The social costs of left-to-right political change
Commenter David Foster writes:
Many people don’t like changing their opinions, and many people don’t want to lose jobs, business opportunities, and friendships by holding & expressing unapproved opinions. Such behavior becomes much easier to self-justify when the vast majority of ‘information’ flowing across one’s view supports the safe opinions.
I would add “and when almost everyone in one’s social acquaintance shares those opinions.”
I’ve spent about seventeen years chronicling, among other things, the social costs of such political change. It was nearly twenty years ago (!) that I made my own political transition – which, by the way, was from relatively moderate Democrat to somewhat-libertarian conservative – and the political climate was different then. It was already hostile and bitter, but not even close to as extreme as it is now.
Would I have done the same in the current climate? Yes. But I understand that one reason it’s so difficult to do, and one reason a person might adopt a stance of not wanting to hear information contrary to the beliefs that person already holds, is that it is now extremely threatening to make that particular change.
As David Foster writes, it now potentially involves jobs, business opportunities, and friendships. Sometimes it also involves marital tension and even dissolution, heartbreaking conflict with relatives including one’s own children, and even the threat of imprisonment depending on how activist one becomes. Social media shunning and viral calls for cancellation are also possible. The Gulag doesn’t loom – yet – and perhaps an actual Gulag as in the past will never arrive here. But if it doesn’t, it will be because it won’t be necessary. There are other ways to make people miserable, ways that don’t seem so overtly evil and yet nevertheless do the trick.
When I underwent my own political change most of this had not yet escalated to that point. And yet even back then I risked – and experienced – social disapproval and hostility from some friends and relatives. I had previously been so naive as to be unaware of even the possibility that that would be happening, and so it came as a real shock. For most people today, such a reaction on the part of their friends and family would almost certainly not come as a shock, because it would be difficult to be that naive in the current climate.
As I said, it wouldn’t have stopped me, but I think I completely understand why others would be reluctant to tread that path. Who wants to become a pariah? It’s easier to not expose yourself to views that could challenge your belief system, particularly when you’ve been told for most of your life (and almost everyone around you believes) that those sources are unreliable and even mendacious. To understand that it is more the opposite, and that the sources you have trusted your entire life are much more pervaded by lies and that you have previously swallowed them, is very very difficult to acknowledge. So most people don’t want to risk even the distant possibility and reject it out of hand.
Well, i know a few people who have moved rightward but they don’t shout it from the rooftop or on social media non stop.
I realize that is not always possible but not everyone feels the need to share personal political opinions with everyone.
Of course, it shouldn’t have to be this way but it can be done by normal everyday private citizens.
Griffin:
I completely agree that some people will make that journey despite everything. But considering how obvious it is that the Democrats are awful and their agenda is destructive, nowhere near the numbers one would expect will make the transition. One big reason, as I wrote in this post, is that the cost is too high and too threatening, so why even open oneself up to the possibility?
I dated a woman for a fairly long time and we broke up. The break up was my idea and the main reason wasn’t really politics. Her dad was a fireman so she was a JFK Irish Catholic Dem. She didn’t like Trump at all and that annoyed me.
We got back together – for a short time – this summer. She informed that when her youngest daughter learned of this she said, “Mom, I rather have you become a lesbian than to date Cornhead.”
I was shocked. I had no idea she felt so strongly about me and it was all based upon my politics; mostly my essays on Power Line and my mean tweets. I also didn’t know she was a lib.
She came over to her mom’s house one day and she wouldn’t even look me in the eye.
I just broke up with this woman, again. It wasn’t over politics but her hatred of Trump wore on me. She got her news from ABC News. If it wasn’t on ABC, it didn’t exist. I asked her about Hunter’s laptop and some other things and she had no clue as it wasn’t on ABC. And understand that this woman is very bright. Not as bright as me, but bright nonetheless.
Cornhead:
I know plenty of people like the woman you describe.
They do not want to experience the cognitive dissonance of challenging their own belief system. Many of them are extremely smart, but not intellectually curious – at least not in the political sense.
It is cognitive and moral cowardice. Not mere dissonance.
How does one get people who are “extremely smart, but not intellectually curious”? What kind of creature is that? How do you determine such people are “extremely smart”?
You have to be a learner to rate a high IQ aka “smart”, but you cannot be a good learner without questioning (i.e., “intellectually curious”).
We’re not talking about idiots savant here, are we?
Cicero:
I wrote they are not intellectually curious ABOUT POLITICS. Perhaps you can understand that not everyone pursues every single topic on earth, particularly if they think they have read a great deal about it and know a great deal about it.
I say they are smart because I know many of them very well and know how extremely smart they are from talking to them about a host of subjects. Many also are very successful in the world in their chosen professions, which sometimes are very intellectually demanding.
“Smart” or even “very smart” does not mean necessarily mean “wise” and it certainly doesn’t mean “correct on every topic.” For example, I think it’s safe to say that both you and I are “smart” (perhaps even “very smart”?) and yet we disagree on tons of things.
Propaganda insulates people from the perceived costs of cognitive dissonance.
The anti-social consequences can be gauged by the decline in the public expressions of personal political opinion.
Instapundit is telling us about something as anodyne as “Think before they make it illegal.” Sales of these items are mushrooming.
But 30 and 40 years ago it was the stronger “Question Authority” and Apple computer’s individualistic slogan “Think Different.”
I think it was the Bush years (circa 2003-4) that made leaving any political bumper sticker on one’s an invitation for keying, the scratching of a vehicles paint along the side — a penalty for nonconformism.
Who now wears a political T-Shirt? 20 to 30 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon. Nowadays (well, pre-Covid) it’s almost exclusively about election events, worn in places where one expects group activity and relative social anonymity.
But otherwise, this expressive and creative part of American political culture is gone.
Does “social media” substitute for this? One imagines that this is impossible.
Have the Left gained power by socially atomizing it’s opposition?
It’s hard to believe otherwise. Americanism is now reduced to singing the national anthem at golf’s Ryder Cup.
“I wrote they are not intellectually curious ABOUT POLITICS. Perhaps you can understand that not everyone pursues every single topic on earth…”
True. However, a lack of interest in baseball doesn’t lead to boxcars.
Only slightly joking.
TJ,
The Ryder Cup and college football. Watching college football is as close to the America I like as one can get right now.
Not only politics but the big ol’ middle finger at the COVID authoritarians.
I see increasing numbers of accounts by people who have been denied banking services.
They have broken no law.
There are no unpaid bills.
Somehow the bank gets wind of the fact that they are “controversial” and cancels them using some vague general purpose clause in the bank account documents.
One can change voting patterns and political donations without going public. That presumes the fascists haven’t figured out how to read individual votes.
WRT Cornhead’s ex and a huge number of others: Happened to read a piece in a pop scientific mag about a guy named Loeb who is a physicist and astronomer interested in alien life. We on the outside can take one side or another without much concern. Inside that sub-sub field, there is, according to the author, more tension.
Pattison, in his excellent “Fossil Men” about new hominid species in Ethiopia, details the vicious infighting in that subspecialty. Indeed, finding a new species is similar to filing a very successful patent. You get it, or somebody else does. If you get it, his potential win disappears.
Point is, if you have personal skin in the game, you can’t afford to absorb information which contradicts it. I don’t care if somebody digs up the eleventh iteration of something Leakey discovered sixty years ago, or a complete newbie. I have no personal skin in the game but the actors do.
Cornhead’s ex and millions of others have personal skin in the game in that their political position defines them as Very Good People. It’s virtue signaling and virtue signaling to oneself–should be a term for that. So , in addition to the personal danger of becoming not a Very Nice Person to themselves, other Very Nice Persons will scorn them; if they change political positions. No history of inflation, say, or free speech trespasses is as important. They are not sufficiently independent of the opinions of others.
So ABC is it because other sources are not just different, they are dangerous. Maintaining one’s status as a Very Nice Person is much more difficult if you have to spend time and energy explaining to yourself why Hunter’s laptop is irrelevant. Better that it not exist, or if it can’t be dismissed entirely, not be brought to one’s awareness in sufficient strength to require effort to dismiss it. I hope I’m making the case that this process applies to myriad other subjects.
The oblique aphorism, “not even wrong” —meaning that the assertions in question are so profoundly clueless that they don’t even rise to the level of misinformed or erroneous— is superbly demonstrated by Prof. Shalom Lappin’s screed in the Fathom Journal’s September 2021 issue…
https://fathomjournal.org/we-shall-be-as-a-city-on-a-hill-trump-progressive-antisemitism-and-the-loss-of-american-jewish-exceptionalism/
Read it and weep.
Very few people are above all, interested in a deeper understanding. That’s why there are so few changers. It takes a combination of character and intellectual honesty to reject comfortable untruths. Even greater is the integrity required to hold fast in the face of near universal disapproval.
A much larger percentage of people want to lead the tribe.
An even larger percentage of people want to ride upon the coattails of the tribe’s leaders.
The great majority of people are committed to being part of the tribe. Tribes occasionally need scapegoats and always when circumstance seriously threatens.
When opportunity arises, the tyrannically inclined seek to manufacture and inflame in the minds of the tribe, threats from “the other”. At the tipping point of emotion becoming impetus, tribes become mobs.
Ah, Neo, you did not respond to the many questions I posed.
“I wrote they are not intellectually curious ABOUT POLITICS.”
Why then are they not using their “smartness” on this particular subject?
I can understand being smart and yet not caring about the weather forecast if one will be cooking indoors all day. But not being curious about the future of future generations? About one’s daily governance?
I bet most of your smart people are not well-versed in American history, philosophy or theology either.
Richard – but your argument tends to gain traction from vested interests like novelty in paleo-anthropology.
The game is zero-sum and driven by self-interest.
How can this apply where supporting politicians who harm one’s self interests?
I don’t see how your collective “virtue signaling” point applies.
Richard,
“if you have personal skin in the game, you can’t afford to absorb information which contradicts it.”
In general that’s true but there are exceptions; Albert Einstein and his having mathematically solved his “Unified Field Theory”. Complete acclaim and acceptance. 5 years later he published his mathematical disproval of his own theory. Character and intellectual honesty.
“Cornhead’s ex and millions of others have personal skin in the game in that their political position defines them as Very Good People. It’s virtue signaling and virtue signaling to oneself…”
Nothing more important to them than the approval of the tribe.
Richard Aubrey: “Maintaining one’s status as a Very Nice Person is much more difficult if you have to spend time and energy explaining to yourself why Hunter’s laptop is irrelevant. Better that it not exist, or if it can’t be dismissed entirely, not be brought to one’s awareness in sufficient strength to require effort to dismiss it.”
Well put. I believe this desperate clinging to the status of Very Nice Person is what drives the handful of leftist acquaintances who haven’t dumped me yet. Each of them has, at one time or another, warned me to stop some line of discussion because continuing “wouldn’t be good for our relationship.” They are that terrified of hearing anything that might threaten one of their beliefs.
It may have been easier for me to abandon the leftist fools’ paradise just because I never thought I was a Very Nice Person in the first place.
I wrote they are not intellectually curious ABOUT POLITICS. Perhaps you can understand that not everyone pursues every single topic on earth…
–neo
Yes.
I started dieting in early August. I’m now down 10# and pleased with myself. When I’m out and about and see so many overweight people, I now find myself judging them — what’s the matter with those people, it just takes some research and discipline. What’s more important than one’s health?
The answer is that our time and will power are so finite and the world is so demanding. We can only do so much and to do one thing is not to do many others.
Furthermore, with politics there is the potential social cost which is very real. As I often point out, we are social pack animals and fitting in with our peer group is essential, not take it or leave it.
Politics and history are large, intimidating, time-consuming, even dangerous subjects. I suggest some realism and compassion when it comes to judging others for not devoting the substantial time and energy to understanding politics and reaching the “proper” conclusions.
Alan Potkin,
I clicked on your link. The article lost me in the first sentence with Lappin’s assertion that American Jews were under threat from “a white supremacist threat from the far right”.
Clueless defensiveness. Jews are solely under threat from the radical Left and Lappin et al can’t face the reality that their long leftist resume… counts for nothing. Collectivist ideologies require the scapegoat of the ‘haves’. That secular Jews are white and ‘racist oppressors’ of the aparteid “Palestinian People” perfectly casts all Jews for the part.
TJ. One’s self interests are not going to be harmed. Those of the Other are going to be harmed. If anybody’s are, since the Leader says none will be harmed Except, sotto voce, those deplorables.
I mentioned to one of my mush head–vindictive sub type–relations that it took twelve feds to get the Whitmer op off the ground. “GOOD!”, she said, with great and, to me, vile satisfaction that the feds got a halfwit big mouth–said to have been voted by his high school class as most likely to eff himself up–into trouble.
She’s a Very Nice Church Lady whose book club read “White Fragility” and concluded you can’t vote for Trump and be a Christian.
Has no idea what she looks like from the outside, since she’s mostly with her Very Nice Church Lady friends who approve.
Richard Aubrey:
I wish there existed a social history of Very Nice Persons. Has it always been so? Is that in flux, or not?
Are these simply people who “Love thy neighbor as thyself”? I do not think so. I bet most of those who are not intellectually curious about politics despise Trump and voted for Senile Joe. Why?
Richard Aubrey:
I suppose one response – not that she’d necessarily care – would be, “Oh, then I guess you’re okay with framing someone innocent if you don’t like their politics, and you don’t believe in “innocent till proven guilty” for those who disagree with you on politics. What does that make YOU?”
huxley,
“What’s more important than one’s health?”
Intellectual honesty? Moral integrity?
“we are social pack animals”
Most are yet a decided percentage abjure the herd. More than a few of us have chosen “The Road Not Taken” and regret it not in the least.
“Politics and history are large, intimidating, time-consuming, even dangerous subjects. I suggest some realism and compassion when it comes to judging others for not devoting the substantial time and energy to understanding politics and reaching the “proper” conclusions.”
History can be digested in bites as time and interest allow. Political opinions rest upon availability of factual truth and the cultural filters we possess. Reason, logic, common sense and examination of consequential results form a dependable lodestone.
If it takes much pondering to decide whether abortive infanticide is wrong or… ‘permissable’, the problem is internal rather than in the ‘complexity’ of the issue.
Richard,
The “Very Nice Church Lady” would be well advised to pray that Catholic theology is right about the existence of Purgatory…
As perhaps should we all.
She’s a Very Nice Church Lady whose book club read “White Fragility” and concluded you can’t vote for Trump and be a Christian.
See the remarks of S.M. Hutchens of the Fellowship of St. James (and an editor of Touchstone). He is a lapsed pastor earning his keep as a librarian. By his account, the most troublesome people in the congregation will be women of a certain age.
It is a truism that holds across all categories, 20% create 80% of the problems and difficulties.
“By his account, the most troublesome people in the congregation will be women of a certain age.”
https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Feminism-Fall-Edward-Dutton/dp/1593680791
“The archetype of the “witch” is burnt deep into the European psyche, recurring again and again in folklore and fairytales. But is she merely the stuff of fantasy? Roald Dahl warned that witches don’t always don black hats and ride on broom sticks. They “dress in ordinary clothes, and look very much like ordinary women. . . . That is why they are so hard to catch.”
In Witches, Feminism and the Fall of the West, Edward Dutton examines the history of witches and witch-hunting in light of evolutionary psychology. Throughout the centuries, witches were ostracized across Europe and often condemned and executed for sorcery and harming children. They generally adhered to a type: witches were low-status, anti-social, and childless, and their very presence was viewed as poisonous to the community. Dutton demonstrates that witches did, in their way, represent a maladaptive mentality and behavior, which undermined Europe’s patriarchal system. When times got tough-that is, when Europe got poorer or colder-the witches were persecuted with a vengeance.
Today, the evolutionary situation has been turned on its head. The intense selection pressures of the past have been overcome by the Industrial Revolution and its technological marvels. Modern witches survive and thrive in the postmodern West, still possessed by the motivations and dispositions of their sisters of yore. “Sorcery” (nihilism and self-hatred) is no longer taboo but has become a high-status ideology. Roald Dahl was all-too correct. Witches do exist, and they mean to do us harm.”
Zaphod:
Good one!
Wow!
Yet another excellent post with superb comments.
Keep up the good work everyone!!
Zaphod; Cicero:
Don’t forget the Furies and the maenads. Please see this.
@Neo:
Yup. The Kindly Ones, if you please. We don’t want to tempt fate.
Not to mention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_spirit
Chinese and Japanese female spirits are relatively tame compared to the ones you might bump into in Laos/Cambodia/Thailand/Myanmar and Malaysia/Indonesia.
Harpies abounding rampant and uncontrolled in the present might be a sting in the tail of the overwhelming success and then eventual worn out death in the West of Monotheism. The Abrahamic religions had, to put it mildly, a very flattening and monochromatizing effect on the taxonomising of the very wide varieties of human positive and negative behaviours. We lack a common popular folklore within which to discuss these dysfunctions.. or even the desirable varieties of pro-social, pro-civic, and heroic actions.
I like the sound of ‘Eusocial’… but seems that the E O Wilson types have appropriated it and it’s an Ant Farm thing more than a Human Thing.
The Lappin piece…. Where to start? There’s a kind of spoken lie which causes the listener to–at least mentally–gasp and by the time one is able to put together the first sentence of reply, the speaker is on to the next. This is a written version of same.
Contemplating point-by-point corrections is horrifying, especially as it would make absolutely no difference.
I comfort myself by picturing him pursued by, say, antifa or BLM and, without the slightest hesitation or moral qualm, demanding sanctuary in a NASCAR event or Baptist church. Or from a couple of MAGA-hatted guys. After which, back to the same-oh.
Best would be if I could communicate this to him. I’ll try to figure it out.
I have noticed, here and elsewhere, several recent references to Edward Dutton’s book Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West. I have not read this book but have browsed in it and read a number of positive reviews. My limited exposure to the book suggests that its author compounds pseudo-evolutionary theory with eugenics and misogyny. I suspect that the book’s intended audience is the subset of men who style themselves “incels.”
@RichardAubrey:
“I comfort myself by picturing him pursued by, say, antifa or BLM and, without the slightest hesitation or moral qualm, demanding sanctuary in a NASCAR event or Baptist church. Or from a couple of MAGA-hatted guys. After which, back to the same-oh.”
He’s descended from folks who would descend upon fresh new resorts in the Catskills, drive out the ‘Diversity’.. and then complain loudly that the place was a Ghetto and then descend up on a fresh resort and and rinse/repeat 😀
There’s a word for it.
Irony is that most of what he thinks is the Far Right are rabid Philosemites. I’m obviously a bit more nuanced, but fair to say that my online reading ranges very widely and impression I get is that the guys he’s spritzing about are a very tiny and mostly irrelevant minority. Most of us are less than uncritical admirers, but provided a Jew sides with Admiral Kolchak and not Trotsky, L’chaim!
We all tend to be our own worst enemies. Life is funny.
@MollyG:
So you’re saying that you float?
I could not have said this better.
I moved from Texas to NYC in 1989. David Dinkins was a terrible mayor – the annual murder toll is a good measure – but he also was a gentleman, as best as I can remember. The politics on the Left has become so raw and all-consuming. To join that club seems to require a certain set of beliefs and to be hostile to anyone who has not fully subscribed. The last decade I worked in a very liberal educational institution, and I kept my head low out of necessity. But I enjoyed what I did and what I taught was, at its core, quite conservative. I know my comment here is a bit off-topic and not a conversion story, as I have been a political conservative since my late teens. But I do not recall ever being attacked for being a College Republican.
Cicero…”How does one get people who are “extremely smart, but not intellectually curious”?”
Writer Andre Maurois remarked that those people who are *intelligent* but in no way *creative* tend to be avid adopters of intellectual systems created by others, and cling to such systems more rigidly than the creators of those systems would have. I think ‘intelligent but not creative’ describes a high % of the people in academia and media.
‘Creative’ and ‘Intellectually curious’ aren’t precisely identical, but they’re closely related.
Neo’s reference in comments above to this:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/09/26/the-furies/
includes a post by Sarah Hoyt. I tend to be a bit ambivalent about Sarah Hoyt as it is not uncommon for her to display symptoms of either Too Much Estrogen or Too Much Menopause. Take your pick. Either way she can at times sail a bit close to the lee shore of the Isle of Bedlam. Reading the Hoyt piece in Neo’s made me think that Hoyt is most based and focused when discussing risks of unhinged wokeness for her sons. Probably just as well that she married and reproduced — therefore Not a Witch.
one reason a person might adopt a stance of not wanting to hear information contrary to the beliefs that person already holds, is that it is now extremely threatening to make that particular change.
However, for the small group of us who were beset in the 1960s by much ‘information’ contra to our beliefs and human observations, BUT persisted in participation in some forms of string music whose main adherents strongly held that ‘information’ as opinion, then belief, then righteous groupthink from which dissent was immoral, then even treacherous – OK, I can see their POV and even recite its catechisms – Yes, we can see how it would be ‘extremely threatening’ for those believers to make that particular change, but the closer they come to actual governance of others, the closer they approach some cold facts whose threats must require a lot of exertion to evade. Much like Stalinists of New York in the late 30s, who sort of joined together in abandoning some – certainly not all- of their previous certainties, while reshaping the groupthink to provide self-forgiveness meanwhile.
Now their grandkids are a new and even more vicious tsunami.
I know my comment here is a bit off-topic and not a conversion story, as I have been a political conservative since my late teens.
T-Rex– I’m another member of Neo’s crew who has always been right-of-center, probably because both sides of my family were. My maternal grandmother set the tone: she had a large collection of elephant figurines (ceramic, glass, wooden, carved stone, you name it), and it was simply understood that the GOP was as much an object of family loyalty as were the Philadelphia Phillies. I chuckled when I read Gerard Van der Leun’s recent description of his late-60s years at Berkeley as “majoring in marijuana studies.” What was I doing in 1968? Going to meetings of the College Republicans and working hard at my studies in order to get into a good graduate school. Even though this was during the Vietnam era, people were generally allowed their own opinions on political matters; nobody at any point on the political spectrum worried about student meetings being disrupted or speakers being disinvited.
It wasn’t until I was in grad school that things heated up. As I look back, the Nixon/McGovern election in 1972 was the tipping point; but even then, it was possible to have serious discussions with professors as well as fellow students that remained civil. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that this particular university went hard Left. My dissertation director (my Doktorvater, in German terms) made an interesting comment over lunch one day. His political background was Minnesota DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor), a peculiarly Upper Midwestern version of the national Democratic Party, but he had no difficulty dealing with an out-of-the-closet Republican; in fact, he genuinely enjoyed talking politics with me. What he said over lunch that day was that he found politically conservative students on the whole to be more intelligent and analytical than their liberal counterparts, because being left-of-center is simply the line of least resistance in the modern university.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether there is (for want of a better term) a genetic component to conservatism, for those of us who did not have to migrate from the Left as Neo has. Private Willis, one of the characters in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, has a solo in which he sings:
” . . . I am an intellectual chap,
And think of things that would astonish you.
I often think it’s comical—Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive—Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal, lal, la!”
Here’s a link to a live performance, for anyone who wants/needs a three-minute break from contemporary politics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_b01PNYV4s&ab_channel=FriedrichLudovico
Appropriately, the soloist turns to his left when singing the word “liberal,” and to his right when singing “conservative.”
On that changing thingie — how did the Democrats manage this?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAstXNtVgAwpTCK?format=jpg&name=small
Serendipitously, Powerline’s Picks linked an article at The Atlantic that addresses the question of which ideology-personality intersections generate (true) fascism / authoritarianism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/
Since all things Covid are now integral to our ideological world views –
Sharyl Attkisson asks: “President Biden is wearing a mask outside. He walks up to press corps, takes down the mask, and talks to them.
Please explain the purpose of the mask.”
https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/status/1444301812136390658
It will be interesting to see if the Woke support Black athletes as much for this kind of Speaking Truth to Power as they did the Kneeling to Diss America kind.
It also addresses the question of smart people choosing not to be educated about political controversies.
https://notthebee.com/article/a-political-war-fully-vaccinated-draymond-green-speaks-out-on-his-teammates-decision-to-not-get-vaccinated-and-i-dont-think-this-is-what-the-media-wanted-to-hear
Some people may not want to change political identification because it would interfere with their gladiatorial sports.
https://notthebee.com/article/supreme-court-justice-kavanaugh-tested-positive-for-covid-and-the-tolerance-mob-responded-with-well-wishes-for-suffering-and-death
“…Very Nice Person…”
Just a quibble here:
Although being a VNP is certainly important, the key is being, rather, a “Very Moral Person.”
If you self-define as a VMP, then you can far more easily be a nasty, brutish, short (medium-size or tall) a$#hole to all those others whom you perceive/define/ostracize as MOST DEFINITELY NOT VMPs (IOW Deplorables).
In fact you can view yourself (and preen accordingly) as EVEN MORE of a VMP when you DO behave like a total (even vicious) thug under such circumstances—a super-hero! An Anti-Fascist!!
(Similarly, when trying to destroy the USA and cause physical, social, economic and medical/psychological mayhem to myriads, one can view oneself as a TRUE American patriot and/or a GENUINE fighter for “social justice”….)
I think the word for it is “delusion” (well, there are other terms, as well).
Oh, and it has NOTHING to do with either intelligence OR curiosity. (The classic example is Heidegger, and he is not the only example by any means…. Humans, after all, are—can be?—complex critters….)
Once again, a (mere, itty bitty, wee) quibble….
An accurate view of the Progressive Progression. This was lifted from AceHQ, but it also showed up today at TWIP in the comments.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/progressive%20progress%2001.jpg
More people in America will change their religion for another with different core beliefs this year than will change the political party they affiliate with.
In other words, most Americans find it easier to ditch God than their politics.
Richard Aubrey,
“That presumes the fascists haven’t figured out how to read individual votes.”
1. If you live in a state that requires Vote By Mail, you can assume they have read them. Thus the stories of USPS being caught not delivering Republican ballots.
https://lidblog.com/voter-suppression/
2. If you have ever individually donated to a partisan candidate, your vote will be presumed forever, and the FEC makes sure your donations are public. Want to know why politicians can be bought? Only the Ruling Class can openly support them.
See https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2019/10/20/racist-watch-website-demonizes-trump-supporters-but-it-has-an-upside-n69823#comments
Zaphod:
“By his account, the most troublesome people in the congregation will be women of a certain age.”
See Sister Bertha Betterthanyou:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16fG1sDagU
neo:
““Oh, then I guess you’re okay with framing someone innocent if you don’t like their politics, and you don’t believe in “innocent till proven guilty” for those who disagree with you on politics. ”
As the MeToo crew made obvious. Not too mention all the race incident hoaxes going around.
The Very Nice Church Lady I earlier referenced has another quality. She has worked for decades with the homeless–meals and shelter. She spent years counseling a woman who had to be dragged through life by the stacking swivel (collar, if you will), as in, no dear, grocery shopping is better at Walmart than the gas station. Here’s how you use the dishwasher which came in your Habitat home….
I recall her remarking, decades ago, when taking somebody to a court office for something,”I was the only one there reading the Wall Street,” with a chuckle.
All of her efforts have been directed toward helping those who’ve made bad life choices.
I feel bad dismissing the efforts and the results, but she has always been in a position–whether she does or not–to feel superior to those she helps.
There are any number of charitable fields where people are where the are due to circumstance, rather than personal failings and inabilities. With the exception of, for example, a friend who recently broke a leg or something, she looks to the failed. I noticed this years before she went hard, angry left.
“the political climate was different then. It was already hostile and bitter, but not even close to as extreme as it is now.”
One of the differences in the political climate of the 70’s – 2000’s is that the Democrats didn’t reflexively call conservatives white supremacists. Why? Because the Dems actual white supremacists were still alive and in positions of power within the Democratic Party. Now that they’re all dead, the Democrats can feel free to fling that label at anyone they disagree with.
Maybe a bit off-topic…
One of the ways that you can determine that your fundamental principles are wrong is to find that your principles are leading you to say and think absurd things. For example, I once discussed waterboarding suspected terrorists with a person who claims to be a utilitarian. To me the issue of waterboarding occupies grey area involving the severity of the process as compared to the severity of the threat from the terrorists. Torture is an abomination, but so are many operations of war. My conservative-hating, utilitarian friend could not admit that Bush ever did anything right so he stuck to the story that this was torture and it was an unforgivable stain on America.
Utilitarians are particularly vulnerable to arguments regarding torture. They want to believe that theirs is the only humane doctrine, but they have difficulty saying whether it is ok to torture a terrorist if he knows where a bomb is placed that will momentarily kill hundreds of people. The greater good for the greater number leads to a clear answer; torture the bastard. So instead, he said torture is ineffective. Remember our POWs in Vietnam? They could just say anything, it doesn’t matter, you can’t get the truth using torture! Of course, our POWs were not tortured for the purpose of getting information, they were simply brutalized for propaganda or other purposes. The utilitarian’s statement is simply absurd, resulting from an untenable philosophy colliding with a desire to be righteous and moral (at least when a Republican is president). To clarify the absurdity, here is the thought experiment: you are kidnapped and taken to an ATM and the kidnapper pulls out his pliers. How many fingers does he cut off before you give hime your password? So does torture get the truth?
“I can say in complete honesty that what the western world is now experiencing is far worse than the Czechoslovak style of communism in the 60s. The forced inoculations, the threats of lost livelihood…”
https://twitter.com/george_jazzcat/status/1443982836860653569
H/T Lee Smith twitter feed.
PA+Cat wrote:
“As I look back, the Nixon/McGovern election in 1972 was the tipping point;…”
There was this December 1972 “Commentary” piece from that time period, which I wrote about at Protein Wisdom, that showed just how that time period transformed the Democrats into what we see them obviously as today.
Links are to the Wayback machine archive.
The Commentary piece:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120828180557/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-new-politics-the-democrats/
My piece about it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100210015204/http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=3106
Would be advisable to appear harmless as doves, wise as serpents and as dangerous as a pack of wolves. No need for those under threat to billboard themselves.
“…advisable…”
Perhaps. Perhaps not…since they’re going to lie about you and try to crucify you anyway.
Compare and contrast (Roger Kimball on fire):
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/january-6-insurrection-hoax/
https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/02/claremont-under-fire/
H/T for both: Powerline blog.
AesopFan,
Sharyl Attkisson asks: “President Biden is wearing a mask outside. He walks up to press corps, takes down the mask, and talks to them. Please explain the purpose of the mask.”
The purpose is to symbolize the message. The message is; shut up and listen, then do as you’re told by your betters.
Barry Meislin,
“If you self-define as a VMP, then you can far more easily be a nasty, brutish, short (medium-size or tall) a$#hole”
The response to such people was given to us a bit over 2000 yrs ago. “Let he that is without sin, cast the first stone”
Richard Aubrey,
“I comfort myself by picturing him pursued by, say, antifa or BLM and, without the slightest hesitation or moral qualm, demanding sanctuary in a NASCAR event or Baptist church. Or from a couple of MAGA-hatted guys. After which, back to the same-oh.”
No doubt and the hypocrisy of it doesn’t phase them in the least because they measure their beliefs and actions by what elevates their ego. So too with her acts of ‘charity’, her “good works” will get her into heaven.
Nat Straw,
“Utilitarians are particularly vulnerable to arguments regarding torture. They want to believe that theirs is the only humane doctrine, but they have difficulty saying whether it is ok to torture a terrorist if he knows where a bomb is placed that will momentarily kill hundreds of people. The greater good for the greater number leads to a clear answer; torture the bastard. So instead, he said torture is ineffective.”
He defaulted to claiming torture to be ineffective because he hadn’t thought through his Utilitarianist philosophy deeply enough. Had he done so, he would have claimed that if enough people subscribed to Utilitarianism fully enough, humanity would evolve out of terrorism. And that the vehicle for achieving that end state was to allow the terrorists to explode the bomb and then go on as if nothing had happened. And, to do that repeatedly and without variation.
So too with the ATM incident, if criminals gained nothing because their victim(s) held on to their password even on to death, criminals would eventually decease from attempting that method, it having gained them nothing. Enough victims losing all of their fingers would be the means by which the criminals would be forced to accept that threat to have become ineffective.
He’s claim that only enough people had to be willing to personally sacrifice enough for utilitarianism to prevail.
He’d also assert that, the fact that sooner rather than later, the threat of losing fingers works most effectively, is not proof of utilitarianism’s flawed nature but of the victim’s inability to embrace it fully enough.
He might even point to Christianity’s persecution under the Roman’s. Those early Christians did not recant their beliefs even in the face of a horrible death. Faced with that kind of theological certainty, the Roman’s could not withstand it.
Finishing while smugly looking at you with “res ipsa loquitur”!
You responding with what if the criminal threatens your children?
Ideological fanatic that he is he might even claim that the greater good required even that sacrifice.
He’d be consistent and also have completely lost touch with his humanity. Having become a sociopath.
Sullivan’s law: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing”
David135’s corollary. “The leftward journey continues until it becomes the center of an adherent’s identity, indistinguishable from a zealous religion
James Burnham in Suicide of the West most cogently explained the fundamental problem and difference.
Progressivism, leftism or whatever label you give it is a tribe among the several ideological tribes. An ideology is utopian and irrational, usually toward a tribal, collectivist utopian goal.
I would also argue that pure, devout or rigid libertarianism is something of a much more benign ideology directed at an individualistic utopia, especially since it springs forth from the same liberal source that gave us the social liberals of the left and the classical liberals of libertarian bent.*
Burnham’s argument was that conservatism, in contrast to political ideologies, is a political philosophy. As such it seeks to discover and pursue those policies and ideas most conducive to liberty and prosperity. Ideologies by contrast claim to have already discovered them and those who don’t adhere and get in the way of their received wisdom and the road to utopia they are on must be cast aside. Hence social costs and gulags.
In the end, a political ideology is the irrational pursuit of an earthly paradise that invariably leads to disaster because it ignores human nature and, ultimately, reality.
Conservatism as a political philosophy recognizes human nature and reality and attempts to rationally understand them, as well as flawed humanity can, and adapt a society that best balances the real forces at work in that reality, knowing the end result will be not utopian in the slightest, but also knowing that making the perfect ideology the enemy of the good leads to mountains of corpses not utopia.
*The disaster that libertarianism leads to is the result of too little social costs to destructive individual behavior and the rigid clinging to irrational theoretical virtues like immigration, non intervention and free trade that are clung to even if they mean national suicide. The usual result is factionalization and chaos which leads to an environment in which collectivist ideologues step into the power vacuum to restore order and destroy the libertarians “utopia”.
A conservative is a libertarian who has taken his rose-colored glasses off and stomped on them after reading one too many crackpot articles in Reason magazine or at Cato.
Courageous transition. I made a transition, though this may be hard to believe, when is was acceptable if weird. Even afterward one could express differing views openly. I even used to joke about it. But the climate gradually shifted and I realized that I expressed my views at my own peril. Now such differences are toxic.
“As I said, it wouldn’t have stopped me, but I think I completely understand why others would be reluctant to tread that path. Who wants to become a pariah?”
Greta Thunberg.
The left thinks that if they can only come up with the right front man for their same old garbage ideas, we’ll just have to accept those ideas.
Now I’m not just rejecting their ideas. Greta Thunberg is fronting those ideas. She’s a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome. I’M NOW EFFING ATTACKING A DISABLED CHILD!!! HOW DARE I!!!
All the world’s problems will be solved, the people who created the Soviet Union and for that matter Pol Pot tell me, if I just surrender my freedoms. And if they have to dig up some wheel-chair-bound lesbian African toddler to exploit, they’ll do it, just to prove how awful I am for not surrendering.
Always ask a liberal, what is the most M conservative position that you support. The one you won’t speak out loud. On any topic.
I won’t engage with family on politics. I ask them this question and since they can never answer it, or their answer is so out in left field, I inform them there is no need to talk about politics with them as they do not have an open mind about any of my positions, or an open mind period.
Then refuse to engage with them. I’ve let them know I think they are closed minded fascists without engaging with their biased viewpoints
I’ve lived entirely in blue cultures. Blue feels like home. Going left-to-right has cost me.
If the Devil offered me the chance not to change or at least to keep my mouth shut, I would have to, Jack Benny style, think about it.
Pingback:Change is NOT | gregormendelblog.com
That Commentary article is interesting. What has changed since 1972 is that the overeducated rich liberals of 1972 got control of the media and have used it to wipe out any opposing view for millions who still rely on the corporate media for information.
What has changed since 1972 is that the overeducated rich liberals of 1972 got control of the media and have used it to wipe out any opposing view for millions who still rely on the corporate media for information.
Edith Efron’s The News Twisters was published in 1969 and Rothman and Lichter’s first tranche of articles was published in 1982. There’s leftover social survey data from 1964 which indicates that Lyndon Johnson won a 14-1 majority among a sample of reporters and editors from outlets with broad circulation.
OTOH, Time-Life properties remained non-liberal as late as 1966, editorial pages were often non-liberal, and you had prominent figures who were non-liberal (e.g. Mike Wallace and Dorothy Kilgallen). Both Gerald Ford’s press secretary and Jimmy Carter’s press secretary found their dealings with the media frustrating. Brent Bozell’s outfit ca. 1997 was reporting that their content analyses indicated that the written press retained a certain critical distance from the Clinton Administration while the broadcast media were extensions of it.
The media have been liberal for decades. I think it was during the period running from 1988 to 2004 that they morphed into extensions of the the Democratic Party and only in the last six years into garbage people paid to lie for the Democratic Party. A lot of it might be actuarial tables at work. Brit Hume and John Stossel landed their first media jobs ca. 1966. In 2000, Fred Barnes recalled that he’d been on the staff of The New Republic and of The Weekly Standard over the period running from 1985 to 2000 and noticed that the interns at the former were getting recruitment calls all the time while the interns at the latter received no calls and editors were going out of their way to not hire them. Note, in that era Laurie Garrett was able to build a career in mainstream media (Newsday, &c) even though she started out at the red haze Pacifica radio and Sarah Petit was able to land a plum editor’s job at Newsweek even though her previous experience was at gay magazines.
“Courageous transition.”
Courageous is precisely the word for it.
And it takes even more courage to express and defend that transition (and one’s position) to others.
(OTOH, some would deny that any of it takes any courage at all; they may, in fact, be the most courageous.)
On the subject of courage, I was blown away by one of Primo Levi’s short stories—“Iron”—in his “The Periodic Table”, and was left asking the time-old question of whether when crunch time came, I’d have the courage to do something in particular, hinted at toward the story’s end.
Not being one to generally seek argument, I’m not sure I’ll ever know how much courage I have until the time comes to show it.
Currently, things have become so tribal, so polarized; and people have become so aggressive and basically inattentive to argument or to reason—saturated with propaganda—that it’s no longer a given that people can even talk to one another on the same wavelength; i.e., no longer a given that one side can even understand what the other is talking about or referring to.
Or that they even WANT to.
Which takes one back to the whole topic of courage and what constitutes it in our insane and thuggish age.
Barry Meislin:
I usually like Kimball’s work, and I certainly agree with his points there, but I read about 2/3 of the article at your link and I was surprised to find him making at least 3 errors of fact. It’s a bit strange. They weren’t errors that contradiction the thrust of his article, but I’m surprised nevertheless.
Nat Straw:
Please see this 2005 post about the morality of torture.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6
I realize that verse may not be any comfort to the secular. But there is a great deal of practical wisdom in the Bible. There’s nothing to be gained by being timid. Right now we are NOT facing a public health crisis. But the Stalinists are pretending we are because we troglodytes standing by our God given rights are LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE!!! (next climate change, wealth redistribution, racial equity, wash, rinse, repeat). I don’t know what hope the secular cling to. Some supposed universal opinion about human dignity? I’d have thought that the image (factual) of a naked elderly man begging for a morsel of food from a communist party official during the Great Famine in Mao’s China, and being refused, might have woken people up. You want more examples? If you need more examples than you are beyond hope.
https://www.amazon.com/Maos-Great-Famine-Devastating-Catastrophe/dp/1408886367/ref=asc_df_1408886367?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80195683470971&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583795260728702&psc=1
I’m under no illusions. I know they will try to force me to “care” about what they pretend to care about. And I won’t care. I’m reminded of what the Czeck killers of the Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich said in their final transmission when they were surrounded and their fate was certain.
“Situation hopeless, but not serious.”
We’re not there yet. In the meantime I will love my wife, my family, and train everyday. Because my enemy never quits, neither will I.
And now I’m sure the FBI will be knocking at my door for violating article 70 of the constitution the Dems like General Milley have sworn fealty to. The Soviet constitution, which makes anti-regime agitation a felony.
geoffb:
That was an impressive piece at Protein Wisdom! Here’s the opening:
_______________________________________
I’ve written before in comments about how, through bureaucratic means, the “New Left” seized power in the Democratic Party. The Left has always been excellent at working committee meetings. They excel at being “Committeemen”. This is about how they managed to pull off an brilliant internal coup.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100210015204/http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=3106</i.
_______________________________________
That's my impression too. I've read enough New Left material to know how serious they are about position papers and such. I don't find a similar expertise on the Right.
Thank you Huxley. Glad you’re on our side now. Good on ya.
“I’ve written before in comments about how, through bureaucratic means, the “New Left” seized power in the Democratic Party. The Left has always been excellent at working committee meetings. They excel at being “Committeemen”. This is about how they managed to pull off an brilliant internal coup.”
Also known as the Gramscian long march through the institutions.
https://www.acton.org/religion-liberty/volume-29-number-3/antonio-gramscis-long-march-through-history
In all seriousness, what’s this mania about “ending” America’s “endless” wars. Our enemies never give up. We deliver tactical defeats and we go home. But they, the communists, the Islamists, the Democrats, never give up. I’m tired of hearing from so-called conservative opinion leaders being surprised Pelosi doesn’t give up.
Think of herpes. Catch a case and it’s with you forever. America, we’ve caught a case and it’s name is leftism.
BrianB,
Thank you for mentioning James Burnham’s Suicide of the West. I searched for and found it available for free download at https://archive.org/details/james-burnham-suicide-of-the-west_202008/page/n1/mode/1up
I’m reading it with interest. As I was a liberal until transitioning in the early to mid 90s I’d either overlooked it or simply never run across it. So far it shows promise of being as insightful as Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind”.
But I understand that one reason it’s so difficult to do, and one reason a person might adopt a stance of not wanting to hear information contrary to the beliefs that person already holds, is that it is now extremely threatening to make that particular change.
That fear is what keeps people “on the plantation” … but there is another perception that primes them to respond to that fear.
The perception that leads them to sell themselves short, as though they are shares of GameStop … the perception that our own, close-to-the-problems/skin-in-the-game, informed common sense is inherently inferior to the thinking of an elite few that – on the basis of surface appearances – are put on pedestals by our culture as wiser, more trustworthy, and more virtuous than the ordinary person.
Thomas Sowell calls those elites The Anointed, but that implies Divine endorsement, so I prefer to call them the Pedestaled Elite.
We came to value education – so some are pedestaled on the basis of such credentials. As opposed to what they actually achieved by applying that education.
We value advancement – so some are pedestaled on the basis of positions held. As opposed to what they actually achieved while holding those positions.
We value success and fame – so some are pedestaled on the basis of cultural notoriety. As opposed to actually doing something admirable in terms of advancing humanity.
This process has been going on, Neo, well before your or my time … all the way back to our society’s move from farms to factories, as we came to celebrate, then depend upon, the great technical, economic, and military achievements derived from education and advancement.
And it is reinforced to this day, from our earliest years, by parents and teachers who simply say “we are right – trust us” without taking the time to educate their charges on WHY they are right.
But as we put them on pedestals, we lose our perception of the humanity of these notables … members of a species that has a well-documented record of error, greed, delusion, and deception, as well as a very limited ability to perceive the differing needs of others from their lofty pedestals. A species that, outside of its medical profession, has a real hard time heeding the words of Hippocrates to “first, do no harm” when they see the need to DO SOMETHING!
Instead, we put total trust in these Top Men (and Women) to have all the answers for us, as we simply go to work or school, thinking we don’t have to worry about going beyond what we are told to do, and apply our own insights to secure our jobs and manage our lives to be ready to work around the inevitable failures of the Pedestaled Elite.
Decades of immersion in this way of thinking have led us to lie to ourselves, about what it takes to get through life … led us to think that our employers, our union leaders, our academics, our activists, and particularly our government are there to assure a prosperous and peaceful life, with little or no effort on our part.
I came to this conclusion in my own epiphany, twelve or so years ago, when after three decades of prosperity brought to us via supply-side economics, we elected to replace that with a return to 1960’s/1970’s command economics, led by an American notable who embraced socialism more than any other in history (at that time) … and the thought leaders of the conservative worldview couldn’t even make the coherent, persuasive case to not make that choice.
I then realized that our leaders were a problem, because they were a reflection of US and our own, conditioned belief in the superiority of the elite few, leading a technocratic society that effectively disconnects most of the distributed intellect in said society by placing it in deference to the Pedestaled Elite.
And that immersion I mentioned above, has also led the Pedestaled Elite to assume the self-assured, self-righteousness that is normally seen in a theocracy – except, instead of being mere spokesmen for an invisible God, the gods for whom they seek coerced submission are readily visible – on our video screens, and in their mirrors.
It is that self-righteousness – which flies in the face of the self-evident truths this nation was founded to respect and protect – that is creating the conflict and strife you are describing here.
Because if those truths were respected, dissent from the Pedestaled Elite would not be faced with cancellation and “othering”.
Richard Aubrey —
virtue signaling to oneself–should be a term for that
“Self-righteousness” seems to fill the bill.
neo —
“Oh, then I guess you’re okay with framing someone innocent if you don’t like their politics, and you don’t believe in “innocent till proven guilty” for those who disagree with you on politics.”
I’d wager than 9 out of 10 “liberals” would shout “YES!” That person isn’t “innocent”, you see, because being a conservative/voting for Trump/being pro-life is already sufficient crime to outlaw them from society in the first place.
They would 100% absolutely cut down every law in England to get at the Devil, and would be laughing and joking among themselves and sneering at the deplorables as they did it.
BrianB —
The disaster that libertarianism leads to is the result of too little social costs to destructive individual behavior and the rigid clinging to irrational theoretical virtues like immigration, non intervention and free trade that are clung to even if they mean national suicide.
I consider myself more of a libertarian than a conservative, but I do not believe that libertarianism is a suicide pact. Human rights may be inalienable and universal, but until the rest of the people of the world acknowledge and embody that belief, it’s not safe to allow them unrestricted access to the one place that kinda sorta does.
AesopFan —
An accurate view of the Progressive Progression.
In a sane world, that script would go:
“You do not fit in here”
“Okay, we will make our own place”
“Why are you excluding us?”
“It’s our place, we made it, so f***k off.”
The end
Most of leftism is a hitherto entirely successful attempt to weaponize the culture’s morals against it in order to grant the left unearned power. At some point the rest of us who aren’t left have to understand that tolerating intolerance can only go so far until it comes down to a matter of cultural survival and an exercise of pure power.
Any discussion with those on the left always ends up in an argument about unstated motivations.
It has become nearly impossible to have discussions with them about the merit of an actual idea.
Its a mental trap I see all the time. And it is always a distraction.
Trump was the perfect example of this. As many things he did were on average fairly ordinary. Yet were always trumpeted as some sort of horrible “UNPRECEDENTED!” issue.
Try discussing it. Almost every time when you get to the crux of their argument. Their opposition is not based on any tangible result. Simply opposition to what they have convinced themselves is the reason for that choice.
It is why everyone on both sides see something terrible up ahead. As one side has chosen a completely emotional and hence always subjective path forward. We may see it as some sort of immature version of ourselves. That can be taught to reason. But it is clearly past that.
@Neo, on 2 Oct. at 3:20 pm, on the Kimball article:
Which one, the 6 Jan. one, or the Claremont one?
aNanyMouse:
The January 6 one.
Why have we tolerated Plantation Democrats in our country so long?
Democrat racism is and has always been evil. Did we think Democrats would change from their KKK days?
“Biden” authoritarianism, Part ~ :
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2021/10/04/bidens-brass-now-accusing-lt-col-scheller-of-helping-china/
Trying to out-Stasi the Stasi seems to be “Biden”‘s biggest challenge at the moment, but one that “he” has been meeting with aplomb.
And then some….
Prepare for more of this obscene, tyrannical desperation. (No doubt, uncooperative—“white supremacist”—teachers, who refuse to totally screw up their students, as they are being forced to do under “Biden”‘s uber-moral strictures, are going to be getting their turn soon, along with those parents who similarly object).
File under: Exodus 1: 17
Human rights may be inalienable and universal, but until the rest of the people of the world acknowledge and embody that belief, it’s not safe to allow them unrestricted access to the one place that kinda sorta does.
Bryan … from what I see, the most stable, fault-tolerant/self-correcting configuration for global civilization is the existence of multiple, independent, sovereign nations … and border/immigration controls are part of maintaining that sovereign independence, even between nations that do respect life and liberty.
This configuration limits the spread of damage when a nation gets stuck on stupid – and provides the victims of such stupidity potential refuges if they can’t get it un-stuck in a timely manner, even if they can’t just walk into those other nations and continue with living their lives.
Related:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/10/im-a-middle-school-teacher-facing-retaliation-after-blowing-the-whistle-on-critical-race-curriculum/
The writing is on the wall.
@ Neo in re the January 6 post by Roger Kimball > “I usually like Kimball’s work, and I certainly agree with his points there, but I read about 2/3 of the article at your link and I was surprised to find him making at least 3 errors of fact. It’s a bit strange. They weren’t errors that contradiction the thrust of his article, but I’m surprised nevertheless.”
I’m curious which claims you objected to. I noted that Kimball accused Trump’s team of not doing enough to counter vote fraud before the election and you’ve commented several times showing that they were trying, but unsuccessful for a variety of reasons.
What else, exactly, are you alluding to?
If being ‘very smart’ includes being numerically proficient and understanding basic economics, then I fail to see how that’s consistent with approval of Dem policies?
“….to counter vote fraud before the election…”
MUST also be mentioned—MUST be STRESSED—that the timing of the January 6 “Insurrection” was MEANT to PREVENT Trump from laying out the case for MASSIVE DEMOCRATIC PARTY fraud before Congress.
AND BEFORE THE NATION.
IOW, Trump “PLOTTED” “HIS” “INSURRECTION” in order to PREVENT HIMSELF from publicly defending these claims and skewering the Democrats.
Um, sure, Nancy!!
(Truth(!) to tell, this scam has your sticky fingers all over it—must be all that designer ice cream in the walk-in freezer….)
File under: A plot that will be ERASED IN INFAMY…(how’s THAT for originality?)
“…social costs…”
Other costs, too:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/next-lehman-moment-will-china-try-create-dangerous-diversion
Curious how “Build-Back-Better” “Biden” is aping “Build-Build-Build” Xi.
(Or maybe not so curious, really….)
Milley warning his buddies in Beijing that Trump has been successfully hogtied, not that that was necessary, mind you…but I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine is official (such as it is) “Biden” policy.
With China.
With Iran.
With Russia.
File under: Hey, you wanna make some serious bucks?
An intellectual framework to explain why 70% or even 80% will hang on tight to the Narrative despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Why do so many still buy into the narrative?
https://youtu.be/uLDpZ8daIVM
He tells an interesting anecdote from the early days.
Imperial College estimated 80,000 Swedes would die if there was no lockdown.
There was no lockdown.
Only 6,000 died.
No change was made to the model.
“Tearing our societies apart”.
(The words of a Facebook employee/whistleblower)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/facebook-whistleblower-accuses-company-of-tearing-our-societies-apart
Nothing that we didn’t know, but nice to find out that AT LEAST ONE Facebook employee has a conscience.
(Now, if we can only get AT LEAST ONE of those crooked ballot stuffers to, um, have a few pangs….)
Great post and a lot of good comments here! Thanks to all for sharing your perspectives.
geoffb,
Interesting post at Protein Wisdom, geoffb. Do you know Jeff?
Rufus,
Know, as in having corresponded with at times, yes. Know as in knowing and having met in person, no.
Protein Wisdom was a unique place. I’ve never known any other blog that taught me so much in such a compelling/interesting way and allowed mere commenters to post their own pieces at a side part of the blog. I miss those days.
Protein Wisdom was a very unique and fascinating place.
I’m catching up at Instapundit and this post has two links from two different contributors. Way to go, neo!
AesopFan:
Yes, that was one of the points that annoyed me.
Another error I recall was about Sicknick’s death (don’t have time to go back and check it now; I’m doing this from memory). I believe he wrote that Sicknick went home after the demonstration on January 6th and then died the next day. That’s not what happened. Sicknick went to his place of work (somewhere else in the Capitol – I think perhaps Capitol Police headquarters?) and collapsed there quite a few hours after the demonstration (around 10 PM), after talking to his family on the phone and saying he was okay but had been sprayed somewhat. He was taken to the hospital after collapsing and died the next day there.
I forget the third one and don’t feel like going through the longish essay to find it, but it was on that order. Nothing that really affected his point, but kind of sloppy in terms of research.
@ Neo – thanks. I wondered if Sicknick’s death was one, but the details apparently escaped me & Roger both – at least Kimball had it correct that he was NOT killed by protestors, either directly or indirectly.
The third one was probably another of those minor points with such a flurry of this-that-yes-no reporting-revising that the actual details didn’t stick for me (or apparently for Kimball).
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