#141: The Infantilized Electorate and the Nanny Mind

July 17, 2018

We’re all familiar with the current phenomenon of so-called “snowflakes” who run and hide in “safe spaces” when they hear opinions not their own. They get really “upset” and need to have a good cry. We’re told, rightly, that this is at least partly an effect of university “social justice warrior” indoctrination. But this way of putting it fails to make clear why the indoctrination works so well. I suggest that it does because these students suffer from an emotional arrested development coming from both their parents and the culture at large, an arrested development which makes them natural soil for “social warrior” indoctrination.

But why is this happening? I suspect that it is an inevitable by-product of the recognition on the part of businesses and marketing agencies that women are the majority spenders in the society. And, like it or not, a huge number of women see the world through the eyes of children; and a huge number of women want someone, a father or a husband or a government or even a pimp to protect and provide for them and their offspring. And the marketers have recognized that a huge number of women are vulnerable to the narrative of the fragility of children both physically and psychologically. There is a lot of money in the issues of “the child.” Books written about them sell in the millions, talk shows endlessly deal with them, and manufacturers make money selling every conceivable child protective gadget. The market likes a child centered society. All of this leads the world being perceived as a schoolyard. 

I’ve focused in the past on how the Infantilization of culture is to be seen in the language used in television news media. I wrote in #103:

“…the sentimentalization of our language. Apparently, the world no longer contains any “mothers” or “fathers,” they were, apparently, replaced during some starless night by a whole new cadre of “mums” and “dads.” This is as true for bad mothers and fathers as it is for good ones. Nancy Grace recently made a point of referring to Casey Anthony, a woman charged with killing her infant daughter, as the “tot mom.” The crazed woman who produced eight children was known as the “octomom.” So, these days, even a possible child murderess is a “mom.” A self-aggrandizing mental case who tries to make an industry out of procreation is still a “mom.” Men, on the other hand, who don’t pay child support payments are known as “deadbeat dads.”

And the chance of war is called “scary” rather than frightening, while external enemies are referred to as “bullies.” This is the language of the schoolyard.

This is the Oprahfied mass consuming herd and it understands the world from the perspective of the schoolyard. I call this the perspective of the “nanny mind.”  Mrs. Smith, Mrs, Smith, Jimmy said something mean and then Sammy said something bad back to him! Mrs. Smith, make them stop, please! (crying)

It’s bad and sad enough that this occurs in the popular media which amplify and distribute this infantilization of discourse, but it is more than that, it is downright dangerous.

Watching news coverage of Donald Trump since the 2016 election is truly sobering. Of course, we already know the derangement to be found there, but look more closely.

The really frightening part is that even apparently sober commentators seem aware of what the listening public expects, and what that public expects is certain things have to be said and that other things are “just too horrible” to have said. It’s all about talk. But the world does not move this way or that way because of talk. The world does not, but the schoolyard does.

This phenomenon is nowhere more visible than in the recent Trump/Putin news conference in Helsinki. The screaming scribblers (and even some normally sober talking heads) are enraged that Trump did not publicly brace Putin on his various crimes and misdemeanours. The only adult I heard was Rand Paul, whose words I summarize this way: Oh please, grow up!

Other than Paul, none of them asked the critical question: Exactly what would the objective have been in bracing Putin in that venue, given that the reason for the meeting was to de-escalate tensions between the two largest nuclear powers in the world?

Would the world have been a safer place because Trump got as tough on Putin as Obama who told him to “cut it out.” Yeah, boy, that would’ve put the Kremlin strongman in his place! Yeah!

He should have said this and he should have said that and why did he say this and … and … and …

The whole thing is so tooth-achingly stupid that were it not so dangerous, it would be utterly laughable.

Karl Marx believed in underlying laws of historical development. He was wrong about that. But this does not entail that we cannot see definite forces at play and see their at least their short-term destinations.

As long as the nanny mind is the dominant target in marketing, the society will lurch towards Socialism, and, inevitably, that Socialism will go broke. But since capitalism, together with universal suffrage, leads inescapably to the dominance of the nanny mind, we cannot help but conclude that there can be no stable democratic economic system. They all lurch towards Socialism, and beyond that to bankruptcy and starvation.

The West needs an adult electorate, but the forces at play do not work in that direction.