House of Eratosthenes

Rick brought up a good column last week that didn’t quite make the cut although it came very close. It would’ve been a done-deal if we hadn’t already harped heavily on the “What in the world is wrong with liberals??” theme before we saw it. Which was something of a shame because it did a better job than most, of explaining the smart-as-a-dickens guy we all know who becomes a left-winger anyway:

To become a conservative, I’ve had to learn a whole new language, one based on reason. If conservatives want to understand the liberal mind, they should consider becoming bilingual, too.

Liberals live in a stratosphere centered on emotions and magical thinking. If you’ve tried to reason with your daughter and she looks at you blankly; if your neighbor changes the subject during your compelling arguments; if your cousin says this about Obama: “I don’t know why. I just like the guy”…that’s why.

After I ‘fessed up last week to once being besotted with socialism, a reader had an epiphany. He wrote that maybe liberals are just plain stupid.

I’m not going to disagree with this. There are innumerable examples from both the famous and the anonymous:

— The most illustrious of all leftists, Noam Chomsky, still maintains that the Khmer Rouge did not slaughter millions of Cambodians.

— Liberal luminaries Annette Bening and Naomi Wolf defend radical Islam, including the dreaded burqa.

— After journeying to Cuba, members of the Congressional Black Caucus bragged about the stellar conditions there.

— Michael Moore thinks that the Cuban health system is to die for.

— Anita Dunn, a former special assistant to Obama, stated that Mao is one of the people she admired the most.

If these are the more informed liberals, what about Jane and Joe in the street?
:
Liberals are certainly capable of intelligence. They may be adept at their careers and hobbies. But the problem is that their naïveté and a delusional way of looking at the world impedes common sense and street smarts.

Further, when liberals take the time to tune in, they get their “information” from progressive propaganda. And they don’t question the Left’s authority.

That’s the biggest problem — not questioning the party line even though there are obvious gaps and gaffes. A big reason for this is fear.

I had a telling e-mail exchange with a liberal friend. When I wrote that I thought Obama was a Marxist, she responded, “Don’t say that! You’re scaring me!”

Robin of Berkeley is discovering Architects and Medicators, I think. Medicators arrive at solutions to problems as the fulfullment of a quest for emotional stability, satisfaction and high. That’s why, when people on this other “side” inspect the methods involved with containing Iran, curing global warming or “reviving” our nation’s economy, we find the stated plan to be so much at odds with the stated goal: The connection simply isn’t there. The people who are most enamored of the stated plan, haven’t even taken the time or trouble to look into it. It’s all about the emotional outcome.

As Robin has learned, when you think like a builder — like an Architect — you’re not walking on their soil because you’re not walking on their planet.

Well. Apparently, your President and mine was reading Robin of Berkeley’s article — voracious reader, He is, as you know — and He said to Himself “Hey! What that Robin of Berkeley said doesn’t make any sense. I’d better do something to make what she wrote make some sense!”

Prophecy fulfilled.

Renaissance of January 2009…officially over. Delivering a commencement address over the weekend, Holy One sonorously intoned:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter…With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

Fox News captured a slightly different transcript:

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
:
Obama also lamented the spread of social media and blogs, through which “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction.”

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you,” Obama said. “It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

“We can’t stop these changes,” he said, “but we can adapt to them. And education is what can allow us to do so. It can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time.” [italicized emphasis mine]

It wasn’t so long ago we were “all” so “hopeful” of this new age in which we’d have a President who knew how to pronounce the word “nuclear,” believed in evolution over Creation, and — what’s that other thing? Had an iPod and Blackberry and knew how to use them?? Hey, whatever happened to that?

For years — decades even — I have stewed and steamed and ground my teeth together, steam coming out of my ears, when introduced to people who would smile broadly at me and boast “I don’t know annnneeeeeeeething about computers!!” The intent has always been to make me feel important, I’m sure. But it’s an insult because it points out that there must be something good about being technologically ignorant, even if it’s only a social kind of good. Well, now I have a new reason to look forward to the end of the Obama era, and I know their kind are in charge now. This is a transgression against one of My 42 Definitions of a Strong Society:

41. Weaknesses are not coveted. Nobody ever brags about, or connects an identity to, an inability to do something other people can do. People do not greet new acquaintances with that most odious of self-introductions, “I don’t know anything about computers.” People don’t form relationships around weakness. People don’t say “That’s my friend Carol, she doesn’t know how to cook.” They say “That’s my friend Carol, she’s the best interior designer around.”

Old Iron notes that He Who Argues With The Dictionaries has apparently found a new constituency to toss under the bus. I would expect the next dumpster to be hauled away from 1600 Pennsylvania is going to be chock full of iPods and Blackberry devices, now that the lowly staff workers have discovered this new decision up at the top that technology isn’t cool.

Anyone who can do hexadecimal math in their heads, please report for interrogation in the nearest dungeon. Recant your testimony about the Earth revolving around the Sun, and that’ll be the end of it. Don’t know what all the fuss is about with color teevee, I can’t see the difference — and get off my damn lawn.

Reading between the lines, I’m a little bit…no, not just a little bit…taken aback by these remarks about “the craziest claims can quickly claim traction…new pressures on our democracy…can’t stop these changes but we can adapt to them.” He’s talking about passive censorship, a sort of censorship-by-neglect. He wants to dismiss ideas that have already, inconveniently for Him, found a voice. He has lost sight of the lesson of Thing I Know #183:

When an education has given you the ability to dismiss ideas more quickly, it’s not really an education.

To those of us who have argued with our left-wing colleagues in person, and left-wing strangers over the innertubes (I’d like to think I’m more diplomatic with the former than with the latter), this is nothing new. We will recognize straight-away what He is really talking about:

Knowledge is a state to be reached by means of purification, not by accumulation; and learning is a subtractive process, not an additive one. You say “such-and-such happened,” liberal says “Let me see your sources!!! GRRRRR!!!!” and you go “fine, here’s a link.” Liberal reacts with a “That came from (fill in the blank)!!! GRRRR!!!!” And out it goes.

So in the world of the left-wing neanderthal, which is a subset of liberalism, it’s really all about becoming a more perfect being; and sometimes the imperfection has something to do with knowing things that shouldn’t be known. Learning is, therefore, a process of un-seeing things, a process of forgetting. People who can’t work iPods and iPads are more worthy, closer to some deity, than people who know how to work those things.

I suspect this fissure has split liberalism deeply; that fissure between the liberals who think learning involves learning, and the liberals who think learning involves forgetting. Dear Leader has just switched sides. You’re smarter now if you’re stupid.

And you can only learn through a stenciled process of filtration. You become smarter by not being exposed to things. You need to stop watching Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. You have to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. And you have to stop reading The Blog That Nobody Reads. Stop. Right now!

The real irony here is that “liberals” have traditionally been largely composed of those who had the foresight to choose parents who could put them through college. And everybody knows how smart that makes you.

This should produce deep soul-searching among the Better Than We. Teehee.
- rob | 05/10/2010 @ 08:01
You need to stop watching Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. You have to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. And you have to stop reading The Blog That Nobody Reads.

1. Check. Well, I slip sometimes when I’m up really late and he’s on in his second re-run of the night. I like Dennis Miller, too, coz he lightens it all up.

2. Check.

3. Check.

4. Not yet, although I will admit to skipping over a lot of stuff oh-so-lightly.

The point being that the point has been made. Over and over and over and over. Ad nauseum in the case of items two and three, to the point that, like Popeye, “I’ve had all I can takes and I can takes no more!” Just HOW many times must we say “liberals are stupid” with the inferred point being that present company is soo much more enlightened, rational, empirical, and reasonable? Taken over time, your collective oeuvre is looking a lot like that of the competition, Morgan. If you’re at this point already, what will you look like at age 65 or so? “Get off my lawn!” doesn’t even come close. I’m referring to the stereotype of the cranky ol’ dude raving about socialists behind every bush and tree, of course.

Just sayin’. You know I love ya.
- bpenni | 05/10/2010 @ 08:11
Must be one of those “truth is somewhere in between” things. I don’t know about the behind-every-bush-n-tree, but they’re certainly behind every government agency no matter WHO is President…every single pop culture item…every single public school classroom. And as I get older, I have my regrets about not understanding liberal saturation as they were oh-so-vigorously trying to sell me things. Occasionally succeeding. And I include Sesame Street in that, along with Star Trek.

They are a demon that never sleeps. And if you click through to Robin’s piece and read it, you see there is an acknowledgment that some liberals are actually quite genuinely smart. They have no inherent love of socialism, but they get sold it anyway, by means of sales pitches that shouldn’t be expected to work even on dimmer levels of humanity. And how is this accomplished? That is why the subject fascinates.
- mkfreeberg | 05/10/2010 @ 08:35
Anyone who can do hexadecimal math in their heads

I am in all kinds of trouble then. Even worse, I once programmed in hexadecimal because the “advanced” computer architecture no longer forced be to code directly in binary.
- Physics Geek | 05/10/2010 @ 09:57
To respond to the article’s main point, I’m really not particularly concerned with whether liberals are stupid or not. Some are, some aren’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s maxim on this:

“You and I are told we must choose between a left and a right, but I submit that there is no such thing as a left or a right, only an up or a down. Up to man’s age-old dream of the maximum amount of liberty consistent with order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

“Left” and “right”, “liberal” and “conservative,” are essentially meaningless terms. The battle is between statists (who pretend to be freedom-advocates) and actual freedom-advocates. The overwhelming bulk of the so-called Right simply wants the government to fix the potholes, put the crooks in jail, and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

I read through all the comments at Wizbang’s cross-post of the article, and I had to snicker at my two favorite (cliched, tired, worn-out) left-wing tropes that are always trotted out at time like this:

– Blame the free market for the failures brought on by the socialization of said free market
– Put up strawmen to deflect the conservative charge of government run amok, by naming public programs which are noncontroversial and which pretty much everyone agrees are needed – road maintenance and that sort of thing.

The commenter JimX reminds me a lot of D-Vega over at RWN. Make some “points,” watch them get destroyed, then move the goalposts and try again. Repeat ad nauseaum. Waste everyone’s time and bandwidth, go around and around and around with people instead of admitting defeat, split hairs, and ignore blindingly obvious holes in one’s own argument by pretending not to hear what some conservative poster is trying to get across.

Gotta love these fucking trolls. And once again, grateful that they don’t stop by this particular blog all that often.
- cylarz | 05/11/2010 @ 03:55
Gotta love these fucking trolls.

Ever get the idea they’re all just the same guy?

And once again, grateful that they don’t stop by this particular blog all that often.

This is precisely the reason we call ourselves The Blog That Nobody Reads. There’s a lot of folks out there, not all of them liberal, who are obsessed with consuming from this-or-that source of information in direct proportion to whatever everyone else is doing. Anti-Star-Trek people, cravenly going where everyone else has already been. If they get the idea nobody’s reading us, they’ll stay away, which is precisely what we want. We appreciate the kind of readers who toss something aside, or stay fixated on it, based on whatever value they’re getting out of it and couldn’t care less what the other guy thinks about it…the people who aren’t planning ahead to the next time they’re asked “So you DID see ‘The Office’ this week right?”
- mkfreeberg | 05/11/2010 @ 06:08

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Your President Doesn’t Want You Reading ThisMonday, May 10th, 2010

Your President Doesn’t Want You Reading This
Monday, May 10th, 2010