House of Eratosthenes

The missus had the idiot-box tuned to one of those shows liberals just love. It doesn’t matter which one. But I was noticing the male action hero somehow got away with doing a very un-liberal thing, namely, telling his female co-star something like “Stay right here, don’t go anywhere or do anything until I get back.” The other example would be Jack Bauer beating a terrorist senseless until he can find out where the ticking time bombs are…

It’s interesting. It would be healthy if it relied on a decent and crisp separation between fact and fiction. In a way, it does. But there’s something insincere about it as well. These people we today call “liberals” are the way they are, because we’re going through a cultural conflict. They’re intruding into an established culture, with a new culture they’d like to impose. “Conservatives” are any people who do something to resist this incursion. This new, enlightened culture says men should not address women in any manner or tone except for the most-deferential; to do otherwise is uncool, anywhere, inside or outside of the teevee set. And that goes double for pummeling terrorists to get information, of course. Their message is not one of “that’s only cool in make-believe, real-life people shouldn’t do that”; their message is that this is BadThink. It’s part of the thought-smallpox we’re supposed to make extinct, right?

The two examples — there may be more — dislodge a telling fig leaf. They reveal a meaningful truth, that liberals and conservatives don’t actually disagree about what’s cool. The disagreement is in whether ordinary people are worthy. Kinda gets back to what I was noticing about their newest, Trump-defense campaign slogan: “America is already great.” You don’t know what that actually means, any better than I do. Does that mean, sometime since their guy got sworn in seven years ago, America crossed some threshold and became “great,” rather like the sun crossing the celestial equator and starting Spring officially? Because the liberal catechism sure as hell doesn’t smile on the idea that America was “already great” in 2009. So, when exactly was this crossover-point, this vernal equinox? Where is the enthused, self-identifying liberal who will comment on that?

Again: Without the “ordinary people aren’t worthy” idea tossed into the mix, there’s an irreconcilable contradiction. And with that emulsifier added, things align, sort out, start working. But this would mean “America is already great” really means, “America hasn’t got any business aspiring to be any greater.”

Pay all your bills, fund your retirement AND save for your kids’ college funds? No peasant, you must choose. Let Sweden and Guatemala have a shot at that first. America has been “great” too long. Am I interpreting unfairly? Because this makes everything work. Jack Bauer is cool when he does what’s needed to stop the bomb plot, but that’s him, you just squirm appropriately while your liberal wife yells at you, Hillary/Bill style.

It also fits into another observation I made awhile ago. There is some sort of licensing process, or criteria at least. Certain people, the aforementioned current President and His wife among them, are permitted by the liberal intelligentsia to imagine themselves doing extraordinary things, to aspire to these things. They are encouraged to do this, applauded for doing this, for merely having the thought, or enabling the thought. Others are not, and the difference doesn’t have as much to do with ideological leanings as it does with social proximity.

It’s a phobia. If you live next door to a liberal, socialize with the liberal, occupy the same economic bracket as the liberal, and then you earn a promotion at work then this creates pressure on the liberal. If this stuff we today call “liberalism” is any one thing at all, it is the avoidance of pressure. Don’t wanna, that’s too hard, what about the rest of us who didn’t bother. Who’s going to provide the worm to the bird who didn’t want to get up early? We need a program…

President Obama, along with others in the same mold, can be a “transforming figure” because He is not a peer.

And this is a division that has endured between liberals and conservatives, since before America’s Civil War. The idea that certain types of people are just certain types of pegs, that fit into certain types of holes. In other words, remember your place. And stick to it. We are supposed to think of women this way, men are supposed to go over there and stay out of the way, let’s have a gay guy do this, the President should be black, and now that He is nothing He does matters unless it can be put in a positive light…doing what needs to be done is for Jack Bauer, you and I are just supposed to go to work, if we do have work, and spend as much of the day as we can in the stall so we can get paid to poop. College kids have these jobs, non-college kids have those jobs.

As opposed to: No, anybody can do anything. The only limit is you.

It has often been remarked that Leftists love The People, but hate individuals. I think this is because it’s difficult to condescend to individuals (at least, to their face). I don’t know a single person to whom I am superior in every way — even if I’ve got a PhD , 20 IQ points, and $45K per year on Joe Schmoe next door, he’s got me on mechanical skill, his wife’s better looking, he’s happier with his job… whatever it is, I just can’t convince myself that I know what’s better for Joe Schmoe than he himself does.

But blue-collar stiffs like Joe Schmoe? Oh, those guys. Yes, obviously I know the right way for them to live, because I once read What’s Wrong with Kansas? in an undergrad seminar and it’s just soooo plain, how can those idiots not see it? That’s what you get for not going to college, I suppose….
- Severian | 03/12/2016 @ 10:40
[…] Freeberg has some thoughts. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Very Un-Liberal Things | 03/12/2016 @ 12:49
Severian, that’s the useful distinction.

Meanwhile conservatives love the individual, but hate the People. As men in black put it: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
- Nate Winchester | 03/14/2016 @ 06:44
“The People” is a Marxist class category. You can’t talk about “The People” without thinking, to some extent, in Marxist terms. And, really, when you think about it, that’s the rot at the heart of Marxism — talking about “The People” inherently places the speaker above “The People.” You’re saying, in effect, that “I, a superior being, am going to tell you all about this interesting new species I’ve discovered — we call them ‘the peeh-pul.'”
- Severian | 03/14/2016 @ 15:56

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Very Un-Liberal ThingsSaturday, March 12th, 2016

Very Un-Liberal Things
Saturday, March 12th, 2016