Moderates United

Why is racism wrong?  Because it treats people en masse, by defining all individuals in terms of their group membership.  It consists in prejudice: pre-judgement.  Inherently, it makes mistakes because not all members of ANY group are homogeneous, even if some members of that group often display the traits associated with them by others.

Further, race can be used as a means by which to deny entire populations, within a larger group, the rights which everyone else expects.  We consider this wrong, because we believe in universal and equally available human rights.  Segregation was wrong because it treated one group differently than others.

Racism is wrong because it can be and often is cruel, and as a culture, we reject cruelty.

Put another way, racism is wrong for exactly the same reason Political Correctness is wrong, in that the latter consists almost entirely in treating groups–political conservative–as absolutely homogeneous, and susceptible to pre-judgement en masse, without any fact gathering, without any effort at establishing a mutually empathetic and connected bond, and without ever looking back, to see if any mistakes were made.

Practically, why does the Left obsess about racism, over and above the obviously useful propagandistic uses to which the word “racist” can be put?

If one looks carefully, the charge of racism actually serves as a focal point for hatred.  Hatred, itself, comes to provide a sense of meaning in those fully infused with it.

Conformity is the only true value on the left, but conformity is much, much easier to enforce when an external target can be created to mobilize the emotions of violence through group rejection of the Other.

Put one more way: looked at objectively, Leftism furthers and perfects all the social and individual malignancies which lead to and have always led to, throughout history, misery, death, destruction, poverty, and diseases of the mind and body.

It literally takes everything bad in human history, distills it, concentrates it, then reintroduces it as a panacea for precisely the ills it creates and fosters.

To call this madness is not an exaggeration.  All of our top schools are suffused with cognitive distortions so severe they should qualify as clinically schizophrenic.

I don’t think anyone, adult or child, should have a TV in the room designated for sleeping.  Physiologically, light before bedtime disrupts sleep rhythms.

More importantly, it is letting a dozen hypnotists in to your room, who are casting spells you cannot even see.  They are making you feel physically unattractive, more lustful, more greedy, more resentful, less patient, less observant.

Have we all not seen the ceremony of the “ritual balancing of opinions”, where the two alleged sides of a controversial issue are represented?  And have not the more perceptive among us realized that vast tracts of possible analysis have been ignored entirely?

When my children were young, we spent huge amount of time on the couch together watching TV.  I’ve seen Mary Poppins at least 30 times, and was a huge Veggie Tales fan.  But we were together, and as appropriate I would comment, making it a learning tool.

And neither of them got anything meaningfully electronic until they were 12.  I watch the zombification of our youth, and it is small wonder they can’t think.  Our only hope is their passionate attachment to freedom, of at least some sorts.

My youngest was complaining of boredom six months or so ago.  I have told them since they were little that only boring people get bored, but I got an Xbox (for me) and Kinect.  The Kinect remains unused.  What I found was if we make enough trips to the library, boredom is not a problem.  Quite literally, I cannot get my youngest to stop reading long enough to play video games.

I try not to lecture, but no doubt I do it constantly.  In my mind, there can be little doubt that the presence of TV’s in most all of our childrens bedrooms from very early ages plays a role in losing emotional connection within families, in cognitive and emotional shallowness; and it very effectively allows the distribution of various propagandas, most notably the consumption ethos, the latent appeal to authority assumption, and the notion that “sex” matters more than the capacity to exist.

It seems the propaganda operations at some of our allegedly best universities are reaching those one would expect in fascist nations.  Read this: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/30/going-viral-princeton-university-students-bold-response-after-allegedly-being-told-repeatedly-to-check-your-privilege/

Here is the point I would make: this young man is CLEARLY  privileged, but not as a result of belonging to some racial, economic or social group.  He was privileged in growing up in a family which was close, and which preached the value of hard work and education.

Poverty is no barrier, in this country, to becoming rich.  Being black is no barrier. Laziness and a sense of entitlement are.  If you want the boat to swim in to you, you are, in the only sense that matters, underprivileged.

And we need to be clear that class-based thinking is the categorical antithesis of personal morality, personal responsibility, personal freedom, personal choice.  It quite literally teaches that you are HELPLESS unless one of these fascist thugs comes down from above and pulls you out by pushing someone else down.

This pattern of thought teaches ONLY ugliness, hate and greed.  It has no place anywhere that wants to use the word Liberal.

I was thinking today about a young woman I knew some years ago.  She worked in a bar, and I would bring her poetry every Sunday, stuff I had written.  It was purely for me–as I think I have shared, sending energy out somehow is healing for me–but I did run into her several years later, and she said she had kept it, which made me feel a bit less ridiculous.  I am ridiculous, to be clear, but I try to keep visible reminders to a minimum.

She had some pretty obvious emotional traumas she was struggling to deal with, and I have often wondered if she wound up on heroin.  I was having an imaginary conversation with her tonight, and what I would answer if she asked me if I knew how to get off heroin.

I think I do.  It is as simple as it is complicated (remember this is my week of confusion, so go with it): addicts need to know, at the core of their being, that they are understood, accepted, and loved, and ideally by multiple people.  They need a core context where they feel welcomed.  They need a home.  They need a true family.  We all do, of course, but they need it more.

This is what I want to build in the Church I have spoken of.  Bohannons: that is what I will call the groups.  I have put a ton of thought into the logistics, but am not ready to share the details.

I thought I would put that out there.  I understand addicts.  I really do.

Unless, of course, I am confused.

I will add that in solving any problem, you always need as one option “I am being a dumbass and have fucked the whole thing up.  Full reboot.”

Princeton and Harvard (and of course others) would do well to keep this in mind.

Sometimes I think it is important not just to admit that you are confused, but to enter it consciously, to embrace it.  Confusion is a luxury that one can sometimes afford.  It can be a fine champagne, in its own way.

Confusion is a place where you are not sure where you are going, or why, or how long it will take.  You are not sure who you are and what you believe.  Confusion allows you to try on emotional costumes, form new constructions, no longer confined by what you have always taken to be true.

We need to be clear–I say this constantly.  Clarity is a core value of mine, but I am seeing, increasingly, the yin and yang.  Actually, I think I have said this, but clarity sometimes comes from confusion.

Is it not true that most confused people are unaware of it?  I was reading a Facebook conversation where someone who had lost his phone repeatedly asked anyone who found it to call him; and he was unable to understand why people were mocking him.  The ability to receive calls was so rooted in his experience and consciousness that he was not getting it.  I myself find myself turning on the light switch over and over when we have power failures, even though I KNOW it won’t work.  Habit is both a friend and an enemy.

And I think it is OK to be weak sometimes.  The trendy word is vulnerable, but for some of us weak is a better word.  Not in control, not seeking to be in control, drifting, wandering, like a rudderless boat down a dark river.

So often, I feel, we fear confusion, we want to drive it away, come back to the land of light and clarity.  We crave an end to it so much that we finish the work of being confused prematurely, and reach wrong conclusions, in varying degrees.

Today–this week–I am confused.  Unclear.  Obfuscated, blocked, in the dark, ignorant, lost, drifting.  And I’m going with it.  Time is a luxury I have this week.  It truly is a luxury I would wish on more people.

I am stupid.  Dumb.  Imbecilic.  And it’s OK for now.

The amount of hate I am seeing expressed against Bundy is grossly out of proportion to his alleged offenses.  As just one example, there is apparently a “Cliven Bundy must die” Facebook page, which the people running it say does not violate their policies.

First, he is clearly no racist.  If you look at the full text of his comments, what he is expressing is sympathy and empathy.  The fact that he has been painted as a racist shows clearly that there is NO ROOM in our current cultural space for actual, meaningful, useful, human dialogue.  There is NO ROOM for treating ideological others as human beings with a right to life and to their own opinions.  Quite literally, they are subhuman Untermenschen.

And tax evasion?  The Secretary of the Treasury–who is in charge of the IRS–cheated on his taxes.  Dozens of IRS employees cheated on their taxes, and still got bonuses.

What this thing really shows is how effective the propagandistic control is that the complicit media have come to exert on the feeble minded, among whose ranks regrettably are most of the graduates of our allegedly best universities, and many of the people who teach in them.

I will suggest the following test to any Power Elite reading this: see how quickly and seamlessly you can transition this hate to affection.  How quickly can you get the same people calling for his head to congratulate him?  It would be interesting for both of us to watch.

Large segments of our populace appears to me fully willing to operate within a fully Orwellian universe, where truth is mutable and subject to change on a dime, and conformity to the dominant narrative the only enduring social imperative.  It is sickening to observe how many of these people think of themselves as independent minded, and capable of the exercise of reason; how ARROGANT most of them are.

So the Clippers owner is banned for life from the NBA and fined some non-token, but also not particularly onerous sum.  Big fucking deal.

Chances are, this year more blacks will be killed by other blacks than the KKK killed in its entire existence.  Many of them will be teenagers simply trying to live normal lives.

Chances are, nearly all blacks in this country will receive horrible educations which almost guarantee their failure in life, despite the ready availability of an alternative–charter schools–which have been PROVEN to improve their outcomes educationally and professionally.

Chances are, most black kids in this country will grow with a father who is either distant or absent entirely; and a mother who is barely making ends meet even with government support.

Chances are, most kids out there today will grow up in fear, lonely, confused, ignorant, and with no plan for life, no direction, and little hope.

Chances are nearly half of them will wind up in prison.

Fuck you NBA, and fuck you, you piece of shit race-baiting cynical opportunists.

Nobody cares, REALLY, for those who suffer in this country.  They are tools, to be used and discarded at will.

Who is really hurt by Sterling’s comments?  Any black his mistress might have invited.  Who is not hurt?  Anyone capable of mastering the kindergarten jingle “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Ah, my superpower, regrettably, is seeing hypocrisy and evil.

Watched this movie tonight.  At the end, listening to the balalaikas, I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and nostalgia.  I walked into the theater feeling a bit sad, so small wonder it ended that way.  I like to sit close to the front, so nobody can see me if I cry.

[You know that old cliche–I laughed, I cried?  That is emotional house-keeping, and to be pursued and valued].

Anyway, I decided this movie, in the end, was about nobility and love.  All three main characters, M. Gustave, Mustapha, and Agatha, are alone in the world.  We never learn Gustave’s story, but one can reliably infer betrayal, sadness, and perseverance.

What all learn, is to love work, and to love others.  These are the only loves that matter.  All three forge identities, selves, and are rewarded, for some period of time, with a sense of integrity, dignity, decency, and belonging that notably were absent from the rich people with whom they interacted.

Gustave died for Mustapha.  That is nobility.

Anyway, I just started bawling.  I had to wait until everyone left, then take a different exit and put my sunglasses on immediately.  It is still triggering me now.  And that is a great thing, a wonderful thing.  Crying makes you stronger.  I am very tough, physically, and emotionally, but I want something more.  There is a current of energy I want flowing through me, and the only way I can bring it in is to learn to interact with, dance with, make friends with, all emotions.

And I felt, for a brief period, an overwhelming sense of compassion.  And I thought that you cannot, cannot, cannot be usefully compassionate if you are afraid of the pain and suffering you see around you, and in you.

As I whine about, seemingly constantly, being nice and being compassionate are two different things.  When Mustapha said his family had been killed, he did not offer him sympathy: he offered him friendship.  That is how you do it.  And compassion, often, consists in watching people struggle, watching them fight their own fights, and hoping they win.

It occurs to me that, while it is not difficult to point to the fallacy of appealing to authority, appealing to “science” is presented, is transmogrified, from an appeal to concrete, fallible human beings to a method which is perfect in principle.  For the reality–men and women with psychodynamic histories, cognitive flaws, hidden greeds and lusts–it substitutes something abstract and something perfect.

“Science” becomes the Pythagorean Theorem, and if enough of the people who “do” science agree on something, it is presumed to be right.  One cannot even dip one’s toes into the issues on Darwinism or Global Warming without getting “science” thrown back at you.

With regard to that former topic, I am reading a book on the topic.  Were you aware that not ONE example of speciation–of one species becoming another–has ever been recorded, either in modern observation, or in the fossil record?  Certainly, in the fossil record there are similar fossils, but nothing reliable can be inferred from them, any more than if a monkey and human were buried next to each other and dug up a million years from now.

Within bacteria, in particular, you can create multiple generations daily, and do so for years.  What is seen is variation, change, adaptation.  But not speciation.

I felt, reading this book, like I had stumbled onto a murder scene, where the wrong person had been arrested.

I feel the need from time to time to remind any readers I may have that I sometimes say things without knowing why.  That has been particularly true in some of my last 4-5 posts.

Many intellectuals like to say foggy things using big words and big concepts and be thought intelligent because they are unintelligible.

As I say often, I like to think of myself as a thought worker, the equivalent in the intellectual realm of a construction worker and architect.  My end goal is clear, actionable thinking, expressed clearly.

But my method is exploration, and sometimes you have to say something to even begin figuring out why you said it.

There is in all of us a deeper Knowing, and to contact it you have give it a ceremonial place at the table, space to talk, respect.  You have to invite it, and then listen.