour, you know?
In particular, feminists hate it when women try to look sexy, especially in the eyes of men.
Maybe some of them. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with looking sexy. The problem comes when one person looks at another and reduces them to a body. And that's what things like the Miss America pageant seem to do: many of these contestants aren't here because of their brains.
One of the Left’s favorite terms to describe the Miss America swimsuit competition (and even the evening gown competition) is “dehumanizing.” In a long article on the Miss America decision, the New York Times quoted Julie Zeilinger, who founded “a feminist blog called FBomb”: “in 2018 this organization has realized it’s dehumanizing to compare and judge women’s bodies in front of a vast, international audience. This feminist charge is ubiquitous but never explained. Why is it dehumanizing?
"Would you look at the tits on her!"
THAT'S WHY. And don't tell my that bikinis don't encourage just that. These women aren't being judged on anything other than their qualifications as meat. And scanty meat at that, since you pretty much have to be a size negative one to have a hope of winning.
One irony is feminists have argued for decades that women should be allowed to walk around topless, just as men can.
In an ideal world, they should be. Such a world actually exists in this one. Not surprisingly, it's in Europe, where the naked human form isn't automatically sexualized. Don't tell me it's human nature when people in Berlin routinely get naked for their lunch hours.
Another irony is that when non-Muslims argue that Muslim women wearing a chador is dehumanizing, the Left charges them with intolerance and Islamophobia.
Humph. I've seen people from all over the political spectrum arguing both sides of this one. My take: if the woman CHOOSES to wear a chador/hijab (and many do), we should not question her choice of clothing. If it is chosen FOR her, then she has (and we have) a problem.
A third irony is women are as interested in seeing beautiful women in swimsuits as men are.
And how many of those women leer? Catcall? Mime (or commit) sexual assault? I'll wait.
It's quite frightening how so many people on the Right don't get it. Don't even know what's to get. They think Colin Kaepernick was protesting the anthem or the flag by taking a knee--not the scores and scores of young black men gunned down for the heinous crime of being high in melanin. They think young people refusing to listen to hatred is some kind of attack on free speech. And they think that girls in Scouts is some kind of abomination.
The Left ruins everything it touches? Hey, sign me up.
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