MAP Forum

I for one love watching the chaos. I can see how it will fail. Soon this whole thing will devour itself and we'll be left in peace while the antis are left in pieces.

Artaxerxes II wrote: Sun Oct 19, 2025 1:43 pmIt situates the politician as a paternal figure rather than an ideological ally, shifting the dynamic from solidarity to guardianship. The gesture is thus not an expression of empathy but a form of ownership:

Figuring you are seeking to call anyone who seeks to further reduce the power and meaningful participation of actual kids and adults labeled "kids" as a "politician"? (As i've been reading some anarchists doing, i.e. "Identity Politician"? Or is this only used in the context of JD Vance?)

This linguistic choice, while superficially benign, is deeply symptomatic of a broader cultural tendency: the progressive infantilisation of adulthood in contemporary political discourse. What might seem like a gesture of leniency or compassion in fact reveals a larger transformation in how maturity, agency, and responsibility are understood in late modern societies.
Calling grown men in their twenties and thirties “kids” functions as a moral shield. It allows political actors to reframe agency as immaturity, transgression as inexperience, and accountability as cruelty. In rhetorical terms, infantilisation becomes a way to neutralise both criticism and moral responsibility without resorting to explicit censorship.

In my view, this phenomenon dovetails precisely with the Machiavellian view (of the 1600s?) and the more recent categorical view that most elites apparently hold in their "Shared Values" paradigm, though earlier articulated as "The Stupid Masses" (rather than stupid-IZED). Noam Chomsky is one analyst who has quoted such elites at length on this topic. Do you know of others?

It situates the politician as a paternal figure rather than an ideological ally, shifting the dynamic from solidarity to guardianship. The gesture is thus not an expression of empathy but a form of ownership: Vance positions himself as protector, arbiter, and moral authority over those he calls “kids.” Such language doesn’t simply soften condemnation; it reaffirms hierarchy under the guise of benevolence.

Yes, as elites seek to bring back feudal thinking more and more (perhaps what will come down more and more in the Globalization momentum?), disguised in the usual pattern within whichever parlance has been popularized. I.e. the 'therapeutic' parlance, or in Walter Lippmann's (et al) time (i.e. The allegedly "Incapable" masses). (See Lippmann's book Public Opinion for example.)

This rhetorical move works because it resonates with deeper social transformations that have blurred the boundary between youth and adulthood. Over the past few decades, the structural preconditions of traditional adulthood—stable employment, affordable housing, and family formation—have steadily eroded under neoliberal financialisation. The result has been the emergence of a new social category: the “permanent adolescent,” someone suspended between dependency and autonomy.

I suppose that the elites and their obedient implementers are busy re-constructing all of their class bigotry towards this new cammoflauged value assumption and oh so convenient judgement!

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified this process by normalising both economic precarity and state intervention into private life. As Giorgio Agamben and Byung-Chul Han have argued in different ways, this normalisation of dependency functions as a new form of social control: a “biopolitics of care” that redefines compliance as responsibility and obedience as maturity. In such a climate, the infantilisation of adults becomes culturally legible and politically useful.

Wow!! F'ing AWESOME analysis!!

What is particularly striking is how this tendency transcends the traditional left–right divide. On the progressive left, infantilisation often appears in the rhetoric of “safety” and “trauma,” which assumes that individuals are too psychologically fragile to encounter certain ideas. On the populist right, it manifests through appeals to “innocence” and “protection,” in which the purity of “our children” or “our boys” becomes a moral justification for censorship and paternal authority. In both cases, the subject’s agency is withdrawn in order to legitimate control, and the language of compassion becomes indistinguishable from the logic of discipline.

Wow, right on!! Brave New World Odors, for sure!

Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality—power exercised through the management of life rather than the threat of death—helps illuminate how both sides now govern through care. What differs is not the structure of control but the aesthetic of its justification.

I think you should qualify that so-called "care" with another word. Maybe "so-called"? Because if you merely leave that word unchallenged, then you're playing into the hands of the social control mindset, aren't you?

What jumps out at me after reading this is Aldous Huxley's question (in his most excellent and demystifying book Brave New World--Revisited, in Latin: "Quis custodiet custodes", translated to: Who will watch over the custodians?

The irony is that the populist right once defined itself as a movement of free speech absolutists, positioning itself against progressive moral paternalism. That rhetoric has now largely collapsed. Instead of defending unpopular speech as a universal right,

Huh? The Right-wing was once oriented to 'absolute free-speech'?? When was this? I always thought it was Leftish groups like the ACLU who defended absolute free speech, thus their legal defending of even fascists' right to speak. And then there's Chomsky who also defends such, saying that to be against speech you hate is not really "free speech". (Worth looking up the quote, folks!)

Freedom of expression becomes a conditional privilege granted to those deemed capable of “adult” speech, a category determined by political affiliation rather than principle. This is not a defense of liberty but a subtle form of gatekeeping. In this new paradigm, the state or its ideological representatives decide who qualifies as a responsible adult and who remains a child in need of guidance.
The conceptual backdrop to this shift is the long-standing Western ideal of childhood innocence, a cultural fiction that scholars such as Philippe Ariès and Jacqueline Rose have shown to be more about adult fantasies of purity than about real children.

Here here!! And how about what the 1970s educator, John Holt, said about that? In his idea of the "Super Pet", illuminating a glaring way in which the State allows the masses to have this PETTY TYRANNY over their young. And KEEPING kids in a PRISON "garden" of childhood, instead of letting them "come and go" from the garden, as they choose. INSTEAD OF adequately PREPARING KIDS FOR THEIR DEMOCRACY, these elites CONTINUE TO WORK TO SUPPRESS their POTENTIAL! ! ! !

To call someone “innocent” is to define them as incapable of moral agency and thus in need of protection. That logic has now migrated into adult political life.

Yes, a tactic that has "Worked" continues to be utilized until it no longer "works"! Well, is it not true? In the context of how long it takes to build up a rhetorical device (i.e. via propaganda), they don't want to have to do that. They don't want to have to work at all to keep the masses subordinate (or risk their "trampling" and attack), but they see that they Have To, lest they get lined up and shot, eh? Some very interesting psychological insights into elite-ism to be explored in this entire idea of elites finding that they are FORCED TO take up these extremely cynical tactics, for sure. Stuff that could expose their meta-game and at the same time inspire a better over-standing by the masses (i.e. that people born into elite families unwillingly engage this issue, and thus let their less thoughtful or less empathic implementer class (i.e. Managerial Class) get stuck in all of this.

Thoughts?

This produces what we might call a regime of conditional adulthood, in which maturity is not a biological stage but an ideological status that can be revoked or withheld. Political allies can be indefinitely infantilised when convenient—excused as misguided or naive—while political enemies are denied innocence altogether and held to impossibly high standards of culpability. The same culture that excuses thirty-year-olds for hateful speech as “kids being kids” will treat a teenager expressing dissent as a dangerous adult. This inversion reveals that “age” has become a political technology...

A 'political technology', wow. Am now wondering if that was in Jacques Ellul's book on technique, and perhaps i should FINALLY read it!?

...a flexible marker of moral worth. Power now decides when individuals are considered mature enough to be held responsible, and that decision is deeply ideological.
Infantilisation thus transforms what was once derided as “cancel culture” into something more insidious: parental culture. Both rely on the withdrawal of agency in the name of protection, and both depend on the rhetoric of care to obscure the exercise of authority.

Ah, rhetoric of care, that's better! Or, how about PROPAGANDA of care!

The deeper crisis, then, is not simply political hypocrisy but a cultural erosion of faith in adulthood itself. Liberal democracy presupposes that citizens are capable of self-rule, of managing freedom responsibly without paternal supervision. As Hannah Arendt warned, the health of the public sphere depends on individuals willing to appear in it as autonomous actors. The growing distrust of adulthood undermines that foundation. If citizens are viewed as too fragile, too naive, or too childlike to handle freedom, then democratic participation becomes a performance managed by parental elites. What replaces it is not tyranny in the traditional sense, but a form of moral daycare—authoritarianism disguised as compassion.

Also known as Orwellian Newspeak, eh?

People who inspire me have said that most of these kinds of changes are "coming to the fore" because N.Americans are not "needed" anymore to help build up the empire. And thus all of these privileges are steadily eroding. Including even those ones we all took for granted for so long. This is, i suppose, major evidence of the rise of the new kings, and a return to the old feudalism, with no more fancy-buttoned trappings designed to fool.

What with the way the usually heavy-handed feds have been OPENLY deploying their stormtroopers in 'ice' --and caring no longer that Nice White Folks are FORCED to SEE the reality. No longer allowed the PRIVILEGE to keep their Necessary Illusions.

Which i think comes directly from the Left (and extreme Right?) propensity to ignore RADICALLY EMPATHIZING with elites in order that they use devices like MASS HYSTERIA to build up their "critical mass". Had the Left (and the extreme Right?) AT LEAST PARTIALLY couched their challenge in language and policies that RADICALLY EMPATHIZE with elites BORN INTO these kinds of HELLISH Class TRAPS, they might better have made a MEANINGFUL BRIDGE with them; and, while 'checking' off-balance within elite motions, work MOST to demystify AND forge MUTUAL safety nets for TRULY ALL, not just their targeted constituents.

(Thinking others might be able to "couch" this better than i. Any takers?)

To resist this trend requires more than defending free speech; it demands reclaiming adulthood as a political condition—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s words and actions without seeking refuge in innocence. The true contest ahead may not be between left and right, but between those who still believe in the possibility of adulthood and those who have quietly abandoned it.

Hmmmmmmmm....well....i don't agree with your concluding characterization. But first, i want to add something to the "seeking refuge in innocence"; how about ALSO "insanity"? Because the "Insanity Defense" is still a thing. And BOTH feel to me like ways TO AVOID the ONLY OPTION AVAILABLE in lamestream Society! Such as the HELL of prison.

So, for the "innocence" angle, the war-stuck Society would NOT revert back to hanging young kids for stealing food, and such things. Same with the "Insanity Defense", i suspect: ANOTHER way to AVOID the ABSOLUTE HELL of prison. And what comes along with that situation.

Adulthood, like childhood is a construct, after all. A POETIC construct, REFLECTING the norms of a War-centered Society (in a formal sense, thus capitalized). An APPROXIMATION. A meta-game played to give privileges to some but not others.

So i think of both ideological "innocence" and the "Insanity Defense" as being part of an on-going PROCESS to bring NUANCE to institutions that PERPETUATE SEVERE ALIENATION. But they BOTH obviously need fine-tuning!! And deeper-diving thought!!

Phaino wrote: Wed Oct 29, 2025 5:36 pm I think you are noticing a valid pattern, though I think your framing is distinctly political, when IMO it's more cultural and biological.

i'd like to remind the readership, here, of what the liberation feminists (as opposed to the femi-fascists) said about 'the political' (and, yes, i think it fits) :
"The 'political' IS the 'personal'."
Or, in your words, "cultural" and "biological".

We are almost heading towards extended adolescence, where the twenties are still considered to be part of one's youth. The extended period of higher education for the average person might also contribute here, there are some people who have not worked a day of their life until they hit the early or even mid 20s, living expenses paid for as they pursue their university degrees.

So, what you seem to be saying is that "adolescence" is the time reserved for the Super Pets (i discussed that previously in this thread), most "useful" for Distracting Nuclear-ized --no longer extended families, now 'Nuclear' families-- Petty Tyrants to SHIELD their loved kids from the OVERWHELMING HELL of this war-stuck Society. (And also as a way to make sure kids are "Hooked Into" life enough that they don't just die off like they used to do so often up to the late 19th Century, when most kids --in the "Lower Classes" had to soberly face this HELL in ways EVEN WORSE than now).

(I think of Matt Groening's comic book, "CHILDHOOD IS HELL", and agree with him, and yet, see how it was EVEN WORSE before kids were allowed this, albeit Restrictive, Prison Garden called 'Childhood' (recalling John Holt's book ESCAPE FROM CHILDHOOD.

And that to "grow up" is to become OVERWHELMED in this situation, the Norm. Or, to become "mature" is to become CYNICALLY-STUCK? Or, basically to become NO LONGER ENCHANTED with life. To somehow lose one's intuition (or, to Actively Suppress it?), then, is to become what some have called "Cementally Nil".

Is this an accurate way to say your thought at all?

Psychologically, such people will be less mature. I don't think it's just a political scheme, young adults truly are less mature than their 1900s counterparts on average, but I don't think this is a bad thing.

Less "mature" only in the sense that they are institutionally NOT adequately prepared for life, i think!! Less "mature" (whatever that truly means!) in that they STILL want to think idealistically??