House of Eratosthenes

OUR infrastructure is inexcusable, much of our public education is miserable and one of our leading presidential candidates is a know-nothing, say-anything egomaniac who yanks harder every day at the tattered fabric of civil discourse and fundamental decency in this country.

But let’s by all means worry about the gays! Let’s make sure they know their place. Keep them in check and all else falls into line, or at least America notches one victory amid so many defeats.

That must be the thinking behind Republican efforts to push through so-called religious liberty laws and other legislation — most egregiously in North Carolina — that excuse and legitimize anti-gay discrimination. They’re cynical distractions. Politically opportunistic sideshows.

And the Republicans who are promoting them are playing a short game, not a long one, by refusing to acknowledge a clear movement in our society toward L.G.B.T. equality, a trajectory with only one shape and only one destination.

There’s a huge glaring error in this, but first let me nit-pick a bit. It is the polar opposite of the truth to say this trajectory has “only one shape and only one destination.” The trajectory meanders, turn by unprecedented turn and inch by serpentine inch, just like any other trajectory driven by emotion and drama. This year it’s all about forcing businesses to do away with male and female restrooms. Previously — just last year or so? — it was about same-sex marriage, and forcing the businesses to participate in that. Next year, who knows…although it will probably have something to do with forcing businesses to do something else. Frankly it’s become rather tiresome, not unlike taking a phone call from a friend who’s in the eleventh year of her divorce and has a whole new round of tall tales to unload about the awful things “Bob” did.

Another issue is that I think I know more conservatives than Frank Bruni does, and I can’t recall a single one who’s terribly obsessed with making sure anybody from any particular group “knows their place.” For keeping groups of people in places, we have democrats to worry about that. The concern with religious liberty is exactly that, protection from litigation; not exactly an unneeded thing in this day and age. One wonders, Who is against such shielding? And why, exactly? More lawsuits are a good thing?

But the big problem is:

…that’s very interesting, considering that it was the city of Charlotte, NC, run by Democrats, which initiated this whole thing with their passage of a gender confused bathroom law. The NC law, HB2, did a few simple things, one of which was to restrict local cities from forcing private businesses to allow transgenders to use the bathroom, locker room, and showers of their “gender identity”. If a company wants to do this, they are welcome to do so. It is their choice.

I thought liberals approved of choice. No?

As for the real issues, yes, we have them. So, why are so many Democrats, like Frank Bruni, so utterly concerned with a law that simply reaffirms freedom of choice for private entities as to who uses their bathrooms? Mention the danger from ISIS and radical Islam, and liberals mostly shrug and say it’s much ado about nothing. Gender confused in bathrooms? 5 alarm fire!

Recap: If liberals don’t get anything they want here, at all, the retail businesses can build all sorts of other-gender-identity bathrooms, let confused males use the womens’ restroom, confused women used the mens’ restroom…you can still have all that. This isn’t about what decision ultimately gets made, it’s about who makes it and gets to force it. And I don’t see anyone on either side overly obsessed with who exactly it is who owns the businesses, or overrides the business’ decisions, by name; so, this is about roles.

No, liberals do not approve of choice. They approve of force.

And they’re opposed to having any sort of discussion about it. Like John Hawkins noted,

Liberalism creates a feedback loop. It is usually impossible for a non-liberal to change a liberal’s mind about political issues because liberalism works like so: only liberals are credible sources of information. How do you know someone’s liberal? He espouses liberal doctrine. So, no matter how plausible what you say may be, it will be ignored if you’re not a liberal and if you are a liberal, of course, you probably agree with liberal views. This sort of close-mindedness makes liberals nearly impervious to any information that might undermine their beliefs.

And over the years, I have noticed something about this. Whenever I chance upon a liberal struggling in this mental state, which is very often, it seems to happen pretty consistently that there’s some disagreement lingering about what is natural. There is a certain pedigree to this. It may have started with the environmental movement. But today, it’s an oversimplification to say: Liberals have a hot, new, potentially disastrous whiz-bang idea, and conservatives are standing athwart the silliness yelling “slow down.” It’s accurate, but there’s more to it than that.

The liberals’ hot, new, whiz-bang idea — at least in the minds of the liberals — has something to do with a return to a more natural state. We have reason to believe this, across the board, including even such issues as the Affordable Care Act and Common Core.

There is perhaps no subject on which this is made more clear, than with the economic issues that have to do with “equality” of income or wealth, like raising the minimum wage, progressive taxes, and social safety nets. Their narrative is not one of “We have come up with an innovative new way to make sure everyone has the same amount of stuff”; it is one of “We have come up with an innovative new way to get things back to the way they were supposed to be, so everyone has the same amount of stuff.” It’s an important distinction, because the latter interpretation is seasoned with a pungent hatred of humanity missing from the former.

Liberals think in passive voice. This is what allows them to envision some sort of intended order to the universe — while simultaneously rejecting any belief system that has to do with a deity that’s doing this “intending.” This is, in a sense, what makes a liberal a liberal. It’s where the arrested development comes into play. It’s definable. Absolute certainty about what’s “supposed to” be this way and what’s “not supposed” to be that way…coupled with a resolute determination to never, ever, under any circumstances, entertain any inquiries into who or what is doing the supposing.

Businesses are supposed to have bathrooms based on feelings of gender identity. “According to whom?” is a rude question, unfit for polite discussion.

Apart from the above referenced hatred of humanity, what’s really dangerous about it is that they envision a validation from history for their ideas, that never was there. You can see this just by discussing things with them a few minutes, letting them monologue about it. They envision a halcyon era that existed before mankind, or when mankind was in too infantile of a state to have much of an effect on anything, in which things worked the way liberals want them to work now, and everything was wonderful. Then man came along and dorked it, so now it’s up to them to return us to normalcy because they & they alone have the smarts to do it. It’s rather like a twisted, Bizarro-world version of the expulsion from Eden. But, they didn’t get it from any sort of written Bible, they imagined it. That’s why I think it came from the environmental movement. They’re just living in a comfort zone, and during the environmental movement’s ascendency they became very comfortable with this. “‘We’ botched it all up, after it was all perfect and wonderful, before ‘we’ came along.” And liberals, of course, never, ever include themselves in that “we.”

[…] Freeberg in good form. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » They Think They’re the “Conservatives” | 04/04/2016 @ 08:20
It’s rather like a twisted, Bizarro-world version of the expulsion from Eden.

The Levellers, a radical movement during the English Civil War, wanted to eliminate class distinctions and give everyone the same amount of stuff. They had a little ditty: “When Adam delved and Eve span / who was then a gentleman?”

Nothing new under the sun. Egalitarianism has been tried in many places, in many ages, and has always failed. We have 500+ years’ worth of evidence that it doesn’t work. But somehow we’re the dumb ones.
- Severian | 04/04/2016 @ 08:47
Mine, from elsewhere:
“Real” conservatives?
Are we using Wiki, a newly abridged “usage” dictionary, or the latest “pocket revision” release of
APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ?
I “self hyphen identify” as rich, handsome, funny, smart, and above average sexual features.
- CaptDMO | 04/05/2016 @ 03:53
one of our leading presidential candidates is a know-nothing, say-anything egomaniac who yanks harder every day at the tattered fabric of civil discourse and fundamental decency in this country

Hey, there Bruni. Ease up on Bernie Sanders!
- cloudbuster | 04/05/2016 @ 17:40
That’s amazing Capt! I also “self hyphen identify” as handsome, funny, smart, and incredibly…I mean, INCREDIBLY…humble!
- P_Ang | 04/06/2016 @ 12:08
(When not humbly script-writing for Obama and Trump on the side…)
- P_Ang | 04/06/2016 @ 12:09
Another little game that liberals like to play is, “Why are you wasting time arguing about X when there are all these far more important issues?”

But if their real concern was that public debate time is being wasted on trivial side issues, the solution would be simple: Give the conservatives what they want on this issue, and then get the conversation back on the important things. If you think the issue of who can use which bathroom is silly and not worth arguing about for 30 seconds, then great, stop arguing about it! If you think this debate is a waste of time, you can end it instantly by just conceding the point.

Of course they never, ever do this. 9 times out of 10 they’re the ones who brought the issue up in the first place, by passing some law or getting a court ruling forcing everyone in the country to do something that liberals want. As in this case. So they’re argument is, “This is stupid and unimportant. So you should just concede the argument and give us 100% of what we want.” No, if you really believed it was stupid and unimportant, you would never have brought a lawsuit over it or lobbied Congress or whatever to begin with. You’re the ones who declared this a vitally important issue. And now you’re mad at us because we agree that it’s important.

The real objection, of course, is not that we are wasting time by debating this trivial side issue. The real objection is that we are not getting the liberal agenda enacted fast enough.
- saneperson | 04/08/2016 @ 16:39
[…] As saneperson commented last month, […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/19/2016 @ 04:05

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They Think They’re the “Conservatives”Monday, April 4th, 2016

They Think They’re the “Conservatives”
Monday, April 4th, 2016