The last post discussed how the left, having been brutally contradicted over the past year or two by reality, almost seem to invite humiliation on themselves, in a masochistic sense. The theme of that post was something to the effect of they aren't even trying anymore. This post will look at it from a slightly different perspective, which is they don't have to try.
Societies benefit from cultural cohesion, and engage in activities to maintain that cohesion. Throughout most of history those cohesion behaviors have tended to be religious or at least superstitious. Societies developed priestly castes to enforce the cultural cohesion. That cohesion gave the nation a survival advantage. They were able to punch above their weight versus tribes that were less united. But those cohesion behaviors carry a cost. In the very first book of the Bible we are given the story of Cain and Abel making food sacrifices to their diety. That is quite a cost. Less food means fewer people can be fed; a smaller population means a weaker nation. The benefits of cultural cohesion must have outweighed the energy costs. This should be a familiar event for those familiar with the work of Dr Joseph Tainter. Societies adapt complexity to solve problems, which comes at a cost in energy.
The Romans kept order through rule of law, effective provincial administration, and through military force. But even they also made sure to maintain cultural cohesion through religion, with magnificent temples and rituals. They paid for those costs through conquest of increasingly distant opponents, and by control of agriculturally productive regions such as Sicily and Egypt. In pre-European America the natives engaged in human sacrifice, notably of children, to appease the gods. Those societies were willing to pay an extreme cost to maintain the priestly caste's imposed social order. It's interesting that the civilizations noted for human sacrifice, the Mayans, Incans, and Aztecs, were the only highly complex nations, who also built great pyramids and monuments. The far less complex, semi-nomadic tribes of North America aren't know for their human sacrifice. We can reasonably suppose that previous complex societies of North America, such as the one that built the burial mounds in Cahokia, also engaged in human sacrifice or similarly costly cohesion behaviors. It's also likely that the incurred costs contributed to their collapse. But that's something of a truism. All costs contribute to the collapse.
Non-religious societies have their own cohesion behaviors. Japan is enormously cohesive, and largely non-religious. They are kept in line by social expectation and judgment. Think of the Japanese salarymen, who lose face if they come home too early. They must not be very important to come home so early. So they come home late. They dilly dally at work, then head to the pachinko bar for a spell, before finally coming home at a respectable time. The inefficiencies are obvious, but more costly is that households are practically fatherless. The results show, with the "grass eaters" afraid to leave the house and the shocking number of young people who just don't have sex at all. Fatherlessness destroys societies, especially in a place like Asia, where the men are low-T to begin with. Think about it: the Japanese are about the smartest and most conscientious and most orderly people on Earth, and they're headed to extinction if they can't fix their social cohesion imbalances.
America is similar to Rome in that cultural cohesion has been maintained through religion and rule of law, but there are some uniquely American cohesive attributes, such as a social code of reciprocative personal liberty, an ethos of equality, and the conviction that success can be found in industriousness and hard work. Modern secular America has its own quasi-religious rituals, such as the 4th of July and standing for the national anthem before baseball games. There are costs to cultural cohesion in America, with vast resources dedicated to indoctrination, but they fall far short of murdering our own children. Perhaps that's part of our great success. We can suppose the following principle: nations have the greatest survival advantage when they can get the most cultural cohesion for the least cost.
And that brings us to the left. They are their own unique culture defined by r-selected psychologies and an innate rejection of traditional society. There are great institutions enforcing their cultural cohesion in media, education, and government. However, the left don't shoulder the burden for maintaining those institutions; they compel everyone to support them through taxation, requiring educational credentials for employment, controlling information channels, etc. Sort of like with corporate welfare, which engages in Privatizing Gains and Socializing Losses, the left is constantly striving to extract the most gains from national institutions while minimizing the costs to themselves. (Nearly all of Bernie Sanders' platform, save for some anti-corruption rhetoric, follows from this foundation.)
Co-opting institutions with minimal cost isn't their only advantage. The most potent lefty cohesion behaviors seem to bear almost no cost at all, which are virtue signaling and lying. In the last post we examined how the left is routinely embarrassed when their outrage is contradicted by reality. We supposed that they may actually enjoy humiliation. And indeed we see examples to confirm our suspicions, like Antifa's Professor Giraffe, a total lefty nutjob who engages in sexually humiliating behavior. So self-hatred is certainly an aspect. But also we have to note that leftists don't have to be right because they pay almost no cost for being wrong. They're not even trying, because they don't have to. They can get all the cohesion benefits of virtue signaling and lying but incur few of the costs.
Let's look at a recent example. Recently it was discovered that an act of racist vandalism at the Air Force Academy was false-flag vandalism committed by the alleged victims. When it originally happened, the media was on it like flies on fruit. The general in charge gave a wonderfully "virtuous" response which condemned the racism and garnered millions of YouTube views. If it wasn't intended as an attack on Trump, it certainly was treated as one. The media praised it to the moon and back for its moral clarity, in juxtaposition with Trump's morally ambivalent stance regarding the Charlottesville fiasco. To us, it was just incredible. Because after Charlottesville, Trump, who loves to kid and clown, was the only adult in the room. The alt-right & neo-Nazi protesters looked bad, Antifa looked bad, the media and mainstream politicians looked bad. Only Trump had the fortitude to call it for what it was; an ugly event where idiots on both sides were engaging in unacceptable behavior. The left was outraged. Trump is head of America's largest and most powerful institution. America's institution's are supposed to condemn the misdeeds of the right, not the misdeeds of both sides!
As tends to happen, reality had her way. It was found that it was, in fact, false-flag vandalism. Trump's "moral ambivalence" was justified to the maximal possible extent. It was savage karma. Did the media outlets admit the reality, or pay any price whatsoever for their outrageous coverage? Of course not! They doubled down. CNN described the revelation as "unfortunate." Can you imagine that? They found it unfortunate that there weren't, in fact, gratuitous acts of racism in the Air Force Academy! They also argued that the general's words were powerful and true no matter what the specifics of any particular incident. All attacks on Trump are valid, whatever the facts.
No one is going to be punished for any of this, the false vandalism, the hysterical reaction, the complete lack of journalistic integrity, none of it. Generally speaking, political lefties are only punished when they absolutely have to be. In the Giraffe Boy link, the professor was in fact suspended, but for hoping for the deaths of his own students! That's how far they have to go. Even if he is fired, he'll quietly be hired by some other sympathetic college. He'll be fine. They just don't get punished. Look at all we know the Democrats were doing in the election. There were some token firings, but they're all fine. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is still a Congressman; Donna Brazille lost her CNN slot but has a great book deal. The only person in jail is Anthony Weiner, serving a short sentence for, again, soliciting minors for sex. To be punished, liberals have to engage in the most egregious behaviors: wishing for the deaths of their students, getting caught rigging their own election, and pedophilia. Even then, the consequences are minimal or even trivial.
The point of all this, if you're concerned I've run off the rails here, is that liberals get enormous cultural cohesion with almost no cost at all. They are united in hate under a false narrative and when reality rears her head they just scurry along to the next faux outrage. According to our postulate from above, they must incur a survival advantage. They seem to. There is evidence of some long-term costs. CNN's viewership is down; Fox News is leading the pack. The kids coming up in school are pretty conservative for their age bracket. The problem with the long-term is that, in the long-term, the Democrats shift the demographics enough that the lefties and foreigners can outvote the American nation in every national election. We're very close to that point, right now. Saying that there are long-term costs to liberal cohesion behaviors is not very helpful when, in the long term, given the current trajectories, they win anyway.
This post is running much longer than normal, so we'll leave it here, at the statement of the problem, with no suggestion for solutions. The problem is that those who hate us and want to kill our nation maintain cultural cohesion with minimal cost. Right-wing cohesion comes with great risk and cost. This is the number one problem we face. If we don't find a way to change the equation so that leftist cultural cohesion is more expensive than our own, we lose. No matter what else do. We'll address this problem more in another post very soon.
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