Striving Against Opposition

The Diplomad slams Cultural Marxism

The Diplomad is fascinating blog by (you guessed it) diplomats of a republican bent in the US state department. They do tend to come across as more republican than diplomat in their posting, but their ridiculing of all things leftist in their blog is likely their chance to "tell us how they really feel" rather than smiling and nodding to various hippy, international law loving, scum.

The USSR's end forced the envious, resentful, and fearful and their leaders to adapt, transform, fracture and downgrade a belief system that had "explained" everything into less-satisfying sub-sets, each focused on a particular topic: most prominently, feminism, environmentalism and the rapidly growing one of "international law." Despite their seemingly different concerns, all these sub-sets shared much in common, to wit, at their core lay anti-capitalist, anti-American and increasingly anti-Semitic emotions disguised as analytical constructs. Over the past fifteen or so years, we have seen these different strands re-meld into what we now call the Anti-Globalization Movement (AGM). While it doesn't have the military force behind it of the old Marxism, nor has it yet formulated a clear vision of the world with which it seeks to replace the current world (there is no AGM Das Kapital), it shares with old-time Marxism a reliance on pseudo-science and a vanguard elite. Also from Marxism come much of its language and tactics, as well as the goals of disrupting economic development of the capitalist kind and bringing down the United States and the global order it dominates.

They also had a few interesting comments about the "pro-aboriginal" activists who seek to protect the lifestyle of natural cultures extra. There comments are wholly applicable to our situation with our aboriginal people in Canada, and highlight the glaring error in our entire strategy in dealing with them.

Having served and visited extensively in Central and South American countries with large "indigenous" populations, I can freely state that the region's "indigenous" cultures largely ceased to exist hundreds of years ago; "indigenous" culture today means rural poverty. As the saying goes, "I was born at night, but not last night," so even I understand, therefore, that calling to protect "indigenous culture" really means seeking to preserve rural poverty; to keep people poor, sick, illiterate, and isolated from the great and small wonders of our age. It means helping condemn them to half lives consumed with superstition, disease, and of watching their puny children struggle to live past the age of five. It's a call to keep certain people as either an ethnic curio on the shelf for the enjoyment of European and North American anthropologists or, equally vile, as exploitable pawns for the use of political activists.

This segues to one of the great and evil myths promulgated by activists, i.e., the Native Americans' love for the land. As one activist (from Minnesota) told me, "they would rather die than give up their contact with Mother Earth." Really? You can believe that if you want, but everywhere I've gone in Latin America, rural people seek to head for the city, or, even better, the USA. They want medicine, Coca-Cola, TVs, cars, motorcycles, corn flakes, and indoor plumbing -- they want to live like the activists do in Minnesota. Those who stay on the land, in particular the men, do not radiate any particular love for the land, the flora, the fauna, or for each other. They fish with dynamite and mercury; burn or cut huge tracts of forest; treat their "sacred lakes" as sewers; drink themselves stupid; and engage in often lethal fights and horrendous cruelty towards women, children and animals. In other words, they behave as uneducated, poor people have throughout all history and in all cultures. Note to activists: the "indigenous" are human.

This is absolutely the case. Aboriginal people are people like any other with the same wants and needs. They would be far better off if we actually did something to enhance their economic status rather than simply making empty token gestures by trotting them out to have a "purification ceremoney" and a "pow wow" any time "progessive" people wanted to have warm fuzzy multicultural feelings or to entertain foreigners. I think the notion that "its the economy stupid" should apply to our aboriginal people every bit as much as the rest of our countries policy, rather than this tedious and unproductive multicultural fiction of the noble savage.

posted by Chris @ 12/22/2004 08:44:00 p.m.