House of Eratosthenes

Here is a question for the ages, at least within the United States of America: Why does The Left win? By which I mean, not, why is it winning lately. Why does it win at all?

Looking back over the last several decades or so, let’s say since the end of World War II; it has been a story of dogged determination in the face of repeated setbacks. The country figured out they’d been wrong the whole time, or else lying, about communists infiltrating the government. Then the country figured out their policies are disastrous, and rejected them. Then it happened again. And again.

In the face of these defeats, liberalism doesn’t just keep on keepin’-on. It doubles down. Today’s liberals are much more shrill and strident than the liberals before President Clinton’s impeachment trial, or the Florida election debacle. They’re also more militant, unwilling to accept compromise in any shape, form or degree. So-called “conservatives” would pile on any one among them showing even a fraction of this sort of intransigence, and blame that zealot for the Republican party’s setbacks — they’d turn on him that way in half a heartbeat. Liberals get to do that all day every day, and it isn’t speaking out against the party machinery, it is the party machinery.

Now if any sort of military general from any time in world’s history showed that sort of lunacy — and won some wars & battles — he would become the stuff of legend. Ballads would be sung about him. Movies would be made about him. Actually, that’s happened already.

It is this refusal to apologize for what they are, this refusal to back down, refusal to compromise or to accept defeat, that is the key to their success. If you even begin to think about resisting them, the sense of despair and futility is immediate. So the answer to my question must be rooted in this: They win because they have a mindset to do nothing else. They don’t understand defeat.

They get knocked down, but they get up again, we’re never gonna keep ’em down…

The conundrum comes about when we veer away from how they are achieving their political victories, and thus enforcement of their advocacy, and focus our attention on what it is they seek to advocate. It is a certain mindset, a certain way of looking at life and of conducting oneself in it. That mindset does not say — get up again when you’re knocked down, keep on truckin’, take no prisoners. It says the exact opposite of that.

It says that you, as an individual, are not capable. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. In fact, if you think you did, you didn’t.

It’s all futile. If you only make 25 grand a year now, then trust them on this, take it to the bank — you will never, ever, ever make more than 40 a year. Ever, in your entire life. That’s their vision.

You’re helpless and you need them. That’s why they have this rotten crappy attitude against religion. It isn’t quite so much that they detest God or disbelieve in Him; the truth is that they are in competition with Him. The faithful say that with God, all things are possible. The American Left says that without them, nothing is possible.

But of course, it’s always bait-and-switch. If you make the mistake of relying on them for anything, first step toward the goal is a bunch of rhetoric about the goal being wrong, and you shouldn’t be trying for it.

So: What they want to sell to us, is the message of futility and despair. Stop trying. Give up. You can’t do it. You’ll never win. The boss is trying to screw you anyway, so clock out, go home, spend more time with your family, and most important of all be sure and elect liberal politicians so they can take the money from that evil boss and give it to you. Because Lord knows, you little peons in flyover country will never get hold of two nickels to rub together any other way.

How they seek to sell that message of pack-it-in-and-give-up to us, is the Tubthumping thing. Defeat doesn’t despair them, it only galvanizes them. Their lack of sentient thinking is the key to their victories; opposing them is like playing a game of “chicken” with a blind man.

How is this reconciled?

Part of it is vision, I think. They’re simply treating themselves differently from the people they want to “help,” because they want to win. You see it in their foreign policy. Is President Obama winning out in his conflicts against Vladimir Putin? The question practically answers itself; He isn’t even trying. And how do leftists counsel the country to resolve its international conflicts, in general? “Sit down and talk out our differences with our purported enemies.” And find “common ground.” Do democrats treat Republicans that way? Again, the question answers itself. Their methods for the party, versus its constituency, are different because their vision for the party is different compared to their vision for the country.

We have books out like this…

Where’s the companion book called “The post-democrat-party United States”? After all, I’ve been looking forward to one for a very long time now. I’m probably not the only one. Shouldn’t we be able to look to our friends, the liberals, to provide the vision for a near-future country without liberalism? Sure that’s essentially expecting them to hop into a hole, reach up and yank the hole in after themselves. But that’s exactly what they’ve been expecting everyone else to do. But it isn’t happening. Because of the conundrum. Liberals want the country to accept futility and defeat, even though they’ll never even think of accepting such things for their precious agenda.

We know why they appreciate defeat, of course. Everyone who’s ever rejected defeat understands its appeal: It’s much easier. For the millions of decent Americans who are seduced into accepting liberalism every year, that is the selling point. They’re not embracing defeat, what they’re embracing is sloth. That’s the sweet side of despair: I never had a shot anyway, and now that that’s settled, heck it’s much warmer and comfier under these bedsheets. Besides, who knows? If I got dressed and headed out the door, I might get run over by a car as I cross the street. Now where’s the remote?

From whence comes this energy to turn all George S. Patton when the time comes to get the agenda sold? How come they never hunker down under the warm comfy bedsheets for a marathon of The View when it’s time to do that? No hold, no retreat, advancing all the time, gonna go through the enemy like crap through a goose.

There was an opinion column coming out in the last few days about Ellen Degeneres that I forgot to bookmark, and can’t find. It made an excellent point about Ellen’s mean joke about Liza Minnelli, and how Ms. DeGeneres is suddenly on the receiving end of a politically-correct beating-down about her being a “transphobe.” To people like me who live in the real world, that would be almost funny if it wasn’t sad. Ms. DeGeneres really is gay. Liza Minnelli, to the best of my knowledge, is not a transgender, she’s just a four-times-divorced substance-abusing Hollywood diva whose femininity is in rapid retreat. My own opinion is that the joke was juvenile, unnecessary and mean, but I would not have predicted a sudden restructuring of the political-correctness-hierarchy totem-pole of this sort.

One Quora contributor, asked about the issue in general, wrote:

Politically correct people usually think they are fighting for justice and what is right… They think they are protecting the weak and oppressed. Yet they often end up being exactly what they hate.

I haven’t liked “political correctness” since I saw it in university in the 80s to promote oppression, censorship, bigotry, and rude behavior.

Once a young women, educated to be “politically correct” rudely “corrected” my grandmother who used the word “Orientals” instead of “Asians”. My grandmother worked in Okinawa alongside the people she called “Orientals” without prejudice. But this young white Occidental politically correct woman had gone to her classes and learned that was the “wrong term” and so she took control to protect those poor weak Asians against my grandmothers linguistic oppression. My poor grandmother. The word use changes among the “educated” to turn my grandmother into an accused bigot.

Political correctness attacks the wrong target. Of course my grandmother was white and therefore an evil oppressor.

The essay I forgot to bookmark, which did not name Patton, nevertheless waxed lyrically of his credo as it is practiced by the politically correct crowd: Not holding anything, not retreating, always advancing, all the time. Imagine what good fortune would lie ahead for the United States, if its leadership upheld that attitude about the nation’s interests.

And, it made a great point. It is all about the journey and not about the destination. This, I think, answers the question. They conquer one goal after another after another, through the magic of incremental progress, while simultaneously rejecting the very practice of achieving goals through incremental progress. They reject that very dream. While living the dream.

The illusion is in their attraction toward the goal. It isn’t really there. As the Ellen DeGeneres episode made clear, there was no genuine back-slapping or high-fiving or victory parade after any sort of greater societal acceptance had been won for openly-gay personalities like Ms. DeGeneres. Maybe there was some for theater’s sake, but none of it was heartfelt. No sense of “Okay we got that done, now back to our day-to-day struggles in our real lives.” Because the truth is there is no “real life” to which to return. No fields to be plowed or crops to be sown after the springtime surrender at Appomattox. Not feasting with the Ewoks after blowing up the Death Star. Nothing of the sort. They are a post-industrial-age movement, and for them the conflict is the feasting/farming. The war is never over, ever. It isn’t possible for such a war to end. Their defeats don’t get it done, and their victories don’t get it done. Endless fighting is the only possible result left.

So now the politically-correct advocacy is for the transgenders. Not only is yesteryear’s victory forgotten as if it never happened. but Ellen suddenly finds herself in the position of the despised, oppressive bully. Maybe she deserves it; I think so. But even so — quite a switch! Hard to even think about it without getting a case of whiplash.

Well, this theory does explain it. Nothing else does. Liberals only appear to work toward goals, while they don’t believe in working toward goals, because they don’t even envision the goal let alone make any progress toward it. All this progress of theirs, which draws the envy of other people who really do work toward goals, is made without even a conscious understanding of the concept. What they’re acting out is nothing more than an impulse. Like a nervous tic.

They have an obsessive-compulsive need to morally preen. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

I wonder how it would hold up, if they were more frequently on the receiving end of blame for the conflict they create and maintain by doing this. I guess we’ll never know the answer to that.

I think they would hold up just fine. The missing element in your equation, I think, is Religion. Leftism is a Religion, which is why they don’t have an endpoint, and why they are like cockroaches. The Jews are still here after how much blame for the conflict? It’s why they seem to hate “America”, because religions are jealous of other beliefs, and a country is just a shared belief. It’s why defeat doesn’t slow them down….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO_xh7xIabk
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 03/09/2014 @ 11:26
Comrade Trotsky had some edifying thoughts about this kind of thing.
- Severian | 03/09/2014 @ 13:42
Conservatives and Republicans are losing and will continue to lose because the LEFT has captured the culture. For those interested obtain and read the book: Capturing the Culture by Richard Grenier, 1990, ISBN-10: 0896331490. For a shorter explanation read Mark Steyn’s Those Who Can’t, Govern, National Review, Nov. 25, 2013, p. 52.

Dan Kurt
- Dan Kurt | 03/10/2014 @ 14:39
The left has captured the culture before. Many times.

There is a reason normal, well-adjusted adults outgrow this culture: It doesn’t work. Disappointments and debts aside, it doesn’t produce much.
- mkfreeberg | 03/10/2014 @ 17:44
The left has captured the culture before. Many times.

Reminds me of something. Hannah Arendt is nobody’s idea of a sparkling prose stylist, but she had her moments, and this was one of them: “Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them ‘children.’”

The main reason lots of conservatives I know “fetishize” (to borrow the left’s term) the Fifties is not because the Fifties were, in themselves, so great — personally, I like color tv and aspirin and air conditioners that work and don’t cost as much as the house. But it was also the last time actual honest-to-God adults were in charge of things. How much of “the culture” these days can be boiled down to people applying the resources of middle age to the enthusiasms of youth? 80%? 90?
- Severian | 03/11/2014 @ 06:44
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They preen themselves morally, yes. But they are victims too. And if they are not victims, then their refined sensibilities ally themselves with victims. And as everyone knows, victims who take their strength from being victims are never satisfied.

The Left takes the moral high ground without taking responsibility for their failed policies. The only recourse is to press for accountability. You will be attacked as a hater, but most thinking and caring people know that outcomes count.
- Estoy Listo | 03/12/2014 @ 19:16
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The Candyass ConundrumSunday, March 9th, 2014

The Candyass Conundrum
Sunday, March 9th, 2014