House of Eratosthenes

8. No War for Oil

Chanted by Liberals to imply that the Iraq war was actually, only about oil. There no real shortage of oil, it’s just expensive. Had we used the money we spent freeing Iraq, buying oil instead, we would have had ten times as much oil. Instead, we caused (temporarily, until Obama screwed it up) a stability in the world’s oil production which in turn weakened those oil producing nations (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela) who were funding terrorism and Communism. The goal was international stability which would have resulted in the reduction of violence world wide. That is until some moron named Obama yanked our troops out of Iraq, and set everything back two decades.

What’s really dishonest about that one is that it appeals to the cliché-driven mindset, and against the grain of reality. In so doing, it reveals that the speaker thinks in clichés. The “neocon” Republican, who is on the payroll of some big oily corporation and at some obscene confiscatory salary rate, with bonuses, probably wears boots and a cowboy hat, has some cunning master plan to siphon the oil in Iraq into some big tanker or warehouse or truck somewhere. After which, he intends to sell it to the highest bidder and this somehow forces the rest of us to pay ten dollars a gallon for gas.

When the real conflict is, liberals want everything to be expensive for those of us who are stupid enough to continue paying for the things we use without relying on the government. So that as life continues to get more and more difficult year by year, we’ll be given an incentive to become wards of the state. Versus the conservative outlook that says no, let’s just let Cloward-Piven die the death it deserves, and if there’s no reason for gas to cost more than $2.50 a gallon then let’s get it down there so people can drive to work, and if there’s no reason for more than 10% of our households to be on public assistance then let’s drive that rate down too.

And then there’s the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with any of this. I recall somewhere on Quora someone decided to get an echo started, and I decided the time came to stop the echo because Quora is abused enough already. Actually, I think I agreed with the person who asked the question, who was pointing out the hypocrisy of democrats voting in favor of the use of military force and then hitting the campaign stumps with the “no war for oil” thing. But still, Quora is for questions. The lefties were rewarding the soapboxing with contrary soapboxing, not much answering-of-questions was happening that I could see. So I stepped in with some truth.

And the truth is, the point where liberals got all pissy about the invasion of Iraq was this: A problem had existed for awhile, and someone was using executive authority to confront the problem, arrive at a strategy, direct resources, and engage action against the problem in such a way that these things might have an actual effect on the outcome. “War for oil,” body counts, making-new-terrorists, “they hate us now,” blah blah blah blah blah — none of that actually had anything to do with it either. On Planet Liberal, when a problem drags on and on across the decades, what you’re supposed to do about it is give a lot of speeches and use them to get democrats elected. Period. You aren’t supposed to do anything to actually change the situation. As we saw a decade ago, when you do that, it offends them a lot, and in a very special way they can’t (afford to) explain.

It’s just like getting hired into a union shop, and then working your balls off so the other guys who’ve been there awhile start looking bad, that makes you the center of negative attention and widespread enmity in exactly the same way, and for the same reasons. Everything was good and everything looked fine to the bosses, until that new guy came on the scene. So let’s “help” him make it home some night, show him the proper use of an axe handle through his teeth.

Anyway. Back to the subject at hand.

6. Violence Never Solved Anything

Cute, pithy, feel-good but still utter nonsense. Interesting that the same Liberals that cry, “Violence never solved anything,” have no problem arming local police departments like soldiers going to war. Interesting that they also have no problem when their president sends troops with guns into another country to make it do what we say. Interesting that so many of the wealthier and more powerful ones have no problem hiring armed guards to keep them safe.

Quite. For liberalism to make sense — just to start making sense — you have to presume nobody is going to use force to try to hurt you or take your stuff, but at the same time, that community-wide starvation is imminent due to dwindling resources, and we need to coordinate the allocation of those resources. The challenge in selling it is that within those segments of our society in which muggings and burglaries are unlikely, the standard of living is comfortable, and by the time you get there starvation ceases to remain any sort of issue. But that really isn’t much of a problem, it’s natural for humans to worry about depleted resources. Especially here in the U.S., it’s become rather easy for us to forget how good we have it.

One of the many reasons liberalism, as we know it today, doesn’t make any sense is while liberal detest violence, they sure do appreciate force an awful lot. Force of law, force of executive order, force of “majority” rule, force of phony-science, force of academia. They just love concluding arguments with some variant of “and so it’s decided, you’ll just have to go along with it.” And yet they know their rules are only for those who choose to abide by rules. They’re like the cowardly vice-Principal who breaks up the fight on the school playground, and then arranges detention only for the “good” kid who isn’t supposed to get in trouble.

Violence Never Solved Anything

Had a liberal niece a few years back opining that the next president (Bush was still in office) should ban wars. She got quite upset when I started laughing at her, so I controlled myself and tried to explain to her that her comment was arrant nonsense. She lives in CT, so I doubt it penetrated her skull.

If violence never solved anything, how did WWII manage to end? It certainly wasn’t through subjugation; I only know a few German and Japanese words.
- Physics Geek | 11/26/2014 @ 09:42
WWII doesn’t count, Physics Geek, because as our cephalopod friends continually remind us, it was the dyed-in-the-wool liberals of the Greatest Generation who won it.

All the same, I think there’s a real distinction to be made between “violence” and “force.” To conservatives, they’re fairly synonymous — the state applies force, in the form of violence committed by its agents. Congress declares war; the 8th Air Force bombs Dresden into rubble.

Liberals seem to use the word “violence” to mean “interpersonal aggression.” If you and I have a fistfight because I winked at your girlfriend, that’s “violence” (and my implication that you’re male and heterosexual when I have no evidence of either is “microaggression”). If the state forces your girlfriend to go out with me because Social Justice, and threatens you both with prison if you resist, that’s… well, I don’t know what that is, actually, in Liberal Land. It’s part of that whole passive-voice thing they do. Social Justice requires this, that, and the other thing, which will somehow kinda sorta just…. happen. They never specify the mechanism. Certainly the only time they ever use the word “force” is when it’s being applied to disfavored groups, i.e. “force energy prices to skyrocket” because the eeeeevil bourgeoisie something something Global Warming.

Weird, no?
- Severian | 11/26/2014 @ 12:34

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Liberal ClichésWednesday, November 26th, 2014

Liberal Clichés
Wednesday, November 26th, 2014