Moderates United

I think Target has perhaps another week to issue a strong statement and win people back.  I think they have certainly cost themselves an ENORMOUS amount of goodwill, and some of it they won’t get back.

I was thinking that if they ran an ad campaign that netted them a 5% increase in business, that would be a counted a huge success.  What about an ad campaign that COSTS them 5%, 10%, or more, permanently?

Target is a family store.  Moms take their kids there during the day.  They have done an excellent job marketing to this demographic.  We bought many of our baby clothes there, and at least one of our strollers.

But the thought of sick men being ALLOWED by policy into the women’s bathroom is going to trigger every last instinct of protection in most mothers, every last feeling of outrage in many men, and who is going to be happy in large enough groups to counterbalance this?  No one.  Mass layoffs and store closings are the most likely outcome of this poorly considered policy which at best will help .03% of the population, a number which is almost certainly much too high, since the true transgenders have been using the other bathroom for some time anyway.

As many people point out, the only people it really helps and enables, are sexual predators.  Unless they are a coveted demographic–and it’s hard to see how they would buy much, when what they want is in the bathrooms for free–this policy has to be seen as idiotic and anti-moral from every perspective I am able to wiggle my head into, other than that of pompous and unreflective political correctness, which is to say the repetition of the pronouncements, today, of the Commissars; and it is hard to see or say why a profitable business would be listening to  Communists in the first place.

Before posting this, I checked the Target website, and saw nothing.  They are making a HUGE mistake.

As a trauma survivor myself, now that I think about it, if I might be permitted to add my voice to the chorus of whiners: why the FUCK do people abuse this word?  Triggering is a very specific thing, and it is quite real, but it is being USED to mean any word or phrase which annoys anyone in any way.  Worse yet: which MIGHT, in the judgement of people who are offended all day every day, offend someone.

This belittles the real suffering of people who, by and large, NEVER are the ones doing the whining and demonstrating.  It is insulting, inaccurate, and both bullying and hurtful.  

Another movie about solitude. I am actually feeling increasingly well.  I am getting moments of peace.  But I understand McCandless quite well.  I had similar stories when I was his age.  He was running from horror.  From unmediated terror.  From the feelings of small children who are placed in hopeless, helpless situations that completely overwhelm them.  Thinking takes the place of feeling.  Idealism takes the place of living.

He met many kind people, but he could never BE with them.  For people who have undergone great terror at an early age, there is always a place which does not reach out and connect, which CANNOT reach out and connect.  The loss of social identity and place is the defining feature of trauma.  The social sense, instinctual social sense, is displaced by the need for survival.  He thought that somehow if he could survive some great ordeal that the path back home would be opened.  That he would surmount his fundamental isolation, which he felt even with his sister.

For the attentive, it is not so hard to see why people are crazy, why most all of us are crazy.  The question is what to do with this knowledge.

For myself, it is a twofold question.  On the one hand, on an abstract level–the level where I find what peace I find, most of the time–it is how to help humanity.  This is where Tolstoy (and all intellectual “Humanitarians”) lived.  But this is an effort to achieve an end–reconnection–which cannot be achieved in the abstract.  Such people are mad, but appear saintly.  The two are often–likely usually–confused.  Saints are those who speak the right words while wrestling with–and failing to surmount–quite ordinary demons. This is why Lao Tzu counseled us to renounce sainthood.

The more important question is how to bring deep relaxation into these troubled place, how to find genuine peace.  I have learned to sleep at night, but I still often shake.  My journey will continue.

As far as McCandless, I feel he found peace in the end.  I agree with his sister, that he did what he felt he had to.  Where does one turn for genuine wisdom in this world?

For a start, I personally look to the work of Peter Levine, and Lawrence Heller and Aline LaPierre.

Most of modern literature: fucking useless.

Actually,  I would add Kum Nye.  It is a great practice. I cannot speak to why it has not been better propagated, why it languishes in obscurity compared to inferior practices we can find prominently displayed in every bookstore.

I finally finished the 127 hours of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire this week, and started William Jame’s “Varieties of Religious Experience”.  I have a major intellectual crush on James.  The clarity of his thought and exposition, the honesty and rigor of his approach, and his genuine humaneness and concern for the humanity of his subject, are all thoroughly entrancing for me.

To the point here, he quoted a Frenchman–Bernaud, I believe was his name–as saying “Good humor is that philosophical stance which seems to say to Nature that we take it no more seriously than it takes us.”

It is amazing how fast moods and emotions pass once they are entered into honestly. It FEELS like emotion has a logic and a terminus, that certain states are bound to last, that the next states can reliably be inferred, and that we “know where this is going”.  We know nothing of the sort.  Great exultations can come immediately out of great melancholies, and LAST.  For a time, at least.  Then we–I–can laugh at the foolishness of the whole thing. Storms, however intense, blow over.

Emotions do clearly have a logic, which is tied to thought–which can both amplify and diminish them–but one must always grasp that the logic can only be appreciated AFTER a change which was completely unexpected.  A leads to B, and B leads to F, which leads to 7, after which Hummus and the color orange.

The constant is a patient connection to them.  If we live in a “sea of mood and emotion” as some song puts it, the task is to learn to swim. I believe I have said this before.  Now I have said it again.  I forget myself.

I don’t know why I live in these places, at times.  It is so odd, so different.   But it is my path.  I have no idea where it is going, and this is OK.

From what is righteous anger a release, an escape?  From the peril of confusion, from living with dread and fear, from what is deepest and most true in us. We have all failed.  We have all “fallen short of the glory of God”, which is to say, we have all lied to that Spirit within us which speaks, which consists entirely in, truth.

This applies to everyone.  It is inevitable, in this world.  It is the nature of this world, which teaches not perfection, but return.

I have taken to granting my demons space on Sundays.  Demons are merely angels we fear. They speak what we dare not, express what we dare, exist how we dare not.  And from this I do not infer the obvious and imbecilic, that “freedom” consists in doing what we will, regardless of consequence.

No: the hatred and horror are already there.  Truth is in seeing them, recognizing the roles they play in our journey to something larger, and genuinely peaceful.  What final use can there be in self deception?

It is equally true that being shattered and broken has its time and place.  One must have the tools to pick up the pieces to build something new and more beautiful and useful.  Until that time, it is merely the pain of an abused dog, which cannot understand the rules which might have kept it safe.

All of us “exist” in many times and places.  Seeing what was that still is, in itself is a liberation of sorts.

If we posit of God benevolence and a desire for human peace and goodwill, both Islam and Leftism have to be viewed as partial atheisms.  Practically, so too do Christianity, Judaism, and most other theistic religions.

My reasoning is simple.  Let us take as paradigmatic of the simultaneous rejection of God and moralities based upon either God’s commands, or conceptions of the good based upon conceptions of God, the famous phrase “If God is dead, then all is permitted”, which Dostoevsky seemingly had Dmitri Karamozov say in its purest form.

Islam says “if this person is not a Muslim, then all is permitted”.  Leftists say “if this person has not conformed to our intolerant tribe, then all is permitted.”

The first case is obvious enough.  Beginning with the example of Muhammad himself, permitted acts include murder, rape, sexual and other slavery, conquest, theft, desecration of the temples of other faiths, and pedophilia.  Literally every major sin which any religion has come up with is explicitly permitted.

In the second case, and particularly in the modern world, these sins, too, are all permitted, but they are first put through a disguise of necessity, a disguise of “rescue” or benefice, or hidden entirely.  The Left, as one example, has NOTHING to say about the pervasive use of rape and sexual slavery by ISIS, but somehow finds it useful and relevant to boycott States which have passed laws reiterating long standing and common sense standards, ones which prohibit men who look like men from indulging a variety of perversions by using the women’s rooms.  In North Caroline, the main person who opposed the law was and is a registered sex offender.  Nobody on the Left wants to know this.

In the 20th Century, and TODAY–in China, North Korea, Cuba and other Leftist hell-holes–murder is permitted.  Rape is permitted.  Slavery is the lot of most, whether it is called that or not.  Empire is a goal, one which China achieved in its invasion and on-going violent suppression of Tibet.  North Korea failed in its invasion of the South, but was only stopped by military means.  Cuba, of course, tried to foment insurrections, and started many bloody and useless civil wars until the Russians stopped sending checks.  Countries like Angola are still paying the price for their mercenary and utterly amoral actions.

Theft, of course, is the NATURE of Leftism, as is the suppression of alternative views, religious faith, and all idols but that of the Great Leader, and the violent sadistic joke of his regime.

Pedophilia, who knows?  One reads about Soviet camps where many forms of abuse were seemingly endemic, but only Islam lists a founder who found it acceptable to marry a 5 year old, who he first fucked when she was still playing with dolls.

We live in aN Alice in Wonderland world, where the most basic conceptions of decency have become entirely dependent, for a great many people, upon their POPULARITY.  If they have not seen something condemned, they are incapable of a visceral reaction.  It is a matter of apparent empirical fact that one feature of the Left is that it has lost its capacity for disgust.  Conversely, if they do see something condemned, they react with all the reflective thoughtfulness of dogs salivating for a steak.  It does not matter if the propaganda target is innocent or guilty: they are guilty because they have been accused.

Thus: partial Atheism.  Leftists, of course, reject God in the main to begin with, but their own self conception rests upon a sort of piety, itself dependent upon the idea that they wish humanity in the main well, that they have visions for a “better tomorrow”, and that compassion is their most important virtue. These are of course all lies, and blatant lies when we see people engaging in acts of violence in the ostensible name of compassion, as we did a day or two ago in Germany.  Perhaps I should call it conditional amoralism.

The psychological root, of course, is sadism, the suppression of personal and other identity in group violence.  I am here speaking mainly of the cognitive aspect of the whole thing.

I think that is the best short phrase to describe the combination of free markets, free trade, and the protection of property rights which commonly gets denominated “Capitalism”.  Capital-ism, of course, is Marx’s term, by which he intended to critique it.  The word implies that only those with money get anything, that those with the gold make the rules, that it is a system by and for those with money.  He may as well have named his book “On Plutocracy”.

In reality, the aim is that EVERYONE becomes a “Capitalist”, that the artist figures out how to paint full time, the car mechanic the way to open his or her own shop, the entrepreneur funds his own venture, etc.  The triumph of large business, of the large multinational corporations is a symptom of economic illiberalism.  It is the outcome of socialist policies which make the hurdles to saving money and opening ones own business insuperable for all but the most insanely determined.  It is vastly easier even now to start a new business in America than virtually anywhere in the world.  A just, fair, liberal order is in fact a “nation of shopkeepers”.  I will note that Napoleon, who intended that as an insult of the British, founded his own reign on aggressive imperialistic wars, mass theft, mass murder, open and pervasive rape, and caused the deaths of millions.  And for this, they erected a monument to him.  Such are the French.  Such is the lack of principle, of decency, of moral clarity, which we see in the modern world.

If one can rationalize the Arc de Triomphe, WHY NOT the murder of a hundred million by Communists?  Napoleon and Pol Pot no doubt both meant well.

The point I intended to make, though–I am here following a long path of not following a path–is that one can easily make the following accurate juxtapositions:

Economic Liberalism aims to generalize and increase wealth; Socialism aims to freeze wealth creation, and spread around what already exists.

Economic Liberalism seeks to foster structural economic investment; Socialism seeks to punish it through regulation and taxes.

Economic Liberalism seeks to harness the power of self interest on the part of those capable of creating wealth; Socialism harnesses the power of self interest solely of government bureaucrats, who are capable only of destroying wealth.

Economic Liberalism seeks to foster innovation and efficiency; Socialism seeks a permanent social hierarchy consisting of the ruled and the rulers.  Witness Cuba.  North Korea.  “Social democracy” is merely a slower version of this same process.  It maintains the illusion much longer.

In my own view, OF COURSE it is bad that massive corporations have in large measure corrupted our election process.  But who made it such a rich prize?  In what respect does increasing the power of government not make the process of corruption that much more tempting, that much more lucrative?  If we make it largely economically irrelevant who the President is, who is in Congress, then the money will leave politics all on its own.  Passing laws won’t do shit.  Smart people will find ways around any laws we might pass.  The problem is the temptation.  Drugs are illegal too.

This is a really useful question I have been using lately.  When my computer crashes, it reminds me of all the things I can control, like software updates, investing in new hardware.  When I forget my password, it reminds me that I have the ability to write my passwords down.  When someone cuts me off in traffic, or acts like an idiot, it reminds me that self driving machines–auto-mobiles–are and remain a miracle, and that whatever minor inconveniences I may suffer, they are suffered in a place I control, which is climate controlled, and where I have many books and much music I can listen to at the touch of a button.

If it is a person, ask yourself how you contributed to the situation.  Usually you will find you did.  You thought they ought to understand; you thought they ought to have known better; you thought they should have reacted differently.  But if you are honest, you will realize that you did not use skills you had, out of laziness or complacency.  Or ignorance: the corrective is study.  I know how to deal with people, but I don’t always follow the rules I know.  I think it ought to be easier.  I shouldn’t have to treat them as if they are imbeciles, or lacking in balls, or constantly looking for a new pissing contest.  But many people are.  Why should it be easier?  It is what it is, and I betray my own childishness in pretending otherwise. If I am failing to control what I can control, then I have no right to whine, and even if I am, it remains what it is, so I can ALWAYS control my reaction.  None of us are truly helpless, even in the worst situations.

Literally every problem I have, or think I have, submits to this question.  It is clarifying, purifying.  The next time something or someone pisses you off, try it.

One of the truisms about bullies which is often forgotten is that in their self estimation they are simply protecting themselves from the threats of others.  That these threats are both exaggerated and not uncommonly fabricated does not change the psychological reality to these people of the justice and truth of their “responses” to these threats and insults and injuries.

Likewise, on the Left one sees this constant refrain that they are “under attack” by Republicans, that the blacks, and gays (not the Jews: fuck the Jews is the motto of the Left, even among that large contingent that IS supposedly Jewish), and women, and foreigners, and foreign nations, and the WORLD are being assaulted, that these horrific, hateful Morlocks are sucking away everything good and decent in the world, that they only want the RICH RICH RICH to become richer, and that they laugh at the gullibility of all who support them.

That this is a cartoon seems not to occur to them.  That a moments pause, a minutes research, an hours dialogue would disabuse them of their bigotry and reflexive hate does not occur to them.

And so while attacking violently and with no effort at understanding they view their struggle as primarily DEFENSIVE.

This, because propaganda.  That is the short answer, but I thought this thought train worth sharing.

http://time.com/4309786/read-donald-trumps-america-first-foreign-policy-speech/

Small wonder Trump is so hated.  The Democrats fail to connect the dots and realize that their Great Leader is, with respect to foreign entanglements, indistinguishable from George Bush, other than that he is unable even to finish what he starts, whereas Bush left Obama a stable Iraq.  Drone strikes: Obama is the undisputed king.  Illegal wars: ditto.  Bush has Congressional authority.  Obama has not, for Libya, for his interventions in Syria that created ISIS, his attacks in Yemen, and no doubt sundry other places I don’t even know about.

I like Trump. He is different.  Hillary is a continuation of Obama, Sanders would be an unmitigated disaster, and I don’t trust Cruz.  Cruz has only lasted this long because Trump created the space for non-traditional candidates.  Had Trump not entered the race, Cruz would have been out long ago, and we would be looking at another Bush, in all likelihood.