House of Eratosthenes

1. There is an intelligence within the liberal movement, manifesting itself through its competence, taking on the responsibility of adjusting the agenda between election cycles. Let us call this the “scheming elites”…

2. There is a demonstrated ignorance within the movement as well, a bloated, voluminous, sprawling ignorance…We could call this the “ignorant commons.”

3. The liberal movement consists, in large part, of a sustained monologue taking place FROM the scheming elites TO the ignorant commons, with zero feedback…

This creates something of a question. New information has a tendency to do that; one mystery solved, two more created. How are liberals motivated, what’s their angle? It’s easy to see how the “scheming elites” gain ground when it’s harder for me to protect my household because I can’t get a gun, or when I spend more time on the employment sidelines because it’s harder to get a job. It creates an atmosphere of hopelessness and desperation, and democrats win more elections when people feel hopeless and desperate.

What of the ignorant-commons? They flock to social media to recycle the talking points the scheming-elites gave them. They think it makes them look smart. How it makes them look, is like Lenin’s “useful idiots,” except on the wane curve of their declining usefulness…

I have noticed a certain drive to make sure all discussions end a certain way. So I guess there’s a childish addiction to winning-the-argument. But that’s not all of it. I recall a certain tireless gadfly engaged in an endless push to smear a questionable George Washington quote, give it a good shove one layer down from the category the facts support — “disputed,” “unsubstantiated,” “frowned-upon by the experts at Mount Vernon,” — to the category the facts would not support. “Debunked” or the equivalent. The tempest in a teapot ground onward, through the sands of time. The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years. Embarrassing to watch. There is an example where “winning the argument” rapidly dwindled into a lost cause. They wanted the quote discredited altogether, couldn’t bring the foundation of fact to support that, got caught coming up short with it, everyone saw. And it’s notable because as an example, it doesn’t stand alone.

I can’t help wondering what they’d have to say about Lenin and the useful-idiots quote.

The motivation is to make sure the discussions end a certain way, not quite so much to win arguments. One of my exes was a lot like that. I used to call the conversations “‘This conversation isn’t over until it’s over the way I like it to be over’ conversations.” I suppose this reflects on me; wouldn’t such exchanges be finished in an instant, if I would simply give them what they want?

But what they want is lying. Worse than lying. Voluntary assistance in lying.

I might add that making sure all conversations end a certain way, in a monogamous relationship, is slightly less silly than making sure all conversations end a certain way on Facebook. How many of those are there? Whose job is it to notify you these conversations are underway?

But, back to the questions that might perhaps actually be answered. What motivates the ignorant commons to persist in their ignorance, and to spread it to others? This answers itself, somewhat, because of the enabling factor. Wallowing in ignorance feels so much better if others share in it. And so we are burdened in the tragedy of ignoramuses working so much harder at recruiting, at pulling others into mire of the ignorance, than those who have successfully extracted themselves work at keeping others out of it. Said mire of ignorance thus becomes — unnecessarily — a sort of rite-of-passage. Only some emerge, but everyone has to enter. Like a turn-style on a subway, everyone has to go through it. Is this a fixable problem?

I was given cause to think about this while reading Susan Stamper Brown’s recent column in Townhall. She, perhaps unintentionally, hit on an illuminating point.

While it’s true that liberalism is destroying America, it is also true that most liberals are not doing it intentionally.

Instead, they do what they do out of fear. Liberals are the casualties of social conditioning which inspires them to fear just about everything. That’s why they fear free speech, warm winters, competition, healthy debate, individualism, the Bible, guns, big sodas, freedom, capitalism, the U.S. Constitution, salt, manly men, a strong military, and so on. These irrational fears drive liberals to attempt to control their environment by creating safe spaces and collective utopias which always fail.

At the heart of liberalism is a quest for control over people’s lives and the insistence that a monstrous, micro-managing government offering minimal personal freedom is the only way to achieve fairness. If Americans understood how enslaved they are, they’d run the other way, but, “ignorance is bliss,” as the saying goes.

Yes, there is something to this. I recall a liberal who was oh so anxious to win-win-win the argument, and/or make sure the conversation ends a certain way…had to ‘fess up, in spite of all his passion for gun control, he didn’t have any guns. In fact, he was grasping for some GoodPerson strokes, having boasted of a personal oath to never own a gun, ever. He hadn’t anticipated the optics. A lot of people haven’t got an opinion about guns one way or another, but they can see what’s wrong with non-gun-owners laying down the rules about how guns are to be owned.

That’s a good issue. Gun control illustrates the distinction between “good fear” and “bad fear”; one enables you to prevent a bad thing from happening, the other enables you to prevent the living of life. Bad fear, like good fear, is rational on some level and that’s what makes it dangerous. There really is a possibility, however remote, that you will be run over by a car & killed if you leave the house. Just like there is a possibility that a gun you own might be used for nefarious purposes, or have some role in a tragic accident. But how far are we to take this? Do you really want to swear an oath never to leave the house, to go along with your oath never to own a gun?

Well, if you’ve never made the decision to “go ahead, damn the risks and let’s see what happens” — about anything, ever — that can look reasonable.

A second enabling factor is the elevation of theory over practice. Every now and then I’ll see a liberal turn this on its head, try to set up this false narrative that it is the conservatives who short themselves, shutting out reality, reciting the same litanies over and over again. Some will accuse me of never having been open to the idea that something I said might be wrong. Now, that’s funny. A typical morning for me will begin at around 3, when I put on some coffee and start inspecting why an application or library I’ve been developing at home doesn’t behave the way I want it to behave. Then I shower, dress, drive to work and spend another eight hours doing exactly the same thing. So my favorite rebuttal of “I realize I’m wrong about six to ten things, every day, before you kids think about getting out of bed” has a paralyzing effect on them that I have not missed out on noticing. They don’t know how to deal with it. It’s as if they’ve never been in a conversation with someone willing to admit he was ever wrong about anything; and that’s probably exactly what’s happening.

We know liberals are great at coming up with theories, but are terrible at refining those theories based on the lessons that come with practice. My favorite example of this is the Affordable Care Act. They want to tell us it’s an overall success, on balance, but there are two things you’d have to take into account to determine that: 1) things that were working fine before the Act became effective, and 2) things that are all cocked up in the aftermath. Liberals resolutely refuse to acknowledge either one of those things, let alone evaluate either one.

But that’s just one example. There are many others. The above-mentioned gun control, climate change, minimum wage…”My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.” Theory, practice; practice, theory. Liberals don’t look at this the way normal people do. That requires maturity. Admitting that practice contradicts cherished theory, or even just that it has required some minor adjustment, can require a lot of maturity that they simply don’t have.

There is a third factor. We have to mature to a certain level to admit nature doesn’t care what we think. That means there is a metaphysical truth writhing away, like a great sea serpent in a moat, seen or unseen. It doesn’t care who wins what argument, it is what it is. Liberals, having failed to develop the maturity to recognize this, seem to think “truth” is shaped by these conversations ending in one way or another. I’m guessing they’ve been commanded by the scheming-elites to log on, and do what they can do drum up support for this thing, or to dissipate the support for that other thing. But I get the impression it isn’t only just that. They seem like true believers, like they can go back and re-write history, make it so George Washington really didn’t say what they “know” he didn’t say, if that is how the dialogue concludes. This is rather ironic, since it’s a tacit admission that with one potent rebuttal inserted where it otherwise would not be, or removed where it otherwise would have existed, reality is likewise altered and suddenly George Washington really did say it.

It seems strange and surreal that there are people who don’t understand this, and therefore it is necessary to point it out in writing somewhere: Reality doesn’t work that way. But it takes maturity to realize that. For that reason, I maintain that some of the most productive and beneficial opinions, over mankind’s history, were formed by those who implicitly understood the limits to how much their own opinions mattered. It’s easy to prove the reverse, that the opinions that have done the greatest damage, or the least amount of good, were formed by those who thought their own opinions were all-important.

Clear thinking is the first casualty of widespread prosperity. Look at the Baby Boomers — they had no objective way to measure themselves, as in 1960 you could have a decent lower-middle-class life turning a wrench on the Ford assembly line. So they invented problems to solve, and set them up in such a way that success could never be measured. “Equality of opportunity” gave way to “equality of outcome,” which is impossible, but at least trying gets you your virtue fix…. and as it’s painfully obvious that the latter is impossible, the only way to avoid pain is to train yourself not to notice that you never think things through.

My current fave in this regard is gay “marriage.” It’s legal now nationwide — hooray!! — but… has anyone followed up? Are gays getting married? If so, how’s it working out? If I spent that much effort promoting a policy, and invested so much emotion into demonizing my enemies, I’d be damn sure I knew the outcome. Shouldn’t there be at least one lefty out there taking a victory lap? “Ha ha, the antichrist didn’t come swooping out of the clouds when Obergefell came down, suck it godbag h8rz!”

But they can’t do that, because this suggests that followup questions are allowed. Which they are NOT. Ever.
- Severian | 04/13/2016 @ 11:28
Out of some possibly misguided respect for history, I avoid the term “liberals” for such folks.
I understand the whole “usage”, evolution, and “appropriation” bits, but I’m Still stuck with the term “progressives”. As the world turns, this too may evolve.
The *sigh* liberal sprinkling of misused “elite” terms implies “education” so “ignorant” is out, mis-educated is too long, “elite” is unqualified, etc.
“Stupids” , while tempting seems unfair.
Considering my own “closed minded bias” from a lifetime of debate, evaluation, and no need to revisit “I sweat to GOD I’ll feed it, and clean up after it, and take care of it!!!!” ad nauseam, I MAY just have to sit in my overstuffed arm chair and harumph them as “them”.
- CaptDMO | 04/13/2016 @ 16:08
I appreciate the link to “Good Person Fever.” I don’t recall seeing that one before, but it highlights someone I was stuck behind last night on the drive home from the liberal ivory tower where I work.

There was an SUV in front of me PLASTERED with liberal stickers. You know the kind, you’ve seen one or vehicles like that before…”Coexist” made with religious icons, the “Peace n Love” one that intentionally leaves out the Cross, liberal political icon stickers, “If everyone was just a commie and killed all the republicans the world would be peaceful”….etc, etc.

They drove like a horde of ravenous conservative zombies were chasing them. Of course, I do too, in my crappy little four-cylinder…I mean, I just wanted to get home. And the 30 or so times they cut me off could have been explained…I mean…they WERE leaving the safety of liberaltopia and heading into the Great Unwashed.

The SUV itself had a strange branding too. It was big…a massive vehicle glistening in chrome, with un-explainable liberal letters in between the myriad bumper stickers that read “AWD” and “V8.” I couldn’t unwind the secret behind my elite liberal betters top-secret code, but I’d venture a guess that it had to do something with….Hypocrite.
- P_Ang | 04/15/2016 @ 13:08
Easy.
Snowflake was borrowing, and subsequently felt free to decorate, the car that daddy bought, but snowflake NEEEEEEEDED.
AKA: Failure to launch.
- CaptDMO | 04/16/2016 @ 06:43

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How They Fail to Mature
Wednesday, April 13th, 2016