House of Eratosthenes

What is in the water that left-wingers drink? Their ideological opponents say something, and their first response is to be horrified and indignant; this is to be expected when being horrified and indignant is the one weapon in your arsenal you’ve been hauling out most often over the last 75 years or so. I can get that. What I don’t get is when left-wingers level some spurious charge at those ideological opponents — the opponents respond — and out comes the horror and indignation. The theatrical shock, dismay, etc. etc. etc. even knowing full well that the last guy who spoke isn’t the guy who created the situation; the horrified and indignant people are the ones who created the situation. Knowing that. Full well. Putting on the little puppet show of OMIGAWD!!! anyway.

I guess it comes from a rich legacy of saying whatever bullshit has to be said, in order to win an election. After a few cycles of observing that people are somehow buying it, I would imagine it’s in the human nature to push the envelope and see what other assortments of crap-ola you can sell, while calling it chocolate pancakes or whatever.

The obsequious longueuers of phony outrage this morning have to do with “mocking the community organizers.” The Campaign for Obama, lurking in my e-mail inbox, sniffing around for five bucks to be donated by loyal democrat Morgan K. Freeberg who somehow made it onto their mailing list…

I saw John McCain’s attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign.

But worst of all…they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process.
:
Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Left-wing talk-show hostette Taylor Marsh, writing in Pajamas Media…

Does Sarah have a clue what community organizers do in cities across this country? Especially in inner city neighborhoods, whose people can’t survive without them?

Roland Martin, commenting on CNN, to whose video clip Marsh linked in her column, repeating the meme…

And many more I’m sure, since it’s clear to me something was written up at a central location and faxed out, to be repeated word-for-word. AGAIN.

What do the “community organizers” do anyway? The uninitiated do what we always do, we turn to Wikipedia:

Community organizing is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. While organizing describes any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner, much community organizing is in the pursuit of a common agenda. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.

Huh. Well, what I heard Gov. Palin say, was something like this…

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess…a small-town mayor if sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities. [notations about cheers/applause omitted]

Now I would imagine, if you want to quibble over this, you would be expected to come up with some actual responsibilities community organizers have. And I would add, further, that a responsibility is much different from an agenda. A responsibility is something you’re supposed to get done, usually within a certain time or prior to some event, to some threshold of satisfactory achievement; and if you don’t, there is some music to be faced. An agenda is simply something you’re trying to get done…or, it can be something you’re not trying to get done at all, but simply pretending you’re trying to get it done.

So according to that, then, C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y. (Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet) is an agenda, but it is not a responsibility because it isn’t objectively measured and nobody gets in trouble if the thing doesn’t get done within a certain timeframe. It’s just a merry-go-’round that spins decade after decade after decade.

Regarding the populism appeal of community organizing. To counter-criticize Palin for criticizing this, is somewhat like criticizing her for being a Republican. Which I imagine is the real point. But it’s phony. Conservatives are supposed to be hostile to populism. That is their purpose. Quoting myself, in the latest horseshoe-configuration debate here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, as some of my fellow McCain/PALIN! supporters dogpiled me and held my feet to the fire for not being a better supporter of His Maverickness earlier this week:

Conservatism, to me, is a rejection of populism; populism is the premature abridgement of reasoned discourse, based on the flawed notion that if enough people agree on something, then everybody should.

And when McCain goes populist on an issue, it grates on my nerves, just as it grates on your nerves when I don’t fall in lock-step with him on everything.

Now, go back and read the Wikipedia definition again. This is exactly what’s been wrong with the country for the last hundred years or more. And listen to Roland. “Act in common self-interest.” “Don’t you dare critize people who fight for community people who have community issues.”

This is exactly the trouble with populism. The fighting. Fifty-one of us think this thing; the other forty-nine think that thing; the forty-nine people ought to just go away. WIN, WIN, WIN! Grind those other people into the dust, because they’re wrong. They have no rights. They’re in the minority, after all.

So it goes without saying the forty-nine shouldn’t be allowed to criticize anything. Roland Martin said exactly that. Don’t you dare.

While our left-wingers are insisting on that, they’re holding themselves up as paragons of free speech. How can they possibly do this? The same way they insist they’re championing the “rights of the little guy” while they support abortion rights. It’s all in the definitions. Anyone caught in the crosshairs of the community organizers, is less than a human being, just like a baby in the final trimester of a pregnancy is “tissue.” The targets of liberal hate are always defined out of existence, just before they are targeted for elimination.

Meanwhile, the liberal activist groups, themselves, and the people heading those groups up, have the right not to be criticized. Don’t you dare.

I’m aware these are controversial thoughts I have in my head, that I scribble down here at The Blog That Nobody Reads. A lot of people disagree with me about them. I know of one who did, and then changed his mind…

This is very very disconcerting:

I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to destroy the Republican Party as it exists today as well as everything it stands for.

That means Republicans are not just wrong but evil and must be destroyed. Literally, destroyed. Freeberg spoke of Eliminationism[.] I thought he was wrong and was overstating the danger. As usual, I was wrong.

Don’t worry, Duffy; I’ll try not to let this one go to my head. But you weren’t alone in disagreeing with me about it or thinking I was overstating the danger.

But in the end, among those who disagree with me on this point, if they are clear thinkers, they’ll be forced to admit they made a mistake. That I was right all along — just as Duffy had to. That’s because, in 2008, The Left is all about populism, and populism is all about destruction. It really is death. You can’t be a good populist, if you aren’t looking for things to target, defining those things out of existence, and then stigmatizing those things into oblivion. It is the means of propulsion of the populist vessel; it is how it moves. Death, destruction and chaos. They call it “fighting for issues” but it has very little to do with the issues and a whole lot more to do with the fighting.

Thing I Know #217. Populism, according to the hard evidence that has managed to come my way, has a tough time staying positive. It seems there has to be a dirty so-and-so who’s due for a come-uppins, behind every energized populist movement. That might be because populism seeks to decide issues according to the satisfaction of the majority, and most of us like to feel our way to a decision rather than think our way through. Naturally, laying the smack down on an enemy feels a whole lot better than actually solving a problem.

Update: The subject of populism is a little bit of a tangent, I’ll concede. Although it does have heavy overlap with the topic under discussion so it isn’t a complete bunny-trail. It is worthy of discussion on this occasion and it is worthy of a bit more critical thinking on any occasion, because by the time we emerge from the school system most of us have been thoroughly indoctrinated to the idea that pure democracy is a pathway to decent justice. And it takes some quality thinking to figure out that not only is that idea flawed, but it’s seriously bollywonkers and gunnybags.

A flashback seems apropros. Quoting from one of my favorite paragraphs out of that nightmarishly bloated novel…

Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We *voted* on it. Yes ma’am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars – rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn’t belong to him, it belonged to ‘the family,’ and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his ‘need’ – so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife’s head colds, hoping that ‘the family’ would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because its miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm – so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that *his* need was worse than his brother’s. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?

Community organizers.

Don’t you dare criticize them!

Notice how they don’t point out the things Obama actually accomplished as a Community Organizer? Probably not a whole there to brag about…I’m thinking.

Palin’s record makes Obama look like a light weight. Though on second thought, the same can be said about half of America.
- tim | 09/04/2008 @ 11:01
So after the Democrats belittle Palin as “the mayor of a small town” (completely glossing over her current title as governor — did you see that? Not to mention one with an 83% approval rating), how dare she compare what she did in her lesser role to what Obama did in his lesser role and point out the glaring difference?

The party of indignance, they are.

I’m with you on the responsibility thing 100%. Oh… and my wife? She LOVES her.
- philmon | 09/04/2008 @ 11:15
Obama got a lot accomplished as a Community Organizer. Nice house, solid political connections, good “job” for the wife, the list goes on. I think the Democrats have gotten a nice, long ride off of this sort of soft, unaccountable, untraceable power. When you attack “community organizers”, you are breaking a bunch of people’s bowls. Of course they’re upset!
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 09/04/2008 @ 11:20
Apropos of nothing… That fat-assed Martin followed hard on the heels of the equally fat-assed and repugnant Donna Brazile last evening on CNN… just as I switched over from Fox (Fox was re-running bit’s of Palin’s speech, which I didn’t need to see, as I saw the whole thing, to begin with). It took about 30 milliseconds before I was off to somewhere, anywhere, else for a while.

I also spent some time in the fever swamps that are the Lefty blogs last evening and the subject of dissing community organizers was front and center. Sheesh. You’d think this was some sort of Liberal Priesthood or something, given the frickin’ reverence bestowed on these asshats. Yet… not a word about church groups, the Salvation Army, and such… groups that do good for “the community” without constantly blowing their own damned horn. And have done so for YEARS before “community organizing” became an avocation.

Drives me frickin’ NUTS, it does.
- Buck | 09/04/2008 @ 13:33
The way I see it, she was not criticizing community organizers. She was criticizing those who equated the experience of being a community organizer with the experience necessary to run the country; no one asked if this guy was even close to qualified, and she’s calling them on it.

By the way, let’s go ahead and call Mrs. Palin T.C.W.E.G.T.E.D.T. (“The closest we’ll ever get to electing Dagny Taggart.”) Just make Angelina Jolie wear square rimless glasses for the Atlas Shrugged movie and release it before November, please.
- wch | 09/04/2008 @ 13:50
Pointer:

http://federalistpaupers.com/index.php/2008/09/04/chesterton-on-palin-and-harris/
- vanderleun | 09/04/2008 @ 14:24
[…] good writin’ This is a post from that blog that you don’t even read anyway: What is in the water that left-wingers drink? Their ideological opponents say something, […]
- really good writin’ « Revenge of Eratosthenes | 09/04/2008 @ 22:28

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Mocking Community OrganizersThursday, September 4th, 2008

Mocking Community Organizers
Thursday, September 4th, 2008