House of Eratosthenes

This past week ended with me making it to fifty. Perhaps that is why reality, and the recognition of it, has been on my mind a bit lately. One of the sobering things about fifty is, like forty and thirty, you know the enthusiasm that surrounded your childhood birthdays is gone and it isn’t coming back. Nobody says “I’m forty-nine and a HALF!” They don’t say, in this bracket, I can’t wait until my next birthday. When people ask if it’s your birthday you don’t say “Heck yeah, where’s my presents!?” And fifty brings an additional splash of cold water, because up to now I’ve had the luxury of thinking, I’m going to check out of this plane of existence before I reach a 100 but I’m still on the first half. When you reach fifty, that’s a mathematical impossibility. I’m not on the first half anymore, unless I’m destined to achieve triple-digits, an outcome we can discard rather safely, I think. So that’s it. Done deal. My center-of-gravity is over the brink. I could ignore that if I choose, but what’s the point? It’s reality. Nobody’s making it out of this alive.

Cool Game But maybe that’s not it. Maybe what has inspired these thoughts is the news. It made a big impression on me earlier in the week, when I prowled through several pages of new e-mail, clicking open links for further reading as I went, and when I was done I had these browser tabs all the way across my screen…which is typical…what was out of the ordinary was that every single story had something to do with reality, and the avoidance of it. Every single one.

Starting with that annoying Pokemon thing.

While the old, familiar faces are front and center, “Pokemon Go” has taken location-based gaming to a whole new level. The free app-based game creates a sort of “digital world” around physical sites using local time and GPS location, so that digital creatures “interact” with players in real time.

La[u]nched on July 6, the game was installed on more U.S. Android phones than Tinder by the following day, according to app analytics specialist Similar Web. On July 8 “Pokemon Go” was installed on 5.16 percent of all Android phones in the U.S, it said.

As I understand it, you point the device in a direction and the app will use the camera to render the objects in your field of view like always, but then superimpose this creature that isn’t really there. I am impressed by this explosion of energy surrounding this unreality-game. Have to congratulate the designers, visionaries and implementers for having their finger on the community’s pulse, or for their happy accident. We’ve already had our nation’s First Lady launching her years-long promotional campaign to get fatties off the couch and move their asses; she and her costars never enjoyed this sort of success.

People, I continue to learn, really get excited over the little opportunities life presents to ignore, deny or contradict reality.

I wonder if President Obama is feeding off that sort of excitement-burst when He pretends that a speech about fallen Dallas police officers is an occasion to discuss Himself, or that that Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful…

“You’re not seeing riots, and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully,” Obama said Saturday, downplaying the escalating crisis gripping the nation. “You’ve seen almost uniformly peaceful protests.”

In the context of the growing wave of violence and animosity directed at police, the president’s remarks appear downright disconnected from reality.

We'll Never Know …or, could He just be playing to a crowd that’s feeling this burst. Or maybe this has nothing to do with what people find exciting or titillating? Could it be just a maturity problem? A failure to develop the intellectual hardiness we use when we take in unwelcome information? An unnaturally high F.Q., or Fantasy Quotient?

That much does seem to be a problem plaguing at least some of the loud, outspoken types involved in these stories, many of whom have inserted themselves into these stories. How many among them would start a “This conversation’s not over until it’s over the way I like it to be over” back-and-forth marathon, upon reading something like this…

Failed liberal policies, not racism, are mostly responsible for the condition in which poor African-Americans find themselves. Welfare dependency and the narrative that because one is black one will always be discriminated against keep many discouraged and defeated.

There are more African-American politicians today than ever, even in the White House. Why isn’t their narrative inspiring the next generation? I think it’s because if the poor were to become self-sustaining they might not need liberal politicians. Poor African-Americans are a core Democratic voting bloc, despite receiving little in return from the politicians they help elect.
What is the biggest lie and worst narrative of all? It’s that politicians can deliver economic and social salvation. Hating the police will not affect this narrative nor will it improve anyone’s circumstances.

Or this…

[I]t is no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person. There’s an indisputable positive relationship between liberty and standards of living. There is also indisputable evidence that we in the West are unwilling to defend ourselves from barbarians. Just look at our response to the recent Orlando massacre, in which we’ve focused our energies on guns rather than on terrorists.

Saw an excellent article in The American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord pointing out exactly this problem.

Here we go again.

Yet another hotly reported media narrative stamps itself on the national dialogue only to find — oops! — maybe there are actually more facts to be discovered before we know, as they say, “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

This time around the media narrative surrounds the Minnesota shooting by St. Anthony Village Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez, the shooting victim one Philando Castile. Says a police audio tape of Yanez:

“I’m going to check IDs. I have reason to pull it over. The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just ’cause of the wide-set nose.”

Then we learn that there are pictures out there of the robber — one of two — committing the robbery, gun in hand. And indeed there is a similarity between one of the robbers and Castile.

Now. How did we learn any of this? From a narrative quite different from the mainstream media’s all-too-predictable “racist white cop kills black man” story — a different narrative that went viral over at Conservative TreeHouse. The TreeHouse story drew instant wrath from liberal websites. Over at Mediaite John Ziegler put it this way:

Shocker! It Looks Like the Media May Have Bought a False Narrative in Philando Castile Shooting

:
The trouble here is that this presentation of a false narrative instead of the presentation of facts keeps happening over and over and over again. X occurs, the mainstream media jumps for the convenient liberal narrative of the moment — and the facts be damned.

We do have a problem with some “minority communities,” as they call them, becoming estranged from the police personnel who protect and serve them. I’m sure it goes both ways, people on both sides of the divide behaving differently than they’d behave if the divide was closed. But it impresses me that this continues to happen; the examples emerge, and the lately-arriving facts start to create problems for the examples.

Why does it keep happening? It is the advocates whose agendas are connected to the quality of these examples, who get to pick them. Why do they pick such lousy examples, that are damaged so badly, or undone entirely, by lately-arriving facts? Did they not know “Hands up, don’t shoot” was a fraud? Maybe they didn’t care?

I’m settling on that last one, that they just didn’t care. I have to keep in mind, Pokemon-Go has finally motivated people to get up off their asses and exercise. Michelle and Beyonce couldn’t do that. People have a fascination with pretending the unreal is real. There’s just no getting away from it, and I have to think this fascination extends to pretending the unverified is verified.

There’s also a tendency for people to stick their heads in the sand and avoid acknowledging what actually is verified, even people in high level positions:

We’re in a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela. Along the way, the alliance picks up radical Muslim countries and organizations such as Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State.

That’s a formidable coalition, and nobody should be shocked to discover that we are losing the war.

If our leaders were interested in winning, they would have to design a strategy to destroy this global enemy. But they don’t see the global war. Instead, they timidly nibble around the edges of the battlefields from Africa to the Middle East, and act as if each fight, whether in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya or Afghanistan, can be peacefully resolved by diplomatic effort.

This approach is doomed. We have real enemies, dedicated to dominating and eventually destroying us, and they are not going to be talked out of their hatred. Iran, for example, declared war on the United States in 1979 — that’s 37 years ago — and has been killing Americans ever since. Every year, the State Department declares Iran to be the world’s primary supporter of terror. Do you think we’ll nicely and politely convince them to be good citizens and even (as President Obama desires) a responsible ally supporting peace? Do you think ISIS or the Taliban wants to embrace us?

No, we’re not going to talk our way out of this war, nor can we escape its horrors. Ask the people in San Bernardino or South Florida, or the relatives of the thousands killed on 9/11. We’re either going to win or lose. There is no other “solution.”

That, too, is something I’m noticing over and over again…people choosing their favorite narratives, as if they were choosing a favorite flavor of ice cream, without regard for what’s actually true…

On Monday Detroit Police Chief James Craig announced that the DPD has launched an investigation into Detective Nathan Weekley after his social media post went viral drawing over 40,000 views and a number of complaints.

The officer’s post was highlighted by the left-wing Michigan National Action Network revealing to liberal supporters of Black Lives Matter that the officer called the BLM movement “terrorists” and said that the only way the people would understand how important police are is to stop going to work.

“For the first time in my nearly 17 years as a law enforcement officer,” Detective Weekley wrote, “I contemplated calling into work in response to the outrageous act perpetrated against my brothers. It seems like the only response that will demonstrate our importance to society as a whole. The only racists here are the piece of (expletive) Black Lives Matter terrorists and their supporters.”

Over the line? Of course it’s easy to say so. But it’s not quite so easy to actually draw the line…across one issue and a great many others, keeping it straight as you go. Since when is calling someone a racist out-of-bounds? I’m seeing people do it quite often and not all of them are getting in trouble.

Phil had a good point to make about that…

I always find it fascinating that the people who scream the loudest about racism make absolutely everything about race. There’s nothing more racist than that.

Speaking of reality: John Hawkins came up with an intriguing thought exercise, of what would be going on in the world right now if white privilege really did exist the way some people seem to think it does. Interesting read, chock full of other things I don’t see happening…

1) We’d see frequent discussions on whether bumbling white dads or negative portrayals of southerners on TV and in movies were unfair to white people.

2) The government would be turning down talented black and Hispanic students to allow less qualified white students to get in via Affirmative Action.

3) Minorities would be LEAVING the United States, not making dangerous treks through the desert in the middle of the night to get in.

4) Falsely calling someone a “racist” would be considered to be just as repulsive as being a racist.

5) There wouldn’t be an option to press 2 for Spanish.

Say what you like about these, but at least they’re tests. And I guess the problem really does come right down to that, some of the ideas that are getting the best, most and brightest attention, and repeated most frequently at the highest decibel levels, are untested. Perhaps it is more accurate to say, the tests are wrong. The ideas are tested in terms of how much passion they can arouse, how much attention they can get. Not on the basis of whether they’re correct.

And here I must confront a paradox. It has been a permeating theme, around here, for the last twelve years that people have a tendency to estrange themselves from reality when they feel like they can afford to do so. Rounding up examples of me saying this, or something like it, would be time consuming and a bit pointless. First few times I made mention of this, it was in the context of Saddam Hussein’s old regime being declared, with blustering and theatrical confidence, to be clean and free of any WMD’s by our fellow anti-war citizens and their advocates; seldom correct, never in doubt. What has happened since then has gotten a bit twisty. People are still estranging themselves from reality. But, it doesn’t seem to be because of a feeling of stultifying abundance, or any sort of perception that they’re living high on the hog and reality has become optional.

Quite to the contrary. They’re voting to elect democrats, over and over again, even when they don’t agree with the democrats who are getting their votes. For the same reason the Depression-era voters kept re-electing FDR to further damage the economy. Their feeling is one of desperation.

It Must Be True But not completely. There are several different things happening at once here. It’s a mixed bag. People who say “Black Lives Matter is having a peaceful protest” are, quite obviously, of the opinion that if this statement is not correct, the lack of correctness will be costless to them. They are not in the line of fire. Maybe there is a loss of reputation that would come into play? But that doesn’t seem to count today the way it would have counted, let’s say, two hundred years ago. That bothers me more than anything. It’s like we’ve lost honor. Maybe that’s it. People can’t trust each other. This can be observed in the e-mail, often. People spread rumors, they get embarrassed when the rumors turn out to be false, and then they go back and do it again.

Sometimes they deny things that are actually true, and get told in front of everybody “Here’s a link.” Same embarrassment. Oops, my bad! And again, they go right back to it as if nothing happened.

So we’re going through an extended chapter here, in which reality is not to be taken that seriously, and reputations don’t matter much. Affluence and abundance have something to do with it, or at least they did. Maybe they still do. Desperation, and a feeling of dependence, also have something to do with it. “Must help spread the fable to make sure I can keep getting my vittles.” I guess the bottom layer of the Maslow Pyramid is something we’re enjoying in abundance, and there’s something higher up that is scarce, worth trading away the level of trust others could reasonably place in us. Which in generations past, would have been an irreplaceable thing.

I guess this observation comes down to only just that. It used to be, “If I say this thing that might not be true, my reputation could be wrecked and I won’t be able to get it back again.” That’s given way to, “If I say this thing that might not be true, some political agenda will be advanced, some group will benefit from that, and my stature within that group will increase. And who cares if it’s true or not, anyway?”

You always see this at the end of an age. When the majority of people sense that the old world is passing away, most double down on the way things used to be. “Chivalry” only got really elaborate when firearms and pikemen made knights obsolete. Louis XVI (hi, Cuttlefish!) and Charles II lost their heads over the divine right of kings several hundred years after anybody seriously defended it. The so-called Age of Reason kicked off with a whole bunch of witch burnings. The classic treatise on Roman legionary tactics and training was written long after the legions ceased being effective (or Roman). Hell, Karl Marx thought he’d found a “scientific” way to turn the clock back to feudalism….

Voting for Hillary, singing the diversity gospel, whatever, is the equivalent of the Duke of York ordering up brilliantly gilded 100 lb armor and a purebred stallion for the tourney… knowing that if he actually went into battle, some dirty peasant with a matchlock would blow him to hell from cover and he’d be dead before he even heard the shot.
- Severian | 07/16/2016 @ 17:43
[…] Happy 50th Bday to MK Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 07/17/2016 @ 05:57
[…] Happy 50th Bday to MK Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup | Untruth | 07/17/2016 @ 06:05
Charles I.

Nit-picking…
- mkfreeberg | 07/17/2016 @ 08:35
The Experts at the Mount Vernon Association of Experts on the Expertise of Mount Vernon Association Experts rates you nit “definitely not negatively un-spurious.” I stand corrected.
- Severian | 07/17/2016 @ 09:21
Happy 50th

“Sometimes they deny things that are actually true, and get told in front of everybody “Here’s a link.””

Strangely, I have found my ‘anti-liberal argument’ account gets banned and IP blocked FAR MORE OFTEN posting factual evidence in the comments section than when simply making statements that I know to be true but don’t support with evidence. You might make the arguments that it was links, but the cut-n-pastes with quotes attributed caused furious anger as well. I always assumed that reality hitting them upside the head was like the cold, dead slap of a herring.

Unfortunately, there are just too damn many trees in the forest to cut down with a herring.
- P_Ang | 07/18/2016 @ 08:40

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