This war assaults biases central to progressive perceptions. A more balanced worldview awaits.
Bombing is a blunt tool, and the way the US and Israel are prosecuting this war will invite fierce scrutiny; therein lies the trap. Progressives are united by a zest for judging. What will now be spotlighted is how this impulse impedes problem-solving by hobbling their ability to objectively assess trade-offs.
It is easy to criticise US President Donald Trump’s proclivity for saying things that aren’t true or that are excessively hyped. However, his communication style is politically productive when it lands with his base through mocking the know-it-all and we-are-morally-superior attitudes so frequently displayed by prominent progressives.
A huge portion of today’s Western scholars and information curators are leftists, as in recent decades conservatives have been steadily culled from key positions at leading universities and influential news organisations. As a consequence, much of today’s university curriculums and news reporting presents history and contemporary events in order to prompt judging.
Daily events are reported in ways which criticise to validate biases. This is true on the left and the right, but right-leaning media outlets tend to be more traditionally grounded. Such grounding encourages the weighing of options and trade-offs to identify the paths most likely to produce favourable outcomes. Conversely, those on the left prioritise judging.
In earlier eras societies’ priorities were anchored by survival pressures. Famines had loomed onerously until quite recently. The arbiters of morality had traditionally ranged from village elders to religious leaders. Progressives indulging their biases is particularly dangerous as they lack the grounding that survival pressures enforce. They then double down by rejecting traditional values and long-standing social structures.
Global prosperity
The spread of neoliberalism across most regions provoked a surge in global prosperity. But as the benefits accrued unevenly, this provided opportunities to politically exploit victimhood themes. That could have been a healthy development if it was accompanied by workable proposals to benefit those least advantaged.
Instead, today’s hard-left politicians and activists have gained much traction by leveraging identity politics with grievances to upend traditional values and structures. Their endgame is power and they promote destructive beliefs to achieve and retain it; progress suffers accordingly. A backlash has begun.
Many important beliefs which unite people are conceptual. That’s fine, so long as they hold up to real-world tests. It had seemed that today’s progressives had discovered a hack to avoid reality-based scrutiny. For decades they have been gaining control of key institutions, allowing them to shape perceptions. Scrutiny of their beliefs was mitigated through dominating how narratives were framed. This led to inequality featuring and that morphed into a broad attack on Western civilisation.
After having captured so many universities and media houses, the left co-opted supranational institutions such as the UN and the EU. This encourages them to recruit unenforceable international law concepts in support of their biases. They wanted a country whose existence is under threat to seek permission to defend itself from highly politicised groups biased against it. That country’s refusal has quickly led to the primary threats to a lasting peace in the Middle East being profoundly degraded. The region’s long-term prospects should soon be sharply improved.
The UN’s mild response to the Iranian government massacring tens of thousands of its unarmed citizens for protesting is not easily reconciled with characterisations of Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas as genocide. Recent images of marchers in various cities with Iranian flags alongside those with Israeli and American flags symbolise the challenges that now await those who are eager to judge.
Significantly withdraw
The stage is now set for the US to significantly withdraw from its war with Iran in the coming weeks, leaving Israel as the primary protector of Iranian protesters. Reports are emerging—seemingly supported by The Economist‘s reference to Israeli intelligence—that Iranian soldiers, police officers, and IRGC members are showing signs of failing to report for duty amid the ongoing conflict, suggesting emerging cracks in the regime. Opposition to US and Israeli efforts to degrade Iran’s military capabilities is further complicated by the Wall Street Journal reporting that UAE authorities are weighing measures to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets held in the Gulf state.
Progressives have been very successful at gaining control of many of today’s most influential information-curating institutions. They sought power through ‘criticism dominance’ rather than by seeking to advance solutions. They would have us believe that the core problem is Western civilisation’s successes due largely to its embrace of neoliberal values.
The big picture is that China and its aligned states, particularly Russia and Iran, broke the rules-based world order by violating its most fundamental principles. Russia’s brutal military invasion of a peaceful neighbouring nation violated that country’s borders and sovereignty. China’s undermining of the global trading system required a systemic circumventing of the World Trade Organisation’s central mission, avoiding large-scale subsidising and dumping.
Overindulged
The left’s success at framing public debates in ways that advanced their biases was overindulged. South Africa instituted proceedings accusing Israel of genocide barely two months after Hamas’s barbaric 7 October 2023 attack on a music festival. Only a month later the International Court of Justice found the accusation plausible.
Making accusations and emphasising judging is very different from leading and focusing on solutions. It is far easier to defend the US and Israel attacking Iran than it is to defend progressives attacking Western civilisation and neoliberal values.
Our government can’t morally defend its anti-Western biases and the economic costs are unaffordable.
[Image: Celebrations in Iran, October 7, 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks#/media/File:3-Popular_celebration_of_Al-Aqsa_storm_in_Iran-.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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