Part III: The Plaintives' Cases Analyzed

A Balrog of Morgoth

In our triptych the first Plaintive insisted that members of the male "class" were destroying members of the female "class".  The goal in view (apparently) was that the female class needed to rise up and destroy the male "class".  The author insisted further that "woke" men--males like her husband who knew what was going on--join the females in this fight to the end.  Quick smart!

The counter case argued by Paglia is that such a view is destructive of human life and culture per se.  It called for a return to "classic feminism" where women were free to imitate male accomplishments, not reduce them to bad tempered, whimpering, screeching children. 

This clash between old-style and new-style feminism, however, sets forth a deeper and broader concern.  The clash is symptomatic of the centre of Western civilization having been lost.  This loss manifests itself firstly in an insistent demand that people be left free to do and be as they want.  They are to create their own truth, as seems good to them.  The second manifestation is the inevitable, perpetual clashes of different centres and different truths.  The end game is only apparent when one "truth" or one perspective manages to become dominant and suppress all others.  In the meantime, we live amidst the struggle--a struggle not about truth, but power.  There is a fight going on as to who will find and seize control of the One Ring:   

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.

The struggle is not engaged by deploying reason, proofs, or deductions, but by silencing opponents via the infliction of violent rage upon them.

Paul Gosselin captures both stages when he writes:

Postmodern man is fragmented and this is reflected in his world view.  American sociologist Thomas Luckmann has pointed out that, in the same way the individual in the West is free to shop where he likes to get his groceries  or clothing, in ideologico-religious terms the individual is free to hit the ideological-religious market and shop for ideas and concepts and cobble together his own custom-made, individualized religion.  Under postmodernism, all options are open, nothing is excluded.  Unwittingly, we have become sophisticated religious syncretists.

The postmodern worldview also postulates that the individual is the measure of all things.  All transcendent, pancultural moral rules or standards are rejected. Absolutes are of no use to us.  Discussing this topic, a reporter once remarked that it is not surprising that we are so fascinated by criminals and serial killers.  Such outlaws push their individualism to the extreme limit.  Satisfying their instincts/needs becomes their only real ethic, regardless of the consequences to others. 

But if, as post modernism asserts, everyone has his or her own "truth", when interests are in conflict, this leads to a stalemate.  In this context, real discussions or debates, cannot take place.  And why is that?  Where can one find a common ground to sort things out and arbitrate conflicting interests?  This has been disallowed.  To which benchmark or Standard would you refer to separate truth from various subjective opinions?  All we have left to sort out such matters are little more than power struggles and emotional manipulation, played out behind a ridiculous charade called "tolerance". 

Those in power attempt to marginalize other ways of looking at things.  And if necessary (or desirable), alternate views can be stifled through legal means.  Recognized minorities can claim their rights while highlighting the oppression of the majority.  An excellent marginalization strategy is to label the assertions of the opposite party as "hate speech".  Once this label has been applied there is no room for discussion.  Game over.  Critics of the consensus are then recognized by all for the heretics they truly are.  [Paul Gosselin, Flight From the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West.  Volume 1. (Quebec: Samizdat, 2012),  p.14f.]

In our triptych, both postmodernists represented (the early and the later) are cut from the same piece of timber.  The screeching wife filled with hate and rage represents the inevitable, logical extension of Paglia's more accepting, rough-and-ready, live-and-let live postmodernism.  If Paglia, being the atheist that she professes to be, represents the fundamental relativity of all truth, Victoria Bissell Brown represents a more extreme, more chiseled, shaped, and polished version.  Granted it screeches more, yet it remains the more consistent manifestation of postmodernism. 

It uncloaks the One Ring to rule them all . . . and in the darkness bind them.