Home » The cost of playing the “The Emperor’s New Clothes” game

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The cost of playing the “The Emperor’s New Clothes” game — 39 Comments

  1. An excellent recent book on the collapse of traditional, classical liberalism into the pathologies of “woke” identity politics (what Dinesh D’Souza calls “identity socialism” and others call “cultural Marxism”) is American Awakening by Joshua Mitchell (Georgetown). It has long been common for conservatives to describe leftism (especially of the utopian variety) as a kind of faith (sometimes even as a perversion of Christianity), but it is best imagined as a cult which requires external enemies (various scapegoats who can be demonized with impunity) and confers power and material benefits upon those who belong and accept, without question, its absurd and utterly irrational dogmas.

  2. Most frightening is the extraordinary level of dishonesty (or perhaps to be more charitable, the lack of awareness of truth) on the part of people who really ought to know better.

    The victory of the propagandistic media, no doubt.

    And yet, those same people ought to be aware of the potential for, and tendency of, the media to be propagandistic.

    Undoubtedly it’s the injection of feelings of being absolutely moral/virtuous/righteous together with the need to demonize others who don’t agree that has totally altered the playing field here.

    Our once liberal society has become Manichaean.

    I would contend that social media has proven to be the poisoned chalice.

  3. Regarding truth and the political realm I always go back to a piece an online friend introduced me to over a decade ago. Hannah Arendt’s “Truth and Politics.”

    “…[T]he sacrifice of truth for the survival of the world would be more futile than the sacrifice of any other principle or virtue. For while we may refuse even to ask ourselves whether life would still be worth living in a world deprived of such notions as justice and freedom, the same, curiously, is not possible with respect to the seemingly so much less political idea of truth. What is at stake is survival, the perseverance in existence (in suo esse perseverare), and no human world destined to outlast the short life span of mortals within it will ever be able to survive without men willing to do what Herodotus was the first to undertake consciously – namely, ?é???? ?? éo???, to say what is. No permanence, no perseverance in existence, can even be conceived of without men willing to testify to what is and appears to them because it is.”

  4. The history of the transformation of liberalism into illiberalism, beginning in the late 19th century, and completed on an intellectual plane by the 1940’s is well known.

    Its driving force has always been, and remains, the substitution of inclusion in place of the value “freedom”.

    Every other psychosocial pathology including the normalization of evil, and the mainstreaming and celebration of mental illness under the rubric of social diversity expressed through absolute inclusion, can be traced to this impulse.

    Freedom is simply too threatening both on the material as well as the moral responsibility levels to be much desired by much, perhaps most, of humanity. It demands as much of the individual in terms of self-responsibility and moral hazards as it offers in opportunity.

  5. For those who seem to have forgotten (or wished to actively blot it all out), an apt reminder from almost 1900 years ago:
    “These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your gates. And do not contrive evil against one another, and do not love perjury, because all those are things that I hate—declares the Lord.”

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298577
    (with an interesting video towards the end of the article…)

  6. Lindsay is talking about an emergent realization among many of us: this is about mental illness preying on mental illness to create more mental illness.

  7. Lindsey wrote, Neo posted and AppleBetty thinks differently:

    [T]he very assertion of pseudo-reality demoralizes men and annoys women who are pressed into engaging with it by the mere fact of being something false that must be treated as true. We should never underestimate how psychologically weakening and damaging it is to be forced to treat as true something that is not true, with the effect strengthening the more obviously false it is. But, we should never underestimate how commonplace it is for women to treat as true something that is not true, with the empowerment strengthening the more obviously false it is.

  8. Thank you, neo, for the link to,
    https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/
    Many comments there are wonderful. Here is the most pithy:

    Cary D Cotterman says:
    FEBRUARY 19, 2021 AT 2:06 PM
    MAGA, even with its imperfections, is an attempt by normal people to re-establish a society based on reality, while wokeness is based on pseudo-reality and pseudo-morality defined and pushed by psychopaths. The article clearly applies to the latter, not the former.

  9. Barry Meislin on March 16, 2021 at 6:48 pm said:
    For those who seem to have forgotten (or wished to actively blot it all out), an apt reminder from almost 1900 years ago:
    “These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your gates. And do not contrive evil against one another, and do not love perjury, because all those are things that I hate—declares the Lord.”
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298577
    (with an interesting video towards the end of the article…)

    Thanks, Barry.
    Let’s make that 2500 years ago, though.

  10. “……Some among them, particularly the very but not exceptionally smart, thus skillfully reinterpret the absurd and dangerous claims of the pseudo-realist ideologues into something reasonable and sensible when, in fact, they are not reasonable or sensible. ……..”

    The above reminds me of Orwell’s comment;
    “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”

  11. Well yes, but the discovery to which I was referring was a fragment from Zechariah, in Greek translation, from the time of Bar Kochba…

    And there were much older finds, too: e.g., the large storage basket and that 6,000 year old mummified child. All rather amazing and the landscape, of course, extraordinary.

  12. Barry Meislin:

    I’ve long loved this bit from the Gospel of Thomas. (Yes, I know Thomas is considered apocryphal, but I still love it, parts anyway.)
    ___________________________________

    (1) His disciples questioned [Jesus], (and) they said to him: “Do you want us to fast? And how should we pray and give alms? And what diet should we observe?”
    (2) Jesus says: “Do not lie.
    (3) And do not do what you hate.

    –Gospel of Thomas, Saying 6
    ___________________________________

    I love the way this saying puts it on the listener, not on external commandments. You know (mostly) when you’re lying. And you sure know what you hate.

    Don’t do it.

    Then discover how hard that is.

    A person could transform his or her life totally with those two injunctions.

  13. There’s a foundational teaching which covers what we should think about all these anonymous stories which do so much damage: “You shall not bear false witness.”

  14. Libertarianism is self-organizing. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is [unqualified] monotonic change. Conservativism is moderating. Principles matter.

    Sex is genetic: male and female. Gender is sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation): masculine and feminine, respectively.

    Trans is a state or process of divergence from normal (e.g. distribution).

    Transgenders exhibit genderphobia of varying degrees.

    Elective abortion is a summary judgment and termination of a human life to relieve a “burden”, for social progress, and medical progress. A wicked solution, to a purportedly hard problem.

    Immigration reform is pursued at the expense of emigration reform, for labor arbitrage, democratic gerrymandering, and to compensate for dysfunctional lifestyles and selective-child.

    Social justice is relativistic is injustice everywhere.

    Diversity [dogma] is a color judgment, not limited to racism, that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, and normalizes (i.e. promotes) color blocs (e.g. “people of color”), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination.

    Color is a low-information attribute.

    Russians are Asians, but not Asian-American. Native born to a legal jurisdiction. Indigenous to a geographical area. It takes two: mom and dad.

    Science is, with cause, a philosophy and practice in the near-domain, where we are capable of observation, reproduction, and deductive reasoning. Inference is created, often creative, knowledge.

    Faith (i.e. trust) is a logical domain, one of four: science (i.e. near-domain), philosophy (i.e. possible), and fantasy (i.e. improbable).

    Religion, its relativistic sibling “ethics”, and its politically congruent cousin “law” are behavioral protocols.

    The extra-universal God is a philosopher of a religion. There are gods, and mortal gods and goddesses, ostensibly “secular”, too. Principles matter. Force matters, too.

    Feminists and masculinists are sex chauvinists and narcissists.

    Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature.

    Diversity of individuals, minority of one.

    The Constitution does not discriminate by sex, color, or even gender.

    The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution are central to the characterization of American conservative philosophy.

    Normalize, tolerate, or reject? I suppose that all’s fair in lust and abortion.

  15. “We should never underestimate how psychologically weakening and damaging it is to be forced to treat as true something that is not true, with the effect strengthening the more obviously false it is.” James Lindsey

    Though it is currently out of fashion, Lindsey is referring to the damage to one’s soul that results from pretending that lies are truths. I suspect that God cares little for the state of our mortal minds, while greatly concerned for our mortal souls.

  16. I suspect that God cares little for the state of our mortal minds, while greatly concerned for our mortal souls.

    Immortal souls, disembodied spirits, really. Yeah, to paraphrase Shakespeare: Earth is a stage, a proving ground, where we fret and strive to realize, reject, and reconcile with His religious (i.e. moral) order.

  17. DNW,

    The “psychosocial pathology” of evil is as common to the individual as it is to those who embrace the collective vaue of inclusion.

    “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?” Rabbi Hillel

    “Freedom is simply too threatening both on the material as well as the moral responsibility levels to be much desired by much, perhaps most, of humanity. It demands as much of the individual in terms of self-responsibility and moral hazards as it offers in opportunity.”

    Culture pays a determinative role in the percentage of humanity that embraces “the self-responsibility and moral hazards” of freedom. Previous generations in America were far more accepting of self-responsibility than today and the cultural zeitgeist was the determinant factor.

  18. You should call him “Snitsyn”.

    Sounds like a name Dr. Seuss would have invented:

    “Snitsyn and the Gibbering Gobbo of Hollyweird”

  19. A thought should be given to Natural Law, aka divine law, with which we are all born. Two year olds know that they’re lying when they lie. It need not be taught.
    Jesus’ recommendation as to how to be most like him: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. Clearly the Democrats and the secularists who compose the large majority of America do not believe that.

    God, being infinite, has no timepiece. He may get around to rectifying our mess, but remember, Sodom and Gomorrah existed for quite some time before he obliterated them.

  20. Cicero:

    Ah, but many do believe in “love they neighbor as thyself” – that is, they think they believe in it or would say they believe it. But at the same time they also believe that people on the right are the haters – that they hate people of a different color or sexuality, or hate women, or any number of other hates. So those on the left hate them because for that reason, or so they say. Nor would they all necessarily label what they themselves feel “hate” – they define hate as what the right does, not the left. And some of these people on the left profess to be religious.

  21. And some of these people on the left profess to be religious.

    Twilight faith, Pro-Choice quasi-religion, and progressive liberal (i.e. monotonically divergent) ideology. Everyone is religious (i.e. behavioral protocol), its relativistic sibling ethics, and politically congruent cousin law. Whether God, gods, or mortal gods and goddesses, each a religious/moral/ethical/legal philosophy… principles matter.

  22. “Love thy neighbor as thyself”
    I find that a little hard to follow. I prefer the version of the Golden Rule that says: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I do try to live by that (somewhat less restrictive) dictum. And it makes this corollary more credible, too: “Do unto others as they have done unto you, … until they stop.”

    Oh, and I have very good, very fine neighbors, and I like them a lot.

  23. There’s also this formulation, attributed to Rabbi Akiva:
    “Do not do unto others that which you would not want them to do to you.”

  24. One of our sons recently came up with a twist on the Rule that I hadn’t seen anyone else use (he is our artistically sensitive one who often has deep psychological ruminations):
    Do unto others as you would have GOD do unto you.

    Not quite the same thing as the others, it hearkens back to the “With what measure you mete, so shall it be meted unto you” stricture, and the “Forgive us our trespasses (debts)” plea in The Lord’s Prayer.

  25. This brings to mind Theofore Dalrymple’s comment on political correctness:

    “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

    ? Theodore Dalrymple

    Making someone denounce their ‘white supremacy’ is part and parcel of this technique.

  26. Mac Siccar:

    (1) Post-modernism has spread, especially in academia and even lower school education, and then filtered out into the rest of the culture. Critical legal studies and critical race studies are outgrowths of post-modernism, which isn’t interested in objective truth.

    (2) Most people under 40 know little of the evils that the left has wrought, for example under Communism. So leftism has spread, too.

    (3) The left has found that using accusations of racism against attempts at truth-telling is very effective, especially with the younger generations.

  27. The Dalrymple quote — “To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself.” — is along the same vein as an article Angelo Codevilla wrote after the Kavanaugh hearings. I highly recommend it. https://americanmind.org/salvo/our-revolutions-logic/

    A key point he makes: “The anti-Kavanaugh campaign’s power and significance lies precisely in the ruling class’s perpetration of an in-your-face hoax. Making someone pretend that your patent lie is true may be the most humiliating of assertions of power. ”

    We are being forced, repeatedly, to pretend that their lies and hoaxes are true — BLM, global warming, me too and rape culture, anti-Asian narrative, Russia collusion, the Capitol “riot/insurrection”, the “honest” election, white supremacy, the racism of voter ID — the list goes on and on.

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