House of Eratosthenes

I was given cause to think back some more on the Anti-Star-Trek mindset that has so thoroughly imbued modern liberalism, when I heard He Who Walks On Water elaborate on the issue this morning on the radio:

Did President Obama just snub the moon? “I just have to say pretty bluntly here, we’ve been there before,” Obama said in a speech laying out his plans for NASA on Thursday. Obama insisted that he was “100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future,” despite his decision to end its space-shuttle program.

Just three words for this one: Pretty fucking ignorant.

But I’m impressed by something else, too. It is obvious to anyone paying attention, by now, what Holy Man means when He says He is “100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future”: That mission is, of course, to further study man’s impact on the ecosystem, and our species’ contribution to carbon emissions and global climate change.

Which, of course, means doing fewer and less of the things we do to make things, help each other, get stuff invented, make life more fulfilling and efficient.

Which is really what scrubbing the space shuttle missions is all about. Forcing the individual to make less of a mark. And of course, if you make a profit doing whatever it is you do, we’ll pour our energies into making sure you make less of a profit…ostensibly to even up the playing field and make us all equal, but not really trying too hard about that either.

I notice a dichotomy about this. And the dichotomy has a lot to do with this bowing-to-foreign-heads-of-state thing. Good Americans object, sometimes vociferously, to the bowing; it is a disgrace to those who have fallen in battle defending this country, giving their all to make sure no American is forced to bow to anyone. We object because by subordinating Himself to foreigners, Obama is putting the entire country on inferior footing.

But the dichotomy is this: Barry isn’t really making Himself inferior. And you see it in this flippant comment about “We’ve been there before.” When Barry tries for something, this rule doesn’t really apply. He pointed it out Himself when He was sworn in, although He managed to mess up the technical details once again: He noted that forty-four men have now been sworn into office. The correct number is 43, counting Him, but the point stands and it’s his point. Hey, Barry! We’ve had Presidents before! Step down and let Hillary take it.

Seriously, He was given a lot of chances to do this throughout the long summer of ’08. But Barry was meant for grander things than second place. Barry gets to try for things; the rest of us do not. We are meant to be ordinary. The rule is so rigid, that if any of us step out of line there’s something terribly wrong. We have to be taxed, the space shuttle program has to be cut, our auto company executives have to be told to step down, and nobody can earn an executive bonus that’s out of the ballpark from what His Holiness’ unelected, unaccountable czars think is alright.

It’s not too different from what I saw a few years ago when President Clinton’s Justice Department went after Microsoft, specifically Richest-American Chairman Bill Gates. It was supposed to be about “monopolistic” business practices, but keen-eyed observers could see the writing on the wall: A private citizen had gotten too big. You’re only supposed to get so high, unless you work for The Chief.

Sometimes when I manage to catch Rush Limbaugh, I wince when he goes into one of his tirades about liberals and how they “worship” government as the source of all good things. I’m not in agreement on this point. After twenty-two years, if I could call it I’d have Rush look into this issue a little bit more thoroughly and carefully:

Liberals do not love government much more than the rest of us, which is to say they barely even like it. It’s much closer to the point to say, government gets a special license to succeed at things, not because it is anointed or perfect, but because it is anonymous. Nobody, other than the President and a tiny cabal of elite Senators, is going to carve out a legacy by doing these things. The desire is to live in a world in which the individual’s pathway to success, is lit dimly or not at all. It takes the pressure off.

It goes back to what I was saying about the mugging. You see a man getting held up at gunpoint late at night, or a woman being abused or molested. So you high-tail it out of there to save your own hide. If nobody else was around, and you have no pride and no character, you get to stand tall — maybe you can even swagger. Hey, you could’ve gotten killed!

But if someone else is around and they put a stop to things, you look rightfully like a fucking pussy. And you feel like one too.

The easiest speech any politician made to any of his constituents, was a liberal politician speaking to a liberal constituent about all the good things he was about to do for the “middle class.” That cuts right to the heart of it. The liberal voter understands he has it much better than many others, especially those who came before in generations past. “Middle class” alleviates the guilt that would normally come with it, when it comes time to steal from others. It reminds him that there are others who are even better off…therefore he “needs” the loot. Or “the poor and downtrodden” need the loot.

But it’s also true. What we today call liberalism is chock full of people who simply aren’t worried about their headstones and what will go on them. Their loving parents may have put them through college, and then they got some kind of a job in which it’s impossible to make any kind of a mark, which isn’t what they want to do anyway. So they get up, eat breakfast, drive, do whatever it is, eat lunch, do some more mediocre undistinguished work, go home, giggle at Will Farrel’s impression of George W. Bush and then the next day they do it again. Until it’s time to quit. Just like two-legged cattle.

Another observation: Somehow, this attracts them toward “great” people like Barack Obama. It’s like they’re living vicariously through the amazing, extraordinary achievements of a deity. Someone they’ll never meet. These poor stiffs at NASA who are about to receive pink slips, the liberal voter somehow feels a close enough kinship with them, that they are to be subjected to The Rule: You can’t accomplish anything amazing. That’s for Barry to do.

These “great” people, I notice, are not particularly trustworthy. Barry’s supporters, in the moment Barry says something, inwardly know what Barry is saying is not true. They won’t admit they know it, but they know it.

When they call Ted Kennedy “The Conscience of the Senate” (+++snicker+++) they secretly see everything wrong with that, that I see.

Let’s put it this way: Given a choice of entrusting their kids over a week at a summer camp with Counselor Obama, or Counselor Palin, Obama voters would pick Palin. This is why they hate her so much I think; she reminds them of a third or fourth grade teacher they’ve actually met. She’s too familiar. They don’t want familiar, so that makes her “stupid.”

They want the alien, the super-being, the godlike persona…the safe anonymity. If you run away from the mugging but Jesus steps in and stops the mugging, you still look big and tough.

Being conservative, in 2010, is about entrusting power to people who already have your trust.

Being liberal is about putting power in the hands that nobody, with a working brain, would ever trust. Check out a list of people your average liberal thinks are imbued with a good “conscience”; you’ll start to see what I mean. Both Clintons, just about everybody in Obama’s mediocre administration, everyone named Kennedy — sheesh, that’s quite a crowd.

Would you put your kids in their care for a weekend? Because the liberals, although they’ll be slow to admit it, wouldn’t think of it. That’s how they’re different. That’s what’s wrong with them. The dichotomy.

“”The bottom line is: Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, the human exploration of space, than I am.”

Nobody is more committed? Really? Not any of the astronauts, scientists, designers, engineers etc. past and present worked their whole lives at NASA? No, YOU Barry are “more committed”.

Just like no one was more committed to making Iraq a free country.

Dichotomy? More like dicockamamie.

(Somebody send that windbag to the moon, ‘cause he’s sucking all the oxygen out of
the room.)
- tim | 04/16/2010 @ 10:09
“Another observation: Somehow, this attracts them toward “great” people like Barack Obama. It’s like they’re living vicariously through the amazing, extraordinary achievements of a deity.”

I agree but you need to go one step further. They also glom on to the achievements of their party or movement. By being part of a huge amorphous mass they achieve something. You yourself predicted they would flock to the streets to “be a part of something” after Barry was elected.

How many Boomers brag about being at Woodstock? How many lefties brag about going to protests and marches? Collective achievement allows them to have pride in accomplishment without risk. (Please don’t ask me what they think they’ve accomplished. AFAIK anti-war protests to the contrary we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan)
- Duffy | 04/16/2010 @ 11:33
Collective achievement allows them to have pride in accomplishment without risk.

Rat own, rat own. I’ve spent my life with Boomy Babers nipping at my heels, and it’s been a source of ongoing astonishment to watch the self-congratulation of a generation of lock-step individualists.

I can tell you from first-hand knowledge that war babies like me had as their primary motivation the distinguishing of themselves from their peers. Kids a few years younger inexplicably embraced the notion that their only identity was collective.

The reason they embrace Big Government is that they project onto it their unexamined introjected image of the Perfect Parent, who’ll pay all the bills while never rankin’ on ’em about cleaning up their room.
- rob | 04/17/2010 @ 07:25
[…] at Night “These Are My People: Americans” “We Will Never Say Thank You” Dichotomy TV’s Tea Party Travesty “Yes, I Love Paying Taxes” Arizona Clears Immigration […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 04/17/2010 @ 12:40

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DichotomyFriday, April 16th, 2010

Dichotomy
Friday, April 16th, 2010