House of Eratosthenes

Hopefully, future generations will want to know about these times. If something truly out of the ordinary doesn’t happen further down the road, I’d say they most certainly should. There’s an awful lot of bickering, and it doesn’t just seem to be that way because now-is-now. Yes, it is a valid point, and verifiable as fact, that in the olden days politicians got into physical contests. Duels to the death, even, occasionally.

But now there are three things happening. First is the “blogging”…which we could, and should, recognize as any means of mass communication linked to the newer technology. Seems unhealthy. Viewed up close, it is. All that time burned away by someone? And all it does is start fights, no minds get changed. I agree with all that. But it’s a lesson in what’s called “seeing the forest for the trees”; you have to take a few steps back, think long term. Blogging is the healthy part, because now our trans-society discourse is capable of some level of dialogue. Of rebuttal, and counter-rebuttal. Pre-blogging — oh, let’s just be honest about this, can we for just a moment or two? — that was not the case. Uncle Walter told us “And that’s the way it is,” and that’s the way it was…

Second thing is what has happened to the liberals. They still want to get even for the “Florida debacle” of 2000. Before that, they were about ending prejudices, and feeding and clothing the hungry. True, a lot of their measures achieved the opposite of these things and the liberals didn’t very much care. But afterward, getting even with conservatives is an objective that has stolen the limelight. The shift is subtle, but it is there. There’s a difference between — “I want to get these people health insurance, and I must defeat conservatives because they’re getting in my way of doing that” — and — “I want to make these conservatives look bad in the public view, and to do that I can get the word out that they, for some reason, don’t want these people to get health insurance.” Those are actually two different things. One is overly simplistic but determined, like a dog chasing a car that wouldn’t know what to do if it caught the car. The other is just plain vengeful.

And the third thing is what’s happened to conservatives. They still don’t have time for all this fighting-about-politics stuff. They have work to do. In fact, very often The Futility sets in, and they say to themselves…well, fuck this, this dime-store idiot liberal guy has all the time in the world to throw his cherry-picked statistics at me, his Mother Jones articles, maybe troll conservative blogs all day, but I have customers counting on me and I have to get back to work. And then after awhile the other thought enters the conservative cranium, yet again…I’m doing this to set up my retirement, get my kids headed to a brighter future, not be a burden to my family when I’m older. If only the liberal dipshits have influence on our politics, they get to shape our politics, and that will render these local efforts of mine entirely futile. The Counter-Futility. Back and forth the conservative goes, like a ping pong ball..it’s futile to do this, it is futile not to do this…

And perhaps there is a fourth factor, concealed from view. If the liberal movement consisted entirely of those with political ambitions, who want the economy to tank so there’s more widespread feeling of despair and it’s easier to elect democrats, it would be easily defeated. It’s not. A lot of liberals care greatly about the plight of the poor, illiterate, the hungry — they just don’t appreciate the story of socially-upward mobility. Every now and then you see them exposed to such a story, of someone born into real poverty who made it big. It rolls off ’em like water off a duck’s back. Doesn’t fit the narrative. They’re Narrative People. But, good-hearted. They want to help the less fortunate; they’re just not too keen on the less fortunate helping themselves. They want to feel needed. If the liberal movement consisted entirely of them, perhaps it would also be easily defeated. What we’re fighting is a mix of the two. And it could be that while these two halves have always been there, combined they have become a more potent force in recent times because the two halves have learned new things about communicating with each other. I don’t know. It’s a maybe. It’s not worth mentioning even, except for one thing: The fact that these two halves, under the surface have entirely different goals, may be the key to their eventual defeat.

Wimpy Getting back to the subject at hand. We live in interesting times because communication is working better — blogging, in fact, may rescue the general level of literacy from the disaster heaped upon it by text messaging. We have aggravation and confusion on the conservative side, and real, hot, vengeful wrath on the liberal side, still wanting to get even for a Supreme Court case with a decade-and-a-half worth of dust on it.

What we have learned, so far, is this: Conservatives and liberals don’t think the same way. One of my friends over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging was amused by the graphic to the right, noting that he was wondering as a child — as was I — how Wimpy ever got his burgers. This is a clue into how conservatives and liberals don’t see things the same way.

Liberals see a guy who wants a burger; or, needs a burger. Now you can tell from just a casual glance at Wimpy that he does not need a burger, whether you’re a conservative or a liberal. So this is not scientific proof, but it is in the realm of the scientific, that liberals fail to distinguish needs from wants. And whatever gaps remain between that & real science are okay, because the conclusion is not in doubt. “Blah blah blah should be free,” they intone, endlessly listing this-and-that before the word “should.” The items are a clumsy hodge-podge mix-up between needs and wants, and the liberals don’t seem to know this, let alone care. On Planet Liberal, the idea is good, because it’s a winning idea. It’s an idea likely to win arguments. But is it true? Does anything with the word “should” in it, have even the capability of ever being verifiable as true? How would you verify?

Conservatives see the “should be free” thing the same way they see Wimpy bullshitting people about his burgers: What sort of system is being put in place here? Liberals have had a great time portraying conservatism as simple-mindedness, a sort of phobia against trying anything new. It’s a bit of propaganda that has worked well for them, you can’t blame them for continuing to use it. But it’s the opposite that is the truth; it is the conservatives who are the more capable thinkers. Conservatives see how things work moment-to-moment, and ask, Is It Sustainable? “Should be free” means someone pays, somewhere. Just as when Wimpy says he’ll gladly pay you Tuesday, Tuesday’s coming. It’s the liberals who are simple-minded, viewing all of life as a snapshot.

In this argument between conservatives and liberals, what is different is a missing dimension.

But that’s not all that’s different. Liberals are so concerned about winning-the-argument, they very regularly neglect the argument:

Dear Liberal,

Can we talk? Of course not. Why bother?
:
When I question why we do not shut down hate mosques, you call me Islamophobic.

When I question why a baker should be forced to make a bake a cake for a lesbian marriage that she does not believe in, you call me homophobic.

When I question why we should not follow Trump and Make America Great Again, you call me fascist.

And after all that name-calling, you then dare say I am judgmental.
:
We have seen trillions poured into the ghettos only to have young black men kill young black men. The liberal answer is to take guns from the people who do not live in ghettos. [T]wo-thirds of federal spending is welfare and Social Security. The liberal answer is to pour more money on the bonfire.

My answer is to try something new.

But you don’t want to hear it…

The mistake the liberals have made here is grave; they have defined “truth” to be whatever it takes to win an argument. It seems to be outside their capacity of understanding to realize this essentially severs whatever connection they had to the metaphysical. It essentially jettisons the idea that there is a truth grinding away, above us, beneath us, among us, meandering, writhing, going about its business entirely unconcerned about what people think. With liberals, it is all about the narrative because the narrative is what’s needed to win an argument.

This Faustian pact they’ve made imbues them with a strange intellectual ability conservatives are lacking. But it is not an ability to be coveted in any way. It is the ability to hold multiple thoughts in one’s head, contradictory with each other and utterly irreconcilable, and to take them all seriously. One of my favorites in recent years, that truly illustrates the lunacy at work, has been a quartet:

1. Premise: Liberals are better at learning than conservatives.

2. Premise: ObamaCare is named after & put together by a black guy, so everybody who is opposed to it is a racist.

3. Premise: Liberals have been working tirelessly, for generations, to banish racism.

4. Fact: In all these years, approval of the ACA has never risen above a bare plurality.

Put it all together and think on it in a healthy way, as only a conservative can, and what is the conclusion? It is quite unavoidable. Liberals need to change something, drastically, about this fight they have been engaging to get rid of racism. They have not been doing it the right way, and a drastic change in direction is required.

Do liberals agree with that? Not only no, but Hell No. This proves they are insane. Insane or…thinking about the metaphysical truth so casually, they may as well not be thinking about it at all, which produces the same results as if they were insane.

That is my one favorite way of demonstrating the insanity. But someone has put together a list of many others, based on the Socratic method.

Seeking genuine knowledge rather than mere victory in an argument, Socrates used his questions to cross-examine the hypotheses, assumptions, and axioms that subconsciously shaped the opinions of his opponents, drawing out the contradictions and inconsistencies they relied on.
:
The resulting list may not exactly fit the definition of Socratic questioning. But in my defense, even Socrates couldn’t possibly envision the scale of absurdity a political argument could reach in the 21st century.
:
Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?
:
If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?
:
Why is the media so outspoken about sex abusers being priests, but avoids calling them homosexual pedophiles? Who are they afraid to offend?
:
How come the unselfish Americans hate their country out of personal frustrations, while the selfish ones defend America with their lives?
:
Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy? Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?
:
How exactly does dependency on the government increase “people power”?
:
And finally, if all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded, but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

That’s just a small sampling. You may note that all these contradictions have been lying around for years, waiting to be noticed by either a liberal or by another party who is seeking to challenge a liberal, who would then comment on it. The noticing has been happening, and the commenting has been happening. Liberals — generally speaking — have not changed their intended travel, either in bearing or in vector.

They are insane, or may as well be. But at the same time, they’re like a house fire, or something that may become a house fire. They cannot be left alone. Their unhealthy thinking affects us. That’s the whole point of what they’re doing, if it didn’t affect others they wouldn’t be doing it. But if they could think on such things in a way that produced good results, and learn things they didn’t know before from the process of implementation, they wouldn’t be liberals.

With liberals, it is all about the narrative because the narrative is what’s needed to win an argument.

Give them this, at least — they’re consistent.

Have you ever read Stephen R.C. Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism? It gets far deeper into the weeds than most folks need to go (since it’s designed for undergrads who want to shovel away some of the BS their profs are piling on them), but his central argument nails Our Betters, the Liberals, perfectly: Hicks says that Postmodernism — for convenience, “the fact that there is no such thing as a fact” — is what sustains them emotionally. They were all-in on Marxism, which is the scientific study of History.

But when it became so obvious that even the faculty lounge crowd that there is no History, they didn’t lose their faith in “social justice.” How could they? They’d defined their entire lives around it! So the pendulum swung all the way back — from History being completely intelligible to the anointed, they decided that the anointed know for a fact that there is no such thing as a fact. There is only “discourse,” and whoever controls the discourse — the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, natch — actually controls reality.

No, they weren’t kidding. And because they weren’t kidding, they taught a new generation, which taught a new generation, that discourse is all there is. Shout the loudest, keep shouting the longest, and shout down anyone who disagrees, and your opinions become facts.

Hicks puts it much more eloquently than this, of course, but that’s the gist of it. I highly recommend it.
- Severian | 02/25/2016 @ 08:56
[…] Freeberg has some thoughts. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Futility | 02/25/2016 @ 11:57
“…But in my defense, even Socrates couldn’t possibly envision the scale of absurdity a political argument could reach in the 21st century.”
This is why I keep pounding on Aesop, and The Brothers Grimm!
Of course, there’s ALWAYS “Idiocracy”. Maybe “They Live”
- CaptDMO | 02/25/2016 @ 15:14
I saw the other day that even the guy who wrote “Idiocracy” is going around saying he accidentally made a documentary.
- Severian | 02/25/2016 @ 17:40
Co-wrote! Co-wrote! Not Mike Judge…the other guy.

Still, he has a very valid point…even President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho took to Twitter to tell everyone to “calm the eff down.” Since his post wasn’t deleted, I assume he wasn’t a Republican.
- P_Ang | 02/26/2016 @ 15:58
Duly noted.

And, yes… shamefully… I would watch Ow! My Balls! That’s just good television.
- Severian | 02/26/2016 @ 16:49
P_Ang “Since his post wasn’t deleted, I assume he wasn’t a Republican.”
Um, more likely, no one knew HOW to do it.
- CaptDMO | 02/27/2016 @ 07:07
Damn it CaptDMO, now you’ve got me thinking about Not Sure’s trip to the doctor. “The chart says your shit’s all retarded.” That’s about the intellectual speed of Twitter, in my experience.
- Severian | 02/27/2016 @ 13:09
My favorite scene in the whole movie. Justin Long is pure magic, in his own stupid-looking way.
- mkfreeberg | 02/27/2016 @ 13:16
The whole movie has grown on me over the years. I thought “meh” when I first saw it; now I think it’s as funny as it is prophetic. And it has the #1 best line for when real life interrupts your web surfing: “Go ‘way… ‘batin.'”
- Severian | 02/27/2016 @ 13:32
When the missus and I sit down to watch some serious teevee together, and the phone rings as if someone had us on surveillance and knew EXACTLY when the popcorn came out of the microwave…I very often use that line. This often elicits an eyeball-roll from her and a self-satisfied chuckle from me.
- mkfreeberg | 02/27/2016 @ 13:34
“And, yes… shamefully… I would watch Ow! My Balls! That’s just good television.”
Oh, you men America’s Funniest Home Videos?
Now, I don’t know about movies like “ASS”, but Jackass 3D comes to mind.
Also, tune into the TV franchise “Rich Bitches with Tits”
This MAY be called “REAL (something) Wives (of x)” or maybe “The (trainwreck family name here)” in your viewing area.
- CaptDMO | 02/27/2016 @ 14:28
*sigh*
Oh, you mean…AFV?
- CaptDMO | 02/27/2016 @ 14:30
[…] For File CCI The Futility An Unbearable Assymetry Memo For File CC Why Are Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman Better Than All […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/27/2016 @ 16:21
“*sigh*
Oh, you mean…AFV?”

Which…makes me wonder if AFV is going the same route as Goldstar > LG or Comcast > Xfinity. Both had their brandnames so terribly tarnished by their cheap, terrible products (example 1) or their horrific customer service (example 2) that a name-change was the “solution” to keeping them in business.
- P_Ang | 02/29/2016 @ 09:02
Back when I used to be really poor, we would have “friends” ready to help us out. The interesting thing was what happened when we were back at work and making money. All of a sudden, these friends didn’t have much to do with us. They liked us better poor. I don’t know if it’s the Lady Bountiful syndrome or something else at play. Liberals prefer lots of poor people, especially if they don’t live too close to them.
- teripittman | 02/29/2016 @ 18:52

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The FutilityThursday, February 25th, 2016

The Futility
Thursday, February 25th, 2016