The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. --MaxedOutMama
I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing.--Kim du Toit
The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.--Moshe Ben-David
The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. --Sultan Knish
All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. --Billy Beck
I am on record as saying that the Left was shocked by their loss in 2016 to Donald Trump. They were so certain of Hillary's inevitability that they didn't bother to turn on the fraud machine. It was in the bag. The World's Most Qualified Woman against a reality-TV orangutan. As Roger Kimball put it in a recent Quote of the Day:
The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the woke oligarchy that governs us.
I am further on record as saying that in five years or so, someone will complete a highly detailed, meticulously researched and footnoted recounting of just exactly how the 2020 election was stolen - yes, stolen.
Time Magazine has published Chapter 1 already. The story is entitled "The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election." The title alone tells you all you need to know, but the story goes into detail. The Woke Oligarchy wasn't going to lose again.
I haven't done one of these in awhile. Let us Fisk.
A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.
"The response was not mass action, but crickets." Left unspoken is the fact that, had Trump won reelection, cities would have burned. You're not supposed to realize that. What you're supposed to concentrate on is that the "Right-wing militias" didn't do anything. The Left was prepared to "protest." "Mostly peacefully" I would imagine. But "right-wing militias" would have been violent! The pertinent phrase however, is "Trump's ouster." They'd been trying for more than four years to achieve that, and now they had.
A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”
In a way, Trump was right.
Tell me something I didn't know.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
"...an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner" was not right "in a way," it was completely accurate. But the pertinent line is this one: "There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes...." Conspiracy. Their word, not mine. We can officially take off our tinfoil hats now. Time has admitted there was a conspiracy. You can argue that the purpose of the conspiracy was to prevent the torching of major cities across the United States, but it was still a conspiracy to ensure Donald Trump did not win a second term.
This next paragraph is where it starts getting really interesting:
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
"...an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted." Lie #1, admitted to later in the piece. Everything possible was done to "win the vote," and to hell with fairness, credibility and corruption. Winning was everything, and you can't count on the voters to do the right thing. Remember, the goal was to SAVE THE ELECTION. Conspiracy. Shadowy groups manipulating things behind curtains. For our own good, you see. And it was bipartisan! Because Orange Man Bad! But, while they brag about their success, they cannot come out and simply say "We defeated Orange Man!" No, they have to wrap the conspiracy in wholesome cloth - the thing they were trying to prevent was "an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all"!
So they destroyed the system in order to save it.
Let's take the next paragraph line-by-line:
Their work touched every aspect of the election.
AKA: They cheated as hard as they could.
They got states to change voting systems and laws...
Unconstitutionally, but they didn't care about that. That wouldn't be decided until AFTER the election was settled.
...and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits,
Hundreds of millions of dollars to steal the election for the conspiracists paid for by the conspiracists and the public coffers. "Voter suppression lawsuits" is code for "making sure only eligible voters vote." Can't have that. But here's the kicker:
...recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.
"Disinformation" like the Hunter Biden corruption story. demonetizing anyone who didn't toe the Leftist line, cancelling anyone who threatened The Narrative™.
They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.
Like the story of the Red Wave, of how - at first - it would appear that Trump was winning by a landslide, but after all that mail-in vote was counted, the Right People would ensure that Trump lost! This is known as Propaganda, and also "laying the groundwork." See? We predicted this! Nothing odd about it at all!
After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result.
They'd had four years to prepare, after all.
“The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
Norm Eisen wouldn't know "democracy" if it bit him on the ass, developed lockjaw and was dragged to death. Conspiracies and Shadow organizations have no part in democracy.
For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election.
That is, "not have it stolen from them" by conspirators bent on that very task.
The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.”
And it was. And Time Magazine is telling us how. Conspiracies, voting rule changes, massive influx of mail-in voting, recruiting ideologically compatible poll workers, control of the flow of information, and millions of dollars in public and private funds.
His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics.
I love the Left's control of the language. Isn't it fascinating that Trump has "henchmen," but the "conspirators" who opposed him were merely people of good intention, pure as the driven slush? That his lawsuits were "spurious," but here's a list of the lawsuits brought and their results. Note how very few were decided on the merits, and how many that were were decided in favor of the Republicans.
Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.
No explanation of how Trump "plotted to block a legitimate vote count," just the assertion that he did, while this piece details a conspiracy of shadowy oligarchs intent on the very same thing. Oh, and "violence at the Capitol."
The Capitol, aside from the razor-wire topped fencing and the armed National Guardsmen, looks a lot better than downtown Portland, Oregon. What, a couple of broken windows and someone appropriated Nancy Pelosi's Speakers lectern? One unarmed protester was killed by a Capitol cop, several more protesters died of natural causes, and the one cop who died after apparently being struck by a thrown fire extinguisher apparently showed no signs of blunt-force trauma. Some coup attempt. How many died in Portland?
The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”
There's that control of language thing again. Our heroes were "democracy campaigners." "Pulling off" the election meaning "making sure Trump loses." Because they knew if he won there was the strong possibility of "a real dangerous moment of unraveling" as the extremist members of their side would go stark-raving.
This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
Again, who's a conspiracy theorist? And language once again - saving the 2020 election. From Donald Trump: "...how close the nation came to disaster."
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
They weren't rigging the election! Oh no! Changing voting rules, implementing vote-by-mail, recruiting ideologically pure pollworkers, controlling The Narrative, silencing dissent, that's not "rigging the election" it's fortifying it!
Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
I'm not going to fisk the rest of the story line-by-line - it's far too long for that, but I will comment on excerpts like this one:
The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, (Mike Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO) wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”
And this is the paragraph that gives lie to the claim that it was "...an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted." It is also an absolute psychological projection, as he accuses Trump of "corrupting the voting process in key states" when that was precisely what they were doing. Refusing to concede? Didn't Hillary tell Biden not to concede under any circumstances? And winning the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote is how Trump defeated Hillary. It's why the Electoral College exists.
The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop.
No, that required that "Their work touched every aspect of the election." Not just one.
The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure....
That has worked just fine unless a Republican gets elected. Especially when the wrong Republican gets elected.
...Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately.
TV anchors "bending over backwards" and "framing" is also known as "Controlling the Narrative." And it's nothing new, but was brought to new levels.
RTWT. Try to keep your blood pressure down. For all the high rhetoric, democracy in America is dead. The Oligarchy is in control, and they're not giving it up.
Here's hoping this post makes it past the Google censors.
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the
situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into
operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and
disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited
them.” ~Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
Add nearly three more decades to that record.
(C)onservatism is not so much based on ideas, but on simply observing what works, and then generalizing from there. - Dr. Robert Godwin
After the preceding sixty years, I am now an almost perfect "enemy of the Left." I'm an old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male who drives a pickup truck and owns guns. The only checkbox I don't tick is that I'm not a Christian, but then I am not an "anti-theist" either. Because I'm in favor of maximum individual liberty and minimum government power - what used to be called a "liberal" - I am now labeled a member of the "Alt-Right," which (deliberately) carries with it ominous implications of "White Supremacy." And I'm a Donald Trump voter, so I am Evil Incarnate.
If not for my heresy of voting for Trump, I might be redeemed - but I would never be trusted.
I started blogging in May of 2003 after spending time in the trenches of Usenet, on bulletin boards, and as a contributor to a failed experiment known as Themestream. Why? Because I was pissed. I forgot to mention that in my CV. I'm a pissed off old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male.
If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that this pissed-off white cisgendered heterosexual male is also a Debbie Downer. I'm a pessimist by nature. I've said that being a pessimist is generally a pretty good way to go through life - you're seldom disappointed and occasionally pleasantly surprised. I've had very few pleasant surprises recently.
This post is no different. You've been warned. Logorrhea to follow.
Larry Correia posted on Facebook an observation that the absurdly high election turnouts reported in heavily blue states are, at the least, suspect. He was chided to "do better" by the first respondent in the comments. Here's Larry's reply:
CJ Nygaard, the massive turn out alone is a red flag.
But as for doing better...
The late night spikes that were enough to close all the Trump leads are a red flag.
The statistically impossible breakdown of the ratios of these vote dumps is a red flag.
The ratios of these dumps being far better than the percentages in the bluest of blue cities, even though the historical data does not match, red flag.
The ratios of these vote dumps favoring Biden more in these few battlegrounds than the ratio for the rest of the country (even the bluest of the blue) red flag.
Biden outperforming Obama among these few urban vote dumps, even though Trump picked up points in every demographic group in the rest of the country, red flag.
The poll observers being removed. Red flag.
The counters cheering as GOP observers are removed, red flag.
The fact that the dem observers outnumber the GOP observers 3 to 1, red flag (and basis of the first lawsuit filed)
The electioneering at the polls (on video), red flag.
The willful violation of the court order requiring the separation of ballots by type, red flag.
USPS whistleblower reporting to the Inspector General that today they were ordered to backdate ballots to yesterday, red flag.
The video of 2 AM deliveries of what appear to be boxes of ballots with no chain of custody or other observers right before the late night miracle spikes, red flag.
Any of those things would be enough to trigger an audit in the normal world. This many flags and I’d be giggling in anticipation of catching some thieves.
And it isn’t that I have to do better. I’m just an gen pop observer who happens to be a retired auditor with a finely tuned bullshit detector. This is going to the courts.
As I've said elsewhere, don't expect a resolution before early December, if then. States are legally required to certify their polls by December 8. Who thinks we won't be there yet?
...NPR sounds like Vatican Radio from the Church of Secular Progressivism, ...The New York Times reads like L’Osservatore Romano of the same pseudo-religion.
Do read the whole thing. This is not surprising to me, but it is beautifully expressed.
That elite media may be biased for or against a particular issue or topic is interesting, and this knowledge may help an interest group rally indignation or manage its public relations; however it tells
little about the overall functioning of media in society. This latter concern is the broader and more important idea, with larger implications.
The larger concept that lies behind the consistent ranking is a broad cultural level phenomenon that I will label an administrative control bias. It has profound implications. Administrative control in this usage
means rational, scientific, objective social management by elite, symbol-manipulating classes, and subclasses, i.e., professionalized administrators or bureaucratic functionaries. The thing administered is often democracy itself, or a version of it at least. Here and throughout this chapter terms such as "rational," "objective," "professional," and "scientific" should be read in the sense of the belief systems that they represent, i.e. rationalism, objectivism, professionalism, and scientism. Scientism is not the same as being scientific; the first is a matter of faith and ritualistic observance, the other is difficult creative work.
William James made a similar distinction between institutional religion and being religious, the first being a smug and thoughtless undertaking on the part of most people, the second, a difficult undertaking
affecting every aspect of a life. The term scientistic administration would pertain here. Note that we move here well beyond the notion of mere gun control and into the realm of general social control, management and regulation.
He explained that people who migrate into journalism believe that problems should be solved by the people already exercising the power. That journalists see themselves as the clergy of the Church of State, acting as intermediaries between the High Church of government - Federal, state and local - and the laypeople who make up the rest of the nation. Which is why I found Mr. Dreher's description of NPR and the NYT to be so poetic.
As the political divide comes to a crashing head in this country on Tuesday, November 3, I thought I'd try to pull together the various threads that have been gathering in my head and try to weave together something coherent before (maybe) this whole thing gets ripped apart.
Why are we at this point? I have pointed at public education as the great enabler, but it goes deeper than that. John Taylor Gatto illustrated convincingly that the public education system was initially established by the Great Industrialists (aka "Robber Barons") of the 19th Century to create a two-tiered system: A lower tier for the workers who would labor, do what they're told without question, and buy the products they themselves manufactured, and an upper tier for the children of the Great Men and any who showed exceptional promise. It was, after all, only natural - "Social Darwinism" was the phrase associated with it, except that philosophy quite easily slides into racism and eugenics (which it did.)
No, a kinder, gentler philosophy was needed, and that was Marxism - the promise that all men (they were sexists in the late 19th century) would eventually be equal, would suffer no privation, would have all they needed, but never any more or less than their neighbors. It was a beautiful dream, but Marx insisted that it was an historical inevitability! So a lot of people adopted that dream and began working towards achieving it, hopefully in their lifetime.
These people were better than the average Joe or Jane. They cared more. They took jobs in government, in education, in media, because Utopia could not be consummated with the average prole! Regular people cared only about themselves and a few people in their close circles. For Marxism to work, people had to care about everyone else, and that required that they be trained, (nudged in the modern vernacular) into becoming a human being that can care more for a stranger than they do for themselves.
I believe my readers can see the flaw here.
Instead of schools churning out capitalists, they started churning out sort-of-Socialists, and among them the Scientistic Administrators referred to by Prof. Patrick. Part of that change was the secularization of the Western world, but the human mind seems to require some sort of spirituality. There appears to be a portion of the brain pre-wired for a belief in some higher power. In the face of a growing secularism, that inherent need for "spirituality" still needs to be filled.
Socialism, its accompanying Scientism and the promise of Marx's utopian vision seems to do so nicely, and generation after generation has been infected and affected by exposure to that horribly flawed idea.
Blue Team Progressivism is a church, offering you moral superiority and a path to spiritual enlightenment. As a church it's got a lot going for it. It runs religious programming on television, all day every day. Every modern primetime program is like a left-wing Andy Griffith show, reinforcing lessons of inclusion, tolerance, feminism, and anti-racism.
Watching a 90-pound Sci-Fi heroine beat up a room full of giant evil men is as satisfying to the left as John Wayne westerns were for the right.
The Blue Church controls the HR department, so even if you don't go to church, you have to act like a loyal churchgoer in every way that matters while you're on the clock. And off the clock, on any kind of public social media platform.
Jon Stewart and John Oliver are basically TV preachers. Watching them gives the same sense of quiet superiority your grandma gets from watching The 700 Club. The messages are constantly reinforced, providing that lovely dopamine hit, like an angel's voice whispering, "You're right, you're better, you're winning."
Hollywood award shows are like church talent shows - the skits and jokes aren't really funny, but it's fun to look at the pretty girls, and you're all on the same team.
If you oppose the ideas of the Left, as I have said in this forum repeatedly, you aren't merely wrong, misinformed, misled, ignorant or in error, you're evil. As Eric Hoffer explained in his 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No.... We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one." F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."
But we have had Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and now Donald Trump, each one inspiring greater and greater derangement to the point where it's actually been called that - [fill in the blank] Derangement Syndrome, each new mutation more virulent than the last.
Those Presidents, and the people who voted for them, have been called deplorables, bitter clingers, racists, sexists, misogynists, homophobes, Islamophobes, pretty much every -ist and -phobe you can think of. But what they're really saying is "heretic." Note how viciously they go after the apostates - the former members of the Left who #WalkAway. They know better. They're better educated, better informed, more intelligent, and therefore should be in charge of everything. As the quote on the masthead of this blog from Sultan Knish explains:
The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem.
Hoffer, in a 1967 television interview with Eric Sevareid, was asked about the Intellectuals - our "betters" in society and (most importantly today) government. He responded:
Hoffer: I talk of a specific type of person when I talk about an intellectual. [...] To me an intellectual is a man of some education who considers himself a member of the educated elite, who thinks he has a God-given right to direct affairs. To me an intellectual doesn't even have to be intelligent in order to be an intellectual. He looked down upon the masses as if they were dirt.
Sevareid: It's their attitude toward ordinary people that is the dividing line in your mind?
Hoffer: That's right.
--
Hoffer: In this country the intellectuals aren't in power. Mass movement hasn't a chance for the simple reason that they aren't started by the masses. They're started by intellectuals.
In America the intellectual has neither status, nor prestige, nor influence. We, the common people, are not impressed by intellectuals. We have a disdain for pencil-pushers. We actually define efficiency by the small number of pencil-pushers. If you asked me what I consider an efficient society I'd say the ratio between the office personnel and the producing personnel.
The smaller the amount of supervision the better, the healthier, the more vigorous a society. The highest supervisory personnel is where the intellectuals are in power - in Communist countries. There half the population is supervising the other half. The intellectuals have a tremendous contempt for the masses. Intellectuals can't operate unless they're convinced that the masses are lazy, incompetent, dishonest; that you have to breathe down their necks, and you have to watch them all the time. We in America are sitting pretty because the masses perform only if we leave them alone. That's where we are at our best.
--
Eric Sevareid: You seem to have a fear about the rise of intellectuals in political life and power. Why are you so frightened of them?
Eric Hoffer: First of all, I ought to tell you that I have no grievance against intellectuals. All that I know about them is what I read in history books and what I've observed in our time. I'm convinced that the intellectuals as a type, as a group, are more corrupted by power than any other human type. It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals.
In my new book I elaborate on this and I offer an explanation why. You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey, eh? But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.
And here we are, 53 years later with a society full of three more generations of college-educated intellectuals. We have a mass movement started by those intellectuals on college campuses where they teach and are taught to loathe their nation and their fellow citizens. We're in not a civil war over control of the government, but a RELIGIOUS war over the control of our souls.
57 genders. Free speech is violence, but violence is speech, but silence is violence. There should be an equal number of female Fortune 500 CEOs but not an equal number of female brick layers, roofers, plumbers, or auto mechanics. Tear down all the statues. Rename all the streets, schools and other public buildings. Burn down Federal buildings, preferably with Federal agents inside. Raise your hand and say "Black Lives Matter" or we'll beat you. Defund the police, but call the highway patrol when a Joe Biden campaign bus is surrounded by Trump supporters in pickup trucks, and on, and on, and on.
And so far we deplorables have acquiesced, gone along, kept our mouths shut and tried to stay out of it.
That choice is not going to be viable much longer. The Left is like the Terminator - it doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, and absolutely will not stop unless it is stopped. It's time to stop them. This election is only the first step. If we don't take it, we may not get another. It's time to #StandUpandFaceThem, and damn the backlash.
REPORT ON BIDEN’S ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA.
“First, it is almost exclusively taken from public sources and
documentation. Everything from Chinese news reports to corporate
records. The report is immaculately cited so that anyone who wishes to
replicate where a specific piece of information was found or see the
underlying documentation can do so.”
The full report is here. Looks like lots of stuff for investigative journalists to run with, if there are any of those left.
Redstate picked it up, but you can bet nobody in major media will touch it, and Facebook and Twitter will do everything they can to suppress it.
Though I am an unlikely messenger at first glance —
rest assured that the name that I carry is antithetical to the values I
hold — my heart is in the right place: with you. The level of urgency
coupled with the platform afforded to me by my circumstance compel me to
speak up and warn you before it is too late.
This blog has been, for me, a seventeen-year exploration of other people's ideas. If you've been here long, you'll know that I use short quotes and long excerpts from other people's writings to make the points I write about. Like most people, I am not an "original thinker." I try to expose myself to as much as I can, and weigh it against my experience and reason to determine truth. Then I put it down in pixels to help me get my head around it.
Over these past seventeen years (hell, over the last 25), I have slowly come to some conclusions that I'm not happy about.
Remember that last nearly 10,000-word überpost? I told you that so I could tell you this. Hopefully I won't be as long-winded this time.
From his recent piece Year Zero at NRO, but do read the whole thing:
Gun sales are at record levels. I supposed the revolutionaries never investigated the original idea of a police force and the concept of the government’s legal monopoly on violence? It was not just to protect the law-abiding from the criminal, but to protect the criminal from the outraged vigilante.
Only police can stop blood feuds such as the ones we see in Chicago or like the medieval ones of Iceland’s Njáls saga, or the postbellum slaughtering of the Hatfields and McCoys. We are already seeing a counterrevolution — as the Left goes ballistic that anyone would appear on his lawn pointing a semiautomatic rifle to protect mere “brick and mortar.”
Without a functioning police force, do we really believe that the stockbroker is going to walk home in the evening in New York City without a firearm, or that the suburbanite in Minneapolis in an expansive home will not have a semiautomatic rifle, or that the couple who drives to Los Angeles with the kids to visit Disneyland will not have a 9mm automatic in their car console? The Left has energized the Second Amendment in a way the NRA never could, and for the next decade, there will be more guns in pockets, cars, and homes than at any time in
history.
To the people of my parent's generation, World War II was a reality that they had lived through, and not a bunch of black and white movies starring John Wayne.
Books upon books were written on the subject, to help them digest and understand just how it was that something of that magnitude could actually happen, how it was that an entire European society could go insane and do what it did. (As for the Japanese society, it was insane to begin with, and thus more easily understood)
Yes, as politically incorrect as it is, I stand by what I just said:
"Entire Societies Can and Have Gone Stark Raving Batshit Fucking Insane."
Just over 17 years ago I wrote a two-part post, Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? In it, I discussed a couple of cases that proved that there is no "Duty to protect" on the part of the government -- municipal, county, state or federal. The second example was of Linda Riss, a New York City resident who was stalked by a jilted lover. She tried to get police protection, but could not. Until an attacker hired by her ex threw lye in her face, scarring and blinding her. THEN she got round-the-clock protection. She sued the NYPD - and lost.
The dissenting judge in the case wrote this:
Linda has turned to the courts of this State for redress, asking that the city be held liable in damages for its negligent failure to protect her from harm. With compelling logic, she can point out that, if a stranger, who had absolutely no obligation to aid her, had offered her assistance, and thereafter Burton Pugach was able to injure her as a result of the negligence of the volunteer, the courts would certainly require him to pay damages. (Restatement, 2d, Torts, § 323.) Why then should the city, whose duties are imposed by law and include the prevention of crime (New York City Charter, § 435) and, consequently, extend far beyond that of the Good Samaritan, not be responsible? If a private detective acts carelessly, no one would deny that a jury could find such conduct unacceptable. Why then is the city not required to live up to at least the same minimal standards of professional competence which would be demanded of a private detective?
Linda's reasoning seems so eminently sensible that surely it must come as a shock to her and to every citizen to hear the city argue and to learn that this court decides that the city has no duty to provide police protection to any given individual. What makes the city's position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense (former Penal Law, § 1897). Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her." (My emphasis)
As I wrote at that time, this is the practical result of "gun control." Denial of the means to defend yourself, while not providing any other layer of real protection.
Every minute brought some new shock and a fresh surge of adrenaline: more and more of those roving gangs, some sticking around for minutes. Squad cars racing down in convoy, sirens blaring. The smashing of windows (a hair salon on the block, I learned in the morning, had been smashed in). The screeching of tires. The shouting of men: “Stop, you motherf–ker!” Why won’t the men in blue stay in front of our house?
At two in the morning, it couldn’t be denied that one particular roving gang was roving no more; its members were obviously staking out our building. Now cackling, now going ominously silent. Should I race upstairs and bring a kitchen knife? How would this scenario play out? Would they just smash our lobby and leave? What could stop them if they wanted to take the elevators up to our homes?
A couple years ago I was working security at a bar in northern Virginia. I overheard a table of college kids arguing about gun rights and gun control and it was getting far too emotional so I did what any sane combat veteran would do and attempted to exfiltrate. I must not have withdrawn as surreptitiously as I intended, because I was stopped in my tracks when a 5-foot-nothing brunette seemingly leapt in front of me and blurted out "excuse me, can you help us?"
I'm sure I must have looked irritated as I cycled through the possible quips and excuses I considered available to me but being uncertain that she wasn't some Senator's daughter, I caved: "What's up?"
She basically leads me to this table of 2 other females (probably both named Karen) and a very soft looking male.
Becky: "So, we were just talking about current events and, you know. So, you look like you're probably in the military, right? Like the Army?"
(When you accuse someone of being in the military you probably don't need to give an example)
Me: "Similar.. yea"
Becky: "Right. Okay. So, do you think civilians should be allowed to own guns?"
Me: "Most of us. Yes."
Becky: (clearly not happy with my answer) "Okay, so, why do you think you need a gun?"
(At this point it's almost 2am and I've just given up on patience. Hold my beer)
(With intentionally overt condescension): "Oh, honey, I don't. I don't need a gun."
Becky stares at me blankly, so I continue, but with a more serious tone:
"I could follow you home, walk up your driveway, and beat you to death with the daily newspaper.
I could choke you to death with that purse.
I could take a credit card, break it in half, and cut your throat open with it.
With enough time and effort I could beat your boyfriend here with a rolled up pair of socks.
I could probably dream up six dozen other ways I could easily end your life if you gave me an hour or so.
If I wanted to, I could wrap my hand around that beer mug and kill all four of you before you could make it to the exit. The worst part is, in your utopian little fantasyland, there ain't a thing any of you could do about it.
I don't need a gun.
You need a gun.
You need a gun because of men like me."
Call me a jerk, but if you want to keep your guns, these are the conversations we all need to start having.
I knew that D.C. was corrupt, but I was unaware just how bad it actually is. Elect someone new to Congress or the Senate? They can't represent the people who elected them because they have no power. That is in the hands of the Power Elite, and through them the staffers and the lobbyists. And if they don't toe the line, the RNC and DNC will do everything in their power to make sure that they don't get re-elected. We don't have a Representative Republic, we have descended to an Oligarchy. Watch all four parts of The Swamp. If that doesn't piss you off, nothing will. And note that the only members of Congress that agreed to be part of this documentary series are Republican House members - no Democrats, no Senators.
The news is reporting that former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz want their testimony in the Tea Party targeting investigation sealed because they're afraid of public reaction should the information be released.
They should be afraid. Everyone sitting in a seat of power in a government office should be afraid of pissing off the public. "Tar, Feathers," as Instapundit puts it, should probably be employed somewhat less than metaphorically from time to time, so as to reduce the possibility of "Rope, tree, some assembly required."
At least some of the corrupt Illinois politicians end up serving time.
I've got nothing to add to this post from 2003 except "Thank you" to the operators of the Internet Wayback Machine, and I'll be sending them a donation.
In December of 2003, just a few months after starting this blog, I wrote Pressing the "Reset" Button, my response to this question posted at Jay Solo's now-defunct Verbosity blog:
I know, I haven't exactly been keeping up with the "of the week" part, but this one ought to make up for it. This question will require some explanation! First I will type the primary question. Then I will explain what the hell I am talking about, and ask any subsidiary questions that come up in the process. Enjoy!
Do you expect the "reset button" to need to be used in our lifetimes? For the sake of a common number, let's define "our lifetimes" as the next fifty years. Hey, I could live that long, given my genes and medical technology.
I was recently discussing with someone the concept of the Second Amendment as the government's reset button. Ultimately a major reason it exists is so the populace cannot be prevented from being armed, or easily disarmed through registration or excess regulation for that matter, in case we must ever take back the government and start again if it gets out of hand or something akin to a coup happens and the imposters must be reckoned with.
It says that the government provides for the national defense, but we retain the right to self-defense, and to keep and bear the tools needed for that, including defense against the government if it ever turns its might inward or ceases to represent us at all. It's not a separate entity, after all. It's us. If it ceases to be us, it ceases to be in our control, it needs to be taken back into the fold.
Do you think this will ever be needed? In the next fifty years? Do you think it will still be possible after another fifty years of those who want as much power, and helplessness of the populace against it as much as possible, chipping away at or disregarding our ability to reset things back to sanity? How about contrarians; do you think the reset interpretation is erroneous or, even if not, will never be needed?
I know I said that I was done writing überposts, but apparently I lied was mistaken. I ran across something earlier in the week that triggered in me the urge to write again. I fought it off valiantly but obviously lost. Either eject now, or go get yourself an adult beverage and settle in for another 5,000+ word wall-o'-text.
You can read my answer to Jay's question, but it boiled down to "Yes, but ineffectively."
In the intervening twelve-plus years I've done a lot of reading, observing, thinking and writing. I've currently got a bookmark folder entitled "Civil War" with about fifty links in it, and those are just the ones I knew I'd eventually want to go back to. Apparently I've been ruminating on this particular essay for a couple of years without realizing it. The piece that finally forced me back to the keyboard is a year-old post over at Sultan Knish, No Truce With the Left. It echos a lot of the sentiments I have posted here over the years, but as Daniel Greenfield is wont to do, he says it more eloquently than I. A short excerpt:
The left does not care about gay rights. If you doubt that, consider how many of the left's favorite Muslim countries have gay rights. The left has recently divided its campaign passions between gay marriage and defending Iran. Iran denies the existence of gays and hangs them where it finds them.
The USSR treated homosexuality as a crime even while it was recruiting gay men as spies in the West. Cuba, the darling of the American left, hated both gays and blacks. The ACLU backed the police states of Communism. If the left supports an enemy nation, the odds are excellent that it is also a violently bigoted place that makes a KKK rally look like a hippie hangout.
To understand the left, you need to remember that it does not care about 99 percent of the things it claims to care about. Name a leftist cause and then find a Communist country that actually practiced it. Labor unions? Outlawed. Environmentalism? Chernobyl. The left fights all sorts of social and political battles not because it believes in them, but to radicalize, disrupt and take power.
The left does not care about social justice. It cares about power.
That is why no truce is possible with the left. Not on social issues. Not on any issues.
Do read the whole thing.
I was reminded of another old post, this one at a blog that still exists, though it hasn't been updated in several years. I've quoted from it before, and I shall here again. While the author, Glen Wishard, was obviously in error about the lifespan of "the Marxist ideal," (see: Venezuela) his warning preceded Daniel Greenfield's by more than a decade:
The rise and fall of the Marxist ideal is rather neatly contained in the Twentieth Century, and comprises its central political phenomenon. Fascism and democratic defeatism are its sun-dogs. The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it. Political activity becomes the highest human vocation. The various socialisms are only the most prominent manifestation of this delusion, which our future historian calls "politicism". In all its forms, it defines human beings as exclusively political animals, based on characteristics which are largely or entirely beyond human control: ethnicity, nationality, gender, and social class. It claims universal relevance, and so divides the entire human race into heroes and enemies. To be on the correct side of this equation is considered full moral justification in and of itself, while no courtesy or concession can be afforded to those on the other. Therefore, politicism has no conscience whatsoever, no charity, and no mercy.
(Bold emphasis in original.) Read that whole thing, too. It's not long. But remember this, as I'll be coming back to it - "The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation...."
Another bit I've quoted here repeatedly demands another airing. Ironbear of the also defunct blog Who Tends the Fires? wrote in 2004:
I have read a great deal of history. And I have read a great deal of past political debate and discourse. Like (Billy) Beck, the last time I recall that we were this irrevocably divided between major factions was in the 1850's and 1860's - and we actually went to war within ourselves over it.
The divide is once again that stark, and that bleak. It's not "1968 all over again", it's 1858.
Unlike the first one, the dividing lines don't cut across states. Like the first one, the dividing lines are drawn across views of the ownership of men.... of whether we are owned by ourselves or by The State.
It would be a mistake to paint the conflict exclusively in terms of "cultural war", or Democrats vs Republicans, or even Left vs Right. Neither Democrats/Leftists or Republicans shy away from statism... the arguments there are merely over degree of statism, uses to which statism will be put - and over who'll hold the reins. It's the thought that they may not be left in a position to hold the reins that drives the Democrat-Left stark raving.
--
This is a conflict of ideologies...
The heart of the conflict is between those to whom personal liberty is important, and those to whom liberty is not only inconsequential, but to whom personal liberty is a deadly threat.
At the moment, that contingent is embodied most virulently by the "American" Left. This is the movement that still sees the enslavement and "re-education" of hundreds of thousands in South Vietnam, and the bones of millions used as fertilizer in Cambodia as a victory. This is the movement that sees suicide bombers as Minute Men, and sees the removal of a brutal murder and rape machine from power as totalitarianism. This is the movement that sees legitimately losing an election as the imposition of a police state. This is the movement that believes in seizing private property as "common good". That celebrates Che Guevara as a hero. The movement who's highest representatives talk blithely about taking away your money and limiting your access to your own homestead for your own good. The movement of disarmament.
The movement of the boot across the throat.
Think about it. When was the last time that you were able to engage in anything that resembled a discussion with someone of the Leftist persuasion? Were able to have an argument that was based on the premise that one of you was wrong, rather than being painted as Evil just because you disagreed?
The Left has painted itself into a rhetorical and logical corner, and unfortunately they have no logic that might act as a paint thinner. It's not possible for them to compromise with those that they've managed to conflate with the most venal of malevolence, with those whom they're convinced disagree not because of different opinions but because of stupidity and evil, with those who's core values are diametrically opposed to what the Left has embraced. There can be no real discourse, no real discussion. There's no common ground. There can be no reconciliation there - the Left has nothing to offer that any adherent of freedom wants. The only way they can achieve their venue is from a position of political ascendency where it can be imposed by force or inveigled by guile.
And all adherents of freedom have far too many decades of historical precedent demonstrating exactly where that Leftward road leads - to the ovens of Dachau.
Billy Beck is the author of the quote up on the masthead of this blog that goes, "All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war."
Another of the things that has prompted me to write was the recent Brexit vote and the reaction that has inspired. The problem isn't limited to the US, it's worldwide. Charles Krauthammer once wrote, "To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil." It's become obvious that this is true not just in American politics. I did a Google search on the phrase "Conservatives ruining future." I got 881,000 results in 0.39 seconds. There's a Facebook Page. It's the #1 hit. It was founded March 11 of 2013. The page has 107,842 total Likes.
A search on "liberals ruining future" got 1,080,000 hits in 0.44 seconds. The #1 hit there? Liberals Are Ruining America. I Know Because I Am One. a New York Times Magazine article from June 8, 2012 by one Steve Almond - "famous" for resigning from his position as a non-tenured adjunct professor at Boston College for their selection of Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker in 2006. Excerpt:
This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the modern liberal. We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices to this escalation and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse. We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment.
If this sounds like a harsh assessment, trust me, I’m among the worst offenders. Yes, I’m one of those enlightened masochists who tune in to conservative talk radio when driving alone. I recognize this as pathological behavior, and I always make sure to switch the station back to NPR before returning the car to my wife. But I can’t help myself. I take a perverse and complicated pleasure in listening to all the mean, manipulative things those people say.
Read that whole essay. I dare you.
Oh, there is a Facebook page for Liberals are Destroying Our Future as well. Apparently it was made in June of this year. It has, at the time of this writing, 132 Likes.
I came across the phrase "conservatives are ruining our future" in a piece about the Brexit vote. A few minutes of Googling and I felt like I needed to take a shower. And to finally write this essay.
"Those people," Professor Almond says. The Other.
One thing that has, if not changed certainly accelerated since I wrote "Reset" Button has been the increasing "othering" by the two sides. Just a few weeks ago I wrote Remember "Civility in Politics"? That piece was the motivation for putting Beck's quote on the masthead. As Roberta X noted, also in 2012, othering is the necessary prerequisite that justifies violence and murder. It only takes one side to do it, but it doesn't have to be a one-way street. The Sultan Knish post referenced above is one such, obviously. Another is Admit It: Decent Folks No Longer Have a Place in the Democratic Party, a piece written by Steve Pauwells and published at Clash Daily in February of 2014 (I told you I've been working on this piece for a couple of years.) Excerpt:
With so much to choose from in the political/cultural Left’s fetid trove of ludicrosities and obscenities, I’m not sure why this particular outcropping of obnoxiousness set me off so sharply – but it did. And reminded me of a harsh truth that simply must be acknowledged once and for all: these are bad people– the Democrats, I mean.
I know, the frontliners in the GOP too frequently are prodigies of gutlessness. Boehner and company? An embarrassment of don’t-create-a-ruckus, go-along-to-get-along accomodationalism, for sure.
But Democrats? They’ve nakedly, ineluctably morphed into the party of evil. As I said, harsh; but undeniably true.
Along with leading the charge in bankrupting America fiscally, Dems have gone whole hog in ransacking the soul of her citizens, as well. These towering disgraces have nailed their colors — Pink? Lavender? Red? Mortuary Gray? — to the mast of legalized baby-killing, perversion of sex and genuine marriage, institutionalized envy and victimhood. Defecating on our military and law enforcement is a party-wide pastime for these wretches — cloyingly using cops or troops as political props when convenient, otherwise icily cutting their legs out from under them at virtually every juncture. This braying Donkey caucus thrives on distorting facts and debauching history — that is, lying — and turning American against American: black or Latino versus white, woman versus man, young versus old, taker versus producer. Since God specifically clues us in that He “hates” those last two bits of odiousness (Proverbs 6:19), are we allowed to call their proponents what they are: wicked?
Way back in the olden thymes, I got a close up look at the Cult of Modern Liberalism. This was back in the early Reagan years when I was a part time employee for the Congressman Clarence Long. I was just a kid and a nobody, but Susanna, his wife, took a liking to me and that gave me the run of the place, so to speak. I used to have lunch with the Congressman two or three days a week. He was a nice man, but about as interesting as vanilla ice cream. That’s true of every elected official I met in Washington. privately, they were very dull.
The interesting people were the aides and activists. The ones on the Right were full of excitement about finally turning back the liberal tide. Even as a kid, I thought they were delusional, but they were fun. On the other hand, the old liberals defending the status quo were scary. They were deadly serious and ideology was everything. These were not people interested in free and open debate. They were not all that interested in the free market of ideas. They wanted to win and they were not interested in deviationists in their midsts.
The lesson I have carried with me ever since is this. Unless and until the Right comes to terms with what they are facing, America is doomed. These are not people with whom you can reason or compromise. They are fanatics. To quote myself, “The Liberal is out there! They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
Psychologist Robert Godwin over at the blog One Cosmos wrote How I Cured Myself of Leftism in 2005. Pertinent excerpt:
At this point in time, I am more inclined to think of leftism as an intellectual pathology rather than a psychological one (although there is clearly considerable overlap). What I mean is that it is impossible to maintain a priori that a conservative person is healthier or more emotionally mature than a liberal. There are plenty of liberals who believe crazy things but are wonderful people, and plenty of conservatives who have the right ideas but are rotten people. However, this may be begging the question, for it is still puzzling why people hold beliefs that are demonstrably untrue or at the very least unwise.
One of the problems is with our elites. We are wrong to think that the difficulty lies in the uneducated and unsophisticated masses--as if inadequate education, in and of itself, is the problem. As a matter of fact, no one is more prone to illusions than the intellectual. It has been said that philosophy is simply personal error on a grandiose scale. Complicating matters is the fact that intellectuals are hardly immune to a deep emotional investment in their ideas, no less than the religious individual. The word "belief" is etymologically linked to the word "beloved," and it is easy to see how certain ideas, no matter how dysfunctional--for example, some of the undeniably appealing ideas underpinning contemporary liberalism--are beloved by those who believe them. Thus, many liberal ideas are believed not because they are true, but because they are beautiful. Then, the intellectual simply marshals their intelligence in service of legitimizing the beliefs that they already hold. It has long been understood by psychoanalysts that for most people, reason is the slave of the passions.
Read that whole thing, too. Of course, the Left tried to "prove" that Conservatism was a mental disorder. Turns out, not so much.
The thing is, the more I study the more I agree with Godwin, the Zman, Daniel Greenfield and Steve Pauwells. And the more certain I am that the Left concluded long ago what Charles Krauthammer says they did. Zman characterized the "aides and activists" on the Right as "delusional, but they were fun." The old liberals were "scary. They were deadly serious and ideology was everything."
And that's the difference. For one side it's a competition. For the other side, it's a war. A holy war.
When Barack Obama was running for his first term as President, his wife told us:
Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction.
Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment. And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.
From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.
What is socialism if not an attempt at human redemption? Remember, "The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it." Not achieve it - agitate for it. Outcome doesn't matter, only intent.
They (journalists) truly seem to believe this, that they have access to information to which philosophers and scientists have been denied. I spoke once to a journalist who worried out loud about "compromising" her objectivity when covering a story.
The claim being advanced here, by assumption, is that journalists can truly convey or interpret the nature of reality as opposed to the various organizational versions of events in which journalists must daily traffic. The claim is incredible and amounts to a Gnostic pretension of being "in the know" about the nature of reality, or at least the reality that matters most politically.
An ecclesiastical model most appropriately describes this elite journalistic function under mass democracy. Information is the vital substance that makes the good democracy possible. It allows, as it were, for the existence of the good society, a democratic state of grace. Information is in this sense analogous to the concept of divine grace under the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church. Divine grace was essential for the good spiritual life, the life that mattered. The clergy dispensed divine grace to the masses in the form of sacraments. They were its intermediaries, who established over time a monopoly, becoming the exclusive legitimate channel of divine grace.
Recollect that the interposition of intermediaries, the clergy, along a vital spiritual-psychological supply route was the rub of the Reformation. The clergy cloaked themselves in the mantle of spiritual authority rather than acting as its facilitators. Many elite newspapers have apparently done much the same thing, speaking and interpreting authoritatively for democracy, warranting these actions on the basis of social responsibility.
It is not accident, then, that the pluralistic model of social action largely discounts journalists as an important class. In the same way the decentralized religious pluralism generically known as Protestantism discounts the role of clergy. This should be expected. Pluralism and Protestantism share common historical origins. American pluralism particularly is deeply rooted in the Reformation's reaction to interpretive monopoly.
Journalists, particularly elite journalists, occupy under mass democracy this ecclesiastical social role, a functional near-monopoly whose duty becomes disseminating and interpreting the administrative word and its symbols unto the public. Democratic communication in this sense is sacramental, drawing its participants together into one body.
I would go so far as to include public educators in this ecclesiastic order. It is their job to indoctrinate each new generation in The Word, The Light and The Life. After all, human redemption is the goal, and Government is The Way.
By way of example, look at this piece - an April 14, 2014 New York Times column by the Times' token "conservative*," David Brooks entitled A Long Obedience.
The Israelites in Exodus whine; they groan; they rebel for petty reasons. When they are lost in a moral wilderness, they immediately construct an idol to worship and give meaning to their lives.
But Exodus is a reminder that statecraft is soulcraft, that good laws can nurture better people. Even Jews have different takes on how exactly one must observe the 613 commandments, but the general vision is that the laws serve many practical and spiritual purposes. For example, they provide a comforting structure for daily life. If you are nervous about the transitions in your life, the moments when you go through a door post, literally or metaphorically, the laws will give you something to do in those moments and ease you on your way.
The laws tame the ego and create habits of deference by reminding you of your subordination to something permanent. The laws spiritualize matter, so that something very normal, like having a meal, has a sacred component to it. The laws build community by anchoring belief in common practices. The laws moderate religious zeal; faith is not expressed in fiery acts but in everyday habits. The laws moderate the pleasures; they create guardrails that are meant to restrain people from going off to emotional or sensual extremes.
The 20th-century philosopher Eliyahu Dessler wrote, “the ultimate aim of all our service is to graduate from freedom to compulsion.”
Which would explain why the US Code of Federal Regulations sections concerning handrails run to nearly 1000 words. Same for doors.
Statecraft is soulcraft! Nothing compels like fines and jail time. It's spiritual! Submit, heathens, or face the Inquisition! It's for your own good!
Now, look at how heathens and especially apostates are treated. Brendan Eich gets forced out of his CEO position at Mozilla for contributing to California's Proposition 8 supporting a ban on gay marriage. Larry Summers, President of Harvard was forced out of that position for various apostasies. Columnist Mark Steyn is currently fighting a lawsuit over his Global Warming heresy. Scientist Matt Taylor was forced to verbally self-flagellate for wearing a sexist shirt during a television interview after landing a probe on a comet. The list goes on. And now it's becoming instiutionalized - the new Democrat Party platform includes a plank calling for the investigation and prosecution of Global Warming skeptics, a tactic already embraced by a number of Attorneys General in fifteen states, Washington, D.C. and the Virgin Islands.
The Gun Rights movement has managed to get a couple of outdoor magazine journalists fired for supporting bans on semi-automatic rifles, and the rightwing internet did manage to cost Dan Rather and a few others at CBS their jobs over Memogate, but our track record is nothing compared to the Left's.
Oh, wait. We made Piers Morgan go home. But then Jeremy Clarkson has actually punched him. We're not a patch on that.
However, it appears that the only place where we've held off the Left has been on the topic of gun control. Why is that?
I believe it's because that's the only topic on which we have a consistent, coherent and widespread philosophy. It may be as simple as "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!" but it is shared by a large number of people who may otherwise be politically apathetic. The Left is made up of a gigantic mishmash of self-contradicting ideologies and agendas, but they all share one underlying belief: The political Right is evil, intolerable and must be - not defeated - but destroyed if the Future Is To Be Saved.
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No.... We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one." F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."
For the Left, any not part of The Body are the new Jews, and I think we understand that - some of us at least subconsciously. Estimates are that about 100 million new guns were purchased by individuals since 2006, along with a LOT of ammunition, mostly handguns and semi-automatic military-pattern rifles. This was not done in anticipation of handing them in at some future date. So, we have the numbers to thwart them in the legislatures and for now the courts are going our way, but pretty much nowhere else are we making headway because they're True Believers and we (mostly) still think of the Left as the Loyal Opposition. We don't want war. We, after all, have a lot to lose. But as long as they're fighting a war and we're not, we're going to be on the losing side.
In 2010 Angelo Codevilla wrote a very influential piece, America's Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution. This was one of the first mainstream pieces I can remember reading that expressed the idea that our government was not divided by the Democrats and Republicans, but it is instead occupied by what Roberta X refers to as "the two halves of the Running Things Party" - as Codevilla calls them, "the Ruling Class" - and they aren't interested in listening to us. Pertinent excerpt:
Important as they are, our political divisions are the iceberg’s tip. When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences “undecided,” “none of the above,” or “tea party,” these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.
Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority’s demand for representation will be filled.
Apparently not this year. Read that piece if you haven't already.
So one third of the nation is politically engaged. Two-thirds of us feel ignored and abused. Now a chunk of those who feel that the Democrats don't represent them are the really hardcore Left who are angry that Obama didn't implement whole-scale Socialism upon his inauguration, but most of the disenfranchised are pissed at the government's profligate spending, reckless abuse and accumulation of powers and complete lack of accountability.
Carol Ann Rand, of the Georgia Libertarian Party, once pointed out to me that the commies have it all over us when it comes to organization, because they're the ones who are built for "unity". "Trying to organize libertarians," she said, "is like trying to herd cats."
Here is the central problem surrounding what you people are talking about:
There is no coherent and cohesive philosophy underpinning it.
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But you people are talking about blowing the place up, whether you know it or not. That's the only way it can go, as things are now, because there is no philosophy at the bottom of what you're talking about. Once the shooting starts, all bets are off.
Which echoes what I said in answer to Jay Solo's question two years earlier, though perhaps more apocalyptically. That's what happens when individuals press the "Fuck It" button.
It is generally accepted that two hundred and forty-one years ago, a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed, about a third of the population was loyalist, a third neutral, and perhaps a third in favor of revolt. In January of 1776 Thomas Paine published his magnum opus Common Sense. By July it had sold over 150,000 copies, and changed a nation. Created a nation. The people had a philosophy behind their rebellion, even if it was "FUCK KING GEORGE!" We have no such unifying philosophy. "Treat me with benign neglect" is not a philosophy.
They've got hate, and a holy mandate to build Utopia - on our corpses, if history is any guide. We've got a populace that knows something is wrong, but has been robbed of the education necessary to grasp exactly what and then reason themselves out of the problem. Robbed by the same forces that are intent on building that Utopia. Instead, a significant portion voted for Donald Trump, mostly out of sheer frustration. Another example of pressing the "Fuck It" button.
This does not bode well for us.
(*David Brooks is "conservative" for a New Yorker. That puts him to the left of pretty much anybody in Texas outside of Austin.)
Happy (In)Dependence Day.
UPDATE: Gerard Van der Leun reposts a 2010 piece on this topic you should read..
