House of Eratosthenes

I admit that I was a little thrown by Affleck’s animosity. I don’t know where it came from, because we hadn’t met before I joined the panel. And it was clear from our conversation after the show that he is totally unfamiliar with my work. I suspect that among his handlers there is a fan of Glenn Greenwald who prepared him for his appearance by simply telling him that I am a racist and a warmonger.

Whatever the reason, if you watch the full video of our exchange, you will see that Affleck was gunning for me from the start. What many viewers probably don’t realize is that the mid-show interview is supposed be a protected five-to-seven-minute conversation between Maher and the new guest—and all the panelists know this. To ignore this structure and encroach on this space is a little rude; to jump in with criticism, as Affleck did, is pretty hostile. He tried to land his first blow a mere 90 seconds after I took my seat, before the topic of Islam even came up.

See, part of this thing we today call “liberalism” is a belief that there are these bad thoughts out there that we have to eradicate, completely, like a disease. There’s not much distinction made there between the bad thoughts and the people who think them. That’s just political correctness, and we’ve had plenty enough time to become acclimated to it and see it for what it is. (As Steve Sailer said, it’s a “war on noticing.”)

Multiculturalism is the next higher gear in the acceleration. It labors under an inherent contradiction, namely that all cultures are equally valuable and yet certain cultures must be targeted while others are protected. We can noodle this out a bit further, but any more than that and we’re departing the narrow orbit of the Affleck satellite. As Rich Lowry explains it:

Affleck simply couldn’t handle the truth. He kept on insisting it is just a few bad apples who think this way. At one point, he tried to wave Maher and Harris off with a condemnation of the Iraq War, positing an implicit moral equivalence between an overly idealistic war of liberation and the stoning of apostates.

Affleck obviously isn’t a public official or a public intellectual. But he represents a dominant tendency within liberalism. Imagine a State Department staffed by less-glamorous Ben Afflecks. Imagine a president of the United States who shares his instincts. This is the Obama administration. It’s why, in part, it has always been so reluctant to speak of Islamic terrorism and extremism. It’s why the president says the Islamic State is not Islamic.

The nation is truly in peril if Bill Maher, of all people, is more clear-eyed than those running our government.

If recognizing truth relies on seeing things for what they really are, recognizing truth when dealing with people must begin with seeing what those people do. This is why P.C. is so dangerous. We have people who talk of these lone wolf terrorists, exhorting the rest of us not to read too much in and start showing ugly biases against Islam and so forth, some even going so far as to stage phony hate crimes. But what they really mean is: The actual terrorist attack didn’t happen. I mean, shucks, yeah it did of course, it just doesn’t mean anything. It should have no bearing on any decision made, no consequence. Kind of a “you didn’t build that” thing.

They don’t mean you should pretend that what happened, didn’t happen — but they’d be pleased as punch if you did pretend that. Get it yet? They’re so busy telling us what to think and what to do, that they’re effectively manufacturing their own reality. That’s the real problem with these less-glamorous Afflecks, and it seems we have quite a few of them walking among us.

So it’s good that the Number One Affleck give us such a clear perspective on how it all works, and let us see how poorly it comes off when presented with hard facts.

This is what happens when you put trained monkeys whose sole reason for “Here’s your pellet” is based ENTIRELY on someone else handing them a “script” for them to “properly emote”. The “makeup” and “costumes” and “hype” certainly don’t help.
ALSO SEE: Teleprompter
- CaptDMO | 10/08/2014 @ 17:42
I gave up “pretending” when I was about 7 or 8 and joined reality. Hollywood should do the same.
- Open other end | 10/11/2014 @ 04:57

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Ben Affleck Destroyed LiberalismWednesday, October 8th, 2014

Ben Affleck Destroyed Liberalism
Wednesday, October 8th, 2014