Moderates United

I took a turn for some Toltec mounds somewhere.  I drove 10 miles, saw nothing, and figured it was one of these things where they lead you on, and you wind up driving 40 miles out of your way, so I went back.

Somehow I got to thinking about Indians, though.  By and large, in my understanding, none of the many tribes inhabiting what became America had written languages.  This meant that myth and ceremony had to be passed down orally, and through initiation and participation.

And I got to thinking about kids asking tribal elders deep questions, like: what happens when we die, exactly?

And it seemed to me that in such a system, it is at least possible that the elder, rather than reflexively mouthing something he or she has heard, or going to consult a recondite text found in a library somewhere, as would happen in places with long written traditions, would on the contrary find HIS OWN answer through reflection, through solitude, perhaps through some sort of “accelerant” like peyote.  And that person would then answer from personal knowledge.

It seems to me that religion, to be alive, has to be constantly reinvented, and in some respects having a written tradition makes this harder.  You have words you can appeal to, and then repeat.  You can FEEL like you have answered a question, when in reality, as far as your connection with the answer, as far as your sense of personal knowledge of the answer, you may as well be reiterating a Latin phrase as a non-Latin speaker.

If guns are banned, only the government and criminals will have them.   If the two combine, you have tyranny.  This is what has happened in Mexico, and in my understanding Jamaica, both of which have very strict gun control laws.

I think the PHILOSOPHICAL importance of an armed populace for a truly Liberal nation cannot be overstated.  I personally would allow the purchase of rocket launchers, grenades, mines, and other such ordnance to people who pass background checks.

The simple fact is that per capita American civilians are by far the most heavily armed in the world, and that in the places where we have the most guns, there is almost no crime.  I don’t know how widely known this is, but in a number of states you can buy and shoot fully automatic weapons.  Kentucky has an annual machine gun shoot where people even bring miniguns.

Only when you get to Democrat bastions do the guns revert to the sole domain of cops and criminals, and only there do you see widespread gun violence.

None of this is complicated.  The  psychology is not complicated, and the epidemiological data is not complicated.

Most politicians, to survive, have to be sensitive to the winds.  In particular, our nation–and all nations which have had the leftist infection inflicted on them–is one in which all people proposing conservative ideas have to count on withering attacks on their persons every time they say something that contradicts Leftist propaganda.  Something as simple as “we can’t borrow 40% of our money forever” brings out the choruses of pushing Granny over a cliff, even though it is true, and even though Granny will fare far better with intelligent planning that long term denial and hasty reactions to what will then be intractable problems.  Think about it: if you care about Granny, is it the part of compassion to ignore the future, or think about it?

What conservative Republicans need is what amounts to counter-battery fire.  They need lots and lots of voicing stating coherent view in support both of the specific policies, and the wisdom and MORALITY of those policies.

Who, anywhere, who still claims to value reason, rejects planning for the future?  And yet that is exactly what this Administration is doing.  A credible claim can even be made that they are bankrupting our country ON PURPOSE.  Who, anywhere, who still claims to value reason, can argue for economic ruin as a tool for bettering the lives of Americans or serving the cause of enlightment or moral improvement?  No one can, and yet they continue to get away with it with large segments of the zombified, propagandized populace.

We need to understand why and how our ideas work better, and argue them consistently and constantly, anywhere we can, until–and I think this would be a good bellweather–most academics admit our decision to fail in Vietnam–and abandon Southeast Asia generally–opened up a chamber of horrors, ultimately causing unimaginable misery, and millions of horrific deaths; and that the New Deal not only didn’t work, but that it prolonged the Great Depression.

Then I watched myself eat.  I tend to “wolf” down food.  Think about that word for a moment.

And I watched World War Z the other night, where humans became like rabid animals, and bit one another.

We are animals.  We are animals not so very different than the dogs and cats we keep in our homes.  And I think all of us retain atavistic instincts.

In my case, I have discovered a great deal of residual tension in my gut, from unprocessed trauma.  And I think the tension can go all the way from the mouth to the anus.

I think many people clench their jaws because they are biting back anger, and an unrecognized primal reaction to danger, that of biting.

We watch primal humans in that movie, and they pull their lips back like dogs, and for the same reason: they are protecting themselves and projecting aggression.

And I got to thinking about territoriality.  Humans likely retain some instinctual need for home and tribe.  We need to belong somewhere, and within some group.  Modern rejections of xenophobia mean that we are all the In group, at least in theory, but our guts may be telling us something else.

Part of the Us/Them dynamic is that you have to feel you belong, intrinsically belong, somewhere.  You feel at peace with you and yours, and whatever aggressions you may have are reserved for the Others.

But what if you never belong anywhere?  Is it possible that leads to chronic low level activation of our territorial instincts?  Could this be behind some of the obsession with zombies?  Could the zombies represent some unexpressed part of a more primitive part of our nervous systems?  I think there is some merit in this idea.

And I got to thinking about dining, one of life’s great pleasures.  In dining, you merge, you blend these nervous systems.  You combine the appetitive, visceral part, with the modern social part of your brain.  It seems to me that pleasant, relaxed meals with other people with whom you feel connected is an important part of mental health.

That many families no longer eat together could also feed this disconnect between gut and sociality.

Peter Levine has an exercise in his book.   Actually, he has a number.  Looking this one up, I found some more I had marked but didn’t try.  Here is Exercise 4:

The jaw is one of the places that most people carry considerable tension.  There are reasons for this.  The following exercise may serve to illuminate both reasons for this typical “holding pattern” and what may lie on the other side of it, as it dissolves.

At your next meal, or with a crisp apple in hand, take a good “aggressive” bite into a food that you desire.  Really, take a good bite out of it and then begin chewing deliberately.  Continue chewing, slowly, mindfully, until the food turns to liquid.  As you do this, become aware of other sensations and reactions in your body. If you feel the urge to swallow, try to restrain it–to “play the edge” of feeling the urge to swallow, when it arises, and continue to focus on gently chewing.  This may be difficult or uncomfortable, so be patient. Note any impulses you might have such as the urge to swallow, tear, vomit, or associations to things going on in your life–present or past. If reactions such as nausea or anxiety become too strong, please don’t push yourself.  Make written notes of your reactions. Page 302

I tried this tonight, or what I remembered of it, and was able to develop a sort of conversation between my gut and the rest of my senses, and realized it is left out of most of what I do.  It is a burden I carry, but don’t integrate, or haven ‘t yet.

And I got to thinking about anorexics. I could easily see trauma embedding in the gut and becoming a sort of alter ego, a Wolf self, a vicious self, and I could easily see a person as unconsciously wanting to attack and starve that wolf self as violent, angry, and vicious.

If this notion is correct, then the way to treat anorexics would be to have them make somatic contact with their guts.  What would pop out would a lot of horrible shit–I use that word deliberately–but there would be an end.

A key problem with severe trauma is knowing where to start, how to start.   There is no pleasant, easy way to deal with horror.

We have two brains.  This is something that needs to be integrated into mainstream psychology.

This is a bit meandering, but fuck it. I think there are some good ideas here, possibly some REALLY good ideas, inspired by Levine’s excellent work. 

There was a skit I saw some years ago in which Clark Kent would take off his glasses, and the person speaking to him would suddenly realize he was Superman, then he would put them back on and they would wonder where Superman went.  I’m sure in the very first issue people were wondering how it could be than no one put two and two together.

I think the notion that the government has money is very much like this.  If I ask you to pay for your own healthcare (and as you feel necessary, insurance to protect you from catastrophic costs), that is a burden.  But if I ask you to pay taxes and the government will pay for it, then you’re happy (if you’re stupid, which plainly many people are).

This is a shell game, a trick.  It only tricks people who don’t get this process of sending a check to the government, which goes to pay for a government employee to cash checks and check tax returns, then a government bureaucrat to administer the payments to healthcare providers, and then to the doctors.

The government does what insurance companies do, but it does it worse, because it has no competition.  There is no impediment to bloat, and no inherent need for quality and speed.  It is a monopoly, at least in Single Payer systems.

What I think people fail to grasp about our free market system is that it has inherent quality control elements.  You can’t stay in business if you don’t provide something people want at a price they are willing and able to pay.  You have on the one hand the value of success, which leftists love to moan about; but you have also the cost of failure, which can also be quite high, and which leftists ignore, as if all businesses were foreordained for success.  The only such businesses are one underwritten by the government. The rest have to perform or perish.

Bureaucracies merely need to continue getting funding from people whose reelection campaigns they support, with taxpayer money.

I was reading the comments on a post about PTSD and somebody said his therapist said the three things that relieve it are social connections, a sense of mastery, and pleasure.

And it occurred to me that THAT is why I like arguing on the internet so much: I am really, really good at it.  It’s my go-to when I’m feeling intimidated or down.  And THAT is why I always seem to make things into a pissing contest.  To be sure, most conservatives in left wing places are insulted vigorously and constantly (and usually childishly), but my ideas are developed.  I can’t sell them if I’m inflicting them.  I think of Dale Carnegie and Two Gun Crowley.

This is a human perspective, which of course fails to take into account the inhuman nature of dehumanizing, predatory propaganda.

Still, I have not thought of this quite that way.  My task is to master more things, rather than play the same old tune the same old way.

I can’t stand it.

The thing about sailing is you leave no tracks, and you live suspended by something practically infinite and in continuous motion.

Ponder that as a life metaphor. 

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.


I was tempted to add my two cents, but reading it, no.

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-now-spends-125-billion-per-year-on-riot-gear-and-stability-maintenance-2013-5

Did you know China spends more on its suppression of popular protests than it does on its military, which by size is the biggest in the world?

They have some 180,000 protests a year, many of which escalate to riots, most of them concerning Communist Party official corruption.

In Tibet, in some cities, they have extensive early warning systems–and large number of police/military on constant stand-by–so that when Tibetan monks set themselves on fire, they can be doused and hurriedly removed from the public space within 3 minutes or so.

It occurs to me that Zinn’s signature “accomplishment” is telling the Soviet version of the American story–the story which ostensibly justified all their violence, tyranny and cruelty–AS an American, and an American veteran at that. 


Since he deals only with the history of America, ostensibly, he is under no pressure to tell the truth about Communism, or all the cruelties it inflicted.


It can be argued that his book has facilitated more deception and leftist regression than any other single book written in the last 50 years.  I read that it is often the only book on American history even many college students read, and as more or less intentional agit-prop, it no doubt has made Leftist recruiting much easier.


I will submit that a much better book for anyone wanting to learn American history from someone who self identifies as a historian first and foremost (and not propagandist) would be Paul Johnson’s excellent “History of the American People.”  All of Johnson’s books are good.  “Intellectuals” is another one I think all people aspiring to a life of the mind should read, as warning.


Those two books really started my journey into being a conservative.  Some more good ones are Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”, Friedrich Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”, and “Economics in One lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt.


What I want to underscore is that the conservative arguments cannot, in my view, be refuted on their merits.  I have exposed all these ideas to continual criticism for many years, including my own.


If you are a decent person, and want decent lives for the people around you, you MUST subscribe to some form of conservatism.  That is my honest view.


We have lost the messaging war precisely because we want to be nice.  We want to give people equal time.  But those people DO NOT want to us equal time for a very simple reason: looked at systematically, both in principle and their history of implementation, NOTHING the sorts of people running the Democrat Party today want can be justified.  The only ideas they hold worth holding are in general held by Republicans too.


If you want to help women or minorities, vote Republican.  If you want to help the environment, vote Republican.  If you want peace, join those of us calling for an end to foreign involvements, understand that current Democrats are no friends of peace either, and vote for some Republicans.  Vote John McCain and his ilk out.


We have allowed the shrill voices of the mentally unhinged to pervert and corrupt our national dialogue for too long.  We have many problems facing us, but we also have many untapped solutions, but ONLY if we return to the objective use of reason, to a firm commitment in ALL cases to the protection of human decency, to a foundational respect for ALL human beings.