House of Eratosthenes

Tom the Impaler wants to know where’d the quote come from? The quote in question is a rather arbitrary length of subselection in the dialog between Henry Rearden and the three-judge panel at his trial in Ayn Rand’s 1957 magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. The story takes place in an alternate-universe near-future at an unspecified date, and describes a downward spiral of America, the last non-collectivist nation on the face of the earth, into the individuality-murdering muck of socialism. Rearden, a brilliant metallurgist and entrepreneur, has invented a wonderful and fictitious metal alloy called “Rearden Metal” that lasts much longer than steel.

There are no planes in this alternate reality; freight is delivered by trains. Rearden Metal has the potential to save vast regions of the country from famine. But the politicians and labor bosses are afraid of the market being disrupted, so Rearden has been forbidden from selling his new metal. He’s on trial for violating the regulation. By showing the trial for what it is, he comes out of it with a $5,000 fine.

I’m doing this from memory. I may have to revise some little tidbits of that up there, but what you have is the essence of it. Which demonstrates two things, in my mind, which I’d been noticing years and years before I ever picked up the novel. They never, or very seldom, are pointed out. But they’re all-important.

Point One is what Rand called “the sanction of the victim.” If you study the history of western civilization since the industrial revolution, you’ll find one pattern that consistently emerges is that the most dreadful tyrants are stealthy. They have some kind of propaganda machination in place to pretend their government has power by consent of The People. Sometimes, they do not pretend this, but nevertheless persist in sending out word that their government is doing The Work Of The People. Nobody ever wants to self-annoint and then have the balls to say “I want this done because it’s me and I’m the guy who wants it done.”

And so when they oppress the classes under them, they demand sanction from the victim. There’s always some process for this, because it makes them and their lieutenants feel so much better about it when the victim participates in the process. It’s kind of like trying to get confessions out of John Proctor and Giles Corey in The Crucible.

Point Two is closely related. It is that when you are confronted by a silly idea, the most devastating thing you can do to it is to take it seriously. I can pinpoint exactly when it was I figured this out — I had it pointed out to me in this Time Magazine article, about a skirmish between Carlin Romano and feminist Katharine MacKinnon, after Romano’s negative review of MacKinnon’s book, Only Words.

At the heart of her thinking is the notion that pornography is literally a form of assault by expression, something like saying “Kill!” to a trained attack dog. “Protecting pornography means protecting sexual abuse as speech,” MacKinnon writes in her latest book, Only Words (Harvard University Press; $14.95). “Sooner or later, in one way or another, the consumers want to live out the pornography further in three dimensions.”

For more proof that words have consequences, there is Carlin Romano, book critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer. His Nov. 15 review of MacKinnon’s work in the left-leaning weekly the Nation set off a war of words that is reaching new heights of animosity. Romano, a former philosophy instructor, opened his review with a hypothetical proposition. “Suppose I decide to rape Catharine MacKinnon before reviewing her book. Because I’m uncertain whether she understands the difference between being raped and being exposed to pornography, I consider it required research for my critique of her manifesto…”

MacKinnon felt more than insulted. She felt…well, raped. “He had me where he wanted me,” she told TIME last week. “He wants me as a violated woman with her legs spread. He needed me there before he could address my work.” And the reviewer? “She’s claiming a book review equals rape,” says Romano. “That’s quite a stretch.”

MacKinnon’s assertion was just as patently absurd, in my view, as the McCain nomination that dangles over our heads like the Sword of Damocles today. And I further hold that the McCain nomination suffers from the same weaknesses as MacKinnon’s babblings did back then…that hobbled Henry Rearden’s “trial.” In all three of these situations, the protagonist has an expectation — a desperate one — that the selected audience will take the proposal somewhat seriously…just seriously enough to do what is expected…and then move on. Don’t take it so seriously as to inspect it.

Romano did exactly the opposite. Like Henry Rearden at his trial, Romano dealt a devastating broadside to the silly idea, simply by taking it seriously.

“People claim I dehumanized her,” Romano complains. “In fact, I did worse — I took her seriously. The worst thing that can happen to a flamboyant claim is to be tested.” To put it another way, MacKinnon’s contention that depictions of sex can be equivalent to sexual assaults may come as news to women who have suffered the atrocity of an actual rape.

How many messages surround us nowadays, carrying the expectation that we are to take said messages only seriously enough to do what is requested of us, but not so seriously as to test them?

I would offer that there are so many they threaten to drown us. And the impending McCain nomination is one of these.

So I intend to take the McCain nomination seriously. After the Republicans nominate him, I will accept him as a serious candidate, and support him to the extent that I think I can trust him. To the extent that his deeds — not his words — are compatible with my own interpretations of the country’s interest. Which means, not at all.

Now that I’ve dealt with how this boondoggle is connected to the Rearden trial, there is something else I think should be pointed out, and I think it’s been injurious to everybody who could be affected by a new administration that it’s gone this long without anyone talking about it. I hope what follows finds its way in front of the eyeballs of one or several prospective McCain supporters, before they pull that lever.

The labels. The directional labels. “Right…Left…Center.”

John McCain, I’m afraid, is the agent by which those labels are about to inflict upon us a very severe injury. No one can deny at this point what a wonderful medicinal balm those three words have been to his campaign. The narrative doesn’t change much at all, so let me see if I can recite it from memory here…

Senator McCain is a “maverick,” now “working hard” to heal the rift with the “Republican base,” over a number of issues on which that base “demands” a “drift” to the “hard right” but by “working with the democrats” Senator McCain has been offering a more “centrist” approach.

Something like that.

And this way of looking at things has been embedded in our political arena, in which massively important and impactful decisions are made, for generations now. There is right, there is left, there is center. Just like driving a car.

The problem is with this unstated moral to the story. I say unstated…it’s Not Articulated Outright…it’s an idea people take only seriously enough to do what is requested/demanded of them. And the idea is this: That if you want to get anywhere, most of the time you should stick to the center.

How conveeeeeeeenient. Now you’re on the hook to do whatever is compatible with the interests of whoever is defining what “center” is.

I’d like to propose something different. The left-right-center thing doesn’t survive the test of being taken seriously. You wouldn’t live by bad ideas half the time, would you? If one third-grader says people breathe air and another third-grader says people can breathe water, you wouldn’t stick your face in a pond half the time would you?

True, we can survive bad ideas. That doesn’t mean we’re obliged to do so 50% of the time.

So my proposal for replacing the left-right-center dictum, is this: Inside-outside. Convention-irony.

Deep down, I think all of us, regardless of ideological persuasion, understand what convention is in running a government, making our laws, and enforcing our rules. Convention is called out in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. We are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of expression, establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…we are, and of right ought to be, free…we’re entitled to equal protection under the law…etc.

If most of us want something to be illegal, and a law prohibiting it is compatible with the Constitution, we can make it illegal. And if it is illegal, you only get to break that law until you get caught, and then you get punished. If you aren’t breaking any laws, then you’re a free man, and you get to stay free, enjoy all your rights, and keep all your stuff.

That’s convention.

Irony is all the stupid crap we do when we find convention boring. Or when times get tough and we form the narcissistic worldview that someone has screwed us over…through convention.

Irony is a 70% income tax on the wealthiest during the administration of FDR. Irony is slaughtering pigs to rot in the fields, and pouring cream in the ditches, in some parts of the country — while, in other parts, people are starving to death.

Irony is eventful freedom. Deep down, everybody already knows Thing I Know #196: When classes of people take turns, over time, enjoying special privileges, not one man among them enjoys genuine freedom. Irony is the Year Of The Woman. Irony is the Black Civil Rights Movement. Irony is The Year Of The Queer, and hate crime legislation. Convention is what most of us understand is in the Fourteenth Amendment, and all of us know makes us a better people with a better government — equal protection. Not just in the boring durations between the fashionable debuts of oppositional things, when some special class has its turn in the limelight…but all the time. White guys aren’t special, persons of color aren’t special, women and gays aren’t special. We are all just “We The People,” like it says in those letters, larger than all the rest, in that Konstyitooshyun that so many say should be getting more attention.

Irony is the idea that violence stops when the tools used to inflict it become unavailable. That gun control can stop violent crime. That something called “disarmament” can stop war.

Irony is the Endangered Species Act. Deep down, everybody understands when our government is restricted from taking things away from us, and instead starts enforcing rules on how we are & aren’t supposed to use our stuff, including our land — this is nothing more than a mocking and denigrating end-run around the rules that were intended to make us more free than that.

Irony is saying illegal aliens “work hard and follow the law.” We all understand that some of them may do the first of those, but none of them do the second.

Irony is letting a murderer live, when he can look you right in the eye and promise you that if he does live, he will kill again. Irony is giving pregnant women the right to murder their babies. What can be more ironic than killing the innocent, while sparing the guilty, while accusing those who oppose you on both counts of contradicting themselves?

Irony is a bunch of soccer moms in New Jersey voting to decide what the speed limit will be in Montana, and what the legal drinking age will be in Kansas.

Irony is insisting that homosexuals can serve in the military until they tell someone they’re homosexual, and then out they go.

Irony is saying when our nation defends itsef, it should do so in a way that makes other nations happy, even if that means not defending itself…and without stopping to notice, nothing we ever do seems to make those other nations happy.

Irony is positioning yourself as a defender of womens’ choice, by bullying and intimidating women who are complete strangers to you, into making the career choices you think they should be making.

Irony is having absurd and silly arguments over the provision of good food, access to legal counsel, and prayer facilities to our own detainees, while when our folks get captured, the other side saws their heads off while they’re still alive.

Irony is the idea that when your employer gives you a stupid rule to follow you’re being oppressed and need organized representation, but when your union gives you a stupid rule to follow, then that’s all good.

Irony is the Earl Warren Supreme Court, 1954-1969. Irony is a fifteen year stretch of cooking up ingenious, creative, spellbinding and surreal new ways to let criminals out of jail that you know damn good and well are guilty, to the point where prosecutors don’t want to prosecute anything anymore, and women and children are afraid to walk the streets at night.

Irony is affirmative action, with quotas. For what can be more ironic than counting beans by the bean color, while insisting that you’re “color-blind” in everything you do?

Irony is running for President as a strong, independent woman, after creating a political career for yourself by riding your husband’s coattails while he cheats on you constantly and, on the record, you were too much of a dimwit to ever suspect anything was going on.

Irony is the fantasy that when someone is willing to hire you for four dollars an hour, if some law is passed that makes that arrangement illegal until the wage is doubled, the guy offering the four dollars will just…find the extra money…somewhere…and the job will still be yours.

Hooters Waitress Irony is complaining about carbon emissions and high gas prices, while driving something big that sits way up high…to work…every day…using 50 gallons of fuel a week to do something that requires 10…or less.

Irony is saying beautiful young women are being oppressed by Hooter’s waitress uniforms, while beautiful young women who don’t work at Hooter’s dress exactly the same way.

Irony is the notion that peace is possible if one side of a conflict, rather than both, thinks it’s a good idea. Or, when both sides hunger for peace, it can be achieved with the details of the peace relegated to minor-footnote status. Deep down, we all understand if both sides want peace and it doesn’t matter who runs anything, there wouldn’t be any fighting in the first place.

Irony is the absurd doctrine that you can’t do anything to defend yourself, unless the threat has already done something to actually hurt you. Who among us would impose such a requirement on their daughters, living away from home for the first time, confronted by a menacing neighbor or co-worker?

Irony is an automated voice asking you to press 1 for English. Irony is wondering wistfully what we can do to help our immigrants assimilate, while wandering the streets all day every day, hearing immigrants speak spanish to their children — their CHILDREN, who will one day have to get jobs here — and thinking nothing’s wrong with it. Or “celebrating the diversity.”

Irony is getting your news out of the Daily Show, your outlook from Rosie O’Donnell, your science out of Al Gore, and your medical advice out of Michael Moore.

Irony is nonsense we practice when we get tired of…sense.

It isn’t right and left. It’s things that we all know make sense…and other things that we all know don’t.

McCain looks like a reasonable candidate when you see him as someone alternating between right & left. When you see him the way I see him, through the lense of convention vs. irony, he looks very different. He looks unprincipled…more repugnant and loathsome on the occasions when he agrees with me, than another would be, in disagreeing with me. He looks like a career politican. More dangerous than all the rest. He looks like all the liabilities of George W. Bush, with none of the benefits.

Because that’s exactly what he is.

Nicely done Morgan… very nicely done… especially liked the close:

Irony is getting your news out of the Daily Show, your outlook from Rosie O’Donnell, your science out of Al Gore, and your medical advice out of Michael Moore.

Irony is nonsense we practice when we get tired of…sense.

It isn’t right and left. It’s things that we all know make sense…and other things that we all know don’t.

McCain looks like a reasonable candidate when you see him as someone alternating between right & left. When you see him the way I see him, through the lense of convention vs. irony, he looks very different. He looks unprincipled…more repugnant and loathsome on the occasions when he agrees with me, than another would be, in disagreeing with me. He looks like a career politican. More dangerous than all the rest. He looks like all the liabilities of George W. Bush, with none of the benefits.

Because that’s exactly what he is.

Amen.
- Ricksteroni | 02/24/2008 @ 10:43

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Memo For File LIVSaturday, February 9th, 2008

Memo For File LIV
Saturday, February 9th, 2008