House of Eratosthenes

I’m having a disagreement with CaptainDMO, but I’m not entirely sure about what, or even if there is one. It’s got something to do with the psychological projection of liberals; as I read through the theories gathered, it seems to me his recognition is that projection is the point of the exercise, whereas in my opinion the projection is a by-product of something else.

My words…

Liberals, promoting their ideas over conservative ideas, behave exactly the way they claim conservatives behave. And it’s probably because they start thinking in exactly the way they claim conservatives think.

And his response —

It’s a matter of Liberals behaving as badly as they ALWAYS do, and “suddenly” finding emboldenment in projecting their own worst recognizable faults onto ANY critics, in a desperate Hail Mary preemptive attempt to quietly put at LEAST a borrowed petticoat on their Emperor, and TRY to shuffle the first and second heirs apparent into a closet.

The root of our disagreement, I think, lies in whether these “recognizable faults” are really bad.

It shall come as no surprise whatsoever, to anyone who’s been paying the slightest bit of attention to what’s been going on, that the leash by which liberals stake their opponents to the ground is so short as to defy logical explanation. It long ago became far less work to create a profile of those who do not arouse liberal indignation, than one of those who do. Working in private industry outside of Hollywood; being one of those hated “executives” in health care, home lending or tobacco; working in government, but for the wrong side; working for no paycheck at all, but rather to raise your children into responsible adults and keep the house clean while your husband works; oh, and let us not forget you’re “basically a war criminal” if you had anything to do with starting the War on Terror. Of course those folks started no war. The war was underway already, and their crime was really just to point at something evil and call it what it really was. But why sweat the details?

You don’t need to criticize liberals to end up on their “Hate You Forever And Ever” list. You really don’t need to do much of anything at all, because the anger is already churning acridly away before the liberal ever starts to know you, let alone see what you say and do. They are like walking clothes washing machines, always at the high point of the cycle, sloshing pure acid around in their innards instead of water.

The anger has nothing to do with critics or any other outside party. It is caused by the inherent contradiction of liberalism. To understand the anger, you have to understand the contradiction; in order to understand the contradiction, you have to understand Star Trek.

You remember Star Trek, right. It started in the 1960’s during the Cold War era and enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980’s that continued until…well, form your own opinion on that. In the years leading up to Y2K, it suffered from a decline caused by a creeping and increasingly central theme of soft-socialism. No individual exceptionalism allowed…save for that of the Starship Captain. In 1991, Captain Picard insisted on communicating with a crystaline terrorist rather than on destroying it, at one point loftily intoning that it had more right to be in space than his crew did. In 1993, the Federation imposed an intra-galactic speed limit of Warp 5 after finding out their engines were tearing the space-time continuum apart. In 1996, in a feature film, he let slip another tempting morsel about 24th century society: Complete communism. No money. Workers work for the state. People labor for the betterment of themselves, rather than to accumulate material possessions.

It is not a perfect ambrotype of liberalism, but it certainly is a better-than-adequate one. Let’s add up the vital elements…

Agreement Over Clarity: You’ll notice nobody ever says…”What we need to do is sit down with our enemies, talk out our differences with them and specifically tell them or learn from them this one item…” This is not an endeavor to end war; it is a crusade against specifics.

Denial of Right to Own Property: Everyone’s on equal footing because there is no money. Of course this is inherently hypocritical, since Captain Picard’s sense of judgment (at least in the episodes where he hasn’t been possessed by an alien) is absolutely superior to everyone else’s. Now you’re seeing the beginnings of the contradiction that makes liberals so angry before they’ve had a chance to be angered by anyone. There is a vertical organizational structure, and yet, at the same time, the society that has been built is rigidly egalitarian. This is irreconcilable.

Freedom From Want: People are somehow driven to better themselves, and yet they enjoy absolute security in their access not only to the staples of life, but to a not so insignificant elevation of the standard of living above the bare minimum. If they are hungry or thirsty, they simply describe what’s missing to a “food replicator” and the stuff magically appears.

De-Valuation of Labor: This one goes all the way back to the beginning. After some hasty and somewhat heated exchange of words between a couple of egotists on the bridge, some last-ditch decision is made and the “order” is given for the vessel to proceed with all due haste to this destination rather than that one…a one-way trip of several days…often with no better justification than somebody’s “hunch.” That’s four hundred souls on board in the old series and over a thousand in the new one. In the days that follow, these perfect people who never have to worry about eating or paying rent, are somehow roused out of bed by their sense of “duty.” The duties do not have to do with making decisions about what needs to be done…unless you’re the Doctor, the First Mate or the Captain. They have nothing to do with handling emergencies, unless you’re the robot. There is no inspection that needs doing in order to figure out how something works, or why it does this thing instead of that thing…unless you’re the Chief Engineer. All other hands on board receive “orders” about what to do, and they do it. Security to the bridge. Warp Factor 8 dead-ahead. Report to Transporter Room 3. Get that man to sick bay, on the double. No wonder these people can’t make any money. In a world full of smart robots, who needs ’em?

Raw, Naked Egotism: If the Captain gives an order to the crewman and the crewman doesn’t carry it out, that means the crewman has been possessed by a deadly space virus or an evil incorporeal alien. If Starfleet gives an order to the Captain and the Captain doesn’t carry it out, that means Starfleet has been possessed by a deadly space virus or an evil incorporeal alien. The message is crystal-clear: Since you as the audience are supposed to identify with the Captain, that means when someone tells you to do something you don’t want to do, that authority is being evil, but if you want someone else to do something they should snap-to and get it done right away. In this respect, Star Trek…and the liberalism that later consumed it…is perfect programming for the young weaker mind to become an extraordinary butthole.

Unified Central Source of All Greatness: In a futureworld in which all human needs have been met and supra-lightspeed travel is an everyday occurrence, somehow innovation has become rare. People spend their entire lives content to perform their “duties,” the vast majority of whose hours must be spent on welding. Welding cross-beam number 34 of 100, into section 127 of 360, on the floor panel assembly of deck 27 of 43, on the skeleton of what is one day to become the USS Yamamoto or some damn thing. That’s some poor schmuck’s entire career, welding that one beam in place. A task made entirely meaningless until & unless there is perfect coordination with some central authority, who is giving similar orders to all the other welders who are welding all the other beams. Very little ingenuity taking place. Here and there, things do get invented…always by a “Doctor” so-and-so, who seems to have become some “fellow” in the Federation, which recognized his or her greatness many years before and elevated that person to a position where the magic could be worked. So everything that makes life worth living was invented by a “Federation Scientist.” The Federation is never, ever blindsided by a Jobs or Wozniak building a computer in a garage. There are no Edison-versus-Tesla rivalries.

Universe Without Borders: After we eliminated hunger and disease from the human equation, we explored the universe and built this Federation with humans and Vulcans. The Klingons declared war on our new union, but we made nice-nice with them at the Khittomer Conference. But the Romulans were still mad at us. So we made a peace treaty with them. Then the Ferengi were being all “We’re going to charge you money for stuff and be nasty people” but we made friends with them. And then the Borg tried to blow up Earth, but eventually we became their friends too, and now we’re all a big happy family. All you have to do is understand each other, and click those red glass slippers together three times. In reality, I would think the reconciliation with the Borg would have happened first. The Federation doesn’t seem too terribly different from them. Which one would swallow-up which other one — would it really matter?

So we have the seven vital items — of both Star Trek and of liberalism. They are loaded with contradictions. So the lazy mind doesn’t have to go scrambling too far to give credit, all that is good radiates from some central point…these great ships half a mile in length are designed by some mastermind, which in turn performs the actual construction by coordinating everything and giving the right orders. But we value agreement over clarity. It is far more important to adjourn the meetings with this vibe, this feeling of “we’re all singing from the same hymnal,” than to have any meaningful information exchanged there (this is the one part of Star Trek I personally find most realistic). People are supposed to spend their lives bettering themselves in such a way that property is entirely meaningless, and yet this stellar level of “bettering” is accomplished by pushing a button or pulling a lever when the Captain tells you to. You’re somehow motivated to do this bettering when nothing is at stake. When you receive a bad order, you’re morally obliged to disobey it. Oh no wait, no you aren’t. Oh no wait, yes you are. Whoever’s way up at the tippy-top of this organized authority structure, must really have everything on the ball and give good orders all the time. Oh no wait, no he doesn’t. Oh no wait, yes he does.

Star Trek seems to have a number of different ranks though; to the best I can make out, they are very close to pay grades O-1 through O-11 in the United States Navy, plus “crewman” for all enlisted personnel and “President” for the Federation President. Liberalism really has only four…

There is the icon at the center of all wonderfulness, which would be whatever liberal has demonstrated the greatest ability to peddle bullshit…to present things as the opposite of what they really are and get away with it. He is awarded the superior rank needed to get this bullshit sold, with astonishing speed. I’ll leave unmentioned who exactly that would be at this time, it’s just too obvious.

There are those who are close to the icon, who help to form the policy. “Policy” is a loosely-used word here. The most important policy by far is what talking points to use against the next conservative you want to browbeat. It can mean other things too, like putting up a billboard that says “Americans didn’t vote for a Rush to failure.”

There are the “good” people who follow the policy. They donate their five dollars to whatever they’re told to donate it to, they read the AARP newsletter and repeat what they read there as if it is their own opinion. They dutifully start their fights on Democratic Underground and Daily KOS. In short, they push the levers the Captain tells them to push…to better themselves.

And then there are the pariahs. People like me, and perhaps you, who don’t buy into the crap. We are not part of the Universe Without Borders. We are not Klingons, Ferengi or Borg. Those creatures, as noted above, were brought into the fold. We will not be. We are despised. We are loathed. The loathing against us is a badge of social stature for those who exude it. We’re like Star Wars fans.

There’s yet another contradiction, and this one might be the most imposing one. That is my point. The critical vision to form is one of the Universe Without Borders…negotiate with the Silicon Avatar, and all the pain will stop everywhere as we learn to understand each other. Not so with conservatives though — they are to be ground to dust beneath the heel of the regulation Federation dress uniform clunky-boot. Set phasers to kill.

Shortly before CaptainDMO disagreed with me, I got a “Please Forgive Fredo” speech from an old friend who worked with me at an old job where I saw some shenanigans going down. Destructive shenanigans. Done by someone who was and is decidedly unrepentant…and making a habit out of damaging things. No discussion at all about what was done, or what will be done, just a quote from Corinthians. See, not all liberals hate the Bible. They aren’t trying to be liberal, and they’re not mean. A lot of it comes from just not wanting to face truth. Clinging to this notion that nothing and nobody can ever be declared harmful. Except for those who oppose what they’re trying to do…which was my original point.

We haven’t invented supra-light travel just yet. So without a universe waiting to be explored, the process that slowly creeps toward center-stage is one not of exploration, but one of — destruction. That’s all that is left. There is nothing to create, nothing to preserve, nothing to explore, so all that is left is to destroy. Surely you’ve noticed this? Does a “Obama/Biden 2008” bumper sticker represent a desire to create something? Not nearly quite so much, as a desire to overthrow George W. Bush and anyone aligned with him. Every single liberal platitude, cloaks a desire to attack and destroy…something. Yet they pretend to be in the process of building something.

Another piece of irony is that in this culture they’ve constructed wherein negotiation is oh so important and yet specifics and details are to be expunged from such negotiations so everything is kept fuzzy, happy and abstract — there is always this obsessive-compulsive desire to define what has already been defined, again and again and again. Liberals are better than their counterparts…we have to keep telling ourselves that. We all have a right to free healthcare. Equal pay for equal work. Barack Obama is SO awesome.

That’s why the peace prize went the way it did. Yes, some of it was purely pragmatic diplomacy, as well…this is an international community hoping to get stuff. But it was mostly emotional. Another day, the sun comes up yet again, and Barack Obama is still awesome!

It backfired big-time, because a big piece of the liberal constituency holds this hyper-egalitarianness as a belief to be cherished above all others. A central point source of all good things is alright with them…just as long as it’s kept veiled behind something opaque. Just as some Christians aren’t too wild about the face of God being revealed in paintings, or Muslims don’t like Muhammad the Prophet to be illustrated in drawings or cartoons. This half of liberalism is wondering something like — enough of that already? We donated our five dollars to your cause, so you could build OUR world. A world in which nobody is wonderful, and where there are no ranks.

In fact, it did worse than backfire. I think it caused a schism in the liberal/Star-Trek universe.

So I don’t think liberals always behave badly. I certainly don’t think they try to. They’re just deeply conflicted people. They want great things to be built, but with no single individual taking excessive credit for the construction of those things or even for the design of those things. But they also want to stifle the exchange of any details technically meaningful. Details offend them, terribly, for reasons I don’t think anybody can ever understand. Least of all them. Of course you can’t build things without exchanging details. The realization of that, I think, offends them more than anything…

They want conversations to be dulled, muted and fuzzy so it becomes impossible to coordinate on the construction of so much as a pencil, let alone a starship, or a beam that is a part of the starship.

What they really want to do is get rid of religion, and replace it all with yet another religion. All things good radiate from some nexus somewhere, but it is not for you to ponder the identity or characteristics of that nexus. Just know that the closer you are to it, the more wonderful you are…and yet we are all equally wonderful…but find a way to better yourself…without money or property…but showing you’ve really got what it takes to be great, by pushing a button when you’re told to.

Scratch that. Comparing that to religion is a disservice to religions. This is more like a cult.

Perhaps there is a third possiblility that you hadn’t even counted upon …

That the root of your disagreement lies in the second half of your words:

“And it’s probably because they start thinking in exactly the way they claim conservatives think.”

No. The deal is, the “liberals” have been thinking that way all along. They don’t “start” thinking that way during an argument or on an encounter with a conservative. It is simply the way they think.

And projection is projecting the way you think onto someone else, assuming it is also the way they think.

I side with DMO on this. I think he thinks the recognizable faults are really bad, so we’re all in agreement there.

The Star Trek analogies are apt, especially when it comes to Picard. See, to the Progressive (my preferred term for “liberal”, since it is we who are the classical liberals) … They ARE Picard. And everyone else is “everyone else” — that is, their cattle, their crop, subjects of their grand experiment that they perform for the good of us all. Self-appointed Gods.

Morgan, DMO, everyone reading this. If you haven’t read or listened to it, you must must must must must. Maybe I am late to the game on this one … but it is stunning in its verbal and moral clarity. And it was written by a french dude, Frederic Bastiat. And it was published, in the year of his death… in 1850. Eighteen. Fifty. And it could have been written this year and been just as relevant. It’s only like 60 pages, and the free MP3’s add up to two hours listening. Great for your commute. Anyway, the bit about Picard and the contradiction reminds me of this passage. (the last sentence, really).

The Socialists Want to Play God
Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. This is so true that, if by chance, the socialists have any doubts about the success of these combinations, they will demand that a small portion of mankind be setaside to experiment upon. The popular idea of trying all systemsis well known. And one socialist leader has been known seriously to demand that the Constituent Assembly give him a small district with all its inhabitants, to try his experiments upon.

In the same manner, an inventor makes a model before he constructs the full-sized machine; the chemist wastes some chemicals—the farmer wastes some seeds and land—to try out an idea.

But what a difference there is between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his elements, between the farmer and his seeds! And in all sincerity, the socialist thinks that there is the same difference between him and mankind!

Freaking pass the above links out to your friends, PLEASE. It addresses all of the vital elements, and skewers the progressive arguments like a stick in a ferret-sickle. (The chapter in Sowell’s “Vision of the Annointed” on The Cosmic View addresses this well, too…) But what is stunning is the clarity of what Bastiat wrote 160 years ago and how it holds up today.
- philmon | 10/11/2009 @ 17:39
In my defense…
The alleged “off topic” bit about Dan Browns new book was a thinly veiled reference to the fables, parables, and other “symbols” that have stood the test of time. I mean, the millenniums, not the recent decades.

I’ll put fourth a couple of childrens stories.
The Fox And The Grapes
The Dog In the Manger

Perhaps it was mere expedience for me to assign projection to “liberals” when
I merely meant to refer to, oh…”The current recognized group of folks, their strange bedfellows of convenience, and any stray dupes unwilling to see beyond
“Go along to get along”, as well as the naive “Can’t we all just get along?” that seem intent in accelerating the current empire to it’s inevitable demise.

The Emperors New Clothes

In referring to current events, (last few decades) these days, I harshly assign “liberal” to many that currently call themselves (and solicit campaign cash as) Republicans, and unfairly include MOST current Democrats. Obviously this is not the case. The actual voting rosters, when available, reflect this.

The Frog And The Scorpion

MY observations of history show that the folks with the most to “win” from other peoples efforts are the propaganda projectionists, let’s call them liars, or distractors, or disingenuous, or derailers, or guilty of omission, or slanted, or biased, or discriminatory, or bigots, or Chauvinists, ******phobics if one must.
Just, follow the money.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Names of such groups invert over time. Words and memes are usurped. Definitions change due to “usage” (awesome ignorance). The “fair” wheel has been reinvented by every Tom, Dick, and Harriot that demands more, with no regard for potential unintended consequence, and no adherence to faith in life’s lessons that “If it STILL walks like a duck…”.

The Fisherman’s Wife

Projection is convenient for parasites in a society that has abandoned the consequences for bearing false witness, and excuse antisocial behavior for “victims”.
“If you build it, they will come…”.

“Social” Justice
“Hate” crime
“Special” protections
For The Children
“Judicial” Activism
Immunities from “Civil” prosecution.
“Free” stuff

Sure, I cold go on and on with endless tortured metaphor, and fractured fairy tales, I’ll let it stand as a draw if I’m given an indulgence for assigning the “projection” label on contemporaryUS folk that self-identify/ behave as “Liberal” and/or “progressive”. In exchange, I’ll be more prudent in separating out such folk from those that simply happen to call themselves (ie.)US Democrats.
I can’t even BEGIN to address the complexities of political cross-titles in other English speaking areas of this rock.

However, I too retain the right of access to the common adage that the cosmos are circular, and we often mimic that which we once despised, often as the only desperate means remaining to negotiate with a least-common-denominator , historically, coming to a lose-lose end.

The Tar Baby, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

*sigh* Dan Brown says it all better in his book
- CaptDMO | 10/12/2009 @ 19:21
Crap, meant to weasel in “When we practice to deceive…”, or sumpin’ or ‘tother from Shakespeare, as some sort of historic recognition of projection as the premeditated intent of the exercise.
- CaptDMO | 10/12/2009 @ 19:31

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