I have seen so much revived interest, enthusiasm, or enrapturement for Monolithic Communism in recent Facebook posts. They claim loyalty to Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or various left-wing groups, too numerous to mention. It is, of course, possible that these bloggers represent nothing more than various, government-financed bot-bloggers based in Russia and China, that have nothing to do with their various namesakes. If that is the case, Americans really must compliment their mastery of the American idiom.
In any society, but especially a freedom-loving one, Marxism and Bernie-Sanders type leaders will draw into it a percentage of the younger population. Why this happens has puzzled social scientists for generations. The scientists posit glibly the natural rebelliousness of youth, but the real answer may have more to do with an ego-deficit in younger people, and their wish for a unity of spirit and definition, known in Marxism as collectivization. Collectivizing gives them greater ego-strength than they can get as individuals.
Conversely, the trendy concepts of the Left, Tolerance and Diversity, that dictate so much to the tone of political rhetoric, do not work because no one really wants them. Collectivizing demands that they achieve unity through sameness. The Left only employs Tolerance and Diversity against the Right's sense of unity.
The Pledge of Allegiance has tradititionally maintained a sense of unity among Americans, and we learned it by heart from our first school-years. We swore by the Pledge of Allegiance because we had to swear by something! People just function better if they have a default-setting kind of self-definition.
Now that Tolerance and Diversity have worked their magic and disabled our sense of unity, what sort of creed will Americans use to replace the Pledge of Allegiance? Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, a quote from The Prophet of Kahlil Gibran? Perhaps Facebook could poll its many bloggers and sort through their suggestions for a replacement Pledge.
This misses the point. Does the Left really want to replace the Pledge of Allegiance, or merely fight against it? Does the Left want to replace America's default settings with something more stridently leftist, or merely fight against them? This too suggests an ego-deficit. People with a deficient ego need something to oppose, something to give them contrast, an identifiable enemy with whom they can have a "Yes-I-did! No-you-didn't!" contre-temps that gives them self-definition.
In E. M. Forster's novel Howard's End, for instance, a young woman and a man becomes engaged to marry. To celebrate, they go to a nice restaurant to eat. Rather than exchange the usual tokens of affection and loyalty, they have a "Yes-I-did! No-you-didn't!" conversation—two introverted, polite young people, elated at having the chance to safely assert their individuality.
My reader can hear a second example of a safe contre-temps in Monty Python's sketch, "Argument Clinic," where Michael Palin pays John Cleese to engage in a pointless argument with him. Like the characters in Forster's novel, Palin boldly voices his opinions over Cleese's objections, elated at this rare opportunity to define himself. He basically declares himself a free man, a person of substance and fortitude, but he has to pay someone to listen to him.
Nation-builders have to take this into account. If they want to divide the Disunited States, they have to underand the mindset of the average American. The timid, introverted, intelligent White person will only exert self-definition in a safe setting, which we don't have at present. He will want to pull back at the least indication of real resistance. Someone will have to stand behind him to give him the fortitude to follow through on his self-definition. Otherwise, he will stay quiet and tolerate any extreme of intimidation.
