Home » Pelosi isn’t just worried about Trump: she’s watching her left flank: the Justice Democrats

Comments

Pelosi isn’t just worried about Trump: she’s watching her left flank: the Justice Democrats — 91 Comments

  1. I think Pelosi knows better. She is just there for the power and the money she and her husband have skimmed off the taxpayer for 30 years. The Socialists know no history or economics.

  2. I’m sure she is worried about them; they could upend her power over the House Democrats.

    As to these radicals themselves, there are no more “radical conservatives” in their party. Those departed the scene long ago.

  3. Better they push hard now, when there are still enough older folks like us around — who remember the Berlin Wall and Pol Pot and all the rest of that horror show — to counter them in the voting booth.

    But I was just telling my 19-year-old son this morning that with the popularity of socialist ideology among the Millennials, my concern for him and my other sons (30 and 17) is that the future is NOT “looking so bright I gotta wear shades”. He and his brothers and their friends are generally pretty conservative, common-sense oriented young men, which I am happy to see, of course. We should all hope that this generation (20-25 and under) will be a counter to the pro-socialist Millennials.

  4. Very timely post & spot on. The Justice Dems are supported by a wide network of communists, both domestic & international, including George Soros in their long-term strategy of destroying America. AOC is just one of their many recruited mouthpieces that they are using to advance their goals; she obviously has no natural talents & is playing an actor’s role in this drama.

    In his SOTU last night, Prez Trump said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Well, this is the exception to that maxim, because this is not a battle, it is a war! The Right better wake up fast & start converting America’s leftist youth to conservative principles, or they will be lost.

  5. AOC is just one of their many recruited mouthpieces that they are using to advance their goals; she obviously has no natural talents & is playing an actor’s role in this drama. –Magnus

    Perhaps, but she makes it clear she would be a willing Robespierre.

  6. I’ve always thought that the left would be more dangerous than the religious right, even back when the religious right were being cast as the bad guys. The left has a lot of recent history, almost all of it bad.

  7. What we are probably going to see in this polity, eventually, and probably sooner rather than later, is unabashed talk of instituting a “Second Founding”, and the advocacy introduction of new organizing principles as the basis for establishing the legitimacy of social relations and attitudes on new grounds. It, if it comes to pass, will make the “Judicial Revolution” and its wake look like a walk in the park.

    “Old Dead white men” was just the very beginning.

    There’s no mystery here for anyone who’s bothered to actually read progressive theory. I’m assuming we all have by now? Marxists dot Org, Second wave feminism tracts, Wilhelm Reich and “The Sexual Revolution; for the Socialist Restructuring of Humans”; Engels on the family, et cetera et cetera.

    Government as the “executive committee of the ruling class”, laws as “superstructural” phenomena to be deconstructed, “rights” as selfish anti-social illusions; freedom as just another word for the problematic phenomenon of alienation, the heterosexual family as the nexus of the private interest problem … all these theses are familiar to us already.

    We should not be surprised or mystified then when: The Constitution, the principles of natural law, teleology, and even established preferences (in an evaluative context where nothing more solid than preferences is held to objectively exist) count for nothing when all social structures and relations and individual impulses are viewed through the lens of suspicion and resentment; and human nature is itself judged a tyranny: The tyranny of the patriarchy, the tyranny of capitalism, the tyranny of the natural family, and as rad-fems would have it, the ultimate tyranny, i.e., the tyranny of biology.

    It’s a fight that cannot be avoided as everyone commenting on this blog knows.

    You cannot concede enough or retreat back far enough, or grovel enough – as sensitive conservatives have amply demonstrated – to satisfy the feelings of grievance generated by organisms discontented with the very fact of their being bounded entities, lacking an omnipotent will.

    I don’t have any crazies or alcoholics in my own family; but I have known people who do, and who have survived such an experience. And what they describe in their family lives, while cohabiting with unpredictable, unstable, never satisfied or satisfiable persons, is similar to what we are experiencing in this country.

    When conservatives label progressive “liberalism” as a mental illness, they are right insofar as in many ways it is a behavioral expression emanating from persons who are in some measure mentally, and most certainly morally, malfunctioning.

  8. Magnus, Kai Akker:

    I think AOC has enormous natural talents. They just happen to be talents that mostly appeal to a younger demographic as well as old radicals. But I am surprised that people don’t see her talents. I think it’s always dangerous to underestimate the strength and appeal of those who would destroy you.

  9. The Justice Democrats (can we call them JDs for short?)
    We of a certain age remember that JD was also an acronym for Juvenile Delinquent [s]. 🙂

  10. Neo, I see some talent, in the acting-out category, and it is enough that she would gladly step up and — solely due to some future emergency — declare who should be executed such that the wonderful future is preserved. That is talent enough!

    I doubt that comes into play, but who knows? Our addiction to free stuff has become so great that even Trump had to throw several free items into the promises last night. Shahid and AOC are supremely talented on that score.

  11. “I think AOC has enormous natural talents.”
    I totally missed them. She has a diploma from Boston University and I compare her to the brainless scarecrow in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. At the finale of the movie the fake wizard tells the scarecrow he can’t give him a brain but he can give him a diploma. AOC has the diploma but I don’t think she is very intelligent, to put it politely.

  12. Ray:

    Do you think I’m saying that she’s exceptionally intelligent? Some kind of big intellectual? What makes you think that would be a natural talent in politics?

    She’s clever, canny, bold, modern, hip, physically attractive, young, energetic, and unafraid of the old guard. She’s dedicated to a goal, knows how to propagandize, mouth slogans, be convincing to those who are as ignorant of history as she is. Who do you think she’s appealing to, anyway?

    She is very talented, and she is also plugged into operatives on the far left who know a lot about the history of politics and political movements. She is also very good at modern means of communication through the internet and social media.

  13. Haha. The “Justice Democrats.” Why not the “Happy Good Time Free Unicorn 4 U” Democrats? It would be slightly more accurate.

    The Incompetent Would Be Feudal Overlords of Northern Griftgrafterica are feeling threatened by people who actually believe the BS they’ve been shoveling to their intellectually debased base for decades and now want actual results, like free college, free housing, free food, and free medical care. Now THAT’S justice!

  14. Like Obama, Occasio-Cortez is a puppet – a very appealing puppet. You want to like her! She seems like a sweet kid and a hard worker. Good for her for toppling some moldy old bumble/cog-in-the-machine pol. It’s compelling.
    There is no substance to her message – it’s all resentment and emotion and fakery and promises that will never be kept – the usual gruel served up by the old puppet masters. She’s doing her job which is to get in front of the camera and project.

  15. Tangent: I’m curious about claims Pelosi may have tardive dyskinesia, a neurological disorder in which the patient makes involuntary movements particularly of the face — grimacing, puckering, blinking and tongue movements. Plus attempts to suppress these movements.

    Watch these excerpts from the SOTU. It’s disconcerting how Pelosi blinks every second or two, along with some weird mouth puckering now and then.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_DlD-vp0s

    Tardive dyskinesia is usually caused by anti-psychotic drugs and in rare cases even by prozac-type drugs. My mother got it after the doctors gave her a lot of thorazine. Pretty horrible. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  16. Ok, I get it… murdering babies after birth or during birth, green energy utopia, glorification of ‘transgender’ children, tax the rich so they don’t eat the poor, firearm registration leading to confiscation, 50 odd genders, open borders, etc. Color me mystified if this is a winning agenda in a national election.

  17. AOC is quite popular in the Democratic Party, particularly among the young. See this

    Miscellaneous survey found 74% of Democrats would “consider” voting for O’Casey. Was she one name in a lengthy list? No details presented. Meanwhile, 17% would like to vote for her. Presumably when she becomes old enough to run in six years, although most of them probably don’t know that much about the Constitution.

    So she’s a hot item in a party asphyxiating on aged, tired, overexposed or under-appealing mediocrities. Not sure that translates into any staying power. Are you sure younger voters are so interested in her? If you’re right, that would mean that we have to fight some of the old fights won a couple generations ago simply because the millennials are so devoid of historical knowledge. Depressing thought.

    Kyrsten Cinnabon has much more visual appeal, at least for a while longer; and maybe a little more mainstream instinct too. Did you notice that dress?
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Rep_Kyrsten_Sinema%2C_Official_Portrait.jpg/1200px-Rep_Kyrsten_Sinema%2C_Official_Portrait.jpg

  18. AOC is as much a creation of puppet masters as is the exulted messiah. Yes, she is media savy, yes some find her attractive, yes she is young; she is also an airhead.

  19. Ray,
    Fans of The Wizard of Oz should realized that the ditzy scarecrow actually had already demonstrated some considerable smarts before the Wizard bestows the diploma on him. Similarly for the cowardly lion and the tin man. Not that it matters, but I couldn’t resist.

    Yes, Sandy-O (like the charismatic Candy-O) is likely a serious threat.

    The self labeling of the hard left has gone from the “anarchist” of Emma Goldman and Pres. McKinley’s assassin (and some communists too), to the “progressive” of Teddy Roosevelt’s failed presidential run, to the “liberal” of Johnson and Carter, back to the “progressive” of Hillary’s last run.

    While it may not matter greatly, I think it matters a least a little bit to the negative that “justice” is the new name. Progressive inspires some notion of a sci-fi novel’s utopia (I don’t mean a dystopia), that is warm and fuzzy. At least with SJW, social justice warrior, there is some hope that the words social and warrior are a type of euphemism. We SJW’s want to sound tougher than we are.

    But Justice Democrat sounds like it means business, and we should realize that the only thing that gives traditional justice its teeth is punishment. This is why it is so important to take the Constitution seriously. One of its primary functions is to protect us against this kind of garbage (evil?).

    Back when a journalist asked Nancy Pelosi whether she thought the then new Obamacare legislation was Constitutional, she responded “Seriously? Seriously?” Which I took to mean, “We don’t take the Constitution as a serious impediment to anything.”

  20. I was going to say, in reply to Ray’s “I don’t think she (A O-C) is very intelligent,” something like what you said, Neo.

    She may indeed not be very intelligent in the sense that most of the commenters here would use the word. She may, for instance, genuinely believe that the only obstacles to implementing her Green New Deal are greedy businessmen, Republicans, etc. She may truly be clueless about many of the problems she thinks she can solve. But that does not mean she can’t be effective at getting power. We should all realize by now that the ability to come up with snappy snark is far more effective politically than the ability to make a cogent argument.

  21. The Dominion of Virginia’s Democratic Party is in the throes of self-enduced self-destruction simply because the Truth is out.

    Simply because the MSM, no matter how much it would like to, cannot suppress—or redirect or obfuscate—this deluge of negative information.

    Similarly, should the MSM no longer be able suppress—or redirect or obfuscate—the destructive and essentially stupid (not to mention exceedingly dishonest) essence of AOC and her wing of socialist radicals, then she’s toast (and will melt from sight like the Wicked Witch of the West).

    Ditto for Pelosi and Schumer and Schiff and the rest of that motley crew.

    The MSM is going to have to go into overdrive—to suppress, redirect and obfuscate—even more than it’s been doing thus far. And in so doing will further expose itself to more Americans for the singular fraud that it is.

    Mueller, too, will have to do his damnedest to keep the fires of the “Trump Collusion with Russia” fiction burning bright.

    They are certainly not afraid to lie. And, in fact, it’s all they got.

    File under: Voldemort

  22. “Color me mystified if this is a winning agenda in a national election.”
    Absolutely true.

    And I am sure Gavel-swinging Nancy knows that too…
    AOC & the JDs need to remember the old adage, “If you strike at the king you best make sure you kill him.” Nancy hasn’t got her skeleton fingers on that gavel just to see AOC & the JDs piss it away on socialist pipe dreams…especially now that President Trump has drawn a line in the SOTU sand & lots of the USA applauded.

    Experience & treachery will beat out youth & passion every time.

  23. “Suppress, redirect and obfuscate”….but I forgot to mention what’s obvious: wildly go on the offensive. Wildly attack. No holds barred. Flail away at any and all perceived enemies. Go for the jugular.

    Everyone they deem a threat will be targeted.

    And the heck with collateral damage (and the truth).

    Remember: They are the moral party that truly loves their country. And so everything they do is justified. (And they are desperate.)

  24. parker and many more:

    The plan is not necessarily to have a leftist win the presidency in 2020. They’re building. The subtitle to the article by Shahid that I linked is: “Establishing a forceful left caucus in Congress might be even more important than picking the perfect Democratic nominee for president.”

    They’ve got time, and they’ve got energy. They believe that time is on their side, because old people are dying out and young people coming forward, schooled by the progressive tilt of the educational system. The Justice Democrats want to move the Democratic Party by increments to the left; it doesn’t have to be all at once—by threatening and replacing Democratic members of Congress in as many districts as possible by primarying them before they quite know what hit them (as happened with AOC’s win—the key to winning the general is to win the primary in a blue district), and by withholding votes in Congress for certain bills unless the more powerful Democrats support somewhat more leftist agendas. That’s one step Another is to accustom the public to more radical views over time. You can see that that’s worked quite well in the last decade or two. Viewpoints that just a few years ago were beyond the pale are now mainstream, with repetition.

  25. huxley:

    There are many other drugs that can cause it, including several medications for the GI system, particularly anti-nausea drugs.

    My guess is that that’s not what Pelosi has, however. My guess would be she has a problem with dry mouth.

  26. “Justice Democrats” is about as Orwellian as one can get.

    As is AOC’s recent gushings about Jeremy Corbyn.

    Both the AOC wing of the Democratic Party as well as the Corbynites currently dominating the British Labour Party are terrified at what may well happen to their Bolivarian heroes in Venezuela.

    The monstrous allegiance of “JDs” and UK Labourites (together with their confederates in Russia, China, Iran, the Palestinians, et al.) to the policies of destruction and terror, misery and death that have been imposed upon Venezuela by Chavez and now Maduro must be publicized again and again for all that it’s worth.

    And then prominently juxtaposed with the dynamic, photogenic, intelligent, smiling face attached to Orwell’s proverbial jackboot.

  27. neo,

    I understand what you are saying, and you are correct about the long game the hardcore left are playing. But, I have a feeling (feelings trump rationally according to the left), they will overplay their hand, at least in flyover country. First they have to convert the military to their agenda, and then abolish the 2nd. I can’t see that happening. I am old but still able to defend the inherited rights of my children and grandchildren. The left never thinks about the unintended consequences of their wishful intentions.

  28. Because their beliefs are divorced from reality… the Left has a losing hand; if in the next 10 years they gain enough power, they will push us into a disastrous for them Civil War.

    If it takes another generation to gain the political power they need, they will force America down the path that Western Europe has chosen and Islam will ‘assimilate’ a PC America.

    But America’s millenials, upon whom the Left’s hopes rest, may awaken, both through witnessing W. Europe’s coming “lesson” in welcoming the “religion of peace” and by experiencing the early 21st Century’s ‘Super’ Mauder Minimum… starting as early as this year, there is strong data that indicates the beginning of a 350-400 year mini ice age… both events will destroy millenial’s faith in the trust worthiness of the Left’s narrative.

  29. GB,

    It does look like another mini ice age is on the horizon. There is nothing new under the son. Siblings and I just bought 5 more cords of seasoned oak to be delivered to our northern Minnesota wood shed. We and ours will survive. We have greenhouses, a lake to fish year round, and close ties to the county sheriff who appreciates our campaign contributions. Plus lots of dehydrated food stores. We will survive, if we can make the 5 to 7 hour drive to the strong hold once TSHTF.

    We have thought this out for decades. We are not stupid. We have gamed this over and over. We will make it to the place where 90% don’t want to be 70% of the year.

  30. Neo – that list of her attributes you refer to seems more like you are describing a twenty-something Hollywood actress.

    She may have what it takes to appeal to a largely ignorant and uninformed – brainwashed is probably a better word – generation. That’s something I guess, though not much, and it says more bad things about our future than it says good things about her.

  31. Jeff Brokaw:

    That list of attributes is not meant to be either praise or condemnation, just a description. I detest her politics and I think she’s incredibly arrogant and full of herself. But I think she has qualities that appeal to a lot of people, especially young people.

    Also old leftists. I was with a leftist friend a month or so ago and even though she knows my politics, she is so enthusiastic about AOC that she enthusiastically asked me “Don’t you just love her?” Needless to say, I answered “Not at all.”

  32. neo: Thanks for the response, though the blinking still bothers me. Pelosi often has this wide-eyed, frozen, vulnerable look which reminds me of my mother.

    Which isn’t to say I’m overflowing with sympathy. I was OMG with her daughter’s recent interview on CNN:

    “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding,” Alexandra Pelosi bluntly told CNN in an interview Wednesday morning. “That’s all you need to know about her.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-will-cut-your-head-off-and-you-wont-even-know-youre-bleeding-daughter-says

  33. “I think AOC has enormous natural talents . . . it’s always dangerous to underestimate the strength and appeal of those who would destroy you.”

    I don’t think that AOC’s talent is enormous, because I don’t believe she is on the scene by & of herself. She has some talent, which is why she was recruited by Justice Dems for this role in their drama. But the Shakespeare of this play is a myriad organization, mature, malevolent, & manic beyond imagination.

    She is dangerous because her supporting organization is relentlessly wicked. Were she to be hit by a bus in the morning, JDs would have her replacement ready to go by the afternoon & that AOC2 would be just as effective in the role. It is the JD organization that has the enormous talents for the tasks they are undertaking.

    The JD organization, other Soros-funded community groups & their underground cobweb of interconnecting organizations are the enemies of American patriots. Snarking directed by the Right at AOC is pointless & allows the Left to make great strides without meaningful opposition from the Right.

  34. David Horowitz runs a number of conservative websites, one of which – Discover the Networks – is very helpful in understanding what’s going on over on the Left, including strategies & the interconnections:

    https://www.discoverthenetworks.org

    The site is well worth your time.

  35. Neo, you have gauged AOC very thoughtfully and wisely. She has a cunning charm, and charm itself should never be underestimated. Most people are so surfeited with both the image (and evidence) of the evil Hitler that they forget, or are unaware, that he could charm a dog off a meat wagon. She is to me an interesting mix of intelligence and ignorance; she knows a lot that is untrue. She is a phenom, buoyed by an uncritical, fascinated media inclined to give her a pass. In some way I need to explore more in my mind, she reminds me a lot of someone I “covered” back in her news-making days — Angela Davis. What a sad commentary on our society that we allowed her to take herself so seriously.

  36. Magnus:

    I agree that she has been selected, and that if her star starts falling she could be replaced. But I don’t think she’d be replaced by someone with as much charisma. The right may not detect much charisma, but believe me the left does, and some of it appeals to the middle. That’s not so easy to find.

    For example, from that first article that I linked:

    For all its passion, the group might have been just another voice in the political wilderness if it hadn’t been for the success of Ocasio-Cortez. She had come to the founders’ attention in 2016 when her brother, Gabriel, who had heard about Brand New Congress, nominated her to be one of its candidates. Chakrabarti was still with BNC, and he told Business Insider earlier this month that the group didn’t really see her district as a likely target: It was occupied by Joe Crowley, the powerful 10-term incumbent from Queens, and seemed unwinnable. But after a few phone calls and a meeting, he had a different thought: “Holy Crap. You are an incredible candidate.”…

    “We would go to these fundraisers in the Bronx, and there would be ex-cops in the room and they would have tears in their eyes. It was a double thing for me. I had just come off the Bernie campaign and here AOC was, she was so fucking inspiring and so charismatic that grown men are crying and I would think to myself, ‘We just have no chance here. Everyone is going to be so disappointed!’”

    And against all odds, she won. She was the only one of the 12 people the group was pushing who won, and it’s no accident. I think it has to do with the talents I listed.

  37. The plan is not necessarily to have a leftist win the presidency in 2020. They’re building…. They’ve got time, and they’ve got energy. They believe that time is on their side, because old people are dying out and young people coming forward, schooled by the progressive tilt of the educational system.

    neo: Absolutely. That is how leftists look at things and they are not foolish for doing so.

    Civil rights. The Vietnam War. Women’s liberation. Abortion. Gay liberation. Gay marriage. Legalized marijuana. Transgender rights.

    These were all laughably fringe concerns once. Leftists turned them around with sheer moral certainty, public outrage and relentless activism.

  38. Nonetheless, stuff works until it doesn’t.

    I think the left has played out its string. Regular Americans have caught on and the usual leftist strategies are sputtering. Otherwise Trump would not have been elected.

  39. Ralph Kinney Bennett:

    She actually reminds me somewhat of Eva Peron, only even more to the left. Something about the bun?

    Just now I got curious to see whether I was the only one saying that, and I found this.

  40. To tell you the truth, Magnus, I wish DTN would go back to the old format. I’ve been using it almost since the day it began, and I liked the way articles of particular interest were presented in the left sidebar, and the fact that you could browse for pieces on specific topics, as well on people, groups, funders, and more.

    I see there’s a new new format. Right off the bat … The article on Kamala Harris shows one “Connection” (right sidebar), to Eric Schneidermann. When I look at the article on him, I see that while the heading on “Connections” says there are seven (known), only three are listed: Sharpton, K. Harris, and Gore.

    Sigh….

    Just the same, thanks for mentioning it. It’s a very good place for leads (although I do look for confirmation elsewhere of the details that I see there), and besides it’s disapproved of by all the right people, including Mediamatters and Sourcewatch.

    (In its article on The David Horowitz Freedom Center, it gets its hair on fire because the Center has been the recipient of large donations from the Bradley Foundation. (I think S.W. thinks that only left-wing outfits should get donations from foundations. The Tides Foundation, the Open Society Whatever, the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations, and like that.)

    https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Horowitz_Freedom_Center

    In any case, I’ve been a huge fan of David since the first time I saw him, in a TV interview shortly after 9/11. And for anybody who hasn’t read his first autobiography, Radical Son, run, do not walk, to your favorite bookseller for your copy. It’s a page-turner, by a man of strong left ideology (and a red-diaper baby) who was so committed to the truth that he ultimately gave up his ideology because his experiences in the real world demanded it.

  41. Neo, interesting article at The Stream. Thanks for the link.

    (Heh. I see that the writer, John Zmirak, has also written for Front Page Magazine.)

  42. parker,

    Are you familiar with the Nebraska retiree who figured out a number of years ago how to grow Oranges and other tropical fruits/plants in -20° to -40° weather?
    And how to do it very affordably…
    Lots of info on the web about him; https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/nebraska-retiree-uses-earthss-heat-to-grow-oranges-in-snow/228245

    huxley @ 11:38,

    From your lips to God’s ears. But at least half of the voters in 2016 voted for Hillary. Since then, what evidence do you see that leads you to believe that a substantial amount of those Hillary voters will now vote differently in the future?

  43. Since then, what evidence do you see that leads you to believe that a substantial amount of those Hillary voters will now vote differently in the future?

    Geoffrey Britain: The Obama voters who switched to Trump.

  44. Huxley,
    Re: Pelosi’s facial tics; about halfway through the SOTU I was wishing I had a bottle of champagne to initiate a drinking game.

  45. “I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,”

    That doesn’t even make any kind of ideological sense.
    Except, if kinda does if you consider this:

    huxley on February 6, 2019 at 11:34 pm at 11:34 pm said:

    Civil rights. The Vietnam War. Women’s liberation. Abortion. Gay liberation. Gay marriage. Legalized marijuana. Transgender rights.

    These were all laughably fringe concerns once. Leftists turned them around with sheer moral certainty, public outrage and relentless activism.

    In other words, the “radical conservatives” were Democrats who held the same, normal (as in, “the norm of the distribution”) cultural and political values as the Republicans (at least in public). I say “were” because now there are no “radical conservatives” in the Democrat party leadership, because they have all been hounded out.

  46. huxley on February 6, 2019 at 11:38 pm at 11:38 pm said:
    Nonetheless, stuff works until it doesn’t.

    I think the left has played out its string. Regular Americans have caught on and the usual leftist strategies are sputtering. Otherwise Trump would not have been elected.
    * * *
    The Political-Industrial Complex is already on it:

    https://store.breitbart.com/products/neversocialist-usa-t-shirt?utm_source=Sidebar&utm_medium=Sidebar&utm_campaign=BB-301

    #NEVERSOCIALIST USA T-SHIRT
    “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

    – President Donald J. Trump, SOTU 2019.

    If you agree, we’ve got the shirt for you.

  47. When you’ve lost the Wa-Po….except the columnist probably means to be complimentary to Pelosi.

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lucille-bluth-like-washington-post-columnist-on-nancy-pelosis-sotu-applause

    A Washington Post columnist on Wednesday wrote in a column that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s contemptuous clap during President Trump’ State of the Union was “Lucille Bluth-like.”

    Bluth is the matriarchal character in the former TV series “Arrested Development.” Bluth’s character, played by, Jessica Walter, is unloving and, as The New York Times put it, lobs “80-proof Molotov cocktails of sarcasm” during the show.

    The House Speaker was relatively expressionless during Trump’s nearly 90-minute speech. But an image of the peculiar way she applauded when Trump mentioned bipartisanship quickly made the rounds on social media.

    Monica Hesse, the columnist, wrote, “The lasting visual image can only be described as . . . withering? Pitying? Lucille Bluth-like in its contemptuousness?” She added: “[T]his was a derogatory clap, make no mistake. This was mockery wearing a half-baked costume of politeness.”

  48. neo on February 6, 2019 at 10:17 pm at 10:17 pm said:
    Jeff Brokaw:

    That list of attributes is not meant to be either praise or condemnation, just a description. I detest her politics and I think she’s incredibly arrogant and full of herself. But I think she has qualities that appeal to a lot of people, especially young people.

    Also old leftists. I was with a leftist friend a month or so ago and even though she knows my politics, she is so enthusiastic about AOC that she enthusiastically asked me “Don’t you just love her?” Needless to say, I answered “Not at all.”

    Maybe leaving out the “arrogant” part (IMO anyway), this is eerily like the way Republicans responded to Sarah Palin in 2008.

  49. Quite a lot will depend if AOC et al. can somehow hide or disguise their animus for the State of Israel, so that all those eager, altruistic Jewish liberals—those, at least, who still support Israel—will be able continue to delude themselves and vote for fanatics posing as “pursuers of justice” who have the back of those who eagerly promote and/or await Israel’s (as well as America’s) dissolution and demise.

  50. Chuck on February 6, 2019 at 3:22 pm at 3:22 pm said:
    I’ve always thought that the left would be more dangerous than the religious right, even back when the religious right were being cast as the bad guys. The left has a lot of recent history, almost all of it bad.
    * * *
    Despite all the horrible things some people did (and do) “in the name” of Christianity, they at least start with a Founder who advocated peace, love, righteousness, and repentance — thus they had to act exactly contrary to His instructions.
    True Christians who actually believe in the gospel and practice its doctines (and may be politically right, left, or center in America) can’t get anywhere near as bad as people who start with the creed of “our ends justify any means we can get away with.”

  51. Oh dear, Neo. The other day I had to chastise commenters for forcing me to waste my precious, irreplaceable time chasing down interesting links that linked to other interesting pieces that had links, etc.

    Now you are doing it. Naturally I had to read your posting from 2007 on the nature of evil, to which you linked in your comment just ahead of mine. And it was well worth the time, including the time it took to read through the rather lengthy comments. While there, I was forced to read your next posting, on Assisted Living, which also required that I read the comments….

    And I’m glad I did. Thanks. :>)

    .

    On the nature of evil: I think that true evil is delight in the perverse. The defining characteristic of evil is that it delights in falsity rather than in truth; that it delights in the pretense that Wrong is right, and that Right is wrong; that it delights in preferring the bad to the good … and that it delights in acting on these perversities.

    This understanding appeals to my philosophizing side, anyway. On the ground, among real people, maybe it doesn’t quite work. What if a person doesn’t develop a normal conscience? Is it possible to be a sociopath not because you delight in causing pain or anguish, but because you simply don’t care one way or the other, and at least causing pain (or torturing the animals in the human zoo) is mildly more interesting than whatever else you might be doing? (I see Jordan Peterson has a video that purports to discuss this.) Are you still evil in some fundamental sense?

    And Neo, if you’ve run across the Catholic professor Dr. David Wood, what would you say about the evils he committed in his youth? He’s said that he had no real conscience at that stage of his life, or at least that’s how I remember what he said.

    I’d be really interested to know what you make of his story, if you happen to know it.

    (If anybody’s curious, see

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakEcY7Z5GU )

    ADDENDUM: Dr. Wood and his wife have four boys … because despite the possibility that the children would be born with myo-something-that-I-can’t-make-out, a muscle disorder, they considered that abortion was off the table.

    They are clearly very glad they did. 4 1/2 minutes:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H8IOTvD63M

  52. Neo – I also was not claiming those attributes to be praise or damnation – just a description. We are on the same page there.

    It’s just a little … odd that one can describe a rising star in Democratic Party politics using the same attributes one might use to describe a very young know-nothing pretty-faced starlet.

    To quote Vince Lombardi, “what the hell’s going on out here?!” https://youtu.be/4V0TYIO6yv4

  53. We can’t consider it surprising that radical or extreme politics has recently been coming to the fore. Not only is that a regular thread in American history, but we are at a financial extreme that has been developing over the last 20 years. The highest corporate profit margins ever; the highest corporate earnings, too, natch; and the highest-multiple stock valuations ever (per CAPE). So much wealth, everyone has an idea of how to use it! Especially for those like AOC ready to use Other People’s Money.

    The Fed tilted the recovery from 2008-09 to Wall Street and the big banks, even though I believe most of the Fed board members were Democratic appointees, and hit savers and pension fund investors very hard. The Fed gave us the lowest interest rates in at least 100 years, if not ever; and they thus encouraged even more of the borrowing and resulting financial leverage that were at the core of the 2008 meltdown to begin with.

    At an extreme like today, there are going to be extreme phenomena all around, and AOC’s new-old-leftist socialism is one of them. But the debt at all government levels is staggering, and its servicing costs had risen sharply as the Fed started to raise rates. There isn’t going to be any money for the AOC-style socialists to redistribute. The question seems to me to be, in a crisis, in the next crisis, will voters be traumatized enough to buy the lure of socializing our economy. If a downturn is remotely like the ’30s, communism appealed to many. But it had so little history at that point; today, we know better.

    If I had to bet, I would bet that we will see wild appeals and some political triumphs for the extreme left, but the profligacy of a generation of these careless policies and careless politicians will teach an older style of lesson — bringing back thrift and prudence as virtues again.

  54. Neo, you are so spot on your description of AOC, very talented, very dangerous; and likely to remain so for a very long time (longer now than Pelosi, or Putin or Xi or Maduro). You’re also great about evil.

    But not quite how to fight it. One way the evil Dems are fighting is with words & phrases, like “Justice Democrats”. Conservatives should call them something else.

    I’m going to call them PC-Klan Democrats, and hope it catches on enough to be PCK Dems. Conservatives are against the evil falseness features of PC, and those who propound it are acting like the Klan of the past. Presuming the guilt of their target, and then doing an e-lynching (VDH says virtual lynching) on their target, quite a bit like the KK-Klan did against blacks with real lynching.

    The PC-Klan has already hugely denigrated Free Speech. As long as the PCK controls the top universities, like Harvard & Stanford, this will be an increasing problem.

    Neo, you’re one of the only thought leaders who discusses the hugely important Gramscian march through education.

    Some part of that is control of the language & definitions, like the Big Lie that Hitler was on the right. A National Socialist Workers Party — on the right??? The right is for small gov’t, not national; and private property, not socialist; and all folks equally, not just workers. Evil / Satan delights in lies. Truth helps to fight off Satan.

    Reps need to discuss, confront, and begin to actively change the “open secret” of college discrimination against hiring Reps as professors. The Democrats are so strong now, and in the near future, because so many middle managers and VPs of big companies are on board with the PC lies, which they got in “a good college”. Now they have good, high paying, managerial office jobs which require boot licking those above, like in college, and being PC to avoid any e-lynching.

    Others, equally indoctrinated, have $100k school debts, are working as Starbucks baristas or elsewhere as barmaids, and are hugely angry at “the system”. Run by white males. They sure do want, and believe they deserve, free education. And other free goodies.

    We need better words — if you have some, please let us know.

    I’m going to use PC-Klan, e-lynch, and even Democrat Derangement Syndrome.
    Not enough conservatives are looking at influencing the language.

  55. Pelosi’s extremely busy:

    Watching Trump very closely;
    Watching her left flank more closely;
    Keeping her ninja moves up to snuff: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/01/02/alexandra-pelosi-nancy-pelosi-daughter-cut-head-off-trump-meeting-newday-vpx.cnn
    Making sure no one notices her medical issues;
    Teaching her party “the fundamentals” (what to wear, when to stand, sit, clap, frown, scowl, smirk, smile, guffaw, ROFL, walk out, etc.):
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/coach-pelosi.php
    Trying to sound like an adult.

    (And one might wonder if she still has to finish reading the ObamaCare legislation from way back when…)

    Yep, Pelosi’s keeping busy.

  56. Well Neo. Eva Peron. Hm-m-m. Very interesting. This is another example of why, when I come on your site, I feel like I’m on tricycle, madly pedaling up the on-ramp as you whiz by on the Interstate in a Benz. Thanks for guiding me to that 2007 mini-essay on the nature of evil, and double thanks for sending me to Stream. Good stuff. And the photos of Evita and AOC are striking. The Angela Davis thing? She had (nor has) neither charm nor looks to compare with AOC. It was more about the undo accord given her on the left. Despite efforts by some to make her look bug-eyed and horse-toothed (with just the right photo shot at the right moment) AOC is undoubtedly attractive and already has her cult — like Che.

  57. Tom Grey, I’m with you on truth-in-labeling. Here’s one better word, albeit not for the Democrats, but for the world of education which they took over — bankruptcy. A number of schools have closed already, and a lot more are going to as their poor business models squeeze them on one side and the demographic drop-off of student-age population gets them on the other. Meanwhile, new internet models will begin to surround them. Not a happy world for professors over the next 10-20 years. So, yes, Democrats own the faculties. But the faculties will be shrinking and disappearing, much the way journalism has already experienced. This will be especially true of the weakest products — think Antioch College. Education in its future developments should offer a great opportunity to restore some balance and perspective to our society.

  58. notice these people’s names– Walid Shaheed, Saikat Chakrabarti . These names imply to me that , born on American soil or not, they are not infused with American values. And their words and deeds confirm it. Call me a nationalist — it has kept this country on a good path for over 200 years.

  59. Julie — good definition. true evil is delight in the perverse. The defining characteristic of evil is that it delights in falsity rather than in truth; that it delights in the pretense that Wrong is right, and that Right is wrong; that it delights in preferring the bad to the good … and that it delights in acting on these perversities 1:51 a.m.

    That video disturbed me. It was better than no change(!), but did not leave me entirely satisfied regarding his story. Is it corroborated?

    Phillyrich — went through the study quickly, thanks for posting. You know this is the huge flaw in democracy per de Tocqueville — how does the society save itself once the majority realizes it can vote itself the treasury? Something is going to have to teach the error of the spend-more and spend-it-on-me attitude. Some kind of fiscal crisis; hope it teaches the lesson before we have bankrupted ourselves.

  60. She’s clever,

    ??

    canny,

    ??

    bold,

    after a fashion

    modern, hip,

    You say that like it’s a good thing.

    physically attractive,

    Uh, no. Inspecting the video of her filmed in 2010 and looking at her now shows you she’s not aging well.

    young,

    You say that like it’s a good thing.

    energetic,

    Not yet applied to any serious purpose.

    and unafraid of the old guard.

    IOW, given to effrontery.

  61. The Fed tilted the recovery from 2008-09 to Wall Street and the big banks, even though I believe most of the Fed board members were Democratic appointees, and hit savers and pension fund investors very hard. The Fed gave us the lowest interest rates in at least 100 years, if not ever; and they thus encouraged even more of the borrowing and resulting financial leverage that were at the core of the 2008 meltdown to begin with.

    Have you bothered to check statistics on debt loads and household debt service?

  62. Deco, please make a point if you want a reply. Please post your statistics if you disagree with what I wrote.

    Corporate debt load is the highest ever, I believe. Government debt and liabilities are at all-time extremes, too. As an example, in NJ, Forbes magazine calculated there was no mathematical way out of their fiscal bind. Is that picture wrong, in your opinion? Instead of snarky quibbles, please make a point. If you can support it, so much the better. Otherwise, your posts strike me as those of a crank with issues and represent too much time-wasting to reply.

  63. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. [Social] Justice is meted from the twilight fringe. Conservatism saves state (e.g. Constitution). Principles matter.

  64. Government debt and liabilities are at all-time extremes, too.

    They aren’t.

    As an example, in NJ, Forbes magazine calculated there was no mathematical way out of their fiscal bind.

    As we speak, New Jersey’s got $42 bn in state bond debt and $128 bn in obligations not financed with bonds. The severity of that debt load could be dramatically reduced by an effective commitment to eschew nominal increases in the debt load. Nominal domestic product has increased by about 4% per year since 1990, so the severity of your debt load declines by half every 15-20 years if you eschew nominal increases in your debt load.

    Over the last generation, the coupon on municipal obligations has bounced around 4.5%. The outstanding obligations are $171 bn. Serviced at a 4.5% rate, that’s amounts to $7.7 bn in servicing per year. As we speak, personal consumption per year in New Jersey amounts to $449 bn. Of that, $92 bn is on housing and $25 bn is accounted for by the final consumption of philanthropies. If about 17% of the residue of final sales is concealed by vendors, discoverable final sales to households and enterprises in New Jersey (bar rents) would be about $275 bn per year. A 2.9% sales tax will generate sufficient revenue to service the state debt in real time.

    New Jersey’s politicians do not wish to balance their books in the face of vociferous complaints and contra their impulse to build patron-client relationships with public money. Their unwillingness to fly right is not a math problem. It’s a problem of political will and character.

  65. @huxley: She’s obviously got some serious neurological stuff going on, given how many videos there are of her having “moments” while speaking. I find it particularly amusing about a year ago or so when she started railing against “President Bush” several times instead of Trump.

    We all have brain hiccups, but she appears to be literally going senile. It makes sense that the weird face stuff is related, but for all we know, she might just be doing it to be distracting. I suppose it’s good that this hasn’t seemed to affect her political career.

  66. she is also plugged into operatives on the far left who know a lot about the history of politics and political movements.

    AOC is the front girl for a movement that is funded by billionaires who do not have the Socialists’ agenda in mind. What they want is for the party to go on. H1B visas are high on their list of priorities. The nonsense about “Jobs Americans won’t do” is a screen for replacing American technical workers with Indians (not Elizabeth Warren types) to do coding and IT. The Indians are paid half of the Americans’ wages and are indentured since, if they quit the job, they go back to India.

    Corporatism is what is going on. I agree with Kai Ekker about the bailout in 2008.

  67. Kai Akker,
    Now that’s interesting. Bankruptcy and higher ed.
    What can be done to nudge the bad institutions in that direction? I read the enrollment of Evergreen State College dropped 20% after some hyper-PC types forced all the white people off campus for a day. Oh Lord, they hold their graduation ceremonies in Red Square plaza.

    I was surprised a year or two ago when Republicans passed their tax cut bill and it included the elimination of the SALT (State And Local Tax) deduction. A couple days ago, Gov. Cuomo declared that NY anticipates $2.3B annual tax revenue drop. He called it as serious as a heart attack. But likely not serious enough to cut taxes and spending.

    A high end realtor, Dolly Lenz, claimed that her numbers suggest 50K New Yorkers have moved to Florida in the last year or so. She said that these people were going to move at some later date anyway, but have chosen to jump ship now.
    ______

    I love Tom Grey’s point. It’s about the power of an effective message or label. How about something simple, Orwellian, and true; the Injustice Democrats? We know that just like Rich in Neo’s fave A Man for All Seasons, the Injustice Democrats are itching to tear down all those laws that protect us in order to get to their brand of justice.

  68. Ralph Kinney Bennett:

    Angela Davis had the hair, though. She was the perfect leftist heroine for her times, and AOC fits ours.

    I think you’re on something a lot more powerful than a bicycle.

  69. I don’t understand why there are so many people who think they are entitled to Jeff Bezo’s money or Bill Gates’ money? i just don’t get it, it is like some beggars who believe Bill Gates’ not giving them all of his hard and fairly earned money is injustice. How much productivity has Bill Gates’ products improved seriously, how many jobs and industry existed only because of Bill Gates’ products, how many people has Bill Gates fed throughout the years. I was so sick watching that entitled socialist sjw loser shouting at howard schultz like billionaires owe him something.

  70. @MikeK: Yes, the whole H1B thing is weird. I work at a company in the satellite communications field in Northern Virginia. It’s a good company (for the most part), but unlike other places I’ve worked at, there aren’t a lot of immigrants, the company is about 80% immigrants. They are good folks, and I enjoy working with them, but it’s not something I’ve ever seen before.

    I always wondered if it’s because so many companies in this area require clearances, and HIBs can get clearances. Or maybe it’s just because they are cheaper. I mean I always thought my salary was pretty competitive, but maybe a lot of these guys are working for significantly less.

  71. “Dave on February 7, 2019 at 11:59 am at 11:59 am said:
    I don’t understand why there are so many people who think they are entitled to Jeff Bezo’s money or Bill Gates’ money?”

    That, or an implied question like it is often and reasonably asked by exasperated conservatives or libertarians trying to figure out how the left’s notion of “fair” as “equal” completely sidesteps “deserts” or “just deserts as an individual return on effective producing” or entrepreneurship.

    And the proximate answer is found in the lefts’ own literature: in their assumed metaphysics, and in their philosophical anthropology.

    So, in answer to the indignant question as to “Why am I not entitled to the return on what I have built?” The laconic liberal answer is, famously, “You did not build that”.

    Meaning to their mind, that the infrastructural or social arrangements that exist as the precondition for your success, make your success “owing to …” X. Y, or Z precursors.

    Now the fact that these institutional structures may have been left in place by those who were freely pursuing their own interests prior to the arrival of any clique promoting the social ownership of everything, doesn’t matter to them anymore than it would if you and a community of those like you pointed out to them that you were born at home, drank from a well, built your own house from wood you cut with tools that family members have made, etc.

    As far as the socialist is concerned, none of that matters in the moral economy of the species-being as they define it. Respecting boundaries is for the unenlightened, as they see the matter. And even your own, inherent inborn capacities are not justly your own as they define a concept of “just individual ownership”; a concept which they wish to supersede anyway.

    Given all of this though, Haidt had a very useful contribution from the point of view of moral psychology, when he pointed out that social investigators had overlooked the fact that conservatives did have an idea of “fair”. And as mentioned above, whereas the progressive version of “fair” meant “equal”, the conservative and libertarian term, connoted just deserts, or individual return on individual contribution.

    This then, opens up another matter relating to the conceptualization of moral questions: and that is found in the progressive criticism of the conservative moral universe, as “Karmic”; meaning in this case, a universe of moral cause and effect. Which is a concept that comports well, or is of an identity with, the conservative moral sensibility of “fair” connoting a reaping of what one has sown.

    Progressives notably … and here comes the metaphysical aspect of it … have been busily attacking the concept of cause and effect since the mid 19th century.

    And so, we can, as we back up a bit, see how it is more or less, all a piece.

  72. Julie near Chicago on February 7, 2019 at 1:51 am at 1:51 am said:
    Oh dear, Neo. The other day I had to chastise commenters for forcing me to waste my precious, irreplaceable time chasing down interesting links that linked to other interesting pieces that had links, etc.

    Now you are doing it. Naturally I had to read your posting from 2007 on the nature of evil, to which you linked in your comment just ahead of mine. And it was well worth the time, including the time it took to read through the rather lengthy comments.

    * * *

    Indeed.
    I especially appreciate links to posts that pre-date my discovery of Neo, and am always interested to see that not only are many of them just as relevant as when written (which is why they were linked to, of course!), but so are a lot of the comments — and that they extend and add to her posts in so many ways.
    Most of the punditocracy’s output is much more shallow, and obviously dated within months (let us skip over their commentariat without comment, except for a few places such as PowerLine).

    PS some of the fun is discovering my own old comments, finding that I don’t remember them at all, and wondering what the heck was I thinking?!?

  73. Angela Davis is the perfect comparison for Ocasio-Cortez. They have the “look”. It’s not about what YOU find attractive in a woman but what progressives find attractive in a woman … or a black man or a LGBTQ person. The person needs to symbolize oppression and still look cute and charming. The Rolling Stones wrote a SONG about Angela Davis called “Sweet Black Angel.” She was their pin up girl.

  74. New Jersey’s got $42 bn in state bond debt and $128 bn in obligations not financed with bonds Deco

    Alas, “Total unfunded pension liabilities that are guaranteed to be paid are $272.54 billion, or 49 percent of state personal income,” per the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

  75. Yeah, I heard that, too. Basically, Jagger is for Jagger and I love the Stones regardless. He flirted with the right under Reagan but has signaled left as well (like that awful song about Condi Rice during Bush II). Basically, if I’m a fan I can forgive a lot, esp knowing that artists will say things to get fawning attention from the press. Sweet Black Angel is actually a really good song until you find out who they’re singing about.

  76. TommyJay on February 7, 2019 at 11:51 am at 11:51 am said:

    I love Tom Grey’s point. It’s about the power of an effective message or label. How about something simple, Orwellian, and true; the Injustice Democrats? We know that just like Rich in Neo’s fave A Man for All Seasons, the Injustice Democrats are itching to tear down all those laws that protect us in order to get to their brand of justice.

    * * *
    One of the reasons the Left’s Gramscian March has been so successful is that they totally channel Humpty-Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean.” Their genius has been in getting the Right to go along with their branding and lexicographical sleights-of hand.

    They had good teachers.

    https://theworthyhouse.com/2019/01/11/book-review-the-language-of-the-third-reich-victor-klemperer/

    Victor Klemperer is famous today for his diaries covering the Nazi era in Germany. But those were published in 1995, thirty-five years after his death. The only book he published in his lifetime was this one, in 1947: The Language of the Third Reich. Its original title, Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen (i.e., Notebook of a Philologist), with the Latin evoking Imperial Rome, is more precise and informative, but I suppose we’re too uneducated today for that title to be used. Either way, this book is fascinating in its description of the twisting of language by the Nazis, who, like all ideologues, turned words to their own ends of power.

  77. Alas, “Total unfunded pension liabilities that are guaranteed to be paid are $272.54 billion, or 49 percent of state personal income,” per the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

    Who are you quoting? And why aren’t you quoting the primary source?

  78. Google search on string (including quotes):

    “liabilities that are guaranteed to be paid are $272.54 “

    includes this result:

    #48 | Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition: New Jersey | Mercatus …
    https://www.mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings/newjersey

    Oct 9, 2018 – Total unfunded pension liabilities that are guaranteed to be paid are $272.54 billion, or 49 percent of state personal income. OPEB are $85.42 …

    Follow the link to this URL:

    https://www.mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings/newjersey

  79. Da**it! No Edit again. But anyway, right after the quote, Kai wrote:

    per the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

  80. Kai,

    Thanks for your interest in my comment.

    When you come right down to it, I have to disagree with Jordan Peterson and most genuinely religious folk: I don’t actually believe that there is a Malevolent Force that exists as a fact of Nature, so to speak. I think that what we call “evil” is certain human behaviors and human character traits that arouse in us a sense of the deepest repugnance and revulsion.

    Unlike the evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, I do believe that there are actual abnormalities underlying certain behaviors and what I’ll call “psychological conditions,” such as sociopathy. It would seem that indeed David Wood had such an abnormality. He thinks it was corrected when he found God; I think that it was corrected as a result (or as a complex of results, really) of actual changes in the way his brain functioned.

    There’s a lot to unpack there, on the subject of “what exactly is evil,” but I’ll leave it at that. I would note that it occurred to me that the sociopath might well not so much take delight in his evildoing as find it mildly interesting in a rather boring or meaningless world. That, if true, also needs to be connected up with a Theory of Evil — or, to put it more accurately, a Theory of What We Mean by the Word “Evil,” both in what we mean by its actual nature and in our “beliefs” about it, meaning the emotional meaning that the term has for us.

    .

    As for Dr. Wood — the video at the above URL isn’t quite what I remember seeing several years ago, when I first came across it. This one has a somewhat scripted quality, and it has “production values,” a kind of polish, including the darned “music.” But it seems to me the other one had more detail, with more incidents, and that it was really more shocking.

    Still, it raised the same question in my mind. I wondered if it was on the up-and-up, or a good dramatic story to tell in order to promote himself somehow. To tell the truth, I’m not that crazy about his other videos either. They seem so suave…. Anyway, I too looked for some corroboration, but I didn’t find anything.

  81. Thanks, Julie. IMO, the malevolent force is us. It’s a part of us; it includes perversity, deviousness, destructiveness…. the joy that can be experienced by indulging some of those anti-social instincts. Nature is capable of anything, of course, but it is our confounded wills, along with whatever conflicted “wiring” or chemistry may go along with our complexity, that provides evil.

    When something is good, or EXTREMELY good, there is that impulse to tear down, damage, and destroy. Dostoevsky gets this very well with his characters. The new “socialists” of America are all about this — no one with reasonable rationality could espouse the doctrine after the last 100 years of history; the people still lunging for it today are indulging a desire for power, a desire to wreck the system we have no matter how good its results have been. Right? It is pure, perverse, human nature. In some ways, maybe, related to the impulse to hate the NY Yankees or the New England Patriots — envy of their success and the power that it brings them. We humans are perverse.

  82. Julie near Chicago on February 7, 2019 at 1:51 am at 1:51 am said:

    … if you’ve run across the Catholic professor Dr. David Wood, what would you say about the evils he committed in his youth? He’s said that he had no real conscience at that stage of his life, or at least that’s how I remember what he said. I’d be really interested to know what you make of his story, if you happen to know it.(If anybody’s curious, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakEcY7Z5GU )”

    and

    “As for Dr. Wood — the video at the above URL isn’t quite what I remember seeing several years ago, when I first came across it. This one has a somewhat scripted quality, and it has “production values,” a kind of polish, including the darned “music.”

    Hi.

    As best I can tell and remember this video is the same video as was originally posted.

    And Wood is an Evangelical Christian, not a Catholic last I knew.

    The Video: Wood’s edit free delivery and narrative continuity and the coherent and systematically unfolding presentation, are indeed a marvel from many perspectives; and impressed me mightily when I first saw it. Right from the beginning with the Plato’s Cave allusions, accompanied by a literal decent into subterranean realms, you know you are witnessing something else again.

    In fact, I would say that Woods seemingly casual review of morality’s central question through the lens of his personal history and attitudes, is despite the horrific content, one of the best, probably THE best and (given the subject’s complexity) succinct presentation of the issue I have ever seen. Only Lewis’ “The Abolition of Man” compares (or possibly William Lane Craig’s debates) to some degree; and what Lewis presented largely as logically implied hypotheticals (placing aside the historical times in which he lived), Wood lived out.

    We don’t really see this honesty anywhere else. Singer is a dweeb. Nietzsche was no Ubemench himself, apparently never tried, and went insane. Half a dozen philosophers who have progressed, so they imagined, beyond the moral perspective, simply fizzled out in death or suicide; and their political disciples have never really done much more than take a lot of innocent people along with them, as they stepped over the brink, never to return with a coherent explanation. Rorty’s answer is to rule the question out of court. Wood however, has faced it squarely.

    Whether his perspective is a byproduct of sociopathy, or a retrospective construction built of past experiences, his unflinching confrontation with the logical issue which almost every commentator, right or left or center flees from or sidesteps is the most powerful I have seen.

    The gutless, grasping at straws circularity of most argument of this sort, and I cite Sam Harris here, is itself morally contemptible in its head hiding dishonesty.

    Whether you embrace moral nihilism on the one hand, or Aristotle and/or Jesus on the other, in either case you are being more honest than the clowns who squeal, “let’s pretend” and “We don’t have to ask that question” and “You can be a nice person without all that!”

    Yeah, you can; until there is some cost involved.

  83. includes this result:

    Julie, she appears to be referring to a working paper published about six months ago under the byline of a Scott A. Shepard. The working paper doesn’t have a single data table in it, much less a delineated actuarial model. It has no bibliography. None of the footnotes refer to any academic literature other than some working papers (some of whose authors are like the one who wrote this one). Mr. Shepard isn’t an economist or an actuary or a finance maven. He’s a lawyer. Again, why are you citing this?

  84. Kai,

    “When something is good, or EXTREMELY good, there is that impulse to tear down, damage, and destroy.”

    Miss Rand made this exact point. “Hatred of the good for being the good.” We read The Brothers Karamazov in college. I remember it as being interesting; I think it was too focussed on the Dark Side for Miss R.’s taste, but the Great Frog knows I could be wrong. Long time since I read her opinion.

    Anyway, yes, the Imp of the Perverse does seem to find a comfy nest in us. Still, I think it doesn’t entirely control us — I mean, not every-man-Jack of us — even though lord knows it does set up a fuss in many of us from time to time.

    .

    Deco, I have no idea what you’re on about. :>(

    . . .

    DNW, I took it for granted that Dr. Wood is Catholic, probably because he’s so vocal about his Christianity and teaches, or taught, at Fordham — not that you have to be Catholic, or even Christian, to teach at Fordham, of course. (Reminder to self: Try not to do that.) Thanks for the correction.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>