House of Eratosthenes

The dining area was miniscule, with a posted capacity of 49. So we were in close proximity to the couple next to us, the masculine half of which noticed my “One Big Ass Mistake, America” tee shirt after their main course had arrived. It turns out they, too, are from the Golden State, San Luis Obispo area. And they, too, are confronted with an unpleasant reality that the state is headed over a Greek-style financial brink.

They’re probably about fifteen years senior to us, which puts them in early sixties, with a clean-cut “grown-up hippie” look to them both. We talked a bit about some of the more appealing parts of California, where to visit for the summer, and a bit about ObamaCare. The four of us were pleased that the accommodations allowed for fellowship rather than isolation. It would have been more pleasing if we’d been able to discuss current events, rather than liberals ruining everything; but, let’s quit beating around the bush. These days, that is the current event.

And this inspires my “DJEver Notice?” moment…

It isn’t that I object to the specific ideas the left-wingers have. Looking back over all their bills, their executive orders, their speeches, their “occupations,” and the subsequent arguing-over-the-innernets in which I’ve engaged…one big problem I see with the things they want to do, perhaps bigger than all the other problems, is that they don’t have any “specific ideas.” They have lots of general ones: Make it less profitable to be productive in our society, make it more profitable to be unproductive, try to make more abortions happen. Do whatever has to be done to make sure the democrat party wins more battles with its opposition, and that the country loses more battles with her opposition, because the democrat party is good enough for a “scorched earth” policy but America is not.

My DJEver-Notice-moment thought is that: The list of definable ideas ends right about there. Following that point, everything they want to do is not quite so much a what, as a who. “Give a blank check of [power/money] to [blank], who, take our word for it, [has/have] all the right ideas.”

Global warming scientists.

The Congressional Black Caucus.

Labor unions.

The members of Congress who wrote ObamaCare.

This-or-that alphabet-soup government agency that “regulates” this-or-that industry to “keep our water drinkable and our air breathable.”

ACORN.

Pharoah Barack The First.

Planned Parenthood.

The United Nations.

It’s not easy to pick up on this, because if you argue with a lefty for any significant length of time, the conversation will swing over toward “you’re just a bad, bad person” compared to the lefty. Unless, that is, you surrender to their nonsense. But on those rare occasions where the point-of-disagreement is actually defined, overall you’ll notice it comes down to the lefty saying yes, and you saying not-necessarily or I-don’t-think-so, to the proposal of granting unlimited power and deference to some panel of strangers — who will then flesh out the details. Which means you and your leftist antagonist are not arguing about details at all. You’re arguing about generalities, the most significant of which is where to put the power.

They are opposed to transparency in this kind of apparatus, they’re opposed to any kind of sharing of power, and they’re opposed to details. Their appeal, therefore, is toward those who are unaccustomed to thinking in details.

I have the impression that our new friends in the dining hall, perhaps, were once held hostage to this. Although it must be said I ave limited confidence in that impression; they struck me as intellectually capable, curious, and capable of handling details. But they also had a very subtle air about them, which I’ve seen many times before over the last three years, of …”Oops.” It came off looking like a distant regret, not so much Obama-era as Clinton-era. Maybe I imagined all that.

What was not imagined, was their California weariness. Oh, here we go again: Tax the filthy rich bastards and that’ll solve everything. Eyeball roll. They’re facing the same gut-punch reality we are, probably wondering, reluctantly, if the time has come to pack up and watch the wreckage from afar.

There are lemmings who are so sure the other lemmings have the right idea while their paws furiously claw away at the ground underneath, and then there are lemmings who remain sure of it as their furry bodies sail through the open air down toward the sea. I’m not sure if one class is more deserving of contempt than the other, or of pity, but I’m sure that it’s generally better in life to embrace details.

I’m also sure that those who shun details, are going to be forever starting fights with people who do not, and then blaming them for the fights.

It all seems to come back to this: Liberalism = Projection.

The “give all the power to so-and-so, and everything will be perfect” attitude you’re describing sounds a lot like Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom — we have “freedom from” all kinds of things, but this scares us, and so we often exercise our “freedom to” by setting up an authoritarian system which gives us the illusion of happiness while carefully circumscribing what we can think, do, and feel. I’m not sure there’s any clearer definition of modern liberalism than that — all kinds of sexual behaviors are perfectly ok (and indeed, must be “celebrated”), says the liberal, but when it comes to the actual management of life, Government Knows Best.

[The “projection” part of that, by the way, is that Fromm thought he was talking about the Nazis (his book was published in 1941), but he himself was a founding member of the Frankfurt School of Marxism; i.e. the guys that gave us “repressive tolerance” and all that good stuff]
- Severian | 04/09/2012 @ 04:47
Clinton did me in too. I was the only woman in a technical class in Toronto, when the Monica Lewinsky stuff was front page. I felt it was personally very embarrassing. What did it for me was the realization that I’d heard how “stupid” the opposition was just one too many a time. Somehow, folks like John Kerry, Al Gore, or even John Edwards were never stupid. I get so tired of hearing about intelligence, especially when the Democratic version doesn’t seem to be backed by common sense.

I’ve lived in Washington state long enough to forget about California’s problems, but I went to high school in the Bay Area and college in Turlock. Sure do wish there was some sign of intelligent life in any of the bureaucrats on the left coast!
- teripittman | 04/09/2012 @ 12:24

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

DJEver Notice? LXXIVMonday, April 9th, 2012

DJEver Notice? LXXIV
Monday, April 9th, 2012