House of Eratosthenes

Liberals are a strange beast. They hear Donald Trump saying “Make America Great Again” and take instant umbrage to the implication that America somehow isn’t already great. I guess in their world of must-think-this and must-not-think-that, they’ll not be permitting anyone to think America isn’t great.

Well, I suppose it’s good to see liberals and conservatives agreeing that America is great. Although I do have my doubts about that. Seems this famous speech is still drawing rave reviews…

I have noticed that there is an almost physical impossibility involved in declaring something “great,” until one takes the time and trouble to declare what something is. I alluded in the post previous to some of the life’s lessons I have learned from developing software; that is one of them. You don’t have to look far to find some sales exec extolling the virtues of his company’s software products, how powerful they are, how flawless they are…quality, bug-free, robust, scalable, etc. But you’ll notice they seldom get around to talking about what makes them so. Processes? It must be processes. Design? Implementation? Testing? And then sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to work there, and it turns out it’s like watching sausage being made.

Over time I have been forced to accept an inconvenient truth. There is no definition to be gleaned about what something is, for no such definition actually exists; not unless there is a prerequisite definition of what is to be excluded. In more concise terms: In order to define what something is, you first have to define what it is not.

We have across-the-board agreement that America is great? Very well; what makes it so? It isn’t the sunshine, the irrigation, the quality of the soil we have in mind. Some might be inclined to emit some glurgy syllables about the wonderful people; but, it seems everyone has some codification rattling around in their craniums, somewhere, about which groups of people suck, and many among those sucky people are Americans. So that’s not it.

Because of the exclusion rule, I have come to hold the truth to be self-evident that open-borders advocates do not, and cannot, believe in American greatness. They do not believe America is great now, they do not believe it’s ever been great, they don’t believe it is in America’s destiny, the probable or the optimal, to ever reach greatness. How could they? They believe in entropy.

God Himself is not above the exclusion rule, or I suppose chooses not to bother with getting around it. If we know anything at all about the Kingdom of Heaven, we know that it is exclusive. It goes without saying we’d have a lot fewer worries if that were not so. But it is, and it’s not hard to see why. If we take it upon ourselves to pronounce, breezily, the way liberals pronounce it with so many other things — “From this point forward, anyone can get into Heaven” — just the most cursory level of responsible thinking would compel us to spare our next thoughts for what is about to happen to Heaven. We already know there have been expulsions from it, and for defined reasons; there’s been no call for the Divine Wisdom to re-think those.

I think everyone gets this, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. This Trump fellow has caused a great hue and cry with his talk about building walls. As the critics against the wall-talk engage in their monologues about how bad walls are, how we ought to concentrate our energies on bridges and not walls, I have noticed the subject matter tends to spiral inward, Nautilus style, like a bit of astral detritus zooming along toward the event horizon of a black hole. Into a singularity: I am a good Christian, and Donald Trump is not. Or: His followers are not. It all seems to go toward me & my friends in, and those other assholes out. Every time. And just like the absorbed body can’t ever escape the black hole, the conversation never seems to veer out of that ever again. They speak out against the evil of building walls, while building one. What were Pope Francis’ exact words about this? “A person who thinks only about building walls — wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian.” That’s a perfect example. The Pope seeks to define what Christianity is, by declaring what can never be a part of it.

It works. But, by working, it reforms the Pope’s statement into an unworkable contradiction against itself.

I’ve noticed liberals have a tendency to attack things, very subtly, by nibbling around the periphery of a thing, attacking the definition of what makes the thing itself, by challenging any attempt to keep anything outside of it. The Republican party, for example: They need to be broader and more inclusive. The Boy Scouts should let homosexuals be scoutmasters. America should let in more immigrants, by which they mean but cannot bring themselves to say, illegal immigrants. Exclusion rule. So I’m theorizing that when liberals break down exclusions from a group, what they really seek to do is to destroy that group itself. How to test it? Simple; take something we know liberals do not want to destroy, see if they have the same desires.

They’re struggling for control of the House, Senate and White House. They have just one of those three things, and have a good chance of losing even that one in November. Where are the calls to make the democrat party the Big Tent party? Let in some stragglers? Hey I like hanging onto my money, I want lower taxes…can I be a democrat too?

Test fails. That proves, or at least fails to falsify, the theory. Everyone with a working brain believes in the exclusion rule, that you define what a thing is, thereby making it stronger, by defining what cannot be part of it. Everyone. But some among us seek to pretend otherwise, because they want to hide what they’re trying to do.

“… for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”
The more things change……
“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
The more they stay the same.
US$20,000,000,000,000.
That sure is a lot of promissory notes in treasury coffers.
Sure are a lot of unfunded, unsustainable, liabilities, “for our children” as well.
- CaptDMO | 07/23/2016 @ 06:54
[…] House Of Eratosthenes notes liberals taking umbrage at “Make America Great Again” […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 07/24/2016 @ 06:56

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

What’s Excluded?Friday, July 22nd, 2016

What’s Excluded?
Friday, July 22nd, 2016