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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/hiney-lickers-of-princeton-decadence/
I'm not a regular reader of the American Conservative, but blogger Violet Cabra brought this article to my attention a few weeks ago and it's been rattling around the back of my head ever since. To sum it up briefly, author Rod Dreher wrote an amusing article about Princeton University essentially encouraging its students to lick each others' butts for fun and pleasure. The idea of our cream of the crop wannabe elites earnestly engaged in such pursuits has captured my imagination.
This is not really for prurient reasons. I am not moved much by the odd sexual adventures of the Ivy League's butt suckers. (I rather prefer this to Rod's "hiney-lickers", although his phrasing has a certain class that butt suckers lacks, probably because Rod is a cultured fellow and I am a bit of a brute). When it comes to people's private sexual practices, as with many things in life, I have an to-each-his-own attitude. I like term butt suckers because, in my area and social class, butt sucker is another term for being a suck up.
John Michael Greer has pointed out that the ranks of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) are largely made up of scared conformists who have hustled their whole lives to get into the ranks of the upper classes, leaving them unequipped to deal creatively with problems that don't have a clear cut answer of the type you can find in a textbook. He has expanded upon this basic idea at length and much better than I can, but like most people I have had plenty of experience dealing with this type of butt sucker, who is eager to please and never ever questions teacher or textbook. I went to school with dozens of them. They may or may not have literally licked each other's rears; I'm from a small town and it wasn't really in vogue when I was growing up as far as I know, but I also didn't run in those circles.
Now, these same scared conformists, these obedient butt suckers who have never entertained a forbidden thought, are the caste of "experts" who are setting national policy in unelected positions. The hall monitors are running amok, and this techno-fascist soft tyranny is what you get when you put a bunch of neurotic risk-averse nerds with a penchant for analingus in charge of the "free" world.
The kind of people who question conventional wisdom may have some level of success in life, but they may very well struggle in an environment that rewards subservient yes-men and punishes deviant behavior like questioning authority or thinking one's own thoughts (in this day and age, very few sexual behaviors are considered deviant by the elite classes, and they seem to be trying mainstream the few taboo sex acts that remain verboten... I suspect that this will be part of what eventually causes the PMC to go up in flames, perhaps literally). We could use some people who have the stones to question the conventional wisdom about a lot of things just now.
For now, it seems that we must endure the Tyranny of the Butt Suckers, but I have every confidence that the pendulum, having swung into the side of extreme restriction and toxic order, will swing back toward freedom and chaos soon enough. I hope they are ready for the backlash they are courting.
(If you are interested in checking out Violet's blog post, which is differently themed and far more thoughtful than mine, you can find it here: https://violetcabra.dreamwidth.org/222840.html).
I'm not a regular reader of the American Conservative, but blogger Violet Cabra brought this article to my attention a few weeks ago and it's been rattling around the back of my head ever since. To sum it up briefly, author Rod Dreher wrote an amusing article about Princeton University essentially encouraging its students to lick each others' butts for fun and pleasure. The idea of our cream of the crop wannabe elites earnestly engaged in such pursuits has captured my imagination.
This is not really for prurient reasons. I am not moved much by the odd sexual adventures of the Ivy League's butt suckers. (I rather prefer this to Rod's "hiney-lickers", although his phrasing has a certain class that butt suckers lacks, probably because Rod is a cultured fellow and I am a bit of a brute). When it comes to people's private sexual practices, as with many things in life, I have an to-each-his-own attitude. I like term butt suckers because, in my area and social class, butt sucker is another term for being a suck up.
John Michael Greer has pointed out that the ranks of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) are largely made up of scared conformists who have hustled their whole lives to get into the ranks of the upper classes, leaving them unequipped to deal creatively with problems that don't have a clear cut answer of the type you can find in a textbook. He has expanded upon this basic idea at length and much better than I can, but like most people I have had plenty of experience dealing with this type of butt sucker, who is eager to please and never ever questions teacher or textbook. I went to school with dozens of them. They may or may not have literally licked each other's rears; I'm from a small town and it wasn't really in vogue when I was growing up as far as I know, but I also didn't run in those circles.
Now, these same scared conformists, these obedient butt suckers who have never entertained a forbidden thought, are the caste of "experts" who are setting national policy in unelected positions. The hall monitors are running amok, and this techno-fascist soft tyranny is what you get when you put a bunch of neurotic risk-averse nerds with a penchant for analingus in charge of the "free" world.
The kind of people who question conventional wisdom may have some level of success in life, but they may very well struggle in an environment that rewards subservient yes-men and punishes deviant behavior like questioning authority or thinking one's own thoughts (in this day and age, very few sexual behaviors are considered deviant by the elite classes, and they seem to be trying mainstream the few taboo sex acts that remain verboten... I suspect that this will be part of what eventually causes the PMC to go up in flames, perhaps literally). We could use some people who have the stones to question the conventional wisdom about a lot of things just now.
For now, it seems that we must endure the Tyranny of the Butt Suckers, but I have every confidence that the pendulum, having swung into the side of extreme restriction and toxic order, will swing back toward freedom and chaos soon enough. I hope they are ready for the backlash they are courting.
(If you are interested in checking out Violet's blog post, which is differently themed and far more thoughtful than mine, you can find it here: https://violetcabra.dreamwidth.org/222840.html).