House of Eratosthenes

Why are the smarmy liberal jackasses so quiet? I remember when Cohen agreed to talk and Manafort got convicted, there was donkey-bleating everywhere and you couldn’t get away from it. I’ve got one at home and one at work. They’re actually letting me go about my business now, not saying a word. They act kind of like the guilty dog.

I’m still waiting for something to emerge from this Cohen-talking thing. Maybe that’s it. I was told at the time I wouldn’t have to wait long for something juicy, and I’m still waiting…

The other thing I notice is that it seems something is happening with the women-accusing-men thing. On the Internet, liberals aren’t afraid to share their feelings, and it doesn’t take much time at all to ascertain that feelings are all they have here. The facts are friendly to Kavanaugh and unfriendly to his so-called accuser. But — I believe her! Because! Her testimony! So brave! It’s like stepping into a time machine and emerging in 1991.

These people don’t seem to understand: You can take sexual assault on women seriously, and still take a pass on the flakier allegations of it, even call them out for being flaky. It’s not a package deal. As I often like to say, grown-ups form opinions based on facts, not based on expectations of other people. This is yet another problem with left-wing politics: Low, as in rattlesnakes-belly low, standards for their emblems. Time after time, they choose the wrong ones. Their selected highlighting icons representative of some supposed far-reaching social problem, stink on ice, stink worse than they’d stink if they were picked randomly, as if someone is making an effort to choose the ones that stink the most. Example: Innocent young men and boys of color being shot and killed by overly-aggressive, trigger-happy cops is something that really does happen and is a real problem — I think — but somehow they decided to pick Michael Freakin’ “Gentle Giant” Brown. Who made that call? And Trayvon Martin? Who picked him to represent anything, who decided we should all be watching him?

If I made it my business to go around arguing about this, I’d feel betrayed. “This is a real thing! Why didn’t you pick that guy, over there?”

The woman who testified yesterday made it look like maybe we’re entering into a whole new era here. It will take a lot of time to determine whether this perception is accurate, but it looks like accusations of this nature are nothing more than an expected price men should pay when they are on ascension. They/we have to grease the right palms to pass through the right checkpoints. Wasn’t that the original complaint in feminism, that men were enjoying the fruits of success without bringing women along, a sort of “take your little sister with you when you play outside” thing? But we already had a convention for that, it was called marriage. Not good enough, because a woman’s place is in the office. Oh and now you’re not promoting them as often or as quickly as some paper-pusher in the nation’s capitol, who knows nothing of your business or of what men & women are supposed to do in it, thinks you should. So we have the usual gimmicks that make paper-pushers happy, affirmative action, quotas, set-asides, and lots of showboating about ending institutionalized sexism “once and for all.”

Still not good enough! When a man’s contributions are being appreciated and he’s being promoted, all of the women who share his interests profit; but what about the women who don’t? So unfair! Something must be done for them!

I don’t know what’s a sadder sight: The people among us who think this is how it’s supposed to work, that the fruits of labor are distributed according to ever-evolving social rules & taboos and aren’t legitimately earned; or, the casual-observers who tune into these things like they’re Hallmark Christmas movies, and come away bumptiously boasting “I believe her!” based on her performance, not on the facts. The latter toiling away in complete ignorance about their bedfellow-tethering to the former, failing to catch on to what’s obvious to everyone else, that they’re supporting a movement and not a woman.

I have a thought about this which seems odd and tangential, but please bear with me. It comes from long experience of kids raised with social media: Their brains have been rewired. I am 100% serious. I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on teevee, but I see what I see. The two generations nearest to adulthood — that is, on the just-short and just-long sides of 18 — can’t, absolutely CAN NOT, correlate things.

They “think” exclusively in likes, upvotes, retweets. Every statement is discrete, to be evaluated entirely without reference to anything other than how it makes you feel at the moment you read it.

I first noticed something like this at the dawn of social media, in the 2004 election, when John Kerry was famously for the Iraq War before he was against it. It was fun to rag him about it, but if you want to be fair to the man, you must admit that people reevaluate things all the time. (Doesn’t every single Republican “grow in office” when he starts voting more like a Democrat?). I myself was for the Iraq War and am now against it, so I’ll cut him some slack…

… but I won’t cut his partisans any slack, because they very ostentatiously did NOT make the argument that Sen. Kerry “grew in office.” They didn’t point out new information that came to light, that would affect his decisions. Somehow, some way, he was right then, AND he’s right now. It wasn’t a mistake. He was in full possession of the facts then, he’s in full possession of the facts now, the facts haven’t changed one iota, but he was right both times, simultaneously. I’m not expressing it very well, because it beat — beats — my pair of jacks just how they square this, but they obviously do.

The deeper down the social media rabbit hole America went, the more blatant this kind of thing got. Obamacare — a gazillion-dollar bureaucracy — will both lower taxes and improve medical care. “Death panels” aren’t death panels, you ignorant snowbilly… they’re just panels that will decide when you should be denied life-sustaining care. The Rather Memos are “fake but accurate.” And now we’re a few Senate votes away from an official ruling, from the highest powers in the land, that facts are no longer legally admissible when they contradict someone’s feelings.

Only social media explains that. People who “believe” Ford get upvoted — they’re such caring, courageous people! People who believe in things like logic, reason, and evidence, meanwhile, get downvoted, because those cause badfeelz, and are therefore wrong wrong wrong!!
- Severian | 09/28/2018 @ 08:35
I was cured of “I Believe” -ism by one particularly stupid episode of my wayward career.

Back in the late ’90s I was volunteering as a youth roller hockey coach. One of my players did something absurd to an opponent and was sent to the box while I was talking with another kid on the bench. He was protesting loudly and convincingly. Once he got to the box (which was on the player bench side of the rink because of space constraints) he made his case to me.

Me, a genius: Hey – I believe you.
Ref, normal: Mike, he ran him into the end boards. Lucky he’s not ejected.
Me, brilliant motivator: YOU DID WHAT?!??!?

It took literally five seconds.

Well, it would be a complete waste of embarrassment not to learn something from that, so from that point on, I decided that I had better not take any such protesting at absolute face value without at least figuring out what other people may have seen. It’s served me well in the 20 years since then, during future interactions with players and refs (as I have done a lot of both) as well as elsewhere in life.
- nightfly | 10/02/2018 @ 10:25
[…] Don’t Deserve to Have Belonging On Hillary Being Uncivil On the Pink Hats Are You Serious? About Yesterday Memo For File CCX Chapters 8 and 9 Kavanaugh and Climate Change Liberals in Tech “Don’t […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/28/2018 @ 07:36

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