Moderates United

This is a rant, and probably not a very good one. I’m  tired and drinking.  All the same, I’m going to leave it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/peaches-geldof-funeral-alan-mcgee-says-bob-geldofs-eulogy-was-the-bravest-thing-i-think-ive-ever-seen-him-do-9281182.html

I’m just surfing the internet, and came across this.  I had read about her death, and wondered about her life.  She apparently dated Eli Roth for a time.  She was married in the same church where her mothers funeral was conducted after she died of a heroin overdose.  They are clear to call it an “accidental” overdose, but it seems silly to view heroin addiction as other than a form of Russian Roulette.

Her 11 month old baby was in the house, and if her husband had not come looking for her, a Trainspotting sort of scenario may have come about.

What is the source of her trauma?  It would seem likely grotesquely erratic parents.  How much trauma must her mother have had to be taking heroin?  I will say, there have been times in my life where if someone had offered it to me, I might have taken it.  All the same, if you love, truly love those around you, you find ways forward without risking your life.

Bob Geldof is best known for his work getting food to Ethiopia.  What he is not known for is publicizing the cause of that particular famine, which was in my understanding a combination of Communist violence leading to civil war, and “agrarian reform”, which is where you march a bunch of people at gunpoint from farms which worked, to the middle of nowhere, and tell them to grow something without giving them seeds or tools.  It is lunacy.

If his moral compass were intact, he could have BOTH sought aid, AND raised consciousness about the horror.  But he doesn’t like Mondays, and the conscious work they require.

Any child in that much pain has been failed by her parents.  This sounds judgmental, and it is, but that is my view.

We can do so much better as societies.  Humanity can do so much better.

Creativity is nothing other than seeing something that was always possible, but simply unrealized.

OK.  I will stop being an asshole.

If we posit both that unresolved trauma and unexpressed instinctual urges reside in patterns of tension in the viscera, could it be that overeating is a way of pacifying those feelings?  In a sense, this possibility is obvious: we have likely all overeaten when under stress.

But usually what is referenced is the effect on blood chemistry.  A combination of fat and carbohydrate reduces cortisol production, in my understanding.  Certainly a sense of satiety dulls the nerves a bit, and quiets the mind.

But Peter Levine remarked in his book that in some senses one could view the brain as an organ evolved by the stomach in order to better feed itself.  Now, I am no Darwinian, but neither am I stupid enough to ignore clear connections.  My position is simply that field theories have to be added to the equation for it ever to account for all the variables/evidence.

Be that as it may, can it be a case of contending “brains”, one of which feels tension unrelated to hunger, but can only relieve it by triggering the eating circuit; and with the other brain, of course, being the one that wants to be skinny and healthy?

I think most intelligent people grasp that simple carbs have to be controlled, since they induce responses which trigger further eating.  Beyond that, I think there are many, many possible diets which will result in weight loss.  The hows are not really that complicated.

Logically, though, if this rough premise is true, then much of our modern obesity can be explained by the abstraction and unnaturalness of our modern world.  If you live in your head, if you never feel “primitive”, if you never let atavistic urges express themselves, then large parts of your self go unlistened to, but they don’t then go away.  They demand attention.

This is all highly speculative.  I am just playing around with ideas, sketching.  I do that a lot.  There may be something here, maybe not.  For my part, I am going to continue working to understand these things.

In the realm of the political, I think a set of basic questions will work in almost all cases:

What is it (how is it defined)?

Is it wrong?

Why?

Is it always wrong?  If not, why not?

Any leftist you take through this exercise will quickly contradict themselves.  Take racism.  They will tell you it is wrong, that it is group prejudice/hate against another group, and that it is wrong because we are supposed to be nice to each other.

But is it wrong when, say, blacks hate whites?  What about when blacks hate hispanics?  What about when British Pakistanis hate Jews?

This will give them trouble.  You then ask again: if this is not a universal principle, what is it?  If we are supposed to be nice to each other and people are not being nice, then that is bad, right?

The reason this gives them trouble is that they have only apparently embraced universal principles, notions of universal human rights.  Slavery in the South was wrong, but slavery in the Soviet Union was freedom (how is slavery defined again, and why is it wrong? )

Leftism is a cult of conformity.  They are told which forms of slavery are wrong, and which are acceptable.  Their reactions are dictated by the culture within which they live, which is post-Rationalist, and atavistic.  They live only figuratively in caves now, but may yet engineer it as literal fact for all of us, at great cost in human life and unimaginable misery.

Edit: I will add that I myself have “decontructed” “universal moral principles” of an historical sort. I do not say slavery is always wrong or right.  I have renounced the right to tell people what they should do.  Certainly, where my interests or those of those I love are affected, I retain the right to make decisions.

I have argued that Goodness is the eventual result of rejecting self pity, cultivating perseverance, and learning something new every day forever.  I have defined Goodness, in turn, as being capable of enjoying with them the happiness of others, and being able to be happy on your own.  You benefit people, and benefit from them, but don’t need them (neediness clouds judgment, which is to say perceptual skill, and the whole thing relies on perception.)

I have further argued that all proper moral decisions are local, imperfect, and necessary.

Leftism, though, IS a moral narrative.  The entire thing rests on seemingly universal moral claims, but claims which are inherently, internally, contradictory.  It is an extraordinarily judgement creed resting on an intellectual base of sand.

I both critique political radicals, and offer an alternative to a return to orthodox religion.  That is my aim.

Only Goodness can be chosen: evil is compelled.

I feel our true “nature” is Goodness, but that through trauma and grief we are thrown off track.  Goodness is the DECISION to stay on track, to correct, to move right, or left or up or down, to stay on the path of Goodness–the path, ultimately, of least resistance (cite the scripture of your choice here).

Evil is being thrown off track, and not getting back on.  It is allowing emotions you don’t want and which are destructive to take a hold of you.  It is precisely NOT making a choice; and obviously in not making a choice, a choice is made by default, one not to your benefit.

Did you know the founder of the National Organization for Women was a committed Marxist, with all that entails, including but not limited to a commitment to the destruction of American culture through the destruction of the family?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mallorymillett/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives/

It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China.  We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:
“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears.  Was I on planet earth?  Who were these people?

“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women.  It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution.  Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.

What people need to grasp is that various churches, in opposing these agendas, very rightly sense the intrinsic viciousness behind them, the intent to turn all human beings into objects.

I have talked of this from time to time.  The supposed criticism Leftists make of Capitalism is that it “enslaves” people, and turns them into objects.  This is not true: it LIBERATES them.  Ask anyone who comes from a socialist system who comes here and realizes he or she TOO can be a “Capitalist”. They can open a T-shirt company, or bake and sell cookies, or become a licensed electrician who does his or her own work.  This is freedom.

Leftists first turn THEMSELVES into objects, into tools of an ideology that turns them into reflexive machines, then seek to make the world in their image.  I have often spoken of the wax museum quality of Sade’s work, particularly 120 Days of Sodom.  Fixedness is a feature of trauma, and sadomasochism is a possible result of trauma.

It seems to me we must logically speak of “higher education” as it exists now in much of the West as a sort of rape factory, one which tells impressionable youth that everything they have been taught to value, all the way markers they once used, all the people they once trusted, are wrong, and not just wrong, but terribly wrong.  This is traumatizing, since it uses for its coercive power grotesque peer pressure on young people who have been removed from their homes for the first time.

It is not different in principle from the Muslim rape gangs, and the grooming for the insanity that follows is likely quite similar.  You first come across as a friend, then introduce the drug of radical freedom from authority, and you end up with someone who is completely fucked up in the head, and will listen to every lunacy you can concoct, such as the notion that women in this nation are oppressed.

One of my projects for some time has been to create some videos on Philosophical Self Defense.  The time for them is rapidly approaching.

When the top law enforcement agent is attacking people for obeying the law, you have a rogue administration, and an asshole who needs to be put in jail:

http://conservativetribune.com/holder-sues-business-illegals/

And we need to be clear: Holder and Obama and Lerner and all these left wing crazies not only don’t like Americans, not only feel no special bond with us or our system, they don’t even particularly like MEXICANS.  They don’t like anyone.  They like power.  Power for them and their small tribe of like minded lunatics.  

I’m toying with that as a description of myself.  I am a conservative, but I am also a radical.  I think our society has to be remade in major and fundamental ways, but gradually, slowly, ethically, and effectively.  This is the only way deep change can happen.

I was driving downtown the other day, and happened to notice a couple of burly men in uniform smoking outside the city jail, aka Dept. of Corrections, which was plainly blazoned on the sign.

And I got to thinking: who does jail “correct”?  That jail, at that moment, was probably filled with some combination of screwed up scared kids, psychopaths, and the continuum between them.

Who winds up in jail?  Disproportionately, the children of single mothers who grow up in poverty brought on in large measure by only having one income, and that often largely from the government.

These kids have major psychological problems, and jail does nothing to “correct” this.  They are in pain, lonely, confused, ignorant.  Often, they have dropped out of school because no one ever taught them to value it, no one ever spent time, among other things, teaching them to read; and because their wounds make it hard for them to concentrate and sit still.

What makes sense to me is that anyone accused of a crime is put through due process, and, when convicted, subjected to a psychological evaluation.  People who are not psychotic, who are in states of severe but treatable trauma, are given treatment.  When they are relatively “healed”, such that it seems likely they will not commit crimes again, they are released.j

Note: this has nothing to do with reconciling their crime with their sentence.  Horrible decisions can be made under the influence of drugs, despair, and stupidity.

Untreatable psychopaths, of course, we never release.  And for capital crimes, why not let the criminals themselves decide what they want: a lifetime in prison, or death?

These are random, as yet unorganized thoughts, but don’t you think our system could be more intelligent?  Can we admit in principle that we are in fact a society, and that even given our diversity, a certain amount of consideration should be given to each of us?

Perhaps this looks socialist.  I don’t view it that way.  What I want to do is expand the tribe in ways socialists would never be able to.

And Emerson:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

What a fine day for another conspiracy theory.

Obama wants a war in Syria.  Why his handlers want this, I don’t know.  The best guess I have seen is so that the Gulf can build a natural gas pipeline across Syria–that Assad is presumably resisting in return for Russian favors, since Russia would lose marketshare and margin with new competition.

So, having failed to make his case a year or so ago that we should be supporting the very ISIS bastards and psychopaths he now wants to bomb, he is now saying he will bomb them anyway, in Syria, in what Assad has said will be an act of war.  If he is smart, Assad will let Obama do this.  But if ego or stupidity get in the way, he might use some of his Russian anti-aircraft missiles against us.  Then Obama gets his pretext, maybe.

This seems doubtful to me, though.  Do we really want a situation in which we are fighting BOTH sides in Syria?  I would not support a war even in those circumstances.  I personally don’t understand how we can’t confine our activities to Iraq, which we more or less assumed custody for when we invaded.  What made sense to me seems, maybe, to be what is happening, which is somewhere between a few hundred to a few thousand Spec.  Ops types wandering around sniping, calling in air strikes, and occasionally laying ambushes, optimally with local troops.  ISIS thinks it is legit.   A thousand dead on their side from people actually willing and able to fight would change their tune.

But the people behind Obama live in realms of abstraction.  They do not do practical things for a living.  They are not responsible at the end of the day for a work performance whose utility they can demonstrate.  They are functional imbeciles, and there is no containing the stupidity of determined idiots, when backed by the power of America’s CEO.

Just putting it out there.  Let’s hope an understanding of their very, very fragile standing in the polls, and the strong likelihood of getting their asses handed to them in November, keeps all of these turncoat sacks of shit on the straight and narrow.