House of Eratosthenes

Now that it’s over, and we’re all done thinking about cooking turkeys and we haven’t yet started on Christmas shopping…this might be an opportune time to define what the Obama Era was. We can get started on that by figuring out what it was not.

It was not a way to heal divisions, certainly not racial divisions. These are yawning chasms, bigger and deeper than they’ve ever been in my lifetime, and let’s face it: If the exercise were repeated a hundred more times, it would come out that way a hundred more times. It is not the Obama way to talk out differences of opinion with the opposition, it is the Obama way to alienate and marginalize the opposition. And that’s what happens when you do that.

It was not a way get the economy humming along, and get all the uninsured people covered. If it was that, in either achievement or in intent, then there would be a “recipe” of sorts validated by experience to have produced these desirable results. The value of such a recipe would be extremely high. Liberals, along with everybody else, would sing its praises, discuss at great length and in great detail how it all works. I’m not seeing any of that at all and you probably aren’t either.

My take on it is that it was about elitism. It was about the few dictating the tastes, selections, values and lifestyles of the many. It was about the premature truncation of reasonable discussions by way of expunging the other side from any discussion, from any circle of influence. Obama said so Himself, right?

Also, about choosing for this elitist influence, those among us who don’t produce anything. It was about the unproductive telling the producers how to do their producing. I do not mean, by “unproductive” — broke. Some of the people who got to wield more influence in the Obama era are, indeed, everlastingly broke. Others make a whole lot of money every day, and have been doing this for a long time. You can’t fault them for not having jobs; they have very impressive jobs. But I notice, when they’re called out to my attention, it is a static situation that these influential people are unproductive. None of the people enjoying this Obama-era heavier influence, would have been interviewed by Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs.

This matters. Having an opinion is easy. Sticking around to watch that opinion brush up against reality, and objectively determine how that all went, that’s something else. You have to be willing to let go of the narrative that said you knew exactly what to do, if it turns out reality doesn’t smile upon that. And the Obama Era was all about sticking to narratives. That’s a luxury in life; one that is afforded, uniquely, to unproductive people whose bumptious opinions never have to come in contact with reality. Or, if they do, and a conflict ensues, since they’re unproductive people they can afford to demand that reality should yield. People who produce things can’t afford to demand such a thing. They have to be willing to see their preconceived notions defeated, while reality triumphs, if reality determines that’s what should happen.

What’s the one thing I’d like future generations to remember? That liberal democrats campaign for the exact opposite of this — “greater liberty,” and a “system that works for everyone.” The nation is now experienced, and hopefully wise. We know that when liberals get what they want, it turns out to be unproductive people deciding for everybody else, how to buy their health insurance…where their money should go if they don’t…what lunches their kids should be eating…and who else should be allowed to pop into their bathrooms while they’re using them. Remember this.

Obama, and His supporters, had eight years to show us their way. And that’s what it was. That’s what it will be, next time. Choose that, by all means, if that’s really what you want. Choose something else if it isn’t what you want. Don’t forget.

Bingo!! As I’m fond of saying, the easiest (and most amusing!) way to refute a liberal’s claim is to take it seriously for five seconds. E.g. Obama’s racial healing: “Aha! So that’s what ‘racial healing’ looks like! BLM riots in the streets, cops getting ambushed, blocked freeways, assaults on Trump voters…. Oh, that’s not racial healing? Then either Obama’s incompetent, or you were lying the whole time. Pick one.”
- Severian | 11/25/2016 @ 12:23
” Or, if they do, and a conflict ensues, since they’re unproductive people they can afford to demand that reality should yield. People who produce things can’t afford to demand such a thing. ”

Exactly. My extremely unproductive relative made the argument to me that Trump could not possibly understand governing because “he’s just a businessman”. Governing can only be done by those who have never gotten their hands dirty with actually making things happen in the real world. People who navel-gaze through 17 years of “college” and never get around to turning it into anything tangible are the only truly wise people, you know!

It was a slap in the face to hear that, considering that she and her husband draw government paychecks to do what they both admit amounts to about 15 minutes a day of actual labor. They never come right out and say “and that goes for you, too, you filthy capitalist”, but it’s implicit, and it’s so obvious that they know what they’re saying. After the last couple of work and politics related discussions, it’s very hard hearing what they think of us and turning the other cheek. But they’re relatives, and you don’t want to harm the family peace. Sigh.

My husband, an executive at a for-profit company who worked his way up from the literal bottom of the heap, could never equal them in their wisdom, because he makes real world things go, and he could lose everything on a wrong decision. The fact that he takes this risk AND pays for other people not to via taxes makes him a sucker deserving of contempt in their eyes.

And of course, being a SAHM and homeschooling my kids, I am not even a person at this point. Never mind that if it weren’t for mothers like me, the entire future would look like one long Black Friday fight at Walmart. (You think those people were raised in a functioning, oppressive, traditional family? Think these ridiculous sales would even happen if the world were populated with people who learned self-control and hard work from frugal suckers? Er, I mean parents?)

They must tell us what to do, or else we will get too full of dreams and take risks and achieve things they can’t, and then they’ll feel bad about themselves, is how I’m pretty sure it’s really working out on a subconscious level. At the root of their self-regard are petty jealousy, laziness, and fear of losing their unearned easy living.
- Getalonghome | 11/25/2016 @ 12:47
Since you’re so wise (truly, not being silly here), maybe you can tell me now why I feel so bad about saying that completely truthful thing about my relatives and our relationship. They obviously do NOT feel bad about thinking such things about us. How does it happen that my mere observing of the truth makes me feel like a big ol’ meanie, and their constant distorting of the truth makes them feel like kings of the world. Suss that one out for me sometime, guru.
- Getalonghome | 11/25/2016 @ 12:55
Hmm. This has to do with feelings felt by people who don’t look at life the way I do, and don’t have the same priorities I do, so it’s difficult for me to say. But I’ve noticed that when you look at the differences between conservatives and liberals, if you proceed from the assumption that the difference has to do with maturity, you never end up wrong or at least you don’t end up wrong by much.

This idea that big ideas are the exclusive province of people who don’t actually make or do anything, is a comfortable refuge of people who have failed to mature; just like good manners are expected from people who have successfully matured. An extreme example would be little kids who are/were the target audience of “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” who’ve been asked to buy into the idea that wealthy industrialists make their profits by dumping toxic waste into rivers. It takes maturity to ask “How does that make a company executive rich?” It also takes maturity to say, if I go without buying this thing I want right now, I can save the money, wait for an opportunity, and buy something that will help me do big things later, help more people, do bigger things…I think we’re looking at the contrast between instant gratification, and the delayed.

The lust for instant gratification makes people into suckers for nihilism, the notion that consequences don’t exist, all outcome is determined ahead of time or is inconsequential, and nothing we do really matters. If nothing we do really matters, then you’ve already got your fifteen-minute workday — the day’s work has only barely begun, before it’s finished already, no point involved in doing any more. Which makes people feel very clever, until they look around and notice they don’t have control over anything. Well, a nihilist isn’t supposed to want any. But people being people, we all want some semblance of control; we’re built to want it, especially when we see something is wrong. So…we all look for ways to get it.

The irony is, those who have dedicated themselves to hard work and delayed gratification, don’t have to look long, even though if they had to look for a long time they’d be able to continue the search diligently and for an extended period of time. But, for them, the answer is right there: Put the objective into the list of things you’re going to try to get done TODAY. For those whose ability to persevere has atrophied over time because they’ve been lunging for the quick easy fix, there’s a lot of looking to be done, and I would suppose the tendency is to settle on the first diamond to emerge from the rough: bitching and complaining about other people, preferably about other people who are different. Which, when you’re a guest in their own home, is not good manners; but manners are for people who have matured, and we’re not born with them. They do have to be taught.

There certainly are control issues going with the maturity issues, I can see this. If you can put together a narrative full of rationalizations about how some recent disaster is someone else’s fault and not yours, you rob yourself of this control. A sense of control starts with a reckoning of “Had I done this, back over here, the outcome in the here-and-now would have been improved.” That’s learning, something we’re all supposed to be doing, and all the time. But if you watch old teevee shows that played at the height of the halcyon era that’s just wrapping up right around now, or maybe a decade ago, you notice this recurring theme: The main character, or some supporting character, belatedly discovers how important it is that he stops blaming himself, and realizes that what happened was not his fault. The joke around our house when we watch these old shows is that everyone has to take a drink when someone uses the line “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself.” Well…in real life, outside the idiot box, we’re constantly being taught — as many times as it takes, before we figure it out and proceed to the next life-lesson — the skills required to generate a superior result, start with finding ways to take responsibility, to blame yourself. Since we can see we’ve got a recent generation indoctrinated on the idea that blaming yourself is one of the very few genuine evils, what we’ve got is a whole generation of nihilists who don’t even consciously realize they’re nihilists.

Short answer is, your relatives are slowly coming to understand it’s their lot in life to sit around and wait for others to do things, because of how they’ve chosen to live life and look at it; they’re not happy with this, and they’re taking it out on others.

There may also be the factor that since you’re accomplishing something and making active, control-based decisions about your life, they figure you can handle the criticism. And you figure, since they haven’t managed to do this in their own lives, that they can’t handle it. Or, if they can handle it, it’s so far outside the norm of what their accustomed to experiencing on a daily basis, that they wouldn’t be able to make sense of it so what’s the point of creating a lot of bad feeling for a smackdown that wouldn’t get the lesson across anyway.
- mkfreeberg | 11/26/2016 @ 02:16
[…] What Are the democrats? …Will Never Be President This Headline Sucks Fake News So What Was That? Uncles and Placemats Happy Politically Correct Thanksgiving The Literal Shakening Kingdom in a […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/06/2016 @ 07:57
[…] It’s a good time to put some diligent, scrutinizing thought into a subject we’ve revisited often in these pages, namely what the heck is/was this stuff described in today’s day & age with the word “liberalism.” It’s not a simple question. And no, we can’t rely on the textbooks. In this era of the Trump administration honeymoon, liberals are more-or-less identical to the textbook definition of conservative. They respond to incentives, material & otherwise, to cling to the last vestiges of a power structure that has outlived both its usefulness to us, and, God willing, its own naturally sustained life span. This is a subtly different question from what exactly was the Obama era, a challenge I imposed on myself soon after the elections. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/09/2017 @ 19:02

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So What Was That?Friday, November 25th, 2016

So What Was That?
Friday, November 25th, 2016