Timothy Birdnow

Alas poor Salon, I  knew him Horatio.

Salan,, the leftist rag, has ceased publication even at this point where the Democrats now stand triumphant.

Interesting, no?

Salon, so named after the French concept of intellectuals meeting to discuss various high-brow topics, was pretty much more saloon than salon, as I strongly suspect they had a snootful before pubishing, but at least it was done in a high-brow manner.

Basically the Prog site went broke:

"The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years,” the editors continued in their statement. "After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable. We know this news will be deeply disappointing to many of you, and we share that sadness.

end

How do you go broke in an era of ascending leftism when you are a leftist icon?

Two reasons:

1. Your target audience has changed. I believe that is so, because the Left has never been truly intellectual or reason based and while the Universities was chock-full of leftists for decades they never did elevate the discussion but degraded it. Leftism is not based on reason - it is an article of faith. It is driven by a BELIEF in the perfectability of Man and that history has a final goal of utopia. That is not reasonable or justifiable by any observational data. The Leftist is basically hopeful that Man in himself can create a new Eden, one devoid of God and that is what energizes them. They want Heaven without God.

But this is not an intellectual approach to reality. Oh, academia has the trappings of intellectualism, it does lots of studies and white papers and speaks the jargon, but in the end it is not intellectual because it dismisses out of hand any information, any reports, anything at all that disputes their belief system.

The end result is, unchecked by real-world evidence, academia has grown crazier and crazier, becoming completely unmoored from reality. They now say there are multiple "genders", for instance, in stark contrast with observational reality and natural law.

This translates down into the ranks and the young Leftist are no longer interested in the hypocrisy of pretend academics. They want warfare and strife and the thrill of hatred. So a progressive outlet that emphasized high-brow leftism is doomed to failure; they are the victim of their own success. Like Viktor Frankenstein they created the monster that would eventually destroy them.

2. On the whole they did NOT win the public at large. Theirs was always a specialty niche and they could not grow outside of their market, and their market changed because they helped change them. They had no legs, no outreach to those with whom they disagreed. The American People did not become more conservative, it's just they stopped accepting what mainstream media told them uncritically, and many of us just refused to continue to move leftward after Obama. Trump was, after all, a New York Democrat most of his adult life, and his policies were more like George W. Bush's than Ronald Reagans, and he certainly was not taking the country backwards much to the last point where it worked. So many in our country do not realize just how quickly Obama moved us leftward, and how crazy the Left had become thanks to outfits lie Salon.

So on the one hand the left moved way left, beyond Salon, and they did nothing to lure in moderates or moderate conservatives, who simply decided "no further" at some point. How do you stay in business like that?

The German Nihilist philosopher Frederich Nietzsche argued that science in the West would fail when it started digging into it's own fundamental assumptions that reality is real and knowable. He was right, and now science is starting to sound as crazy as the rest of the Left (the trans business is a prime piece of evidence for that). In many ways publications like Salon represent this very principle in action; they died because they dug out their own foundation. Why would younger leftists be interested in a bunch of old leftists who pussyfooted about so? They want hellfire and raw meat. They are the children of the Salon writers, who taught them to be that way, even while disdaining that method themselves.

What the Democrats do not realize is they did not win the hearts or minds of Americans, just inflamed anger at the public's situation in life. Yes, Saul Alinsky counseled radicals to "rub raw the wounds of discontent" and yes, it advances a political agenda oftentimes, but it does not actually change hearts or minds. The public will suffer terrible buyer's remorse in time.

Leftism has the seeds of it's own destruction built into it. Unfortunately it also has great appeal to some, particularly those not grounded in the Judeo-Christian faith that used to underpin our society. It is a false faith, Christianity without Christ or God. It is destined to fail, but it will drag as many down to hell as it can before it does.

And Leftism grants power and wealth to those who manage to harness it, but she is a fickle mistress indeed, and will eat her own as fast as embrace them. Ask Trotsky about that. And while the employees of Salon may not see it or admit it, they are now in the mandibles of the Left as surely as was Trotsky, or any other "hero" of communist revolutions who wound up in show trials before being executed.

It is the nature of liberalism to turn to leftism and to continue radicalizing. Grow or die. Moderation is not going to work with a philosophy that says the only road to paradise is through drastic change and anyone in the way is evil. That means you have to smite the evildoers. To the Left America is entirely a nation of evildoers. They want to smite everyone here - and they don't want voices like Solon, which was an intellectualized leftism. They see that as a voice for an "unenlightened" age.

The Russian revolution was started by the "Intelligentsia" but it was finished by the thugs and bullies and abusers. It's what is happening here.

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