What’s the far right got against Reich? I didn’t know any Americans beside a handful of occultists, and their readers, were aware he’d existed. It’s perversely encouraging that at least some educated Americans know history goes back before 1960. I specify “educated” Americans because the peasantry, or those derived from same, usually know quite a bit of history passed down through generations. “Well, back then, Mississippi—our part of it, anyways—was real hard for a black man, and Great-Great-Grandpa had heard there was work in Detroit for any man willing to do it, no matter what color he was, so we moved there, and then Great-Grandma met Great-Grandpa and they got married in 1964, and Great-Grandpa got caught in the big riot in 1966 and got hit in the head with a brick, and he never could drive after that so Great-Grandma had to learn to drive, and one day her and your great-aunt Gayla was driving to Sears and got a flat....” and so on. (And now I want to finish the story and find out what happened after they had the flat!)
The eddicated these days seem to live in a temporal vacuum. You can go on leftist sites these days and find many, many memoirs from the PMC—female of the species, usually—in great detail about the parents’ divorce or Mom’s alcoholism or the writer’s first year at college, but very rarely is there any mention of the larger world. It’s as if the typical writer is living her life in a large box whose inside is covered with mirrors. All she can see is herself. In some of these there’s a heartbreaking suspicion that something bigger than Me and my feelings is out there, but almost never do you see something like, “Now, our family had come over from China, so every time we got too absorbed in [problem] we’d have the whole span of Szechuan history to give us perspective, but...”
So if the Far Right has some awareness of history, I hope it spreads. And I hope they gain enough historical knowledge to realize they’re on the wrong track.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2021-04-15 03:28 am (UTC)The eddicated these days seem to live in a temporal vacuum. You can go on leftist sites these days and find many, many memoirs from the PMC—female of the species, usually—in great detail about the parents’ divorce or Mom’s alcoholism or the writer’s first year at college, but very rarely is there any mention of the larger world. It’s as if the typical writer is living her life in a large box whose inside is covered with mirrors. All she can see is herself. In some of these there’s a heartbreaking suspicion that something bigger than Me and my feelings is out there, but almost never do you see something like, “Now, our family had come over from China, so every time we got too absorbed in [problem] we’d have the whole span of Szechuan history to give us perspective, but...”
So if the Far Right has some awareness of history, I hope it spreads. And I hope they gain enough historical knowledge to realize they’re on the wrong track.
—Lady Cutekitten