Journalists, friends, history, and farce
It was Karl Marx who wrote this oft-quoted remark:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
There’s certainly something to that, but I’m not sure it’s a whole lot. Sometimes history repeats itself again as tragedy once again, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say farcical tragedy.
Is there such a thing? If so, we may be living it right now.
For example, there’s journalist Virgina Heffernan (credits: LA Times, NY Times, etc.), who ponders one of the deepest and most pressing moral and ethical questions of our age: what to do when a Trump-loving neighbor does you a favor.
I’ll let Byron York describe Heffernan’s profound philosophical musings:
Dilemma for writer Virginia Heffernan. When it snows at her ‘pandemic getaway,’ helpful neighbors plow her driveway unbidden. Do a ‘great job.’ What a nice thing! They don’t do this in the city! Only problem: Neighbors support Trump. 1/10
Heffernan frets. Realizes ‘I owe them thanks.’ But Trump! Heffernan becomes suspicious: This could be, like, a terrorist thing: ‘Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist political party in Lebanon, also gives things away for free.’ OMG! They’re Trumpite terrorists! 2/10
Or they’re Trumpite Nazis! After all, French collaborators said the Nazis were very polis, French for ‘polite.’ ‘So when I accept generosity…acknowledging the legitimate kindness…am I also sealing us in as fellow travelers who are very polis to each other?’ 3/10
This is terrifying! And what if the neighbors commit some other kindness in the future? What then? Heffernan: ‘What do we do about the Trumpites around us?’ 4/10
‘My neighbors supported a man who showed near-murderous contempt for the majority of Americans,’ says Heffernan. ‘They kept him in business with support.’ And I’m supposed to accept generosity from THEM? 5/10
Still, they plowed the driveway so nicely. What to do? Heffernan thinks and thinks, comes up with answer: I’ll acknowledge their kindness with ‘a wave and a thanks.’ But no ‘absolution.’ No way. ‘Free driveway work…is just not the same currency as justice and truth.’ 6/10
But wait! Heffernan *can* give her neighbors something. She’ll give them the opportunity to apologize for supporting Trump! 7/10
More importantly, Heffernan will offer her neighbors the opportunity to put aside what they believe and take up what she believes. What could be more generous and neighborly? 8/10
Heffernan: ‘I can offer them a standing invitation to make amends. Not with a snowplow but by recognizing the truth about the Trump administration and, more important, by working for justice for all those whom the administration harmed.’
Thus Virginia Heffernan comes up with a way to repay the spontaneous kindness of neighbors: A wave, a thanks, and an invitation to become like Virginia Heffernan. What more could a neighbor want? 10/10 End.
This woman is one of the many voices who are presently instrumental in shaping public perceptions of historic events. Therefore a glimpse into her mind is instructive.
I have noticed a somewhat related phenomenon in my own life since January 6 and the intensification of the labeling of everyone on the right as evil conspiratorial insurrectionists. Several people I know – who don’t usually discuss politics with me at all – have asked me abrupt questions that amount to requiring me to take a kind of loyalty oath or pass some sort of test. It’s not “are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” It’s “do you think the election was stolen and that Biden isn’t our president,” and “do you believe in QAnon’s theories?”
These questions are rather easy for me to answer if I choose to, and whether I choose to do so depends on my relationship to the asker. The first answer is: “So far we don’t know how much fraud occurred, because the evidence has never been given a fair hearing, something I wanted to happen. But Biden has been inaugurated nevertheless and therefore is president.” The second answer is, “No.”
These questions from these particular people – who, as I said, are not ordinarily given to political interrogations and already know my basic politics, which differ from theirs – are a sign to me that the left’s narrative that everyone on the right is a potential insurrectionist has taken hold in the general population. That’s why Heffernan can write a column like that and not get laughed out of the business.
This may be farce now, but it portends tragedy.
What is happening today far exceeds in irrationality and in viciousness what occurred during the “dark times” of McCarthyism, about which leftists are still obsessed, without knowing much about the facts (there had been, in fact, Communists and fellow-travelers in the government, such as Harry Dexter White, one of the architects of Bretton-Woods). Perhaps even more unhinged than the piece by Heffernan is an essay recently posted by the very “progressive” Nation; the argument by Kali Holloway, who considers herself to be an “abolitionist” (an opponent of the “carceral” system), is that she nonetheless wants extremely punitive prison sentences for the “racist insurrectionists” and the coup-plotting “domestic terrorists” of the incident on 1/6, likened by many on the left to 9/11.
I could not tell you whether I believe in QAnon’s theories because I have no idea what they are. Or who or what “QAnon” is.
Now and then an acquaintance tries to relate something to me that appears to come from QAnon, or perhaps a similar source, I’m not keeping close track. I don’t pay attention to theories that aren’t sourced pretty well. I may note the argument in case evidence surfaces later. It’s the same approach I apply to NYT articles.
My view on the election is that there are procedures for contesting an election, and no one managed to employ them successfully to keep this one from being certified. That’s a process that deserves a lot of attention, and I’m open to evidence that it was grossly abused, but that’s where we are. I will do what is right and legal to prevent any damage I can prevent from a lot of lunatics suddenly holding office. I will also continue to mock mercilessly the kind of farce that a lot of Biden supporters seem to think qualifies as behavior that’s entitled to respect, as in this nice Bee piece: https://babylonbee.com/news/138000-points-suddenly-awarded-to-losing-team-at-halftime
Joining Heffernan is NYT comrade Taylor Lorenz:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship
Super Bowl Extra: WaPo laments that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are “normalizing piracy”.
I don’t have any idea what QAnon is. Neither do I know anybody who knows. This is a reprise of the Left’s bogeyman strategy with the so-called alt-right.
Is this an example of “first time farce, second time farce, third time’s a charm”? It’s only Marx, so what’s the harm?
I watched part of the Super Bowl. I don’t have a whole lot of interest in pro football, but watch a lot of college football, and am always a little sad when that season ends, so watch the SB just because it’s the last game till late August.
Anyway: at one point the announcers gravely noted that relatives of Brian Sitnick (sp?) had been invited to the game. I forget their exact words but the suggestion that he had been killed by the rioters was clear enough.
I guess everyone’s heard that remark from whoever it was (Will Rogers?) that it isn’t so much what you don’t know that hurts you as what you do know that ain’t so. There is a very determined and powerful force now making a whole lot of people know things that ain’t so.
The really sad thing is that this woman, and the LA Times, have no idea how offensive they sound. My neighbor did me a favor, but I’m in the right to behave like a jerk about it. Ooookay.
‘My neighbors supported a man who showed near-murderous contempt for the majority of Americans,’ says Heffernan.
Has anyone on the left ever listed specific situations where POTUS 45 has “shown near-murderous contempt” for the majority of Americans ? I’d like to see the list. Just asking.
Wonder if next time her drive will get plowed?
Philip Edwards (4:31 pm) asked: “Has anyone on the left ever listed specific situations where POTUS 45 has ‘shown near-murderous contempt’ for the majority of Americans? I’d like to see the list. Just asking.”
Wellll, those guys are given to hyperbole and exaggeration, but (1) that’s very old news and (2) the same applies to Trump, in spades. Offsetting penalties.
What I will say is, they’ll agreeably supply a list, but [here goes the numbering of items again] they’re the ones, the only ones, who will get to irrefutably define words like (1) “near-murderous”, (2) “contempt”, and (3) “majority”. May as well add (4) “Americans”, since anyone who walks into the country will now be defined as “American”, with all the rights and privileges accruing thereto.
(If your defintions differ from theirs, you’re canceled. Next customer . . .)
definitions
“a glimpse into her mind is instructive.” neo
No doubt, she anticipates the day when her neighbors are shipped off to the reeducation camps and will speak approvingly of it.
What are ” pandemic neighbors”? Cannot be people who live in the place she fled to, in order to be safe, could it?
If so, then you will never need a better illustration of why when a progessive swims up to your lifeboat after having steered the ship into an iceberg, your response should not be to extend a hand, but to strike with an oar.
it’s a crowded attic,
https://www.newsbusters.org/journalists/virginia-heffernan
SHIREHOME, now that the neighbors know who and what this woman is, they will perhaps keep the plow at home next time.
Have you seen this? Education in Illinois is head for indoctrination…
https://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/george-will-in-illinois-indoctrination-could-replace-education/article_86020946-68d7-11eb-8e05-937f550d4059.html
Also now the Orcs (if there are any literate ones) know that she’s the only person on that street who is not equipped to defend herself against a home invasion. Neighborly intervention now less likely. What’s not to like?
The quote is from Marx’s essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Bonaparte
18 Brumaire was the date of the 1851 coup d’état that brought Napoleon III to power.
For all his other sins, old Marx had a way with epithets. I do so enjoy his term for bankers, ‘The Roving Cavaliers of Credit’. See Steve Keen’s essay here for more detail:
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/
Communism is on the march so Heffernan’s prudent answer to that question, if posed, as to whether she is or ever has been a communist, is “Yes”.
There is no question in my mind the present Democratic Party is essentially communistic, with materialistic socialism now controlled from the new Kremlin, surrounded by troops with live ammo with which to kill fellow citizens who might assemble. The looting, arson, violence and vandalism we have seen primarily on the Left Coast could not be responded to with the same vigor.
The US is the world’s 3rd most populous country. With China plus its many Belt and Road initiatives in Africa, plus Leftist governments in many South American countries, communism or democratic socialism, a nicer but phony expression, now rules more than half the globe, likely more. And secular materialism marches on. The Abyss awaits, in the form of one-world government by China.
So those who once showed no interest in discussing politics or ideology in an arena of ideas manner with you, are now emboldened enough, not to take up the questions of the day as questions, but as if to administer orthodoxy tests.
I don’t know if these are the doting grandmothers you described, or occasional lunch companions or who, but their remarks are a window into their “soul” as people used to put it; not only now, but the whole time you have known them: A hidden and heretofore unnoticed, or politely ignored self , being revealed.
Chekists, in waiting. If they show up for lunch attired in “swanky” knee high lace up boots, and leather jerkins and bill caps, look out.Ha! Actually it probably will become a fashion for some.
The dead eyed viper Stephan Colbert has long looked as though he is sporting the rig already, even though he is not.
@Cicero:
The Chinese won’t geld your great-grandsons and make them wear dresses. They won’t import Somali Orcs to rape and mutilate your great-granddaughters. There is that.
Chinese are the Far Enemy. Let them fester and die in Africa or genocide the place. Win-Win either way. Nasty, Unkind, but True, nonetheless.
Clean House at home first. Chinese later.
Despite rantings of one poster here, I have no love for CCP. Seen them at work up close.
But priorities, priorities. Don’t let them distract you.
Texan88:
TIME the magazine wrote on the Democratic “cabals” preceding the election: “These groups engaged in a unified legal front to “change voting systems and laws” at the state level, often unconstitutionally bypassing state legislatures and shifting power to the states’ governors in the process.”
What part of being unconstitutional is bad, then?
How was this not a coup de etat?
Zaphod:
the Chinese are everywhere, spending the US $ our trade imbalance has granted them. How about Confucius Institutes funded and controlled by the Chicomms on our college campuses? An elementary Chinese immersion public school in my town, and others. They make the fentanyl that kills tens of thousands here every year. They also make 85% of OUR prescription drugs!
How do you propose to clean our house? Do not count on elections!
I am not distracted.
Yes.. And in every case, many of your fellow countrymen whored themselves to Chinese interlopers in order to profit by enabling said infiltrations. Hang those folks first. That’s my point.
Re 85% of Prescription Drugs: Hang the Faculty of Wharton School and some CEOs.
Re Other Drugs: Why are the Sacklers walking free and alive?
Start. At. Home.
Obviously Confucius Institutes and a PRC National in every school ‘teaching Mandarin’ is a problem. Get rid of both. What do you think was the first thing PRC did in Hong Kong to infiltrate the schools? Mandarin Teachers, of course.
Elections. It is to laugh. We’re in agreement here.
Fair to say that my proposal is a Modest Proposal 🙂
Note well that Chinese don’t have same problem of Elite Defection at home because (a) Nationalism is not a Foundational Sin in their system and (b) They arrest, torture, dispossess, publicly humiliate and execute offenders in front of their co-workers.
It is *always* necessary to execute the occasional Admiral Byng in order to ‘Encourage the Others’ as Voltaire wittily expressed it.
Why don’t those of us on the right do the same to those of us on the left?
“My neighbor [insert nice past tense action here] for me, but they support Biden, with his ACTUAL murderous contempt for unborn children. Millions of babies are killed every single year by organizations he supports and funds, and my neighbors agree that this is somehow “liberation” and “healthcare.” But [this nice thing he did] is not the same currency as NOT MURDERING A HUMAN BEING.
So why don’t we? Is it because we’re just more sympathetic to the wide spectrum of thoughts and opinions of people and we can understand (though still vehemently disagree with) the perspective of someone else who doesn’t see an unborn child as a human? Or is it because we’re just idiots who are letting people walk all over us, and which is what is getting us into this mess in the first place? I don’t agree with cancel culture at all, but right now it’s winning, and the side that is in control will cancel us all soon, unless we somehow find a way to fight back.
@Natalie S:
Slowly, you’re beginning to hate them.
That’s OK. Means you’re a decent Human Being. Don’t let yourself be guilt-tripped because the Man from Linz said something like that in his breakout best seller. Let the Enemy keep fighting the Last War. Different Country, Different Time, Different Peoples.
“who don’t usually discuss politics with me at all”
That is the key point. While there are some deranged and hateful folks out there on the Left, the real problem is the greater number of people who are only vaguely politically active and aware. If you look at the turnout numbers, there’s probably a good 10 to 15 million people who couldn’t be bothered to vote FOR Barack Obama in 2008 but did turn out to vote AGAINST Donald Trump in 2020 (putting the whole fraud issue to the side).
I’m going to suggest those folks are not the most rational and informed of actors. They basically just accept whatever the mainstream establishment tells them and they’re the reason there’s probably no good way out of this mess. They’re not going to wake up and smell the coffee until the scalding hot liquid is dumped right in their lap.
Mike
MBunge; DNW:
Actually, the particular people who quizzed me – the ones who don’t usually talk politics with me – are fairly politically active and aware. They don’t usually talk politics with me because they know my politics and don’t want to get into a fight. But now they seem to want me to take a form of loyalty oath – loyalty to the current Democrat narrative, that is.
That said, there are plenty of people like the ones you describe, MBunge. But not these particular people.
Natalie S:
I think it’s because we don’t politicize every aspect of life.
And that in turn, Neo, is because politics is not our religion. One’s religion should permeate one’s life. What almost everyone on the right has in common is that whatever our religion is, it’s not politics.
This could be stopped if the GOP defended President Trump and his supporters instead of attacking them.
I didn’t think it could get crappier, but it did since the election.
Two friends incommunicado long time. One I grew up with, always on the liberal side and he knew me to be on the conservative side. Radio silence. And I won’t beg for a conversation. The other guy worked alongside me a long time. Rabid Trump hater. I never said much, but never joined in the bonfire festivities. Silence.
Sister had career in nonprofit management. Always radical. Announced after the election, before impeachment she wanted to get rid of the white men. Still on speaking terms.
Former Assistant State Attorney General announced that all Christians are bigots, fat, stupid, and poor. Still on speaking terms, but suspect he may be a monster. Also, wants a monarchy here. Also didn’t sign up for the Vietnam War. Wants a draft. Claims he would have been a marine. I pointed out he didn’t enlist. His answer “So sad, too bad”. Yeahboy! That is the rallying cry that carried the day at Iwo Jima and Chosin.
You are in a kind of unique position here, Neo; insofar as you have regular and continuing and active social relationships with what appear to be a large number of convinced liberals and progressives. These range, it seems, from the by-default type, to the active, ardent, and emotionally comitted.
You therefore have the sort of access that allows you to make careful observations and analyses that most of us cannot; not even apparently, those whose own family members have become intensely “woke”. This, since it looks to be a characteristic of the woke in general to simply declare and dismiss rather than to discuss; and to decline further engagement or even association if so much as challenged on what they declare as beyond permissible doubt.
Thus, given that last – and add to it the emotionally involved and conflicted status of a fellow family member trying to objectively analyze a child or sibling’s real state of mind or moral predispositions – it makes your less emotionally fraught yet still involved situation potentially more productive of illumination.
Although these people are unlikely to recite a psycho-social history of their moral development [ a woke parallel to your own mind change political developmental story] you can probably still piece together elements of how their minds work just based on what you know of them, and their manifest attitudes and delivery in saying as much as they might.
One of the real points of contention on your site among commenters has been the degree of personal moral responsibility incumbent upon the [or any] individual to consider public matters with at least some critical distance or skepticism, even if in only doing so pro forma, and as an exercise and check in order to make sure that our courses are not too far off compass.
The question might resolve, in the final analysis, down to whether like you, they had any moral or intellectual compass in the first place which pointed anywhere but toward a self-affirming spot in that circle dance you often mention.
I have a question I will throw out here, the answer to which will help highlight the differences in attitudes among your regular commenters.
Are we as citizens and civic peers, and as moral beings, obligated to try and think logically and critically about the matters that come before us? Are pietism and fideism, religious or secular, ever an excuse for a free man or woman?
And let me remind everyone here that according to our founding documents, it is not. And that in addition, even in the most supposedly hidebound religious faiths of the past, Roman Catholicism among them, every child was introduced to a catechism which was not merely a recitation of articles of faith, but an explication of both first principles and their reasons, along with not only rational ( if largely deductive) defenses, but also outlined criticisms of the tenets being advanced and defended. This intellectual attitude goes right back to the Sic et Non methodology of the Middle Ages, and should be nothing too far beyond the grasp and or responsibility of modern man.
How is it that a child in 1940’s America could be expected to grasp principles that adults are now mostly excused from?
Cappy,
Give us their reasons. Or at least insofar as you are able, the reason they don’t feel they need reasons.
You know: “Badge? You wanna see a badge? I don need no stinkin …”
Oh,
Highly recommend the revent interview [on Rumble at lesst] with Andy Ngo. It involves a discussion of his infiltration activities and his evaluation based on personal experience of the Antifa membership. I’ll try to find the interview. Interviewer is a 30 something Australian guy [looks exactly like my next door neighbor]
The interview does not start off too promisingly, and Ngo’s extremely laconic manner requires viewer adjustment. But it is well worthwhile.
Ngo’s evaluation of the Antifa membership? An upper level of woke and radicalized academics, lawyers, and public employees, and a lumpenproletariat base of psychologically troubled individuals who believe that their feelings of estrangement and ALIENATION will be cured by refashioning society; i.e. remaking everyone else.
That damned marxist obsession with alienation, again.
“So sad, too bad”
1. Why would a friend, talk to a friend, that way?
2. Can you put a name to this guy? Seems to be public figure. Any reason to preserve his anonymity at this point?