Richard Rorty, writing in the middle of the End of History, in ’98 already

From Samuel Vriezen Facebook post 14 Nov 2016.

Surprising bit that I saw quoted in a comment stream, by none other than postmodern pragmatist liberal philosopher Richard Rorty, writing in the middle of the End of History, in ’98 already:

“The old industrialized democracies…are heading into a Weimar-like period. Many members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots….
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.” [my emphasis].

(Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Harvard University Press, 1998)

Self-Portraits (May 2016)

2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Ear Flies Variation I
Ear Fly F
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Self-Negative Portrait A (4x4)
Self-Negative A
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Ear Flies Variation A
Ear Fly A
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Charlie Chaplin (4x4)
With Charlie
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Lord of Noiselandia (4x4)
Lords of Noiselandia
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Ear Flies Variation E
Ear Fly B
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Wise Man in the Pillows A (4x4)
Man Amongst the Pillows
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Rat-Faced Man (4x4)
Rat-Faced Boy
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Earbuds
Ear Buds
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Self-Negative Portrait C (4x4)
Self-Negative B
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Jean-Paul Imbeault (4x4)
Jean-Paul Imbeault (Matane, 1953)
2016 05 20 Self-Portrait - Really? (4x4)
Really?

 

 

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