House of Eratosthenes

Catching up on e-mail, I see I have been embroiled in a number of Facebook arguments without realizing it. Abortion, mass shootings, gas prices, etc. As I’ve noted before, I’m some 35-40 years into figuring out what makes liberals tick and I’m an extremely slow learner, but I couldn’t help noticing something.

All I can do is infer based on what I see, but it seems like my sparring partners do not care that much about whether an unborn baby is a baby, or how to prevent the next mass shooting, or who’s to blame for high gas prices. There’s this pattern of abrupt sign-off with some kind of “I give up, this is a stupid argument”…maybe that’s because I really am stupid and they’re bright enough to see it. They certainly seem to think so. But if that’s the explanation, wouldn’t they be toiling away without my involvement trying to find ways to be fair to both the unborn baby and the mother, or to prevent the next mass shooting (apart from coming up with new gun laws that aren’t related in any way to the tragedies that inspire them)…or, making gas affordable again? Instead all I see them do is mock, ridicule, and re-ignite these arguments on social media that they end up saying are too stupid to justify their continued immersion after a few exchanges.

Liberals, I have determined, don’t care about the end state. They don’t revisit it, like a farmer revisiting a crop he planted, to face a potential abrupt forced about-face, to engage in a forced confession of having had the wrong idea…to exercise good old fashioned humility. They’re not interested in learning anything new, like they say they are, and they’re certainly not interested in learning something new if it comes at the cost of admitting to a mistake.

Liberals are liberals because they want to ratchet up their social status. Rush Limbaugh used to say the whole damn ideological positioning was the most gutless move you could make: Just be for…everything. Don’t see a problem in anything, don’t figure out any weak parts in an argument, don’t criticize, just go with the flow and think happy thoughts. He was right.

They love to start arguments but they can’t stand finishing them.

I can see, when I’m the one poking the bear, or when I’m the bear being poked, there’s a panic setting in that others aren’t seeing. The whole thing is a bribe that goes back to middle school: “Believe, with us, that two and two make five, and your social status will elevate.” And here comes someone like me who knows 2+2=4, but much worse than that, is and has always been unpopular…not willing to make the trade…never has been, ever. And you can see the panic and the fear. Oh shit! Someone we forgot to bribe!

And then they engage in this whirling-cyclone thing, this desperate mad butterchurn-spin, spewing the arguments they have been using on themselves to keep themselves comfortable in their nonsensical positions. It comes off looking like they can’t tell the difference between a strong argument, that could win over a convert, versus a weaker one, just the soothing pablum one says to oneself for sake of self-assurance that no learning is needed. I presume that they simply have no strong arguments available, because they haven’t needed any for a long time. They haven’t been challenged. It is a charitable presumption I am making, for the alternative is that they’re entirely unaccustomed to strong arguments and that’s why they can’t distinguish.

They panic because it’s too late to bribe me, and they can tell. They can’t invite me to any parties, or if they do, they can’t impose this believe-what-we-want condition because I’m past caring, I’ll shrug it aside and accept or refuse the invitation on its own merits, like a grown-up. The social conditioning has zero effect on people like us, we who have achieved adulthood the way you were always supposed to achieve it. We’re not going to pretend water is dry to get along, or that men can get pregnant.

And they DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. TO. DO. About that. Sheer panic.

Maybe this is why so many people in software are liberals: They’ve been conditioned, and the conditioning was manufactured out of necessity. Without it, you’ll be like me, forming whatever conclusions are logical and rational as you bounce from one crime-ridden, blight-invested, oh-so-progressive blue-state unicorn land, to another, working the computer software jobs and seeing with your own eyes how their policies consistently end in the same disasters, which aren’t present in the red states where they grow the food.

Where, if you go around thinking like a liberal, you’ll have your arm ripped out of its socket by a harvester or some such thing. And so people don’t.

After all I’ve seen, if someone wants to spend a lifetime they’ve only just started, writing computer software for a living, as a contractor or FTE, I would have to incorporate this into my advice if they come asking. You can get these jobs in red states, I’m told…for this reason or that reason, that has not been my chosen path. By default, you’ll be working in deep blue, one gig after another after another. And so before we get into data structures and algorithms, first get yourself accustomed to living in places governed by “leaders” who have neither the time or inclination to admit to mistakes, or to learn anything new. Get used to the signs of liberalism. Tents under bridges, needles and human feces on the ground, etc. Lots of tightly packed “income inequality,” together with loud opinionated people complaining about it. Get used to all that, first, then let’s talk about the bubble sort and the binary search trees. Also get used to “middle of the road” types telling you to pay no attention to politics or liberals…while the politics and liberals are literally in your face, all of the time, whenever you’re not in the office coding.

The blue-brains can’t answer simple questions about their own positions. “If recent policy changes are not responsible for high gas prices, then what is?” “If the unborn baby is not a baby, then what is it?” “How would this latest round of new gun laws have prevented that shooting?” They can’t answer these questions. They have no wish to do so. They just want to be popular…like in sixth grade.

Having never been offered even the potential reward, people like me have never cared. And so the two sides end up talking past each other. Others notice this, and pronounce the whole exchange to be futile. They’re right about the first half of that, wrong about the rest. Nestled inside the tire-spinning and other wasted energy in these dysfunctional exchanges, are secret answers to why the things that suck so much lately, suck so much. This is not insignificant. Real people are being hurt, by these policies, for real.

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Someone We Forgot to Bribe!Wednesday, May 18th, 2022

Someone We Forgot to Bribe!
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022