The Leftist Ideological Ather and Lay Leftists

The way the non-left argues against leftists is always by posing as “pragmatists”. Laughing off the latter’s ideas as naive/idealistic, or “too radical”.

What this does is concede the moral argument to the left. “Yes, ideally we should do as you say, but I the old cynic who has seen the world, unfortunately do not see how this is possible.” Rather than casting the leftist as the villain, it casts them as the hero overcoming unsurmountable obstacles.

(Compare this to e.g. the following extremely irritating leftist quote arguing against capitalism/technological progress: “We always ask if we can, never if we should”. Note that the objection is to the should, not the can! This puts the obligation on the capitalists to defend their tech — and because moral arguments are in the realm of the left, they have to do this by appealing to left-wing premises, e.g. “our technology will benefit minorities!” thereby reinforcing those leftist premises.)

I call this “Lay Leftism”: as a result of total leftist ideological/cultural dominance, normies function not as centrist or neutral, but as “lay-leftists”, who implicitly assume leftism as a high ideal. This is also why you see the following phenomenon:

Also published on Twitter

Describing Classical India as a “Buddhist society” is perhaps like describing modern America as a “leftist society”.

Sure, everyone is woke, hates capitalism … but the system is still largely a capitalist machine.

While centrists or “liberals” are chiefly guilty of this, RWs also do not really have the ideological coherence and conviction to really fight on these fundamental principles. Without an Ādi Śankara to challenge the ideological aether head-on and give the Lay-Buddhists/Lay-leftists an alternative view, society will continue to move in the direction of increasing Buddhism/Leftism, constrained only by pragmatic limitations.