The first obvious one is “Cultural Revolution”, the Chinese version. I saw some Chinese propaganda posted in a local library the other day, literal propaganda, written by professionals, from that period.
Call it the “Disconnection Revolution”. Was that not what happened? Did not a sizable minority, backed by the police power of the State, turn stark raving mad and start attacking people who had done nothing except, perhaps, not voice the idiotic slogans of the executioners loudly enough?
Or “Culture wars”. This becomes “Connection Wars”. How do we connect? We don’t. I personally have been evicted, banished, exiled numerous times from places on the “other side”, while trying to establish dialogue. I believe and continue to believe that the issue of monetary reform, of the fact that banks are stealing our money legally, should be a bipartisan issue. But once you admit to a side, your views are discarded, regardless of their merit and strength.
Is decadence not formally disconnection, dis-integration?
The more we become disconnected, the greater the manifest market need for constant connection. What else is Twitter? It is a salve for empty people, who don’t know who they are in silence, and who feel more alone the more they try to reach out others. This is the role that violence in media plays. There is something in sacrificial culture that binds people together. That was my principle interest in graduate school, explaining what sacrifice–particularly human sacrifice–does that is culturally useful.
Or take High Culture. High Connection. It is a means of weeding out the undesirables, and a way of connecting with people who have similar training and thus similar tastes.
Think of culture as a standing wave in the air. If you tune into it, as in a radio frequency, you get connected with everyone else on that channel.
This is what religion does, and what the leftist cult does. There are numerous reasons cities breed Democrats. One of them is that the very complexity of the cities, and the planning that is needed to make things work, fosters a belief in central planning, since their experience is that it works. The trains run. The lights come on. Water comes out of the faucet even on the 50th floor.
Another reason, though, is that in that ocean of diversity, you MUST, to keep your sanity, have SOMETHING you can rely on as at least a base common ground. That something is politics. I have said this before, but it’s worth saying again here.
American Culture: What connects “Americans”.
This is a useful heuristic, in my view. What one sees is that attacks on culture are attacks on connection, making it extremely ironic–and regrettably typical–that those most concerned with “alienation”–Entfremdung–are those most vigorously working to (not for,. to) create it.
I will add that the identity, the connection, Socialism/Leftism enables is not one that works to individual self fulfillment. It does not make people happy. It assuages an anxiety that is made necessary by their rejection of individualism. It is a mutable creed. The Big Idea of the month will differ from last month. There is no rest. There is no completion to the project, like, say, there is in Buddhism. There may be different versions of Buddhism, but you can pick one and run with it. If you are a leftist, you have to tune into the frequency every day to know who you are that day and what you believe.
And God forbid they ever lose Conservatives. They will have to invent a new enemy, or begin the process of cultural–connective–catabolism, as their souls dissolve.