Portland and the Trans-valuation of Values

Via James LaFond's blog, here's Portlander Tony on Saturday's citywide political dispute:

 I believe your pioneering efforts in the art or crowbar fighting have begun to gain some converts here in Portland. Antifa smashed a guy in the head downtown yesterday with a crowbar. Too bad no video. The boys in black masks are getting more violent. The current liberal craze is to dump milkshakes in the faces of people they disagree with. Here in Portland, the milkshakes are made with quick dry concrete. Makes for some nice chemical burns. I am predicting a short term escalation of violence over the summer. Once someone finally gets killed, I think they’ll all get scared and stay home for a while.

There was a trailer parked on Foster by the used tire store on 60th yesterday, being used as a platform for a billboard, encouraging people to go downtown and join the revolution. The funny thing, after the shit downtown was all over, I get off work and go grocery shopping at winco. There’s all sorts of antifa there, doing their shopping, I could just tell, they were dressed like punk rockers (playing dress up), and looked haggard like they’d been running around downtown all day. Anyway, a lot of them were couples. I’m kinda watching them, and they’re all the most prissy kind of men. Asking their girl what the right kind of vegetable to get with all the rice they have at home, following behind their women, bagging the groceries while the women pay the bill, the whole scene was kinda funny to me. Like, a couple hours ago, these dudes were throwing shit at the cops and screaming “FUCK YOU FACIST! I’LL KICK YOUR ASS!!!”, and now here they are, following their women around like servants. 

My impression is that for many "antifascist" protest is a moral holiday, a Mardi Gras of sanctimony.

Hilarious inversion: where drunkenness and debauchery would be indulged, and celebrated, now moral righteousness is indulged, and celebrated.

Drunkenness and debauchery aren't much restricted any more, after all; even celebrated--indeed, debauchery is now a sub-theme of "antifascist" demonstrations. Individual characters appear as if directly from the pride parade. Walking artifacts they are, of their origins in early gay pride demonstrations where their appearance was in fact transgressive. Now that's inverted, and their appearance on the streets of Portland Saturday, as in any corporate-sponsored pride event, is more an expression of power.

The moral holiday releases angst acquired conforming to social convention. The social order these angry antifascists have been conforming to is very much the one they demand, and loudly. Indeed, their problem Saturday was that somewhere in their town a couple dozen "fascists" were openly flouting that order.

They'll never see it (irony isn't really their thing) but I think I do: the very things they demand, sexual liberation, diversity, feminism, drugs, drugs, drugs, are making them sick. They are immersed in it, encouraged by unending propaganda and discouraged from dissent--by such as the shaming rituals they take part in when they march, positively warning them: from this social order there is no escape.
They're trapped.

So they are as ill-equipped to self-diagnose as a pre-modern man enduring a disease yet to be discovered. Like him they look for explanations wherever they can. They don't have to imagine a sympathetic relationship between their deep unhappiness and some aspect of nature.
They have us. And they are turned upon us by the same social order that is making them sick to their souls. By people invested in that order--by the people who profit from our disease.

So yes, my progressive friends. There are people out there who deserve your wrath.