The Sentimentality of the Left Wing… Lately.

as a thought experiment I think it's
often really useful to challenge your own political views and your own social values that you may not think of as political but that really are implicitly political positions it's important to challenge your political views and assumptions by imagining whether or not you would find them plausible whether or not you would find them appealing if they were being preached by some other political party some other political party you don't sympathize with so I'm gonna get right to the point I'm gonna flesh this out with examples right away you're all gonna know what I'm talking about but guys I feel I have to put in a kind of trigger warning or disclaimer here that should be easier than ever for you to follow if you do not want to hear real talk that involves adult themes my personal life private experience and sexuality I have a separate channel I'll put the link in the description called active research and foreign opinion and that you only get the most serious and respectable content that I do whether that's on history politics philosophy linguistics or having you don't get anything about my autobiographical personal life sexuality or what-have-you so guys if you don't want to hear it you don't want to hear it so this is a kind of meme that I've seen again and again especially in the last five years I showed my girlfriend this a vegan activist had a photograph of herself posted to the internet naked two women together both of them naked and of course the first thing she's declaring below this nude photograph of two young women in the prime of their lives naked sorry that's worth mentioning you could be 80 years old and be a vegan activists you could be 80 years old and be boasting yourself naked on the Internet but no it's not what it says here and the first thing she's saying is this again this kind of left-wing meme that images of naked women aren't sexy and her wording was except when she chooses to sexualize them that her own body and her own naked body her own nudity in public isn't sexual except when she wants it to be that was her phrasing so I've seen this you know again and again it different for a different kind of angles and approaches to this I have never seen a man say this once I've never seen a gay man say that he's posting like a gay man who works out of the gym and let's say gay man who pays to get all his hair waxed you know so he says a hairless chasten visi I've never seen a gay man post sexy pictures of himself and and say hey this isn't sexy if you think this is sexy there's something wrong with you because you are sexualizing it and that it's it's up to him when not just his image but his real body so here's but here's my point there's nothing left wing about that position it's actually quite conceivable that a kind of conservative Catholic right winger could take the position there's nothing sexy about the naked body that many religions around the world have some traditions you have to do history of religion a bit where denuding yourself is associated with humility with even you know being humbled being humiliated and formal religious ritual in fact we adhere in Canada anti-war protests I remember these especially during World War one where protestors who were conservative richest religious fundamentalists would march in the nude and even in the Canadian summer that's pretty mortifying but any anything other than the hottest day of the year marching nude in Canada an even fall or spring or something that they did these protests naked and as you can imagine this was especially challenging to the police like the police don't really want to tackle you or you know arrest you or something if you're if you she said it caused a great deal of consternation of studies nude protest marches this this kind of approach to human sexuality what would that seem convincing to you if it were coming from a right-wing source instead of a left-wing source and either the the various sects negative attitudes you know that I now see on the left wing any of them could be transposed to their side and if so what is it that is again I use the word before what is it that's even plausible about this to you most of you already know this about me I grew up going to nudist colonies my whole childhood so I had a lot of experience being around naked people growing up now there are advantages and disadvantages to raising your kids going to nudist colonies and just disclaimer in Canada that is not normal Germany a very large percentage of people go to nude beaches or formally nudists or natural ists or Natura some of this quite common in Germany differs within within Europe from country to country um Canada is part of the British Empire and is definitely more conservative about nudity then say Australia we also as mentioned don't really have the climate for being naked but you know when I was changing clothes for gym class you know or something in primary school you know it didn't freak me out being you know naked in the change room and of course some boys were its employees were really kind of screwed up about taking off their clothes so there were some there were some advantages to that Justin was it being comfortable with and used to being around naked people so I already told Melissa this story because for me at age forty this was really striking I had a day I'm certain I was either walking to the gym or I was walking from the gym to buy groceries completely banal and you know I was really consumed with a lot of negative thoughts just stuff I'm stressed out about so you know probably talking to my lawyer or you know studying Chinese but I remembered he's being completely consumed in negative thoughts that wasn't really you know you're looking ahead of you on the street but kind of a lot to think about it a lot in my mind and in the cold of the Victoria winter it's not that cold here but it's pretty cool I didn't notice until it was right up next to the woman I passed a young woman in the prime of her life who was basically topless which by the way is legal in Canada that's a right very very few women practice so she was actually wearing a completely sheer sheer as the word used a completely translucent top and she was again it's actually pretty cold here she was wearing uh like a parka but she was intentionally walking with a bucket wide open this is very strange and jarring for a number of reasons she wasn't um she didn't look all dressed up like as if she was at a she was at a nightclub or something and I remember I said to Melissa like this is so shocking to me partly because I feel I shouldn't be shocked and you know again maybe it would have been less shocking if I kind of seen her coming or something but I wasn't really paying attention I was thinking all these Nathan's mine then all of a sudden there I am really face to face with frankly a half naked woman and again she didn't she didn't seem to want the attention or anything she wasn't you know she was just walking on the street I have no idea where she was coming from her going to it was really puzzling so if she was even dressed up like you just been going to a nightclub or going to a fashion shoot or something like I would kind of get it but broad daylight yes nobody even so like you know you you might be able to imagine some scenario yeah it was it was very strange yeah and it's in it's winter and it's what you yeah right and what we just well in Canada you have legal right to in Canada you have the right to the woman can be topless in any situation where a man can be topless again it's gender equality so if you have a restaurant where the dress cody's everyone has to wear a shirt every wants to wear a shirt if you have a swimming pool where nobody has to wear a shirt nobody else was sure that's that's the wrong Canada's is of gender equality that way anyone we just had another really peculiar episode that were you know Melissa wasn't me she really noticed this but that that was different the episode we just had was a woman weren't incredibly revealing attire in the cold of the cold cold day and she was really trying to start some kind of flirtation with me but anyway in that case she wanted the attention at least so what we know I guess but you know it's very strange look sorry um you know not to not to digress from a digression here but you know that experience so that the woman who was actually the translucent where you know I didn't want to be thinking about that it's not my mind it wasn't in the mood and that really jarring kind of interruption in the flow of my thoughts that forced it's like it's just this brutal reminder no we're not angels in human form you know we really are a bunch of bipedal monkeys who for the most part shave the hair off our faces not me not lately who put on clothes who've constructed this semblance of a civilization set of social mores laws roles responsibilities and expectations but you can be given a very jarring unexpected reminder of to be blunt your baser animal nature which neither the left wing or the right wing nor any religion around the world really has anything to say about there's nothing there they're gonna do to change that you know so anyway but the business of being in denial about human sexuality and what it means and what the effects are especially I mean again is not a two-year-old woman or something if you're an attractive young woman in the prime of your life of exhibiting your body nude to men in public at random and the effect that's going to have to have a mentality of being in denial about that saying no it's not gonna have that effect that to me is very right-wing it's very conservative it's very religious it doesn't it doesn't match with anything in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto or something there's nothing Marxist about there's nothing left wing about it you know so on and so forth I mean the idea it's not all that popular on the left but on the far left the idea that the ideal world is a borderless society that the poor of all nations should come and gather and congregate wherever the wealth is that an unlimited number of people from Nicaragua should be allowed to walk into the United States there should be no borders that unlimited numbers of the poor should simply come and eat and Los Angeles or whatever the perceived destinations are for mass migration would you would you find that convincing if it was a right-wing pious Catholic who was telling you that it's it's to me it almost sounds more plausible if you believe in you know God's grace if you believe that you know ask and the Lord shall provide if you believe in caring for the poor and all the stuff that's built into the Bible is very compatible with that worldview of a borderless society of unlimited migration and we're talking really exclusively here about migration of the poor and also the the optimism that none of these people are going to be escaping criminal charges in their hometown or none of them are just gonna be running away from a bad situation in their hometown you know what whatever it is that they're running away from that they're running away from something yes in in many cases that's poverty in other cases those are you know problems with the law or problems with your family you know or what have you that to me fits very well into a horrid right-wing Christian worldview now I wouldn't support it again I don't support a borderless society neither when it comes to the left no when it comes to right I don't support this delusion that the whole world can be embraced as as refugees or as or as labor migrants or or what have you certainly you know starting with my blog on tumblr I was introduced to just how seriously people and that the far left now some people know if it's ten percent of people you know take the idea that that drug addicts are in no way bad people it should not be shamed for being drug addicts even though they were in no way responsible for their own actions I put a really sincere autobiographical statement about my life then in Perpignan so in Perpignan I had a newborn baby I was son I was carrying the baby sometimes I was going grocery shopping and my wife was carrying the baby now my ex-wife you know and there would be crowds of drug addicts around and of course sums they're there to meet a dealer they're there for some other reason and the French police did have a very respectful kind of civil rights approach to policing the drug guys every so often you would see the police you know assaulting arresting a drug dealer or what-have-you but I mean they acknowledged like drug addicts they have the right to stand around in a park you know it's you know loitering or something well they weren't they weren't pressing some kind of trivial charges against these people but it made my life awful every day and there were conflicts with drug addicts trying to get into our building you know what I mean there was a buzzer system to get in and stuff and you know my French isn't that good I'd have to speak to them in French and said no no I'm not letting you in the building you know I don't know you know who I don't know who you heard of me but it's not me I can't you know when it could be really nasty one woman remember she was basically going through withdrawal assume her dealer was inside she was freaking out you know on the tour step and just an honest statement about this it wasn't demonizing drug acts was just saying you know this is the reality my life here in Perpignan is the drug addicts you know make my life miserable every day and I got these left-wing people who followed my blog I guess because of veganism or something absolutely harshly condemning me were these saw this is like equivalent to homophobia like you know they in the same sense that like oh homophobe hates someone just because they're gay like you hate these people just because they're they're drug addicts you know really you know really you know by private message and in public you know responses to it on on tumblr and you're one of them mocking me just saying oh I feel so sorry for you because you have to talk to drug users like as if that's what my my complaint post answer okay this type of this type of attitude if it were a conservative Catholic even a conservative Hindu or something I mean kind of any of the big religions if it were some far-right wing conservative religious person it would seem more plausible to me because I understand okay so you have this belief in the soul or the human spirit being something that's not really dimmed by drug addiction or you believe in the goodness of human nature or something and you or you believe I shouldn't judge these people oh okay you know I can see the line of reasoning there where you really feel it's important that I'm I'm super friendly to these drug addicts or that I'm happy that they're standing around this way and and you know and so again you know none of them ever assaulted me but there was one situation that came close actually it's it's really trivial it's not worth it but some of them tried to kind of interact with me in a hostile way and just one of those situations you know could have been a good benefit so it and when you've got a newborn baby you know you're on your P's and Q's and you can you know getting mugged for your wallet is one thing if you or your wife are physically carrying a newborn infant you know the loof anyway it's it's it's much more of an existential conflict you know put it that way so yeah look us as I say that there have been some autobiographical anecdotes here and you know I could go on I mean none of this stuff and when I look at basically anyone on the left wing who is further to the than Bernie Sanders I see a sort of gradual accretion of good intentions that have ossified into totally irrational and counterproductive fixations the only purpose of which is to make the believer feel morally superior to the unbeliever so I'm less pious than you I don't believe all refugees are good people I've known a lot of refugees if you live in Laos and Cambodia even if you live in Nice and Thailand even when I lived in France I'm sorry no no no a lot of refugees around the world okay but don't believe all refugees are good people you kidding me you know just ridiculous but you know the point of that belief is not to make the world a better place it's not to have a working immigration policy or refugee policy it's not that they're interested in doing humanitarian work to help refugees themselves the point is this belief makes me feel better than you and now I'm gonna let you know it and you know obviously the the fact the role of this in in the cult of nudity and of female sexuality as as activism and stuff okay so you know you're gonna post pictures of yourself nude on the internet but you're doing this with the stated caveat that you feel morally superior to anyone else who either finds these pictures erotic or someone else who's doing the same thing as overt erotica so you feel superior to other women who have their own blogs or their own Instagram page or whatever it is their own website their own YouTube channel where they're they're approaching it in that manner yeah and look the only other caveat I have to say in closing is probably the right wing is worse and I just don't have to hear it because I have so little cut act with the right wing people it wasn't far right-wing people who were criticizing me on my blog when I was posting this stuff it's definitely I know some right-wing people I know some people in Detroit but lately I've talked to some people who voted for Donald Trump that would certainly certainly a change from the company I normally keep but for the most part the in an ADIZ on the other end of the political spectrum are simply inanity 'he's I do not hear