House of Eratosthenes

Well, we’ve reached a negotiation. It’s pissing everyone off, so it’s probably about as good a compromise as could be reached. I’m sure a better compromise might have been…well, better…but it’s an open question as to whether that was possible, and a worse compromise surely would have dealt more damage.

Let’s review at a high level with all the drama left out of it. That’s when we learn the most, you know; reviewing things at a high level, and with low drama. It occurs to me that with all this conflict compressed into a couple of months of “ZOMDFG The Debt Limit Cometh” we may have seen our entire human-species story conveniently mushed into a handy package of relatively miniscule time. The opportunity for learning about ourselves is rare.

We have these capable people, we have local widows and we have town drunks. That is to say, we have people who are capable of meeting their own essential needs and then sparing a bit of effort afterward to help others. We have those who are in need of the assistance through no fault of their own, and then we have others who live in a state of dependency as a chosen lifestyle who think work is for suckers. Now, within the capable people there is another meaningful distinction to be made between those who earn their daily bread creating products and services that can be sold — and then we have those who, although they bristle at having it pointed out, push paper around and produce nothing. That’s a touchy subject, so much so that this last divide cannot even be acknowledged if the peace is to be kept, unless the audience within earshot has been carefully selected.

Now, you put these pieces together into a unified mass, and you can divide that mass again yet another way, this time according to how people think: Those who are receptive to all of the above three distinctions, and those who will acknowledge only the one divide between capable and incapable. Conservatives and liberals, in other words. Conservatives understand there are producers and non-producers; they understand there are local-widows and town-drunks. Liberals only see the difference between what they call “haves and have-nots.” So add this to the long list of reasons that the liberal viewpoint not only doesn’t make sense, but cannot make sense; in a twist of irony which no sane writer of fiction would allow himself, liberals fail to gel with reality because they are not sufficiently “nuanced.” Our side doesn’t know its butt from a hole in the ground, but somehow, we have all the money — except when a survey comes out that says liberals must be more sophisticated because they enjoy higher incomes and have achieved higher levels of education. See, even when they measure things liberals can’t keep it real, because the measurements change to accommodate what’s being currently discussed; what is to be “proven.” They see themselves as champions of the underclass, the David striking a blow against Goliath, but when they seek to assert themselves their tactics become like those of the Goliath. The rest of us need to learn to welcome our new overlords, they’ve taken over the academia, the communications industries, the science institutes, the executive branch, everything that is an establishment. Anyone who isn’t a liberal, even flush after an election victory, needs to bend, yield, give way, make do, learn to compromise, etc. But oh by the way we’re filthy stinker rich people who have all the money.

Now, into this picture of the people, we have to add the picture of our nation’s government’s finances. The revenue situation stinks on ice. We’re taking in something like three dollars for every four we spend on defense, social services, stimulus programs, foreign aid, administration, and interest on the debt. Much of the spending is new; up until just a few years ago, we somehow figured out how to get along without it. By the way, the debt situation, like the revenue situation, is about as bad as it can possibly get. Were the revenue situation to be completely turned around starting tomorrow, there is still much difficulty involved in seeing how we can ever dig ourselves out of this hole.

The point of all this is one I’ve made many times before. Those who obsess over the one people-distinction, the dividing line between the haves and the have-nots, and close their eyes to all the other people-distinctions…have-nots due to circumstance, and have-nots due to personal preference…haves from making friends and pushing paper around, and haves due to money fairly earned by helping others…of necessity must also blind themselves to the deteriorating financial situation. As we round this meaningful corner of truly losing control of the government’s finances, to such an extent that we’ve never lost this much control before — they still need to make their noise about finding creative and innovative new ways to spend money. The real tragedy is that their ideas are not stationary; they’re sliding down a slippery slope. Some among them are thoroughly enmeshed in the progressive worldview, ready to tattoo themselves with it from head to toe. Others are simply headed there, humans only just recently bitten by the zombie, at the nascent “What’s wrong with us all coming together to help each other?” gullible, innocent, almost adorably naive stage.

Now, look what we just saw happening here. Leave aside which side got what it wanted out of the final compromise; ignore that, for in my view it’s a little like figuring out chair positions on the Titanic. Take a look, instead, at the public-relations battle. Liberals pride themselves on their public relations. They took a beating from beginning to end here, and no, it was not a “lost leader” as part of some grand strategy of theirs. They looked like idiots and they didn’t plan to. Even worse, they looked that way to the “no dog in this hunt” types, the moderates, the Main Street people, the freshly-bitten slippery-slope-sliders. Idiots. Harmful, dangerous idiots.

And that is the point I wish to make here. It is a point I’ve made before: Modern-day liberalism is the precise opposite of what it pretends to be, the inverted-color image of what those who embrace it, seek to make of themselves. It is supposed to be about independent and logical thinking, but you can’t get much less logical than “screw the debt picture we have to find more ways to spend money.” It isn’t independent. Once confronted with something that is plain truth, a fact so verifiable and simple that it cannot be denied, liberals will refuse to discuss it if it endangers the agenda. One of my favorites is “Is Peggy Joseph (the ‘Obama gonna put gas in my car and pay my mortgage’ lady) smarter than Walter Williams, Charles Krauthammer and George Will?” They simply won’t address it. It’s mind-boggling to watch this. They’re emotionally invested in that hardcore-case worldview, in which the dumbest person who agrees with them, can boast of greater intellect and capability than the most promising among those who dare to dissent. And so the subject is changed, because it seems if they confess to the obvious someone will leap out of nowhere to grab and tear up their “left-winger in good standing” card.

Seriously, try it sometime.

We found out why Barack Obama got nominated back in 2008. No president in modern times, I daresay, has dealt with any situation with greater incompetence and laziness that what we just saw out of Him. Quick, name one thing Barack Obama did about this besides giving wonderful speeches, just one thing. You can’t. And at this point, should the speeches even count? You and I breathe in oxygen and return it to the environment as carbon dioxide; Obama gives speeches. But if you have a single negative thing to say about Obama then you must be racist. So yes, Obama is where He is because of the color of His skin. Every politician desires some cudgel to be wielded to allow him to have the final word in an argument — Barack Obama just so happens to have one. And absolutely nothing else that would make Him of any practical use to anybody.

I have also written, to excess, about how liberals boast of their grand ambition to make life more “fair” and to make people more “equal.” But that this, too, is polar-opposite/mirror-flipped from what they really want to see happen, and you don’t have to study them too long before this becomes apparent. Social spending, military spending, invading a country, aborting babies, a mosque at ground zero, gun control, labor unions, teacher salaries, evolution versus intelligent design — discuss any one of these things with a liberal for more than thirty seconds, and the discussion will loop around to someone being innately better than somebody else. These people are so wonderful, those people are bitter clingers. What did we just see happen here? Liberals came to an argument without facts and without reason, and ended up calling the other side a bunch of names.

Like I said: A compression of human history. The complete picture of what we are, warts and all.

Call them liberals, progressives, moonbats, lefties, whatever. They are, ultimately, line-erasers. Distinction-losers. They seek to conflate those who need help because of genuinely hard luck, with those who choose to rely on the efforts of others because of genuine laziness. They seek to do this so they can achieve the next tier of compassion, understanding, wisdom and open-mindedness. They achieve the exact opposite. They appear to genuinely believe they are laboring toward a level playing field in which everyone with a heartbeat enjoys equal rights and equal opportunity. Consciously or not, they labor toward the exact opposite of this.

They talk a great deal of “sitting down to talk out our differences” with “understanding” and a willingness and capability manifested on both sides, to perceive subtle “nuances” and achieve a productive “compromise.” Which, then, both sides can recall fondly, remember as an occasion on which something meaningful got done, goals were reached on both sides, understanding was achieved and conflict was avoided. We’ve just seen how they conduct themselves before, during, and after such a sit-down.

They walked into the “sit-down” intent on getting everything they wanted, compromising on nothing, got all pissy with their representatives at the table when the compromise was offered anyway. They got even pissier when the compromise was reached, signed, sealed and delivered. Now they’re scheming of ways to get even. Because they’re so much better than everybody else and deserve more, and everyone else is so terrible and awful.

They’re supposed to be working toward a better world. But a child can see the world that has been built, may be completely screwed, and it isn’t because of conservatives saying “stop spending money” — it’s because of liberals saying “spend all the money you want plus a whole lot more.”

They have giant holes in their lives that can’t ever be filled. Feeling guilty about drowning girls in the back seats of their cars, or whatever…they must do penance, but the penance somehow has something to do with the rest of us being forced to spend money.

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What We’ve LearnedThursday, August 4th, 2011

What We’ve Learned
Thursday, August 4th, 2011