Architecture and moonbats: the struggle is real

I continue to shake my head in disbelief at how extremely liberal/far-left-wing/progressive moonbats can find something ideological in anything and everything they see.  It's as if they look at the world through spectacles designed to show reality only in politically tinged colors.

The latest example may be found in the Guardian, where an article postulates that President Trump's preference for classical architecture is actually a form of endorsement for patriarchal, authoritarian societies.

Modernism took the advances of the technological revolution, then tried to make a clean break with the styles of architecture that had preceded it. Its practitioners were designing for the masses, imagining egalitarian utopias and rejecting what had come before.

Neoclassical architecture, on the other hand, harks back to a time when European nations were more powerful on the world stage, more homogeneous – and derived no small part of their power from the subservience of racial minorities and women.

. . .

In short, the call to return to classical beauty often masks a desire to regress to a uglier place in the recent past where diversity was a vice and subjugation a virtue. Modernity and globalisation, and their material expressions, are the enemy.

The far right operates by inciting fear about forces that threaten to topple white supremacy. Conspiracy theories, such as the “great replacement”, imagine that white Europeans are under threat from Muslim migration and the falling birth rates of emancipated women. Classical architecture, with its invocation of white power, is a visual and psychic balm for those anxieties.

. . .

Traditional narratives depict imperial Rome as a bulwark against invading barbarian hordes, an image that has clear appeal for the contemporary right. It was also a slave-owning society, and one where women’s power was limited to the home, since they were unable to vote or hold public office.

History, both ancient and more recent, is a place of refuge only for a select few. If you’re not white, or not a man, the chances are that the past would not be such a beautiful place to return to. Aesthetic time travel is far more appealing to those who see classical architecture as a comforting symbol of their former power. Eulogising these styles without confronting their complicated history is a mistake.

Diversity – in a society and in architecture – must be defended. Architects should be free to build brighter futures through their work, not forced to mirror a compromised past.

There's more at the link.

I've seldom seen so much bulls**t compressed into a single article.  The author appears both tone-deaf and reality-blind.  She literally can't conceive of a world in which some of us value artistic expression in architecture, as opposed to soul-less brick bunkers and blockhouses.  Somehow we're "subjugators" and "white supremacists" and "clinging to our former power", merely because we find classical architecture more beautiful and inspiring than the proletarian, utilitarian dreck inspired by Karl Marx and his disciples.

I don't suppose there's any help for people like that.  They've sat in their ideological chairs for so long that the iron has entered their souls.  They no longer have any relationship with reality unless it's been filtered and processed through the ideological fortresses with which they've surrounded themselves.  I'd almost feel sorry for them, except that they insist on thrusting their ideas upon the rest of us.

Oh, well.  If war is the final argument of kings, this can always be our final argument against modernist architecture.

Peter