House of Eratosthenes

As the radical Left and the beltway swamp continue to blame Trump for the attempts on his life, after going nearly a full decade with their constant windbaggery about what an “existential threat” he is and how he’s “basically Hitler” — a thought occurs to me. It’s a thought about a rethink. Maybe we need to do one. Maybe it’s overdue.

We have these “issues.” Supposedly, we can separate Left from Right by way of these issues. An unwanted pregnancy; kill it, or put it up for adoption? Trouble is, a lot of these issues are manufactured. Repeal Obamacare? What will you replace it with? How do we “shore up Social Security”? And hey, experts say this-or-that county is back in trouble with the Covidiot numbers. So they should repeat the ineffective rituals there? Hey buddy, where’s your mask?

And some of these issues aren’t good litmus-test issues, because the sides switch. Hawks or doves? It used to be, The Left counseled caution, understanding, compromise and appeasement, “nuanced” and “shades of gray” thinking, while The Right was more ready to rattle sabers. Sometime in either the Trump or Obama eras, this flipped. Trump supporters would say that’s the benefit of having a strong presence in the White House; confronting the belligerents properly and with effective negotiation tactics, you lose the need to rattle sabers. I notice nobody else seems to be offering any cogent alternative explanation.

The Mobius Strip Twist with “questioning authority” confounds and perplexes me. Back when housewives spent weekend afternoons cooking roasts for their husbands, who were out in the driveway changing oil in the family sedan, and beer cans were steel and had pull tabs — this was easy peasy. The Left meant questioning authority, up to and past the point of anarchy. Now The Left means fawning obeisance to St. Anthony and not-questioning any of his most questionable dictates. The Right, meanwhile, having been lied to about anything and everything over the years, and having noticed, scrutinizes everything and when they’re criticized for this, they scrutinize the criticism. The two sides have switched; they were emphatic in their positions before, and are even more emphatic about their newer positions now. What happened? I can form some a theory about it, several in fact. But none of them justify my complete confidence. I’m open to the ideas of others.

Most to all of the other issues melt down into the now familiar non-form and non-shape puddles of nonsense and goo. And that includes everything economic: Whatever you’re experiencing that’s good, our side gets the credit, and so far we’ve received short shrift on that. Not getting the credit we deserve. Whatever you’re experiencing that’s bad, blame the other guys. Both sides argue this way. The few positions that emerge that appear to be actual positions, are really just historical artifacts from this-or-that highly visible party-aligned figure, usually a President, having done something out in the open with great fanfare. And we argue about whether that was a good idea or not.

That all is prelude to my main point, which is this: Sometime over the last several years, like forty of them give or take — sometime since “supply side economics” or “voodoo economics” — positions on issues lost their definitional power to indicate to us what a party, faction or ideology was supporting or opposing. We see this now all too clearly, as “Trump is worse than Hitler and must be kept from power” has become a dominant “issue.” Then we have this derivative issue of the two assassination attempts against him this summer, and what culpability the loudmouths have in motivating that after calling him Hitler all these years. As issues go, this one doesn’t look difficult or murky, to me; how many times can you publicly call a man Hitler, before someone decides to do something about it?

And does it really make sense to evade responsibility, ducking behind the heat-shield of “one man’s words are not another man’s action,” after burning off months and years going on and on about “Trump incited an insurrection on January 6”?

But to go on all this time pegging Donald Trump as an “existential threat to our democracy” and threatening violence against him, and fight-fight-fight; watch the assassination attempts unfold; and then, monologue some more about how the target‘s “inflammatory rhetoric” is to blame for these assassination attempts. It is, as Darth Vader might have said, impressive, most impressive. Indeed you are bonkers, as the Emperor has foreseen…

What we’re looking at here is this unwritten and unspoken policy among the American Left, that you never concede anything that would stir up a headwind against the flight path of your agenda. Never say what a decent person would say: “Crazy people are motivated by a fuzzy confluence of many different factors, and the possibility exists that my words contributed. I will try to be more mindful of my rhetoric in the future.”

The cult forbids it. Instead deny, deny, deny, and on your way back from denying, do what damage you can against The Target. Inside the echo chamber I’m sure it looks like something that makes a lot of sense: Trump is to blame for the assassination attempts on Trump! He needs to tone down his irresponsible rhetoric!

Outside the echo chamber though, it looks like what it is. Nuts.

The thought that occurs to me is, maybe we’re in a new era now and we’re no longer voting on issues at all. If we reward this absolute and unyielding reluctance to accept any responsibility, we are bound to see a lot more of it. I can think of no quicker way to make all of America look like the worst of our blight-infested, crumbling, democrat-run and economically destroyed inner cities. Surveying the hundreds and hundreds of those, you find that’s the key ingredient to the deterioration: Lack of accountability among those who wield the greatest influence. Oh no, nothing wrong with my decisions. Oh no, nothing wrong with my statements or actions in office. Oh no. Can’t be that. It must be climate change.

Issues have given way to maturity levels.

These are the people who grew up telling mommy that actually, what I was doing was putting the cookie back into the jar. And unfortunately, we are left to surmise, mommy bought it and in so doing reinforced to the sneaky little shit that he can equivocate and prevaricate his way out of anything and everything.

A generation, or two generations maybe, came and went.

And now this is the true difference between the “parties.” One side, embarrassed in public repeatedly by the highly visible debacles involving Jussie Smollett, Hunter Biden’s laptop, “Russia Russia Russia,” Steele Dossier, Mueller Report…concedes nothing. Not even as a throwaway prelude, palliative packaging material to cram in before the word “but” on the way to making a stronger, opposing point. They won’t even do that. True cult thinking.

I mean, you try it. Facing down a Trump hating leftist, challenge them to concede there never were any prostitutes hired to pee on a bed. Be completely up front with them. “My litmus test for a cult is, that you can’t concede stories were told, and given high visibility, about Trump and they turned out to be false. Let’s see if you can concede just one of those.” See if they can admit it was a falsehood, even given that. They won’t do it. It’s less of a concern that the cult be exposed, than that they be kicked out of it.

And we the electorate — whether we realize it or not — sit in judgment of this when we cast our votes. We give signals about tactics, whether we should see more of them or less of them. What we reward and what we punish, determines what will be deployed in future campaigns. When I say, in politics, “cause is effect, and effect is cause,” I’m talking about that. When you see bizarre campaign tactics used that weren’t known or even imaginable just a few years ago, that’s because someone tried it for the first time, and it worked. The mud stuck to the wall.

We’re voting on maturity levels, and on cult thinking. We’re sending signals about how the country overall does its thinking. How grown-up of a society we are.

Issues are effectively dead, or are at least dying.

That’s my thought.

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Voting on Maturity LevelsWednesday, September 18th, 2024

Voting on Maturity Levels
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024