Month: June 2018

Day is filled with life we can see.  The night is filled with life we can feel.  Nothing ceases, come nightfall.  There is something beautiful in this.

It occurs to me to comment that the claim that all cultures are equal is exactly equivalent to stating that all principles are equivalent. 

A culture which values women must be equal to one which subjugates them.

 A culture which murders homosexuals must be equal to one which values them, like, say, the Greeks.

A culture which conquers and kills people who differ from them must be equal to the one which seeks only to live in peace.

Logically, all of this is implied when the claim is made that we cannot “judge” other cultures morally.  Everything is equal to everything. 

And, to be clear, seeking to understand others is always a useful practice.  Finding the good and the bad is always useful.  Seeking evolution is always good.  It is not either good or bad, but that there should be a continuum seems to me a necessary conclusion if one is to act in a principled fashion, with principles being a necessary element in true cultural and social order.

But when, as one example, the British put an end to the practice of more or less forcing widowed women to burn themselves to death–living, with no sedative–on their husbands funeral pyres, this was a win for Goodness.

When the put an end to the cult of sacrificial murder which gives us the word “thug”, that was a win for Goodness.

Western Liberal values, in general, have made the world more peaceful, more prosperous, more just on nearly any scale, and, arguably, better, with the sole exception that we have not solved the problem of replacing indigenous religions with something truly better.  We “gave” Christianity to much of the world, then abandoned it ourselves.  This is our one truly great, gaping failure, and we need to fix it. 

That, obviously, is the focus of my own efforts on a daily basis.  

Globalism is more or less the notion that we should offer a final global victory to the same sorts of people who have been behind every other imperialism, every other conquest.  The people who spoke of Manifest Destiny would look approvingly on a global government.

It can be stipulated as an absolute principle that the sorts of people who seek power are the sorts of people who seek power.  You are always on safe logical ground with tautologies.

But if we consider that people who seek one unit of power tend nearly always to seek 2 units of power, and then 4–Acton’s axiom rephrased–then a global government is like offering crack to a hard core addict.  We need to keep the crack away from him or her.  We need to keep power distributed, confined.  We need firewalls.  We need blocks, limitations.

The argument for the sundry fascisms is that it is “necessary” to “get things done”.  This is the whole role of the manufactured “crisis” of global warming.  They can’t think of anything else, at least at the moment.

What Obama was in the process of doing was ceding power quietly, without fanfare, but in reality.  Hillary would have continued this.  Importing ignorant mobs was part of it.  That would have secured her Party’s power, and enabled the rest.  If the power hungry, aka the power elite, can conquer America, then they win.  They have nearly taken Europe already.

This whole thing was a well orchestrated and executed propaganda offensive.  It hit suddenly, secured immediate traction, and seemed unstoppable.  It allowed all the people who hate Trump and the people who support him to stand just a bit higher on their soapboxes, denounce us more strongly than usual, and in general vent feelings they have been hesitating to express in the wake of Trump’s continuing successes.  They needed a counter-offensive, and this was it.

But conservatives countered this wave immediately and, I think, skillfully.  Memes and videos appeared everywhere immediately addressing these points.

I remember reading a short story, I think in Tim O’Brien’s “Going after Cacciato”, where as a young Marine Lieutenant he watched his squad execute a battle maneuver perfectly, and even though they were under fire he took a moment to appreciate their performance, where they operated as a single organism, as a living and agile thing.  I kind of feel a similar pride with conservatives.  We were attacked as heartless and cruel, as savage beasts worthy of being killed, and of having our children killed.

But we responded as an organized horde.  Social media was filled with counter-attacks right away.

It seems to me that we are slowly building our confidence and capacity.  We are slowly becoming a coherent and reactive organism, which is capable of fighting to defend itself.  We are slowly being trained by the Left to actually be everything they hate, which is an organized force for reason, respect for the past and the work that went into building our present world, and for moral and political principle.

They are an incoherent mob.  They are a dark force, which surges first one way, and then the other.  They are forever in movement, never still.  They can’t remain still, because this would allow them to see the lies they are fed daily.  They really do need a daily cause.

And this makes people who remember the past, who envision a future based on principles which clearly work, existential enemies.  We are not just people who disagree: we are people whose very being calls into question the value of their lives.

And conservatives are GETTING this, increasingly.  We are the only credible alternative to mass destruction of everything good so many generations took so much time and invested so much soul energy to build.  We, now, are the product of the dreams of those who came before us.  To tear all this down now out of stupidity, spite, and laziness is the worst thing I can imagine.

I think a comprehensive border policy would involve helping the Mexican government take down the drug cartels.  Part of that might be legalizing drugs, at least some of them, and certainly pot, at least at the Federal level.  That would be the peaceful, and perhaps more effective strategy.

But ponder how many fighting men (and a few women) we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those are half a world away.  Would what would amount to a war in Mexico, which directly affects American security, not at least be directly germane to our immediate safety?  Could we not send in a Marine brigade to supplement the government?  Would that even help, or is the corruption everywhere and ineradicable? 

However we approach the issue concretely, nation building in Mexico would be in our interests.  If it were not such a hellhole, families would not be fleeing as groups.  That is perhaps the core issue with regard to families: the men likely don’t feel safe leaving their women and children behind.  This used to not be the case.  I don’t know how it has gotten so insane.

But Colombia was insane for a time too.  They have largely fixed it.  Mexico is not filled completely with incompetents and criminals, or so I suppose.  People exist who want to find a way to rebuild a place worth living.  We should find them, and support them however necessary.  It would sure as hell be a better use of money and resources than fighting in a landlocked country filled with people who live in stone huts and caves.

If all else fails, always go back to the children.

Formula: if you don’t agree with policy X, you hate children. 

I have to say, leaving character, that it is gratifying to see how quickly and efficiently conservatives are beginning to snap to attention and go on the offensive when the Left attacks us.  We have been the targets of ridiculous attacks for decades, but because we are thoughtful and have tended to assume the same of the people attacking us, we have tended to grant that, while we differ in our beliefs, we are certainly not perfect, and are willing to submit to constructive criticism.  The problem, of course, is that it is purely, and by design, DESTRUCTIVE criticism intended to marginalize us, dehumanize us, and push away from power.

That we should have a border should not be controversial.  It never was.  It is a very old concept.  The nation of Mexico understands it quite well.  Their policy more or less seems to be that if you are just passing through, they don’t care, but if you want to LIVE in Mexico, and come from somewhere else in Central America, they will put you in jail for years.

And that laws which are not enforced are irrelevant in modifying people’s behavior was equally uncontroversial.  This is why we have police, a court system, a prison system.

It seems to be true that Obama made publicly acceptable a great deal of nonsense.  But it also seems to be true that Trump is making publicly acceptable calling bullshit on that nonsense.

I will say again that this cannot but have the effect of pealing Democrats away from the plantation–the work farm, where they labor for free supporting people who use and abuse them and tell them it is for their own good.

This is the main reason, I think, the rhetoric is so awful, so overblown, so ludicrously out of proportion to the actual issues.  I read one Democrat is comparing Trump to a dumpster fire.  How?  Why?  Employment is up tremendously, North Korea has likely ended its notions of a nuclear war, the border is being protected better, Trump is working on improving our trade deals, pedophiles are being busted by the thousands, etc.

That is the opposite of a disaster, EXCEPT for Democrat ambitions.  But how long can they tell such blatant lies before people in large numbers start waking up?  We are a stupid, complacent, ignorant nation, but I don’t think we are yet THAT stupid, complacent and ignorant that the Democrats can keep more than a 5th of our population forever.

One very important aspect in the public dehumanizing of a large segment of our populace is the relentless moralizing tied to political discourse, combined with a Madison Avenue tone, spin and vibe.

“You can’t be a man because you don’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.”  The Rolling Stones sang this perhaps 40 years ago.

We are seeing the political equivalent of “you can’t be a good person unless you eat Frosted Flakes”.

That this is absurd, a non sequitur, is not recognized by the people who are targeted.  For many people, the public recognition of their virtue through a carefully crafted propaganda apparatus is sufficient.

The divide of Frosted Flake people/non-Frosted Flake people taps into a deep tribal instinct.

It is the an odd, perhaps THE odd fact of our modern existence that we are biologically “built” to live in small groups where we know everyone and everyone knows us but that we never experience this feeling to its full extent.  We build sub-groups, we build “voluntary associations”, but there is never anything given about it.

Modern propaganda targets both this latent instinct, as well as the latent alienation which inheres in not getting our needs for social inclusion and connection met.

And I speak of propaganda as a living organism.  It is reasonable to ask how much of this is planned.  Some of it is, clearly.  And it may be the case that there is a small coterie of people somewhere devouring all the latest social science research.  Certainly, Madison Avenue is.

But my feeling is most of this is institutional habit, and that our propaganda is not much more–or less–than a rumor which has no root in reality, but which gets bigger and bigger in the telling. Everyone loves salacious gossip, things that make you go OH MY GOD, and immediately tell someone else.  Much propaganda is of that sort. 

The Trump is Hitler meme, for example, depends entirely on the fact that most Americans don’t know jackshit about history, and really have no idea who Hitler was, other than that he has been the personification (not without reason) of evil for the past 50 years.  I would submit Pol Pot was a worse person, by the way.  Much worse.

I want to say something about empathy too, but have no time at the moment.

What other crime is there in which the whole family participates?

The Left obviously has a serious Jones for an influx of people willing to continue to buy their Kool-Aid, so for their part they simply want to pretend the laws should not be enforced at all.

But if the laws are enforced you need a policy, and keeping kids out of adult jails is not s bad one. If we were seeing pictures of terrified ten year olds surrounded by older men that would be s source of outrage too,

Did my part I am becoming more conscious than I think ever before how “the news” is a for profit business whose principle method is exciting emotions of all sorts every day. We consume more if we are wound up, so they wind us up. All of them, to some greater or lesser extent.

I am pondering just allocating an hour or two every Sunday to get caught up. It seems likely the entire arc of some of these stories is less than a week. Things will come and go before I even hear about them.

This story of the children in cages has had an interesting trajectory.  First it was introduced as a Trump atrocity, then it was discovered the cages happened, seemingly, under Obama, and the story disappeared for a couple weeks.  Then Trump had his summit with Kim Jung Un, and now the story has made a reappearance, seemingly with the media pretending that they don’t know this was a huge problem under Obama, and that Trump has somehow done something new, other than perhaps enforce laws which were not being enforced under Obama.  Obviously, if kids come over the border illegally, they need to be housed.  We can house them in prisons, or in what amount to orphanages.  We house them in orphanages.  This is not inhumane, and self evidently if the kids don’t want to wind up in custody, they should not break the law.  And to the extent breaking the law has no consequence, or is perceived to have no consequence, it is effectively encouraged.

These are all common sense considerations, mixed with an attempt to speak the unspun truth.

The bigger story, to me, is how readily large segments of our population seem to be to believe that conservatives somehow find pictures of children in cages acceptable, that we react differently somehow, as parents and one-time children, than the Leftists do.  They think of us as defective human beings, who do not feel as they feel, who have no love in our hearts, who are utterly lacking in all compassion, who are not, in important respects, human at all.

They have, in other words, made of at least Trump supporters–but I think this can be generalized to all conservatives and even non-compliant Democrats–Untermenschen.  I think some scary percentage of these Leftists, especially in particularly nutty places like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, would be perfectly OK with setting up reeducation camps for people like me. We are not human to them.  We don’t react like humans.  We don’t feel like humans.  And we spend all our time being greedy, power hungry, and wicked.  Just like Hitler said of the Jews.  Just like Lenin and then Stalin said of the kulaks, and other petit bourgeoisie.

How is this possible?  It is a fascinating and relevant question.  How has so much hatred, anger, and violence been inculcated in people who, in other contexts, would in most cases seem relatively psychologically normal?

We can’t have conversations.  This is obvious.  But the reason we can’t have conversations is they literally see us as another class of humans, one to which they are vastly superior.

This should trouble all thinking, rational, well meaning, decent human beings, regardless of their particular positions on matters of specific policy.  We can debate how health care and health insurance should be organized.  We can discuss optimal border policy.  But none of us should be having to defend our very humanity, and at that, failing because no one will listen.

It has gone too far.  Much too far.  

What does the picture of an orchard–say, an apple orchard–mean to you?  It is regular, orderly, optimized for hydration.  It is a symptom of human effort directed at the natural world.

In contrast would be a natural old growth forest.

These are two types of order.  Both are needed, perhaps, to some extent, but I feel wisdom inheres in the latter.

Socialism, in theory (certainly not practice), is the process of turning the world into an orchard, where everything is regular, regulated, and reliable.  It is a safety zone, with no mistakes, and nothing and no one lost or left out of the system.

I read Elon Musk has come out of the closet as an orchard farmer.  I thought he was more interesting than that, but then I’ve long thought the rumors of his profound intelligence were exaggerated.

Disorder, so called, might be seen as the night.  It is what we don’t know. We are given, here on Earth, night and day.  Is this really such an unreasonable arrangement, that we have found, and some are seeking to make global and “permanent”, ways to shine an artificial light all the time, such that everything which might have been found in the shadows disappears?

Is it to be neon and rows in our future?  Time will tell.  I certainly hope not.  Mystery is beautiful, and some deep realities can only be reached through it.

Put another way: is humanity to take the path of naive stupidity, or return to what was once known, and expand it and incorporate it within our science and our culture?