Book I of Plato's Republic tells of a dialogue between Socrates and several others concerning the topic of justice. Thrasymachus opines that justice is "the will of the stronger." In his view, strength is its own virtue, thus the natural order is for the will of these more capable men to be carried out. The just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. In matters of human affairs, such as business, it is the unscrupulous man who comes out ahead, at the expense of the just man. In so many words, nice guys finish last. The most unjust society is one dedicated to profit and self-interest, because the unjust will naturally be advantaged. Thus, he reasons that the most just course of action is to see to the will of the strongest, because only the strong can counter the predatory behaviors of the unjust.
Socrates counters that injustice inherently foments friction and division. An unjust nation cannot be strong because it will be turned in on itself. Likewise, a purely unjust man would be incapable of gaining the societal power that would allow him to inflict harm in the first place. Such a man is to self-destructive to be a serious threat. He reckons that Thrasymachus's predators must have at least some virtue in order to hold the capacity to cause injury, and terms them as "half-villains."
It's an interesting concept, that those most dangerous to us must, by necessity, possess some fair amount of virtue. Perhaps its the reason we are advised not to dehumanize our enemies. It's a matter of self-interest. We become blind to the source of our enemies' power. If we can ever truly assess an opponent as having little to no virtue, then we could safely ignore that opponent and focus on more realistic threats. But if they are a threat, their virtues must be acknowledged.
The concept is reflected in a debate that occurs amongst conservatives today, regarding how to respond to our political counterparts. It is quite apparent that the Democrat party is largely infected with lunacy these days. Some opine that this is an excellent development for our interests - that the further disconnected they become, the less capable they will be to act on their delusions. Others lament that having a major party in such a state of disorder poses a serious hazard to our political process, and we must do whatever we can to encourage them back to moderation. (Both arguments have been made on this blog.) So which is correct? Should we encourage them towards greater virtue, or help push them off the deep end?
The answer must depend on the disposition and intent of the other party. An oncologist is much more aggressive in treating a malignant tumor, which has the disposition to kill the host. It is a villain. The benign tumor has no more or less virtue than its murderous counterpart, and yet it is not a villain.
The question then, is do the left wish us ill will? Not in the political sense, but personally. We can always make the argument that our political counterparts, by choosing the "wrong" ideas, will weaken us indirectly and cause us harm. For instance, we see Democrat policies as leading to poor economic outcomes, more crime, greater rifts between identity groups, etc. On their end, they imagine our policies will lead to oppressive aristocracy. Do they see us as mere counterparts to be negotiated with to secure the best realistic outcomes for all parties? Or do they view us as enemies to be destroyed?
It is quite apparent that they do, in fact, wish us personal harm. They seek to restrict our freedom of speech. That is as real a harm as anything. They wish to see us removed from meaningful employment, and engage in egregious witch hunts to do so. They even wish physical violence on our persons, which has been demonstrated many times, and effectively formalized by the highly popular "Punch a Nazi" campaign. Who is a Nazi? Anyone they disagree with.
When we consider the consequences of empowered leftists, we can't just calculate the societal impact of enacting their desired policies. We must consider their virulent desire to punish us for all the perceived injustices in the world. Historically, radical leftists have always turned murderous once they've obtained power. They openly boast, today, that they want to hurt us. We should certainly take them at their word.
Our opponents are not equivalent to Thrasymachus's half villains, who were motivated to injustice by self interest. The radical left are ideologically driven. The are self-interested, to be sure, but they are also religious. As long as they believe that they are saints and we are demons, then any virtue they acquire will only be wielded against us. We'd rather them be Socrates' "perfectly evil" - but inept - villains, rather than dangerous semi-virtuous half-villains.
If that seems to be a broad brush, keep in mind that we are talking only of the ideologically possessed radicals. There are still a great many intelligent and sane folks among the left who can be persuaded with reasoning, who don't resort to cries of heresy in all debates. (Racist, misogynist, etc.) We should deal with those types gently, rationally, and persistently. But the rest, who engage in politics as religion, who are not liberal like Jefferson but progressive like Marx, whose thirst for vengeance is only limited by their lack of real power...they should be tormented towards insanity. Pull gently on the moderates, and kick the radicals as hard as you can.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Scorched-Earth Politics
In his most recent podcast, the Zman did an analysis on Rome to make allusions to our current political environment. The first segment was in reference to Marius. Becoming consul - the highest position of the Roman Republic- required running a gauntlet of many decades of career development that served as something of an apprenticeship. The goal was to weed out the incompetent through intense competition, and to season the rest. Great restraints were put on the consuls once elected to prevent any of those highly competent leaders from exercising any dictatorial ambitions. Marius, however, was considered to be a particularly competent leader. As a result, the senate made an exception and allowed him to violate the term limits. A reasonable decision, perhaps, but it became the crack in the edifice that would eventually be weathered into a major schism. It was then that the Romans decided maybe it was okay to put faith in great men over great political organization.
He goes on to make a comparison to the modern times. Putting faith in great men like Marius didn't end up well for the Romans, nor will putting faith in a great man like Trump work out for us.
I struggle to find any way in which the analogy adds up. Certainly, many of us in Trump's base put faith in Trump over the political system. But we already distrusted our political system. Not much has changed there. Perhaps he meant Republicans as a whole, but that doesn't work either. The process in place before gave us the likes of Bush, McCain, and Romney. The whole point of Trump was that he did not come through the established political conduits. The rejection of the political system came before the adoption of the great man. It's even more stark when you consider the broader political establishment. They aren't making an exception for a great man. The reject him entirely, with tremendous passion.
The analogy is so wrong that it comes full circle and becomes correct again. Our elites are so opposed to Trump that they are breaking all their own rules to get rid of him. It's the opposite motivation, but the result is the same. The political establishment has decided that its own rules are optional. The Roman system consisted of a complex balance of powers within an aristocratic meritocracy. It was difficult to gain any power from outside the aristocracy, and even the insiders had to thoroughly prove their merit. America is also a complex balance of powers, but is nestled in a democracy. There is not, in theory, an established process for attaining high positions. Merit is determined by the vote of the people.
The Roman elites made an exception to their greatest ethos: restricting power given to a single man. Just forty years after Marius, Julius Caesar would cross the Rubicon. Today our elites are ignoring the great American ethos of democracy. The will of the people is not sacrosanct. Exceptions can be made. Electoral outcomes are optional.
Even more disturbing - for those of us who aren't particularly enamored with American-style democracy to begin with - is the nullification of rule of law. We watched in disbelief as the DOJ admitted Hillary Clinton had committed crimes as Secretary of State, but the only action of that venture was to grant immunity to her cohorts. Now we watch as Paul Manafort is subjected to solitary confinement for crimes committed alongside the Podestas, whom Mueller is trying to grant immunity. It's hard to believe they are being so blatant. The message is crystal clear. The US justice system is merely a political weapon. Rule of law is of much less concern to the American ruling class now than limited execute power was to the Roman senate in 89 BC. It won't take forty years to witness the consequences of all this.
The American political establishment is currently engaged in the process of destroying its own legitimacy. The whole American system is propped up by a general belief in rule of law and the sanctity of the electoral process. The Washington political machine has decided that both are optional...at their own peril. They despise the new roof of the building, so they attack the foundation, with dynamite. (The media are engaged in a similar process.)
Let's allow that the liberal media is correct, and Trump is a presidential abomination. If so, his lasting impact will be marginal. Look at how quickly Obama's legacy was reverted. However, this assault on America's core beliefs, by the very institutions that depend on them, inflicts a profound damage that may never be undone.
He goes on to make a comparison to the modern times. Putting faith in great men like Marius didn't end up well for the Romans, nor will putting faith in a great man like Trump work out for us.
I struggle to find any way in which the analogy adds up. Certainly, many of us in Trump's base put faith in Trump over the political system. But we already distrusted our political system. Not much has changed there. Perhaps he meant Republicans as a whole, but that doesn't work either. The process in place before gave us the likes of Bush, McCain, and Romney. The whole point of Trump was that he did not come through the established political conduits. The rejection of the political system came before the adoption of the great man. It's even more stark when you consider the broader political establishment. They aren't making an exception for a great man. The reject him entirely, with tremendous passion.
The analogy is so wrong that it comes full circle and becomes correct again. Our elites are so opposed to Trump that they are breaking all their own rules to get rid of him. It's the opposite motivation, but the result is the same. The political establishment has decided that its own rules are optional. The Roman system consisted of a complex balance of powers within an aristocratic meritocracy. It was difficult to gain any power from outside the aristocracy, and even the insiders had to thoroughly prove their merit. America is also a complex balance of powers, but is nestled in a democracy. There is not, in theory, an established process for attaining high positions. Merit is determined by the vote of the people.
The Roman elites made an exception to their greatest ethos: restricting power given to a single man. Just forty years after Marius, Julius Caesar would cross the Rubicon. Today our elites are ignoring the great American ethos of democracy. The will of the people is not sacrosanct. Exceptions can be made. Electoral outcomes are optional.
Even more disturbing - for those of us who aren't particularly enamored with American-style democracy to begin with - is the nullification of rule of law. We watched in disbelief as the DOJ admitted Hillary Clinton had committed crimes as Secretary of State, but the only action of that venture was to grant immunity to her cohorts. Now we watch as Paul Manafort is subjected to solitary confinement for crimes committed alongside the Podestas, whom Mueller is trying to grant immunity. It's hard to believe they are being so blatant. The message is crystal clear. The US justice system is merely a political weapon. Rule of law is of much less concern to the American ruling class now than limited execute power was to the Roman senate in 89 BC. It won't take forty years to witness the consequences of all this.
The American political establishment is currently engaged in the process of destroying its own legitimacy. The whole American system is propped up by a general belief in rule of law and the sanctity of the electoral process. The Washington political machine has decided that both are optional...at their own peril. They despise the new roof of the building, so they attack the foundation, with dynamite. (The media are engaged in a similar process.)
Let's allow that the liberal media is correct, and Trump is a presidential abomination. If so, his lasting impact will be marginal. Look at how quickly Obama's legacy was reverted. However, this assault on America's core beliefs, by the very institutions that depend on them, inflicts a profound damage that may never be undone.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Hierarchal Inversion
There was a funny quip about Trump during the election that I've only just recently caught wind of.
The situation, then, is that you have so-called democrats acting like aristocrats to keep a populist movement suppressed. We've often noted here that liberals will abandon any principle in their zeal to attack Trump. Is this just the normal hypocrisy? Well, it certainly is hypocrisy, to be sure. I really like the new motto of the Democrat Party: For the People. This after they allowed a corrupt insider to steal the nomination from their own populist candidate, and are so full of rage at the success of their opponents' populist candidate that they clamor day and night for some way to overturn that electoral outcome. They're as hypocritical as a group of people could be. Still, I think there's more to it than that.
I've started thinking of politics in terms of competence hierarchies as described by Jordan Peterson. The hierarchies arise naturally, and can be destroyed in two ways, which we can think of as leftist and rightist scenarios. In the rightist scenario, the hierarchy becomes corrupt and stagnant. People find ways to game the system so they achieve and maintain positions in the hierarchy above their merit. They seek to maximize their rewards while blocking the paths of their competitors from ascending. Thus, the hierarchy becomes steep, with little fluidity. The society no longer functions as a meritocracy, but as a tyranny. The leftist scenario is one of flattening. They become resentful of the successes of the high-ranking and seek to level the playing field by deflating the hierarchy. Leftism can be a good balancing force when the hierarchy is corrupt, but is a societal hazard when the hierarchy is functioning properly. In our society there is all kinds of corruption among our elites to be contested, yet the liberals seem to only fixate on the parts of the hierarchy that work. (The reason is obvious...they are controlled by the corporate media.) The leftist scenario leads to chaotic anarchy, the rightist to a tyrannical order.
Generally we think of conservatives as defenders of the hierarchy against liberals, but it's not quite so straightforward, because there are three roles. On the far right (of this representation) are the aristocrats, in the center would be meritocrats, and those on the left you could call populists - the political faction of the dispossessed. We see it play out in our politics. Democrats have always been the union party, which made sense when laborers were at the mercy of robber barons. That situation has changed, and Democrats are losing their grip on the union vote. Instead, they go about convincing various identity groups that they are oppressed, and then importing as many 3rd world immigrants as they can - legally or otherwise. Liberals, whose niche is representing the interests of the dispossessed (a worthy goal in itself) tend to find themselves in the perverse business of growing the numbers of the dispossessed to improve their political clout.
Liberals are normally battling against the hierarchy, whether it is good or bad. What about us? When the hierarchy is functioning, we rightly defend it. What about when we decry a corrupt hierarchy? That puts us to the left of it...do we morph into liberals? What do you call people who defend a functioning hierarchy and condemn a corrupt one? Meritocratic, sure, but are they liberal or conservative? I suppose it's hard to find a political label because that's just what we innately expect sane rational people to do. Perhaps this is why it can be so hard to define what a conservative it. We pretty well know what a liberal is. Conservative is hard to peg down. Conserving what? The most significant observation made by the alt-right is simply that mainstream conservatives don't seem to conserve anything at all. Where do we, the "real" conservatives, sit in the hierarchal spectrum? Perhaps right in the center. I see myself as sitting a bit right of center: a meritocracy with some national inertia built in. It can't necessarily be said that the right side of the hierarchal spectrum means the most conservative. Those at the far right have far more in common with liberals than with us. Think of it from r/K theory (the fundamental political theory). What the two ends have in common is a disdain for free competition. The liberal and aristocrat both seek to buttress their positions by suppressing competition, and they seek to leverage the power of the state to do so.
In another video, Mr Peterson was making the case, regarding competence hierarchies, that neither left nor right are inherently better. Judging their merit is relevant to the current predicament, and it's the extremes on both ends that are dangerous. He stated there are many examples of the rightist scenario, that of excessive order - the Nazis being the canonical example. He struggled to think of a leftist scenario example and then moved on with his argument. Now that is interesting indeed! There are of course many examples of left-wing ideological governments that killed many times what the Nazis did. Shouldn't it be quite easy to think of one example of the leftist scenario? How could it be that the left, hell-bent on destroying hierarchy as they are, could gain an excess of power multiple times in different time and places, and yet we don't have a good go-to example of the anarchy scenario? The answer is that the left don't eradicate hierarchies when they take power...they become the hierarchy. Leftists only loathe the hierarchies in place because they are excluded, either because they are inept or because the structure is corrupt. They can never accept the former as true, so they assume all hierarchies are corrupt. Thus, they have no qualms with erecting a truly corrupt hierarchy themselves, so long as they are highly placed within it.
The normal example given for leftist tyranny is the Soviet Union. The agenda of the Marxists/Communists was that the hierarchy existed for the sole purpose of disenfranchising the commoners, and must be dismantled. When the Communists finally gained power, they merely replaced the competence hierarchy with an incompetence hierarchy. (See spandrell on Biological Leninism.) Stalin had a particular umbrage with the intelligentsia, and took great effort to torture and destroy them. He propped up a system where the most brutal thugs were rewarded with state power. Not only was Russian society not pulled leftward (in the hierarchal sense) when the leftists gained power, but it actually moved to the right, becoming an extreme aristocracy, with Stalin as autocrat. The whole framework became inverted. The society was structured around an incompetence hierarchy where liberals pulled to the right for aristocracy, and conservatives/meritocrats hoped for a leftward shift.
That all should shed some light on today's predicament, where the left nominated an aristocrat and the right a populist promising to drain "the swamp" - a metaphor for the national power structure centered on the Potomac. This situation only makes sense if the hierarchy is already inverted. Under an inverted hierarchy, liberals become aristocrats and conservatives become anti-establishment. The last election was utter proof of how far things have gotten. We are in the upside-down world. I used to find it amusing that liberals were making so much pro-establishment commentary, as a display of how unprincipled they were. Now I realize that it's the expected behavior once they attain power. Sure, they do make plenty of anti-hierarchal pronouncements - such as opposing the patriarchy - but they would have to. By definition, liberals must stand opposed to some corrupt social hierarchy, real or imagined. Even when Stalin had attained absolute power, he still orchestrated a great mythology where Western-aligned "wreckers" were conspiring to sabotage the peoples' government. Liberals complaining about oppressive hierarchies can be ignored as background noise. It's when they start displaying pro-establishment sentiments that we should be concerned.
Trump is basically a comment section running for president.It's funny for the obvious reason. Internet comment sections aren't renowned for their eloquence, and neither is Trump. Liberals also found it vital to associate Trump with something they could easily claim intellectual superiority over. But there's another deeper truth to the comment, something that the TDS sufferers smugly sharing the quip on social media would probably not have picked up on. It reflects Trump's populism. Comment sections are the voice of the people, for better or worse. Call it the ugly side of freedom of speech, if you want, but the whole point is that the unpopular speech still gets its say. There is some order to it as well. Most forums these days have a voting mechanism so that the favorite comments shuffle towards the top, and the rest get buried. Sure, often it's something ridiculous that makes it to the top, which just shows that it is a truly proper analog of modern democracy.
The situation, then, is that you have so-called democrats acting like aristocrats to keep a populist movement suppressed. We've often noted here that liberals will abandon any principle in their zeal to attack Trump. Is this just the normal hypocrisy? Well, it certainly is hypocrisy, to be sure. I really like the new motto of the Democrat Party: For the People. This after they allowed a corrupt insider to steal the nomination from their own populist candidate, and are so full of rage at the success of their opponents' populist candidate that they clamor day and night for some way to overturn that electoral outcome. They're as hypocritical as a group of people could be. Still, I think there's more to it than that.
I've started thinking of politics in terms of competence hierarchies as described by Jordan Peterson. The hierarchies arise naturally, and can be destroyed in two ways, which we can think of as leftist and rightist scenarios. In the rightist scenario, the hierarchy becomes corrupt and stagnant. People find ways to game the system so they achieve and maintain positions in the hierarchy above their merit. They seek to maximize their rewards while blocking the paths of their competitors from ascending. Thus, the hierarchy becomes steep, with little fluidity. The society no longer functions as a meritocracy, but as a tyranny. The leftist scenario is one of flattening. They become resentful of the successes of the high-ranking and seek to level the playing field by deflating the hierarchy. Leftism can be a good balancing force when the hierarchy is corrupt, but is a societal hazard when the hierarchy is functioning properly. In our society there is all kinds of corruption among our elites to be contested, yet the liberals seem to only fixate on the parts of the hierarchy that work. (The reason is obvious...they are controlled by the corporate media.) The leftist scenario leads to chaotic anarchy, the rightist to a tyrannical order.
Generally we think of conservatives as defenders of the hierarchy against liberals, but it's not quite so straightforward, because there are three roles. On the far right (of this representation) are the aristocrats, in the center would be meritocrats, and those on the left you could call populists - the political faction of the dispossessed. We see it play out in our politics. Democrats have always been the union party, which made sense when laborers were at the mercy of robber barons. That situation has changed, and Democrats are losing their grip on the union vote. Instead, they go about convincing various identity groups that they are oppressed, and then importing as many 3rd world immigrants as they can - legally or otherwise. Liberals, whose niche is representing the interests of the dispossessed (a worthy goal in itself) tend to find themselves in the perverse business of growing the numbers of the dispossessed to improve their political clout.
Liberals are normally battling against the hierarchy, whether it is good or bad. What about us? When the hierarchy is functioning, we rightly defend it. What about when we decry a corrupt hierarchy? That puts us to the left of it...do we morph into liberals? What do you call people who defend a functioning hierarchy and condemn a corrupt one? Meritocratic, sure, but are they liberal or conservative? I suppose it's hard to find a political label because that's just what we innately expect sane rational people to do. Perhaps this is why it can be so hard to define what a conservative it. We pretty well know what a liberal is. Conservative is hard to peg down. Conserving what? The most significant observation made by the alt-right is simply that mainstream conservatives don't seem to conserve anything at all. Where do we, the "real" conservatives, sit in the hierarchal spectrum? Perhaps right in the center. I see myself as sitting a bit right of center: a meritocracy with some national inertia built in. It can't necessarily be said that the right side of the hierarchal spectrum means the most conservative. Those at the far right have far more in common with liberals than with us. Think of it from r/K theory (the fundamental political theory). What the two ends have in common is a disdain for free competition. The liberal and aristocrat both seek to buttress their positions by suppressing competition, and they seek to leverage the power of the state to do so.
In another video, Mr Peterson was making the case, regarding competence hierarchies, that neither left nor right are inherently better. Judging their merit is relevant to the current predicament, and it's the extremes on both ends that are dangerous. He stated there are many examples of the rightist scenario, that of excessive order - the Nazis being the canonical example. He struggled to think of a leftist scenario example and then moved on with his argument. Now that is interesting indeed! There are of course many examples of left-wing ideological governments that killed many times what the Nazis did. Shouldn't it be quite easy to think of one example of the leftist scenario? How could it be that the left, hell-bent on destroying hierarchy as they are, could gain an excess of power multiple times in different time and places, and yet we don't have a good go-to example of the anarchy scenario? The answer is that the left don't eradicate hierarchies when they take power...they become the hierarchy. Leftists only loathe the hierarchies in place because they are excluded, either because they are inept or because the structure is corrupt. They can never accept the former as true, so they assume all hierarchies are corrupt. Thus, they have no qualms with erecting a truly corrupt hierarchy themselves, so long as they are highly placed within it.
The normal example given for leftist tyranny is the Soviet Union. The agenda of the Marxists/Communists was that the hierarchy existed for the sole purpose of disenfranchising the commoners, and must be dismantled. When the Communists finally gained power, they merely replaced the competence hierarchy with an incompetence hierarchy. (See spandrell on Biological Leninism.) Stalin had a particular umbrage with the intelligentsia, and took great effort to torture and destroy them. He propped up a system where the most brutal thugs were rewarded with state power. Not only was Russian society not pulled leftward (in the hierarchal sense) when the leftists gained power, but it actually moved to the right, becoming an extreme aristocracy, with Stalin as autocrat. The whole framework became inverted. The society was structured around an incompetence hierarchy where liberals pulled to the right for aristocracy, and conservatives/meritocrats hoped for a leftward shift.
That all should shed some light on today's predicament, where the left nominated an aristocrat and the right a populist promising to drain "the swamp" - a metaphor for the national power structure centered on the Potomac. This situation only makes sense if the hierarchy is already inverted. Under an inverted hierarchy, liberals become aristocrats and conservatives become anti-establishment. The last election was utter proof of how far things have gotten. We are in the upside-down world. I used to find it amusing that liberals were making so much pro-establishment commentary, as a display of how unprincipled they were. Now I realize that it's the expected behavior once they attain power. Sure, they do make plenty of anti-hierarchal pronouncements - such as opposing the patriarchy - but they would have to. By definition, liberals must stand opposed to some corrupt social hierarchy, real or imagined. Even when Stalin had attained absolute power, he still orchestrated a great mythology where Western-aligned "wreckers" were conspiring to sabotage the peoples' government. Liberals complaining about oppressive hierarchies can be ignored as background noise. It's when they start displaying pro-establishment sentiments that we should be concerned.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Antireligion
In this blog, I sometimes invent words by adding the prefix anti- to some existing word. I picked this up from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile. He points out that English doesn't contain a proper antonym for the word fragile. It would seem that the opposite of fragile should be durable, resilient, tough, etc. A similar (imaginary) word with the same meaning would be unfragile. This supposes there are two extremes of fragileness: fragile and not fragile. We might imagine dishes being mailed and trying to gauge which ones would arrive broken. That would amount to assessing the likeliness of something being damaged by chaos. Taleb notes there is another possibility: something being improved or strengthened by chaos. Trump has a penchant for lobbing chaos towards his opponents, which they swing at wildly to his benefit. The crack veteran soldier is hardened by the turmoil and brutality of war. Modern warfare doctrine has been heavily influenced by John Boyd's maneuver warfare, which is an abstract process that guides a belligerent to respond to the chaotic battlefield faster than their opponents. It was used to great effect in the first Iraq war. When war planners implement maneuver warfare, they are not just building an army that won't break in the face of chaos, but one that excels in chaos. An army that is not just unfragile, but antifragile.
In many domains we do see anti- used properly as a prefix. We can describe a spin as counter-clockwise, which the British call anti-clockwise. It is used correctly. It is not just the lack of clockwise, but the opposite. Sometimes the prefix is misused. A dud movie is called anticlimactic. Well, what is the opposite of climactic? The intended meaning is that the movie was weakly climactic or without climax. There are other prefixes that should have been used. Unclimactic, nonclimactic, aclimactic, etc.
If I decide to coin a new term - antireligion (technically, the term already exists, and just means opposition to religion) - it helps to know which variety of anti- is intended. We will actually use a 3rd version: anti- in the sense of the antijoke. The antijoke is a joke that pretends to not be a joke. Yet it has all the essence of a joke: setup, punchline, people laugh...or groan. It's ironically funny, but still a joke. Currently in theaters is the newest iteration of Deadpool, described as an anti-hero flick because he lacks the normal superficial virtues of a hero. Still, Deadpool generally does what all heroes do: confront forces of chaos to restore order. There are all kinds of similar examples of anti- used to describe things that are ironically pretending to be the opposite of what they are - mostly by hipsters.
It wouldn't be wise to criticize religions on principle, because nearly any social organization will be "religious" in a sense. It should be noted that the definition of religion that is normally used on this blog is the one described in Religions, Cults, and the Alt-Right, which described religion as an organization where members make logically improbable statements to earn social status. That is not a definitive definition, but it is certainly valid. You could tighten the definition to say that a religion requires belief in the supernatural, which is the most common usage. But, as William Briggs points out in his post today, Dissolving & Not Resolving the Fermi Paradox, often the opposite of a religious stance is just as much a matter of faith.
While one couldn't criticize religion as defined without taking on an enormous swath of the social order, we can still make valid claims that some religions are better than others, and that some organizations are more "religiousy" than others. We like to beat up on the leftist religion - referred to as The Cult around here - not just because they are super religiousy, but because they so thoroughly believe that they are the antidote to irrationality, the opposite of religion. They are the antireligion. The antireligion is a religion that pretends not to be a religion. They are ironically religious. While they constantly mock believers, what do they do? Recite a dogma of logically improbable beliefs, virtue signal for social status, and burn heretics. Hmm, sure sounds like the leftist stereotype of a religion to me.
Let's close this with an antireligion antijoke.
Why did the leftist cross the road?
To protest irrational Christians because diversity is our strength.
In many domains we do see anti- used properly as a prefix. We can describe a spin as counter-clockwise, which the British call anti-clockwise. It is used correctly. It is not just the lack of clockwise, but the opposite. Sometimes the prefix is misused. A dud movie is called anticlimactic. Well, what is the opposite of climactic? The intended meaning is that the movie was weakly climactic or without climax. There are other prefixes that should have been used. Unclimactic, nonclimactic, aclimactic, etc.
If I decide to coin a new term - antireligion (technically, the term already exists, and just means opposition to religion) - it helps to know which variety of anti- is intended. We will actually use a 3rd version: anti- in the sense of the antijoke. The antijoke is a joke that pretends to not be a joke. Yet it has all the essence of a joke: setup, punchline, people laugh...or groan. It's ironically funny, but still a joke. Currently in theaters is the newest iteration of Deadpool, described as an anti-hero flick because he lacks the normal superficial virtues of a hero. Still, Deadpool generally does what all heroes do: confront forces of chaos to restore order. There are all kinds of similar examples of anti- used to describe things that are ironically pretending to be the opposite of what they are - mostly by hipsters.
It wouldn't be wise to criticize religions on principle, because nearly any social organization will be "religious" in a sense. It should be noted that the definition of religion that is normally used on this blog is the one described in Religions, Cults, and the Alt-Right, which described religion as an organization where members make logically improbable statements to earn social status. That is not a definitive definition, but it is certainly valid. You could tighten the definition to say that a religion requires belief in the supernatural, which is the most common usage. But, as William Briggs points out in his post today, Dissolving & Not Resolving the Fermi Paradox, often the opposite of a religious stance is just as much a matter of faith.
While one couldn't criticize religion as defined without taking on an enormous swath of the social order, we can still make valid claims that some religions are better than others, and that some organizations are more "religiousy" than others. We like to beat up on the leftist religion - referred to as The Cult around here - not just because they are super religiousy, but because they so thoroughly believe that they are the antidote to irrationality, the opposite of religion. They are the antireligion. The antireligion is a religion that pretends not to be a religion. They are ironically religious. While they constantly mock believers, what do they do? Recite a dogma of logically improbable beliefs, virtue signal for social status, and burn heretics. Hmm, sure sounds like the leftist stereotype of a religion to me.
Let's close this with an antireligion antijoke.
Why did the leftist cross the road?
To protest irrational Christians because diversity is our strength.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Partially Accurate Vomit
A recent article from USAToday ran with the headline: Baltimore police stopped noticing crime after Freddie Gray's death. A wave of killings followed. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but this strikes me as a strangely worded headline. There use to be something of an artistic style to writing headlines. Probably it was out of necessity, as the message had to be conveyed in limited print space. Those restrictions are eased in the online setting. The two terse sentences of this headline read more like the brief descriptions that generally follow catchier headlines. The tempo of it strikes me as that of your typical internet click-bait. Baltimore police stopped noticing crime after Freddie Gray's death. You won't believe what happened next... It reads as a strangely artless headline because that's exactly what it is. It's written in a dying medium suffering serious brain drain. The papers' major activity is to compose sensationalism to lure in the diminishing crowd of dimwits who still turn to the big corporate outlets for their worldviews. [When I scroll to the bottom, the first promoted headline is: Professor speaks out after shutting down penis size study amid backlash. It really is a tabloid.]
Focusing on the content of the headline...if you didn't know better, you'd almost think there was an epiphany in the mainstream media. Conservatives, of course, have been saying forever that Obama's war on police would cause crime in the inner cities to increase. Life would become much worse for the typical citizens just trying to make it day to day. (And much better for the criminals.) Now, the papers are printing just the outcome we all predicted. Do they finally realize there is some merit to what conservatives have been saying? Of course they don't! As proof, let me cherry-pick a couple lines from the article.
If I wanted to insult you (totally hypothetical, of course), I could slew random insults until finally something stuck. No one is perfect. Everyone is subject to some criticism, and thus some valid insult must exist. If I called you a hundred terrible things and one hit a nerve, would you say I was partially accurate? No, it wouldn't even make sense to issue a judgement on my correctness, because we wouldn't then be operating at the same level of analysis. You'd be responding in the domain of assessing truth. But I'm in the domain of inflicting harm. If I threw three punches at you and one landed solid, you wouldn't give me some credit for being partially accurate.
The papers are operating in a similar sense. They constantly attack the political opponents of the left. Any truth that can be find in the text is merely incidental. Insult someone long enough and there must occasionally be an element of truth. It is inevitable that these publications would at times display apparent moments of partial honesty. They deserve no credit for such inadvertent deeds.
Focusing on the content of the headline...if you didn't know better, you'd almost think there was an epiphany in the mainstream media. Conservatives, of course, have been saying forever that Obama's war on police would cause crime in the inner cities to increase. Life would become much worse for the typical citizens just trying to make it day to day. (And much better for the criminals.) Now, the papers are printing just the outcome we all predicted. Do they finally realize there is some merit to what conservatives have been saying? Of course they don't! As proof, let me cherry-pick a couple lines from the article.
During the Obama administration, the department launched wide-ranging civil rights investigations of troubled police forces, then took them to court to compel reforms. Under President Donald Trump, Washington has largely given up that effort.
Tuggle blames a shortage of patrol officers and the fallout from a blistering 2016 Justice Department investigation that found the city's police regularly violated residents' constitutional rights and prompted new limits on how officers there carry out what had once been routine parts of their job.No matter the news, cops and and conservatives can always be blamed for something. When you see headlines like this, you may sometimes be tempted to think the media is finally coming around in some domain where they had previously rejected reality or basic reasoning. Never assume that to be the case. The more cynical among us respond to such articles by saying, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." That is the proper analogy.
If I wanted to insult you (totally hypothetical, of course), I could slew random insults until finally something stuck. No one is perfect. Everyone is subject to some criticism, and thus some valid insult must exist. If I called you a hundred terrible things and one hit a nerve, would you say I was partially accurate? No, it wouldn't even make sense to issue a judgement on my correctness, because we wouldn't then be operating at the same level of analysis. You'd be responding in the domain of assessing truth. But I'm in the domain of inflicting harm. If I threw three punches at you and one landed solid, you wouldn't give me some credit for being partially accurate.
The papers are operating in a similar sense. They constantly attack the political opponents of the left. Any truth that can be find in the text is merely incidental. Insult someone long enough and there must occasionally be an element of truth. It is inevitable that these publications would at times display apparent moments of partial honesty. They deserve no credit for such inadvertent deeds.
Monday, July 9, 2018
Schumer has Thrown Himself Under the Bus
Today Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took a few minutes from his busy schedule of other Trump-hating duties to pre-emptively attack Trump's Supreme Court pick, and to throw in a little Gorsuch bashing on the side. The former is to be expected, but the latter never ceases to amaze me, and brings us back to the last Supreme Court extravaganza, just last year. Schumer bashed Gorsuch then too, likening him to a right-wing activist and urging for a filibuster. What was most fascinating was not just that Gorsuch was a straight-laced vanilla judge with no clear political leanings, but that Schumer himself had voted along with other Democrat bigwigs like Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and Joe Biden to confirm Gorsuch to a federal circuit court in 2006.
We've noted often here that for liberals there is not a principle they won't violate and not a fellow Democrat they won't throw under the bus in their zeal to attack Trump. It is quite a thing to see someone like Schumer throw himself under the bus. He admits that he confirmed a right wing ideologue as federal judge. He should resign! He's utterly failed his party and ultimately enabled Gorsuch to become a Supreme Court Justice. Of course, this doesn't really matter to his base, who don't care much about reality. Oceana has always been at war with East Asia, and Chuck Schumer has always been opposed to Neil Gorsuch.
Still, this reality denial has its costs, and we're seeing them now. Just take a minute to appreciate how well this has been played by Trump, and how poorly by Chuck and the rest of his demented gang. Trump's first pick was a solid, apolitical judge, with a strong reputation and legal mind. He easily handled the Congressional grilling session and, most importantly, he was until so recently a Democrat-approved judge. And still Schumer came out firing from all barrels, a fight which he lost after 3 Democrat senators from red states defected.
Now Trump has nominated an actual conservative. What does Schumer have left? He's already fired everything he has. No sane person would find Schumer credible this time around. He has already demonstrated he will attack Trump's pick, whoever it may be. This one will be really grilled in his Senate confirmation hearing, and will probably be appointed. And if not, that may be okay too. It's another one of those situations where Trump wins either way. If his nominee is appointed, he gets a big win to add to his "Promise Made, Promise Kept" war chest he is building for 2020. If the conservative judge gets borked, it will ignite red America just in time for the 2018 elections, and Republicans probably pick up some seats as a result. The liberals still own the media, and no doubt we'll be hearing all about how Brett Kavanaugh is a racist who kills puppies, but the truth is Schumer is in a terrible political pickle, and it's all because he threw himself under the bus, a common symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
We've noted often here that for liberals there is not a principle they won't violate and not a fellow Democrat they won't throw under the bus in their zeal to attack Trump. It is quite a thing to see someone like Schumer throw himself under the bus. He admits that he confirmed a right wing ideologue as federal judge. He should resign! He's utterly failed his party and ultimately enabled Gorsuch to become a Supreme Court Justice. Of course, this doesn't really matter to his base, who don't care much about reality. Oceana has always been at war with East Asia, and Chuck Schumer has always been opposed to Neil Gorsuch.
Still, this reality denial has its costs, and we're seeing them now. Just take a minute to appreciate how well this has been played by Trump, and how poorly by Chuck and the rest of his demented gang. Trump's first pick was a solid, apolitical judge, with a strong reputation and legal mind. He easily handled the Congressional grilling session and, most importantly, he was until so recently a Democrat-approved judge. And still Schumer came out firing from all barrels, a fight which he lost after 3 Democrat senators from red states defected.
Now Trump has nominated an actual conservative. What does Schumer have left? He's already fired everything he has. No sane person would find Schumer credible this time around. He has already demonstrated he will attack Trump's pick, whoever it may be. This one will be really grilled in his Senate confirmation hearing, and will probably be appointed. And if not, that may be okay too. It's another one of those situations where Trump wins either way. If his nominee is appointed, he gets a big win to add to his "Promise Made, Promise Kept" war chest he is building for 2020. If the conservative judge gets borked, it will ignite red America just in time for the 2018 elections, and Republicans probably pick up some seats as a result. The liberals still own the media, and no doubt we'll be hearing all about how Brett Kavanaugh is a racist who kills puppies, but the truth is Schumer is in a terrible political pickle, and it's all because he threw himself under the bus, a common symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Monday, July 2, 2018
There Are Either 2 Genders or 1,577 Trillion
One of the major tenets of the liberal belief system is that gender is a social construct, which is a roundabout way of saying that science is not allowed into gender debate. If gender is merely a social construct, then society is free to make gender whatever it wants. A good Critical Theorist would not only want gender to be not just non-traditional, but something really ludicrous, for no other reason than to rub it into conservatives' noses.
Gender is no longer seen as an observed natural phenomenon, but as a shackles used to enslave people into an oppressive social order. Two genders was too limiting, so a third was created, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on. We are currently at, apparently, 112 genders. (Read a few for some good entertainment.) Well if 111 genders wasn't enough, surely 112 is oppressively limiting as well, yes? For instance, maybe my gender is the morning mist that settles on wild mountain clover. (Not actually ridiculous if you read the genders already created.) Because each person is unique, and each person's sexuality is unique, there must be one gender per person. So not just 7.2 billion, one for each living human, but 108 billion, one for each human who has ever lived. Not only that, but we are told by Harvard that gender can change daily. So there must exist a gender for each human, for each day they ever lived. Average lifespan throughout history is about 40 years. That means there are approximately 1,577 trillion genders, and that number is growing by 7.2 billion per day. Or, perhaps, there are only two. It seems those are the only options. Two, or a number that approximates infinity.
Gender is no longer seen as an observed natural phenomenon, but as a shackles used to enslave people into an oppressive social order. Two genders was too limiting, so a third was created, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on. We are currently at, apparently, 112 genders. (Read a few for some good entertainment.) Well if 111 genders wasn't enough, surely 112 is oppressively limiting as well, yes? For instance, maybe my gender is the morning mist that settles on wild mountain clover. (Not actually ridiculous if you read the genders already created.) Because each person is unique, and each person's sexuality is unique, there must be one gender per person. So not just 7.2 billion, one for each living human, but 108 billion, one for each human who has ever lived. Not only that, but we are told by Harvard that gender can change daily. So there must exist a gender for each human, for each day they ever lived. Average lifespan throughout history is about 40 years. That means there are approximately 1,577 trillion genders, and that number is growing by 7.2 billion per day. Or, perhaps, there are only two. It seems those are the only options. Two, or a number that approximates infinity.
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