House of Eratosthenes

It’s either 100% pure awesome or 100% concentrated evil to those guys. Every speech Dear Leader has ever given is the best one in the history of human utterance…until the next one; meanwhile, I honestly think you’d have trouble getting a liberal to agree that the sun rises in the east if Sarah Palin was on record claiming so (typical responses would probably include “only somebody as stupid as her would need to say so” or “what is ‘east’ but a convention of language anyway?”, depending on the context and the pretentiousness of the liberal).

Made me think of a status update I placed on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, soon after The Left went back into their 2009 orgasms of “OMG Was That Not The Bestest Speech Evar!?!?!”:

Observations: Every stupid thing Palin says is the stupidest thing she has ever said. Every wonderful speech Obama gives is the greatest speech Obama has ever given. Conclusion: People who love Obama and hate Palin are like that guy in “Memento”; they have absolutely no working long-term memory.

Yep, can’t be a good leftist unless history is in a perpetually infantile state, and always began yesterday morning.

The Online Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit suggests that “anterograde” may not be an entirely perfect fit for this…

Anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. Anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia, where memories created prior to the event are lost, can occur together in the same patient. To a large degree, anterograde amnesia remains a mysterious ailment because the precise mechanism of storing memories is not yet well understood…

Among those who are constantly insisting every single speech Obama has given is the BEST SPEECH EVAR, which is classic anterograde, it is a common failing to audibly articulate that George W. Bush was the WORSTEST PRESIDENT EVAR, leaving entirely unaddressed the question of acknowledging Carter, Harding, Nixon or the two Johnsons…which is a symptom of retrograde. So most seem to have both.

I’ve come to doubt these people have any long term memory that could be handicapped. I don’t hear them say things like “I remember the first time I saw my wife, wearing that dress…” Now and then they might mention their hometown, but I don’t hear them say anything about the little hill where [insert name here] started a dirt clod fight with ’em, or anything of the sort. I don’t even very often hear mention of where they were on 9/11/01. Or, if they’re old enough, when Kennedy was shot or when Lennon was shot. Which is oddly paradoxical, because you’d think someone so committed to living life for the emotional highs would have at least a mediocre level of sentimentality.

I think the constant adrenaline rush burns out the long-term memory entirely, I really do. Strips the cogs clean off the gears.

Now, while we’re on the subject of that Nolan movie, I see the wiki entry for it includes a chart that wasn’t there last time I looked. Hey, nice. Could-a used that…

The barking moonbat brain, on the other hand, I’m just going to have to continue figuring out as I go along…

I think the long-term memory doesn’t quite so much burn out, as wither and atrophy from lack of use. The superlative, from what I have noticed, doesn’t mean the same thing to a left-winger as it means to an ordinary person; superlatives are de-linked from history. “Best speech ever” sounds like a comparison between the speech just given, and each selection within an archive of earlier speeches — that is precisely what it is supposed to mean. Well, I don’t think it does.

I think these are people so committed to prerational thinking that they’re just grasping for a more bubbly and exuberant way of saying “that was a good speech and I approve of it.” In the classic prerational mold, they have hyper-individualized their motives and their thoughts. Whenever we labor to create a new culture in which the individual is diminished, and subordinated to the priorities and needs of the group, paradoxically people will start to act out according to the individual priorities they’re supposed to be neglecting. As they attend to the group membership in order to do their group thinking, they say things out of service to their individual interests.

Put in much simpler terms: When they gather in a group to discuss how good Barack Obama’s latest speech was, they end up in a competition to find the most enthusiastic expression of what a good speech it was, like sharks at a feeding frenzy. The superlative is the natural conclusion of this journey, the zenith from which one can proceed no higher. Even if it means comparing today’s Obama to yesterday’s Obama and finding the historical Obama to be wanting.

But of course, Obama cannot be found to be lacking in anything, at any time. So yesterday’s Obama becomes a sort of made-up Obama. Through this exercise, they not only ignore history, but consciously reject it. It didn’t happen. The brain cells that store and retrieve long term memory rot away just a little bit more…and then, they go back and do it a few hundred more times.

They, essentially, do with their memory-related brain lobes what I do with my stomach muscles when I sit around and blog. The natural result is atrophy. Lack of definition and lack of capability through lack of use.

If you held a gun to my head and made me choose my one favorite definition of liberalism — and note please, liberals, that “gun to my head” is a metaphor — I’d go with “liberalism is the tyranny of the eternal present.”

That there’s no real sense of history in “progressivism” is obvious enough — their major ideas, which is to say their only ideas, have been discredited for about 100 years now. But despite the name, there’s really no future in “progressivism” either — both metaphorically and literally. The important thing isn’t what X or Y policy will achieve; the important thing is that we’re really, really, really for policy X, with all our heart and soul. It’s the best policy, the only policy, and it’s gotta be passed rightfrigginnow! But once it’s passed… it’s on to policy Y, which is the best policy, the only policy, the most important policy evah!!!1!11! &c.

This is why you see absolutely zero followup for any leftist policy, even the ones that “work” — I’d certainly be cynical and hackish enough to claim credit for Clinton’s “welfare reform,” for instance, if I were them. But they never do. It’s all about maintaining that high you mention, Morgan. Sad

[That this mental attitude is also characteristic of high school tells you all you need to know, really. All the cool kids roll their pants cuffs… until one day they don’t, at which point nobody has ever rolled his pants cuffs in all of recorded time. Johnny was always the coolest kid in school… until he wasn’t, and now everyone knows he’s always been a loser. Etc.]
- Severian | 01/14/2011 @ 16:04
Sounds an awful lot like the plot of “1984,” Sev.
- cylarz | 01/14/2011 @ 20:55
Is there any “scientific” correlation between exposure to mind altering drugs
(recreational, maintainence , or mandatory a la Ritalin et. al. )
and long and short selective memory? (which I’ll just go ahead and call “stupidity”)
Does anthropomorphic “wet brain” fall under imbecile, moron, retarded, or
simply the disingenuous challenged?

Something or another about “…are doomed to repeat it”
- CaptDMO | 01/17/2011 @ 14:57
In my own experience which is far less than scientific, I have noticed my Marijuana posts are by far the most incendiary…at least when you go by how far & how quickly the comment threads explode.

I see that as somewhat insane all by itself. Government has this law you don’t like, it has that law you don’t like, it has this other law you don’t like…but then it has this one over here about mind-altering substances and suddenly our liberties are being TRAMPLED!!
- mkfreeberg | 01/17/2011 @ 15:01

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Anterograde AmnesiaFriday, January 14th, 2011

Anterograde Amnesia
Friday, January 14th, 2011