It's clear if one has analytic partisans as professors how the dogma works—there is a clear limit to questioning, philosophy is restricted deeply. No questions of history, a hypocritical naive realism around style, no questioning how intuitions are mediated and how that is a problem of method, etc.

They're liberal in the sense of classical liberals like Locke, where the state is but a mediator for keeping a certain property owning class in charge, where liberty is meant just for property owners, and support for "democracy" is insofar as it's not so democratic that "the poors" can get any ideas

Keeping out the English-American soft power of the internet frankly was genius particularly in hindsight. It is not hard to find people of smaller nations speaking of the cultural shock that English hegemony online has upon intergenerational social cohesion.

I suppose Sade takes the title for the exercise of deliberately worst ethics, but alas he just ended up avec Kant

The permeable, relativistic definition of "left" in this country, particularly given the cumulative rightward swing of American politics, simply operates as a discursive form of control very fitting to the neoliberal era, where a choice isn't so forbidden as it's framed out of the picture entirely.

Given the fellow is a polisci prof, and given but a cursory glance at things like Tonkin, Iraq, etc., the irony of the post is that it's an utter lie.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

In the long run, I hope the field learns the right lessons from these things and brings back a more radical and holistic standard for therapeutic practice. Not to excuse or downplay anything, but there's a glimmer of hope and opportunity for therapists to realize a higher social potential.

The engagement dynamics on these platforms also make this sort of thing so predictable from the traditional left perspective, Marxist etc. — mere "anti-establishment" branding is resentful and reactive, its discourse is inherently parasitic and there're material incentive structures at play therein.

The thing about it anyway is, even if one has sociopathic traits that make cognizing such things difficult, that shouldn't be an excuse, but a prompt to find tools and principles that keep one acting ethically.

Yeah many problems are too loud to simply ignore, though I refer to the more objective institutional variables (also it's interesting that the 2nd red scare doesn't go as high as the tea party movement here). Granted, I don't tend toward liberalism and never did take American democracy seriously.

Applies to just about every "free speech absolutist" in my experience — naturally, speech is always curbed by power relations anyway.

Truly, can't the needle haters get some grace?

Have shared this before, but will share it again as it is related to this point (and it has been helpful for keeping me motivated in these times).