Something I had been thinking about for a while

This recent resurgence of radicalism. Burn, baby burn!  Nobody is saying anything about build, baby build.

In the '60's, there was rioting but there was also building. Day-care centers, food banks and co-ops, schools, "free" medical clinics. There were all sorts of social institutions created, some still running today.  Some of them were wonderful (food banks and co-ops), some of them were kleptocratic and corrupt (marxist of course) but they purported to do good for the local communities.

We see nothing of that today. Assistant Village Idiot explains this much better than I can: 

Lack Of Art
Critical Race Theory, and Critical Theory in general doesn't have any art I can think of. Not poetry, not music, theater, film, painting, sculpture, nor literature. It may just be that I am not up on such things. I don't think it is mere recency, as both have been around for years, nor is it a bias from unfair comparisons from centuries ago. I am not asking that it produce an equivalent to the high Renaissance. Existentialism is also recent but does not suffer from the same lack. there is plenty of interesting theater, poetry, and literature from them, and I think only a little stretch of the concept brings in the visual arts including film.

I suppose you might make a case that successive philosophies since the enlightenment have each produced less art of a durable nature, and Theory is just that much farther down the line, but you would have to go some to convince me that was more than a merely convenient explanation.

This is a major red flag for the intellectual foundation of a philosophy, that artists in no medium can bring forth anything of interest. The heart of artistic expression is transposition, of reframing or new understanding of one concept and making it manifest in another. If you can find nothing to transpose, it means there is nothing there.

This is unsurprising, as Theory never pretended to be making anything, only analyzing it. It's right there in the name, Critical Theory. It critiques. It is described as a tool for interrogating everything else. "Interrogate" is supposed to have a more refined meaning than the picture that pops into our head from movies, of guys sitting in a chair under bright light, getting beat up after any bad answer. It's supposed to mean "asking questions." In reality, it's pretty much the sadistic guys with the brass knuckles. You either aren't interrogated at all because you're on their side, or you get the crap beat out of you.

So we interrogate history with Critical Theory. We look at American education through the prism of Critical Race Theory. We examine music or literature via Theory. But we never make anything with it. Making something requires talent, courage, and effort. A critical theorist might have any or all of these things. But they aren't required for the job.

Some excellent comments too - go and read.