More On Paradoxes

Read that title aloud. This post is about the fascinating paradoxes in the way people like me: feminist, leftist (and divine), are portrayed by the opposition: the anti-feminists, misogynists and wingnuts. These descriptions are paradoxes, but few seem to notice that.

Take the most obvious one first: how to smear leftists (though I'm really a middle-of-the-Olympus goddess). One does this by calling all leftists piglets sucking on the teats of the welfare state, unable to get a job, too lazy to get off the couch, whiners and losers. Then again, all leftists are elitist, latte-sipping East Coast billionaires driving around in their limousines. It's not possible to be both of these things at the same time, except in the crazy imagination of Wingnuttia, and the job of course is not to provide accurate descriptions but to smear, to make the opposition into something undeserving of human understanding or compassion, to take real living people and to make them into a caricature of Evil.

What is laughable about these descriptions is that most rich people vote Republican and probably listen to Rush while cruising around in their limousines, and most people on welfare don't vote at all. I'm not sure about the latte-sipping part. Is there a ban on wingnuts when it comes to latte?

That was the first moron paradox. The second has to do with the right's hatred of educated people and of intelligence. Hence, liberals are called ivory-tower professors and the academia is portrayed as one vast gigantic worm factory; the nest from which all liberals slither outwards. It's a bad thing to be smart in this country. This is where the Republican party funnels the subconscious hatred based on class: not against the true powers of the society, the corporations, but against those scruffy academics. How dare they make fifty thousand a year teaching! How dare they! And the wingnut answer is to destroy the universities and to replace them with trade schools where students will not be upset by anything they learn.

But at the same time liberals are really, really stupid. That is why they are liberals! I keep getting this one from trolls all the time, but even Tom deLay agreed with this idea in a radio interview I heard. Liberals are thick. They just don't get it that human nature is unalterably whatever the current conservative powers believe it should be and that only the few worthy ones can rule the masses which will be held down with religion.

The third paradox I want to write about is the all-powerfulness and insignificance of feminism. Feminists, those evil, hairy and manless shrews. They are all-powerful. They have destroyed everything that we hold dear: the family, the military, the labor markets, the Western civilization. Their power is felt everywhere, though hidden from sight. Even when conservatives run this country they are really just abject slaves of feminists. Pick any crime you can think of, and feminists are the guilty party. They are even to blame for blow jobs! Scary, scary feminists! Tremble, you poor wingnuts.

But at the same time feminists are nothing! Nobody takes them seriously! They are a sorry lot, manless and ugly and nobody invited them to the prom. And they haven't gotten laid for centuries.

Besides all that, feminism is deader than the doornail. NO! It's all over the place, swarming upon us, drowning out the the strong voices of masculinity, weakening and corrupting the culture! Making Men into Mice! NO! Feminists are the laughing-stock everywhere. Nobody takes them seriously. Nature is not a feminist and nature can't be denied! God is not a feminist and God can't be denied! The feminist experiment is therefore doomed to failure but never stop fighting it, because if you do they might win!

My head is swimming just from writing this all down. I no longer know if I'm a powerful piglet who just destroyed the world or a puny weakling billionaire who can't get laid. But I think you get the point.