From here.

Imagine if news outlets other than conservative ones explained that young people were also going to be required to buy something they didn’t need so that Medicaid could be expanded offering “free” healthcare to more lower income people.

The top earners are not only paying their fair share — they’re paying everyone’s share.

From here.

The Purple Problem is…simply stated…that they’re not doing this.

It really doesn’t take much to trash a place once you can manage to define, influence and eventually monopolize the prevailing viewpoint. It’s inevitable when people start to see self-improvement as a futile effort. Of course, that’s exactly the viewpoint liberalism keeps pushing…unless you count “be more liberal” as self-improvement. Education? They’re for it as long as it means being more liberal. If it means what it used to mean, if it has something to do with earning a more respectable living and making yourself more self-sufficient, they’re not for it anymore. Employment? They like the kind of employment that doesn’t actually produce anything. Service and sacrifice? Only if they get to choose. The soldier doesn’t have their respect. Freedom and personal choice? Again, the choice is for them.

It’s particularly depressing in California. Most other states, the folks in charge drone on and on about how each new year is going to be the best one ever for that state. Our folks only talk about the slim chance we have at maybe surviving this “crisis,” digging ourselves out of the hole. There’s no vision for actually winning at this thing. But that’s not to say there isn’t a stated answer. It’s always there, and it’s always more liberalism. We have the crime, we have the problems with our schools, we have the high taxes. And we have people leaving. Are they all conservatives? No. Just like the graphic says, the liberals vote in the nonsense and they get sick and tired of the messes they create, so they leave. They go someplace red, that’s missing the nonsense, and then they vote in more of it over there.

Most perplexing of all, they don’t seem to know what they want. Received this e-mail yesterday:

Morgan —

I’ve been working at the Democratic National Committee for two weeks, and I’m already picking up some pretty important details. I’m not just talking about where to get the best cup of coffee or how to find the printer (though those are important things to know).

I’ve been looking through staffing plans and strategy memos, I’ve been sitting down with department heads, and poring through the budget.

Here’s what I learned: This is an organization that’s ready to win.

Now I’m asking you: How do you want to build a successful Democratic Party not just for today, but for the next generation?

What are your priorities for 2014 and beyond?

[ ] Making sure we’re doing everything we can to hold Republicans accountable
[ ] Getting out the word about President Obama’s agenda on social networks like Facebook and Twitter
[ ] Supporting local Democrat candidates in my hometown

I’ve worked on campaigns ever since my dad ran for school board when I was eight, and I’ve always loved it. But I also know how easy it is to get tunnel vision — there’s always the temptation to focus on the immediate and forget to plan ahead for our future. At the DNC in particular, that would be a huge mistake.

Most campaigns and committees don’t get to play the long game, but we do. We’re building a bench of future leaders now, so that we have strong candidates to run for office — from president to Congress to city council — in two years and 20 years down the line.

They’re playing the long game. But “hold Republicans accountable” is not an end-goal, nor is “supporting local democrat candidates in my hometown.” Those have to do with making sure one party wins and one party loses. For the personal passion, those things are supposed to be a means toward an end; what’s the end? Getting the word out about President Obama’s agenda on social networks? Again, that’s a means toward an end…what are these people trying to do? “Not just for today, but for the next generation”?

It’s creepy. If I received an e-mail from a conservative organization, they’d say they’re trying to thwart President Obama’s agenda. And then they’d smear that agenda…which a lot of liberals would say is unfair, but hey, at least there would be some specifics. I get e-mails from the DNC and Organizing For Action all the time, they’re all like this. Win, win, win…they very rarely, almost never, say what exactly it is they’re trying to do.

Here and there I see something about womens’ choice, and making health care affordable for everyone. I think we all should be able to agree, now, that democrats don’t care about making health care affordable. As for womens’ choice, that means abortion, which means treating pregnancy as a disease. That would make babies diseases, which means making humans a disease, and there I think that pretty much bulls-eyes it. That brings us back to the beginning, where self-improvement is seen as an exercise in futility.

A Californian heads for Colorado, studies and works to turn the place blue like California. Meanwhile, back in California, the state he left does not turn red. Too many rules locking in the liberalism. Oh, eventually it might happen, the way the grass cut in the wake of a mower might eventually grow tall again, or the fence boards just painted by a paint brush might eventually need another paint job. But — that’s what they’re doing. Mowing, painting. They transform a place, pull up stakes, head to the next territory and transform that.

From where does the passion come? Their vision is toward darkness, incompetence, fear. On Planet Liberal, next to every nugget of information that could be learned so that some exciting new thing may become possible, there’s a rule saying you’re not allowed to repeat it, or write it down, or learn it in the first place. What drives this sense of commitment toward that, toward defeating human potential? Why this war against productivity?

Crabs in a bucket, I suppose?

Me, about a month ago:

Liberalism is a bad sales job, and therefore will always have a division in its midst between those who are being duped and those who are doing the duping. Just like an ass will always have a crack.

I was expounding on this point last night on my Hello Kitty of Blogging account.

Left-wing policies hurt the very people they’re supposed to help; right-wingers know this, by-n-large, but do the lefties? The answer to THAT question is key to understanding the left-wing movement in modern America.

It is the Pareto Principle in action. Eighty percent of this knowledge that left-wing policies are bad, is monopolized by twenty percent of the left-wingers, with the remaining eighty percent of them doe-eyed, innocent, mostly well-intentioned. And there’s some selfishness in there too: They figure if we have some sort of wealth-redistribution scheme underway that isn’t underway already, they stand to benefit.

This mixture of good intentions and soft selfishness, is worthy of discussion. At the very heart of this thought process, this “bigger half of the ass,” the duped-people subscribe to a number of articles of faith:

1. Capitalism — and there is remarkably little confusion about what exactly that word means — doesn’t work. It is a sucker’s game.
2. It is like multi-level marketing. It will pay off, for those who are in early and out early; the ones who fail to bail out will be left holding the bag.
3. HOWEVER…individuals cannot make the decision to bail out, it takes a certain number of people to pool their resources and bail out together, stiffing everyone else.
4. So, fuck everyone else and let’s get ours! Are you with me?

So these eighty percent of the liberals who possess no more than twenty percent of the understanding, seek to form a community. It is greater in size than a single individual, but it is less than everyone, because someone has to be left holding the bag. They feel like they’re in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: “If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison…” That’s the plan, A is going to betray B, they figure they’re A, except there is some antecedent action in the story — B has already stuck it to A in some fashion, so B has it comin’. That would explain all this chatter we’ve been hearing for the last couple of years about “the ninety-nine percent,” “one percent,” et al. One percent of the people have 99 percent of the wealth and vice versa…massive inequality…they seem to inwardly sense that these stats are made-up and can’t be trusted, but it doesn’t matter because there is some inequality there, of which the homily is only tangentially representative, the way an ancient fable might be only figuratively connected to something that actually happened. The inequality directly translates to injustice. You have more than me, that somehow can’t possibly mean you did something to earn the loot that I didn’t do — that is, in some way, preemptively eliminated as a possibility. If you have something I don’t have, there must have been an equal allotment of whatever it is, and then when I wasn’t looking you must have stolen my share.

So they’re in the prisoner’s dilemma, but it isn’t a dilemma for them at all, because, payback. The only “dilemma” is to do the getting-out, right now, and screw that other guy before he figures out what’s up. And they can’t do it alone. They need to do it as part of a group.

The dupers — well, they’re easier to study, even though they’re deeper thinkers. They’ve simply found a way to provide this temptation and take their cut. The more the dupees are duped, the easier it is to dupe them some more, so you have to ask yourself: Why would the dupers ever stop? Of course they wouldn’t and they won’t. There’s no incentive to make an honest living here. We can’t make them listen to reason. The way to save the country is to ram something up that ass, split it in half. Separate the duped from the dupers who are duping them.

There’s a trick there. Clearly, if what’s motivating them is “fuck everyone else and let’s get ours” then they aren’t entirely well-intentioned. Nor can it be said they’re entirely missing the capacity for good intentions, either. What they’re missing is maturity. They don’t trust capitalism. Maybe they feel they’ve been given the shaft by it. And they probably have. Capitalism does give a lot of people the shaft. The case could be made that it gives everyone the shaft. Look into the lives of the people who win at it all the time; look closely, and you’ll find they haven’t always won. They lost here and there, it’s just nobody ever talks about it. As you gather more and more information, you see a pattern emerge strongly suggesting that that’s the real secret to success. You just get up after you’ve been knocked down. Acquire new relationships, get rid of others, after you find out some people are going to do right by you and others aren’t.

But you find this all out after you have paid attention. Our modern society’s current infatuation with hardcore liberalism, the extremist techno-liberalism that pretends to be building great and grand new things while it does nothing but wreck the wonderful things that were already there…it is rooted firmly in a case of cultural ADD. Few-to-no people can pay attention to anything for too long. Liberalism is an easy sell in this landscape, because “get that guy before he gets you” is such a short and seductive message. The rebuttal against it is considerably longer, lacking that adrenaline surge associated with sweet, sweet revenge. It’s boring. And it consists mostly of unanswerable questions, like “If you’re building something great and grand, then what exactly is it? And how well does it work?” That doesn’t excite the attention-span-deprived, and it doesn’t draw in the selfish, because it doesn’t offer them anything.

To save the country, we need statements.

And we have to aim them at the early-recruits. The ones who are not quite yet at the stage of “fuck that other guy before he fucks with us.” That’s too late.

The target audience has to be the “centrist” who has just read some sad-sack story. Gay guys who can’t get married, single mom with breast cancer losing her health insurance, young dude who can’t get a job, Yale law school slut who has to pay for her own contraceptives…

I’m coming to be aware of a lot of this fresh-recruit propaganda has to do with economic classes. That’s been going on since at least the 1930’s, but with a hardcore liberal President we’re living under a renewed push. So-and-so works really, really, super duper hard, and yet he only makes one eight-hundredth as much as the boss. Or one ten-thousandth. So unfair!

How do you talk to people who are falling for this? After all, we all know how it plays out: If it isn’t fair, we need some external influence to make it fair, involving student subsidies, minimum wages, more regulations, and higher taxes. By the time someone asks the obvious question of “Waitaminnit, how do these things actually improve anything for anybody, long-term?” everybody’s lost interest and moved on to something else. What a short path it is between sympathetic murmurs and destructive impulses. Actually building something is pretty tedious. Takes a year to build the barn and a day to knock it down.

I went on to suggest the following…

Here’s how you talk to the ignorant, mostly-innocent, mostly-well-intentioned majority:

“I notice, Republicans [conservatives] do not seem to want to hurt poor people, nearly as much as democrats [liberals] want to hurt rich people…”

“Yes, they want fewer poor people the same way democrats want fewer rich people, but they don’t want the poor people to go away the way democrats want rich people to go away. They seem to want the poor people to stop being poor, which, I think, for the most part, those poor people would be just fine with that…democrats, on the other hand, appear to want to bring ACTUAL harm to rich people.” And discuss from there.

Of course, we don’t know any of this for sure. It’s an easy thing to target a class and say there’s something wrong with it being there. Much more difficult to say what exactly you want to have happen to the people who are in it. Adolf Hitler did manage to get that done, eventually, but what about the rest of us. I think if we can all agree on anything, we can all agree that’s not a good model for us to follow.

The right-wing has a ready solution for this, and quite a lot of distance between them and Hitler’s final solution, because our poor people don’t want to be poor. Well, by-n-large they don’t. Lots of people who can’t get jobs, want to be able to get a job. It’s not so easy to say the same thing about rich people. Isn’t this just obvious? Rich people would rather be rich than poor…poor people would rather be rich than poor…

While we’re still in “no duh” territory, it becomes obvious that the lefties want to do something destructive to the rich people, while they’re observing worriedly that there, ya know, are some rich people. More rich people than they’d like. How do they intend to thin the ranks? Load them up in boxcars? Banish them? Vaporize them? Make them poor? Does it really matter which one it is? It’s all destructive.

A right-winger wanting poor people to be rich, is not similarly destructive. That’s, like, uh…the way it’s supposed to work. Remember that?

From Dr. Joy Bliss at Maggie’s Farm.

Twenty percent taking psychotropic medication, six percent addicted to the stuff. Nice.

At 4:19: “ADD tripled. And the drug sales increased by a hundred fold. Autism has increased by 40 times since DSM-IV. Childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S. has increased by 40 times, in spite of the fact that we had rejected it. Shows how impotent the system can be.”

From Robert at Small Dead Animals.

The Onion:

Defense Needs To Be More Physical, Reports Man Slumped On Couch For Past 5 Hours

INDIANAPOLIS — While watching the NFL playoffs Saturday, local man Steve Gordon, who barely moved for five straight hours as he slouched on his couch, reportedly announced that the defense needed to be more physical and deliver punishing hits. “Come on, get up, move—just smack ’em,” said the man who hadn’t even gotten up to use the bathroom since the early game. “They should be flying around out there and slamming into the ball carrier at full speed. Let’s see a little effort. The linebacker just has to shove blockers out of his way, rush up the field, grab the quarterback, and whip him to the turf.” According to living room sources, Gordon expressed frustration with the lack of hustle by defenders and with the excruciating pain in his back, which he twisted awkwardly at halftime while attempting to adjust a cushion.

Harrison Dietzman writing in Ricochet.com. From The News Junkie at Maggie’s Farm.

But because people in the West are not threatened by concentration camps and are free to say and write what they want, the more the fight for human rights gains in popularity, the more it loses any concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone toward everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights. – Milan Kundera

I would like to propose a short thesis on the American Left. The primary goal of the contemporary American Left is the destruction and refocusing of human desire. The root of this project is the Left’s perennial project to remake the human.

Vulgar Marxists proposed that the human was an inherently economic animal, and, because of that, placed their hope in economic revolution. History proved them wrong; the human could not be reduced to economic motivation. The proletariat failed to unite against their oppressors, and violent revolution failed to sustain itself.

Waking up in 1968 with a bad Soviet hangover, the post-Marx Left sought to find the true site of revolution. The proletariat must be replaced by a more reliable revolutionary class, one based on something other than economics. The New Left proposed that the human, rather than a fundamentally economic animal, was a fundamentally desiring animal, and, rather than a slave to capitalist production, was a slave to capitalist desire. Capitalism monopolizes and controls human desires in order to perpetuate its existence.
:
The Left relies on human selfishness to remake desire…Human desires are frequently cited, accurately or not, as the basis for human rights. Want publically [sic] funded birth control? Then argue that it’s a human right. The same goes for SSM or assisted suicide. If you love someone, then it’s your human right to marry them; if you no longer want to live, then it’s your right to die. If you don’t want a child, then abort it. But if that same baby dies in a car accident on the way to the abortion clinic, the death becomes homicide. By making human desires indistinguishable from human rights, the Left fundamentally recreates the historic Western category of the human.

That’s a big-thought, that “I should have it because it’s my right” is an agenda-item, as opposed to a flailing-about brain fart from someone who never matured and has run out of arguments.

I have often heard of leftists insisting on as much, that their political movement is truly “progressive,” a linear-trajectory unidirectional perpetual expansion of human rights so that people could do more and more things. I’ve never thought of this as rational, since they seem to acknowledge that these rights are attached to expenses; they want the expenses to be absorbed by “The Rich,” who are uniquely capable of so absorbing; but they must understand the wealth of The Rich is still a finite resource. And rational people should understand that an infinite depletion from a finite resource must end in exhaustion, with all the devastation that would be attendant to such exhaustion, no other outcome possible. They must understand this.

Could it be that they actually get this, and figure something like “What do I care, I’ll be dead by then so let my grandkids deal with it”? What a sorry lot of sick sons-of-bitches…

From Zero Hedge, by way of Maggie’s Farm.

The output, the activity, the incentives, they’re all flowing toward Barack Obama’s vision: People shouldn’t work. They shouldn’t help each other. They shouldn’t even be born. People are nothing more or less than a contaminant, a pox upon the planet.

Update 1/11/14: Someone took the time to use the BLS figures and plot where the unemployment rate would be if the labor participation rate stayed the same:

More at The Federalist, by way of TPNN.

My mother.

Just a note for the files…

A new term, actually…two words…

Catechism-Science (n.)

Bearing in mind that experience and experiment come from a common Latin root, catechism-science is anything toiling away under the label of “science” that exists entirely outside of that. Its persuasive strength comes from being repeated over and over, verbatim, by people who call themselves “scientists” but who do not do science.

It’s important to separate this out from the real stuff, for a number of reasons. One of the most important of these reasons is that science relies a great deal on deductive reasoning, and while deductive reasoning is most persuasive when it is carried out properly, people lose track of how easy it is to do it improperly. It doesn’t work at all, in fact, unless 1) the range of possible causes has been exhaustively listed, and 2) each item within that list was eliminated conservatively. If the producer of the conclusion succeeds at #1 and fails at #2, the final conclusion is only as strong as the weakest elimination. If he fails at #1 then the whole thing is just a waste of time. Or, to be more precise about it and maybe a bit more tactful, it is a (questionably) valid exercise of what might be real scientific thinking, within an arbitrarily restricted scope of possibilities, thus rendered at least partially useless.

This is done all the time nowadays. Super Bowl Sunday is an awful day for spousal abuse; this-kid or that-kid has Autism; this-or-that climate-change model is 95% certain.

This is not the same as anti-science, which works toward a desired conclusion by paring information away that doesn’t fit. Although there is certainly a relationship between catechism-science and anti-science, in the sense that they both start with the desired findings already identified. They both contain an awful lot of passive-voice statements, like “these symptoms are thought to be classic traits of Asperger’s” or “the science is settled on global warming.” Statements formed within these sciences, involve a consistent situation in which the speaker is pointing to someone else, and nobody really knows much of anything except how to repeat things that someone else has said.

Therefore — if you ask fairly innocuous questions, questions you ought to be able to ask of real science, such as, “how do we know that?” or “just how sure are we of that?” you get back a whole lot of nothing, veiled threats hinting toward your imminent ostracism if you don’t straighten up and fly right, or pure nonsense. “Oh, very sure! Very, very, very sure! Extreeeeemely sure!”

If you let it play out, now and then you find out that’s actually correct. About as often as a roll of the dice comes up double-sixes, and for the same reason. In other words, it might occasionally bump into real and verified truth, but isn’t real science.

Was listening to Tom Sullivan in the car yesterday, and I’m not sure what brought this up. Had to be the Chris Christie bridge thing. Was anybody talking about anything else, anywhere, yesterday? But anyway, a caller called in and compared the Republicans today to the way they were back in Reagan’s time, coming out of it with an unfavorable view of the current ones. The word she used, that caught the host’s attention, applied more to the modern image than to the modern substance, was “sleazy.”

There’s a lesson here for everybody, Republican or otherwise. Today’s Republicans have an image problem; they project an image of sleaze, because they project an image of nothing else. Think about it: Someone may say to you “I’m going to vote for [insert name here] (who happens to be a Republican” and it may be clear from that what they want to do, what their vision is, what their hopes and fears may be. But what if they say, “I’m going to vote solid Republican,” what would that tell you today? You wouldn’t know where to begin. Not that you can’t argue about it. But the argument would be short; one side would slander the Republicans, the other side might try to defend them, but not for too long and not too vigorously. And it wouldn’t be that interesting of an argument. Neither wide would have any real confidence in whether they captured the true meaning of the speaker’s intention when he said he would vote Republican.

And that’s, if it ever happened.

What’s interesting about this is that the Tea Party does not have a similar problem. Everyone’s got a good solid idea of Tea Party priorities. That is not to say everyone is correct about this. The Tea Party is at the center of a determined and motivated attempt at political slander; it is an energized and driven effort, because it is an effort that is needed. They are a threat.

As Michelle Malkin has been pointing out for years, and continues to point out now, you just can’t count on a Republican to be much of anything anymore. Not even a non-democrat.

One clue we have on what might be going on, is the number of times I hear the name “Barack Obama” as I take phone calls from conservative fund-raising groups. Well, that Barack Obama person has fund-raising groups working for Him, who also contact me often. They write to me in the e-mail and say: Barack Obama just made such-and-such happen. Kick in five dollars, three dollars, whatever you can afford, and we’ll make some more stuff happen. The conservative groups say: Barack Obama just made such-and-such happen. Donate today, or else we won’t be able to stop His agenda…and He’ll make more stuff happen. See the difference?

I’ll state it more plainly: Evidently, from my experiences if from nobody else’s, everyone who’s been sent to Washington to stop Barack Obama, has made a livelihood out of failing to do so.

It’s a bit odd that the guy whose approval rating looks like this…

…enjoys such “support” from both sides of the aisle. President Obama certainly has had a unifying effect on the country. People of all sorts of different ideological persuasions agree He’s doing an awful job and His policies are wretched. They also agree that we shouldn’t do anything to actually stop Him, or even slow Him down…unless assurances can be provided that whatever we’re doing to stop Him, will have little to no actual effect.

There’s something cultural happening here. Something huge, beneath the surface, and something new. It seems our society lately is losing the ability to carry out a vision; to evaluate results. How did Clint Eastwood put it: “When somebody does not do the job, we got to let him go[.]” That sentiment did not prevail in the last election. And yet Obama’s supporters were not saying, in large measure, “He is doing the job.” Their message was more like: He’s trying really, really, super hard, and it’s taking a long time because things are so, so, so very messed up. That is what carried the day.

Americans are becoming less and less results-oriented. We’re becoming more & more like the dog chasing the car; more interested in the chase than in its possible conclusion. In reality, there’s no reason for Obama to still be messing around with improving the economy five years into His regime, anymore than there was any reason for FDR to be similarly struggling eight years into his. That’s all just a lot of pablum to be fed to the masses. And the Republicans, sorry to say, have bought into this wholesale. Worse than that, they’re selling it retail.

As is the case with anything else, things are only going to get better after we form a vision for actually solving the problem, and start carrying it out.

Rush Limbaugh takes down President Obama, along with every other pie-eyed lib who indulged this fantasy about unemployment benefits spurring economic growth.

The president’s been speaking for the last 20 minutes, 25, 30, whatever on the morality and the economics of extending emergency unemployment benefits, anything to get Obamacare off the front page and get Obamacare off the radar. Now we’ve got to extend unemployment benefits. It’s nothing more than the news agenda being recycled. It’s just flat-out amazing. If what he just said is true, we ought to just stop anybody working and put everybody on unemployment, and that’s how to get a recovery.
:
The president just said that unemployment benefits actually create new jobs. Now, stop and think about that for a second. Unemployment benefits create new jobs. What is unemployment insurance? It is paying people not to work.

Let’s change the term. Let’s get rid of “unemployment insurance” and let’s call it “paying people not to work.” The president of the United States just said to resounding applause — well, I’m not sure that got applause. The only thing that’s really gotten any applause in the White House, he’s got all kinds of people standing behind him, is when he said we can’t dare have another government shutdown. That got a standing ovation. So it tells you the kind of people in the room.

Money quote:

“Voting for extending unemployment insurance helps people and creates jobs,” Obama said. “Voting against it doesn’t.”

It’s clear we’re having a difference of opinion about what a “job” is. President Obama, along with a lot of the vocal libs, are pursuing a definition that may be technically correct…to a fault. They’re being very short-sighted, I think, associating the concept of a job with some sort of activity. I suppose when you don’t have a job, that’s very appealing: You either have a job or you don’t. Who cares what the job does if you don’t have one.

But if no one’s producing anything, the people who do have jobs aren’t going to have them for long.

What sort of “jobs” does President Obama have in mind? Are these jobs that produce products and services that other people can use? If not, then I think He should present this honestly and ‘fess up that His vision is not quite so much about economic growth, but rather a flurry of activity which is not quite as useful to our own long-term prospects. And then the rest of us could make an issue out of it and discuss it. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

My general experience with arguing-with-libs-on-the-Internet is: Good luck getting them to engage this as an issue. Usually, they’ll just start over at the beginning and explain it all to you how it’s supposed to work: “See, when people receive their benefits, they use them to buy things they otherwise would not buy, and that creates activity…”

But how do we go about growing the economy, making everyone more prosperous? Isn’t it obvious that for that to happen, someone, somewhere, has to actually make a useful product? You know…do work? Product-ive work?

It’s looking more and more like we’re getting a history-playback, along with all the education that entails if we just open our eyes and pay attention to the lessons.

We’re seeing first-hand how FDR made the Great Depression drag on, and on, and on.

Yes, Prof. Sowell, go after this one. Take it down already. It’s caused enough trouble.

New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, in his inaugural speech, denounced people “on the far right” who “continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics.” According to Mayor de Blasio, “They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else.”
:
Years ago, this column challenged anybody to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had ever advocated this “trickle-down” theory. Some readers said that somebody said that somebody else had advocated a “trickle-down” policy. But they could never name that somebody else and quote them.
:
The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories — including J.A. Schumpeter’s monumental “History of Economic Analysis,” more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type.

It is not just in politics that the non-existent “trickle-down” theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American universities — and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a “trickle-down” theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.

Sowell has already written previously about the ideas of those who have flown off the handle at this statement of his, that there’s no such thing as a prominent political advocate of “trickle-down”:

What I said that set off the crazies was that there is no such thing as “trickle-down” economics. Supposedly those who believe in trickle-down economics want to give benefits to the rich, on the assumption that these benefits will trickle down to the poor.

As someone who spent the first decade of his career researching, teaching and writing about the history of economic thought, I can say that no economist of the past two centuries had any such theory.

Some of those who denounced me for saying that there was no trickle-down theory cited an article by David Stockman years ago — as if David Stockman was the last word, and I should forget everything I learned in years of research because David Stockman said otherwise.

What is often confused with a trickle-down theory is supply-side economics, such as that advocated by Arthur Laffer. That theory is that tax cuts can generate more tax revenue for the government because it changes people’s behavior, causing more economic activity to take place, leading to more taxable income, as well as a faster growing economy.

It is not hard to find examples of when this happened — for example, during the Kennedy administration, among other times and places.

Then he got into something that’s been bugging me for awhile:

If education provides anything, it should be an ability to think — that is, to weigh one idea against an opposing idea, and to use evidence and logic to try to determine what is true and what is false. That is precisely what our schools and colleges are failing to teach today.

It is worse than that. Too many teachers, from the elementary schools to the graduate schools, see their role as indoctrinating students with what these teachers regard as the right beliefs and opinions. Usually that means the left’s beliefs and opinions.

The merits or demerits of those ideas is far less important than whether or not students learn to analyze and weigh those merits and demerits. Educators used to say, “We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think.”

Today, students can spend years in educational institutions, discussing all sorts of issues, without ever having heard a coherent statement of the other side of those issues that differ from what their politically correct teachers say.

…but…I suppose that’s a discussion for another time. Meanwhile…

Those who complain of “trickle-down” policies, and politics, and advocates, who don’t really exist — betray their own skewed understanding of how economics work. I’ve noticed, without fail, that such complaints rely on an underlying premise that a “tax cut” is some kind of a giveaway. That’s a wrong turn there. Once you mistake a nothing as a something, any progression from that point is bound to be wrong. Or let us say, the only shot it has at being correct is by random chance. You’re better off shaking a Magic-8 ball.

Have they lost sight of what used to be a given, that an economy relies on people actually producing things? Do they really think the only reason anybody has anything is because the government “gave” them money, by way of not-taxing them?

In many ways, I am saddened and distressed at this writhing, twisting, mutating societal notion of what is “mainstream” and what is extremist; this is one of the ways. So it’s extremist these days to think that people, by default, deserve to keep the money that they have made, is it. The “mainstream” thought is that all money comes from the government not taxing you. Is it really that bad? I’d like to think not. But these commonplace and popular statements about trickle-down make me worried.

Matt Walsh is ticked off.

After discovering that half of the female Marines can’t meet the minimum physical fitness requirements, usually failing to do three pull-ups, the Corps has decided to delay the standards. This is all part of the process of “equalizing” physical requirements so as to integrate women into combat roles.

Here we have a horrible idea, stacked on top of a bewilderingly idiotic idea, poured over a collection of reckless, ideologically-fueled, irrational, liberal feminist ideas. Basically, an insane idea had sexual relations with a moronic idea and the two gave birth to this idea.
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I disagree with the fools who like to pretend we’re living in a Charlie’s Angels movie, where ladies can shout “girl power” and then kick butt and take names with the best of ‘em.
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I disagree with every single thought process and ideological dogma that goes into creating a scenario where the home of the Few and the Proud is transformed into a place for the Many and the Physically Incapable.

When the DC elite declared their plan to move women into combat positions, supporters of the move tried to assuage the concerns of rational Americans by insisting that physical requirements for combat roles would NOT be altered or adjusted for the sake of women. But rational Americans — being, well, rational — knew from the get-go that this was a lie. Women are not men. Men are uniquely equipped for the physical and mental rigors of combat. Women are not. This fact, while scientific and undeniable, seems quite insulting to the legions of childish Utopianists who’ve been hypnotized by Disney movies and college professors into believing that women can “do anything men can do.” Anything. And, in order to please these types, military brass will cave and kowtow, eventually rigging the fitness tests so as to achieve a paradise where our daughters and wives can charge into combat and be mercilessly slaughtered.

And the rational Americans were right. Again.

One of the (Army) Sergeants at work was telling me this is a falsehood, that the Corps is not delaying the standards and the girls actually have to do SIX pull-ups, right-freakin’-now. Seemed to know what he’s talking about…but…dunno. Seems to me we’re going about this all the wrong way at any rate. Let’s say the “Charlie’s Angels” people turn out to be right and women can meet every physical challenge that men can meet. That’s provably false, but let’s grant it anyway. Can’t we all agree, even given that, that they’ve reached the right conclusion by going the wrong way?

Can’t we all agree that they did not pick out samples of men and women of significant quantity, and hold stopwatches by them, clipboard in hand, as they did their squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, 2-mile runs, etc.

No, they didn’t do that. They didn’t run tests. They decided ahead-of-time, before even so much as a single speck of data was in, that WomenCanDoEverythingMenCanDo. Then, they felt obliged to follow suit on that, re-announcing this incorrect opinion every time the question came up. Can’t we just acknowledge that’s how it works? The problem isn’t that this is wrong — although it is. The problem is that once people invest their egos in such things, they are easily seduced into terrible ideas.

And we’ve got a lot of that going around lately. The problem isn’t that Barack Obama is a bad President of the United States, or that everyone who’s black would be equally terrible. The problem is that there is so much valuable information being tossed out, by those determined to toss out any evidence that even superficially suggests how much Barack Obama sucks at His job.

It’s also probably not true that gay married couples are any more “loving” than straight married couples, or that they can provide better homes for children. Once again, people who think so didn’t decide that by visiting a thousand married gay couples and a thousand married straight couples and meticulously comparing them. They just refuse to consider any other possibility. That’s the wrong way to go deciding things.

That all is just obvious. Isn’t it?

The Blaze:

Ohio Man Who Raped 6-Month-Old Baby to Death Wants Mercy

Condemned killer Steven Smith’s argument for mercy isn’t an easy one. Smith acknowledges he intended to rape his girlfriend’s 6-month-old daughter but says he never intended to kill the baby.

The girl, Autumn Carter, died because Smith was too drunk to realize his assault was killing her, Smith’s attorneys argued in court filings with the Ohio Parole Board, which heard the case Tuesday. And Ohio law is clear, they say: A death sentence requires an intent to kill the victim.

“The evidence suggests that Autumn’s death was a horrible accident,” Smith’s attorneys, Joseph Wilhelm and Tyson Fleming, said in a written argument prepared for the board.

They continued: “Despite the shocking nature of this crime, Steve’s death sentence should be commuted because genuine doubts exist whether he even committed a capital offense.”

Smith, 46, was never charged with rape, meaning the jury’s only choice was to convict or acquit him of aggravated murder, his attorneys say.

However, rape was included in the indictment against Smith as one of the factors making him eligible for the death penalty. Under Ohio law, an aggravated murder committed in the course of another crime – such as burglary, robbery, arson or the killing of a police officer or child – is an element that can make someone eligible for capital punishment.

But, the law is clear: Eligibility for the death penalty relies on intent to kill. Perhaps it was there, but where’s the proof. If the glove don’t fit you must acquit, or something…

And, this is the right thing to do, I’m sure the attorneys will say. In America, everyone is entitled to the very best defense before the court they might have. All of the logic is durable enough, although book-driven and without any human intuition applied…no common sense…so it leads, step by step, to the conclusion that they should be there, where they are, in the courtroom, arguing “You must spare my client because he did not actually mean to kill this six-month-old baby girl he was violently raping.” (The book-driven common-sense-devoid durable logic also leads, step by step, to the conclusion that the jury will have to do that, there is no other valid verdict to hand down.)

Their parents must be so proud!

What’s the take-away here? There is a faint glimmer of validity to the argument that the lawyers present. All it proves to me, though, is that the lawyers are not the entire problem. Prosecutors must prove intent to kill, according to the law. A problem emerges because Smith was drunk as a skunk, and in a rage. But I cannot help but wonder: Is that an edge-case of some sort? What’s the population of accused murderers who are prosecuted under Ohio law, with the prosecutors asking for the death penalty? Are they a reasoned and sane lot? Do they tend to do crisply and clearly defined things, things that are easily proven, signifying their intent to kill?

Like fill out a form?

The problem is with the argument itself. It’s there to be made, and that means the lawyers are going to have a point when they say it’s their job to argue it. Since the problem is in the argument being there to be made, the root cause is the law. There are a lot of laws like this because there are a lot of people who want to make laws like this.

Make it harder to get people executed. That will somehow lead to good things.

It’s not always so.

One of the things the 2006 Superman pre-reboot half-reboot did right, was to summarize the whole legend in under a minute…

Ooh. I kinda like that. Makes this a sort of Republican movie: The bad guy is into “sharing,” thinks there’s something wrong with the good guy because he won’t share.

Actually, that feeds into why Superman is my favorite Superhero. The origin. Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Fantastic Four, The Flash, Spider Man…they all put themselves in certain situations. Yes, external factors exerted a motivation on them, but they enjoyed the benefit of choice. I’ve always identified with Superman because he never consciously selected a single thing, ever, not once.

And every single adventure the Man of Steel has, is centered around the singular question of: How can I use my gifts to effect the best possible outcome?

Meanwhile, jealous little people talk smack about him because he has ability, and for no other reason. But his abilities are still limited. He makes his way on the salary of a senior reporter for the Daily Planet, walking to work from his humble apartment at 344 Clinton Street, Metropolis, Apartment 3-D. On some level, I’ve been identifying with this. My entire life, really.

The latest: I’m still re-adapting to bachelorhood after my wife lit out of here in December 21st. Her duty as doting daughter is fulfilled, her father passed away surrounded by friends and family, December 29, at 11:39 at night local time, or something very close to that. That happens to be — in a cruel twist of fate — our first wedding anniversary. It’s now January 5th, he’s cremated, she’s ready to bring back a portion to scatter into the Pacific Ocean. (He always wanted to come, but was scared of our earthquakes, supposedly.)

But, the blizzard. She’s trapped. She’s lost her Dad, I can’t do anything to comfort her except talk to her on the phone, and she’s trapped.

As for me…oh, can we please get this one thing straight? I DO NOT HAVE A GIRLFRIEND IN CLOVIS, CA. Yes, I did head down there. You know why? Because they had an economical but high-quality hotel, and Starbucks, and Hooters, all within one square mile of each other. That’s it, and that’s all.

My Monday-to-Friday brain cycles have been entirely devoted to work…I’ve got my own stuff I’m doing, on evenings and weekends, and lately I’ve hit a bit of an impasse, even though what I’m trying to implement (for free, with nobody cutting me paychecks for accomplishing anything, let alone just trying) is vastly, vastly, many orders of magnitude simpler than other things I’ve managed to get done. The kitchen is a fucking goddamn mess. The car is a mess. Everything’s filthy. I miss my wife terribly. And when everything is completely quiet, it still feels like there’s a John Phillips Sousa band playing in my head because I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing.

So, yeah. I clock out and actually book a hotel room. Take my Trek 7300 with me. Apart from the bike, it’s really no different from what Christopher Reeve did in Somewhere In Time…except my woman is separated from me by distance, not by time. It’s just old-fashioned writer’s block.

In this case it breaks down pretty simply. I have two problems. One, I needed to figure out how to instantiate a new object with symbol-lookup, every time a “call” command was invoked within a new scripting language I’ve kinda sorta been inventing, in order to implement an effective regression test against a math library I put together. Two, I’ve been coming to grips with a rule that I had not confronted until now: You can’t put anything in a union that isn’t POD. Well, I solved problem #1 between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. in my hotel room. Then, I solved it some more between 6:00 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. at the local Starbucks. Problem #2 I knocked out in ten minutes after I returned home. See? That’s how it works. You can sit at home with your thumb up your butt wondering what to do, FUCKING ENDLESSLY, or you can get away, spend a little bit of time and a little bit of cash, and solve the goddamn mutherfucking problem.

I’ve been around the block with this kind of stuff, I know how it goes. To me, it’s all part of the routine. You try little things to get past the barricade, then you go on to bigger things. Occasionally, it rises to the magnitude of renting a hotel like Christopher Reeve did. You just do whatever it takes.

But, I’m on Facebook. And all our friends know about what’s been going on. “Why are you in Clovis??” “Why are you in Clovis??”

I AM IN CLOVIS BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE TOILING OVER THIS STUPID FUCKING BUG AFTER MY WIFE COMES HOME AND I’D MUCH RATHER BE WATCHING TEEVEE SHOWS WITH HER SITTING NEXT TO ME. That’s why I’m in Clovis. Or, a few hours ago, was in Clovis.

Because I’d much rather be watching teevee with my wife by my side. Even though what we’d be watching, in all likelihood, is NCIS. I’m rather burned out on that. But I’d lunge for it in a heartbeat, if it meant I could watch it with my wife. I happen to like her. I miss her. And…truth be told, I’m wishing I spent a bit more time watching her “stupid” teevee shows with her, before she had to take off because her father’s vital organs started shutting down.

All of that is a digression, though. I come back home to find out: The Niners won. In spite of that — perhaps, because of that? — none of my Facebook friends want to offer anything by way of: Why can you not declare a C++ object to be a part of a union, even though you can declare it within a struct? They’d rather think about football.

Well. Who can blame them!

But there is something going on here that concerns me, and more than a little bit. I’m a child of the seventies and eighties. Contrary to what has been thought by the many, many liberals who have “debated” me on the Internet over the years, I am not the product of old-money. There were no resources available to send me to college, and if there were, I did not have the GPA to justify it. I have never been college material. But I was raised to solve problems. I did that, and life has been good to me. I am not a candidate to be interviewed on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs…although, I should be, and if it were to happen, I would consider it a very high honor. I do not wear my first name on a badge on my shirt. Although, in my mind’s eye, I do. I do not think of computer programming as any kind of white-collar, let alone savant-intellectual, affair. I never have. I have always thought of it as on par with stacking lumber. Just problem-solving. Nothing more than that. More blue-collar than white-collar. Just implementing stuff, so that the people way-up-there who have to make real decisions, can concentrate on those decisions, after I make sure the machines do what they’re supposed to be doing. All these years, on some level, I’ve always thought of myself as a sort of janitor or something.

And, I’ve always thought of myself — always had to think of myself — as the beneficiary of an uncommon bit of good fortune. No, wait. That is an understatement. An historical bit of good fortune. Fantastic fortune. Like, you fire a bullet out of your gun, someone else fires a bullet that hits your bullet and knocks your bullet out of the air. That kind of good fortune.

Since about the seventeenth century or so, we have had this institution we have called “college” that is supposed to — let’s be honest, okay? — put on this good show about trying to educate the masses so everyone can be moar-better-equal, while in reality, laboring tirelessly to preserve and perpetuate a caste system.

The era to which we have become accustomed over the last thirty years, which we are now abandoning, typified by this unforgettable commercial…

…is coming to an end, I sense. My last job interview I was asked three questions — which I aced, but the interview was a fail and probably because I’m too expensive for the gig (since this is all pretty much freshman-knowledge):

What is 2 to the power of 5?

what is 2 to the power of 16?

Please e-mail me a code fragment that will read in a string of characters, reverse it, and output the result to console.

When the above commercial came out, you could ask people in their mid-thirties these questions and, at the very, very least, they might display a sense of intellectual curiosity (even though that would make them baby-boomers): Gosh, yeah, you know I should make an effort to look into that. See, back then everybody understood the concepts: Computers were doing all these wonderful and amazing things, even though at core, all they were doing was distinguishing a zero from a one. All these cool things they did were derivative of that. It fell to humans to figure out how the more complex problems were being successfully puzzled out by machines that, internally, could only resolve that most simplistic problem, distinguishing a zero from a one.

Nowadays, so much more has become possible. And the humans have become stupid — again. The man-in-the-street is no longer intrigued by how complex problems can be made possible by a stupid machine that can’t do anything more than distinguish zeroes from ones. Thirty years later, today’s man-in-the-street sees that all as “geek stuff.” It isn’t something he should make the time to sit down and figure out. Jersey Shore beckons.

I’m coming out of an era in which the seventeenth-century, “college kids rule” model has been upset. I do not have any college experience. At all. Well, save for three quarters of a corporate accounting course at a community college, and that (if memory serves) was all on video. My only real diploma is high school, and that, I think, was a GPA of 2.65 or some such. And yet I am a builder of applications. I have managed requirements for large projects. Huge projects. I have coded my balls off. I have been a project manager. I rose to become the senior engineering resource for a blue-chip company, responsible for deploying all applications throughout the enterprise, of a ten thousand seat wide area network. That is not a testimonial to me being smart, or even to me being bull-headed. It is a testimonial to my blind dumb-ass luck. I had been born, and had come of age, when Prometheus came around with a whole new brand of “fire” to offer to the mortals. It is phenomenally good luck, on the magnitude of a bullet knocking another bullet out of the sky.

Folks, we are fucking blowing it.

These kids growing up now, who are younger than my son, they’re getting the shaft. Good and hard. They should be just like me, each and every one of them. It isn’t happening, because this stuff relies on just a little bit of intellectual curiosity on the part of the moppet. But if the moppet shows just a little bit of this, quicker than you can say “blue pill” he is medicated.

My son has a diagnosis of “severe Autism” because, and only because, his mother wanted him to have one. After an entire decade of everybody arguing about this non-stop, nobody has stepped forward with a good definition of what it is he isn’t supposed to be able to do. It isn’t just him. There’s a whole generation behind this. Kids who aren’t supposed to be taught things, because they can’t handle the emotional trauma of learning to do things they aren’t supposed to be able to learn to do. But the authorities who say so, can’t define what these kids can’t learn how to do. It’s all blind-faith stuff. It’s all manufactured-disability. We found that out, for sure, after driving six hundred miles so we could go to the disposition meeting and find out why my son is being diagnosed. Turns out, there isn’t a shred of real “science” to it at all. I asked the doctor what this “brain” thing was she thought she found, and she said I was “bullying” her, then proceeded to bully me, refusing to answer, refusing to consider, refusing to discuss. So that’s where we are. Pushy women refuse to discuss things, and we project the dysfunction onto the next generations of boys who aren’t showing the proper qualities of malleability. Then we diagnose-it-out-of-the-way. And call it “science,” even though none of the “scientists” can answer any questions.

Manufactured. Disabilities.

And this in the age when high-school graduates can become architects of how everything fits together, when they can dictate how it’s all supposed to work, if they just show some work ethic and take the initiative to figure out cause-and-effect…since no one else is bothering to. Prometheus has come around a second time, to give us fire from the gods. We just told him to go fuck himself sideways. Now we’re going back to our football games, after making sure our kids have been properly medicated…so they don’t develop any of this unhealthy curiosity about complicated numbers and computers and shit…GOOAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!!!!

Revenge of the Nerds? It happened. It came and it went. Now we’re medicating.

We are blowing it. Big time. Words cannot describe.

I miss my wife. My son, too. So much.

I miss the olden days. When strength was strength, something to be adored. When weakness was weakness, something to be abhorred.

I really don’t know what motivates us nowadays. You want me to state it really honestly? I feel like the whole thing has sort of passed me by. I don’t understand why we treat weakness as strength and vice-versa. I’ve got some ideas about it. But, like a lot of old people from our times and from days gone by, I find myself grappling with a newer confusion about it all. I want to stay curious, and to do that, I have to stay humble so I want to stay humble.

But if you forced me to take a guess about it, like, with a gun to my head — I’d say we’ve been losing our way because we’re just too comfortable and we’re just too bored. We’re losing our grip on reality.

She is emblematic of the reason I hate humor nowadays; or, to be pinpoint-precise about it, I loathe what we today often call “humor.” So much of it just isn’t funny, and is not intended to be. We have many among us who are losing their sense of what humor really is, and they may never have understood it. But no, that’s not what I mean by “Silverman effect.”

What I mean by that is: The idea that the “humor” is funny if, and only if, it aims this ridicule and hurt in the right direction. This idea of “I just said something insulting about this class of people, or that particular person, now laugh at my ‘joke’; you owe me“…followed by…”So-and-so hurt my feelings when he made fun of me.” Or said something that wasn’t quite politically correct. Or spiked the Could-Be-Construed-As-O-Meter.

Because Sarah Silverman is not all of this. It’s a phenomenon that is much bigger than her. A lot of people will “laugh” at just about any joke made at Sarah Palin’s expense, provided it is at her expense. As long as it ridicules her, or her son Trig, or Catholics, it’s all the very-best-joke-ever. But those very same people will be all set to get properly horrified if the Duck Dynasty guy says the wrong thing. The Victim class rules must be enforced at all times, oops he said such-and-such, time for some mob justice. Keep rocking the boat until the pariah is properly made a pariah. As long as someone’s career comes to an end over this, the outcome is a good one.

The premise is — has to be — that these people over here have feelings, and those people over there do not. That’s the problem with it. Well, aside from the fact that they’re destroying the very concept of “humor.” And when they’re in mob-justice-mode, they don’t seem to be trying to resolve a problem that came about when the target of wrath opened his mouth. They don’t seem to be climbing out of a hole, or doing what’s unhappily become necessary. They seem to be looking forward to such opportunities. Relishing them. Say something disparaging about a victim class, and quick as you can flip a switch, all of a sudden “everybody” has the right not to be offended. And you just violated it, buster.

But it isn’t everybody. Other people not only are missing that right; any & all comments made about them that are somehow negative, are automatically “funny.” As long as they’re the target. That seems to be the thinking.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Canada Free Press:

“There is no more neutrality in the world,” said Black Panther leader, civil rights activist and fun-loving rapist; Eldridge Cleaver. “You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem—there ain’t no more middle ground.”

We live in Eldridge Cleaver’s world now, a world with no more middle ground. Where not doing anything does not mean you will be left alone.
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The average American still holds the fanciful belief that, if he isn’t annoying anyone, he should be left alone. To the people running his country, this is as bizarre and unworkable as Phrenology or the Geocentric theory or handing out universal health care without also compelling everyone to buy it.

Hat tip to The Barrister at Maggie’s Farm.

About that: A bit more at Gerard Van der Leun’s American Digest, where the best comment of the year has already been picked out:

Stop looking for The One way to fight back. To make up for not fighting back we imagine we, or someone that will fight on our behalf, will find the one unguarded and vital target where we can attack and win in an instant. Politically, we fantasize about finding the weak spot in The Death Star and firing a kill shot.

The Left didn’t bring the country under their control that way. The Left has published books on how to fight the system. They fought the system. They now own the system. The Left waged a Long March through the culture. We keep engaging in Short Retreats to the next “gated-community” that we hope will protect us from liberal domination.

Start fighting in small ways, anywhere, and it will give you confidence to fight more and the tide will turn IF liberals find they can’t rely on never finding opposition. Use direct language. Call them communists, racists, sexist, traitors, etc. You don’t gain respect by speaking in moderate language about the people that are setting fire to this country. This isn’t Sunday School. This is a Civil War. The Left already knows it. They already fight like it’s a Civil War. You might as well face up to it.

You know their ideas are bad ones, because they’re most likely to look like good ideas when things are left (kept) undefined — when everything remains unclear and vague.

Good ideas stand up to inspection. Theirs don’t even stand up to proper description.

The graphic below went up on the sidebar Sunday night, about twenty minutes to nine at night, Pacific time.

I’d just taken a call from Mrs. Freeberg, out in New York. Her father had just passed away, surrounded by my Mother-in-law, her, and the rest of that immediate family. End of a tough, tough couple of weeks I guess…and, that’s how we spent our “real” first anniversary, 12/29/13. Life shakes out that way sometimes.

I’ll always remember you, my dear friend. As much gratitude as any son-in-law ever had toward a man for raising a girl into a wonderful woman, that’s what I have for you. Godspeed, Graeme.

*sigh*…

During April 2012, I was driving a work transport van from the Kearl site to Wapasu Man camp in northern Alberta. There were seven to 10 individuals from various companies and diversities riding in the van. We were listening to the radio, talking among individuals and just trying to make the ride as mentally short as possible.

Without thinking, I told a joke that had ethnic implications. Later, I received notice from APEGA that I had offended one or others in the van. The joke was not intended to offend anyone. I have officially apologized to the individual that reported the incident to APEGA.

I wholeheartedly apologize to APEGA and its members. I am truly sorry of my lack of prudence when interacting with the diverse workforce in the oil sands projects.

“Iggy Slanter” sez…

Q: Who reports jokes?
A: someone that has been trained to be insulted.

From the great Jack Lemmon movie that absolutely, positively cannot be remade now…

Charles: The Port Authority is livid. The Freighter people are furious. And Mr. Lampson himself is terribly upset.

Stanley Ford: Of course he’s upset, he’s a lawyer. He’s paid to be upset.

The movie is older than I am, it hit the marquee well before I was conceived.

Prescient, no?

Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account. It was a comment I made in a thread, underneath a status update — not the status update itself. So by its very nature and the necessity of bringing it into being in the first place, it arguably belongs there…but, as is so often the case, once I post it and look at it, I see it is more at home here.

What I was doing was expounding on something wise that Prof. Thomas Sowell said:

Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?

The Prof. is way too classy to mention the word “liberal.” I am not similarly encumbered.

I have found that if there is one question, or question-fragment, that is universally unanswerable in liberal-land, it would be a bunch of questions sharing a common theme of “Is that the model.” Is that a picture of the way we want to see ’em go. Is that the way we want to have it turn out.

They’ve made a sort of sport out of defending the indefensible. And then on top of defending it, they build it up to such lofty heights…they lunge, exuberantly and irrationally, toward the superlative when there is no reason to do so. They can’t simply argue that Obama is a good President, He has to be the BEST ONE SINCE WASHINGTON and maybe better than Washington too. And they do that with everything. The ACA is not just a keeper. It is WONDERFUL legislation. Everyone who loathes it, or merely hesitates to extend approval to it, is a dumb knuckle-dragger.

So you ask them: Alright then…is that the model? Should we want a lot more legislation to look like this? Be ratified the way this was? Be adjudicated the way this was? Be implemented the way this was? Is that the desirable prototype? The ideal toward which future legislation should aspire?

Deer in the headlights. They have no idea what to do with that.

Joe Biden is the pinnacle of all desirable personal attributes and strengths in a Vice President? If so, what specifically would those desirable attributes be? What is it he is doing, that we should want all succeeding veeps to do?

You almost feel a tinge of proxy-embarrassment for them. When you ask things like “So, John Freakin’ Kerry, is he like the best Secretary of State ever? In what way? What does he offer, exactly, that we want our Secretaries of State to have? Is he better than Thomas Jefferson that way? Charles Evans Hughes?”

Skipping over details, is critically important to the exercise of confusing mediocrity with excellence. Details are unfriendly to this endeavor. But out here, in the real world, we have to care about details. We don’t have the luxury of ignoring them.

And that ventures into something else worthy of consideration. Our country is rapidly becoming balkanized, divided between what might be thought-of as “in the beltway” and “out of the beltway.” Although that is not completely accurate, since we have a lot of beltway types outside the beltway. That does not create a distinction we can actually use, because it doesn’t work in all cases.

Here’s what does work: The classic definitions of “blue collar” and “white collar.” Obviously, that division has not remained static for fifty years, even though it’s been about that long since it’s received any critical inspection. So we need to take stock of where exactly that division is. Blue is supposed to mean, you make your living with your hands. It may or may not involve physical strength. It usually means you don’t need to go to college, although that’s been going through radical change, and it never meant that you didn’t need to know something. Bricklaying, for example, has had masters and journeymen and apprentices for hundreds and hundreds of years, because a wall built by a bricklayer who didn’t know what he was doing, has always been worse than useless.

So. It’s not knowledge-versus-not-knowledge. It never was. It’s not college-versus-not-college…although, more than twenty years ago, it might have been that.

In spite of the shifts, the changing definitions are actually becoming simpler. And not in a good way.

We are still blue collar and white collar. But blue collar is: Mike Rowe might have wanted to interview you on Dirty Jobs. And, it’s: Whether people appreciate what you do or not, they really do need to have it done. That’s a bit problematic. We need to be careful of who we’re asking. Lots of people think their jobs are vital, but that’s not always true, so that is not the correct test to apply. We would have to imagine an alternate universe, created in the moment, with the altered condition that that occupation had gone away, and apply the thought exercise of: What happens, then? In that world, psychiatrists are expendable. So are lawyers. Hey, we were getting along quite alright when we had fewer of them, sorry lawyers but it’s true. But everybody poops, and that means everyone needs those pipes cleaned out.

This creates problems. Airline pilots typically wear white shirts, right? But what’s really white-collar about that job? They don’t make the rules; they follow them. They shepherd the machinery. They inject the human intuition into an operation where the machines can’t be entrusted to do everything, although the machines are already doing most of it — just like a bulldozer driver. Or a truck driver. As such, they sell their time, and not the same way I sell my time when I design and test software and then fill out a time sheet. So they’re blue-collar, and the question is more easily resolved in their case than in the case of a software engineer. Categorizing software engineers is a real problem. We certainly should be white-collar. We’re responsible for outcome, we make decisions that impact others, we even decide how things should work. But we’re not really supposed to; that’s just how it turns out. In reality, we’re not much more white collar than the airplane pilot. Other people make the rules and then we execute them, selling our time as we attend to the task of marrying up theory with reality. We’re on the ground, where the action happens. That makes us blue collar.

Sowell had something to say about this, too. As Wikipedia summarizes it, and it seems a fair summary, to me:

An intellectual’s work begins and ends with ideas, not practical applications. These purveyors of ideas may be at all points of the political and ideological spectrum, although Sowell generally reserves his sharpest criticisms for those on the left. Certain common patterns cut across specific political ideologies, however. Intellectuals, for example, show a marked preference for third parties, working outside the established power structures and applying what is presumed to be superior insight, to control the resources and decision making processes of the masses and their official leaders. This preference sometimes makes outwardly competing ideologies appear more alike than different. For example both National Socialism and Stalinism attempted to micro-manage the lives of their citizens; both implemented sweeping propaganda campaigns to reframe reality, and both resulted in leadership by an elite outside group. This, apparently, despite the fact that both movements were notoriously anti-intellectual.

Mmmmmmmm, hmmmmmm. Now we’re getting to the heart of it. We have theory, and we have practice, if those two were identical in every way and in every case then there would be nothing worth observing there. But they’re different, and at some point they have to meet up. We have people working close to the point of impact, and other people working apart and away from it, the “intellectuals,” whose “work begins and ends with ideas.”

With the consequence that, they do not have to deal with the nagging question of what happens when their ideas collide with reality. See, there is the distinction. That is what causes people to think in entirely different ways. Some of us have to contend with reality. It doesn’t necessarily make you think more brilliantly or keenly, but it absolutely does make you think differently. About little things. Little, tiny things like: My gunfire keeps drifting up, I need to adjust these sites in that direction. Cause and consequence. Stimulus and response. Reality.

“White collar,” to the extent it actually applies in this day & age — and I’m afraid it does — has to do with Sowell’s “intellectuals,” as he uses that word pejoratively. Intellectual giants, but mental midgets. Their work begins with ideas, and it ends there as well, so they never have to deal with implementation. They are several layers removed from the collision between theory and practice. They study a great deal more. And know a whole lot less.

Problem is: They run freakin’ everything. The people on the ground who can see how things are going, what actions cause what effect, can’t use that good information because they don’t have the authority. The rules, that were written up and socialized and validated and codified and adjudicated and ultimately signed, say you’re supposed to do such-and-such…and that’s the end of the conversation. Wait, which industry am I talking about here? I’ve lost track. It is no more possible to answer that question, than it is necessary. The situation I’ve described applies to industry after industry after industry, vocation after vocation after vocation, discipline after discipline after discipline. These mega-cool super-people who are so “wise” that they don’t have to actually deal with cause-and-effect, make the rules. Someone else, who has seen the wreckage that results, has the job of unquestioningly implementing these wise, wise, protocols and procedures. White collar and blue collar. That is how it’s divided up now.

When & if it all turns to crap…++cough++ healthcare.gov ++cough++…everyone can defend everything, because everyone followed the rules, and the rules were the correct ones, who are you to question any of it. Meanwhile, the results are crap. And that’s where the question comes in.

So…is this the model? This is how we wanna see ’em go, then?

It’s a good question. If it’s unanswerable, that may be inconvenient to a lot of people; nevertheless, that means something.

Update: Another Sowell classic:

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

On one of my performance reviews at the place where it didn’t work out — that is spelled out in detail. Can’t remember the exact wording. “Morgan has a lot of experience at places that are concerned with final outcome, and occasionally irritates our engineers who are more concerned with process” or something similar to that. Software engineering, I guess, is an industry not quite as well-defined as a lot of people like to think it is. It has one foot in each of these two very different worlds.

I don’t. I’m far too simple and far too inflexible. It’s always been abundantly obvious where I do, and don’t, belong.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc is the correct name. Not “proptor hoc” or “proctor hoc.” Pee are oh pee tee ee are.

Latin for “after this, therefore because of this”, is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states “Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.”

Deductive reasoning is powerful, since once it has been applied correctly, the conclusion it produces is undeniable. This distinguishes it from the inductive, which merely suggests the pattern found. But it has to have been applied correctly. Its power as a logical statement comes from the word “only,” as in, “this is the only explanation left standing.” For that to work, two things have to happen. First, the explanations that were identified as possible ones, must constitute an exhaustive list — a fair evaluation must have been applied to everything possible. Second, as these possibilities were eliminated, conservatism must have been consistently practiced. Nothing was eliminated until a sound argument had been assembled soundly eliminating that possibility as a possibility. If anything was bounced out due to being found merely improbable, or if the set of possibilities originally assembled was not complete, then it doesn’t work. The reasoning loses all of its persuasive power. Or should.

What brought this up: Mrs. Freeberg is out of town this Christmas. It is the first Christmas in many years in which the real tree in the living room managed to make it to December 24th.

I was just teasing her because — ignoring the dangers to sound, logical thinking posed by the post hoc fallacy — the lesson to be learned is quite clear. She sucks at watering the Christmas tree, and we now know it’s my job, because she’s way too distracted and spends too much time fiddling around with the computer while the tree dies of thirst.

It’s funny because…well, if you could see how I fiddle around with computers while neglecting other things, and how she runs around taking care of these little odds and ends including watering plants, making it look easy…well. Heh heh. I thought it was pretty funny. Uh, honey? What do you mean I get a beating when you get home?

Seriously though, it’s just something to be kept in mind when someone smugly announces: The evidence is in! It very often is not that simple, even when the evidence seems to be, scare quotes included, “overwhelming.” Overwhelming in what way? Our evidence is pretty overwhelming: The tree is doing quite well. I thought about watering the tree on 12/21, thought about it again on 12/24. Received a text message from the wife 12/25, “Did you water the tree yet?,” said to myself…uh oh. Thought about it some more the next day, and the next day, early this morning I finally got around to doing it. Tree’s doing fine! “Evidence” says I’m a maestro at this gig…after all, I never had anything to do with it in those previous years, when the tree was dying. I was way too busy. Fiddling around endlessly on the computer. Now the watering is my job, and the tree is doing fine.

Y follows X, is the situation. Proper deductive reasoning considers four possibilities:
1. X caused Y;
2. Y caused X, nevermind the fact that X was observed first;
3. There is a Z that caused both X and Y;
4. It’s just a big coincidence.

Occam’s Razor says, when there are multiple possibilities, if any one receives favoritism it should be the one that is least extravagant, or that demands the fewest presumptions. In this case, that would be the last of the four.

Because if I’m sure of anything, I’m sure of this: I do not take care of plant life better than Mrs. Freeberg. The jury is not out on that. TRUST me on this.

But…the tree’s doing fine.

It’s funny. Whether the victim-class is defined according to race, gender, creed, obesity, language, immigration status, income level or sexual preference, the rules are always the same.

1. We should never hold the members of that class to any kind of a standard, be it a standard of performance or a standard of behavior;
2. We should treat it as a human-rights violation if any member of that class wants something, and ends up not getting it;
3. If any member of that class falls short of what they were supposed to do or screws up, we’re not allowed to notice it or talk about it;
4. They should never, under any circumstances, at all, anywhere, whatsoever — have to prove anything.

To those, I suppose there is a fifth one we might add that says when a member of the victim class ends up in some kind of conflict with someone else, they should prevail. Trouble is, occasionally a member of one victim-class comes into conflict with a member of another victim-class. Then things aren’t quite so clear-cut. Seems we’re in the process of hashing out some sort of pecking-order. One example that immediately springs to mind is when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had to hash it out during the entire summer of 2008, over who was to be poised to be the Greatest!! Presidential Candidate!! EVAR!! And…well, that got kinda ugly didn’t it.

People who insist on unquestioning fidelity to these rules, from everyone they know & see & hear, without specifically listing the rules — they’re the ones who say they’re “for equality.”

What a crack-up.

Update: It’s as if someone said, “Hey, what that Morgan Freeberg said in that blog over there doesn’t make any sense, we’d better do something so that what he said makes more sense.” Equality between the two sexes, or among the many sexes, whatever, is not the objective. If that were the objective then women in the Marines would have to do their pull-ups. We’re going to send girls into combat in order to accomplish something. Would a rationally-thinking country not have a better idea of what that something is?

Equality isn’t it. Winning battles clearly is not it. Until someone provides evidence showing there’s a benefit I haven’t considered, the sensible conclusion is that there’s no benefit. And when do we do costly impractical things that we know provide no benefit? When an outside force compels us to. When we follow rules.

High time someone went through the trouble of writing down these rules.

Went up into the hills yesterday with a friend of mine, to go hiking and make some far away inanimate objects dance around, by way of burning gunpowder. Great fun. Turns out, there’s a big bright round thing up in the sky and that might have something to do with why there are shadows and stuff. As we were walking along chit-chatting about this and that, we hit on the observation that some of the Internet-arguing people, the left-wingers debating non-debatable things endlessly under cutesy pseudonyms, flinging accusations around, moving goalposts, engaging all sorts of nonsense hyperbole and logical fallacies — they often act like this whole thing is, for them, some sort of a gig. They show all the surface-level passion of a car salesman in a teevee commercial. And I think you know what I mean by that: He acts more animated in delivering his message than a “true believer” would show in delivering his — you can tell he’s getting paid, or hoping to get paid.

Amateurs behave differently. They at least consider good, hard evidence that might upset their views. If someone is really and truly concerned about gun violence killing people, and their proffered solution is gun control, they may not ultimately accept or approve of the clear and obvious rebuttal, “Oh, like Chicago?” But that should at least slow them down a bit. My friend was getting frustrated because he was able to recall when the liberals put up bad citations, he had the citation of some other work that clearly proved the other one was faulty, fraudulent, a study made in bad faith, or some such; and, a little later in the comment thread, the lib would put up the same link all over again, as if he hadn’t dealt with that, like the earlier exchange never happened. Such frustrating behavior might very well be the work of an amateur, but it doesn’t seem likely. It certainly doesn’t reflect the characteristics of someone who’s truly concerned about the problem being discussed. And, it is exactly what you’d expect out of someone being paid.

We already have people who vote for a living. Could it be we have large number of people who argue on the Internet for a living?

I can recall when that was a very silly question to ask. Nowadays, there’s been a shift, I think, and we need to seriously consider it. Lord knows, it’s gotten much tougher to get a “real” job under Barack Obama, and there is a perceptible increase in strange, weird activities representative of the swelling ranks of people who, ya know, gotta pay the bills somehow. Registering the home phone with donotcall.gov doesn’t seem to do a bit of good anymore, you just get the same dinnertime phone calls from companies conducting “surveys.” I’ve occasionally been tempted to ask the person on the other end what the terms of their employment are. Truth be told though, that conversation so rarely happens because when I take the time to pick up the handset and say hello, and hear some machine whirring away or clicking or whatever to connect me to some other human who couldn’t manage to actually dial me, I hang up immediately. It’s a great feeling. But it would be better to skip the whole stupid exercise.

I digress, though.

Are these teeming multitudes of “gotta pay the bills somehow” people being recruited by liberal activist organizations to argue on the Internet, hmmmm. I haven’t seen anything that would create an actual problem for the theory. And for the things already seen, it’s a bit tough to come up with some alternative explanations. The Internet-arguing lefty says, here is a study that says X; my buddy says, here is the study that proves your study is a sham; a dozen comments go by, over the next day or two, and the lefty puts up here-is-the-study-that-says-X all over again like the earlier exchange never took place. Frustrating, maddening, and downright weird. If it isn’t paid trolling, it looks like brain damage.

One alternative explanation has the virtue of being simpler. Simple explanations are valuable. They deserve our attention, and maybe they even merit a friendly bias. The simpler explanation is the one we have always been assuming: People who are passionate about something, just don’t listen very well.

By way of explanation, and perhaps making good use of the earlier digression: I recall a certain older male relative who received one of these phone calls from a real estate “firm” of questionable repute, who called him up and got him all excited about a house-flipping opportunity out in the crumbling suburbs of Detroit. There followed a flurry of hasty long-distance family-conference, during which time my brother and I endeavored to shake him from this. Boy, was it ever tough. My brother then took an interesting tack on the whole thing, conceding the point that going into house flipping was the RIGHT thing to do, since the senior relative wanted to do it so badly, but then outlining the steps that should be followed if this is to be done right. The oldster, surprisingly, conceded back that this plan made all sorts of good sense. But then continued to chatter away excitedly about the shysters who called him.

This intrigued me as much as it perplexed me. I spoke to him about it some more and directly inquired: Why is it, exactly, that we’re hoping for good results from following a bad process? Doesn’t it make better sense to hope for good results from a good process?

That stopped him, and made him think. For a moment or two.

Then, he continued to chatter away excitedly about the shysters. Some more.

This is Confirmation Bias.

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people’s conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.
:
Experiments have found repeatedly that people tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with their current hypothesis. Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they phrase questions to receive an affirmative answer that supports their hypothesis. They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were true, rather than what would happen if it were false. For example, someone using yes/no questions to find a number he or she suspects to be the number 3 might ask, “Is it an odd number?” People prefer this type of question, called a “positive test”, even when a negative test such as “Is it an even number?” would yield the exact same information.

I have noticed something over the years about confirmation bias, that might go a long way toward explaining the Internet behavior. Confirmation bias has a tendency to be LOUD. Ever notice that?

People who fall for this and start to engage the poor decision-making that results from it, seem to be a lot more interested in the confirmation than in the bias. They don’t want to do it all by themselves. They want to socialize their poor decisions. From watching how all this goes down, I’ve often formed the impression that there is real, and perhaps measurable, confirming going on here. The subject is perhaps 60% certain of the proposition before talking about it with others, and 80% to 90% certain of it afterward, even if no actual supporting evidence has been provided. For examples of this, I don’t have to think back too far or recall too much: As I drove home from the excursion, I passed one of those idiotic atheism billboards that said “‘Tis the season to apply reason” or some such. There. That right there is what I’m describing. Proselytizing a lack of belief. What’s it cost to rent a billboard? How does this emerge as a good decision, even if you have all the money in the world? Aren’t your resources still limited? Why do this? Seriously. Stupid.

A genuine and respectable atheist wouldn’t give a fig.

Humans have a way of welcoming confirmation bias, of working hard to make it happen to us. We all have an inclination, I think, to treat our own endorsements of something before audiences of familiars or strangers, as if it’s hard evidence. Blogging provides an enormous temptation toward doing that, by the very nature of the exercise. You have to work hard, with pretty much every paragraph, asking yourself “Waitaminnit, how do I know this is true?” The answer that comes easiest — few will admit it, but this is universally true — is: It must be true, I just wrote it down, and heck the whole Internet can see it! That, obviously, is faulty thinking right there. But you have to work to stay out of it, to not be sucked in.

No one is immune. And of course, it’s always fun and entertaining to point it out in the other side. But no greater harm in doing it, contrasted with not doing it. These things should be corrected. “Sayin’ so don’t make it so,” when someone just talks out their ass about the Tea Party being full of trigger-happy weirdos or something similarly slanderous and uninformed.

We’re all here by accident and there is no God? Sayin’ so don’t make it so.

The point to all this is: These people — assuming they are NOT being paid — are engaging in an ancient social pastime. They seem to inwardly know that their comments are not intended to observe the state of an object, quite so much as to change the state of an object. This is learned behavior from early on. You see it in classrooms of little kids arriving at a consensus about something; If some of the more charismatic ones happen to have their minds made up earlier than the majority, for whatever reason, they are very often heard using their “outside voices” inside. They are building a skill, which some of us are missing I notice. The skill of deciding and measuring things, that can be decided or measured only by way of including the human element.

Some everyday examples of this:

• Where this emerging consensus is going;
• Whether the decor in this room makes it delightful/cheerful;
• Whether a newly discovered political figure has “charisma,” or as it is commonly phrased, “is the real deal”;
• Whether a baby is beautiful, or ugly;
• Whether the dance performance was worth a 10.0;
• How to interpret an ambiguously worded test question, like “one hundred and one over five eighths”;
• He’s a jerk (pass-fail assessment);
• …but he’s an even bigger one (relative assessment);
• He does, or doesn’t, “need” that money he has;
• Joe Biden won that debate.

You go see a movie with a group of people, and one among you might say: “That actor really nailed the part, didn’t he?” The truth no one wants to acknowledge is that the “didn’t he?” is more important than the preceding statement. This is someone welcoming, on top of practicing, the exercise of confirmation bias. Actively seeking to have the bias confirmed. The question implicitly acknowledges the possibility that the actor didn’t really do that well. It grudgingly allows for this, in the sense that it seeks to eliminate it. There’s no point trying to eliminate something that isn’t actually there.

You can see the conflict, everyday, if you only take the time to look. As fewer and fewer people think Obama is a good president, the bullying-narrative that He is the greatest ever, has become more forceful. More intense. Any day now the healthcare.gov site is going to be working wonderfully…it’s said over and over, although there’s no evidence supporting this at all.

Matters to be decided in that bulleted-list up above, share common characteristics and these are worth some serious thought. They are testable, it could be said; it could even be said the tests are reproducible. If a hundred randomly selected people all agree that a room is tastefully and pleasingly decorated or that a baby is beautiful, you can go pick out an additional two or three participants and they’ll probably agree. What distinguishes them from the harder and firmer stuff, like “what is 2 + 2?” is that the human element is required.

Some of these squish-ball questions work very hard at masquerading as something objectively measurable. “Mitt Romney doesn’t need all that money” comes off sounding like an assessment has been made of what the Romney family “needs,” and either the income or the net worth has been mechanically and coldly assessed at something far above this. That is the implied sales job. We all know that is not the case, and that is not what is being expressed.

I have occasionally commented, to the surprise of some people I know, that if Autism was as trendy when I was a kid as it is now, I’d be diagnosed for sure. I don’t follow it up with a “wouldn’t I?” because there’s no confirmation bias taking place there, you’ll have to take my word for that. I’m absolutely sure of it. Of all the things that are different between a middle-age Morgan and a school-age Morgan, one thing that has remained absolutely consistent is my poor performance on written tests, even on tests confined to subjects on which my conceptual understanding is complete and strong. Even achieving total command, best I can do is about 70% at the end of it because I keep running into idiotic stupid questions like this one…and, responding much the same way as this so-called autistic kid:

You see, when the biggest part of answering the question is resolving the conundrum of “What did the test designer really mean to say?” — well, ya know, that’s a problem.

But we have a much bigger problem than that, in our society. We are conflating these squishy questions with firmer questions. We are essentially intermixing questions that cannot be resolved…read that as, cannot be resolved without including the human element, questions that require the engagement of confirmation bias in order to be answered at all…with questions that rely on objectively measurable truth. We are making an everyday habit out of mistaking the former for the latter.

It’s only impacting those of us who never learned how to socialize our poorest decisions, never learned how to acquire and ingrain a sense of certainty about them. A sense of certainty that, it should be noted, never belonged there in the first place. Only we notice it, because only we have any reason to. And we’re not only being outvoted on this matter. We’re being diagnosed with learning disabilities that don’t actually exist, at least, not in the way they’re being portrayed.

The loud majority is fortunate…I guess they are. They get to run around saying risible, silly things like “the science is settled on climate change.” What they are doing is something they’ve been doing for a very long time, since back in those school days where, when the group is asked a question…the heads swivel left, then the heads swivel right. Everyone knows whether or not to put their hands up, after they’ve had a couple moments to check and see what everyone else is doing. They are affecting the state of an object while deluding themselves, and others, into thinking they’re just reading it. That object is ethereal and omnipresent — everywhere, surrounding us all, binding us together. It’s almost mystic. And they’ve managed to achieve some weird symbiotic relationship with it. “The actor really nailed the part, didn’t he?” feeds this ethereal object surrounding us and binding us together. They tell the ether what to think. And the ether rewards them by confirming their certainty, and in so doing, sustaining and nourishing them.

After a lifetime on the outside looking in, I’m still confused about whether I should feel jealous or not.

Their answers are always “right.” Until they’re not…and then, as we see in some examples of group-thinking error, like the “Obama’s gonna fix our health care” thing for example…they become not only estranged from reality, but resentful of it as well. The traumatic collision between theory and reality is airbrushed out of the recent history; it never happened. Anybody who brings it up is demoted to pariah status. Needs to leave. It is “futile to discuss” the matter with such people………….isn’t it?

Cross-posted at Rotten Chestnuts and Right Wing News.

Gonna finish this tomorrow.

Twenty-eighth best quote of 2013. Yay, me.

Seriously though, as I read through the other 29 quotes I had some serious doubts about my merits. There’s some great stuff in there. And it’s good time-capsule material when you think about it; speaks volumes to the subsequent generations about what’s going on right now.

Me, on the Hello-Kitty of blogging, in a rant that unexpectedly picked up the “likes” like a wool sweater picking up cockleburs:

My give-a-damn about gay things in general has officially burned out.

If I was the president of a news company, right now I’d be putting out a memorandum that [says] we’re not covering any more gay stories, period. No celebs coming out, no reality-teevee show stars getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing, no movie reviews, no comic book characters having gay weddings, nothing except genuine, hard news. By which I mean, AIDS coming back, overnight. Cover that if it happens, otherwise, it doesn’t qualify as news.

This shit’s gotten seriously out of control. No, I don’t hate gays, I just don’t want to know about it unless it’s something I need to know.

I’m particularly incensed about gay-friendly movies. There are now, in every official way, “gay and lesbian” movie genres; I can’t simply avoid the genres, because the movies are not all in there. Romantic comedies, dramas, even action movies try to be hip and with-it by burning off screen time on gay themes that have nothing to do with the “real” plot. I’m not talking about laughably absurd situations that are really funny, that might happen to depend on homosexuality — like for example, this old show. I’m talking about the gayness itself being the draw, when according to the movie’s billing, the draw was supposed to be something else. The “cool thing to watch” if it’s a “cool” movie, or the funny thing to watch if it’s a funny movie.

When you can’t even make up your mind if you’re laughing-at or laughing-with, you go down that road without me, m’kay? I’m just not that fascinated with homosexuality. I have no reason to be, I’m not gay.

That all having been said: Since this letter is now disappearing off the Internet, and at this point I don’t even have a link I can put up, I thought I should go ahead and get it captured.

Dear A&E,

Thank you for bringing us a show that was family friendly and fun to watch. I greatly appreciated the fact that my Christian family could watch a Christian family on TV as opposed to much of the garbage that is reality TV. Unfortunately, you have done a disservice to Phil Robertson as well as the Christian AND non-Christian fans of Duck Dynasty.

Freedom of speech means that we are all free to speak what we believe. The Supreme Court does restrict some speech. In fact they specifically address such speech that may cause panic or physical injury. The example they give is that someone cannot scream “fire” in a crowded movie theater when there is no fire.

Why, because it would cause a panic and people would get hurt. Did Phil Robertson’s speech meet this criteria set forth by the Supreme Court? No, it did not. The only people who panicked were the A&E executives that decided to pull Phil from the show.

Phil Robertson spoke what he knew to be true according to the Bible. Does that ruffle some peoples feathers because it goes against what they want to do? Yes it does.
The members of GLAAD are free to speak out against Christianity and those that believe in the Bible. How is that speech any different than Phil’s?

Under the U.S. Constitution they both have a right to express their thoughts and opinions. So why is Phil being punished for expressing his opinions? Why are you punishing Phil Robertson for being a Christian? This was not an incident of homophobia or hate speech.

Homosexuality is clearly defined as a sin in the Bible just as other sins are listed. Stating it as a sin does not make someone anti-gay. Phil even stated, “we should love God and each other.”

If GLAAD and the LGBT community expect everyone to be tolerant of their views, opinions, and lifestyle choices, they too must be tolerant of Bible believing Christians, their views, opinions, and lifestyle choices. For A&E to succumb to the pressures of “political correctness” speaks volumes about your true concerns.

However, I would remind you that tolerance is a two-way street.

At this point what is needed is a clarification about your programming and your ant-Christian stance. If you are truly an anti-Christian station, which the move to pull Phil from the show based on his Christian beliefs reveals you to be, please be up front about it. You will most likely lose viewers based on this incident.

However, do not for a minute believe that you are losing viewers because of Phil’s comments. You will lose viewers due to your reaction to his comments.

Therefore, without clarification from A&E that you support Christians and Christian beliefs as much as you support GLAAD and the LGBT community, then “As for Me and My House We Will No Longer Support or Watch A&E.”

Respectfully,

Steven D. Ruffatto

The gayness becomes something we have to talk about, once again, because it rubs up against other things that are more important to us. I would not call those other things “freedom of speech”; the A&E network is under no obligation to preserve, or provide, Mr. Robertson’s rights according to the First Amendment, which when all’s said & done is merely protection from the government, and from nobody else. Without commenting on what may or may not be in the contract between Phil Robertson and A&E, I would say his First Amendment rights have emerged from this unscathed and unmolested, and I wish people would stop describing it that way.

That, however, has to do with the letter of the free speech protection. The spirit of it, however, has certainly been disturbed. After all, if you choose to defend A&E’s decision, whatever argument you use to provide that defense is going to culminate in a continuing obligation to keep on censoring. So there is an issue here, it just doesn’t involve the actual amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It involves the spirit of America. We are a place where the solution to such problems is more speech, and not less speech. That is what has made us unique, and it has been good for us.

Mark Steyn points out:

Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, in his career-detonating interview with GQ, gave a rather thoughtful vernacular exegesis of the Bible’s line on sin, while carefully insisting that he and other Christians are obligated to love all sinners and leave it to the Almighty to adjudicate the competing charms of drunkards, fornicators, and homosexuals.

Nevertheless, GLAAD – “the gatekeepers of politically correct gayness” as the (gay) novelist Bret Easton Ellis sneered — saw its opportunity and seized it. By taking out TV’s leading cable star, it would teach an important lesson pour encourager les autres — that espousing conventional Christian morality, even off-air, is incompatible with American celebrity.

Some of my comrades, who really should know better, wonder why, instead of insisting Robertson be defenestrated, GLAAD wouldn’t rather “start a conversation.” But, if you don’t need to, why bother? Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. Yet thug groups such as GLAAD increasingly oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. It’s quicker and more effective to silence them.

As Christian bakers ordered to provide wedding cakes for gay nuptials and many others well understand, America’s much-vaunted “freedom of religion” is dwindling down to something you can exercise behind closed doors in the privacy of your own abode or at a specialist venue for those of such tastes for an hour or so on Sunday morning, but when you enter the public square you have to leave your faith back home hanging in the closet.

Does this re-make or re-mold society in the way GLAAD intended? Ann Coulter says:

…[T]o just cite standard morality that has been around for thousands of years and have this angry gay mafia gang up on you and demand your suspension has just gotten out of control. This is not good for the gays.

Not good for the gays. That is a point that keeps getting lost, here, it seems to me. We’ve seen this with black and we’ve seen it with the women: The rank-and-file members of the supposedly oppressed minority who really are just going about their lives and trying to get along, at some point, are left behind by the advocacy organizations who purport to represent them. The “real” people have an incentive to try to minimize conflict with others, whereas the advocacy groups have an incentive to stir it up, aggravate it, keep it going. America’s unique curse lately is that our culture is no longer controlled or guided by the people who actually have to live in it. Once again, we see that the people who have to live with other people, are ready to do so. We’re ready to look past the differences, to minimize them, to work together on other things. But the advocacy groups won’t allow us to.

They smell blood on the water, and they want some flesh. The “gay sharks” are particularly vicious, because the black-sharks have already had their frenzy, along with the fem-sharks. One example after another can be found of such-and-such a guy…usually a guy…who had a promising career, but said the wrong thing and his head ended up on a pike. But where are the examples to be made by the gay lobby? They need more kills. That is the truth of the matter. That’s what is at the heart of it, and we’re not allowed to discuss it openly. There haven’t yet been enough martyrs for the gay cause, and there need to be some because otherwise it has not yet achieved stature.

Again: It isn’t the gay individuals saying so. It’s the organized advocacy groups. That’s the way it always is; the people just want to move past it and get on with their lives like anyone else, the groups insist on wallowing in victimology and forcing everyone else to do the same.

I don’t think we should continue to pretend any of this has to do with “tolerance.” It doesn’t, and nobody who’s been paying attention thinks it does. It’s about blood. Blood and predators, executors and martyrs, masters and slaves, anointed and damned.

The real irony is, if Phil Robertson had more power, and GLAAD and the A&E executives had less — heck, if Robertson was the dictator over all of us — there’d be more tolerance. In all likelihood, we’d have a happy situation in which there’d be a place for everybody. GLAAD is putting a lot of effort into avoiding exactly that situation. They want to make new pariahs, to shove targeted people into pariah status. They seek to establish, and preserve, a caste system. We’re supposed to pretend they want an egalitarian society, but they want the exact opposite of that.

The I.Q., or Intelligence Quotient — back in my day, as it was explained to me — is your maturity age (M.A.), as assessed by some sort of test, usually a written exam, times a hundred and then divided by your chronological age (C.A.). So a set of answers might contribute toward a measurement of 118 I.Q. when you’re fourteen, and if you submitted the same answers at age ten maybe your I.Q. would turn out to be in the 130’s or 140’s.

The more news I see about this healthcare.gov fiasco, the more I learn about how it came about, and the more observations I make about how ObamaCare proponents see the situation, and draw their inferences about what it all means…the more value I see in measuring what we could call the F.Q., the Fantasy Quotient. This would be the weight of everything that contributed toward your final opinion about something, divided into one hundred times the influence of your first-impressions. So travel back in time a few years, Obama and crew say something about health insurance for the first time and you go — cool! Maybe. You get inspired, the inspiration creates a fantasy. The fantasy creates a prejudice. The prejudice, by definition of the word, feeds into the final judgment, even if it has to withstand an onslaught of subsequent and contrary experience. How much or how little the subsequent and contrary experience diminishes that original impression, says something about you, and that something is reflected in the F.Q.

A good software-testing engineer has an F.Q. approaching zero. A healthy F.Q. might be somewhere in the twenties, maybe down in the teens.

If your F.Q. is a hundred, you’re pretty much incapable of ever learning a damn thing, and that’s a widespread problem we have now. Pavlov’s bell rings, people slobber, and their minds are made up at that point. We’ve got a lot of people walking around right now, as free to live and vote as you and me, with 100 F.Q.’s. They live in fantasy. ObamaCare is still just as wonderful for them as when they first heard about it. I really don’t know how this happens, I don’t get it. Maybe it’s their way of dealing with disappointment? Just don’t deal with it?

It isn’t just ObamaCare. These so-called “researchers” probably have very high F.Q.’s.

Nelson Mandela is a saint, or something. Barack Obama is a holy prophet, or Messiah, or something. Raising the minimum wage will actually raise wages. Gun control will stop gun violence. Trees must be saved. But babies are nothing more than “tissue.” We must be suffering because of something called “unfettered capitalism.” Everybody has ADD (hat tip to Maggie’s Farm). We can condition and shame men into not looking at pretty women anymore. And, my personal favorite, everyone who sees a problem in Barack Obama must be motivated by skin color.

These people can’t apply tests. Not really. Sure, they can run tests on things, but they can’t learn anything from the results. Their minds are already made up. You won’t see them revising an opinion about anything, nor do they have any stories to tell about ever having been compelled to change their minds about anything.

EVER.

Quothe severian:

As near as I can reconstruct the liberal “thought” process, the speech act somehow creates reality, if one is of sufficiently pure heart. Choices and their observable, measurable outcomes don’t matter; if you say it loud enough and long enough, it will become true. Healthcare.gov is expanding coverage and global warming is happening, because consensus. Repeating it makes it real.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter what the impure of heart say — or do — because we all know what they really mean. Calling Obama a Marxist is somehow raaaaacist. Hell, calling Obama “Obama” is raaaaacist according to Chris Matthews. Just as snow in Cairo and expanding Arctic ice is somehow evidence for global warming, not saying racist things is exactly the same as saying racist things. Lather, rinse, repeat, and it will be true soon enough, because words are magic.

Megyn Kelly said Santa Claus is white. That created a firestorm, somehow. As near as I can understand the thoughts and feelings that go into this round-robin heckling, the problem with Ms. Kelly’s comment is that she injected the attribute of quantifiability into something that is not quantifiable, because there is no reality, none whatsoever, associated with the mythical Santa Claus. Two problems arise with that argument, if that is indeed the argument being made. One, it isn’t true, since Santa Claus is based on stories that really were told, and one-to-some people who actually existed. Two, if it’s really all-mythical and everybody’s perception of Santa Claus is as good as anybody else’s…why is Megyn Kelly deserving of all this derision, then? Doesn’t she enjoy the same privileges and protections as the kids whose Christmases are supposedly ruined by the vision of a white Santa?

That is all neglecting the obvious third problem, which in my book is a real doozy. Who are these kids? How have they been raised? Not only is their F.Q. way up high, apparently, but it seems they experience a lot of consternation when they think about a white person giving them presents, and it isn’t the ordinary consternation that comes with a stranger climbing down your chimney and entering your house. There is someone else making skin color a part of this, in a most negative and unhealthy way, in a way that insists the races are supposed to be somehow separated. People of this-skin-color are not supposed to do anything nice for people of that-skin-color. Megyn Kelly is not the person harboring this fantasy; it’s somebody else. And I guess my own F.Q. is being tested, because I thought we as a society were supposed to be past all that.