House of Eratosthenes

Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. https://t.co/mkD69RHeBL

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 23, 2015

Well, unfortunately for Queenie, the jokes don’t need to write themselves. We have the Internet, all ready to jump in and remind people of things. Should they ever need it.

And, someone on Hillary’s staff did. Could this be some sort of clever ploy I’m not bright enough to understand? Well, humility is important…Hillary’s side is running things, right now, kinda-sorta. But simplest explanations are usually the best, the millennials are running quite a lot too. And, by definition, they had not yet achieved awareness way back when. Or adulthood anyway. This shows all of the signs of someone having their finger on the “Tweet” button, thinking they knew exactly what to say, when they hadn’t heard the back-story. I’m rather likin’ it. Hillary tends to champion a lot of causes that don’t have my support, and in this case she’s suffering massively from ignoring something I think should be getting a lot more attention, which is the problem of rape hoaxes. The “victim deserves to be believed” ploy has a back-story of its own, going back quite aways in our society, enjoying all along the support of those with authority. Well, of course they don’t mean due process should take a back seat! They don’t, do they?

But there’s something else going on here that’s escaping notice. We’ve got this Thanksgiving holiday coming up, in which relatives will gather around a dining room table, start arguing about politics, of course very little will be actually learned by anyone, very few minds will be changed one way or the other…certainly it’s a lot less likely with the time limit imposed by the Cheesecake Nazis, or someone reaching up to drown out what they see as a lot of petty bickering with some classical music, or pop tunes, or heavy metal or whatever. Before that happens though, the subject of the Syrian Refugees is going to surface…and with that, a lot of dishonesty, since it’s pretty easy to cherry-pick some statistics that make it look like President Obama’s taken the correct position. And let’s face it, cherry-picking statistics to get that done, is what a lot of people in media seem to see as their guiding mission, each and every day. But this is not a statistical issue, it’s a national security issue.

It’s also a philosophical issue, and this is where it ties back to the “Hillary says rape victims deserve to be believed” thing. Awhile back, off-line in the e-mails, a couple of my blog brethren and I delved a bit deeply into the difference between the sophists and the dialectics, and how each one of those two sides sees truth.

The bottom line is, sophistry — boiled down to its crude essentials — is winning the argument, period. Not quite so much at the expense of the winning argument being a useful one, but more like, with complete apathy toward that. An example would be…well, we can go back to the last time I blogged about something. A dead lawn looking cool — there isn’t much truth involved in that, since dead lawns look like shit. But the statement has a good shot at being the winning argument, if the value embraced has something to do with laziness. No need to water a dead lawn; no need to cut one either. A dead lawn is the lawn of a do-nothing. It is also the lawn of a sophist. You get to look cool (even if your lawn doesn’t), and act smug.

It is the contrast between the Architects and the Medicators, the former of whom think about things the way one must think about them, when one sets about the task of trying to build things that will actually work. And, to the latter of whom, the point of life is to be happy. The former demands thought, the latter involves feeling.

After seven or eight years of man-crush on Emperor Obama, an entire generation has figured out a new way of “thinking” and it isn’t healthy. You can’t create anything that will actually help anyone, thinking this way. You can’t grow turnips, or rice, or tomatoes, or slaughter some beef, pork or chicken, thinking this way. “This soil is good for growing grapes! Not only is it good for growing grapes, but it is the best soil for growing grapes on the WHOLE planet! And if you do not agree, unhesitatingly, my friends and I will all get together on Facebook, and mock you!” Just like “survivors of sexual assault deserve to be believed.” As is the case with sophistry, the conclusion has nothing to do with whether the soil is really good for growing grapes, or whether the survivor of a sexual assault really did survive a sexual assault.

Great Pumpkin What Hillary — or her staff — did here, though, is arguably outside the realm of sophistry, since classic sophism is all about Arete, or “moral virtue“. It looks like this fits the definition as far as intent, if not achievement. But there’s something else, isn’t there? Authority figures, and advocates, who drone on about this “victim deserves to be believed” stuff endeavor to create a symbiotic relationship of sympathy, which persists even when the objectives of truth and justice are not being served, and there’s nothing morally virtuous about that. Their message to the rape-hoaxer is quite clear: Don’t worry about all that stuff, sweetie. You’ve got me. My loyalty goes above and beyond, and outside of, the evidence and the truth it speaks about what really happened. This is a prominent feature of what’s being offered, not a hidden one. It is a part of the packaging as well as the substance.

Oh what, she didn’t mean it? Well there were other ways to word the statement, and it was “tweeted” the way we see it above. Now there are two good reasons to wish things had been left unsaid, not just one. Hey, that Hillary Clinton is a real savvy political figure, right? Smartest woman on the planet.

This “deserves to be believed” aspect of the modern American progressive’s flavor of Arete, seems to have achieved dominance. Just as a belief that the accuser really did survive sexual assault, has nothing whatsoever to do with this conviction that she “deserves to be believed”; so too did a belief that Barack Obama would serve as a healing balm of the country’s race relations problems, have nothing whatsoever to do with the conviction that He deserved to be seen that way. It’s just like the crappy, toxic soil that deserves to be perceived as excellent for growing the vineyard — best on the whole planet! And don’t you dare say otherwise! Or even hesitate to believe it! Or we shall mock you!

The sophists of millennia ago who aroused the enmity of Socrates and Plato, would have stopped short of this. There is no “moral virtue” involved, cosmetic or genuine, in claiming to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary. What there is, is a weird sort of group cred. Just like sophistry, it ignores truth, or rather makes a fair-weather friend out of truth, showing support for truth only when truth happens to take the side of the superior goals. But its goals are unique.

Today’s liberals have adapted themselves to take a place within a society in starvation mode. They believe the soil is the best in the world for growing the doomed vineyard, not because such a belief is in line with the truth, and not because once they’re seen professing the belief they’ll have a better chance of ensconcing themselves within a cloister of elites wielding real authority. They’re more like rats on a sinking ship, climbing over each other to reach the highest ground. Even their political animals drunk on power, like Hillary, are in this mold because we see them lose their enchantment with power as soon as it involves some actual responsibility. Hillary is just an example of this, but she’s a good one. For decades now, when power involves the power to remember key events in her latest shenanigans, and her butt is in a seat before a Senate hearing trying to figure out what really happened — she’s lost her famous lust for that particular power. Power will have to wait ’til tomorrow, today I’m a victim. Help me! I’m melting!

And They Bought It This is a fine distinction. It is between a desire to ingratiate within a peer group for the purpose of wielding this power and running everything; versus, for the purpose of mere survival. To be among the last to be cast out of the fortress on the eve of a deadly winter.

The takeaway? It could very well be that rape hoaxes are nothing more than a thing of the past, from here on every single accuser can be believed; and furthermore, that the Syrian refugee crisis is not being used as a Trojan Horse gambit by our enemies, and every single case can be safely admitted without negative consequences. And, that Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. But it doesn’t matter — these are not the people you want in charge when the ship really is sinking, or whenever there’s a reef, iceberg, another ship, or anything else that might sink it. These are not the people you want running things when there is a threat. Because containing and managing a threat, like dispensing justice, or growing a vineyard or building a bridge, is something you do competently only reckoning with real truth. Measurable truth, dialectic truth. “Doesn’t matter who’s cheesed off about it” truth.

And these people do not belong in the front seat, that’s not their bag, baby. They are political-animals through and through. Every now & then they are guilty of pretending otherwise, pretending that their hands really do belong on the steering wheel, but only rarely and only weakly. Behind closed doors, they’re probably amazed they’re getting away with so much, that it’s taking the country so long to come to grips.

[…] Freeberg fisks Hillary Clinton … and a whole lot more. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » “Deserves to be Believed” | 11/24/2015 @ 08:20

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“Deserves to be Believed”Tuesday, November 24th, 2015

“Deserves to be Believed”
Tuesday, November 24th, 2015