A Culture of Cant
“Cant” was one of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s favorite words and least favorite things. In his usage, “cant” meant the third definition offered by my American Heritage dictionary: “hypocritically pious language”. Thanks to the cultural Marxists, America is now immersed in a political culture of cant.
President Trump’s comments about some Third World countries recently brought forth a veritable festival of cant. The President somewhat undiplomatically referred to Haiti, most African countries and El Salvador as “shithole” countries and suggested we would be better off getting immigrants from Norway than from those places.
Well, of course we would. Immigrants from Norway are far more likely to contribute to our society than immigrants from Haiti. At the same time, immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and most of Africa are more likely to end up takers, people who cost us more than they contribute. Their low skills, large families, and propensity to crime (El Salvador is one of the most violent countries on earth) make this almost inevitable. And yes, these countries are shitholes. The only way in which President Trump was slightly at error is that in Haiti and most of Africa there usually isn’t a hole. Even in India, a country far advanced over Haiti and most of Africa, a third of the population craps in the open like dogs. They don’t call it the Turd World for nothing.
The cultural Marxists’ response to the President speaking the truth was to howl to the heavens. They trotted out every “-ism” word they could think of. They found one Haitian woman who had done well in the U.S. and pointed her out (as a wholly atypical example). I’m sure they tried to find a Norwegian mugger but quickly found that in Norway the muggers are mostly Somalis whom the Norwegians were dumb enough to import as “refugees”. Norway had to publish a pamphlet in Somali saying no, it isn’t OK to rape Norwegian women because they were out in public without a male relative.
Here is where the cant comes in. Everyone in this country, including the most avid cultural Marxists and people from the countries he called shitholes (who left because they are shitholes) knows that what the President said is true. Their protests are entirely and wholly cant.
The Left has been in love with cant for a long time. To pretend races and ethnic groups within races are all the same is cant. To assert that men and women are interchangeable and that women make fine firemen and soldiers is cant. To say all cultures are of equal value is cant. Who was the Mozart of the Hottentots or the Palladio of the Apaches?
What makes the Left’s blather cant is that they know what they are saying is lies as they say it. So deeply are they immersed in cant that their very vocabulary has become it’s language. “Sexism", “racism” (as they define it), “homophobia”, and above all “hate” are words that canter along at a remarkable pace. The cultural Marxists are themselves champion haters. They hate the Christian religion, Western culture, the White race, men (unless they are gay), non and anti-Feminist women (a majority), conservative blacks, Asians (because they are competent and thus not “victims”)— the list goes on forever. Ultimately, they hate God. But in their language of cant, none of this counts as hate. Why? Because by their definition only the Right can hate. Again, they know all of this is B.S. as they solemnly pronounce it. That is the essence of cant.
The rise of populism in the U.S. and in Europe is driven in part because ordinary people are starting to perceive the cant. They increasingly understand that when the cultural Marxists and Establishment politicians spew the blather the Left demands, they know they are not speaking the truth. They are speaking entirely in “hypocritically pious language”, i.e. cant.
In contrast, when President Trump and real conservatives in Europe call shithole countries shitholes, the public knows they are not canting. They may on occasion be wrong (President Trump was not), but they are saying what they genuinely think. The populist rebellion is in many ways a rebellion against cant. For both the cultural Marxists and the Establishment, that is very bad news because they have nothing to offer but more cant.
Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.