i'll admit i'm stuck in the enlightenment and the ideals of the french revolution, but, in my mind, the left is supposed to uphold rigour and logic and empirical observation as it presents science as a revolutionary counter to the conservative dogma of religious tradition. specifically, the left - as a revolutionary force - is supposed to aggressively attack religion as conservative and backwards, and it is supposed to do so using the language of science.

i've been over this dozens - if not hundreds - of times at this point. everything is confused in the united states because the liberal party (the republicans) succumbed to nietzsche's predictions and collapsed into nihilism. that hasn't happened anywhere else in the world. but, it's created this kind of optical illusion where the traditional conservative party (the democrats) are misperceived as representing the left, and it has created this weird set of alliances that an enlightenment-era thinker has no option but to reject as incoherent.

so, how do you explain the premise of an empirically driven religious person like ben shapiro, that attempts to forcefully push reason and logic to uphold religious tradition? in any other place in the world, at any other stage in history, this would be a contradiction in terms - a complete absurdity. something like this:

and, do not take this too lightly - for this is the reality that a world full of ben shapiros will create; dark age arguments produce dark age thinking.

but, the flip side of this is the intuitively driven liberal, that attempts to argue against a conservative ideology and traditional values using appeals to personal opinion. this is no less of a contradiction, no less ridiculous, no less ahistorical. when you take away logic from liberals, you are denying them of the only weapon that they actually have in their fight against tradition, rendering them helpless fools that are easily pillaged by rampaging barbarians, like shapiro.

but, is all of this ahistorical absurdity not, in truth, quintessentially american? is this not a perfect idiosyncrasy? what has america ever cared for history, or for the rest of the world, anyways?

all i can do is try and hold up a mirror, and insist i can't take either side in their carrollian reality.