Socialism, here we come?
I’m thinking of Santayana again and his “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Why? Take a look.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
I’m thinking of Santayana again and his “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Why? Take a look.
It appears ore a statement of age and experience rather than being “on the verge”. Even you, neo were at one time a Lib. This should come as no surprise.
“If you aren’t a Liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you aren’t a Conservative at 30, you have no brain”.
we have already lost.
it does not matter what i think, what you think, or anyone else here thinks. we are not young, and we are on the wrong side of the argument time wise.
its the young now that will sweep everything away, and they are defining the world. all we are doing is grousing and sort of believing that our discussions matter.
the attitude of the youth will replace the attitude of the old, and since the old cant get to the young (for 40 years), well, each new set of youth has moved the line over.
and this is not a smooth linear transition, i explained a long post ago that they convinced them that the best glass of water is at 30 degrees. befre they reach that point though, it freezes and they cant drink anything.
I can only conclude that the kids’ complete ignorance of what socialist and Communist societies are really like (the historical record) plays a large prevents them from thinking clearly about the matter. Their teachers and professors have presided over an academic culture that has imposed strict silence in the matter. It was deliberate.
As far as these people are concerned, “good” intentions trump real results and logic.
In the late seventies and early eighties I knew about, in stages and as got information, the historical record of socialist societies. And I was paying attention to the philosophical arguments against socialism, with a view to seeing if those arguments could be overcome. That lead to a dead end. However, noteworthy, from where I stand now, is the fact that all of the information that was unflattering to socialism I got OUTSIDE of the university. Reading on my own. Plus, one of the guys in the house I lived in was reading Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago.” I borrowed it from him and read some of it. There were moments when I encountered the scary ethics of expediency exhibited by some of the Marxists and socialists I knew – deliberate lying is something that creeps me out.
The kids do not have enough information. Plus, they were brought up to think highly of themselves (the self-esteem regimen), which portends only massive amounts of egocentrism and narcissism. I’m afraid it is only going to be hard, hard experience slapping them in the face that might wake them up.
You people realize this is entirely your fault, right?
You have spent years now accusing anyone whose policies are to the left of Attila the Hun of socialism. You have spent years hysterically condemning the most innocuous of liberal policies, policies supported by the majority of Americans, as bare steps away from a Stalinist hell. For Christ\’s sake, conservatives accused Bill Clinton, who in any reasonable world would be considered a liberal Republican, of being a socialist!
Of course people are going to say they like socialism! If you tell them that the policies and leaders they like are socialists, at least SOME of them are going to conclude that this socialism about which you can\’t shut up is a great thing.
Good job, conservatives!
The essence of socialism/Marxism is the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth. This happened under FDR, when the top tax bracket was put at 90%. During the 1970’s the top federal tax bracket was 70%. Both periods saw stagnant or declining economic growth, with falling employment and capital flight.
“snarfle barfle” has provided an “explanation” that imparts no real understanding of how the education process and media have been used to gradually boil the frog.
Our kids have been told to look to Euro-socialism for the model of how to have a prosperous and “fair” economy. “Social justice” means redistribution of income, of which history has imparted ample examples of failure. When we point out that this scheme is what it is, along comes a troll like “snarfle barfle” with his faux explanations which might convince the credulous who are awed with pseudo social-psychological babblings. It’s an interesting variant of what the anti-anti-Communists do: lampoon the messenger.
I read the poll as saying that 33% are socialists and around 30% don’t know the difference between capitalism and socialism or can’t even define either “capitalism” or “socialism.” Sad commentary on the current state of affairs, especially when I visualize what the results of a similiar poll would have been along about 1955.
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Socialism fails and milton friedman was right. His DVD series is wonderful and shows exactly why 2.0 unemployment, under socialism, is still miserable.
The economy is the exchange of goods and services. And the economy accelerates when people really want to exchange goods and services. When you have rewards to creating something that others want, as in capitalism, you get motive to innovate new products through creativity and technology. If you have a bunch of people doing this, you exchange these goods and services and create jobs and wealth.
Under socialism, people stay complacent in their situation. there is relatively any motivation to create products that other people want, and this creates a domino effect. (you can motivate others to produce cool products if they want other peoples’ cool products). however, high taxes eliminates the motivation for many. And for this reason, most of the good products come out of capitalists countries.
There is not a set amount of wealth in this world. It can be created and people can join in by creating something that people want. Obama’s policies seek to make everyone equal by stifling competition and innovation — trickle up poverty.
So everyone is equal financially, and unemployment is very low — but everyone is just above poverty. Cuba has low unemployment, but there are no mansions and nothing to shoot for.
Furthermore, people stop progressing. People stop learning from failures.
Watch Socialism Fails Video HERE
That happens in bad times, it may seem dark now, but better times will be again.
jordan,
That was a very good comment you made above. Those of us who were around in the 1970’s (including me) know what that was all about. In college I had some economics professors who were open to Friedman’s work, and some who were not. At the time, I had a static view of the world and I believed the zero-sum explanation for the economy. I was a kind of revisionist Marxist, and I zeroed in on the crucial argument, as I saw it, at the time: human nature is not compatible with earthly Utopia. I probed this critique in great depth, coming out the other end a person disabused of my Marxist convictions. Later on, after I left the Jesuits, I studied finance and business at Boston College’s MBA program. There I discovered that wealth creation is real and that the economy is not a zero sum game. And more than anything else, the Reagan boom pretty much convinced me that there was indeed something to Laffer’s Curve.
The Keynesian Multiplier is dead, except at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League. The president and his party are basing their policies on the belief in the Keynesian Multiplier. It will fail. I have seen these things attempted before in my young 54 years. They failed in the Sixties and Seventies.
When you propose to make the government’s take on the economy grow from a little over 5% to a little over 13%, that is very dramatic and, I think, stifling of investment and job creation.
What is even more shocking is that fact that an enormous amount of money spent in public education and in higher education has turned out nearly two generations of young Americans who fall for Obonga’s drivel.
The essence of socialism/Marxism is the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth.
See, this is exactly the problem I described above. Virtually every tax system involves the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth. You understand this, right? You understand that any tax imposed by any government – even conservative-lead governments! – involves the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth, right?
I suppose you could argue for a system in which every citizen received government services equal to the exact amount every citizen pays in taxes, but that might make it hard to do things like…maintain a national military.
So, I repeat: this is exactly the problem I described above. You equate something done by every government everywhere in the world ever – even the one run by St. Reagan – with socialism. And then you wonder why people might equate socialism with things other than socialism? You don’t seem too clear on the subject yourself, so I don’t think it’s fair for you to be too hard on others for making the same mistake.
Or to rephrase: to accuse Obama of socialism because he proposes raising the top marginal income tax rate to a rate lower than the rate applied by St. Reagan during the first 3 or 4 years of his administration is to remove all discursive value of the term “socialism.”
Conservative half Comanche David Yeagley, who is definetly not politicaly correct, and to the right of many on this site, has an interesting article up….
“…And here we have America, so bold, so new, so grand in the beginning, now yearning for subjugation, for servile ways, for infantile status. America, racing to the womb, leaping into the dream of a carefree life. Momma Obama is the voice of that weakness, that dark place of slavery.
Yes, it is the original comfort zone: total dependency. Mindless, floating utopia. To leave it, to be born, to be willing to experience the rip-roaring birth, as America once did, is not something anyone seems willing to even talk about. Oh, yes, the talented talkers of conservatism wondrously glorify the ideologies of the founding fathers. But they all fail, totally, to recall the agony of birth! The talkers and the would-be conservative politicians ignore, utterly, the price paid for the implementation of those sacred ideologies of the fathers. War. Violence. Citizens’ resolve. The fathers were willing to pay the price to be born. Today’s Americans are apparently not. America is aborting itself.”
He then goes on and talks about the young Jewish nation calling for a King, and how the Prophet Samuel warned them what a king would do to them….I have often thought about this as a warning in the Bible about what absolute power in the hands of a human ruler can bring…
Entire article here but will probably open in comments section so you have to scroll up to read : http://www.badeagle.com/2009/04/05/passover-is-near-eve-of-april-8/#comments
“Their teachers and professors have presided over an academic culture that has imposed strict silence in the matter.”
I can’t speak to the college culture of the ’70s or early ’80s, but when I attended a very liberal college, there were academics who had come from Poland and beyond the Wall. They gave us kiddies examples of what communism looked like and sounded like. My first Spanish teacher was a Cuban refugee whose husband had been an economics professor in La Habana; he was teaching at Central Michigan University in the ’70s and ’80s and was a good antidote to romanticizing distribution of wealth.
A bigger problem is that the average American student doesn’t read anything, even homework assigned readings. But they like pretty pictures, as evidenced by the dimwits who wear Ché Guevara T-shirts and (ironically) protest racism, war, and censorship.
snarfle barfle,
Obama’s biological father, whose views and ideas he says he admires in his autobiography, was a Kenyan member of the Communist Party. Mr. Obama, Sr. published a paper in 1965 in which he outlines how he would organize Kenya’s economy. You cannot distinguish it from Marxism-Leninism. Obama, Jr. also expressed in his autobiography (interesting how such a young man who accomplished nothing would deem his life worth an autobiography) the fact that he has embraced his mother’s ideas as well. Stanley Ann Dunham was a Marxist, who was attracted to that ideology from her adolescence at the high school on Mercer Island in Washington state.
In college at Occidental, a known Leftist warren, he says he made sure he took courses from professors who were known socialists and Marxists. Ditto at Columbia. He has the most Far Left voting record of all the members of the U.S. Senate, including Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
His attatchment to the Annenberg Challenge of Chicago and work with Ayers also solidifies his socialist/Marxist creds.
Take you drivel somewhere else. You clearly do not know a thing about economics, finance, or the provenance of ideas in political ideologies. I’ll bet you wear a Che Guevara t-shirt. Well, here’s some news for you: Ernesto “Che” Guevara went to his death before the Bolivia firing squad bawling like a baby and pissing his pants. His was a brave man when waving his 45 pistol at hogtied political prisoners he would torture and shoot. Not so brave when facing his own death.
And I’ve been deeper into socialist/Marxist ideology than you have been or could ever possibly hope to be. I know Marxism when I see it, so scram. Grow up.
Wait! Did anyone read the whole article?
Does this article say anything new? Young and inexperienced people prefer the security and false utopia of socialism. As they age, reality begins to set in. Additionally, those who are more successful i.e. smarter, prefer capitalism by a 5-1 margin.
As they say, who don’t know that?
Now, ask yourself, which demographic groups vote most often and in the biggest percentages? Older folks.
Ah ha, you ask, then why did Obama win this last election?
Perhaps because not only was the public disgusted with Republican corruption, the MSM went completely over the top and became Obama’s public relations department and never seriously looked at Obama or discussed the issues. Also the economy tanked at just the right time to cause maximum damage to the incumbent party. Finally, the republicans offered a unappealing candidate with no new ideas and charisma and personality of a wet mop. (aside, did you see how they reacted to Palin though?)
The public did want hope and change. They were desperate for it, and got a snake oil sales man instead due to the convergence of the above factors.
Given all that, he still only took 52% of the vote and only won by a 5% margin. So I ask you what is so profound about this silly little poll? Besides, had they worded it differently, I suspect the results would have been different.
Personally, the only poll I believe in is the one taken on election day.
And the top rate under Reagan had been dropped to 28% at one point. The Democrat controlled Congress forced it back up to 35%.
The top rate is going to go back up to (rounding it off) 40%. They want to hike the capital gains rate up to 30%.
Right now, income over $250K is exempt from the payroll (FICA) tax. They are going to make income over that amount subject to taxation. That most certainly is redistribution.
Stop the snarky “St Reagan” insults.
Just about every Leftist on conservative blogs that I participate in eventually succumbs to snarky condescension and ad hominem.
I used to be in favor of the progressive tax code. By the way, I’m not rich. I earn six figures, but certainly nowhere near the high end. I’m below the $250K threshold. I work as an equities research analyst. I know firsthand exactly how companies make decisions about expansion, hiring, and whether or not to bring out a new product. They do a thing called Net Present Value analysis of the cash flows. In this business we set up spreadsheet templates that determine, as best we can, the free cash flow that is expected over a period of time into the future. Then, you discount those cash flows to the present using a discount rate that takes into account the risk free rate plus a risk premium. Uncertainty adds risk. Also, higher taxes mean less money makes it into the sum of each year’s free cash flow. Then, you add up the discounted cash flows for the entire period and determine if the project, expansion, or new product roll out is worth it.
Right now the risk premiums we are using – that I am using – are higher than normal because the macro environment that Obama and his people are putting into place is mind-boggling. And that does not even take into account the possibility of that boondoggle called Cap and Trade (which is a swindle based upon junk science).
These under-30somethings are a real hoot. They don’t know history. They don’t know economics or finance. They are filled full of post-modernist epistemology that is hostile towards traditional values. I’m telling you; if you folks like to bash us Baby Boomers, well the Boomers are being eclipsed in their youthful stupidity by the even more amazing youthful stupidity of the Yers and some Xers.
Call it what you wish, Obama is taking us to the collectivist Shangri-la.
The silver lining is that if things aren’t too broken there will be a whiplash reaction to his anti-america agenda.
We must be able to fill the vacuum with the moral argument in favor of a capitalist system and what it has given to the individual and the world.
I wonder how many of the faithful, (even here). feel comfortable defining and defending capitalism as the most moral and just system of social/economic governance?)
snarfle barfle Says: “I suppose you could argue for a system in which every citizen received government services equal to the exact amount every citizen pays in taxes, but that might make it hard to do things like…”
There are thresholds of deficit spending and government control, beyond which long-term economic stability is severely compromised. Study economics and history, no system is perfect, but the further “left” societies venture, the lower their standard of living tends to gravitate, as well as their creative output in virtually all arenas. Snarfie, your name reflects your attitude, immaturity and (lack of) intellect…
Ah, Neo! Again with the history posts; and once more I rise to the bait.
Sigh!
Of course ignorance about the past is a problem, something like collective amnesia, but granting that, there still remains the question of what past are we to remember? There are many pasts and what narrative we embrace depends greatly on our personal experiences and prejudices. The past looks different depending on where you sit to view it.
Capitalism certainly did not look all that great to the mine and mill workers of a century ago. Their drive for collective security was a rational response to the very difficult situation in which they found themselves.
Nor does capitalism look so good to the poor of many developing countries where in recent decades entrenched social and cultural elites have exploited market reforms to enhance their own positions at the expense of the poor. There are good reasons why Marxism is resurgent in much of the underdeveloped world today.
I could go on and on, but the point should be obvious; there are good historical reasons for many people to favor collectivism over classical liberalism, and the historical record contains many factors out of which an anti-capitalist, anti-democratic narrative can be, and have been, constructed.
Personally I am a huge fan of capitalism and human freedom, but I also recognize that people who think differently are not necessarily doing so out of ignorance of history. In fact, many of them are professional historians who are as well versed in the past as am I.
One of the more despicable tactics of left-wing commentators has been to brand their opponents as being morally, educationally, or cognitively deficient. Let us not stoop to their level.
Fred, I just posted a response to you on the continuity of thought in various kinds of socialism, continuing the discussion with huxley on “How do you know a Marxist when you see one?”
I want to take issue with suggesting that income redistribution is the starting point for defining Marxist thinking. It is an inevitable consequence of Marxist analysis and policy, but it is not the starting point, so we can leave Ronbo’s tax rates safely out of it.
The starting points are Historical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. Without going into the ins and outs of it too much, the core ideas are that History is all about the struggle for money and power, and conflict is the engine of change. It is a short step to the question of being most concerned with Lenin’s famous “Who-whom?” and worrying about fixing historical “mistakes” through taxation, discrimination, expropriation, or punishment.
The danger and seductiveness for intellectuals is immense. Marxism promises a universal decoder ring for reducing all the complexities of human experience to scientific certainty. This puts power in the hands of the intellectual who masters the “scientific” methods to direct all the lesser humans, and tells them that pure Reason must always be followed, to the exclusion of Tradition (the historical pattern of social relationships) and Revelation (traditional religion and morality).
Paul Johnson (an outstanding polemicist) argued that at bottom Marxism and its derivatives are not economics or science, but a particular kind of hyper-intellectualized heresy. As I talk to young people and even older progressives, I detect the resurgence of a whole raft of ancient heresies: Gnosticism (where some people should run things because they “just know”), Pelagianism (“people are naturally good”), and what I once heard described as the Third Empire Heresy (“technology can help people become immortal”…I’m not kidding).
Among nominally Christian progressives, Arianism is rampant. You see it in places like the growing self-described “Unitarian movement” inside the officially Trinitarian mainline churches.
Fred, I’m sure you are recognizing by name a lot more heresies masquerading as political or social philosophy than I can.
“I could go on and on, but the point should be obvious; there are good historical reasons for many people to favor collectivism over classical liberalism, and the historical record contains many factors out of which an anti-capitalist, anti-democratic narrative can be, and have been, constructed.”
Hopefully the bold tags work – I can’t recall if they use HTML or the brackets here.
The mistake here is the word “good” – no there can not be a good one made. You yourself pretty much admit that – it contains many factors that can be extracted to point to that. Yet cherry picking your evidence isn’t “good”, that should result in an “F” for the paper or the referee’s refusing to publish said paper. Yet, for whatever reason, that is now taken to be sound reasoning.
Sadly this is also been making head ways into the softer sciences. Papers that even 20 years ago would have been thrown out (and even then this slide had already begun) are now Gospel and Cannot be Questioned.
One of the best (and worst) papers I ever did in college was based on this poem: http://www.eliteskills.com/c/5568 That poem is obviously all about how males shape the lives of females and stifle their growth. It is obvious reading it and we also have the author speaking about it as such. Yet I made the case that the Bonzai tree is considered the world over a thing of beauty when trimmed and controlled, in the wild they are ugly twisted things. That the author meant that only under the hand of a man could females reach their true beauty. It was obviously quite a bit longer than that, but that was the gist of what I wrote.
For myself I was poking at the feminist teacher, she knew it, I knew it, and she gave me a good grade based on how I supported my thesis (I used “sound logic” and supported my case – she also made me stand in front of the class and read/defend it, though for reasons other than making me feel bad, she asked before doing it). I really shouldn’t have gotten a good grade, not because I was basically poking at her (I actually liked her and the class, one of the few English classes I enjoyed in college), but because the whole point of the class was to critically deduce what an author meant. It wasn’t about thought processes, logic and how it can be twisted, or any other exercise where what I did was interesting. We had other classes that supposedly did that, though they all failed miserably.
However, given my other courses, I do agree with what she did – it was one of the few humanities courses where supporting your thesis was more important than your thesis. I knew her better later on and knew that the reason she ran the class the way she did was because of that – many dropped for other courses where you simply had to learn what the prof thought and regurgitate that. Simple regurgitation of the teachers thought with no logic behind it tended to get and “F” in this course (and is one of the reasons I both enjoyed it and made a good grade – never was very good at regurgitating what a teacher told me – always liked to poke).
I recall this incident because it was one of the few good ones I had in a modern humanities class. I recall it because that shouldn’t be so. Yet it was proper to to do so because the state of education in the rest of the department – too many considered “good” to be what I am replying too and *never* should have. She ruthlessly cut grades on cherry picking information or bad logic even when she agreed with your conclusions – I still get a smile today (jeesh, almost 20 years later) thinking of many of the others complaining about “what did she want? I wrote what she said it meant in the paper?”
snarflebarfle Says:
“See, this is exactly the problem I described above. Virtually every tax system involves the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth.”
No, you’re just showing how you don’t get it. Yes, every tax system can be portrayed that way but not all have that as a goal. Some just want to provide basic services (national defense, roads, and schools) along with a social safety net. This is not redistribution of wealth for it’s own sake.
Federal or state taxation is intended not for redistribution, but to fund essential work which can not be done by private enterprizes: police, military, vital infrastructure which is impossible to commercialize. It also includes civil services, like justice, customs, fundamental research, schools, a big share of universities expences, but all this hardly can be described as redistribution. Capitalism does not exclude government, it only restricts it to a fairy limited set of tasks, and economy management is not one of them.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but I would again like to thank neo for the brain storm of starting this blog and pointing it in the directions it goes, and the great regulars and “occasionals” who come in here to discuss the ideas that flow forth. And…OK, I also have a new found respect for ballet.
I worked as a sales engineer for an industrial manufacturer for many years. The company ended up being bought and sold three times in the last few years I was there after the founders passed on. The final (still current) owners re-arranged the compensation package for the outside sales force. Instead of each individual living and dying by his own sword, we were grouped as one, and all payed equally from the results. You can imagine what happened to the outside sales force’s compensation and the company’s over all sales. During free time in the evenings, at sales meetings, the “producers” were all over the slackers who brought us all down, while still raising their own boats. I left shortly there after, as did all the producers eventually. Although the products are unique and highly beneficial, the company’s sales, and size, are less than half what they were.
It’s a no brainer.
If anyone is going to be testifying about socialism, marxism, whatever, lemme know when to tune in to C-Span. thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edn36RzqA-M
Seems to me the creeping and emotionaly charged concept of “fairness” is the culprit here. Who doesn’t want fairness?
What leftist have really done is use the word fairness, when what they’re really pushing is fairnesses first cousin “sameness”. Who the hell wants sameness?
Politics is no longer about ideas that get thought about and debated. Its about who best manipulates the public emotionaly so thought never gets a foothold in the debate.
Snarf makes a reasonable point, he just overstates it and throws in gratuitous insult. There are indeed degrees of socialism and redistribution, and failing to make that distinction has not been our best PR move. Nonetheless, there is another side to that. The free market position has been misrepresented and exaggerated by the left, and the term “fascism” has been thrown around rather freely in describing conservatives. By your reasoning, snarf, fascism should be sitting pretty now as people realise that the accusations were unfounded. So while I take your point, I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny. That one can find fault with how conservatives have criticised liberals does not mean that such criticism is the cause of socialism’s popularity.
No politician openly supports socialism or communism, of course, and I doubt that any of our major players think of themselves as socialists. Because they are not extreme socialists, they consider any use of the term to be a wild exaggeration. They use it as a technique to discredit the critics. By restricting the definition of socialist to only the purest type, while expanding the definition of capitalism to include any economic problem that might occur, the left has very effectively manipulated the terms of the discussion. This is why “free market” polls much better than “capitalism.” It is the reverse process of calling socialism “investment in (fill in the blank).” “Socialism” doesn’t poll well, so they call it something else. Bolsheviks didn’t advertise they were going to build a vast network of prison camps for politicals, either. It all sounded so empowering of the people at first.
I agree that some conservatives have missed this PR point, and in an effort to be dramatic and ring the tocsin have played the “socialism” card poorly.
Okay, that was a terrible mixed metaphor. Sorry. But you take my point, snarf. What you note is real, but is not the main cause.
assistant, look up Maxine Waters videos on you tube.
You will find her tearing into the U.S. President of Shell Oil, threatening socialism (by name) and government take over of the oil industry.
Note her “handlers” in the background in the video. They can’t control their joy, leaning back in their chairs, even covering their mouths to hide their broad smiles.
The news blurb was taken off Fox (I saw it the night it was on). It never was played on the major networks, that I am aware of.
I’m puzzled by why we continue to refer to “socialism” for an economic phenomenon that would seem to be better characterized as “state capitalism,” as opposed to “private capitalism.” Calling it state capitalism seems to do a better job of emphasizing its major weakness, which is the concentration of both economic and political power in the hands of a ruling few. It would also seem to do a better job of indicating that capital is the major producer of wealth in the world today, while labor’s contribution is necessarily shrinking to the point of oblivion.
@ Davis:
I don’t believe that “state capitalism” is even possible. The actual term I believe is “corporatism”, which is much different from a free-enterprise system.
On another note, “capitalism” is the Marxist term for what Smith called “the system of natural liberty”, or what we now call “free-enterprise system”. If we want to purge misappropriations of “capitalism” or its precepts from the debate, we should use “free-enterprise system” or “free-market system” instead.
I cringe every time people use “capitalism” to describe our current economic system because it invites the listener to only consider the downsides as represented by Marx.
@Deekaman
“If you aren’t a Liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you aren’t a Conservative at 30, you have no brain”.
I was a conservative at nine years of age: I read the world’s myths and legends as a child; when I was 14, I confessed Christ and was baptized. Hence: If you’re a liberal at any age, you are ignorant.
You understand that any tax imposed by any government – even conservative-lead governments! – involves the expropriation and redistribution of income and wealth, right?
Note true… because there is a difference between pooling money to pay for things like bridges, military, etc… and the unlimited unconstitutional hunger that is socialism where the only thing you seem to need to fix anything is more money, like more Adobo.
What people like you Snarfle don’t understand is that a “progressive tax” system was and is a COMMUNIST invention, and technically unconstitutional, violating equal treatment under the law (which itself is often now ignored for unequal treatment to create equal outcomes, another communist fantasy).
The part that is scariest is that Snarfle doesn’t have the intelligence or ability to see equivalence once it’s been relabeled, or his masters spin it three ways to Sunday. That these arguments are meaningless in and of themselves and serve only to cause actions which meet goals is lost on him. Why? Because he is not a true believer/fellow traveler, but a useful idiot. The people most easily manipulated by false arguments as to what things REALLY are.
the truth is that these arguments are MENTAL CONSTRUCTS that don’t really exist but are real to each of us for they are how we think. But thoughts are not real, thoughts govern actions, actions move matter, and so material actions are real. I cant kill you with a thought, but I can induce a thought in someone that then will cause their material to move in a certain way if they accept the argument and then accomplish that task for me.
The whole argument set around abortion (eugenics) and assisted suicide (euthanasia) is exactly this. as long as you think that there could be an argument that justifies an end or presumptive end (as we rarely get that end after we pay the cost), it only will take time to keep dinging you before they find the argument that unlocks the material to move the way they want.
Wanting to be a part of a collective to give you meaning because the society has debased and removed all other meaning from everything else (Art, music, love, family, fealty, capitalism, community, charity, religion, etc), so all you young people move inexorably towards that only permitted light.
So, I repeat: this is exactly the problem I described above. You equate something done by every government everywhere in the world ever – even the one run by St. Reagan – with socialism.
Repeating the same wrong concept over and over will not make it right, and convincing everyone in the world that it is right will not make it right either, it just makes everyone wrong.
Your ability to ignore nuance when it’s convenient and falsely create it when convenient is incredible. Not all taxation is socialism. Not all taxation is redistribution of wealth.
When a welfare recipient gets their money and their monthly cheese, what productive work did they do in exchange for that? what VALUE did the state get? a lower crime rate? Less occupation of potters field?
When a state pays a company through a bidding auction to create a new highway bypass, its not redistribution of wealth.
You can repeat the idiotic missive and hope we are as vacuously stupid to not see this little difference, but it will not work.
The problem the young and left have with the old and more knowledgeable is that the tricks that work with their stupid friends do not work with the better educated older people.
That is the younger peoples self esteem is so high, they will make up answers and give a cargo cult pretend acting session as to being smart. But they don’t even understand what they are talking about, like Snarfle here. Even if they are older and on the left they are still mentally regressed to that same old high school mentality of how the world works.
Snarfle doesn’t know how his education was crippled. He thinks that he got a better one, as that’s what they told him. he thinks that he knows the facts, cause they said to him these were the facts. He thinks that what he knows is all that is needed to know, and so he will not check out facts from the other side, he will not go deeper than a cursory glance in which his self confidence training insures he need not look further, give more effort, and work harder than he did in school, since school was not the real world.
Or to rephrase: to accuse Obama of socialism because he proposes raising the top marginal income tax rate to a rate lower than the rate applied by St. Reagan during the first 3 or 4 years of his administration is to remove all discursive value of the term “socialism.”
To argue that socialism is in the amount, and not the purpose is ingenuous.
No?
I think so, since socialism can’t be found in the quantity of money that is voluntarily given for state services within constitutional bounds. It’s found in the purpose for which those funds are taken.
Are they taken to make a highway, protect the nation, etc? or are they taken because we want to give more people who don’t work some more money?
Were we born to work for others without the freedom to work for ourselves?
Snarfle thinks so. Snarfle thinks that he will benefit from such slavery, but snarfle hasn’t been told that its slavery. Snarfle has had it all relabeled, so that he will eat his vegetables and think they will give him magical muscles…
Snarfle cant even do the basic math to figure out that a far and apportioned tax would put more wealth in the hands of the poor than the communist progressive tax.
A progressive tax says that the state can treat people differently based on some justification (once this is allowed the justification is not a validity, its just a puzzle to see what sounds right and how it can be used to unlock the wealth).
It sets the precident that says, if you earn more, we can take more
If you earn less, we can put you in camps and we can make you work
Snarfle cant see the connection. he cant see that the second one requires the state to set a special condition on some people arbitrarily, and so then do something to them arbitrarily.
In the first example the arbitrary presumptive reason is monetary success and meritocritous ability.
In the second example its parasitism and cheating society making one an enemy of the collective which provides everything (And why it leads to the kind of thinking in communism reflected by george barnard shaws missive that we should justify our existence every five years)
The nice thing is that I am not as young as snarfle, the time I would have to live in that world he is creating will not be as long as the time he will live in it and think about the conditions, despair, and helplessness.
Snarfle is arguing theory against experience…
While he has been taught that experience counts for nothing, since that’s the past and has no relevance, he doesn’t realize that its everything, and why people are effective.
Age and treachery will outdo youth and enthusiasm every time…
Its why the generals are old, and the line is young
Its why the socialist leaders grow old in luxury, while the people who support them supplicate themselves to get crumbs.
Its why the society wishing to make this conversion will foment this in the young and foment the young against their parents. As if strangers who want their families to succeed over yours actually will give you better advice than your mother and father who have no other purpose than to see you do well (unlike this other stranger whose purpose is to advise you on how to do poorly, remove your abilty to work out implications, and then tell you its all going to be much better than your parents advice).
Maybe god’s justice is not that which we would want it to be
But if you open your eyes, you can see the justice in people pretending to be pigs, wallowing in the muck, and being miserable doing it till they pretend to be happy.
Strcpy,
I think you misunderstood my use of the term “good”. I simply meant that many people, because of their historical experience and interests, see collectivism as preferable to liberalism. The term “good” does not refer to any moral value attached to their perceptions, but rather indicates that, to them, their understanding and preferences are fully legitimated by their experience. In their minds they have good reason to believe what they believe. We might argue with their conclusions, but we should respect them.
Regarding “cherry-picking” two points: (1) Some editing process is unavoidable. The historical record is so vast that nobody can comprehend it all. No discussion of history can list and fairly judge every item. Inevitably we pick and sort through the past choosing to emphasize those items that seem to us to be important while ignoring those that don’t. When we do so we are guided by our own prejudices. (2) A disparate and random selection of items simply presented as “facts” is usually incomprehensible. In order to make our position understandable we must structure the “facts” around a central argument, and in the process construct a narrative. This in itself requires the selection of some items and rejection of others. Selection and ordering of facts is unavoidable if we are to make sense of the past.
Is this editorial function “cherry picking” or something else? In my own mind I distinguish between concientious “historians” [who, if they are true to their craft, discipline themselves to confront as much as possible of the realm of relevant facts; to judge them fairly in their own context; to be aware of the range of arguments pertaining to their own work, and to place their argument within the context of relevant discourse] and “cherry pickers” [who are interested simply in building a winning case and in doing so feel free to ignore, disparage, or mis-represent alternative arguments and points-of-view].
It sounds like you had a good teacher. She made you consider alternative points of view and to defend your own position, and did not penalize you for taking an unpopular stance. Good for her and good for you for prizing that experience.
Oblio @2:10 A.M. post
Thank you for the very good precis of dialectical materialism as a kind of hyperinflated intellectualism. That is quite correct. Also, you are right to spot the resurgence of all of the various heresies known to have been rampant in the world of Late Antiquity.
At one time, in what seems to me now as another lifetime ago, I would say that I was a kind of Pelagian heretic – but one who was fence-sitting while I probed to see if utopian values could indeed be compatible with human nature and if human nature was more plastic than first thought. On the other hand, I was not a Gnostic, because deep down I disdained the notion of an elite who would have the knowledge to let the rest of the mere mortals know how to proceed. I wanted to see if there was a way we could arrive at a kind of humane socialism informed by the Gospel where we worked these things out in community. I merely wanted to investigate if this was something achievable in the real world. There has been some success with it in religious communities, like monastic orders. But then towards the end of my journey I discovered that evil is something we cannot be rid of in this world. It will always be there and even has an organic basis. So, there can be no heaven brought back down to earth. We are not in the final dimension yet.
I was never really and fully accepted by fellow socialists because of my Roman Catholicism. I used to put up with all manner of snarky and subtle insinuations because of it. It was as if I always had to apologize for being a Christian and it was a chore to explain my reasons for investigating socialism. And whenever I would try to explain to people why I was taking the critiques of socialism from Catholic and Christian thinkers seriously, I could see by the expression of rolling eyes that I was thought of as a hopeless case.
i wanted to take a quick moment to expand on something with a empirical example. just so i pre-empt arguments as to what i said.
That is the younger peoples self esteem is so high, they will make up answers and give a cargo cult pretend acting session as to being smart. But they don’t even understand what they are talking about, like Snarfle here.
of course the young will take umbrage…
but all one has to do is show them this, and you will/might realize that the reason this is happening is not just ignorance.
pay close attention… pure ignorance does not cause people to fill in the blanks from epistomology that ehy have internalized and dont even realize they are drawing from.
Marx would never say he didnt understand something (and it was obvious that he didnt understand most of everything, but sure put on a good show), and his followers, even if they dont know it, dont either.
all every one of them had to do was to ask what does that word mean. and their ignorance would be cured, and they wouldnt do something stupid.
but self esteem based on nothing is a condition that is induced in the young to make them fear being found out that they are not real, they are not competent, they are abysmally defficient.
[in a way, when snarfle and such come here, they are actually like the young gunfighter who thinks that he is good enough to go up against the old one (never realizing he is old for a reason). some of them get so full of self confidence they decide they are going to find a place and like a jesuit convert their tiny group of masses to the cause… but invariably, they are confounded. the magic parrot words dont work. they dont respond to the fear of being outside the collective. the MANIPULATIONS that work on them, that they internalized (the way the child of a narcisist may pick up effective technique but not have to be a narcisist to execute it). they use ad hominem, they use derision, they use threats of expulsion from the collective, and so on… because thats what was used on them in their childhood to control them. they feel very uncomfortable without their collars on… its why sci fi resonates when the slaves wish the others to join them in their collective wonderfulness]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUP9Jm9SqvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lysWbzQyiWw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVfUiD9kkN0
there are tons of them… and others too…
[like petitions against water. and all of them refuse to just ask plainly what it is]
the purpose of the self confidence movement is revealed, and the presumptive arguments are the way to achieve experimenting on children witout permission, because we are willing to entertain at tall that perhaps there could be an argument to justify it.
sorry about the bolding… sigh
Artfldgr,
I followed your reasoning in that above post. It makes sense.
Nothing in contemporary America I detest more than the profligate waste of education dollars doing what these education apparatchiks have done to our young people. It is a crime. It’s actually worse than medical malpractice.
@Artfldgr,
Age and treachery will outdo youth and enthusiasm every time…
Are you former Marine? Or a North Carolinian? Because the last person I heard that line from was a former Marine in and native to NC.
seems like another nail has been driven into the coffin of the noble savage. one of the key foundational points to our new age culture… (and is wrong)
http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/bloody-stone-age-war-in-the-neolithic.htm
and i agree with you fred, becuase i work in a research place. and we have to go through all kind of hoops to run a study with people in it. but a social scientist who has the ear of the state, gets to experiment on people in ways that is incredibly harmful.
even worse, they are not cognizant of all the harm, and all the damage that all of these social experiments cause when they interact with each other across regions, and communities.
its like running a hundred different tests on mice, in which all the mice are allowed to freely interact. so the ones who become schizo from the experiment, prey on the ones who are being dumbed down. the choices of the dumbed down, imprison the wiser. the frustration of the wiser makes them absolve and mentally go galt even if just a little, and so on.
meanwhile, everyone looking at the public thinks that all thsi crap is natural, scine tehyc ant see the experiments.
my childhood and most of my life has been ruined by these experiemtns and missives. right now i am working on a genetics project, and we are having trouble moving it forward since the solution is beyond the mentality of those in charge. i was kicked out of the path where i could succeed since i blew the curve for the diversity crowd. so now i have no conenctions, no proof of my ability. its been 24 years of effort to be connected again… and its terribly frustrating since the solution i have solves the large unformated data search problem in general, and kicks but in sequence alingment and such..
i am handicapped (half deaf), have no degree (wrong diverse group), a high iq (proven by attending bronx science)m but i cant succeed since i have face blindness of a sort, and the others are cargo cult.
they pretend to be smart, but they are not. the doctor i am working with is of the old breed so he didnt want to send me away withotu understranding what he was turning down. when he understood it (took several months) he was excited. he still is… but its taking us YEARS to get a small board made given the current system.
i cant get capital, sba is for minorities and women. cant get grants, i am not affiliated with a large state entity. cant protect the idea, so i cant go to ventur, or they will take it for my own lack of smarts.
the point is that every day in every way my life is affected not only by the general level of this crap. but as well with the direction mhy life has taken as i have been constantly pushed aside for my own good by others. sometimes without telling me (like finding the studies and papers that jsutified their experiment of putting a 170+ iq child in with juvinile criminal sociopaths!!!! yeah that was fun. i was lucky. the not so rounded smart kids went mental, dropped out, etc… but they helped meet their diversity targets)
anyway… its like polution in the air everywhere, eventually you dont smell it any more… but that dont mean its gone.
Two GREAT comments, Artfldgr.
Professor Light (do you prefer Dr. or Mr.?), your response to Strcpy was excellent in its way, but it left a point to quibble about. Strcpy was inferring conclusions about your attitude to the claims of “anti-capitalists” from your word choice (“good” reasons). You clarify that the “goodness” of these reasons is subjectively determined by the people who hold these opinions and have extracted facts from their own or historical experience to validate their opinions. So far, so good. You go on to say that
I’m not sure that “respect” is the right word, either. Understand, yes. Acknowledge, yes. Behave civilly according to the social conventions of of the situation, yes. Leave unchallenged, not necessarily. Validate, no. Defer to, absolutely not.
And under no circumstances should you leave such people in material possession of the contested territory as the price of social peace. We must not let intellectual comprehension be the father of appeasement, however unintentionally.
Oz, you are dead on. We must not accede to a Marxist analytical framework in this debate. There is no such thing as a “capitalist.”
I am not a marine, i am not even military. i am 4F. they could and wouldnt take me.
the phrase is an old one… and the military likes to keep the ones that resonate as to the reality of reality.
i cant speak authoritativly on this, and if someone else out there could help, but what i see is that one of the major hurdles to basic training is to get them out of their fantasy world and learn that reality is real, and all that then comes from it.
this is why military tend to not be leftist (unless they are opportunists who didnt get the agrandizement and upward mobility that they thought they desrved in their service), because once you see reality the way it is, you cant go back.
I grew up in what then was defined as a war zone. the projects of the bronx in the 60s-70s.. i was also an volunteer fireman and emt at one time..
this kind of thing tends to make reality real for you. i would suspect that even farmers know more of reality is real than the average city folk (who think they are stupid)..
no military, but i do have respect for it. and thats because i UNDERSTAND it.
as far as that quote..
well imagine how much we would learn about how to protect ourselves if we just remembered it and could apply it. the poor girl who got into a white limo in manhatten, drugged by a woman and two men, raped, and dumped on the street might have thought. hey! i am 16, they are smarter than me, i aint getting in there becasue if they ARE not nice, it wont go well.
nope their self confidence thye can handle anything makes them seek pleasure like a moth seeks the light o the flame, with the same end results. (but since dialoge that blames her for her actions – not absolved the criminal of theirs, is not allowed. so all these have to step into the bear trap to see how it works).
i do not have any illusions as to why i am sitting here typing to you.
my family are refugees from hitler and stalin. so how could i look at the military in a negative light? i can if i want to look at who was hurting for one reason, but then that gets negated by the other said, that provided a place to run to that was even better than home!!!
my family experienced these various systems, they, like most lativans are greatful that the US exists at all… and a lot of them, even the young ones that participated in the brek down by joining in the hedonistic rituals, are afraid for what the americans are about to do to themselves.
after all it IS possible to debase yourself.
on another note, here is another nail in rouusseaus ideas.
Since Marx is grounded on Rousseau ideas of reality (among others)
And all this amounts to refutation of those ideas
And the economics was refuted experimentally
And now genetics is proving the premises of the stuff too
And yet, we want it so badly, we abandon all reason to work towards our own suffering.
Maybe man suffered so much as he developed that he got so used to it that life don’t feel normal unless we are hurting… (not all of us though)
Stone Blades Cut Back Evolutionary Dates
http://www.icr.org/article/4586/
Artfldgr, you should write your memoirs. It sounds like a hell of a story. I know you have the energy. You’ll need the help of a good editor. Perhaps someone in this community could give you a hand on making a connection to a likely publisher.
@Artfldgr
…get them out of their fantasy world and learn that reality is real, and all that then comes from it.
When God works with his children, he teaches this same lesson: I had to go through a stage where I learned that “ought to be” is not reality, nor should it be treated as such. This does not mean that one becomes lawless; it means that the natural condition of man is lawlessness (we are fallen): the bible is filled with what happens to the righteous in the hands of the wicked.
Oblio,
Thats funny… at least i can say i did more than obama.. 🙂
actually i have a freind that has volunteered to edit even my posts. he is a famous author, and i helped him through the early days when things were happening to him and he didnt know a damn thing (and so would slide to the self destructive). a great guy… (stephen king wrote a blurble to his work and he did for one of kings books).
my life is not all that interesting from a literary viewpoint… its useful as far as examples of what happens in the world and one small part of it…
yeah i know you could have written that to be sarcastic, but i have no way of knowing. (you would be surprised at the suggestions i get that are serious).
i just came from a family of doers. thats all. and they fit the ideolized progressive model.. what progressive think they are making but not. had complete freedom as a child, but that was tempered by responsitiliby for my own actions. no rebelling in my family, cant do it, its impossible. you have nothing to push against. son said to me (raised away from me), that he wasnt going to be like me. and so on.. usually a hurtful kind of thing for a father, but in my family, he is his own person, and if thats what he wants, its fine with me, as long as he is aware and willing to accept the consequences.
i guess if you just get up off your butt (not commenting to you oblio, you have obviously gotten off your duff), and just go out in the world, you will ahev marvelous adventures…
i look at people who walk in place looking at a mirror and cant understand why they do that. i live in ny, but anywhere would be the same, for i take a camera, and i walk aroudn the city and take pictures.
doesnt sound like much… but just that simple healthful act, brings LIFE to life…
who will i meet today? who will ask me a question. waht conversation will i have, if any? what will i see?what will happen?
doing that got me signed to a top agency… then i started dioign more formal work on the side, and float in and out as i feel like it. but now when i go out, i meet people like salmon rusdie, or a top designer..
and they are no diffeernt than everyone else… so writing a memoir would really be promoting the thing that i find farcicle from the other side.
taht is the concept that some are special. i have been on that other side, and stood there with the famous who are annoyed that they ahve to stand there and be looked at like a zoo animal. but its their job… i have had fun and been in the crowd to see how people think… and have them tell me stuff… and so on… and then walk over and to to the other side of that line they cant cross.
the whole world is lilke this… and most of what we carry with us day to day is false views… i just got tired of being lied to, and told what things were like by people who have never even been there.
so i just went there. more attitude than anything else. and mom and dad and grandparents tauight that.
Oblio, if i eve do write that thing and someone actually wanted to read it… well, i will leave a copy for you… 🙂
and to top the leftist getting back to nature and the noble savage over the top today.
New mother eats her baby’s placenta. (And, we thought Nadya Suleman had issues).
latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/04/want-lettuce-and-mayo-on-that-placenta-sub.html
Artfldgr, I was not being sarcastic. I find your vision of life in the last post charming, rich, and full of interest.
You need to reframe the way you think about the purpose of writing a book, and for that I will refer to the great Dr. Johnson: “Depend upon it, sir, no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Money and the connections that come with success help most things. I say this because you spend a lot of time writing about your frustrations.
Beyond that, if your story becomes widely read, you will change the way people think about things. I think you write so much here because you want to change the way people think. And people in general react more strongly to stories than to abstract theories.
Your editor needs not only to help you tighten up your prose, but to help you conceptualize the story so that you are showing your story and the conflicts, and your mistakes and adventures, not simply summarizing your conclusions. You should look at Malcolm Gladwell’s treatment of Chris Langan in Outliers as evidence that there is demand.
Oblio,
i actually dont write very much here. i dont want to change minds, i want to connect to them.
here is what you made me think.. and i didnt know you were writing more.. lets just call this enough about me… i am not that important… but i do like to connect and be a part of the converstation with interesting things…
=======================
Oblio,
I just realized that it would be better as a moral story..
It would be about a boy who loved people, and wanted to be with them, but was different than them. so he went about trying to do things so well that people would like him, and maybe ignore that he spoke funny, had red hair, used big words, etc.
He worked so hard he achieved reaching Carnegie hall, and Avery fischer hall, while later attending a very prestigious high school.
And ya know what he found out?
He found out that doing things really well will make you hated. He found out that being different was only good if they loved that difference, otherwise nothing will cure them. he found out that doing really really well was not a ticket to anywhere. All it did was give you permission to sit next to others in the special room and then try to get somewhere rather than not being allowed to try. He learned that if you invent something that really helps and can do good for people, people wont help because they don’t understand it, if they did, then they wouldn’t need you to invent it. he learned that the more you help people the more they dislike you (America should learn from that one).
He also learned the hardest lesson. That when he was smaller, and so smart, and they treated him so special, he wasn’t really special. If my family didn’t teach me that, and that I am only who I am, and it has no bearing on others, as others have no bearing on me, I might not have survived when the magic went away.
I learned that everyone thinks they are very very smart, and so once you grow up, you have no way to distinguish yourself from posers. (and that everyone thinks everyone else is a poser). And as a corrilary to the invention phrase above, if you try to prove it, they attack you cause they don’t understand it, and so think your bs them, not smarter than them (they get angry cause inside they think that your cheating them).
Oh, and they get VERY angry that they think that your smarts give you things in the world that it just doesn’t do. who makes more the smart or the manipulative? Do phds make more than MBAs? Who is smarter? Who gets the girls? Who makes the money? I learned that your punished for acquiring things you never acquired.
Oh… and I learned that others would rather manipulate you, use you, steal from you, tease out things from you, foul you up, and more… rather than team up with you for mutual benefit. they would rather destroy what they don’t have (spite), than share it when freely given.
There is a lto more..
But when you are actually smarter than most people, the only real difference is that you can hit the buzzer faster on more facts than them. you can make change qucker.
But you are also not allowed to be with them. they wont let you. and if your kicked out of the white tower for diversity reasons, fouled with bad advice, its nigh impossible to meet others who are like you.
There are 1.1 million students in ny city. The top 1200 go to Brooklyn tech, Stuyvesant, and Bronx Science… where I work, I have met 5 people who came from science, in my life outside, only met one…
I also know what profound and utter loneliness is. what it is for everyone to dictate to you how to speak, how you should act, how to help you be liked, and on and on… but always telling you to be someone different than you are. “maybe you can stoop to their level” maybe you can tell me how to measure their level so I know what it is?
A person with lower IQ has a much easier time finding common interests. A person with a very high IQ is abused because their interests are not common.
You have no way to connect with anyone. How can you. they wont even ask you a question if they don’t understand anything. they will change the subject to their interests (then get upset you know more than they do, or rather deeper than they do).
They will discuss all kinds of things, like how crystals can hold emotional energy, a complete and huge mythological arcane of how the world works, but because its closer to reality than faeiries, they think its real. you hear them talk about stuff and they don’t know where their idea of it came from. oh, and god help you if they are having difficulty, you want to help, and you walk over and fix it for them with ease. They are not appreciative… in fact; your better off letting them cut their hand off first!!!
So you end up being well versed in the mythologies, the arcane, the ‘facts’. So that you can pretend to be like them, for they sure wont let you teach them.
But loneliness is the worst Oblio.
The story would be about a very lonely boy who realized that he would NEVER not feel that way, then learned to live with it.
and learned to love people despite the abuse. For like another man who had it worse than me once said. They know not what they do, how could they?
Heh. All that happened here is that Rasmussen discovered there are a lot of products of the American educational system who have no clue whatsoever what the definition of the word “socialism” means.
…and as to whether they’re actually approving socialists or not? – I seriously doubt it.
Most of these “socialism approvers” likely couldn’t give you definition of socialism if you let ’em look it up first in the dictionary (IF they even knew how to use a dictionary).
…and as to whether we should start worrying about this or not? – Not really: because we’ve already been “worriting over” the underedumacated products of the American public school systems the leftist Academy has been churning out for decades.
What we need to do is take the educational system back. Again.
So you were a naif. You didn’t understand the meaning behind the phrase “Tall poppies get lopped off.” You under-estimated how other people feel anxiety, anger, and spite. You didn’t know that people in positions of authority would espouse a set of ideals, and then act ruthlessly in diametrically opposed ways. That they would sacrifice you to their ambition and convenience. That without patronage and connections, you could never achieve your potential in the eyes of the world, and that the world wouldn’t care all that much.
You were sent out unprepared and unsupported. For what it’s worth, I tell my son, who is a freshman in college, to stay on the lookout for the “cheap shot” from the blindside. Did anyone tell you that? Your social weaknesses magnified the problem (you can’t read faces).
But did you learn? Are you coming back? Are there Second Acts in our lives? Is there more richness and beauty than anyone can imagine, even though there is loneliness and frustration? Hell, artfldgr, we have a movie.
See, there IS a story in there, and people would want to read it. But don’t romanticize it.
“If you aren’t a Liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you aren’t a Conservative at 30, you have no brain”…but many of our present “progressives” seem to have neither heart NOR brain. They were not bothered, for example, by the prospect of abandoning our allies in Iraq to large-scale slaughter; neither are they bothered by the generation after generation of kids whose potential is stunted by the public schools.
God, this blog gives me goose bumps.
It’s that 27% that worries me.
But did you learn? Are you coming back? Are there Second Acts in our lives? Is there more richness and beauty than anyone can imagine, even though there is loneliness and frustration? Hell, artfldgr, we have a movie.
oblio… i finally came back to read what you would say. after all when one exposes one self that way, one is afraid of what may be said.
what you said was GRAND.
i HAVE learned, but havent learned how to work people. so i am still a cork on the roiling sea.
i teamed up with a doc. its a good relationship. he has 40 years experience in genetics and eventually genomics… i have no degrees, and such, and he is amazed that we can have a one on one like he does with tops in their fields.
so i guess there is a consolation prize there. but to tell you another thing i learned. people who love you will abandon you rather than see you suffer.
you can ask neo, as she has seen some of my art work, and more private stuff. (my name is too unique so i cant post that. there are literally only a handful of us in the world, and so tracking me down by name is VERY easy).
I have incredible beauty in my life. and the few freinds i do have, are the kind that people wish they had one of. my wife and i are solid, and things are good there. both families love each other, so you cant ask for more.
i wish i could send neo a few pieces of art, and she can put them up to show you. maybe others too and we can have a art show of neo neocon attendees.. (i am in my first art show today… its an employee one at the hospital, but what the heck)
i am VERY lucky oblio, and please dont think that by knowing my bad, i dont see the good. i have incredible good. so maybe its unfair to want more? i dont know… but i do know that if i had more i would do more, and that in itself generates much good.
on another note, i have a famous author friend, who i am very glad we have become good friends. he is willing to edit my posts, and write with me. a really great guy working hard. we have already teamed up on one thing, as he liked a premise and then made a sick story out of it. what fun… (he was worried that i wouldnt like it. but i told him i loved it. i wouldnt have written that, but thats teh fun part. and i refused to critique it since i told him that that would change his artwork because he respects me. so i wont do that. but what fun!)
you summed up things so well… and no, i was more prepared on some levels than others… growing up in a area of the bronx where the newspapers LITERALLY compared my neighborhood to dresden but no bombs (i can find the article that way too).
so i had a life that was not elite and white tower and away from life. but in other areas, like you mention the patron and such, i missed so many ops, and now are in the shits. (the patrons i did have come to me, tended to be socialist fellow travelers who thought how much i could do if they could move me).
others tended to have the desire, but not the will. they never realized how tough, important and such things are.
thanks oblio. thank you so very much for taking me seriously. i dont get a lot of that. as i said, its very lonley when there is no one to talk with that understands the subject. 🙂
but that doesnt mean that these people are bad, or insufficient, or anything. it just means we have otehr common ground and i love them, and just accept that we meet on their beach, never mine.
in some ways i was well prepared, in other ways my parents believed the future, and so thought i wouldnt need those things. in a way, i was declawed till later. now i am not, but i am past the years where they see a young man and want to help.
now i am old and they would rather i go away
@ @bookladysblog has she tried baby bjorn? My husband loves it (bonus points – men look hot wearing them). Other ppl like mobys