House of Eratosthenes

One year onward, it might be a good time to think about That Other Split, the one that isn’t between Republicans and democrats. Conservatives and liberals are on both sides of this.

To the one side, are people who translate their values directly into selection of candidates. They want the guy who gets their vote, to stand as an emblem of what’s right. Their kids should want to be like this guy. Note that very few people, even among the ones who voted for him, would elevate Donald Trump to such a pedestal. There isn’t much strategy here, other than “If I elevate what’s important to me so that everyone sees it, and bury what I don’t like so that no one can see it, I will prevail,” something like that. There are a lot of people here who forget the Morgan Rule Of Winning Arguments: First step is, you have to DO some actual arguing. They like to skip forward, to the fun part, where they win.

The other side is much more pragmatic. They see an election as, possibly, the first step toward solving problems; or, if the other guy wins, the first step toward making those problems much worse. The candidate states some policies, which may be good or bad, and he may be sincere or not. If he wins, he’ll do things; if he was sincere, the things he does will bear a resemblance to what he said he was going to do when he was campaigning. If the things he does are good things, then things will be made better, and if the things he does are bad things then things will be made worse. This crowd thinks a lot of the problems we have, are the result of politicians being dishonest about the good things they said they were going to do, or being elected to do bad things. They’re completely right about this.

The democrats lost a year ago because they appealed entirely, or at least mostly, to the first group. “Remind people of climate change constantly, FORCE people to buy bio-bags & drink out of eco-cups, REMIND them that Trump called Alicia Machado Miss Piggy, make every cartoon character gay and then everyone will have to like us.” To the second group, they’ve only been throwing scraps. “Actually, when you raise the minimum wage, unemployment goes down” — nice thing to say, you can have Paul Krugman repeat it a few times, but no one believes it anymore. Not even Krugman.

The business of the democrat party is to make it prohibitively expensive for a full-fledged, legal, law-abiding citizen to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide in the time period between paychecks. Nickel & dime them to death, with gas taxes and “You must carry the health insurance that pleases us or else pay a fine”…tax them on their taxes. Until following the law is not only questionable as a possibility, but pointless. And the average American lives in a tiny apartment with a bunk of screaming kids and his credit card debt is equal to many years’ worth of income. With the country enshrouded in despair, democrats just might win something.

So when they campaign, as they appeal to the pragmatic group, they have to sell nonsense. Joe Biden said it himself: “We have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt, yes that’s what I’m telling you.” We have to succumb to an invasion of outsiders for the sake of national security, we have to make it more expensive for businesses to hire people in order to get the people hired, America is the greatest country on Earth already I hope you’ll join me in fundamentally transforming it. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. People are tired of it.

You can’t win an election appealing to the first group, because too many of them are defecting and joining the second group. “Hooray, I elected someone who looks like me!”…it only lasts so long and then there’s another election. When people get more desperate, they get more practical.

Trump won because he appealed to the second group, with plans that are credible. A year onward, we see they’re working. The nation has learned an important lesson, albeit not a very sophisticated one, it’s a lesson fit for children just on the verge of becoming grown-ups, about cause and effect. When you do this, that other thing is more likely to happen. Say what you want about grabbing pussies, but that’s what our evolving culture needed to learn.

I’ve been studying them for decades, but the Liberals who take the first option still beat my pair of jacks. I can understand voting for Hillary Clinton. I really can. I can even imagine scenarios where I do it myself, that don’t involve a horrible Jigsaw-like contraption set to saw my nuts off if I don’t. What absolutely flummoxes me, though, are those people who believed, an all apparent sincerity, that voting for Hillary Clinton was the very culmination of their being.

I don’t think I originated this quip, but I used it a lot back in 2016: The Democrats’ campaign was best seen as a piece of experimental theater, to test if it’s possible to create a Cult of Personality without the personality. Again, I’m not talking about voting for her because you think Trump would be / is so much worse — aka the old “but Booooooooooooooooosh!” scream of the George W. years. These people knew what a snake she was, and not only did they not care, they acted like — again, in all apparent sincerity — this actually somehow made her better than before. I’m totally buffaloed. Figure that one out, and I’ll finally understand the Liberal mind.
- Severian | 11/02/2017 @ 07:04
Hm. Maybe, Sev, it’s analagous to the anti-thought that often goes on among people who have intellect without discipline. They take the primary point – to know truth – and subordinate it to other considerations that make no sense if you’re not trying to get to the bottom of things. Thus the one who cooks up the most outlandish and least-realistic theory becomes Ruler of the Brains. After all, any yobbo can see what’s really there! Plain truth isn’t challenging enough to a True Intellect. The more false-to-facts the theory, the better, because it proves how much more elevated that brain must be to come up with it.

I think with feminism in general, the reaction to preferring pleasant, comely, and good-to-work-with professional women has been to prove one’s dedication to the cause by instead preferring (and becoming) abrasive, unlovely battle-wagons whom no sane person wants to spend time with in any capacity. They MUST be the best because they don’t rely on any positives to get the job done, you see. Any ol’ Jane can get by on looks, skills, and personality and IT’S NOT FAIR. And in Hillary they found the apex of the personality, the ultimate distillation of that philosophy. So in that one, narrow sense, they really DID find “the Most Qualified Candidate Ever” except the qualifications they wanted was validation for insanity, and not qualifications for being a good government official. Hence she’s been a complete trainwreck in every job she’s ever held, but still must be forwarded as the great hope of every other talent-deficient harridan.
- nightfly | 11/02/2017 @ 09:15

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That Other SplitThursday, November 2nd, 2017

That Other Split
Thursday, November 2nd, 2017