House of Eratosthenes

We agree much more often than we disagree. We’re in two different generations, but our story is the same: Sick and tired of seeing more and more wreckage accumulate from yet more bad liberal ideas. We have much in common personally. We’re both geeks, with lengthy careers and semi-interesting stories to tell about them…somewhat…both “lucking out” with some combination of luck and hard work, into jobs somewhat at odds with high-school-grad status. Funny/sad stories to tell on the love-life front. The younger of us is still coping with the metropolitan-super-sanitized-bullshit each and every day, albeit having managed to ensconce himself in the partial security blanket that is Folsom; the older one is in the enviable position of having extricated himself from it altogether. I’ve often thought if something should happen to my Lady Love, God forbid, Buck might be something of a real-life sketching of myself in the later years, a sort of “Time Travel Morgan.”

This comment, though, was a little bit of a head-scratcher:

I tend to think of you (and your rhetoric) as sort of a scorched-earth pessimist, Morgan. If you throw out the outliers on either side of the bell-curve… and by that I mean the Jane Hamshers and the Morgan Freebergs (in the blogosphere)… the great majority of us are indeed sick and tired of all the goddamned “Your’re eeevil!” statements, followed by the inevitable “You’re stoopid!” retorts. Our politics today look more like an elementary school playground than reasoned discourse between adults.

There HAS to be a better way, or the republic is doomed.

Well, I agree entirely with the elementary school playground remark. On me being a scorched-earth pessimist, that’s probably a misunderstanding but a forgivable one; once the “typical” discourse about this-or-that turns to glurgy sweet socially acceptable nonsense, count me out thankyewverymuch. We’re into the Prager mindset here, showing a strong and sustained preference for clarity over agreement. Some folks interpret this as antisocial behavior. I can see where they’re coming from, wrong as they may be.

On our rhetoric matching the “You’re Stupid” versus “You’re Evil,” we’ll let the reader judge this one. My comment is limited to — I dunno what he’s been reading. We at least attempt to be a little more, uh, nuanced than that…

But Hamsher? We’re a counterpart to her?

Just wow. The Morgan Rule Number One counsels an unorthodox solution to the false accusation: “If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty.” According to that, then, I need to become a conservative version of Jane Hamsher. Well, that takes some talent I don’t gots. I simply don’t know how to go about it.

I’m familiar with the doctrine of discarding outliers in the data before processing the data — in computer science, in statistics, in democracy and other social matters. There is some merit to it, but all in all the practice is much more controversial than most people understand it to be. The fact of the matter is, much of the appeal this has had for us throughout the years has been taught to us by our civil servants in the public school system. They just love it, because excluding the outlier lends unnatural and unmerited weight to conventional thought; the public school system, being a labor union construct, adores conventional thought. Makes the populace much easier to control.

First thing I did when I read this surreal comment, was head on over to Buck’s place to see if anything was going wretchedly wrong. Surely such a capable mind would require a strong seismic force to shake his connection to reality? The dude called me Hamsher. Thankfully, as noted above, all seems well over there. That settled, I undertook the task of trying to figure out what bee had somehow flown into his bonnet. Process of elimination would yield fruit the quickest, I decided; also noted above is the fact that we don’t disagree on much, although we disagree. I took a quick inventory of the issues —

We seem to disagree on Sarah Palin;
We disagree about legalizing pot;
We disagree about pretending illegal aliens belong here.

Perhaps he feels I have failed to give his side of one of these, or all three, proper consideration. This is certainly possible, and I am, perhaps, prone to frequent error here. It’s a malady common to technical people: Once we find a method is a good one, our tendency is to shun all the others.

There is a problem with considering Buck’s point of view on these three, though. In all three cases, it calls for turning one’s back on reality. Taking a certain thing that is known to be something — and deliberately pretending it is the opposite of that thing. Palin, who can obviously get more done in a constant unit of time than most folks can, is an incapable dimwit; pot, consumed in a variety of forms for the express purpose of altering the thinking process, doesn’t do this; and illegal aliens are not illegal at all.

Bunny trail here: In the case of the illegal aliens, I notice the word “undocumented” is used in place of “illegal” by the tireless advocates who work so hard to proffer this doctrine of “Pretend things are the opposite of what they really are.” Obviously this is an errant practice and it is being promoted for nefarious purposes — but when you think on it a minute or two, “undocumented” makes the point even more ruggedly. By which I mean, my point. If a law is a bad one, the adjective “illegal” might fail to sell some on the idea that said illegal thing should be avoided. “Undocumented,” on the other hand, means you don’t know something. When you’re talking about twelve to eighteen million of something living in close proximity to our kids to whose protection and safety we are sworn, and go to sometimes absurd lengths in other matters to supplement even incrementally — this is a heady issue.

Other than those, I can’t think of anything on which we’ve disagreed. It’s a testament to how much respect I have for our blog-brother that I put this much thought into what could have inspired what might very well be nothing more than a brain fart, but at this paragraph I think the point of diminishing returns has been crossed in this exercise. We have much more to say to the opposition than “you’re stupid/evil,” and we’re not a Hamsher; at least, I don’t think we are. As for pessimism, it’s always been our position that while the recent avalanche of dumbth is thick, slick, fast and treacherous, our country will survive it in the end — after losing a whole lotta stuff, most tragically from our heritage. But wiser. And still flawed. Our nation has a lot of things going for it, but one must always remember it is a construct upon humanity with all of humanity’s blessings and all of humanity’s shortcomings. And Adam did bite out of the apple. The point is, though, that we’ll get through the current crisis, and that’s always been our position over here.

In my experience, moderating one’s tone in mixed company brings benefit and is often costless; but moderating one’s understanding of truth brings no benefit at all, and costs like crazy. We live in interesting times, wherein anyone who undertakes to learn what is happening right now but at the same time keep outlying thoughts out of his head, embarks on a road to insanity. If the end goal is to keep extreme viewpoints from being expressed, lest others become offended, the far better course is to learn to keep one’s mouth shut. But let the thoughts develop as the truth compels them to be developed.

What the hey?

I’ve fired off some comments I wish I could take back, maybe this is in that ballpark.

“We have much more to say to the opposition than “you’re stupid/evil,”

Ah yea, a lot more, and some of the best stuff on the ole blog’osphere in my opinion.

You kids can work this out, I have *Hope*. Maybe some face time…NM isn’t that far from Folsom…couple beers…
- tim | 08/20/2009 @ 06:49
He’s tops on my “have beer with” list and has occupied that position for a long time. I’d be embarrassed to say how long we’ve semi-seriously discussed the possibility of having a real sit-down, without having managed to get ‘er done. This is my fault, really, since I’m the city-mouse…that busee-busee-busee stuff ya know.
- mkfreeberg | 08/20/2009 @ 06:58
Ummm…. wow.

Getting to the point… it was the Hamsher thing that pissed ya off, wasn’t it? In trying to make my point about outliers I named two names. In so doing I picked a prominent Lib-blogger at random and it could have been worse, ya know. I could have equated you with one of those other Firepups (and they are an offensive lot, generally speaking), Yglesias, or…gasp… Moulitsas. And I probably shouldn’t have made this personal at all, using your name as an outlier on the right. There are more strident examples… that twit who runs Little Green Footballs comes to mind (Johnson? I could go there and check, but it’s a philospical thing with me to NOT go there.). And thus was born a misunderstanding. I apologize for the offense… but in my defense… Hamsher does share certain qualities with you. Her posts are always well-written, she uses language to great good effect, and she does her homework.. if one can consider her sources “homework,” in the authoritative sense. I read her a lot… if only to get a feel for what the other side is thinking… kinda like our intel guys who read Soviet defense journals back in the Bad Ol Days.

I’ll stand by my pessimist statement, though. And I’m fairly close to you in this regard, as I believe not much if any good can come out of this administration.

As for the three things… Yes on pot (we’re irreconcilable here), Yes on Palin (same as pot,with VERY interesting parallels ;)), Not so much on the illegals. I’m against roundup and mass deportation… the cattle-car scenario. Other than that, we’re on the same page.

You left out “moderation,” as in making the GOP’s tent bigger. We’ve gone head-to-head on this one more than once. Moderation isn’t a BAD thing. Never forget that politics is the art of compromise, which isn’t to say one must or should abandon one’s values in the process. Certain things ARE non-negotiable, but not everything. It’s in the latter frame of mind where my general unease and/or disagreement with you seems to emerge, Morgan. I’ve not been able to discern where… if ANYwhere… you would be willing to compromise in order to “Git ‘R’ Dun.”

Wow, again. I’m taking up way too much space here. But this will do for starters. Is my point clearer, now?
- bpenni | 08/20/2009 @ 12:52
All right, well that’s a pretty darn good explanation. No apology necessary m’friend, it would be hypocritical of me to counsel a rigid fastening to truth and then bear a grudge when you speak your mind. The thing is, and I know from your comments you’re hip to this, I look at a comparison between myself and Ms. Hamsher and I’m like…well, the title says it all.

In fact I have to plead ignorance here. I don’t read her. Ms. Valenti’s Twitter feed is plenty enough for me. I’m sure you can relate to that…

Regarding compromising to git ‘r dun. I’m more than willing to join you for a gentleman’s session of beer & cigars & solving all the worlds problems, specifically with where to draw this line — AFTER the overture has been offered. As of last year and the foreseeable future, the overture has not been offered; the country’s in the mood to lean left right now, at least as far as elections go…leaving aside the discussion that party self-identification is an entirely different matter.

My point is this: The overture has not been offered. No large bloc of voters is telling conservatives “tone down the rhetoric on this, and we’ll think about supporting you.” There’s no evidence of such a thing; the evidence indicates the dialogue is more like:

Voters: So in ’08, what are you guys all about?
Conservatives: Yes on global warming yes on capitulating to terrorists yes on embiggening the government…just not quite as much as those other guys.
Voters: Huh. Yeah, well, uh…seeya!

And if the dialogue is like that, any discussion of toning down in order to git ‘r dun, isn’t about gittin’ ‘r dun. It’s more like, we’re out hiking, we’re lost, and I’m drawing lots with you to figure out whose leg is going to be eaten for dinner when nobody’s even hungry yet.
- mkfreeberg | 08/20/2009 @ 16:51
In fact I have to plead ignorance here. I don’t read her. Ms. Valenti’s Twitter feed is plenty enough for me. I’m sure you can relate to that…

Well, sorta. And sorta not. I firmly believe we shouldn’t spend ALL our time in the echo-chamber. While I will admit to frequenting right-of-center blogs more often than those on the Left, I will also attest that I spend quite a bit of time reading the opposition. It just seems like the smart thing to do… once again, if only to be “informed.”

The one thing I didn’t address in my original comment… was our long-delayed beer-summit. We DO need to give that some thought. Serious thought. 🙂
- bpenni | 08/20/2009 @ 19:02

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