House of Eratosthenes

Seeing some progressively-inclined people coming up with some proposed moments of torch-passing, before which President Trump should be properly redirecting credit for any positive economic signs to his predecessor, and after which he truly owns the economy. It’s interesting that this is precisely what I saw these noble thinkers avoid doing during President Obama’s two terms in office — the hour grew quite late, and they were still blaming anything that went wrong on George W. Bush. But apart from being inconsistent, I find this to be rather insincere.

Whenever I burn off a few minutes on social media, where the feedback & criticism is instant in both directions, I find I seem to be coming up with a new catchphrase of sorts: “As always, if we’re going to argue about it, then let’s do it honestly.” And let’s. There is no set time period after which some torch is passed. It’s a year, it’s all eight years, or it’s a day, whatever it takes to make liberals look good — and it takes a lot. A good thing that happens in the final moments before two-term Trump is obliged to watch the swearing in of his successor, on January 20, 2025, should be credited to Barack Obama. That weird thing the Dow did last month, is to be blamed on Trump. And the various plunges it did throughout 2016 in Obama’s last year in office, are to be blamed on George W. Bush. Who saw the economy crash during his final year in office, of 2008…but if anything cheerful ever happened during that time, the credit for it would rightfully go to — Bill Clinton.

My point is, if we came up with some reasonable time interval to make the liberals happy, they’d just change it like a too-modern National Anthem singer changing pitch during one of the long notes, to make their side look good. Oh, it’s eight years. Oh no, it’s eight minutes. Because that makes our side look good…and we say so. Since we say so, you know we’ll never let it go, so give us what we want. Why even bother with the exercise?

I see Neo Neocon has put up something lately that addresses this directly, so I’m guessing she’s run into this experience as well.

Simply put, it is the assertion that economic effects are delayed in a very special fashion with Obama. Everything bad that happened to the economy during the 8 years of Obama’s presidency was Bush’s fault and was blamed on Bush, including the slowness of whatever recovery there was.. And everything good that might happen to the economy during Trump’s presidency is to Obama’s credit, not Trump’s.
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Obama was the first president in my memory to blame his predecessor—pretty much incessantly—for what went wrong during his own tenure. It was actually one of the first things I ever noticed about Obama, back when he was campaigning in 2008, and it seemed unusual to me at the time, although now (unfortunately) we’ve gotten very used to it. In fact, I even coined a phrase for Obama back then: “the blame duck.”

Of course, anyone looking in from the outside, or grappling with this mindset for any length of time, can see what’s going on here even if the liberal can’t: The liberal doesn’t want to have to re-think anything, doesn’t want to admit he got something wrong. This is a useful metric for assessing maturity, figuring out when it’s missing: The recalcitrance against admitting mistakes, or that a re-think is necessary.

I should add, it’s useful although there are some problems with it. Some people, along the way to acquiring this maturity, use this as a litmus test. “You never admit you’re wrong because I’ve never seen you do it.” Some errant individuals go so far as to make mistakes on purpose…I think…at the very least, apply far less intellectual discipline to one challenge than they would apply to other challenges that have aroused a more sincere concern. So that they can make a big show of admitting they were wrong at a later time, thereby fulfilling the litmus test. Suffice to say that this is not how I think the metric should be applied. Those who apply robust, responsible thinking to whatever comes their way, if they do it right, should be called upon less and less often to admit they’ve made mistakes. People often forget, this is what we should expect to see. In fact, if the challenges aren’t meaningfully changing across time, you’d have to be some kind of idiot to not show some statistical improvement as you continue to deal with the same ones over & over again, right?

But, all that having been said. If you find yourself talking to someone who’s willing to stretch and twist and distort reality, move goalposts around, come up with “constant” time intervals that aren’t really constant in order to methodically sort out credit & blame just to avoid admitting he got it wrong about something or somebody — that’s when you know you’re talking to someone who should not make meaningful decisions that actually affect other people.

It is the Dullard’s Credo:

1. If I don’t see it, I don’t believe in it.
2. If I don’t believe in it, I don’t want to know about it.
3. If I’ve already made up my mind I don’t believe in it and I have to see it, that is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY bad!
4. If it’s funny but it makes me or my political compatriots look bad, it isn’t funny.
5. If it isn’t legitimately funny but it makes my political opponents look bad, you’d better laugh and laugh HARD or else you and I can’t be friends anymore.

It’s a failing I see more and more often in these times, and it’s not all on the liberal side of the fence I’m afraid. It does appear to have something to do with age. People, unacquainted with a particular issue and not previously exposed to the position statements available on either side of it, initially learn about it through one such position statement. Stating it more concisely: They learn about it for the very first time, through propaganda. If the propaganda stirs up emotions, and if it’s good propaganda it will…there is a bonding, and from that moment forward they won’t even make the slightest motion toward reconsidering. There’s no further indoctrination needed, they’re already in the Confirmation Bias feedback loop.

If I am accurate in my perception that something has changed here, and this emotional-attachment gutter-balling is much quicker and more efficient than it used to be as people willingly abnegate their critical-thinking faculties…this would have to mean propaganda, as a market commodity, is currently skyrocketing in value. Yesteryear it worked a fifth of the time, now it works three quarters of the time, that’s a meaningful increase in value.

I really don’t know where things go from here. But it can’t be good.

Perhaps it would be better for everyone if people went back to occasionally admitting their prior decisions were made without benefit of all the meaningful facts, and now that said meaningful facts have emerged, honestly re-evaluating. You know, learning. That stuff. That’s how people get smart and form opinions that are respectable. After the learning.

[…] There is no set time period after which some torch is passed. It’s a year, it’s all eight years, or it’s a day, whatever it takes to make liberals look good — and it takes a lot. A good thing that happens in the final moments before two-term Trump is obliged to watch the swearing in of his successor, on January 20, 2025, should be credited to Barack Obama. That weird thing the Dow did last month, is to be blamed on Trump. And the various plunges it did throughout 2016 in Obama’s last year in office, are to be blamed on George W. Bush. Who saw the economy crash during his final year in office, of 2008…but if anything cheerful ever happened during that time, the credit for it would rightfully go to — Bill Clinton. House of Eratosthenes […]
- Let's Review 50: Signs of the New Spring and the Same Old Urban Decay - American Digest | 03/04/2018 @ 11:38
For what I’ve seen on the non-lib side, it’s all reactionary, and usually tongue-in-cheek. Most of us on the right, and even those in the middle, are tired of the last twenty good years of “Everything good is liberal, everything bad is not-liberal.” It’s everywhere that we turn. The internet, the TV, movies, education, work. You can’t really HELP but react. Not because it every actually worked on those that are intelligent, but because it’s both incessant, and ravenously eaten by the sheep like dung-beetles at a sewage-plant smorgasbord.
- P_Ang | 03/04/2018 @ 13:56
P_Ang has it dead-right… we see it even in non-political things. My hockey team’s fan board is a good example: there’s a substantial hunk of folk who have been up in arms about the team’s (lack of) direction for years… and it’s my observation that when the team is improving or declining makes no difference to a certain subset of that hunk. Everything good is a mirage or an accident, everything bad is “I told you so, these guys are terrible at running a hockey club.”

This gets a large reaction from people who defend some of the positives, and sometimes will lead to flame wars because the tendency is to defend every move, no matter how bizarre and misguided, as bad luck, and to take claim for every positive.

But along with that, there’s a second side to it, and it’s one I see increasingly in political discussions, and it hinges on something that is peculiar to one side of the debate, summed up in the old directive: “No enemies to the Left.”

Whenever something bananapants goes on with the Left – and let’s face it, we are inundated with examples – nobody denounces it, and at most some people observe “Well, that’s obviously awful BUT…” followed by the de rigeur denunciation of some relatively-minor pecadillo of a Righty. And everyone in the GOP has to ritually disavow any of these flawed people.

It’s a neat inversion of “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” On the Left, they love the sin so much it absolves the sinner completely, but those on the Right must cast out their own no matter how repentant.

Well, as the chorus goes, “And that’s how you got Trump.” The reaction to this transparent dishonesty is, increasingly, that people on the Right are fresh outta fucks to give, and new stock ain’t due any time soon. They are through with it. They know that any time they admit anything along the lines of “Well, yeah, that wasn’t ethical or proper,” that the Left immediately uses that as a blind to launch an ambush – “THEY ADMIT IT! BUT YOU STILL WERE GOING TO VOTE FOR HIM YOU TERRIBLE AWFUL PERSON WHO IS PROBABLY ALSO RACIST AND HATES ADORABLE KITTIES.” They’ve put up with it for – what, 40 years at least? So now the answer is, “Yeah, I am gonna vote for him, your words mean nothing, and I invite you to contemplate both my middle fingers.” There will be no concession no matter how objectively just, because the subjective result is cultural and political erosion.

One hopes that this doesn’t become a permanent attitude and we can all get back to actual enjoyment of each other’s company someday.
- nightfly | 03/05/2018 @ 12:58
Here’s what I saw….
Positive economic movement began in Mr. Trump’s first hundred days.
THOSE began in November 2016, and the movement was based on raw “confidence”.
I MAY have a varnished power of observation, and a “trick” stock portfolio.
- CaptDMO | 03/05/2018 @ 16:10

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Sunday, March 4th, 2018