KT's Theory Of Everything, Marxism Edition

I'm coming to terms with Marxism as part of the explanation for much of the madness in our culture.

Motivating Question: What does the term "stolen land" mean if all land, everywhere, has been taken through aggression at some point in history?

My Theory Of Everything

I've been struggling to figure out just what is going on with the craziness coming out of our Elites in academia, the media, entertainment and politics. Women can become men? Really? On what planet? 

Ditch the SATs? Why? 

Run down the cops until they leave in large numbers? Are you insane?

I've heard people I respect patiently describe how this is Marxism in action, but it always seemed like they were trying to pound the current square peg into their favorite, round hole. It was the book, Empire of the Summer Moon, which tells the story of the Comanches, that brought it all home.

Yes, I'll get off the Comanche thing soon, I promise.

Wife kitteh has been out of town, visiting our son in Seattle, so I've spent a little more time than usual surfing the Interweb tubes. Over the 4th of July weekend, there were plenty of progressives waving their arms and yelling about stolen land and racism. You can't make that claim if you objectively study the Indians of the Great Plains. It's all nonsense and the historians in academia know it. 

It's just like colleges deciding to ditch the SATs. The data is crystal clear - those tests are excellent measures of college readiness. How in the world can people whose job it is to think clearly take positions completely at odds with reality?

They're Marxists.

Marxism breaks the world down into two groups, the oppressors and the oppressed. Marx did it along class lines. Hitler did it along racial lines, in a national context. It simplifies your model of the world until even the most mediocre of thinkers can easily analyze data and produce a paper. Multivariate analysis is very, very hard. Univariate analysis is very, very easy.

The land was stolen because the Bad People have it now. The SATs are unjust because the Bad People do well. The cops are unjust because the Good People go to jail more often. See how easy this is? Marxism makes the world simple enough for intellectual children to understand perfectly.

And that's all this is. We're walking down the trail blazed by the Nazis. Intersectionality adds a few wrinkles, but really, it's the same thing. Jews Straight, white, men are the source of all evil and Germans people of color and alternate lifestyles are their victims. If that's how you divide the world, then an idiot could write an academic paper.

Back To The Comanches

Empire of the Summer Moon clearly laid out how the Comanches "stole" the land from the Apache and Navajo. If a dilettante like me can see that, then surely the historians in the academy can as well. There's no way on Earth you'd blather about stolen land when it's clear that every square inch of the planet has been "stolen" over time. If everything is part of a set, then there's really only one name for the set. It's called "everything" and putting things in that set has no value.

This isn't rocket science, it's trivial, Venn-diagram logic. And yet, it's dismissed by our Elites. Instead they yell about "stolen" land when the data shows that the adjective has no value. You would only do that if it fit into your simple, Marxist model.

Marxism allows third-rate, lazy, incompetent thinkers to pretend they're contributing to our store of knowledge. It gives them a thought problem they can handle instead of something too complex for their modest abilities. Best of all, it gives the academics what they crave - an easy source of material for papers and a willing market to publish them in refereed journals.

Hmm. There's a theme here, isn't there? Printing money, porn and Marxism all solve difficult problems with ease. It's all fake, of course, but we can pretend that the problem is solved and get on with the gloating and preening about how great we are.

Marxism makes being an academic easy.