Camille Paglia Blog on Democrats, Trump, Liberalism

[Kyle 207]

I always enjoy inconoclasts of all stripes. Someone posted this on FB and thought some here might enjoy. She's a true liberal but might trigger many here, so you've been warned.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/camille-paglia-hillary-wants-trump-to-win-again/

Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars. She’s also very keen on the email Q and A format for interviews. So, after reading her new collection of essays, Provocations, The Spectator sent her some questions.

You’ve been a sharp political prognosticator over the years. So can I start by asking for a prediction. What will happen in 2020 in America? Will Hillary Clinton run again?

If the economy continues strong, Trump will be reelected. The Democrats (my party) have been in chaos since the 2016 election and have no coherent message except Trump hatred. Despite the vast pack of potential candidates, no one yet seems to have the edge. I had high hopes for Kamala Harris, but she missed a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role and has already imprinted an image of herself as a ruthless inquisitor that will make it hard for her to pull voters across party lines.

Screechy Elizabeth Warren has never had a snowball’s chance in hell to appeal beyond upper-middle-class professionals of her glossy stripe. Kirsten Gillibrand is a wobbly mediocrity. Cory Booker has all the gravitas of a cork. Andrew Cuomo is a yapping puppy with a long, muddy bullyboy tail. Both Bernie Sanders (for whom I voted in the 2016 primaries) and Joe Biden (who would have won the election had Obama not cut him off at the knees) are way too old and creaky.

To win in the nation’s broad midsection, the Democratic nominee will need to project steadiness, substance, and warmth. I’ve been looking at Congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois and Governor Steve Bullock of Montana. As for Hillary, she’s pretty much damaged goods, but her perpetual, sniping, pity-me tour shows no signs of abating. She still has a rabidly loyal following, but it’s hard to imagine her winning the nomination again, with her iron grip on the Democratic National Committee now gone. Still, it’s in her best interest to keep the speculation fires burning. Given how thoroughly she has already sabotaged the rising candidates by hogging the media spotlight, I suspect she wants Trump to win again. I don’t see our stumbling, hacking, shop-worn Evita yielding the spotlight willingly to any younger gal.

Has Trump governed erratically?

Yes, that’s a fair description. It’s partly because as a non-politician he arrived in Washington without the battalion of allies, advisors, and party flacks that a senator or governor would normally accumulate on the long road to the White House. Trump’s administration is basically a one-man operation, with him relying on gut instinct and sometimes madcap improvisation. There’s often a gonzo humour to it — not that the US president should be slinging barbs at bottom-feeding celebrities or jackass journalists, much as they may deserve it. It’s like a picaresque novel starring a jaunty rogue who takes to Twitter like Tristram Shandy’s asterisk-strewn diary. Trump’s unpredictability might be giving the nation jitters, but it may have put North Korea, at least, on the back foot.

Most Democrats have wildly underestimated Trump from the get-go. I was certainly surprised at how easily he mowed down 17 other candidates in the GOP primaries. He represents widespread popular dissatisfaction with politics as usual. Both major US parties are in turmoil and metamorphosis, as their various factions war and realign. The mainstream media’s nonstop assault on Trump has certainly backfired by cementing his outsider status. He is basically a pragmatic deal-maker, indifferent to ideology. As with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump rose because of decades of failure by the political establishment to address urgent systemic problems, including corruption at high levels. Democrats must hammer out their own image and agenda and stop self-destructively insulting half the electorate by treating Trump like Satan.

Does the ‘deep state’ exist? If so, what is it?

The deep state is no myth but a sodden, intertwined mass of bloated, self-replicating bureaucracy that constitutes the real power in Washington and that stubbornly outlasts every administration. As government programs have incrementally multiplied, so has their regulatory apparatus, with its intrusive byzantine minutiae. Recently tagged as a source of anti-Trump conspiracy among embedded Democrats, the deep state is probably equally populated by Republicans and apolitical functionaries of Bartleby the Scrivener blandness. Its spreading sclerotic mass is wasteful, redundant, and ultimately tyrannical.

I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realise how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal. A persistent characteristic of civilisations in decline throughout history has been their self-strangling by slow, swollen, and stupid bureaucracies. The current atrocity of crippling student debt in the US is a direct product of an unholy alliance between college administrations and federal bureaucrats — a scandal that ballooned over two decades with barely a word of protest from our putative academic leftists, lost in their post-structuralist fantasies. Political correctness was not created by administrators, but it is ever-expanding campus bureaucracies that have constructed and currently enforce the oppressively rule-ridden regime of college life.

In the modern world, so wondrously but perilously interconnected, a principle of periodic reduction of bureaucracy should be built into every social organism. Freedom cannot survive otherwise.

What is true multiculturalism?

As I repeatedly argue in Provocations, comparative religion is the true multiculturalism and should be installed as the core curriculum in every undergraduate program. From my perspective as an atheist as well as a career college teacher, secular humanism has been a disastrous failure. Too many young people raised in affluent liberal homes are arriving at elite colleges and universities with skittish, unformed personalities and shockingly narrow views of human existence, confined to inflammatory and divisive identity politics.

Interest in Hinduism and Buddhism was everywhere in the 1960s counterculture, but it gradually dissipated partly because those most drawn to ‘cosmic consciousness’ either disabled themselves by excess drug use or shunned the academic ladder of graduate school. I contend that every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts, rituals, and symbol systems of the great world religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam — and that true global understanding is impossible without such knowledge.

Not least, the juxtaposition of historically evolving spiritual codes tutors the young in ethical reasoning and the creation of meaning. Right now, the campus religion remains nihilist, meaning-destroying post-structuralism, whose pilfering god, the one-note Foucault, had near-zero scholarly knowledge of anything before or beyond the European Enlightenment. (His sparse writing on classical antiquity is risible.) Out with the false idols and in with the true!

There’s a lot of buzz about the ‘intellectual dark web’. One of its leading figures is Jordan Peterson, who is in some ways like you — he provokes, he works in an array of disciplines, he encourages individual responsibility. I saw your podcast with him. What did you make of him? Why is he so popular?

There are astounding parallels between Jordan Peterson’s work and mine. In its anti-ideological, trans-historical view of sex and nature, my first book, Sexual Personae (1990), can be viewed as a companion to Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999). Peterson and I took different routes up the mountain — he via clinical psychology and I via literature and art — but we arrived at exactly the same place. Amazingly, over our decades of copious research, we were drawn to the same book by the same thinker — The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949), by the Jungian analyst Erich Neumann. (My 2005 lecture on Neumann at New York University is reprinted in Provocations.) Peterson’s immense international popularity demonstrates the hunger for meaning among young people today. Defrauded of a genuine humanistic education, they are recognising the spiritual impoverishment of their crudely politicised culture, choked with jargon, propaganda, and lies.

I met Peterson and his wife Tammy a year ago when they flew to Philadelphia with a Toronto camera crew for our private dialogue at the University of the Arts. (The YouTube video has had to date over a million and a half views.) Peterson was incontrovertibly one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered, starting with the British philosopher Stuart Hampshire, whom I heard speak impromptu for a dazzling hour after a lecture in college. In turning psychosocial discourse back toward the syncretistic, multicultural Jung, Peterson is recovering and restoring a peak period in North American thought, when Canada was renowned for pioneering, speculative thinkers like the media analyst Marshall McLuhan and the myth critic Northrop Frye. I have yet to see a single profile of Peterson, even from sympathetic journalists, that accurately portrays the vast scope, tenor, and importance of his work.

Is humanity losing its sense of humour?

As a bumptious adolescent in upstate New York, I stumbled on a British collection of Oscar Wilde’s epigrams in a secondhand bookstore. It was an electrifying revelation, a text that I studied like the bible. What bold, scathing wit, cutting through the sentimental fog of those still rigidly conformist early 1960s, when good girls were expected to simper and defer.

But I never fully understood Wilde’s caustic satire of Victorian philanthropists and humanitarians until the present sludgy tide of political correctness began flooding government, education, and media over the past two decades. Wilde saw the insufferable arrogance and preening sanctimony in his era’s self-appointed guardians of morality.

We’re back to the hypocrisy sweepstakes, where gestures of virtue are as formalised as kabuki. Humour has been assassinated. An off word at work or school will get you booted to the gallows. This is the graveyard of liberalism, whose once noble ideals have turned spectral and vampiric.

[Degenerate Gardner 4,085]

I appreciate your efforts to assure a balanced diet.  The right has been gorging on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fearmongering outrage for weeks now; time to mix in a little Camille.

[Fozzz 152]

Kyle, Jordan's Peterson analysis of Frozen is essential listening.  This is right in your wheelhouse.  

 

 

[G650 14,263]

26 minutes ago, Kyle said:

I always enjoy inconoclasts of all stripes. Someone posted this on FB and thought some here might enjoy. She's a true liberal but might trigger many here, so you've been warned.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/camille-paglia-hillary-wants-trump-to-win-again/

Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars. She’s also very keen on the email Q and A format for interviews. So, after reading her new collection of essays, Provocations, The Spectator sent her some questions.

You’ve been a sharp political prognosticator over the years. So can I start by asking for a prediction. What will happen in 2020 in America? Will Hillary Clinton run again?

If the economy continues strong, Trump will be reelected. The Democrats (my party) have been in chaos since the 2016 election and have no coherent message except Trump hatred. Despite the vast pack of potential candidates, no one yet seems to have the edge. I had high hopes for Kamala Harris, but she missed a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role and has already imprinted an image of herself as a ruthless inquisitor that will make it hard for her to pull voters across party lines.

Screechy Elizabeth Warren has never had a snowball’s chance in hell to appeal beyond upper-middle-class professionals of her glossy stripe. Kirsten Gillibrand is a wobbly mediocrity. Cory Booker has all the gravitas of a cork. Andrew Cuomo is a yapping puppy with a long, muddy bullyboy tail. Both Bernie Sanders (for whom I voted in the 2016 primaries) and Joe Biden (who would have won the election had Obama not cut him off at the knees) are way too old and creaky.

To win in the nation’s broad midsection, the Democratic nominee will need to project steadiness, substance, and warmth. I’ve been looking at Congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois and Governor Steve Bullock of Montana. As for Hillary, she’s pretty much damaged goods, but her perpetual, sniping, pity-me tour shows no signs of abating. She still has a rabidly loyal following, but it’s hard to imagine her winning the nomination again, with her iron grip on the Democratic National Committee now gone. Still, it’s in her best interest to keep the speculation fires burning. Given how thoroughly she has already sabotaged the rising candidates by hogging the media spotlight, I suspect she wants Trump to win again. I don’t see our stumbling, hacking, shop-worn Evita yielding the spotlight willingly to any younger gal.

Has Trump governed erratically?

Yes, that’s a fair description. It’s partly because as a non-politician he arrived in Washington without the battalion of allies, advisors, and party flacks that a senator or governor would normally accumulate on the long road to the White House. Trump’s administration is basically a one-man operation, with him relying on gut instinct and sometimes madcap improvisation. There’s often a gonzo humour to it — not that the US president should be slinging barbs at bottom-feeding celebrities or jackass journalists, much as they may deserve it. It’s like a picaresque novel starring a jaunty rogue who takes to Twitter like Tristram Shandy’s asterisk-strewn diary. Trump’s unpredictability might be giving the nation jitters, but it may have put North Korea, at least, on the back foot.

Most Democrats have wildly underestimated Trump from the get-go. I was certainly surprised at how easily he mowed down 17 other candidates in the GOP primaries. He represents widespread popular dissatisfaction with politics as usual. Both major US parties are in turmoil and metamorphosis, as their various factions war and realign. The mainstream media’s nonstop assault on Trump has certainly backfired by cementing his outsider status. He is basically a pragmatic deal-maker, indifferent to ideology. As with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump rose because of decades of failure by the political establishment to address urgent systemic problems, including corruption at high levels. Democrats must hammer out their own image and agenda and stop self-destructively insulting half the electorate by treating Trump like Satan.

Does the ‘deep state’ exist? If so, what is it?

The deep state is no myth but a sodden, intertwined mass of bloated, self-replicating bureaucracy that constitutes the real power in Washington and that stubbornly outlasts every administration. As government programs have incrementally multiplied, so has their regulatory apparatus, with its intrusive byzantine minutiae. Recently tagged as a source of anti-Trump conspiracy among embedded Democrats, the deep state is probably equally populated by Republicans and apolitical functionaries of Bartleby the Scrivener blandness. Its spreading sclerotic mass is wasteful, redundant, and ultimately tyrannical.

I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realise how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal. A persistent characteristic of civilisations in decline throughout history has been their self-strangling by slow, swollen, and stupid bureaucracies. The current atrocity of crippling student debt in the US is a direct product of an unholy alliance between college administrations and federal bureaucrats — a scandal that ballooned over two decades with barely a word of protest from our putative academic leftists, lost in their post-structuralist fantasies. Political correctness was not created by administrators, but it is ever-expanding campus bureaucracies that have constructed and currently enforce the oppressively rule-ridden regime of college life.

In the modern world, so wondrously but perilously interconnected, a principle of periodic reduction of bureaucracy should be built into every social organism. Freedom cannot survive otherwise.

What is true multiculturalism?

As I repeatedly argue in Provocations, comparative religion is the true multiculturalism and should be installed as the core curriculum in every undergraduate program. From my perspective as an atheist as well as a career college teacher, secular humanism has been a disastrous failure. Too many young people raised in affluent liberal homes are arriving at elite colleges and universities with skittish, unformed personalities and shockingly narrow views of human existence, confined to inflammatory and divisive identity politics.

Interest in Hinduism and Buddhism was everywhere in the 1960s counterculture, but it gradually dissipated partly because those most drawn to ‘cosmic consciousness’ either disabled themselves by excess drug use or shunned the academic ladder of graduate school. I contend that every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts, rituals, and symbol systems of the great world religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam — and that true global understanding is impossible without such knowledge.

Not least, the juxtaposition of historically evolving spiritual codes tutors the young in ethical reasoning and the creation of meaning. Right now, the campus religion remains nihilist, meaning-destroying post-structuralism, whose pilfering god, the one-note Foucault, had near-zero scholarly knowledge of anything before or beyond the European Enlightenment. (His sparse writing on classical antiquity is risible.) Out with the false idols and in with the true!

There’s a lot of buzz about the ‘intellectual dark web’. One of its leading figures is Jordan Peterson, who is in some ways like you — he provokes, he works in an array of disciplines, he encourages individual responsibility. I saw your podcast with him. What did you make of him? Why is he so popular?

There are astounding parallels between Jordan Peterson’s work and mine. In its anti-ideological, trans-historical view of sex and nature, my first book, Sexual Personae (1990), can be viewed as a companion to Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999). Peterson and I took different routes up the mountain — he via clinical psychology and I via literature and art — but we arrived at exactly the same place. Amazingly, over our decades of copious research, we were drawn to the same book by the same thinker — The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949), by the Jungian analyst Erich Neumann. (My 2005 lecture on Neumann at New York University is reprinted in Provocations.) Peterson’s immense international popularity demonstrates the hunger for meaning among young people today. Defrauded of a genuine humanistic education, they are recognising the spiritual impoverishment of their crudely politicised culture, choked with jargon, propaganda, and lies.

I met Peterson and his wife Tammy a year ago when they flew to Philadelphia with a Toronto camera crew for our private dialogue at the University of the Arts. (The YouTube video has had to date over a million and a half views.) Peterson was incontrovertibly one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered, starting with the British philosopher Stuart Hampshire, whom I heard speak impromptu for a dazzling hour after a lecture in college. In turning psychosocial discourse back toward the syncretistic, multicultural Jung, Peterson is recovering and restoring a peak period in North American thought, when Canada was renowned for pioneering, speculative thinkers like the media analyst Marshall McLuhan and the myth critic Northrop Frye. I have yet to see a single profile of Peterson, even from sympathetic journalists, that accurately portrays the vast scope, tenor, and importance of his work.

Is humanity losing its sense of humour?

As a bumptious adolescent in upstate New York, I stumbled on a British collection of Oscar Wilde’s epigrams in a secondhand bookstore. It was an electrifying revelation, a text that I studied like the bible. What bold, scathing wit, cutting through the sentimental fog of those still rigidly conformist early 1960s, when good girls were expected to simper and defer.

But I never fully understood Wilde’s caustic satire of Victorian philanthropists and humanitarians until the present sludgy tide of political correctness began flooding government, education, and media over the past two decades. Wilde saw the insufferable arrogance and preening sanctimony in his era’s self-appointed guardians of morality.

We’re back to the hypocrisy sweepstakes, where gestures of virtue are as formalised as kabuki. Humour has been assassinated. An off word at work or school will get you booted to the gallows. This is the graveyard of liberalism, whose once noble ideals have turned spectral and vampiric.

Lol.

[bad_teammate 13,197]

39 minutes ago, Kyle said:

I always enjoy inconoclasts of all stripes. Someone posted this on FB and thought some here might enjoy. She's a true liberal but might trigger many here, so you've been warned.

oh man this old lady said a bunch of anodyne things i bet the libs will get SUPER triggered now!

[HenryJames 66,077]

She's a classical liberal!

[Dahobbs 17,543]

Kyle is really dumb. And still avoiding responding with any substantive point in the caravan thread. 

[Blotto 23,523]

I bet Camille reaaaaaally likes to sniff her own farts.

[Pescado_Rojo 19,416]

I stopped reading at Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars.

[Fozzz 152]

I feel a little bad for Camille.  She's been plugging away for decades saying basically the same shit Jordan Peterson says and yet Jordan has a much larger following than her even though he's a relative newcomer to the scene.  Hopefully she gets her due.  

[David Dennison 18,860]

Jordan Peterson's fifteen minutes expired a couple of months ago.

[Storm the Field 5,294]

Quote

The Democrats (my party) have been in chaos since the 2016 election and have no coherent message except Trump hatred.

Yep, that mid-term election was a real ass-whoopin for the Dems.

Paglia's entire article ignores recent history and appears to be premised on her completely unsupported belief that Trump is significantly more popular than any and all evidence would indicate.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Storm the Field

[Kyle 207]

1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

Kyle is really dumb. And still avoiding responding with any substantive point in the caravan thread. 

Pos Rep. This is one of my favorite posts of the month.

[RollLeft 5,045]

 

 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,472]

 

 

Edited December 7, 2018 by Bozo_Casanova

[High Plains Drifter 11,050]

 

1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I stopped reading at Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars.

 

Too bad. Agree or disagree, its a pretty good screed.

[Js1 85,348]

[TornACL 7,698]

FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: True Liberal Blasts Democrat Party!! MUST READ

 

Thanks, Uncle Gary.

[TornACL 7,698]

If you like over the top adjectives sprinkled atop piles of pseudo-intellectual nonsense, that "screed" is right up your alley.

[ChuckNorrisActionJeans 2,678]

Love the self-loathing "feminists" like Paglia.  Obvious contrarian is obvious.

"Screechy Elizabeth Warren," huh?  What precisely is screechy about her? Her voice? Volume of speaking? Her gender, maybe?

[RollLeft 5,045]

2 hours ago, Fozzz said:

I feel a little bad for Camille.  She's been plugging away for decades saying basically the same shit Jordan Peterson says and yet Jordan has a much larger following than her even though he's a relative newcomer to the scene.  Hopefully she gets her due.  

For her to get her due means many people, in her own words "her party", have to eat crow.  So, no she hasn't and will likely not get her due because the same people who have tried to challenge Peterson often are the same people who want her to shut up.  It's a shame.   

Edited December 7, 2018 by RollLeft

[David Dennison 18,860]

1 minute ago, RollLeft said:

For her to get her due means many people, in her own words "her party", have to acknowledge eat crow.  So, no she hasn't and will likely not get her due because the same people who have tried to challenge Peterson often are the same people who want her to shut up.  It's a shame.   

It's easy to challenge Peterson. He's made to look foolish quite often.

[Brisketexan 105,151]

25 minutes ago, TornACL said:

If you like over the top adjectives sprinkled atop piles of pseudo-intellectual nonsense, that "screed" is right up your alley.

That's her schtick, and it has been for decades.  I've never particularly enjoyed or learned a lot from any of her screeds, and I've read stuff from her since the 80s.  She's a self-described Susan Sontag wannabe who then turned on Sontag, but the point being, she molded herself on what she thought Sontag was.

And in case it needs repeating:

The novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap.

[High Plains Drifter 11,050]

I didn't say I learned anything from it, or that I agreed or disagreed with it. I said I enjoyed it.

Sue me.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,472]

It's easy to challenge Peterson. He's made to look foolish quite often.

Peterson is a smart enough guy, he’s just out of his league when he argues with experts outside the areas of his expertise, like when Sam Harris ventures away from the human mind or Ben Shapiro ventures out of his parent’s basement.

[Brisketexan 105,151]

1 minute ago, High Plains Drifter said:

I didn't say I learned anything from it, or that I agreed or disagreed with it. I said I enjoyed it.

Sue me.

There are men out there who enjoy hammering nails through their scrotum.  You do you.

Just don't expect the rest of us to pick up a hammer and join you.

[Brisketexan 105,151]

2 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

or Ben Shapiro ventures out of his parent’s basement.

That Ben Shapiro is considered "an intellectual" by anyone in 2018 America is perhaps the most certain indicator that our society is not long for this world.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Among the grifter class, Ben Shapiro is an intellectual god.

[High Plains Drifter 11,050]

5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

There are men out there who enjoy hammering nails through their scrotum.  You do you.

Just don't expect the rest of us to pick up a hammer and join you.

Come on, its just a page long. You might get an actual chuckle out of, grandpa.

[Brisketexan 105,151]

I skimmed it.  She's still Camille.

[MidTexHorn 822]

I've always enjoyed Camille's shtick. She usually provides 5 minutes of overly intellectual masturbatory but entertaining reading, at least one thing I completely agree with and at least several that I completely disagree with. What's not to like?

[Brisketexan 105,151]

26 minutes ago, MidTexHorn said:

I've always enjoyed Camille's shtick. She usually provides 5 minutes of overly intellectual masturbatory but entertaining reading, at least one thing I completely agree with and at least several that I completely disagree with. What's not to like?

She never does so while being young, attractive, and naked.

You asked.

[MidTexHorn 822]

19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

She never does so while being young, attractive, and naked.

You asked.

Fair enough, although I might have to hate you now for making me think of Camille and naked at the same time.

[tantric superman 4,667]

4 hours ago, Kyle said:

She's a true liberal

Nope.  Never been one.

 

3 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Jordan Peterson's fifteen minutes expired a couple of months ago.

Yeah, but that sexy Canadian accent? 

Timeless.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Camille is a hack twat.

No one gets off on the sound of their own voice or the smell of their own farts more than her.

[Mole 4,333]

1 hour ago, MidTexHorn said:

I've always enjoyed Camille's shtick. She usually provides 5 minutes of overly intellectual masturbatory but entertaining reading, at least one thing I completely agree with and at least several that I completely disagree with. What's not to like?

This is a pretty fair assessment. I agree with her view of multiculturalism and the problems and unintended consequences of our attempts to secularize society. I also agree with her assessment that most people talking about Peterson (“both sides”) don’t really grasp what he’s saying. Her view of his intellectual prowess is extremely overstated, but he’s definately smarter than most of the garbage we run across in public discourse.

 A lot of the rest just seems like literary masturbation.

I’d rather talk about her and her writing than the context of the OP’s framing of the article, but it seems that we all need something to rage against.

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

She's a great stylist -- impressive vocabulary and well-constructed sentences -- but yeah, there's not a whole lot of oomph behind her ideas. 

[Pescado_Rojo 19,416]

39 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

She's a great stylist -- impressive vocabulary and well-constructed sentences -- but yeah, there's not a whole lot of oomph behind her ideas. 

[Kyle 207]

3 hours ago, Mole said:

This is a pretty fair assessment. I agree with her view of multiculturalism and the problems and unintended consequences of our attempts to secularize society. I also agree with her assessment that most people talking about Peterson (“both sides”) don’t really grasp what he’s saying. Her view of his intellectual prowess is extremely overstated, but he’s definately smarter than most of the garbage we run across in public discourse.

 A lot of the rest just seems like literary masturbation.

I’d rather talk about her and her writing than the context of the OP’s framing of the article, but it seems that we all need something to rage against.

I naively thought it might stimulate a conversation, but I forget surly fueled by ad homs and faux outrage. The sexism seeping out of the closest was an unexpected twist I must admit.

[Js1 85,348]

[Dahobbs 17,543]

5 hours ago, Kyle said:

I naively thought it might stimulate a conversation, but I forget surly fueled by ad homs and faux outrage. The sexism seeping out of the closest was an unexpected twist I must admit.

Pick something that isn't so profoundly uninteresting next time. 

[Kyle 207]

If you'll send me your address, I'll send you a 8 x 10 glossy with signature. I'm prepping one for Felix so no trouble to add another.

[Asithappens 974]

On 12/7/2018 at 9:49 AM, Kyle said:

If the economy continues strong, Trump will be reelected.

She's pretty good at pseudo-analytics, but she's bat shyte wrong here, imo.

Baffle us with your bullshit all you want, Cam, but in the end your opinion isn't that much better than most others.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,472]

I naively thought it might stimulate a conversation, but I forget surly fueled by ad homs and faux outrage. The sexism seeping out of the closest was an unexpected twist I must admit.

Yawn

[LongestHorn 759]

I was first exposed to Camille in Esquire 1991 issue.  

It started with this.

For every woman who gets murdered, three men do. Where are the shelters for domestically battered men? Boys and men get molested and raped, but where’s their tax-funded crisis line? Counseling? A national campaign to combat violence against men? And why isn’t she required to serve in the front lines?

With these murmurs stirring, how long can it be before they start putting it all together and asking, “Why doesn’t this society consider my life as valuable as the life of a woman? Why is it still ‘women and children first’? Why are men still expected to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and go down with the ship?

“And does it make sense that nothing she can say or do to me is unfair because I am stereotyped as possessing power and she calls herself an oppressed minority? Why is biology my destiny but not hers? Hey. I’m a victim, too. I never killed an Indian or owned a slave. You’ve got me confused with somebody dead. I, myself, never raped anyone or paid a woman less for the same job. It wasn’t me. It’s not my fault. Get off my back.”

Obviously this kind of thinking could be trouble. Men still form the most influential lobbies, and if they start torching their jockstraps and talking back nasty, blaming them won’t work anymore. It would be a fearful thing to confront our own tactics in this angry mirror.

[cactusflinthead 27,598]

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/camille-paglia-i-dont-get-along-with-lesbians-at-all-they-dont-like-me-and-i-dont-like-them-8076611.html

Those psychedelics she avoided might have done her some good. Mostly seems like a bitter 60 something that never got enough sex or fun.

Yep, she's a barrel of laughs. 

Edited December 9, 2018 by cactusflinthead

[EMAWesome 101]

I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realise how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal.

 

This part is comprehended by the left almost to the level your dog comprehends Neil Bohr's diagram of the atom.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,472]

imgur