House of Eratosthenes

What do these events have in common?
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[Easily-gathered list of liberal individuals and advocacy-groups being unhinged]
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Since Donald Trump’s name figures prominently in each of these events, is the president to blame? Remember, Trump is not a traditional Republican or even a traditional conservative. In the past he gave money to Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. So why are Trump’s critics going through the emotional equivalent of the St. Vitus dance?

To answer that, look at the critics, not at Trump.

This has been on my mind a great deal lately. According to conventional wisdom, and the narrative liberals like to push — also, not completely unfounded by the anecdotal evidence we see if we pay attention across time — liberalism pushes us along in one direction, sometimes at warp-speed and sometimes at a glacial pace. But, being “progress” that is inevitable, it doesn’t retreat. It relies on the ratchet effect. From Hell's Heart, I Stab at Thee And, to the envy of everyone else who’s struggling to get something done, liberalism as a movement always seems to know what to do next, even when it’s being dealt its most bitter defeats. It’s like the metaphorical fiddler, with the “pay me now or pay me later” attitude. It appeals to a constituency of intellectual lightweights, of drama queens, hysterical types, who have no long-term plan, seem to exist in a constant state of agitation and despair, looking at life through a straw. And yet as a political movement it’s always playing for the long-game.

Why, then, in the wake of this latest defeat, is it so evidently not the case? They’re like the villain from a science fiction movie, or corny old comic book, reaching up to grab the hero off a high scaffold with an evil snarl and spiky speaking bubble that says “I don’t care if I live so long as you die!” A first-term President Trump having to contend with a Senate and House dominated by the opposition party after 2018, seems like a near-certainty if the democrats can manage things right. Is that the vision? Gum up the works, let the whole country SEE THEM DOING IT, and then hoping the voters forget who’s been making it this way when the time comes to vote?

How do the foolish video “beheadings,” and real-life active-shooter events, figure into it I wonder?

Why are they so much off the deep end? Shouldn’t they be busying themselves with circulating propaganda, like they did after Reagan beat Carter and then Mondale? I mean, granted that took awhile, but it at least went off in the direction they wanted…worked eventually. A new generation of idiot voters reached the age to cast a vote, the women got all lovesick and swooning over this cutey-pie Arkansas Governor, and he got elect President. That would not have worked if the electorate was being reminded all week long every week, how democrats can’t carry a thought any better than a the party drunk can carry a tune. Like they’re being reminded right now.

Goodman continues with his reasons. He doesn’t seem to think there’s a plan behind this, that the liberal movement is a victim of its own innate insanity. I’m undecided about this, but I find his summaries to be persuasive:

Liberalism without Ideas. During the last election, Donald Trump raised a number of issues – some of which were unusual in presidential politics…Some of Trump’s solutions were standard Republican fare…But here is the important question: Can you say with any confidence what Hillary Clinton proposed to do about any of these problems? I bet you can’t.

As for Bernie Sanders and the left wing of the Democratic party, there seem to be some concrete proposals. But I can’t think of one that is different from what the left was saying back in the 1930s.
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A Party Without Ideas.…Today, identity politics is all there is. In the last election, Hillary Clinton asked women to vote for her because they are women. Blacks because they are black…This is the new racial politics and it’s been going full throttle for some time.
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Campuses Without Ideas. Historically, colleges and universities in this country represented fountainheads of free inquiry. They were places where the free exchange of ideas was permitted and encouraged…But no more…Instead of debating whether vouchers would help liberate poor minority kids who are attending bad schools, for example, some campus protestors are claiming that even hearing the case for vouchers “marginalizes” black students. Ditto for welfare reform, or just about any other reform proposed by someone who is right-of-center.

Further, we are increasingly told that speech itself is a form of violence. So, physical violence is justified to silence speech that is “offensive.”

Anti-intellectualism is so consuming campus life that even a slight deviation from political correctness on questions of identity can provoke scathing condemnation.
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A Culture Without Ideas. What is happening on college campuses is a barometer of what is happening in elite culture as a whole. Writing in the New York Times, Kenan Malik reports that:

Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write, the magazine of the Canadian Writers’ Union, penned an editorial defending the right of white authors to create characters from minority or indigenous backgrounds. Within days, a social media backlash forced him to resign.

You can see I’m struggling here to excerpt fairly, retaining the structure of his critique without copying verbatim. You should really go RTWT, the parts I dropped out are not throwaway by any means.

As Goodman closes in for the kill shot, I find myself entirely unable to whittle it down in a way that would work. Every single word is meaningful, and important.

Bottom line: having lost all interest in ideas (because basically they have nothing to say) the political left has turned to identity culture — asserting that people have rights and obligations based on their genes or their ethnicity or their gender. If you disagree with them, they will not debate the merits of the case. They will instead attack you as an enemy of the groups for whom politically correctness requires sympathy. And they will encourage members of those groups to lash out against you — violently in some cases — because in the world of the mindless, brute force is the only thing left.

[…] House Of Eratosthenes discusses liberals and their ideas […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 06/18/2017 @ 06:03

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Liberals and Their IdeasSaturday, June 17th, 2017

Liberals and Their Ideas
Saturday, June 17th, 2017