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2020 America: It’s Orwell crossed with Lewis Carroll — 34 Comments

1. And that is how it used to be. When I was a child my family would watch both conventions even though my family was Republican. It was exciting! Now it’s boring, when you know who the opposing candidate is before the convention starts.

2. Only the virus of hysteria, insanity, panic, paranoia, and stupidity (afflicting a very large percentage of the citizens of our beleaguered republic) should be feared by a rational person, because there seems to be no possible cure. In the event of a clear victory for Trump (not very likely, an outcome contested by armies of lawyers being more likely), the subsequent chaos in the streets and the lunacy gripping the public may well make this summer of our discontent seem mild indeed. Trump’s latest salvos against CRT and 1619 are perhaps the last salvo against the forces of unreason and totalitarianism.

3. I live in a red state and I would say that many conservatives watch or read the liberal (D) point of view in order to get both sides of the story. Those people are better equipped to discuss the news and policy issues than some of the liberals I see on TV.

4. “Why wouldn’t they want to know what the other side is saying?”

   What a quaint notion! Who does she think she is? Voltaire?

   I’d say most here, certainly including Her Neoness, understand the stakes underneath that oh-so-innocent question.

5. Here’s what’s on my YouTube repeat today. Genuine subversion.

   “BLM Riot Turns Into MAGA YMCA Dance Party”
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnzPEyTpByU

   Ricky Rebel makes MAGA cool! Does my San Francisco heart proud.

   Ricky was a top gymnast at age 11, then a competitive dancer for several years, before singer-songwriter-dancer performer, and now pro-LGBTQ, pro-Trump advocate. Here’s his #walkaway video:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1-6uGoXcF8

6. Neo: “She is different; she wants to know. I don’t know what causes that difference, but I certainly notice it.”

   Steven Pinker has posited this in his Book, “The Blank Slate.” He points out that our personalities are primarily shaped by genetics. One of the five major personality traits is open or closed mindedness. Very open minded people are those much like you, Neo. They’re always searching for answers, ready to change their minds if they get new information that warrants such. He argues that the open versus closed minded grouping lies along a continuum from very open minded to very closed minded. Most people are somewhere in the middle. They can change their minds when provided a powerful argument, but are not going to seek to find that argument. The longer and more ingrained their beliefs are, the more difficult it is for them to change. There are fewer people at both ends of the spectrum. IMO, this characteristic is one reason why gaining control of the education system is so powerful. Teaching children the tenets of citizenship ensures that most people will not seek to verify those tenets once they are well embedded in their minds.

   I grew up on the standard fare of Boy Scouts of America teachings. Patriotism and loyalty to country were foremost in my mind. When it came my time to serve in the military I never questioned what I would do. When I first encountered Vietnam War protestors in 1966, it was as if they were from another planet. I was at least open minded enough to ask myself if I was wrong. I did a lot of reading and soul searching to see if what these young people were saying was true. I satisfied myself that Communism was evil and that fighting Communism was a good thing. I also accepted that maybe long hair on men was not necessarily a badge of shame. When my son wanted to wear his hair long, I went along with it. 🙂
   When Global Warming became an issue I tried hard to see what the truth was. I spent months reading and commenting at Real Climate, the blog run by the warmers. I kept asking for better explanations of how the models worked. I eventually concluded that they didn’t have solid answers. I wanted to accept what they were explaining, but I couldn’t. I’ve been a pretty solid skeptic since then, comfortable that AGW is not a crisis issue.

   I certainly would not put myself in the very open minded category. I do look for facts to try to verify what I believe, but I’m certainly not in your league Neo. You, and most of the changers are in the category of having very open minds.

   I became interested in Pinker’s thesis because my two brothers and I are so unalike. Same parents, same schools, same teachers, same little town, even many shared friends; and yet, we are different personalities completely. To go into the details would take a small book, but suffice it to say, I’m convinced that Pinker is pretty much correct that genetics (nature) determines our personalities more than nurture. That does not augur well for utopia on Earth.

   As to the motives of the Democrat mayors who are letting their cities be destroyed, their behavior is as much a mystery to me as Vietnam protestors. They seem to believe that Trump will be blamed or maybe they have convinced themselves that the violence is really all Trump’s fault. It seems to be tied up in the slogan, “Orangeman bad.” Other than that, I don’t have a clue.

7. People like Ricky Rebel give me hope that the culture wars aren’t entirely lost. As Andrew Breitbart insisted, “Politics is downstream from culture.”

   I give Trump credit for his outreach to gays and blacks. I’m not sure how much effect he is having, but I believe Trump is having some — and more than any recent GOP standard-bearer might have had.

   If Trump cracks the Dem hold on minorities, that’s all she wrote in 2020.

8. As to the motives of the Democrat mayors who are letting their cities be destroyed, their behavior is as much a mystery to me as Vietnam protestors. They seem to believe that Trump will be blamed or maybe they have convinced themselves that the violence is really all Trump’s fault. It seems to be tied up in the slogan, “Orangeman bad.” Other than that, I don’t have a clue.

   J.J.: The leftist view is that the United States, as a conservative country, is the single most evil force on the planet. Thus any effort to oppose a conservative US at whatever cost, which Trump represents in spades, is worth it.

   Dem mayors are not quite there at the global level, but they are beholden to those who are and the current Dem leadership, who are all-in on defeating Trump “by any means necessary” (Malcolm X’s term).

   I think the Dem leadership has miscalculated badly, but maybe in the longer view of moving the Overton Window to the left, as neo suggests, it’s their most effective strategy this election year.

   (I do wonder how many Democrats have already factored in a Trump victory.)

9. I’m going to paste in an edited-and-condensed-for-clarity e-conversation I had a few years ago with a former neighbor, a highly intelligent woman whose political horizon extends no farther than the nose on her face. I think it’s germane here. Here it comes.

   “If you’ve got a bone to pick with me please do it privately.” Game on.

   I had written to you, “no, it is *not* so that ‘Republicans shut down the government in order to stop 8 million Americans from getting affordable health care.'” I will cite just one other example. Maybe a month ago, your friend stated flatly and blandly that people opposed Obama only because he’s black.

   So: do I “lump you in with all those other nameless ‘liberals’ of whom I speak so often and with such scorn”? On one hand, I already have stated that “I know you are educated and intelligent, and very significantly, a person of honest heart and good will.”

   On the other hand, I will frankly add that I trust you don’t fancy that those of us on the receiving end of these attitudes are going to react with admiration.

   It has been said by many of us on the receiving end that “conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, but liberals think conservatives are bad *people*.” I think there’s a lot of truth in that, despite the broad-brushing of both conservatives and liberals, and despite the bumper-sticker depth of the sentiment. If you can suffer me, I will now offer an idea that’s somewhat less bumper-sticker-ish.

   Jonathan Haidt is an academic social psychologist who, by the way, had worked for “liberal” Democrats but who more recently has trended more left-centrist in his outlook. (No, this is not a cheap attempt to suggest that you really ought to be more centrist; it’s in the spirit of full disclosure.) I briefly quote from an article** by one Todd Zywicki that quotes “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt:

   ** http://volokh.com/2014/01/17/jonathan-haidt-psychology-politics/

   BEGIN PASTE

   So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

   END PASTE

   I’m not at all surprised. I know that for many-to-most issues, I think I am capable of fairly stating the “liberal” position, seriously, without snark or sarcasm. I know that many of my friends on the right-leaning side of things can do so pretty ably.

   I also I know that in my experience, not nearly as many left-leaners can do that. In my experience, they will tend much more towards “Republicans shut down the government in order to stop 8 million Americans from getting affordable health care,” with little evidence that they have any actual idea what actual people “of honest hearts and good will” on the dark side (sarcasm) actually do think — that is, if they will concede that there are, on the dark side, people “of honest hearts and good will.” That’s my experience, and Haidt’s research bears out my experience. Your mileage may vary.

   M J R

10. I grew up in and lived in Portland all my life, before moving to an adjacent suburb in late 2016. What really bothers me is seeing in the last few days allegations by some Portlanders that violence and trouble here is caused by rightwingers who come into the city from out of town in the night. One female journalist who lived here for a long time and started her journalism career here but has lived in Barcelona for some years now even had a piece published on Yahoo News to this effect — and how would she know? She’s been in Barcelona for a long time. Did she just entirely make it up? She’s in her 70s and has always been a far left activist and on Facebook called for Trump to be impeached the day after the election but this kind of thing just seems really low. Her only “evidence” seemed to be the guy who was murdered a few nights ago by someone in Antifa. It’s disgusting.

11. M J R: How did your friend respond?

    I was thinking about that Haidt observation earlier today, when talking to a liberal cafe acquaintance…

12. huxley (7:31 pm) asked: “M J R: How did your friend respond?”

    No response. At all.

    A few months later, after a similarly-spirited political exchange, she unfriended me and blocked me.

    (It was after this incident that I realized that many (most?) people on social media like Facebook are there not to discuss intelligently, but solely to emote and snark and virtue-signal, and I needed to choose my conversation partner(s) with that in mind. I’m a slow learner, but when forced, I can learn. Thank heaven for Neo’s Place!)

13. George Orwell was a democratic socialist that could not square that his belief system entailed, inherently, the very totalitarianism he railed against.

14. TexasDude:

    Please see this.

15. “I said that in my opinion most people don’t want to know, don’t want to hear, don’t want to have their belief system challenged by anything that could threaten it.” neo

    I agree, so where does that leave us? Given that is, that those who vote democrat are in effect voting to enable those who will impose tyranny?

    The irony is Shakespearean; they are enabling the circumstances that will lead to civil war. And if those they enable win, they will have also enabled the fashioning of the chains of their future enslavement. Which they will justly deserve.

16. Folks, I quite doubt that the gene pool of the US has changed so much, as to come close to accounting for the drastic decline in “open-mindedness”, in recent decades.
    I say, the vast preponderance of this decline owes to drastic changes in Higher Ed, and (in due course) the MSM.
    Once Foucault, Derrida etc. became the Rage, first in English depts., then in Philos. depts., then across the campuses, the bastardization of the MSM, and thus the “educated” populace, was all-but inevitable.

17. Once one acknowledges their own capacity for evil it is harder to be led astray. As Solzhenitsyn writes, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” I suspect there are many who so little know themselves that they cannot imagine they could do evil.

18. I agree, so where does that leave us? Given that is, that those who vote democrat are in effect voting to enable those who will impose tyranny?

    Geoffrey Britain: I take solace that history is not the story of straight-line extrapolations made manifest.

    Although it has become a key leftist narrative, nonetheless the Civil Rights movement truly made a monumental shift in American attitudes towards race. Which is to say, we could be on the verge of a major shift towards conservative values. I make no promises, but it is possible. If it did happen, it would look obvious in retrospect after Trump 2016.

    Still there is the small fly in the ointment, toward which you point, that a people can vote in socialism, but they must shoot their way out.

    I’d like to think we have some leeway remaining.

19. There is “me”, speaking generically, and there is what I believe These are two separate entities. I like to be skeptical and I’m skeptical of skepticism, too.

    And there are those who are what they believe and, thus, cannot allow for what they believe to be challenged.

    Since anything I noticed at age eighteen was a new phenomenon in the world, I’ll say it started in the mid-Sixties. Lefty beliefs were, deliberately, larded with moral superiority. Believing in…some lefty point was not a matter of doing your homework [which you weren’t supposed to be doing in the first place] and reaching a conclusion.
    In retrospect, I think I can recall a few examples, although I do recall a generalized exasperation about the whole thing without twigging to the strategy.
    Believing a lefty point made you a Very Good Person. And all other lefties would know you were a Very Good Person to the extent you made the point, repeated the point, and extended the point [if some is good, more is better].
    As my rat in the Skinner box showed me, not that it was a mystery, anything associated with pleasure is pleasurable to contemplate. Approach. Repeat.

    Tom Lehrer and the Folk Song Army.

    So we’re not facing ideas. We’re facing people who are desperate to maintain their self-image as Very Good People who, regrettably, might have to be mean. Like Che. It’s like taking the chants about justice from the rioters as an invitation to discuss ideas about justice.

    Have you ever tried talking policy and the response is something about mean tweets?

20. neo,

    Re: Orwell being a socialist, his own words betray his misapprehension and confusion: “As [Orwell] describes so well in “Capitalism and Communism: Two Paths to Slavery”: “Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets and war.”

    First of all, Communism is famous for “dole queues” not Capitalism. The Great Depression’s dole queues (an anomoly) were exacerbated by socialistic attempts to alleviate a natural economic correction brought about by people refusing to live within their means and by climatic conditions (the dust bowl) exacerbated by very poor farming practices.

    Secondly, capitalism lightly managed, regulates markets with more efficient producers naturally limiting any “scramble” for market share.

    As for war, societies run by demagogues make war, whereas democratic republics do not make war upon each other. And such societies are the ones in which capitalism works most effectively.

    Like most liberals, Orwell’s compassion prevented him from grasping the inescapable necessity for inequality. Individuals invent not committees. Collectives embrace and adopt individual’s breakthroughs or resist them. Entrepreneurial risk taking requires a private pool of capital available for investment with reward commensurate with risk, something public funds lack consensus to do. Civilizational progress itself rests upon the collective embracing individual breakthroughs in insights. Finally, evolution itself rests upon the ultimate inequality; evolutionary mutational advantages passed on strictly to descendents.

    Apparently, Orwell was either unaware or dismissed the inescapable and natural 80/20 law. Wherein 80% of a society’s wealth gravitates into the hands of the other 20%. That phenomenon is the result of nature’s “unequal sharing of blessings” most directly evidenced by evolution itself.

    The history of America demonstrates that Judeo-Christian support for philanthropy and Capitalism’s natural upward and downward mobility in which meritorious effort (in the aggregate) results in individual, familial and group advancement while neglect-rejection of meritorious virtues results in decline… have proven that inequality is not definitive.

    Capitalism, when combined with America’s other societal virtues results in freedom not slavery and does so more effectively than any other economic system because it follows natural laws. Both in the operative principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist and in acknowledgement of human nature.

21. “It’s Orwell crossed with Lewis Carroll” – with a Forward and Afterword by Franz Kafka.

    The righteousness, the lack of curiosity and narrowness of accepted ideas, the lack of intellectual seeking, the behavioral intolerance, the willingness to excommunicate and consign others to a sub-human equivalence as heretics, the willingness to excuse and sanction violence…..All of these things align perfectly with the tenets of a fundamentalist evangelical religion, without the theism.

    It’s an all-consuming belief system.

22. Something we take for granted our side is that whether we like it or not, we get Their opinions rammed down our collective gullets any time we walk past a TV or browse a popular website. They, on the other hand largely can filter us out and caricature us without much effort required.

    I do agree that it seems increasingly likely that political leaning has a strong genetic component. The horrible big thing is that it’s looking more and more like *most* traits have strong genetic components. The Great Unthinkable and Unsayable of C21. When you look at the lengths individual humans will go to to avoid self-knowledge, just think what social classes, societies, civilizations, and the entire (starting to make sense here) God Damned (thanks, I think) Human Species is capable of.

    Cheerful thought for the day. You’re all welcome 🙂

23. Since anything I noticed at age eighteen was a new phenomenon in the world, I’ll say it started in the mid-Sixties. Lefty beliefs were, deliberately, larded with moral superiority. Believing in…some lefty point was not a matter of doing your homework [which you weren’t supposed to be doing in the first place] and reaching a conclusion.

    Richard Aubrey: IMO leftists have granted themselves moral superiority going back at least to the French Revolution. They weren’t always wrong, e.g. the Civil Rights movement and unionism (to a point).

    However, as I remember the early- to mid-sixties, leftists and liberals were happy to debate conservatives on, say, William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.” WFB debated Chomsky and Hitchens, as well as numerous liberals.

    In those days leftists and liberals prided themselves on their debate skills. Plus they weren’t arguing crazy stuff like an infinite number of sexes and systemic racism as the answer to everything.

    I’d say things changed after 1968 with the assassinations of MLK and RLK, the riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention and the election of Richard Nixon. (I would add the apocalyptic frenzy of several million doses of LSD by then, but that’s a more subjective claim.)

    Since then the Frankfurt School/SDS/Weather Underground point of view that arguing within the system, even against the system, only strengthens the system, has steadily become ascendant.

    And here we are.

24. Buy ammo. Be prepared to use it. Not looking for violence, but if the elected officials, cops and judges won’t stop the madness we’ll have to.

    My liberal friends have no idea what they are lusting for.

25. J. J., your story was nice. Do you still have any of your old Boy Scout stuff? I was only in Cub Scouts, but I remember there used to be a whole store somewhere that had only Scouting stuff. I think that was in Illinois… but where exactly, God only knows at this point. It was a long time ago. It was just a first-floor storefront, I think. The kerchief and blue uniform and badges and the Handbook and the oath of Akela (which I naturally can’t remember any more – Dave… my mind is going).

    Well, anyway, the part about your brothers was interesting as well.

26. Philip Sells– there are Scout Shops around the country, associated with the local Councils (also on the web). You might not want to buy their stuff though– it’s not the Scouts that we grew up with!

27. Oliver T, Philip Sells —

    Half the internet ads I get served are solicitations from lawyers looking to gin up more lawsuits against the Scouts for past molestation. The BSA may not exist for much longer.

28. Huxley. I wasn’t eighteen during the French Revolution. So it doesn’t count. My point, sort of, was that old things look new when you first encounter them. Not having been there, I can’t say there’s a difference. But I recall a couple, fifty years ago, of folks on campus making directly the point; believe this and you’ll be a Very Good Person. Almost in those words. And more common, now that I think of it, believe this and you won’t be one of those awful people. It’s the only way not to be one of those awful people.

    I used to watch Firing Line, with particular attention to the WFB slouch. I saw him live once, and he had some serious nervous habits. One guy who’d worked with him as a kind of intern said something about “grotesque”.

    If we had a WFB today, we’d have somebody who could choose a Hitchens or a Chomsky to debate.

    What we have is Tucker Carlson. Whose original schtick was to invite crazy lefties who thought they wouldn’t make complete and total train wrecks of themselves.

    I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no Hitchenses available but I haven’t seen any kind of debate where the lib doesn’t just go nuts. It’s mostly, or frequently, when facts are called into question.

    That said, I was referring to everybody else on the left side. Some time back, I described talking with one about Hands Up, Don’t Shoot. She admitted she knew better but then had a physical reaction as if she were about to have a stroke. Then insisted I must be one of those who wants to kill SSSI for the disabled. And she didn’t want to be corrected further.

    Going around with a guy I went to college with and I mentioned gun grabbers. He insisted on cites. I said that’s a waste of time since it changes nobody’s mind. He accused me of evading. So–having sucked him in (see Cannae)–I provided half a dozen, right on point. He changed the subject, which I had said would be the case.
    This is dishonest. Pretending that the rules of discussion apply–if you have facts, I’ll consider them–until that becomes inconvenient and then change the subject or go to name calling, is not something done by accident. It’s a strategy, or a technique.
    People don’t do dishonest unless they’ve decided that doing honest won’t take them where they want to go.

29. Bryan, it wouldn’t surprise me. I never did follow the developments at BSA later in life except peripherally – I’m at least vaguely aware of the abuse scandals, the gay scoutmaster controversy some time back, some types of revisions to the Handbook, but it’s all been kind of background noise to me, I’m afraid. But I do know and am persuaded that the Scouts of my youth are gone. What I say about the Scouts is purely a nostalgia play. I suppose I would feel the problem more keenly if I had children, especially sons. I would want them to be true Scouts, I think. (There is, or was, an Orthodox Scouting interest.)

    I suppose you could say that if I had sons and Scouting didn’t exist, I would have had to invent it for them. What a poor demiurge I would have been! – but you get what you get.

30. Manichaeans believe that matter is bad and spirit is good, so long as it’s pure. If pressed, most Manichaeans believe that purity of spirit is all that matters, and if your spirit is pure, you cannot sin with your body. Once you reach that point, you will demonize “impure” people who don’t buy the idea of the week and the acceptable “march of history.” You will also excuse your own sins with your body, whether they are violent, sexual, or cruel, so long as you can maintain your own Manichaean purity. Manichaeanism infects the modern left, just as it infected the French Terror in 1792, the Russian and Mexican revolutionaries in 1917, the Nazis after the Great War, the CCP, the Khmer Rouge, and the Jihadis. It is at the core of modern political nihilism and psychosis.

31. We raised 5 Eagle Scouts but I am thinking now that, whenever I say that, I need to add a disclaimer of “pre-apocalyse edition.”

    I knew that the end was in sight about 20 years ago, when the Feds (DOD) caved to the LGBT bullies and ended the “perks” that allowed traveling Scout troops to stay at military facilities overnight. Many volunteers, especially officers, were (maybe still are, for a while yet) Eagle scouts, and the connection was seen as a prime recruiting opportunity. Obama’s tenure revealed that the real agenda of the Left was precisely to sever that connection.

    When the bullies pressured the BSA to admit known homosexuals as leaders — this during the height of the Catholic Church sex scandals! — the tunnel got darker.
    That the Scout leadership caved on that issue, AFTER winning a lawsuit that said they didn’t have to, the writing truly was on the wall.

    Our Church ended its association with the Scouts after more than 100 years of premium membership (money, support, number of troop units, etc.).
    AesopSpouse and I intended to continue serving as a resource for the community, because of years of experience (not to mention investment in supplies and gear!).

    When the BSA partnered with #BLM this year, we resigned.

32. AesopFan: I feel like BSA let me down and I was only a Scout for a year. “Troop 24, where are you?” was our theme song after the TV show:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nVrEw2OkXU

    Good clean fun and good for a growing boy. Your family went the distance and you got kicked to the curb.

33. “I said that in my opinion most people don’t want to know, don’t want to hear, don’t want to have their belief system challenged by anything that could threaten it.” neo

    Remember when I wrote to you that you would get difficult trials because of your view that you didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, and don’t want anyone else here talking about Flat Earth theory?

    2020 is only part of that prophetic proclamation.

    It’s also why I don’t answer your reader’s questions or comments.

34. “Troop 24, where are you?” was our theme song after the TV show: – huxley

    That was a fun show – there is nothing like the good humor of some of the oldies.
    No doubt that is part of our problem today: too many generations who never learned to laugh gently at human foibles.

    Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
    A: That’s not funny!

    Scouting had a good run – 110 years! – but the leadership started selling it out as soon as Baden-Powell was gone.
    Scouting was his military profession, and the program was really meant as a pre-junior-ROTC. He did some amazing stuff in his intel & ops work.

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