Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I very often use the term “this stuff we today call ‘liberalism’,” along with “liberalism as we know it today.” These are simply embellishments to phrasing, to make the meaning more precise when it seems like I have the luxury of doing so; the rest of the time I just call it “liberalism,” which is a betrayal against proper definition. After all, the luxury of precision may be gone for awhile, but one’s obligations as a writer remain. Now & then, to avoid flouting the far weightier obligation of not-boring-the-reader, one must use shorthand; one must hope the reader will “get it.” Liberalism is supposed to mean power to the people. It has classically meant free market capitalism, and civil liberties under rule of law. Hopefully, where I’ve failed some writing duties, I’ve succeeded in others, for here in the first paragraph even the casual reader can spot the problem. Liberalism, as we know it today, is most certainly not about these things.
And yet it is now what it was before. What we see today is not a usurper against something that has been bumped out of its proper ensconcing, into oblivion. It is, I suggest, a grotesque transformation. It is a formerly beautiful and noble effort that has become the very thing that it, itself, once swore to destroy. How did this happen? It is out of scope for this series to examine the details of the history, but at a very high level I make out that there have been four significant evolutionary stages:
1. The Storming of the Bastille in 18th-century France, which manifested a decline of monarchy, worldwide;
2. Marx and Engels — I’ll discuss this a bit more below;
3. Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and all that;
4. Hippies.
Now throughout history, it’s always been true that if you want to move power around, and get people on-board with your plan but you want to attract the interest of very casual observers, it is necessary to make some enemies. There is a reason for this. The casual observers are always great in number, but they’re not going to be terribly excited about ethics because when you get into the details ethics become very complicated. They also make for some dry reading. To build a coalition, eventually you’re going to have to examine details so you can reassure people they’re not making friends with others whose ethical directions are minutely different from theirs. And very few things in life are more boring than examining the minute details of ethics. This was the contribution of Marx and Engels, as I see it. The Bastille event sought to right wrongs, but it ended up being a flash-in-the-pan; collapsed into the Reign of Terror, people saw what was wrong with that, and the whole thing lay more-or-less dormant without having succeeded in defining what it was supposed to be. (Or perhaps, having succeeded in not-defining itself.) With the second-stage, the weight of the ideology was shifted more toward this aspect of “those dirty so-and-sos are exploiting your labor and keeping the product for themselves.” You’ll notice, even today, you can pick out lazy-thinkers easily because they confuse “Make sure such-and-such a person doesn’t have any influence” as some kind of a workable plan. Cast the designated target out, especially out of any proceedings wherein the Big Decisions are made about things…after that, everything should work out more-or-less alright. This does not reflect reality, not even in the slightest. But it attracts the “tl;dr” crowd, like spilled sugar attracting ants in midsummer. They’ll come running, every time, they can’t resist it.
I don’t need to list examples, do I? Hillary Clinton’s campaign was about very little apart from that. Global warming “science” has come to be very little apart from that. Kick the right people to the curb, after that we’re on autopilot. The permanent fantasy of those who can’t be bothered to pay attention.
Like the levels of an upward-growing and increasingly wobbly Jenga tower, each layer builds atop the layer just beneath. FDR successfully turned around the declining fortunes of progressivism in America, by introducing her citizens to the idea that they could elect a government to fix complex and terrible problems, by targeting the dirty so-and-sos and defrocking them of influence. His contribution of deceit, here, was to cloak the idea of “defrock business and management of influence” under the guise of “give some influence to the ‘workers’.” There are lots of things wrong with this, but they all take several paragraphs to explain properly. And this is what was so ingenious about Roosevelt’s real plan: It engaged that timeless political ploy, of making a friend out of one faction by way of making an enemy out of another. But to see what’s wrong with the New Deal and all the rest of it, you have to look at things studiously, think on it clearly, and express what you’ve found — with a little bit of length, a little bit of bloat, thus exceeding the attention span of the casual observer. Some talented writers did try to explain in a way that mattered. But, the Great Depression was on FDR’s side. Economic desperation does things to people.
With FDR, we finally had the marriage between revolutionary zeal, and the lust for big-government. Also, he drove a wedge between management and labor, a wedge that, unlike Marx’s, was truly customized for the mechanized age and would endure throughout mankind’s technoindustrial era. He also managed to drive a wedge between “intellectuals,” who were solidly on his side, and the people who are what intellectuals are supposed to be — those more likely to arrive at workable answers to pressing questions, by thinking things through with clarity.
And then we have the Vietnam War, and all the conflict that created. This is what I’m hoping is coming to an end now, for this is where the desire for overthrow is mixed with the aspects of culture. If you were to time-travel back to the Great Depression and ask a fervent supporter of FDR that most pressing question people wonder about revolutionaries: “What exactly is it you want to do with your opposition, convert them or obliterate them?” — the answer coming back would be entirely benign. This movement is about fairness, it’s about sharing the power. Opposition can stay exactly where it is. We just want these “workers” to have a voice. But time-travel back to the days of Woodstock and ask the hippie, the answer isn’t quite so reassuring. There’s a desire for anarchy that wasn’t there before. Convert or kill? We-ell…that’s a demand for definition, and hippies aren’t wild about definitions of things, they tend to avoid ’em. Certainly, some hippies did want to kill rather than convert whoever opposed them…and the movement, as a whole, was in no hurry to save face by driving them out of the ranks. So here, there is a zeal for destruction that wasn’t there before, an emphasis on wrecking the current system altogether before a new one can be built atop the ashes — Marx had some fantasies about that, said fantasies became realities in other countries, not quite so much here in the states until that point. And the avoidance of definitions was fitting into this zeal for destruction, like two happy bedmates meant for each other, in a way that was quite natural but had not achieved final emulsification, to this extent, up until then. Roosevelt wanted to destroy things. But he wasn’t shy about revealing what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it. This thing we for the past fifty years call “liberalism,” calls upon the casual thinkers — most people — to keep thinking casually, to define nothing, to remove the definitions of things that exist already, and in so doing become “part of a thing that’s bigger than you.” That would be, to realize Marx’s dream, destroy the civilization we have now so a new one can be built atop the ashes.
The big difference between the third stage and the fourth stage was that the former happened through electoral victory, and the latter by way of electoral defeat.
Which brings me to my concerns about today.
Liberalism, as we know it today, is not entirely made up of nasty, destructive, anarchistic people. And that’s the problem that remains after the 2016 elections to continue confronting us, continue plaguing us…that is the problem that remains unsolved. Liberalism has, within its ranks, people who are genuinely good. And it isn’t made entirely of stupid people either. There are people who support it, some even enthusiastically, who are quite smart. A lot of these people, in fact, are the cream of our civilization, the very pinnacle of what the rest of us should want to be. And they support liberalism. That’s the problem.
This stuff we today call “liberalism” has people within its ranks who are genuinely kind, caring, thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent and trustworthy. It has good people it simply doesn’t deserve to have.
We all have people like these in our extended families, do we not? Every Thanksgiving we get to hear & read about smarmy liberal nieces and nephews getting properly prepped to face down their Republican uncles over the dinner table…well, the younger generation has an excuse. If you’re my age, the next generation senior to you actually lived through the Great Depression, and you’ve seen your share of family gatherings wherein it was the older crowd who leaned left. Kind, hard-working, honest, salt-of-the-earth types. Not only are they liberals, if they’re still among us, they’re so enthused about it that they participate in the recruiting. And, do all that other stuff good liberals are supposed to do, at the expense of continuing to be good people. Take on all the proper and expected opinions of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush. In my day it was Ronald Reagan, James Watt, etc. I remember my bewilderment that my aunts and uncles, who I never heard utter an unkind word against the character of anyone they actually knew — even in situations that called for some rich, loaded insulting, they still took the high-road — letting loose on these politicians three thousand miles away. Reagan, in particular, wanted to blow up the world. He already had the firepower to do it seven hundred times, they said over & over again…he still wanted more. Big ol’ meanie.
See, it’s that lack-of-definitions thing again. Talk of nuclear weapons that could blow up the world several times, surrounded us. It was everywhere. You couldn’t get away from it. The point to it was, that anybody who wanted to embiggen a stockpile of nuclear arms must have been insane, because with enough power to blow up the world several times, on tap, this would be pointless. It never seemed to occur to these propagandists that their reaction was equally insane, for the same reason: Accepting the premise that Ronald Ray-Gun has the power on tap to blow up the world 700 times, and wants more acquisition and development so he can do it 800 times, what’s the harm? I’m just supposed to be alarmed that he’s President, and a nutcase? Okay…well accepting that, after he gets told no, and we also have to have a lot of social programs he didn’t want on top of that…he’s still the President, and a nutcase, so nothing’s been solved. If the defense budget is cut, and now he can only blow up the world 600 times? Again, nothing’s been solved. The argument fails to hold up under its own premises.
This is why we need a Twilight of the Age of Aquarius. The most fervent, most casually-thinking Roosevelt-supporting progressive, back at that Third Stage, would not have plied you with such a ramshackle argument. You could have sat down with him and had a reasonable discussion, with good points made on both sides. I’m not speaking about mannerisms — although there is that. I’m describing arguments that are structurally sound, that at least hold up under their own premises.
What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.
We have these kind, decent, intelligent aunties & uncles who are fully engaged in the second of those two things. And don’t seem to consciously realize it.
Your dear old Auntie Petunia despises Donald Trump, and on top of that spite has built up an antipathy against the conservative cause…or, perhaps has a history of this already, which made it only natural she should despise PDJT — because she is a decent person. She’ll be happy to describe this to you at length, I’m sure. My own were really in their element, dominating discussions at that Thanksgiving table, about how much they hated Reagan & Co., and it was their calling to be decent people that compelled them to do all this hating against people they didn’t know. Funny thing about this is, it’s honest. It all starts with what makes decent people decent people: The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Decades ago, though, something happened with this. Something with the “others.” I wasn’t there to see it, so I can only speculate that it had something to do with information traveling more quickly, news around the world becoming more important, but there arose an increased concern over “doing unto others” in situations wherein the “others” were nasty people. Terrorists, burglars, rapists, a vagrant who broke into a pool hall to steal beer. Ah, the enthused will say I’m showing my ignorance of the Bible; it was part of the original teachings of Christ, we shouldn’t be showing this kind behavior only to kind people, we need to be showing it to the stinkers as well. Indeed, this is central to the whole point of what Christianity is.
But herein lies a problem. There is a point to the do-unto-others rule; civilization cannot exist without it. This is what makes Christ a conservative. How does civilization endure, when it becomes civilization suited for those among us who would harm others? Conservatives believe in the Golden Rule, even for the benefit of those who aren’t already following it, too. They follow it to set an example. Quite the concept, eh? There’s a subtle difference here. You often hear the liberals object — entirely emotionally — to “torture,” as in, waterboarding terrorists. “That’s not who we are, we don’t do things like that, that’s what makes us better.” The subtle difference is in the recognition of the concept of time. Your kindly Auntie Petunia might be able to grasp it, but she’s not making use of it because the narrative she’s following doesn’t allow for the concept of time. There are these terrorists, which have fallen into the hopper-funnel of oppressed-persons; there are wonderful thoughtful people like her, and then there are stinkers like you. That was the situation yesterday, and that will be the situation tomorrow. Her narrative doesn’t call for anybody learning anything from anybody. The only situation-changing event in it, anywhere — whether she consciously realizes it or not — is Marx’s. The destruction of civilization so a new one can be built atop the ashes.
Your Auntie will sometimes quote from the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me.” There is a perversion taking place here. “Least of” is not a reference to terrorists, thugs, rapists, etc. Christ here is speaking of true kindness. Doing things for the powerless, those who are in no position whatsoever to repay. Read The Whole Thing.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
It’s crystal-clear. Christ is not speaking of terrorists and murderers and rapists. He doesn’t say “I was in prison and you found a way to declare my sentence unconstitutional, and freed me so I could go burglarize, murder and rape some more.” He is speaking of powerlessness with this business of “least of these brothers and sisters.” This is the grand perversion that took place in the middle of the twentieth century, this notion that The Golden Rule should be followed for the exclusive benefit of those among us who are dedicated to never following it. It’s not because Auntie Petunia has been suckered into thinking the malcontent will mend his ways when he sees other people are showing him kindness…although some within the vast crowd she represents, do fall for it. The problem is more like this: The objective has been lost. Because such an epiphany, taking place within the mind of this malcontent, would be a situation-changing event, and so many Aunt Petunias are following this narrative, explained above, that does not allow for such a change.
We see this problem everywhere. We see it with the border issues, like Trump’s “Wall.” We see it with all this discussion about health care. The words of Christ are interpreted to apply to the situation at hand, by a lefty who insists Christ is on his side. But then the recommendation is something that goes against the continuance of civilization itself — and quite often, we see this Christian interpretation articulated by someone who is not a Christian, in fact has nothing but contempt for Christianity, which is offensive in the extreme. So there’s two problems here. Christ, arguably the First Conservative, is being made to look like someone pressing for the erasure of of civilization. Open borders, welfare-state — as Friedman pointed out, you simply can’t have both, but so many Auntie Petunias never read Friedman and want to give it a go. The second problem is the insult from the secular. “Of course my own argument would have no persuasive effect upon me, since I abhor your dopey religion, but I’m hoping it’s good enough for you.”
With Franklin Roosevelt’s innovations now 80+ years established, the Aunt Petunia in the Americas has forgotten all about free will, and supports big government. Can’t quite find where Christ ever did. On that subject, however, there’s nothing I could write that would approach the coherence of a brilliant piece I discovered lately, which found its home in my mental file folder marked “Didn’t write it, but wishing like the dickens I did”:
It’s Time For The Left To Stop Imposing Its Morality On Everyone
Hrand Tookman, April 2017I was born in 1977, and for most of my life if I listened closely enough, somewhere I could hear some leftist shouting “Stop imposing your morality on me!” Today I’ll be writing about why I agree…
:
I spent years asking anyone who will listen, Right or Left, this question: Why are murder and theft illegal in the United States? I get a variety of answers stemming from “Biblical truth” to “Hold the bad guys accountable.” These, I humbly submit, are merely byproducts.That murder and theft are illegal in the United States has nothing to do with “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not steal.” We have these laws because in the United States people are afforded certain rights, such as to life and to property. Our laws may mirror those of many other nations, but in the United States, they’re less about controlling the behavior of others and more about protecting our rights as individuals.
If you’re a person of faith then you likely believe God’s greatest gift to us is life, and that his second greatest gift is free will. In the United States, our Founders codified the gift of free will. They called it “liberty.”
Liberty is effectively free will, minus the right to infringe on others‘ rights.
:
I am a lifelong and practicing Christian, but I think we should reject and oppose using the government to impose morality or legislate charity, foremost because in doing so we negate the very merits of both morality and charity.If we’re forced to behave morally or give to charity rather than doing so voluntarily, there’s really no merit to it. It’s no different than robbing someone and giving her money to charity, then crediting that person’s “giving nature.” Additionally, the more the government forces us to behave morally or act charitably, the less we’ll be inclined to do voluntarily.
Consider those who insist that health care is a right (it isn’t), but never bothered to ask their own insurers about putting their uninsured friends or neighbors on their own policies. Instead, they just sit around patting each other on the back for insisting that the government force us all to be as charitable as they never have been or will be individually.
I’m not going to try to social-engineer readers’ views by talking about who we are as a nation, but we should resist becoming a nation that collectively hides behind “we gave at the office” simply because we pay taxes…
A pattern starts to emerge here. Auntie Petunia might have intelligence, and with it the ability to diligently inspect something, ponder ramifications to things. She’s just not bringing it. That is probably more because of what she does understand, than because of what she doesn’t understand: She gets it that “politics” has something to do with the making of rules, and the more she finds out about how it all works, the less she likes it. So she lunges for the easy fix: Propose a new rule, and then rather than hang around long enough to see the results, get the hell out of there. Again, what’s missing is the concept of time, so once she’s out of there the cycle will begin again as she comes to find out about something wrong with our society…then she’ll dip her toe into the slimy filth-infested waters of politics just long enough to propose or support a New Perfect Rule again, and then get the hell out of there again.
Solving all the world’s problems is worth an opinion or two, but never worth an investment of time longer than what’s needed to ask for another helping of mashed potatoes.
The latest New Perfect Rule is to make sure no one ever has to listen to any “hate speech.” Various campus crackpots, student & faculty both, have come up with some strange arguments to festoon upon the rest of us, about how important it is that our institutions of higher learning should be closed to unwelcome ideas…this is the exact opposite of what institutions of higher learning should be doing, of course. The Auntie Petunias who pay attention only casually, and have emotionally invested themselves in the liberal cause, tell us these are just fringe-kooky people advancing this obvious self-contradiction, and do not represent the mainstream of liberal thought. But no less a person than a former presidential candidate, lately went so far as to assert the idea that the Constitution doesn’t protect whatever he happens to define in the moment as “hate speech”:
Despite being a former presidential candidate, a former governor, and a former Democratic National Committee chair, Howard Dean doesn’t appear to know basic constitutional law.
In a tweet on Thursday, Dean wrote, “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.”
Back we go, to the definitions again! And this time it’s not me going off on ’em, broken-record style, as is usually the case. It was the first response to the “tweet”:
Before you can ban anything legally, you’ll have to explicitly define it. Please give a definition of “hate speech”.
Therein lies the problem.
Gov. Dean is wrong. Completely.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not have a free speech exemption.
The Supreme Court has ruled time and time again that there is no explicit “hate speech” exemption to the First Amendment, provided the hateful statement statement does not lead people to commit acts of violence.
Most notably, in the Brandenburg v. Ohio case, the Supreme Court clarified that the fighting words exemption to the First Amendment applies to language that is used to directly incite violence, or “imminent lawless action.”
But try explaining that to Auntie Petunia. Casual learning…icky hate speech, to be muzzled and expunged…a Magic New Perfect Rule to make it happen…it’s all too alluring. You’re on the wrong side sweetheart, now please pass the green-bean casserole.
And this pattern will hold up with regard to just about anything that gives more power to the government, and takes power away from the people. Classic-liberalism has been turned entirely on its head — not replaced by something that stole the label — and it wasn’t even ambitious, power-hungry or unscrupulous people who made it happen. It was casual observers just like your dear Auntie Petunia who made it happen. The only time she doesn’t support big government, in fact, is with the death penalty. And the military.
She’s been fooled, repeatedly, but it bears repeating that she isn’t stupid. Not necessarily anyway. She’s just not showing intellectual vigor where it really counts. Her desire for influence has spiraled — temporarily — outside the perimeter of her zeal for knowledge. She doesn’t understand how this hurts people she’ll never meet.
Back in the day, she would have been solidly behind this self-contradicting, ramshackle, can’t-stand-even-on-its-own-premises argument of “Reagan wants more missiles even though he can blow up the world 700 times.” Because she’s been forming and solidifying opinions without taking the time to think on things with some diligence, even as she emotionally bonds herself to these opinions, she believes in all sorts of silly nonsense. And it isn’t just her problem. Because if she’s a good person for believing these bits of nonsense, then it follows that anyone who disagrees must be a bad person.
She’s very sure that if people desperately need something, like medical care for example, then the profit angle has to go away. If you profit from ending a person’s suffering, then you must be profiting from the suffering itself, and what sort of monstrous human being would do such a thing? It seems like a reasonable argument when you read these stories of people and businesses profiting to excess, in situations where the delivery of the medicine or aid is restricted, for sake of enlarging these profits. But again: Thinking with some diligence. The concept of time. Conserving civilization. Ramifications; consequences to actions. Where’s this all lead? No profit for delivering medical care, or for making medical care possible…or, profits, but sharply limited. What kind of person goes into that line of work? Well one might argue, dedicated practitioners who really believe in what they’re doing, which I suppose might be a good thing. But how many of them? And even more importantly than that, what sort of resources do they have at their disposal as they try to find cures that have not yet been found? Weighty thoughts to be considered…but, oops, Auntie Petunia’s very limited attention span for political things has been exceeded. She’s helping to clear the dishes and asking your mom if she needs any help loading the dishwasher. And here was you thinking this was an important subject, with lives on the line, just because she said so when she brought up the subject…silly you.
She also thinks if it’s very important for people to get something, like the above-mentioned medicine, or education, or gasoline or legal services…what we need to do is put all the important decisions about this stuff under the control of bureaucrats who pay no price for making the wrong decisions. Oh no, she won’t say that’s what she means. But if you look at how she frames all these things, those are the definitions that actually work. If everybody has to have X, then what we need is a Federal Department of X. If ABC Corporation is the thing that’s supplying the X, then there is harm already being done, in her eyes. Part of it is because of the profit-angle explored in the paragraph above, but that’s not all of it. Auntie Petunia, with her pass-the-gravy length of attention span, seems to be laboring under the assumption that when faces and names are taken away from authority, all human frailty is removed as well. The functionally-anonymous bureaucrats, and commissions packed full of bureaucrats, boards, committees — they seem to become saintly oracles who never make any mistakes, just because they aren’t associated with any names.
This thing about hate speech is rather revealing, since like Gov. Dean, Auntie Petunia finds the hateful ideas to have earned her passionate opposition before they have even been defined. As I pointed out above, this is a new thing because the hostility against defining things doesn’t have a long ancient lineage, at least not here in the United States. It is a post-New-Deal era thing. Most of us didn’t notice it happening while it was happening, because the desire to destroy melds so effortlessly with this thing we today call “liberalism”…which in & of itself, is a disturbing thought to have. But it’s true. The opposition of these “hateful” ideas is all wrapped up in the objective of destroying things. It’s easy to prove. Let the purveyor of this “hate speech” have his say, come up with a good rebuttal against it, convince EVERYONE watching and listening, COMPLETELY WIN THE ARGUMENT any possible way it could be measured, but let the purveyor keep his position. FAIL. But, get this purveyor of hate speech fired before the word even gets out about what his position is, or what your position is, where the epicenter of disagreement is between the two — Mission Accomplished! And so I have to ask, can we please dispense with this cock-and-bull notion this is about any sort of mutually-respectful exchange of ideas, or a search for the best policies that will help the most people? It isn’t true, and hasn’t been true for a very long time. It is about heads as trophies. It’s about blood on the water making the sharks hungrier and bringing more of them coming. The ultimate irony: This is all about promoting something called “tolerance.”
Another flimsy thing Aunt Petunia believes is not a concrete thing at all, it’s more of an abstract concept. It’s a clue to answering the primary question, which is how does an ideology of indecency and destruction of civilization, attract and hold the loyalty of decent people who don’t want to destroy anything. You’ll notice anytime modern liberalism detects some sort of vice, people who are at various stages of emotionally submitting to the ideology will start to think of that vice in strange terms. Let’s say you experience an everyday human vice, like bad driving. Some jackass cuts you off on the freeway, notices what he did, acts like you are the problem, flips you the bird. Being a reasonable person, you’re going to look at this as a jerk being a jerk. “What an ass!”, you say to yourself. And then you forget about it. You do not mobilize some tireless crusade to rid the world of bad driving…although that is a pleasant thought to have. And you’re not even thinking of it as an isolated case. Perhaps you’ve noticed there’s a whole zip code of people who drive like inattentive, rude jerks, all of the time. You go “Oh well, that’s life in the hood” and you resolve to avoid it. I mean, geographically. You take the long way ’round. Point is, being a reasonable person, you take an attitude of “it is what it is” and you adapt. Auntie Petunia does the same! But somehow, other rude, ignorant, jerky behavior, like for example…”Ain’t no way I’m gonna vote for Barack Obama, he’s just a dumb ni**er.” That brings on a OMG! There’s still some racism out there! And, we have to eradicate it. Like it’s Smallpox. Which wouldn’t be a problem all by itself, that would just be a quixotic pursuit by itself. Oh there’s Auntie Petunia jousting at windmills, let her keep going at it, who knows maybe she eventually will eliminate racism and that’ll be nice…she can work on rude assholes driving, next. But that’s not all of it. Because Petunia is making racism a thing of the past, we have to do things that don’t make any sense whatsoever. Like actually vote for Barack Obama. What Petunia is essentially saying is: Okay, so ordinarily it would make sense to keep Obama away from the White House, or to get Him out of it at the earliest opportunity once He’s there…BUT, ThereStillIsSomeRacism and so, we have to do the opposite of what normally would make sense.
We see this a lot with sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. Flimsy ideas emerge, self-contradictory ideas, ramshackle ideas, ideas that do not stand on their own even if one uncritically accepts their own premises. One of my favorites is the litany that is so routinely recited in “sexual harassment training”: “It is important to remember that the intentions of the accused are irrelevant, it is the perception of the offended person that is all-important.” And: “These rules are put in place to foster an environment that is effective, productive and non-threatening for everyone.” Every time I’m required to attend one of these courses, which by the way do nothing to improve one’s skills at sexual harassment, I’m dismayed to learn, I always end up asking the same question: Which? Is it the perception of the accused that determines everything, or are these rules put in place to make the workplace non-threatening — for everyone? Which is it? Can’t be both. There’s nothing more threatening than having to work in proximity to some unhinged, lifetime-spinster crazy-cat-lady with a giant chip on her shoulder, and be formally told that her perceptions against you are going to determine your future. Again, we’re in smallpox-eradication mode, and the perception that “there’s still some” leads to doing the opposite of what would make sense.
The “safe spaces” within our universities are merely an extension of this. There’s still some hate speech out there! So it isn’t enough to notice it the way normal people from Planet Earth notice it; say to oneself, “What a colossal jerk!” and then move on with life. Oh no. Once again, we do the opposite of what makes sense. College, a place where brilliant young minds to go to get their “well-rounded education” and be exposed to all sorts of new ideas…is to be purged of any not-quite-right new ideas. Life imitates The Onion, again:
College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea
Students, Faculty Invited To Freely Express Single ViewpointBOSTON—Saying that such a dialogue was essential to the college’s academic mission, Trescott University president Kevin Abrams confirmed Monday that the school encourages a lively exchange of one idea. “As an institution of higher learning, we recognize that it’s inevitable that certain contentious topics will come up from time to time, and when they do, we want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion,” said Abrams, adding that no matter the subject, anyone on campus is always welcome to add their support to the accepted consensus. “Whether it’s a discussion of a national political issue or a concern here on campus, an open forum in which one argument is uniformly reinforced is crucial for maintaining the exceptional learning environment we have cultivated here.” Abrams told reporters that counseling resources were available for any student made uncomfortable by the viewpoint.
One of the most widespread ways Auntie Petunia hurts total strangers without being aware of it, is by way of exercising a latent sexism that’s not at all different from what she’s supposed to be working to eliminate. She might do well to think for herself, one of these days, what exactly it is men and boys are supposed to do; but, that requires diligent thinking she’s not willing to expend, and so she ends up wandering the earth as a sexist who doesn’t realize she’s a sexist. She’s full of castigation and chiding against her nephew who’s in the middle of a divorce — “you made your bed now lie in it,” “she can’t be all that bad, after all you’re the one who picked her,” etc. — all somewhat true, but not worthy of being mentioned to her niece who’s in exactly the same predicament. In our society today, this is all just good manners. Because we have a lot of people walking around who think of themselves as ideological “centrists,” sensible middle-of-the-road types, who are Auntie Petunias. They’ve been fooled into taking the liberal viewpoint on everything, including the family-law issues. They don’t consciously sign on to the agenda item to eliminate any & all places for men in society, to get rid of masculinity as if it was just another “ism,” or smallpox. Never would sign on to it. But in actions, they fully support it, in all things, never go against it. There there, dear…what a bum, he made you do it. You were only running up the household debt on useless junk to make yourself feel better, and you only had that affair with the postman because he made you do it.
This is sexism against the woman, when you think about it a bit. Everything bad that happens to men, supposedly, the men did to themselves…we are empowered. Bad things happen to women, that’s also something men did…women are not empowered. Just waiting to see what someone else is going to do to them. Is there any situation possible, within the human condition, that’s less powerful? But again, Auntie Petunia is a casual observer and a casual thinker. She won’t think about it.
If she did, it might do some damage to another article of ideologically-neutral good-manners…another item that makes no sense, that we have to do anyway because we’re in the middle of eradicating something. This notion that there are no innate differences between men and women. Once again, we see the idea is sufficiently silly that no one who supports it will actually string it together, word-for-word. When you do that, the nonsense is too stark, too in-your-face. Subtlety is required. But we know the idea not only lives on, but has achieved mainstream status, for you cannot stand on a hilltop and broadcast to a general, unrestricted audience and say: Men can do things women can’t do! Oh Lordy, batten down the hatches for what comes next. Even though it’s 100% true. The casually-thinking Auntie Petunias will swarm all over you, like fire ants…very noisy fire ants. We see this in the software engineering industry quite a lot, as I’ve mentioned a few times. Numbers numbers numbers, there are so many male engineers on this team, and only so many female engineers or no females at all, it must be because of systematic discrimination! And just try to point it out…managers cannot hire people who do not apply, and the chicks aren’t interested. Turns out boys like to think about this stuff over here, girls like to think about that stuff over there. We find a girl here & there who happens to be interested in the Periodic Table of the Elements, and when we do, we treat her like gold. You know why? Because she IS gold! And you know why she’s gold? Because that’s rare. Show me ten kids who’ve memorized the Periodic Table, nine of them will be boys, maybe more. Ah ha, says Auntie Petunia! But here’s a girl who can out-engineer you any day of the week! Usually this is a lecture about Grace Hopper. Well if Auntie Petunia could stick around for an actual discussion about it, the obvious might sink in…you were bent out of shape about statistics, as in this-many males and that-many females on this team. Statistics are about averages. Girls, on average, are not Ms. Hopper. They want, on average, immediate acknowledgement when they do something positive, which means far less to their male counterparts, and this tends to distance them from nerd stuff. Tends. It isn’t an ironclad rule, but then again it doesn’t have to be one, because Auntie Petunia you were complaining about the averages.
This makes perfect sense, but unfortunately, once again it exceeds the “pass the sweet potatoes” attention-span.
Auntie Petunia believes it’s very wrong to “stereotype” against all Muslims based on the actions of a few Muslim terrorists. She has no problem, however, stereotyping against lawful gun owners after one gun-owner — more often than not, a not-legal gun-owner — shot up a nightclub or school. Once again, this is supposed to be centrist, not dedicated to any particular ideology, just about right-vs.-wrong. But her biases are evident.
She believes everybody’s choices should be respected. This has been especially damaging, because it isn’t even close to being true. Fooling your boyfriend into impregnating you when he doesn’t have a job, and you don’t have one either, is not a respectable choice. She also thinks that what’s really important in life, is that those who are in it should be happy. Again: Not even close to being true. The point to life is not to be happy. History is full of people who led very important lives, who by their actions made wonderful things possible for those who came afterward. Sometimes it was evident while they were still alive what important lives they were living, and sometimes it was commonly realized only after they shucked their mortal coils. But a lot of those people were not happy.
She thinks these flimsy things, and others equally flimsy, because she doesn’t think much about the things she thinks. It bears repeating, this is not necessarily because she’s stupid, it’s because she’s not bringing whatever intellectual acumen she’s got, to the exercise at hand. But that’s not all of it. This is a self-perpetuating cycle; one person falls for it, and that provides additional incentive for others. It’s the bandwagon fallacy of “everybody knows.” Again, we see Auntie Petunia doesn’t have to fit a profile to fall into the trap. She could have a long history of being mostly-invulnerable to bandwagon. She may be an introvert. She may even be antisocial. Being socially engaged, though, is not what trips the trap. It’s this desire to make a snappy decision, to have an opinion, without doing any actual work to develop one. Not at all unlike deciding to eat something unhealthy, on a weeknight, to avoid having to cook anything.
What I find really alarming about the whole Auntie Petunia thing, is that it encroaches on turf that traditionally has not been hospitable to the liberal way of life. In the smaller, more sparsely-populated areas that were the subject of Obama’s ire when He spoke of people who “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” The thing about small towns is, as others have pointed out, everybody knows everybody else’s business. What’s not widely understood by some who’ve never been there, is: Bandwagon fallacy plays out especially well there, almost as well as it does in a more populated, densely-packed urban area. In some ways, maybe even better. You have to “get on board” with whatever. If you don’t, you’ll be cast out in some way. The small town is decidedly red state, but like a dry, tinder-packed forest during the hot summer season, it’s got all the ingredients needed to make something very different start happening, and maybe in a great big hurry.
Because Aunt Petunia is so lazy in her thinking about the politics that so often attract her attention, but always for such a brief amount of time, she has a tendency to think in caricatures. If you personally know of one, she probably still refers to Trayvon Martin as a “boy.” Sheriff’s deputies are bullies, husbands are abusive, CEOs are greedy and don’t look out for their “workers.” The environment is being polluted by their “corporations.” It isn’t that she actually sees the world in such a monochromatic way; what’s really going on, is the exceptions just don’t interest her. They’re not part of the narrative she’s chasing. What she’s doing, is virtue signaling. There is an eventful, but not overly long, history behind the use of that phrase and it gratifies me to see my own terminology, “GoodPerson Fever”, made its debut relatively early. (Although the two aren’t exactly the same, since V.S. is a verb and GPF is more like the mental affliction that keeps the behavior self-perpetuating.) She’s after the quick fix. “I have no opinion” would, in her own estimation, make her a BadPerson. So she reaches for the microwave-dinner-for-one way of forming an opinion…liberals have it all over conservatives here. They’ve got a product ready to go on the frozen food shelf. Conservatives don’t.
Here I have another concern about the Auntie Petunias. They may live in small towns and they may be afraid of being perceived as BadPeople for not having formed opinions, therefore for not having formed the correct opinions. But, is that all of it? I’ve explained in detail above how their ideas don’t make sense, and on some level they must be able to understand this themselves. What gets the GoodPerson Fever started in the first place? Is there something in their pasts that make them feel the need to show what good people they are, by having these correct, but nonsensical, opinions?
She wants to be seen as compassionate, she wants to be seen as informed, she wants to be seen as cool. The cool aunt, kind to everybody, and nobody ever gets anything past her. That’s the desired narrative. The thing about her that is so painfully true, and you’d better not ever mention it out loud, is somewhat at odds with this: She is motivated by self-preservation. She’s acting out the situation I was describing years ago, in “Liberalism is a Holdover From Human Evolution.” Summarizing it at a high level: We have a village with people in it, and shared supplies. We do not have an abundance of these life-sustaining supplies, which have to be rationed in any case. But if things get bad, someone will have to be ostracized and left to die, outside the gates, in the cold. So you’d better behave the right way, because if the next harvest is bleak you might very well turn out to be that guy. And oh by the way, if I tattle on you maybe you can be the guy anyway…and I get your share of stuff.
No that isn’t reality. Not anymore anyway. But, that’s the mindset. Orwell wrote of this in 1984, toward the end of the book: “Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we, Under the spreading chestnut tree.” We’re fortunate to be living in America, where this is just an idea, not reality. But it’s still an idea that motivates people, even if they don’t want to admit it.
This is why, at least a part of the time, she turns her back on religion. As long as we’re stuck on what “everybody knows,” part of that is that religious people are dolts. She doesn’t want to be a dolt…
And this has been going on awhile. Politics and religion, religion and politics. Don’t talk religion or politics! Stop it! There’s cheesecake!
The truth is, Auntie Petunia, far from being harmless, is a walking disaster to herself and others. She is easy prey for the current era of disinformation, in which the casual thinker is being prevailed upon — quite effectively, might I add — to take to the streets to “protest”…something.
In this arc I have complained about, and celebrated the apparent disappearance of, all sorts of wellsprings of unhealthy political thought that have emerged over the last fifty years or so. My hope is that the “protest” we see today is a swan song. I’m celebrating the demise of the idea that anarchy should rule, and our current civilization must be destroyed to make way for some new one. Of the idea that women should be “empowered” as rude bitches who talk over people, with all this lately-appearing “nevertheless she persisted” nonsense. Of the idea that while women are acting more like men, men should aspire to act far less so, that the ideal man is a man who doesn’t act manly at all. Of the idea that the most effective public discourse is to be a “Crazy Aunt Mabel” who refuses to control her own impulsive emotions, and by implication obligates everyone around her to do it for her. Of the idea that our various agencies and institutions should be weaponized. Of the idea that truth is subject to a person’s individual choice. Of the “we do it together, or we don’t do it at all” group dynamic. Of the idea that security is worth so much that we should sacrifice opportunities for a little bit more of it. Of the abnegation of dignity. Of the idea that clean-hands people should run everything, and it’s the place of the productive to stop producing, and wait for unproductive people to tell them when it’s okay to start again, and how they should be doing it, and how much. Of the idea that it’s man’s place on the planet to squeak through it, aspiring toward no more noble purpose than to reach a biodegradable burial site without leaving any evidence he was ever here.
I am daring to hope, that we are seeing a “twilight” of all these bad ideas. And more.
But, Auntie Petunia’s intellectual laziness, I fear, is a permanent thing. She isn’t going anywhere. Laziness is a human vice without beginning or end. Best i can hope for, there, is that it may go out of style for a bit. And I’m not overly sure about even that much.
Auntie Petunia labors tirelessly to be the kind, cool, perceptive, compassionate aunt everybody should want. But she scares the stuffing out of me.
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Great post. I have lots of thoughts, the first of which is: Aunt Petunia, like most smart-but-lazy liberals I know, thinks of things like government and especially medicine as basically a priesthood. Not the televangelist kind, either, but the actual minister-to-a-flock kind. What kind of person goes into the ministry? The true believer, the guy who is willing, and indeed longs, to work 24 hours a day, to be constantly on call for others, and who can put up with the incessant drumbeat of endless petty bullshit that is “sin” for most normal Americans. (I mean, think about that for a sec — you rarely even get a juicy “I cheated on my wife”-style confession; it’s almost always “I had impure thoughts about my secretary.” All day, every day, for years). I’d do it for $500K per year, but ministers probably don’t get $15, and free use of the rectory.
Liberals think doctors should be like that.
Which, if you’ve ever met any ministers — or any doctors — is laugh-out-loud impossible. The kind of person who is emotionally suited to the ministry — and I mean absolutely no offense by this — can’t handle the intellectual requirements of being a doctor. Similarly, doctors — and no offense to them either — can’t handle the emotional requirements of the ministry. The very best doctors and ministers could probably do either, but for 99.8% of them, they’re completely different skillsets. And — this is the important part — one skillset is far more economically valuable than the other, and its practitioners expect to be compensated accordingly.
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- Lefties Getting Religion | Rotten Chestnuts | 05/08/2017 @ 19:10Good stuff, Morgan.
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