Home » Impeachment of Trump and demonization of his supporters have been the left’s goals from the start

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Impeachment of Trump and demonization of his supporters have been the left’s goals from the start — 58 Comments

  1. It appears that boycotts and other financial responses are the only certain pressure we can bring at the moment.

  2. After I left the Left in the 2000s and attempted to debate politics with my former comrades, I discovered (1) I could usually out-debate them online because they didn’t know both sides and (2) they then always turned to personal attacks, not just ad-homs, but pressure, including covert, to put me out of the group.

  3. Just remember the goals of any action by the left whether it’s:

    impeachment,
    Pelosi talking to the Joint Chiefs and claiming Trump is unhinged and the nuke codes must be taken from him

    deplatforming/canceling conservative thought and action,

    Issuing statements that there will be a 50 state armed insurrection on inauguration day…

    or whatever….

    The idea is to

    1) Sully Trump’s name

    2) Sully YOUR name – create a narrative that you are stupid and dangerous to justify any action they wish to take

    3) Teach YOU never ever to vote for a Swamp Drainer again or you’ll be punished

    4) Accuse wildly so as to justify immoral, unconstitutional actions across the board.

    They are piling on now…heaping every calumny on Trump and conservatives that they can think of.

    This is to allow them to do what they want.

    it’s always been their tactic.

    For example:

    We are being deplatformed and silenced.

    So suppose conservative net platforms like Parler go underground. The Left’s obvious move is to call it a “cabal” and “terrorist organization ” otherwise why would they hide underground? If they had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t be so secretive.

    And then watch the unconstitutional laws fly.

    They will use this tactic to get your guns too.

    So remember, with the Left they don’t care if they don’t get what they are demanding…

    ..like an impeach AND convicted Trump.

    ..or removing the nuke codes from Trump.

    No the accusation is all their after. because that provides justification

  4. I very rarely have occasion to hear NPR anymore, but was moving a little audio system to another room this morning and checking the reception of several local stations. Heard about 5 minutes of an interview with a Democratic congressman and neither interviewer nor interviewee hardly spoke a sentence that didn’t include the words “insurrection” and/or “terrorist.” It was almost stilted:

    “So, Congressman, what do you expect to do about [whatever] after last week’s terrorist insurrection?”

    “Well, [whoever], I think that we need to [whatever] in response to last week’s terrorist insurrection.”

    When I stopped listening they had not yet thrown in “white supremacist” or “racist,” but I probably just missed that part.

    By the way, in case it hasn’t been mentioned, this piece by Glenn Greenwald is worth reading:

    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/violence-in-the-capitol-dangers-in-67f

  5. I don’t fully understand these unfounded allegations of racism and white supremacy. From some comments I saw, some of the House Dems assert that white supremacy is the reason why Trump was impeached and that his supporters are white supremacists. I think it is just another way to demonize Republicans as the worst people in the Universe.

    I was very sorry to see that my alma mater is taking some kind of institutional stance for anti-racism based upon the book of Ibrahim X. Kendi. I was very, very sorry to see that.

    In my dust-up with Mayor Pete, his kneejerk response was to call me a racist. Me, being me, pushed back hard against that allegation.

    Calling someone a racist is an easy charge to make and near impossible to prove.

    We, as a country, have gone full tribal. As Mark Steyn said today on the Rush Limbaugh show, we are watching Western civilization just go over a cliff.

  6. Notice the same model. Trump simply stating anything is proof that he is guilty. “The government wiretapped his office” deserves impeachment, yet the government did authorize wiretapping his campaign. “March peacefully” is insurrection. And not just Trump, suggesting a 10 day investigation into voter irregularities equates to accessories to insurrection.

    Some Republicans are going along with this, to which I say I’m no longer a supporter of that party that allows such tyranny in its ranks.

  7. Cornhead, among the House Dems claiming support for Trump is “white supremacy” is Speaker Pelosi. It’s shameful.

  8. “Calling someone a racist is an easy charge to make and near impossible to prove.”

    Or disprove. I decided a while back that the worst thing you can do when the charge is made against you is to defend yourself. The more you defend, the more you are convicted, so just shrug. Any attempt at defense just brings on the knowing smirk, perhaps with something like “I know, some of your best friends…” added.

  9. I don’t fully understand these unfounded allegations of racism and white supremacy. From some comments I saw, some of the House Dems assert that white supremacy is the reason why Trump was impeached and that his supporters are white supremacists. I think it is just another way to demonize Republicans as the worst people in the Universe.

    Cornhead:

    It’s a leftist organizing tool, that’s been field-tested for years now with spectacular success.

    Back in 2016 I read a report which investigated the “deep values” of Black Lives Matter activists by interviewing them, then sifting the results using some methodology (not well described) into conclusions. Attacking white straight Americans as a privileged class oppressing everyone else is the core belief which holds BLM together.

    Furthermore the usual old leftists, called “operatives,” are the spiders weaving the BLM web:
    ____________________________________

    Importantly, [the operatives] revealed that their goal was not to help Black America, but rather to “create an engine that moves into larger social upheaval.” To achieve this goal, the Operatives are undertaking a concerted effort to take the undergirding philosophy of Marxism, where society is divided into the “Haves and the Have-Nots,” and reinvent it in the era of Black Lives Matter through the term “Privileged.”

    Black Lives Matter as a movement represents the hopes and dreams of leftist organizers who shared with us that, until now, they had never felt such a sense of hope and excitement that their goal – as one operative put it, “total social upheaval,” and “systemic change” — could be realized in their lifetime. From veteran agitators like the Weather Underground’s Bill Ayers to a new crop of social-media-wielding female and LGBTQ leaders, Black Lives Matter is encapsulating the hopes and dreams of multiple generations of progressives in a way, they say, no movement has before.

    –Frontier Center Report, “Black Lives Matter”
    ____________________________________

    Sadly, Frontier closed down for reasons I never learned and the report is lost except to those of us who downloaded when we could.

    National Review published an overview here:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438780/black-lives-matter-report-analyzes-groups-impact

  10. Neo-

    I expect one of the narratives going forward will be this. That the Democrats had to impeach Trump or he would never have left. They have been claiming this since 2016. And it really does not matter if he is convicted. Simply because such a large group of people believe impeachment IS removal.

    And anyone who points out anything contrary to this will be quickly dealt with

  11. Cornhead on January 13, 2021 at 5:08 pm said:

    I don’t fully understand these unfounded allegations of racism and white supremacy. From some comments I saw, some of the House Dems assert that white supremacy is the reason why Trump was impeached and that his supporters are white supremacists. I think it is just another way to demonize Republicans as the worst people in the Universe. “

    Sure you do, really.

    You just cannot quite process it.

    Self-interest is now “racism”. Freedom, is now racism. You are presumably white; if you prefer your own good or aims to the desires of another not identifying as white, then you are per se are guilty of discriminating on a racial basis. Your “intent” does not matter. This goes for property ownership and anything else. You can back up and concede as much ground as you want, but that does not mean that they will not keep pressing until you are no longer “living in their house or driving their car”.

    Hubert gave us the links explaining the mechanics of this process and the fundamental assumptions which defined it – which most of us, yourself included, at least had intuited.

    It is just difficult, not to mention disappointing, to face.

  12. Unarmed crowds numbering in the hundreds cannot take over a government, especially if protected by firearms.
    And doubt 1 person there thought it would be possible.
    This was a rally, not the coming of the French revolution
    Good artical

  13. Everyone … please … do not vote against ALL REPUBLICANS just because a few RINO’s supported impeachment.

    They are the ones to work against. They’re frightened of the Left and so will meekly do whatever their new masters tell them to do. Primary THEM.

  14. I don’t fully understand these unfounded allegations of racism and white supremacy.

    Some of it consists of cynical games, and some of it is a function of the emotional processing of bourgeois liberals. Recall Thos Sowell’s dictum, cribbed from T.S. Eliot:

    “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

    (Well, some of them actually do mean to do harm).

  15. Tuvea:

    Dan Newhouse 4th Congressional District WA will be primaried and defeated by another Republican challenger IMO. Conservative Republicans are not rare in Eastern WA. He should be looking for a new job starting today.

  16. They still have a web site, but I at least, cannot get the reports to download

    DNW:

    I’ve tried as well.

  17. Chases Eagles:

    I thought you were in the Puget Sound area so you use vote by mail just like the rest of the state. How the votes are counted in the 4th Congressional district, I don’t know. Does your county use Dominion or just the usual Democrat Puget Sound fraud methods?

  18. I may seem repetitive here. It’s one thing that the operatives do what they do. Why so many people buy in with all the fervor of a drugged-up bolo fighter in the Philippine Insurrection–original simile, you may use it without attribution–puzzles me. If, by puzzle, you conflate gobsmacked with alarmed plus brassed off.
    These are people who are smart enough to show up to work with their pants on, to come in out of the rain, to survive without minders.
    These are people who face opposing facts with alarmed confusion and then resort to either, “I don’t believe it,” or ad hom.
    These are people who, in other areas of their lives can make considered judgments. But in this area, 2+2=5, if necessary and no arranging of pebbles on a table will convince them otherwise, until 7 is the required answer and then…seven is the answer.
    It is tempting to call them stupid, but even an amoeba can learn. The same with ignorant.
    Obviously predictable consequences of an action are blown off as…see ad hom or “I don’t believe it.”
    Utterly predictable catastrophes are blamed on the usual suspects, as if George Washigton’s baleful glare screwed up the unicorn-and-poptart thing.

    I wonder if somebody seeming so stupid can actually be so stupid but figures that looking stupid is part of the deal in the Struggle.

    And people who are, mostly, reasonably kind in their personal lives are constantly fulminating with baseless, vindictive rage. For what?

    I am completely out of ideas here. Except if there’s such a thing as virtue signaling to oneself.

    Sowell, referred to above, may be hitting it.

    Problem is, these clowns are the willing foot soldiers of the operatives. And there are so many of them.

  19. Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “There are people in our country led by this president (for the moment) who have chosen their whiteness over democracy.”

    Uhhhhh, isn’t that incitement to racial strife?

  20. Remember in 2016, that Trump was supposedly giving the Nazi salute at his rallies? Ben Shapiro fell for it (or said he did), and that’s when I exited Shapiro’s Twitter feed.

  21. Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “There are people in our country led by this president (for the moment) who have chosen their whiteness over democracy.”

    I’d love to ask Nancy …

    I’m white and i’m proud.

    I’m black and i’m proud.

    What’s the difference?

  22. jack it’s the same thing that US, Canada, and Europe need to accept other-race immigrants while Africa, China and India do not

  23. Racism has been the Democrats preferred attack word. Remember Biden during the 2012 campaign? “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” That was an attack on Romney and Ryan. Laughable, when examined in any detail. Then there’s Joe’s claim that a black rapper he was talking to, “You ain’t black if you don’t vote Democrat.” It shows a supposition that the blacks should know where their bread is buttered. And it shows why they use the race card against Republicans. They think it keeps the blacks afraid of what the Republicans will do. But Trump did what the Democrats have not done. He actually improved things for the black community. More jobs, better pay, investments in inner city areas, reform of prison sentencing (Second chances for reformed convicts), and never any discrimination against any ethnic group. The Democrats know they are losing adherents in the black communities. Their tried and true tactic is to play the race card. It’s all the have.

    What is disgusting is the fact that they have let inner cities become ghettoes of homelessness, drugs, crime, poverty, and rotten education. The blacks and others living in our inner cities deserve better, but they will never get it when the cities are controlled by the corrupt Democrat machines. Trump gave them a glimpse of what could be and the Democrats are very fearful of that.

  24. Richard Aubrey:

    What you are asking is, essentially, “Why does propaganda work?”

    My answer is that it works because (a) most people don’t think for themselves (b) most people don’t want to move out of the prevailing public opinion consensus (c) most people don’t do their own research; it takes too much time and effort, and one has to be especially motivated to bother.

    That is why propaganda works even on the intelligent. Intelligence is not the same as thinking independently. Intelligence can sometimes just be being good at taking in information. Which can make one susceptible to propaganda, actually.

    And then, once a political opinion or stance has been formed, there’s the common phenomenon of confirmation bias.

  25. jack (7:22 pm) hypothetically posited:

    “I’m white and i’m proud.
    “I’m black and i’m proud.
    “What’s the difference?”

    Answer: different shades of gray? [ yuk yuk ]

    But seriously, it looks like it’s not quite enough to associate racial hatred with a political philosophy or political party or a political persona.

    Now it’s a choice between whiteness and democracy??

    So if I’m adherent of democracy — leaving aside the philosophical quibble about democracy being two foxes and a hen deciding what’s for dinner — if I’m an adherent of democracy, now I’m supposed to repudiate my “whiteness”??

    (Rachel Dolezal, call your office.)

    Am I supposed to don sackcloth and ashes in penance for being born what I am??

    This entire situation / culture / nation is accelerating over the proverbial deep end with rapidity and urgency, and I don’t wanna go.

  26. Right now both sides are reacting will emotional outbursts, each side knows they are right and, if they are believers, God is on their side. We are seeing the human condition that has repeated itself for thousands of years playing out one more big old collision of power, might and righteousness on each side. Neither side is really the smaller or weaker but than the other but one side has media and the other is being treated rather badly at this time however not nation in the history of the world has had an oppressed side that is better armed including our founding fathers.

    Having spent my military years in Military Intelligence I would like to caution every conservative to settle down and wait for a clearer picture of the entire situation. We don’t need to keep on feeding the Dems more made for TV goofy shows that present us as racist stupid people. We need to gather ourselves and work harder to have clear clean elections and bring all of the hard working Americans who want to keep what they have earned to our side.

    Let the dust settle down and never make a move where there is not an excellent chance to win and that should be with the ballot box, getting out and working our butts off to chip away at what the Dems have gained through hook and crook. I pray that there will never come a time when orginazed folks resort to actual fighting because no one has any idea where that kind of stuff will end up but I do know that will be a terrible day for our nation.

    Without clear thinking and incredible planning shooting and looting lead to disaster which we have seen in some cities is deadly, let’s stay away from that and use our heads to plan each stage of our political encounters and plan for a win. Trump did that four years ago and he did understand his people, now it is time for us to start a piece at a time to take the high ground of discourse giving the most disadvantaged the most hope of pursuit of happiness.

    Please don’t be stupid and let the Dems set up a knock out punch.

    That will be all.

  27. om, Yes I am in Jefferson. We are poor so I suspect that Dominion is too expensive. So far I have found out that there are 5 different systems from 4 companies (and 10 versions) that are in use in Washington but I haven’t figured out which is used where (yet).

    Clear Ballot Group Clear Vote 2.1, 1.5, 1.4.2
    Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5
    ES&S EVS 6.1.0.0, 6.0.0.0, 5.2.2.0
    HART Intercivic HVS 6.2.1
    HART Intercivic Verity 2.3, 2.0

  28. We don’t need to keep on feeding the Dems more made for TV goofy shows that present us as racist stupid people. We need to gather ourselves and work harder to have clear clean elections and bring all of the hard working Americans who want to keep what they have earned to our side.

    Let the dust settle down and never make a move where there is not an excellent chance to win and that should be with the ballot box, getting out and working our butts off to chip away at what the Dems have gained through hook and crook.

    OldTexan:

    Amen to that! You’re a patriot and a strategist.

  29. “I think it’s important to emphasize how early the template was set to taint Trump and all his supporters as evil.” neo

    Tainting Trump as evil is one thing. Attempting to taint 74+MILLION Americans as evil is quite another. It’s a monumentally stupid thing to do and the more that meme is pushed, the greater will be the blowback to it. Only ideological fanaticism can explain either that it’s a smart course to pursue or a necessity to appease that insanity.

  30. @OldTexan:

    Have you considered that there exists an entire Media Class (others less charitable would narrow that definition down further) whose greatest joy is producing product which demonizes White People? Males doubly so.

    When did you last watch a prime-time drama or sitcom which portrayed a WM in a positive light? At best going to be a buffoon.

    When was the last time you saw a TV commercial showing a White Heterosexual Nuclear Family being happy and healthy and not dysfunctional?

    Come to think of it, when did you last see a TV commercial which didn’t have some rather in your face improbable gender gymnastically weird miscegenation going on?

    Now I bet most of the readers here feel uncomfortable even reading what I’ve just written. Ask yourselves, though: is that a feature or a bug? Have your minds been hacked. Slowly slowly boil the frog.

    It’s not up to Us to be good little doggies and all will be OK. All will not be OK. There’s a lot of work to be done to clear up degeneracy. One could start by trying to get the local trailer park folks off Fentanyl, for example. Plenty of people who could be much better need rescuing.

    But worrying about optics which are filtered and manipulated by those who rule over us anyway? Forgeddaboudit, I think.

  31. @Jack:

    The meme for this is the “It’s OK to be White” stickers which everybody should be sneakily leaving on lamp posts (those wonderful multi-use lamp posts).

    Another good one is “Islam is Right about Women”. 😛

  32. Cornhead,
    “I don’t fully understand these unfounded allegations of racism and white supremacy.”

    Propaganda is not about the truthfulness of allegations. It’s about the accusation in and of itself… being proof of the allegation.

    “As Mark Steyn said today on the Rush Limbaugh show, we are watching Western civilization just go over a cliff.”

    Much of western civilization’s citizens have been indoctrinated into the unspoken but implicit meme that only cultural and racial suicide can atone for their ancestor’s sins and dispell their white privilege.

    That is the goal of today’s Marxist progressive multiculturalism.

    DNW,

    “You can back up and concede as much ground as you want, but that does not mean that they will not keep pressing until you are no longer “living in their house or driving their car”.”

    Bingo because until we are no longer “living in their house or driving their car” we still have some degree of control and power.

    It’s about power, it’s always been about power and the greater the control, the greater the power. True believers justify to themselves their need to control others by rationalizing that only with power and control can they make a better world.

    The difference between a ‘Trotskyite’ and a ‘Stalinist’ is self-deceit.

    Old Texan,

    Waiting for the smoke to clear is wise.

    Equating both sides, foolishness.

    Most liberals are well-meaning. Any liberal who voted for Biden is enabling tyranny, though most are willfully blind to it.

  33. Neo. I get your point on why propaganda works. What I don’t get is the, to me, unnatural fervor. It appears in the viewpoints taken, the resistance to other ideas, and the hostility to those with other ideas.
    How can a rational human being look at the world and decide nothing matters but mean tweets? Yes, she can be told that. But why would she buy it?
    I was not in Hitlerian Germany. I have no idea how many people nodded along with it to stay out of trouble, how many made a show of it to stay out of trouble and perhaps gain something such as…I dunno…dogcatcher or something, and how many people BELIEVED.

    Maybe Sowell has the right of it; the need to feel important is strong in some and a cause or idea gives them an opportunity.The stronger the need, the more the fervor.

    Which brings up the question of why they don’t feel important. Ran into a young lady in a mobile home park, going along with a lawnmower cleaning up those handkerchief-sized lawns. I don’t know what else she does, but dollars to donuts, that activity, mostly every week she said, takes the edge off having to feel important.

    We live on a two-lane road, 55mph for five to ten miles each way except for half a mile posted 45mph right in front due to curves. The 45mph sign apparently reads differently to younger eyes. I’m important….I suppose….since I help out at accidents every couple of years. Does that make a difference? I keep up on my first aid and carry a spare handkerchief which will do for a number of injuries, one way or another. Can that be one of the reasons I’m not a Trump hater?

    I keep saying, this is not the Homo Sap I used to think it was.

    I know a very nice lady who HATES Trump and none of her causes actually have facts behind them. She does not, as far as I know, do anything of any civic value.

    Apparently, announcing on a regular basis that you do not shop at WalMart is not sufficient.

  34. Richard Aubrey:

    Tony Robbins has an interesting model for human needs. Being important is one such need out of six:
    _____________________________________________________

    THE 6 HUMAN NEEDS ARE:

    1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
    2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
    3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
    4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
    5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
    6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others

    https://www.tonyrobbins.com/mind-meaning/do-you-need-to-feel-significant/
    _____________________________________________________

    The ranking above is only one order. People rank their needs differently and consequently have different lives.

    I’m not asking you to accept Tony’s schema, but suggesting that, however humans are set up, it doesn’t reduce to one need or two.

    Furthermore, the thing about needs is that they are must-have. People can go crazy getting their needs fulfilled and often do. Most people haven’t met their needs well and IMO that’s a lot of the crazy we see out there.

  35. Here is video from Jan 6 of Alex Jones trying to work to a place around the Capitol building to try and diffuse the growing mob.

    Fast forward to about minute 20 (which was recorded later), near the end when he expresses fears that globalists are stoking Qanon followers to stage some sort of event on Jan. 20 in all the capitols around the country, which will be used as excuse for the new domestic terrorist act.

    You can trade one conspiracy for another, but based on some veiled comments ymarsakar has been making over at Bookworm Room, I tend to believe Jones.

    Watch for yourself.

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/raw-footage-captures-alex-jones-working-with-capitol-police-to-quell-riot/

  36. Huxley.
    Thanks for the Robbins quote. Some of the Trump haters I know are living secure middle class lives, many with a significant other. Except for #3, everything is covered in that, if they don’t have it, endless opportunities are available.
    I know a guy who’s been crippled since the age of nine. He HATES Trump. I have no idea who he’s hated in the previous decades of his life. I suspect his dependence on others covers some of Robbins’ other needs. But why Trump?

    As I say, it would be different if they had any complaint about his policies.

    There are people who are slavering at the prospect of Trump and his family subject to endless prosecutions for…..whatever.

    Just Not Getting It

  37. Things are progressing according to plan.

    ‘ )

    You can trade one conspiracy for another, but based on some veiled comments ymarsakar has been making over at Bookworm Room, I tend to believe Jones.

    I saw that clip of jones. When Alex crazy jones is telling people to disperse, not engage in rioting or anger… this country is about over, isn’t it.

    A J thinks Q Anon is a conspiracy theory run by Russia or some other state disinfo op, COINTELPRO style. It is the nature of paranoia land to be… paranoid. Sometimes they are right.

    His actions, regardless of whether such a thing as Q + Anon exists as a single entity , were quite service to other and commendable. He got a lot of graduation points there.

    I said even before Dec 25th, that military operations would be in progress Jan 6 to jan 20th. Before the Christmas RV blew up (prematurely as it happens, given what happened IN DC).

    Stay home, defend the neighborhood, don’t go out.

  38. Watch the AJ clips. This is the Holy Spirit of Peace vs the UnHoly Spirit of Conflict (that many have seen with their own eyes here)

    My Aura of the Prince of Peace extends even that far.

  39. AJ’s comments on Q are half and half. He is not very smart, in in fact rather dumb by his own words. That’s what he says about himself. He is not an intel analyst or strategist like some of us.

  40. Richard Aubrey,

    I’m with you, and have said the same thing many times. I know a LOT of people, who if you meet them seem perfectly decent. Have dogs, kids, jobs, don’t do anything outward that indicates “crazy”. Yet…. as soon as Trump, or the GOP comes up, batshit crazy takes over. The hate and bloodlust is palatable. In one case I’ve mentioned, my BiL, who has not worked since the Wuflu hit, has spent his entire time sitting in front of the TV watching CNN and MSNBC….he’s been brainwashed. But the others, I know, don’t spend the entire day being subjected to such nonsense.

    I do note one correlation: those who hate Trump/conservatives/GOP are also the ones whom from the very beginning have been totally living in fear of the Wuflu, and become Karens to anyone who isn’t following the “protocols” to the letter. I really wish Dr. Sanity was still around; she had such great insights to this mass hysteria and psychosis.

    “Just Not Getting It” Me neither.

  41. Re. Dr. Sanity,

    That woman is a genius of a sort. Readimg her essay I almost feel as if I have been plagiarizing her material for decades.

    Thank Great Gaia’s Ghost I am able to go back years to my own Internet comments to see that they – those relating to postmodernist anthropology and its embrace of nihilism and will to power – developed from other sources; some dating way back to my own college days or shortly thereafter. I can now stop hyperventilating and slapping my hand to my forehead.

    Still, her well grounded and crystaline formulations, coupled with her specific professional credentials, place her observations head and shoulders above the average sociopolitical commentator undertaking an etiological analysis of our current moral plague.

    One other observation. 2006 seems quite long ago, now. But I guess we forget just how long this struggle has been going on, and how many years already we have been dealing with one version or another of political post modernism and/or some strand of cultural marxism.

    Since, the mid eighties at least.

  42. Yet…. as soon as Trump, or the GOP comes up, batshit crazy takes over. The hate and bloodlust is palatable.

    I understand that, since the same thing happens when “as soon as Ymar comes up”, people react that way. Mostly Reds now instead of Blues.

  43. Richard Aubrey, physicsguy, DNW:

    You are all decent intelligent voices here. I read your comments with interest. I respect you as far as I’m able in this text over a wire into a window format.

    However, I find myself somewhat bemused when you say you can’t understand people on the other side. It’s like hearing Henry Higgins in his smoking jacket sing, “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”

    –“My Fair Lady: Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” Rex Harrison
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY

    I grew up with crazy people. I’ve been plenty crazy myself and believed plenty of stuff — including leftism — that I now consider on the fruity side. I’ve made progress, but no doubt I still do.

    So, it would seem my bar is considerably lower than yours. I don’t expect people to be all that rational. Rationality is a thin layer we’ve added since our hunter-gatherer- tribal days.

    Mostly people are getting their needs met, however they can and usually with whatever worked in the past. It’s not a particularly rational process even with people who have developed their rationality to a fair degree.

    I don’t believe I’m settling the issue. I’m explaining what it looks like from my side.

  44. Huxley,

    Fair comment. But without diving too deep into the weeds, from one angle, rationality is a categorical, unconditional, non-negotiable moral obligation.

    Just as a male has the unconditional moral obligation to exhibit physical courage to his natural limits and even beyond in order to be considered a man, so the human animal has a moral obligation to practice reason as a precondition for moral fellowship.

    In fact, rationality stands as the sine qua non of man as man, and not just as a goddamed thing of some kind.

    The irrational “person” cannot, prima facie, be reasoned with; they cannot be trusted to even be capable of formulating coherent or proportional reponses to environmental stimuli.

    Now, in all this we do have to recognize two things,
    1, that people may have diminshed organic capacities, or have suffered traumatic injury, emotional or physical, affecting their psyches.
    2 that we must distinguish between instrumental reason which many morally demented people do seem to possess, and right reason which is another but related process.

    But these former must be understood as damaged humans, if they are to be considered as fellow humans. Otherwise all you are dealing with is a collection of appetites welling up within a skin bag with a face.

    From my point of view, people who are irrational are in some sense both immoral, and incapable of being included inside the circle of reciprocity.

    Now I acknowledge that many people nowadays disagree with this, and wish to place the yoke of solidarity on our necks without any reference at all to distributive reciprocity or reason. But that is just effen nihilism masquerading as humanism. Human? In that case, a human what?

  45. “However, I find myself somewhat bemused when you say you can’t understand people on the other side. It’s like hearing Henry Higgins in his smoking jacket sing, “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?””

    Funny link.

    It’s possible we are talking somewhat at cross purposes here on the basis of an equivocal use of the term understand.

    By “understand” I think that those on my side of the divide probably mean to “get inside their head and visualize their reasoning process”

    Which of course is a problematic formulation of the aim in the first place, if there is no explicit reasoning involved in the subject’s decision making or evaluation process.

    Which is where my point about the categorical moral obligation to reason comes in.

    It actually seems to me that “unreason” or something like it ought to be listed as the 8th deadly sin in addition to pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, greed, and sloth. Though unreason can be seen as an outgrowth of pride, envy, lust and sloth, certainly.

    And “unreason” can also be seen as an element in the complement class of the classes of the cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude (a courage of a kind)

    But then all of this is part of a vitrue theory or tradition of ethics.

    And much in the way of ethical and moral reasoning nowadays is based on a deep and ultimate nihilism wherein nothing is “for” anything, there is no telos to man, and “the good” is defined as the satisfaction of urges, while urges are never interpreted in terms of existing for some end or another than the tautological sake of their own satisfaction.

    So, how do you “save the appearance” of “mankind” in those circumstances? You cannot.

    You can only adopt Rorty’s “just because” rationale and try to construct a community of affect: party by brain washing people into not to thinking too much about it but “feeling” instead, and partly by judicious culling of the reproductive herd as Rawls admits would ultimately be necessary if his “Theory of Justice” were ever to be implemented.

    But we have been over this later point many times before.

  46. “the same thing happens when “as soon as Ymar comes up” Ymar

    What do you expect when you claim to be the second coming of the “Prince of Peace”?

    “My Aura of the Prince of Peace extends even that far. Ymar @ 12:07 pm

    “Auras” are a personal characteristic…

  47. DNW,

    An absence of “explicit reasoning involved in the subject’s decision making or evaluation process.” does not obviate an irrational motivation. You can certainly get inside the head of “a collection of appetites welling up within a skin bag with a face”. You just have to set aside reason to do it.

    Since reason is necessary to negotiation, force is all that remains if their irrational motivations violates your natural rights.

    “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.” Robert A. Heinlein

  48. What do you expect when you claim to be the second coming of the “Prince of Peace”?

    Nobody here even understand what that means. There’s no reason to talk about it, it’s something for later when the children have grown up more.

    Also your reaction is amusing, because it is the same type of reaction that Leftists do when they hear about Babbit.

    “What do you expect for trying to threaten Congress and invade, traitor?”

    It’s basically children making excuses for getting caught or threatened with punishment for their actions. They don’t deny they did it, or that stopped working. So they have to come up with a rationality or excuse for why what they did is right.

    “He hit me first!”

    The proper and even human response to “you murdered her” is contrition, guilt, shame, and atonement. Accepting it as true and excusing it, is not mature enough.

    This kind of immaturity can be seen in what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. America has to grow up. Or the civilization collapses. Don’t you see the signs?

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