House of Eratosthenes

I was watching democrat party advisors and consultants “guest” on the Fox News Channel to peddle their shit, and a very simple thought jumped into my head. At first I thought it was such a simple thought that it couldn’t possibly be worth anything. But then I realized it was impossibly difficult to tell whether it was a simple thought or a complexificated thought. Which one of those it was, I was not sure. But it was one of those two.

And that’s the sign of a good thought.

By which I mean, you may claim this is a thought not worth having…and perhaps you are right. But having been through this cycle a few times, I know beyond any doubt it’s a thought worth jotting down.

Let’s jot it down.

I have a perception, which I could quantify properly if I had a mind to do so, but I have no mind to do so because the benefits would be slight and the effort would be cumbersome. Let us simply presume the thought may be properly quantified but I don’t feel it worth the hassle of proving it. My perception is that we have embarked on some kind of “quickening.” Things, today, compared to the way things were a year ago — are vastly and drastically more changed compared to the way they were changed between one year ago and two years ago. We are in a measurable acceleration curve. Do I really need to provide data to support that? Is there any intelligent soul out there who would honestly contest it? I think not…and so I shall skip that part of the exercise.

No, in observing this quickening, I wish merely to observe, and I think it only necessary to observe, this: Something has fallen away. A facade. A mask. A mask has fallen away. We pretend it is not so. But we seem to be merely going through the motions of carrying out an elaborate deception, that a generation ago was somehow more honest. People pretend to be falling for things that, in times past, really did fool them. And can fool them no longer.

To understand what I mean, it is necessary to divide people into groups. Oh, how we hate to do that! And yet we cannot explain why we so hate it.

Some of us seek to deceive, and others do not. The necessity of separating the one from the other, is self-evident and self-explanatory.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that the planet will die unless we unplug our phones as soon as they’re done charging.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that terrorists seek to end their own lives in order to kill a few of us…and yet if we simply change our foreign policy, they’ll start loving us all to pieces.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that we are not a very good people. But if we simply create a binding structure of public government-owned and government-administrated insurance for our lives and medical needs, that we will become wonderful people.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that our young children know a great deal more about how to make our society work properly than we do; and that those who have been on the planet far longer than we have, know far less about this than we do.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that our economy sucks so much because our country is so far in debt; but that we can turn things around by taking on more debt.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that a woman who is loyal to her man, who makes his life easier, who uses her daylight hours to create a home he will want to approach when the day’s work is done…and brings him cold beverages to drink and hot meat to eat, perhaps dressing herself down to titillate him and make him feel more important…is somehow doing damage to herself, and perhaps to him. And that a miserable, demanding, bitching dried-out old harridan is somehow fulfilling some sacrosanct destiny, for her benefit and for his.

There are those who seek to convince all within earshot and line-of-sight, that Iraq was a much better place with ol’ Saddam in charge.

Here is my complicated but simple thought. And perhaps it will diminish what faith you have left in humanity. Or perhaps it will help to preserve it.

Three NOBODY is falling for this bullshit. Nobody. No conservatives. No liberals. Nobody in between.

No, in our parents’ generation, our so-called “leaders” told us sweet little lies…some of us immediately figured out what they were doing, but also, that they had a stake in the lie being successfully told. And so they became passive liars. They listened, they smiled, they nodded — not believing a single word of the lie being told. But understanding right off the bat, that it was to their material benefit for the lie to propagate. And so they behaved as if they believed the lie, that they were far too smart to believe.

Some others among us were just-plain-duped. They were the suckers. Their wallets held the fuel that kept the whole Ponzi scheme going…and they did not hang on to that fuel for very long.

Nowadays — we have the quickening. And I do not think things are staying the same. The lies being told are so much more brazen. We can have a “public option” on our national healthcare, with no rationing. Nobody has any reason to oppose His Glorious Wonderfulness’ ideas, other than their own unapologetic racism. Hollywood celebrities are the wisest among us. Unplug that coffee pot, or the planet might die. Keep importing that oil from the states that sponsor terrorist acts against us, or else Fluffy the Polar Bear won’t have any chunks of ice waiting for him as he swims around, and Fluffy just might drown.

I fear we have lost that all-important distinction, as we embark on the 21st century Anno Domini.

I fear we have lost our ability to distinguish between those who profit from the lies, and those who honestly fall for the lies.

I fear we are now telling lies that are so substandard in quality, that nobody is falling for them. Nobody. Anywhere.

I fear we have been suckered into a kind of infinite vortex. I fear we have become pawns in some pyramid scheme. That nobody’s dumb enough to fall for the lies being told, but also, that we are all in a desperate search for the next sucker…the next sucker who simply doesn’t exist anymore.

I fear that we have, for generations now, been divided among those who seek to deceive, those who pretend to be deceived, and those who honestly are deceived.

And that, while nobody was paying attention, the last of those three groups quietly dwindled down to nothing. I fear we are caught in some bizarre little puppet show. One in which all, or most of us, are caught defining our individual existences around the act of selling something nobody is buying.

I fear this is the beginning of the end of a mighty civilization. I, and you, are blessed to be born at just the right time to witness it.

Blessed, and at the same time, cursed.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I don’t think I’ve deceived myself concerning your point, but it lays out more nicely along a historical axis, IMHO.
The overwhelming majority of human history has been about small numbers of people controlling large numbers of people.
These United States have, as a whole, been an experiment running counter to the bulk of human history.
The Progressives made two Constitutional and one legislative tweak a hundred years ago that set about unwinding that experiment, creating a permanent political class in this country, and opening a door for fascism, economic- and social-Marxism, and debt to attack with all of mercy of a disease vector.
You, as usual, do an excellent job of enumerating various symptoms of that disease.
The only thing we’ve going for us is the internet, cheerfully blowing the lid off of all this nonsense these last 15+ years.
I predict survival in the very long run, with copious pain in the near to long term.
- smitty1e | 09/04/2009 @ 01:48
We are dining at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe then. I think I’ll spend a year dead for tax purposes.

So in your little venn-ish diagram, there is no room for those who are not deceived nor pretend to be deceived, nor are deceivers. Hmmmm. That is where I’d like to think I am, since you and I don’t seem to really fall into any of those categories as far as the issues you’ve laid out are concerned. Or are we such a minority that we are, as we did in our physics proofs, “negligible” and can be ignored. Just curious.

Now if we’re talking about Santa Claus, and more controversially, Jesus, Ok… I’m afraid I might have to be a deceiver when it comes to my grandkids. At least while they’re young. And let me just say I have a very open mind about the Jesus thing. But I have decided it is a good thing either way.

While I was reading the first half of this post, I couldn’t help but think … when you get into that Sowell book you just got, it’s gonna fill a whole bunch of this stuff out for you. Stuff you sort of knew but couldn’t put your finger on. It’ll take your “mind’s hand” and put your finger on it like I do with my grandson when he’s having trouble figuring out where something goes. How it fits.

Because he has taken the time to find out what we who work in other fields haven’t had the time to research.
- philmon | 09/04/2009 @ 06:17
So in your little venn-ish diagram, there is no room for those who are not deceived nor pretend to be deceived, nor are deceivers…are we such a minority that we are, as we did in our physics proofs, “negligible” and can be ignored.

You/we are not negligible; more like out of scope. When one earnestly desires not to be fooled, one must think in ways that are foreign to what was “popular” thinking last November, and remains popular now. Among those who don’t care about being fooled, and those who want to be fooled, the outcome is important at the beginning and at the end. Reasons for supporting this outcome, are simply filled in after the fact — the tragedy (and the point of this post) is that the quality of these reasons has been generally on a decline now and we’re now at the point where the reasoning makes no sense at all. Which reveals that it never had to.

One item I left out here, and that I’ve explored elsewhere, is “Barack Obama is a humble thoughtful guy.” These popular articles of faith are swiftly twisting around to become the opposite of reality.

[W]hen you get into that Sowell book you just got, it’s gonna fill a whole bunch of this stuff out for you.

I don’t doubt it. Got it right here next to me.
- mkfreeberg | 09/04/2009 @ 07:35
Oh, Morgan….

I have to admit it’s really painful to see your pessimism gain the upper hand, however I may agree with it. I think I mostly agree with smitty here, if only because I’m left with no other option.

The Web has contributed mightily to what you so correctly perceive as the acceleration of the debate; I say almost every day that things I never expected to be discussed are not only on the table but seem to be exposed as issues in the minds of more people than I ever thought would agree with me. This is a horrible thing, but I can only hope and pray that I have the strength to see it through.

I think we’re witnessing the last battle for the minds of normal people that the Left has been waging since 1789. The argument can be made that the intellectual class of the French academy was finally forced out of the closet by the emergence of the American experiment, whatever the internal pressures may have been in France. America, and Americans like you, have existed as a thorn in the side of control freaks since the inception of this country. It’s happening again, as you so clearly understand, primarily because for the first time in history everything is being seen in the moment due to the existence of the Web. The genie’s out of the bottle, and history has proven that there is no cork sufficient to reverse the tide.

This won’t be easy, and we may not see the end of it in our lifetimes. The battle is joined, as we have hoped for at least the last 40 years. Hang on, little brother.
- rob | 09/04/2009 @ 09:01
smitty1e: I predict survival in the very long run, with copious pain in the near to long term.

I’m with smitty… we ain’t dead yet.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
–Mark Twain
- bpenni | 09/04/2009 @ 11:57
Ehh…so in other words, the emperor has no clothes and most of the crowd are afraid to point it out.

This is new information? Maybe that’s why you said, “I have a perception, which I could quantify properly if I had a mind to do so, but I have no mind to do so because the benefits would be slight and the effort would be cumbersome.”

One corollary – nobody wants to admit they’re being fooled, not when the subject is something serious. Everyone likes to think that *they themselves* are the ones who know what’s *really* going on, while those “other people” are the ones with their heads in the sand – or in some bodily orifice.

We point out their foolishness in falling for some demagogue promising utopia through government. They reply, “Oh, but what about you and your sky fairy, you supersititious fools? Ever considered that a bunch of churchmen made the whole thing up?”

As a side question, why is everything on this site, comments and all, suddenly in italics? Did you set this up intentionally, Morgan?
- cylarz | 09/04/2009 @ 13:43
Mmmm…. not in italics in my browser.

“If I were dead, I’d be the last to know” – Paul McCartney

Hey, out of scope is another mathematical term we used to use, and it works for me. I was just curious as to why we weren’t accounted for in the diagaram….. I felt nonexistent, which I knew not to be true… you know, the old “I think, therefore … ” bit.

I heard a caller today on a radio show saying that he is fighting back, and he intends to win.

Well me too.

I’ll not Shut Up, I’ll use my ten commandments, I’ll try to understand where they’re coming from so we can head them off and hopefully correct their angle, or at least make someone else listening question their angle and think about mine. I’ll encourage others like me who are too shy to speak up to speak up.

The Sky Fairy, incidentally, is at the very least the accumulation of the experiences of mankind and the wisdom they have inferred — a wisdom that allows us to make better decisions without having to do massive research on every decision we have to make. So what if some church people did personify it? It doesn’t diminish the wisdom, and it doesn’t make it ok for some third party to make decisions for me — people who don’t know me, don’t know what’s important to me, and aren’t as familiar with the myriad of variables and influences I will take into account by my Sky Fairy Matrix and other more tangible immediate facts and processes.

So your sky fairies are people like Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. Who the hell are they to tell me what to think or do? Bite me, self-anointed “Progressives” 🙂

Progress to whom?
- philmon | 09/04/2009 @ 14:38
@philmon,

>Progress to whom?

And to where? A unified world government?
- smitty1e | 09/04/2009 @ 14:41
Philmon, you have said something that the secular folks may never understand, but should: that even if religion is a quest to be something attainable, fueled with the wisom of our elders, tweaked with our evolving grasp of technology, then it should not matter whether there are holes in the sail – the boat still floats and we are still moving. Those that mock religion always start and end with the deity – low hanging fruit personified (He’s not exactly defending himself). I have always thought that personifying a deity just allowed for the conversation to end. At some point, those that continue to think about it are just shirking other duties.
- wch | 09/04/2009 @ 19:09
True about the progress to… what I was getting at, though, was … who gets to define what “progress” is?
- philmon | 09/04/2009 @ 20:03
Yes, those who mock religion are at least as arrogant as those who mock others for not living up to what their own religous beliefs are.

Because it pretty much amounts to the same thing in the end. They’ve just turned one form of self-righteousness in for another.
- philmon | 09/04/2009 @ 20:06
[…] Compromising Position” Men; Men Trying to Please Women… Van Jones’ CD Highlights Memo For File XCIV This Is Good LXII D’JEver Notice? XXXVIII Stopping the “Pledge” Echo D and E White […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/05/2009 @ 21:25

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