THE VINDICTIVE TRUTH

Wretchard has a great post talking about "The Fifth Kind of Man":

The problem with an administration that relies upon spin is that it forgets how vindictive the truth can be. The truth bites back — and hard. But in an environment where politicized media and bureaucracy will tell its masters only what they want to hear the truth is concealed beneath the talking points until it is too late. In that regard, perhaps the Iranians should have the last word. A thirteenth-century Persian-Tajik poet, Ibn Yamin wrote that there were four types of men.

One who knows and knows that he knows… His horse of wisdom will reach the skies.
One who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows… He is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!
One who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know… His limping mule will eventually get him home.
One who doesn’t know and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know… He will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!

And then there’s the fifth type of man. The man who doesn’t want to know because he thinks it doesn’t matter.

I differ a little from Wretchard on the last: it's not that he thinks it doesn't matter as much as it actually matters so much--and that is precisely why why he doesn't want to know about it.

The truth is indeed vindictive--but in a horribly passionless way. Likewise, reality, the space where truth resides, has a calm persistence and patience that is unmatched by even the most desperate attempts by the human species to avoid it.

Nevertheless, human ingenuity has discovered many ways of temporarily hiding from the truth; obscuring the truth; and when necessary, lying about the truth in order to avoid reality and its consequences.



I have written extensively on the pervasive psychological denial of the political left (see here, here , here, and here, for example). And, I frequently point out that denial is an "equal opportunity" defense mechanism engaged in by all human beings; it is an involuntary, built-in psychic response designed to protect an individual from precipitously having to face unwanted, unacceptable or threatening feelings, thoughts or behavior. The mind simply blocks out reality and truth--and sees what it wants to see or becomes blind to reality.

The consequences of denial can vary from extremely mild to extremely extreme. It depends entirely on what aspect of truth or reality is being denied.

Let's consider some of the more negative consequences of psychological denial:

• In the longer-term, denial requires a continued compromises with reality to maintain the pretense that "Everything is fine!" or "Nothing to see here, move along!" Eventually, delusional thinking, along with paranoia and its inevitable conspiracy theories begin to take the place of rational thought in those who deny reality for long periods of time. (see all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists for examples in our own country; or the more recent comments of former President Clinton--once considered a "moderate" democrat, who now fully adheres to the model that the Republicans have manufactured a culture of fear in order to fool the American public into thinking we are at war (read the transcript linked below). See here and here for some examples in the Muslim world, which is rife with conspiracies and which could not exist as a cohesive society without them).

• The denier must then place the blame for the unacceptable reality on someone else and that leads to increased conflict between those who are in denial and those who aren't. Efforts to maintain their denial consumes them and will lead them to escalate their anger, rage and attempts at external blame the denial becomes untenable and ever more obvious.

• The denier will begin distort language and logic to rationalize and justify their behavior(examples of this are too numerous to mention, but I have discussed it here , here and here) . Eventually, cognitive strategies and rational argument will be abandoned altogether by the denier, because those strategies are not sustainable and are unable to convince others; at which point the person in denial will simply refer to his feelings or emotions as the sole justification.

• The denier will feel justified in acting out against those who threaten the peacefulness of their fantasy (just ask Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker behind "Innocence of Muslims"). Remember, for example, the attacks and attempts to silence authors like Mark Steyn because his book , America Alone, discusses the genocidal demographic trajectory of Europe as they refuse to acknowledge or deal with the reality of Islamic immigration.

Nevertheless, the degree of denial engaged in by the the Obama Administration and their supporters on the political left has been boundless and very creative.

Usually, I give the political left and its more clueless adherents the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that their unwillingness to face reality was unconscious; and was so pronounced and pervasive because they could not accept the truth that history and the real world had revealed about their beloved and bankrupt ideology. That ideology, whether it is called Marxism, communism or socialism is fundamentally anti-human .

What happens when psychological denial ceases to be unconscious and becomes a deliberate, willful, and consciously evil behavior-- in spite of all the accumulated evidence of its malignant impact on real people in the real world?

At that point we can safely assume that we are no longer dealing with a purely defensive structure in the psyche; we are dealing with aggressive, unadulterated sociopathy.

I believe that last statement accurately describes the Obama Administration.

The traditional definition of sociopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of social responsibility and failure to adapt to ethical and social standards of the community.

If we think about that definition for a moment, we can perhaps begin to understand what is going on in our world today; and the reason that a huge number of people have embraced a sociopathic lifestyle.

Under the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the ethical and social standards of the community have, unfortunately, been slowly evolving and eroding.

In western culture, ethical and moral standards used to be anchored to the real world (i.e., to reality); but in the postmodern wilderness in which the political left and most of its most visible spokespeople--i.e., leaders in the Democratic Party-- wander aimlessly, ethics and morality are relative and "anchored" to feelings and whim; which inevitably unleashes the baser and more vile aspects of human nature.

The 20th century became the playground (and litter box) for the narcissist; and by the time the 21st century rolled around, malignant narcissism was not even considered deviant, it had gone mainstream. Since psychopathology continually evolves and worsens if it is not confronted and dealt with, what we have now in our culture, particularly the political system, is the endstage of psychological evolution under postmodernism: the sociopath who disguises his or her sociopathy by selflessness (it used to be marketed as "Hope and Change", now even that has been changed to "[Ignore the truth and reality of what my policies have brought about in the economy and the world, and let's just move] FOWARD!"

These selfless sociopaths are people who couldn't care less about the individual human being. Individual human beings are expendable; even vast numbers of them--as long as they stand in the way of the implementation of the sociopath's great ideas and compassionate execution of those ideas. They are the fodder that can be used to build "great" societies, utopian fantasies and collectivist wet-dreams.

It used to be that with the rise of civilization, political sociopaths--both selfiash and selfless-- were (thankfully) few and far between. Even so, when they appeared in history, they wreaked havoc and destroyed lives with great abandon for "the greater good". Needless to say, a central aspect of the 'greater good' was always the advancement of their own glorious self and their ideas.

We can thank primarily the political left and its useful idiots for the persistent, unyielding, and willful celebration of--and ultimately mainstreaming of--malignant narcissism. We have entered the age of postmodern sociopathy and nihilism.

What does it matter if the lives and freedoms of so many individuals are sacrificed to the murderous oppressors of the world? If you "kick out the wealthy" then you have the wonderful socialist paradise of Cuba; or the magnificent utopia of North Korea with all their misery, poverty, oppression and leftist enlightenment! We will all watch with wonder and awe as France implements the ultimate redistributionist fantasy of a 75% tax on the "wealthy". Is there anyone who can possibly believe that this will solve France's financial problems? Believe me, the next phase will be the demands for a 100% tax on those evil rich people who cause all the worlds problems with their wealth.

Under the "enlightened" and "progressive" left, wealth will be redistributed until there is nothing left to redistribute; at which point the human mind will be completely enslaved and even more scapegoats will be deivered to the altars of progressivism--but so what? As the eminent leftist and quintessential nihilist Joseph Stalin once remarked, "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem."

In the long run we are all dead anyway, right? Now there's a vindictive truth for you....

IT MUST BE NICE TO BE SO ENLIGHTENED

Yuval Levin notices something funny about the political left:

E.J. Dionne says that if the Court overturns any part of Obamacare, “we will need a fearless conversation about how a conservative majority of the court has become a cog in a larger right-wing project to make progressive political and legislative victories impossible.” James Fallows says that “the Roberts majority is barreling ahead without regard for the norms, and it is taking the court’s legitimacy with it.” Yale law professor Akhil Amar thinks the proper outcome is so obvious that if even four justices disagree with him then the Court must be a sham—and he takes it personally. “If they decide this by 5-4,” he told Ezra Klein, “then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud. Here I was, in my silly little office, thinking law mattered, and it really didn’t. What mattered was politics, money, party, and party loyalty.” Other examples abound this week.

It would be easy to criticize all this for its sheer unselfconscious lack of seriousness: These people are actually saying that any outcome except the one they want must be driven by an outcome-oriented political crusade. Only their view could result from an actual engagement with the question before the Court, and any other view could only be a function of corruption or of cynicism. It must be nice to be so enlightened.[lINKS AT THE ORIGINAL PIECE]

Don't you think it's interesting that they don't seem to notice this about themselves? Or, if you are cynical, then maybe you think that these leftist ideologues do this deliberately and consciously, knowing full well that they are being led by the balls of their postmodern socialist ideology?

It is certainly true that some of them are not at all concerned about the lack of serious intellectual rigor; nor do they have any interest whatsoever of engaging you in any debate about the issues. THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, don't you know. GLORY TO SOVIET POSTMODERN LEFTIST THOUGHT!

Facts are not important. Neither is reality. For today's left, the name of the game is Rhetoric and controlling the narrative.

Eric Allie captures perfectly the difference between rhetoric and reality in this cartoon:



Obama, the perfect postmodern political President is a master at the art of rhetoric--which is at the heart of all progressive postmodern leftist attempts to obtain and consolidate power.

With postmodern rhetoric you can "talk" tough, but carry a limp stick. You can say whatever your audience at the moment wants to hear and still be philosophically consistent when you do exactly the opposite. Or you can say the opposite to a different audience (just like these guys) since truth is not the objective; only manipulation and deceit to achieve the desired political effect.

It's a sleight of hand known as using "contradictory discourses" and it is a political strategy where truth is rejected explicitly and consistency is an extremely rare phenomenon. As I said, what matters more than truth (or honesty) is achieving the desired political outcome (i.e., getting others to believe what you want them to believe about what you believe).

And, if they don't achieve their policital outcome, then they do not revisit their premises; they only change their rhetoric.

If Obamacare fails, it's not because it's unconstitutional; it's because the court is a bunch of hacks. Or because we are all racists. Or because of Bush. Or all of the previous rationalizations.

They consider themselves so enlightened that it is inconceivable that they could be wrong.

What's important to the postmodern demagogue is the language's effectiveness at achieving the desired result. Stephen Hicks wrote in Explaining Postmodernism[pages 175-177]:

To the modernist, the "mask" metaphor is a recognition of the fact that words are not always to be taken literally or as directly stating a fact--that people largely use language elliptically, metaphorically, or to state falsehoods, that language can be textured with layers of meaning, and that it can be used to cover hypocrisies or to rationalize. Accordingly, unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality.

For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality....

For the postmodernist, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rehtoric. Rhetoric is persasion in the absence of cognition....

Hicks goes on to note that:

Language is a tool of social interaction, and one's model of social interaction dictate what kind of tool language is used as....

And so given the conflict models of social relations that dominate postmodern discourse, it makes perfect sense that to most postmodernists language is primarily a weapon.

This explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language. Stanley Fish, as noted in Chapter Four, calls all opponents of racial preferences bigots and lumps them in with the Ku Klux Klan. Andrea Dworking calls all heterosexual males rapists and repeatedly labels "Amerika" a fascist state. With such rhetoric, truth or falsity is not the issue: what matters primarily is the language's effectiveness.

If we now add to the postmodern epistemology of language the far Left politics of the leading postmodernists and their firsthand awareness of the cirses of socialist thought and practice, then the verbal weaponry has to become explosive.{emphasis mine]

All threats to the effectiveness of their message--and to the perceived threat to their sense of superiority-- must be attacked, and they will scarcely notice the cognitive dissonance required to compare the empty suit with FDR one minute and Ronald Reagan the next. Or, that when the court agrees with them it is a beacon of social justice and an example of truly enlightened consideration; but when the Supremes disagree with their ideology (and stands in the way of their progressive postmodern agenda), the court becomes "a sham" and "illegitimate."

Of course, we shall see tomorrow what the court's decision is about Obamacare. I am sure, that in the end the Justices will make their decision based (as all decisions are based) on their understanding of the law. Could that understanding be flawed? Certainly.

Whenever human beings are involved, you can expect the imperfect; but that doesn't mean we are not capable of wonderful things. Nor does it mean that we should suspend that particular reality and try to change human nature.

In postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the political left, and the remnants of Marxism, socialism and communismhave found the perfect epistemological, ethical and political vessel to reassert their ideology--an ideology that requires the willing suspension of reality by its adherents to "win the future."

And, it's absolutely inconceivable to these arrogant bastards that the implementation of their perfect progressive, "reality-based" future is always being blocked in some perverse way; or, that they could ever be wrong about anything....

I'm glad that I find it so extremely conceivable.

COUNTERING THE POSTMODERN POLITICAL NARRATIVE

Wretchard writes in a comment to one of his recent posts:

A friend once told me “there is no better way of ruining a noble cause than by getting rogues to represent it”. That describes the process which has overtaken peacekeeping, environmentalism and even the campaign for racial equality. These causes, which are otherwise noble, will take decades to recover from the grifters who have made a fortune in their name. How on earth did peacekeeping get put in the care of Kofi Annan? Why was a guy like Al Sharpton allowed to assume the role of the racial conscience of America? How come Al Gore gets to pronounce on science?

The Narrative, probably. Always the Narrative.

NARRATIVE is defined by Mirriam Webster in the following way:

1: something that is narrated : story, account
2: the art or practice of narration
3: the representation in art of an event or story; also : an example of such a representation

Narrative is an essential element of the postmodern political rhetorical strategy to try to control or distort reality in order to gain power over others.

Here is an example of competing narratives as discussed by a political scientist:

Consider two accounts, the first of which resonates for most of the American public and the second of which baffles many Americans:

Two huge commercial jetliners smash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon after, the buildings collapse. Fires rage for days; eyewitnesses tell of the horrors they saw or experienced. Thousands die as the public learns that terrorists willing to commit suicide hijacked four planes and turned them into weapons of mass destruction in the name of their political/religious beliefs. This is an evil act and an act of war—a sneak attack like Pearl Harbor. It is perhaps a new kind of war, but a war nonetheless and the only response to being attacked is to attack back both to punish those responsible for the carnage and to prevent future attacks. Defending civilization against terrorism requires hunting down the supporters and perpetrators of terror and the regimes that support them.

For many the truth of this narrative is self-evident. Anyone denying or even questioning it is either an enemy or delusional (or both). The link between the events themselves and the conclusions is seamless to those who accept it. But a different narrative also exists:

Two huge commercial jetliners smash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon after, the buildings collapse. Fires rage for days; eyewitnesses tell of the horrors they saw or experienced. Thousands die as the public learns that terrorists willing to commit suicide hijacked four planes and turned them into weapons of mass destruction in the name of their political/religious beliefs. This may have been an evil act, but now the suffering Americans know what it is like to live in physical terror. It is an experience Palestinians and Iraqis and others in the Middle East have known for years. This will lead, once again, to attacks on Muslims, this time in Afghanistan, and perhaps in other countries. Once again, innocent civilians will bear the brunt of the suffering from the attacks from the western powers while corrupt regimes give tacit support to the US. As bombs fall from 30,000 feet and civilians die, new refugees will be created in a land that has already suffered from more than 20 years of on-going war.

The two narratives start in the same place, but then head in different directions which evoke far different images. Where the first emphasizes the reassurance a strong, military response can offer, the second expresses fears that this strong response will quickly become a vengeful attack on a vulnerable religious community. Whereas the first invokes images of justice, the second predicts uncontrolled revenge and more of the injustice that has long characterized the relationship between the west and Islam. It asks, if Americans claim that justice is so important, why have Palestinians been neglected for so long and subjected to frequent attacks using American-made sophisticated weapons? Why are Iraqi children unable to meet their basic nutritional needs while its leaders literally live in palaces? In short, the second narrative expresses the deepest vulnerabilities, humiliation, rage at both the west and the leaders of Muslim countries, and fears of annihilation.

The second narrative is connected to the anger and resentment against the US in many parts of the Islamic world, but it doesn't mean that all Muslims agree with it or hate the US. The power of the narrative is its plausibility, meaning that it resonates with how many Muslims understand historical conflicts with the Christian world as well as more recent events in their own lifetimes. At least four events are especially relevant here: (1) American support for the Shah of Iran and complete opposition to the Iranian revolution; (2) unconditional support for Israel despite their refusal to take significant steps towards the achievement of a Palestinian state; (3) the Gulf War, which was justified in the west in terms of turning back Iraqi aggression but which was widely understood by Muslims as propping up autocratic, unpopular and corrupt regimes upon whom American oil supplies depended; and (4) threats to Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem resulting from not only American presence in the region but the more diffuse forces of modernization and globalization which threaten Muslim cultures. A psychocultural analysis points towards the deep fears and humiliations these events have unleashed and links them to parallel past experiences.

It is a fundamental truth of the postmodern political left that the difference between truth and fiction is not what it used to be--in fact (can't use facts when describing anything postmodern!) it never was what it used to be.

"Who controls the past", ran the Party slogan in 1984, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."


As Winston from that novel wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. What he meant was that Freedom can exist only when reality exists. Once you accept that there is an external reality, then the confusion generated by the postmodern narrative dissolves away; and Freedom is possible.

Let me again quote from a post at Belmont Club. In this one, Wretchard is writing about how the "reality based” community of liberals can’t believe what is happening all around them and how they attempt to NARRATIZE it all away. He quotes one noted HuffPo liberal:

>“Many of us already knew it, but Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat in the Indiana Republican primary puts things into stark relief: In 2012 any vote for a Republican is a vote for crazy. Any vote. Any Republican. No matter how sane the Republican, it’s a vote for crazy.”

But Wretchard counters,

...it is his incredulity at what should have been obvious and rising discontents that is itself interesting. How could Casey have missed the rising gas prices, string of foreign humiliations, climbing unemployment, the stagnating incomes? How? How? As Naseem Taleb put it, most “unpredictable” events are really White Swans which are obvious in retrospect and were a long time coming. The only reason nobody saw it coming was that they didn’t want to. As Saul Bellow once wrote “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

To counter the Narrative that "REPUBLICANS ARE CRAZY" you do not immediately offer evicence that a psychiatrist has documented you are sane. Once you do something like that, it is too late: you have already accepted the left's faulty premise and are battling on their postmodern turf. You will not be able to score. As I pointed out in a previous post STOP ALLOWING THE LEFT'S RHETORICAL STRATEGIES TO DEFINE THE DEBATE on why the Democrats always seem to win the name-calling contests:

Not because they are actually correct or have truth on their side; not simply because they have the media referrees on their side, but because they always set the ground rules and they always insist on playing in their home court.

The "war on women" meme is not real, that is, it has no reality. Neither is the charge of Republicans being "anti-Black" or racist; or anti-poor. These memes are just a few of the ongoing, politically correct rhetorical strategies adopted by Democrats and the progressive postmodern left in general, to achieve their ends.

There is no desire for rational argument on the Democrats' part because Truth is not the objective of their rhetoric. Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change [emphasis mine]."

Postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this those who use it are completely indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason.Hence they tend to loathe rational debate and make sure that any discussion of issues plays out with their rules.

The only way to counter these postmodern political narratives is to destroy the premise on which it is founded. I would say something like: "How DARE you sir/madam insinuate that I am crazy/racist/homophobic/sexist/stupid, when your own behavior [insert behavior here] is evidence to the fact that YOU are the one obsessed with [insert insult here]. You are engaging in psychological projection as a way of denying a painful reality about your own policies. The real issue that needs to be discussed is the failure of the Democrats on the economy/international relations/etc etc [and lay out your argument]."

In other words, refuse to play on their soggy postmodern turf and get back to reality.

STOP ALLOWING THE LEFT'S RHETORICAL STRATEGIES TO DEFINE THE DEBATE

Barbara Boxer says the "war on women" is real!

Suppose it’s the championship basketball game and one player is committing foul after foul. Each time, he denies he’s committed any offense.

Eventually, he fouls out. But even as he heads to the bench, he’s protesting that he did nothing wrong.

That’s what we’re seeing today from Republicans who claim there is no “war on women.” The Republican National Committee chairman likened it to a “war on caterpillars.” The Senate Republican leader claims it’s all manufactured – even as female members of his caucus warn about the growing backlash against the GOP from women.

But whether it’s sports or politics, denials don’t change the facts. So let’s look at them

She cites as her basis for the "war" bills that would "restrict a woman's reproductive health care", including of course, abortion, family planning, violence against women, and preventive health care (e.g. mammograms, STDs etc etc). She cites the despicable opposition to Obamacare as yet more evidence that Republicans are anti-woman, hence the "war on women".

Republicans and conservatives, instead of saying that these issues have nothing to do with one segment of the population (i.e. "women" or "blacks" or whatever little victim group the left has split out from the whole) and that they have to do with important and crucial concepts and values such as limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility, seem eager to meet the left on its own turf.

Ramesh Ponnuru suggests that Mitt Romney should ignore this supposed "gener gap" because the whole notion is a myth:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is obsessed with the women’s vote.

On the day after Rick Santorum dropped out of the race and removed all doubt Romney would be the nominee, the campaign issued five press releases within three hours on the theme that President Barack Obama’s economic record has failed American women: one featuring comments by Romney, four highlighting remarks by female Republican politicians supporting him.

It might be a good strategy, if the women’s vote existed.

Romney and the Republican National Committee argue that Obama’s energy policy is making women pay higher gas prices; that his economic policy is disproportionately costing them jobs; that the Obama White House pays female aides less than male ones. The RNC has been especially eager to repeat former aide Anita Dunn’s claim (which she later said was taken out of context) that although Obama himself was blameless, his White House was “a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

Everyone understands why Republicans are mounting this attack. They are responding to weeks of Democratic charges that they are waging a “war on women.” A recent USA Today/Gallup poll that found Romney losing support among women younger than 50 in swing states has especially alarmed them.

EMPHASIS MINE.

Ponuru is absolutely correct. Republicans are responding to weeks (years, decades) of Democratic charges on this issue. AND THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS SEEM TO WIN THE DAY.
Not because they are actually correct or have truth on their side; not simply because they have the media referrees on their side, but because they always set the ground rules and they always insist on playing in their home court.

The "war on women" meme is not real, that is, it has no reality. Neither is the charge of Republicans being "anti-Black" or racist; or anti-poor. These memes are just a few of the ongoing, politically correct rhetorical strategies adopted by Democrats and the progressive postmodern left in general, to achieve their ends.

There is no desire for rational argument on the Democrats' part because Truth is not the objective of their rhetoric. Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change [emphasis mine]."

Postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this those who use it are completely indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason.Hence they tend to loathe rational debate and make sure that any discussion of issues plays out with their rules.

Look past the superficiality of Boxer's "arguments" about Republicans. Why is government even involved in the issues she cites? When did we conservatives give up the fundamental fight about the role of government in our lives? When did we stop caring about individual freedom and personal responsibility?

Well, it began when the accusations of being "anti-woman", or "racist" or whatever, started being hurled around. These accusations--even if they are completely unfounded--are political poison for the person on the receiving end of them. So in the hysteria to respond, the accused almost always says, "NO! I'm not racist, sexist, [fill in your favorite here]! But by doing so, he or she has already lost the ability to have the debate be on the issues that are important, and have ceded the rules.

For the Republican or conservative the debate is about freedom vs slavery--it is about the right to pursue your own life, liberty and happiness. It is about the importance of every individual human life to be free to live their lives without the State telling them what to do.

Think about what the postmodern left's PC and multicultural gurus preach in their high-minded, superior rhetoric that inevitably brands anyone who dares to disagree with a racist label. Then WATCH WHAT THEIR RHETORIC ACTUALLY BRINGS ABOUT in real life. It is in the tribal and entitlement behavior that you begin to see the toxicity of this dogma; as well as the essential oppressive nature of the politically correct behavior that adherence to the religion of multiculturalism demands of us.

Having given up any objective standard by which to mediate the vastly different perspectives and world views that each disparate group brings to the table; having abandoned reason altogether in favor of expressing some feel-good platitudes about a supposedly essential "need to belong" to one's race, tribe, religion or group first and foremost; the outcome is what Hicks refers to as "group balkinization" --with all its inevitable and inescapable disunity, disharmony and conflict.

After that the complementary dogma of political correctness is used to stifle free speech and to further obscure reality.

This PC dogma is antithetical to the concept of the universalism of human experience that is the bedrock of civilization; and instead glorifies sexual, cultural and tribal differences, no matter how insane or irrational.

Multiculturalism teaches that what is truly important above all else is belonging to one's sexual, racial, ethnic, or religious identity, and not that one also belongs to the family of humankind. If the former is held superior, then "social withdrawal" from community and a pervasive distrust of other groups follows quite naturally; including conflicts between different nations, religions and ethnic groups.

What the Obama Administration and the Democrats are doing right now is to divide America up into as many victimhood groups as possible.

The only "universal" that is shared under such circumstances is a committment to disharmony and, lurking beneath the overt moral relativism, is a grandiose sense of entitlement from each group as it jockeys for postion in the victimhood status heirarchy.

Ponnuru comments, "Republicans deserve credit for resisting the idea -- the lazy instinct -- that what female voters care most about are "women's issues." The party should take the crucial step of seeing that women don't have to be courted on the basis of their sex at all."

But principled Republicans and conservatives should resist even more strongly. They should refuse to play the game the Democrats are playing and always bring the discussion back to the essential concepts and ideas that made this nation at one time the most desirable place for free men and women to live.

UPDATE: This cartoon, which I received in an email today seems appropriae somehow:



[Here are some other Glenn McCoy cartoons]

AMERICA, THE INDOCTRI--NATION

Two stories in the news recently illustrate precisely why American students are continually losing ground in knowledge, science, and logic; and why America is losing competitiveness in the global economy, as well as leadership in science.

The first is a study reported on by the WSJ on how California universities indoctrinate students:

The politicization of higher education by activist professors and compliant university administrators deprives students of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and refine their minds. It also erodes the nation's civic cohesion and its ability to preserve the institutions that undergird democracy in America.

So argues "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California," a new report by the California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The report is addressed to the Regents of the University of California, which has ultimate responsibility for governing the UC system, but the pathologies it diagnoses prevail throughout the country.

The analysis begins from a nonpolitical fact: Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work

.

Next we have a piece, written by Michael Barone and titled: "Colleges skimp on science, spend on diversity":

How many times have you heard Barack Obama talk about "investing" in education?

Quite a few, if you've been listening to the president at all.

In fact Americans have been investing more and more in education over the years, led by presidents Democratic and Republican. But it's become glaringly clear that we're getting pretty lousy return on these investments.

[...]

On higher education Democrats and many Republicans as well have followed the same course as on public schools: Shovel in more money, in this case in the form of Pell Grants and subsidized student loans.

College and university administrators have been happy to scoop up all the money by rapidly raising tuitions and fees. Higher-ed expenses have been rising much more rapidly than inflation for three decades.

And what has the money been spent on? Some of it presumably goes to professors in the hard sciences and the great scholars who have made American universities the best in the world. Well and good.

But many university administrators have other priorities. The University of California system has been raising tuitions and cutting departments. But, reports John Leo in the invaluable Minding the Campus blog, its San Diego campus found the money to create a new post of "vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion."

That's in addition to what the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald calls its "already massive diversity apparatus." It takes Mac Donald 103 words just to list the titles of UCSD's diversitycrats.

The money for the new vice chancellorship could have supported two of the three cancer researchers that the campus lost to Rice University in Houston, a private school that apparently takes the strange view that hard science is more important than diversity facilitators.

American students are busily being marinated in postmodern progressive multicultural and diversity dogma even before they reach college. The indoctrination into the gospel of moral relativism and postmodernism begins in kindergarten and continues unabated until graduation from high school. By the time these students go to college, their minds are supple and pliant enough to be fully cooked by the tenured leftist activists on the university faculties around the country.

Do you think it is just a coincidence that the Obama's connection with unrepentant terrorist and avowed leftist William Ayers had to do with an educational project in Chicago's schools? What do you imagine that project's real goals were, when the author of the grant that underwrote it was William Ayers, bomber, terrorist, and now university professor?

Ayers was the one who wrote the grant in 1993, and hired Obama to administer it. This was Obama's only serious executive experience in his entire life, and it was a total disaster.

Today, the unrestrained incorporation of postmodern, leftist/socialist, politically correct multiculturalism, diversity and radical environmental ideas into the curriculum continues unabated.

These ideas are the foundation of the socialist and communist revival in America after the cold war (and we thought we won that one--hah!)

Regarding that Chicago Annenberg Challenge-Ayers-Obama connection, Sol Stern wrote in 2008 an article titled "The Bomber as School Reformer":

Ayers wrote the grant proposal[to the CAC] that secured seed money for the schools and ran the implementation arm of the project; Obama became chairman of the board that distributed the grants. Not only did the Times exonerate the Democratic presidential candidate of having anything like a “close” relationship with Ayers—their paths merely “crossed” while working on the Challenge, the paper said—but it also bestowed the honorific of “school reformer” on the ex-bomber. “Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform,” the article maintained. On Meet the Press Sunday morning, Tom Brokaw—who will be moderating tomorrow’s debate between the presidential candidates—picked up this now conventional wisdom and described Ayers as “a school reformer.”

Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.) For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.” Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that “Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation,” and then, as in days of old, raised his fist and chanted: “Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta la Victoria Siempre!”

Joseph Stalin once observed that, “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Right now, it is a weapon of indoctrination that is being aimed at the next generation of Americans who are growing up steeped in the garbage of leftist thought.

The health of our educational system--from K-12 through college-- is absolutely essential to the long-term welfare and competitiveness of the United States. American education used to be the strongest on the globe, and to the extent that remains true, it is because the hard sciences in this country (e.g., math, engineering, computers etc.) have been largely resistant to the political taint that runs rampant in the humanities. The latter subject areas, which include literature, philosophy, and history, have become unabashedly ideological over the last two decades; and the "social justice" advocates of today's collectivists have taken over our K-12 education system and are determinedly undermining American values with their politically correct, multicultural and anti-capitalist curriculum.

But even the hard sciences are beginning to be infected.

Make no mistake about it, what many teachers today are doing is indoctrinating their students minds into an unquestioning obedience to the collective. This they cannot do unless they also can manage to corrupt even the hard sciences with their dogma.

There can be no area where a child is allowed to think freely and without the proper political perspective. That is far too dangerous for the underly ideology they are promulgating.

And, as an example of the critical non-thinking exhibited by today's college students indoctrinated into the dogma of the left, we have this egregiously mindless mantra: "No cuts, no fees, education should be free."

Like obedient dogs, they have been trained to believe that "education" is some kind of dogfood that appears magically in their dish when the "master" deems it time to eat. Beyond that, they have no idea where it comes from.

America is fast evolving from a free nation to an indoctri-nation.

ESSENTIAL SOCIOPATHY OF THE LEFT ON DISPLAY

All around us today we are witness to the essential sociopathy of the "compassionate" and "loving" left. In the matter of Trayvon Martin, we have seen our own clueless President increase the hatred and fan the flames of racial divisiveness. Of course, he has not a word to say about his Justice Department's darling Black Panthers placing a monetary bounty on one of the characters in the ongoing national psychodrama. You would think that would be illegal (or, at the worse, uncivil; but you would be wrong--this is Obama's America we are now talking about; and in it, his political opponents are the ones who are always to blame.)

Let's move on to a more subtle expression of the sociopathic narcissism; i.e., the veiled threats that are being uttered directed toward the SCOTUS, who in the last several days have been annoyingly uncooperative in following the accepted narrative of the postmodern political left on the issue of Obamacare. How dare they question it!!

In a post, "Nice Court You Have There; It Would Be A Shame If Something Happened To It"; Wretchard writes:

By saying Obamacare is so self-evidently wonderful and legitimate that only someone crazy would disagree with it, Blumenthal makes you wonder why this matter is even before the Court in the first place. For the answer to that question, see “begging the question”.

What is less clear is whether Blumenthal, in reminding the court that the Executive Branch had the monopoly on physical power, was not engaged in a kind of subtle menace. After all, the Court’s power is not based on “credibility”. It is based on power vested in it by the Constitution. What would the administration say if someone argued that the president’s authority was based on “credibility” rather than his legal power as chief executive?

The left will seek to de-legitimize the Supreme Court, possibly the same way that the President did in his 2010 SOTU speech when they had the audacity to disagree with his position. How dare they rule contrary to his position? Remember, as Obama has reminded us with regard to Obamacare--He cares doncha know? Any who oppose his benevolent policies for the good of all are uncaring, racist, sexist, wealthy jerks.

And that's the essence of the argument. The left cares deeply about these things. We Republican and conservative and Libertarian troglodytes are throwbacks in human evolution, too stupid to appreciate the scientific workings of the minds of Progressives like of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid--let alone Barack Obama! (the solution is to re-engineer humans to conform to the progressive dream!)

Isn't it interesting that the progressive postmodern left always seems to FEEL that their emotions are...scientific? That just because they FEEL something is good that it is "reality-based" and necesarily and undebatably true? Isn't it interesting that they always think they can re-engineer humans to adapt to their silly schemes--make them better somehow?

If that's not an affront to reality, then I don't know what would be. It is also the hallmark of people in a psychological fantasy bubble, sometimes called psychological denial.

I have written extensively on the pervasive psychological denial of the political left (see here, here , here, and here, for example).

It is important to point out that denial is an "equal opportunity" defense mechanism engaged in by all human beings--progressive or conservative; Democrat or Republican. It is an involuntary, built-in psychic response designed to protect an individual from precipitously having to face unwanted, unacceptable or threatening feelings, thoughts or behavior. The mind simply blocks out reality and truth--and sees what it wants to see; and feels what it wants to feel.

Psychological defenses can be a symptom of a much larger psychological problem; or they can be a temporary and even healthy adaptation to reality.

Feelings can be useful pieces of data with which to understand reality, but they are certainly not the best tool for that purpose; and a reliance on them to the exclusion of using reason and critical thought is a strategy that cannot succeed for long-term survival. When assessing how appropriate one's feelings are in a given situation, it is often necessary for the contents of the unconscious to be explored and brought to the conscious level and considered. Unconscious internal conflicts--such as the desire to always please or displease your parents; or the need to feel superior and more compassionate than others, for example-- can easily mask the inappropriate aspects of the feelings, making them worthless as a means of understanding the external world.

Taking this kind of action as a method of checking and understanding one's own feelings is a process called "insight" or "self-awareness". Some people do this quite naturally and honestly. Some learn in therapy or when they are in crisis. But if insight is absent then one's feelings have the potential to do great harm --both to one's self and to others.

Some unconscious factors, or psychological defenses, that can make one's feelings untrustworthy are: 1) the person you are responding to has become symbolic of someone else in your life (displacement, fantasy, or perhaps distortion); 2) focusing on one particular aspect of a person, you ignore other, more objective data that are available to you about the person (denial); 3) you place your own unacceptable feelings onto the other person--e.g., I'm not an angry person, -- he's an angry person! (projection or full-blown paranoia).

The truth is that there are countless ways that unconscious processes within ourselves can distort our responses to others and to reality itself.

Growing up and attaining maturity requires that we take a moment to consider such factors playing a role in our emotions before we act on those emotions. If we come to know ourselves and understand our own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, limitations and secrets; then our emotional responses to people or to the world can be very valuable tools to help interpret the world. But they are only tools, and if not used wisely, they can do more harm than good. Feelings cannot be used in a court of law--for good reason. And they are not ultimate truth in the court of reality, either.

All too often, mistakes are made; feelings can simply be wishes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality. If we are lucky, we discover this before too much damage is done.

The key to gaining control over behavior that is motivated by unconscious defenses is to make them conscious. This requires that a person be able to reflect on his or her behavior or feelings and on the contents of one's mind; and with honesty and forthrightness develop some insight into why one feels, thinks, or acts a certain way. This is particularly important if the way one is thinking, feeling or acting is causing serious problems to one's self or to others.

The inability to reflect on one's own behavior or the contents of one's mind and motivations is exactly why so many political debates boil down to acrimonious accusations.

YOU'RE PROJECTING! NO! YOU ARE. YOU'RE IN DENIAL. NO, YOU ARE!

How can you decide if someone is "projecting" versus accurately responding to and interpreting objective reality? How do you determine if someone is "in denial" or responding to reality?

In other words, how do you tell if the use of a defense is a SYMPTOM of some underlying psychological problem versus whether it is ADAPTIVE AND HEALTHY and indicative of an acceptance of truth or reality?

In order to be adaptive, a defense:

• should regulate, rather than remove affect – that is, instead of totally anesthetizing a person, the defense would just reduce the pain (and therefore make it easier to cope; rather than to avoid coping altogether)

• should channel feelings instead of blocking them (i.e., allow a healthy expression of those feelings in a way that can discharge them in socially acceptable ways rather than keep them hidden and motivating behavior)

• should be oriented to the long-term; and not simply the short-term

• should be oriented toward present and future pain relief; and not focused past distress

• should be as specific as possible (i.e., be as a key is to a lock; not as a sledgehammer applied to a door)

• the use of the defense should attract people and not repel them (Vaillant points out that the use of the mature defenses --i.e., humor, altruism, sublimation etc.-- is perceived by others as attractive and even virtuous; while the immature defenses are perceived as irritating, repellant, and even evil).

Having laid out the tools, the reader can decide for him or herself if the current responses of the political left--either to the Trayvon Martin case; or to the "unexpected" questions of the Supreme Court Justices on Obama's Health Care Initiative--are symptomatic of a larger issue; or are a healthy adatation to reality.

Now, what happens when psychological denial ceases to be unconscious and becomes deliberate, willful, and consciously evil behavior-- in spite of all the accumulated evidence of its malignant impact on real people in the real world?

At that point we can safely assume that we are no longer dealing with a purely defensive structure in the psyche; we are dealing with aggressive, unadulterated sociopathy.

Let me go back to the beginnings of Obamacare.

Jay Nordlinger at National Review described a perfect example of this kind of deliberate, malevolent sociopathy:

Several readers have asked me to respond to Diane Watson. I do so wearily. She is the Democratic congresswoman from L.A. who said last week that President Obama’s health-care critics were racist — and who heaped praise upon a) Fidel Castro, b) Che Guevara, and c) Cuban health care. She said,

You need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. And you know the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy — Che Guevara did that. And after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found . . . an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro.

It was clear, from her tone, that she regards Castro as a kind of Christ figure. (To listen to the congresswoman, go here.)

I’m afraid I can’t say anything more about these subjects than I have already said. Let me offer a piece from 2000: “In Castro’s Corner: A story of black and red.” And a piece from 2007: “The Myth of Cuban Health Care: Michael Moore gives it a powerful boost.” And, in this FAQ column, you will find suggestions about what to read concerning Che Guevara.I’m afraid that mythologizing about Guevara, Castro, and the Communist dictatorship will never end. Indeed, it will get worse after the Castros and Cuban Communism pass. I used to think — I’ve had arguments with Armando Valladares about this (he is the heroic Cuban dissident who wrote Against All Hope) — I used to think that Castro-lovers in the United States were merely ignorant: They knew not what they said or did. How could all these “liberal Democrats” support a police state? A totalitarian dictatorship?

But, some years ago, I stopped thinking that: I had to swallow that these people — certainly some dismaying percentage of them — actually like it: actually like the dictatorship and all the murderous oppression that goes with it. You can’t remain entirely ignorant or naïve after 50 years of this dictatorship. And that is a very, very bitter pill to swallow.
One more point: Many of the leaders of the Cuban democracy movement are black — “Afro-Cuban.” President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to one of them (the political prisoner Oscar Biscet). Many of Castro’s most ardent supporters in the United States are black: Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Randall Robinson, and so on. What must the black Cuban democrats think of these Castro champions?

Very, very little, I can tell you. (Emphasis mine)

The traditional medical definition of sociopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of social responsibility and failure to adapt to ethical and social standards of the community.

If we think about that definition for a moment, we can perhaps begin to understand what is going on in our world today; and the reason that a huge number of people have embraced a fundamentally sociopathic--and "progressive" lifestyle, all the while convincing themselves that they are "compassionate", "post-racial" and just.

Under the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the ethical and social standards of the community have, unfortunately, been slowly evolving and eroding.

In western culture, ethical and moral standards used to be anchored to the real world (i.e., to reality); but in the postmodern wilderness in which the political left and most of its most visible spokespeople--i.e., leaders in the Democratic Party-- wander aimlessly, ethics and morality are relative and "anchored" to feelings and whim; which inevitably unleashes the baser and more vile aspects of human nature.

The 20th century became the playground (and litter box) for the narcissist; and by the time the 21st century rolled around, malignant narcissism was not even considered deviant, it had gone mainstream. Since psychopathology continually evolves and worsens if it is not confronted and dealt with, what we have now in our culture, particularly the political system, is the endstage of psychological evolution under postmodernism: the sociopath who disguises his or her sociopathy by selflessness (now marketed as "hope and change").

These selfless sociopaths are people who basically could not care less about an individual human being.

They think in terms of movements and achieving some grand scheme of "social justice"--which is far from real justice and the search for truth.

Individual human beings are expendable; it is the collective or State that matters; and, as long as they stand in the way of the implementation of the sociopath's great ideas and compassionate execution of those ideas they can be ignored, marginalized and even killed. To this type of mind, individuals are merely the fodder used to build "great" societies from the all the utopian fantasies and collectivist wet-dreams.

It used to be that with the rise of civilization, political sociopaths--selfless and selfless-- were (thankfully) few and far between. Even so, when they appeared in history, they wreaked havoc and destroyed lives with great abandon for "the greater good". Needless to say, a central aspect of the 'greater good' was always the advancement of their own glorious self and their ideas.

We can thank primarily the postmodern political left and its useful idiots for the persistent, unyielding, and willful celebration of--and ultimately mainstreaming of--malignant narcissism. We have entered the age of postmodern sociopathy and nihilism.

What does it matter if the lives and freedoms of so many individuals are sacrificed to the murderous oppressors of the world; or, for that matter, even the compassionate oppressors of the Democratic Party--who, after all, want only the best for you of?

If you "kick out the wealthy" then you have the wonderful socialist paradise of Cuba or the currently evolving one of California; or the magnificent utopia of North Korea with all their misery, poverty, oppression and progressive enlightenment!

Under the uber-enlightened and progressive reality-based left, wealth will be redistributed and the human mind enslaved--but so what? As the eminent leftist and quintessential nihilist Joseph Stalin once remarked, "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem."

In the long run we are all dead anyway, right?

DELUSIONAL TRIVIALITIES

Mark Steyn writes that the state of our Union is broke:

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans:

“The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!”

I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union’s state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned.

In his usual dry, humorous manner, Steyn goes on:

...[A]ny historians stumbling upon a surviving DVD while sifting through the ruins of our civilization will marvel at how his accumulation of delusional trivialities was apparently taken seriously by the assembled political class.

An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the president told us. “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable master’s degrees in Climate Change and Social Justice Studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett’s got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion.

Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-sized budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion.

One of the things I spend a lot of time doing in my work as a psychiatrist is encouraging patients that I see--patients whose lives are characterized by repeatedly making bad choices; by projection (blaming everybody else for the plight they find themselves in); and by delusional thinking (not necessicaril to the point of frank psychosis, but delusional nonetheless when it comes to their situation)--to slowly learn to appreciate the distinction between the internal world and the external world.

This is called "reality testing".

The ability to appreciate that external reality is NOT the same thing as what might be going on inide your head is a critical task of development. This task is made much harder these days because the dominant philosophical model, Postmodernism, basically asserts the opposite--i.e. that there is no distinction, and that what you are thinking or feeling IS the same as, and even superior to, external reality.

This philosophy is dominant in educational circles; and itunderlies most K-12 and college curricula.

This is why so many supposedly intelligent people develop such misbegotten notions about the world. This is why so many of them end up coming to see people like me when their fantasies and delusions pop like bubbles when they eventually run into the brick wall of reality. And they always do run into that wall, sooner or later.

The accumulation of "delusional trivialities" in one person's life can and will eventually lead to significantly negative consequences for that individual at some point. When the delusions are shared by the leaders of a nation, all of its citizens will eventually suffer the consequences.

In the case of our own country, our leaders appear to be only minimally interested in the reality of our debt situation; and their trivial "fixes" are like putting a bandaid on a wound where one's lifeblood is being pumped out. Instead of stopping the bleeding, they seek new and better ways to transfuse the patient to stay ahead of imminent collapse and death.

Where are we going? We are being led down the psychopath to economic destruction by the empty-headed promises of hope and change, made by people so blinded by the enchanting delusions clanking around inside their heads, that they have been able to ignore reality for a very long time.

Reality, however, will not be ignoring them for much longer.

OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA

Recent events in my life have made me re-evaluate my priorities and goals (going to Hawaii definitely helped in this regard). While I enjoy blogging, it still takes up a lot of my time and energy; and, believe it or not, I don't care for politics as much as I care about ideas and the philosophy behind them.

I would like to begin to concentrate on other writing projects and distilling some of my own ideas into other formats. Unfortunately, blogging over the past year has often felt like a ball and chain that prevents me from going in that direction. I know I have taken extended time off from blogging in the past and have always come back to it...that's because I truly hate what is happening in the world, especially in my beloved country where I see a constant erosion of of liberty; the slow, cancerous growth of collectivism; and a spiritual and moral stagnation brought about by postmodern philosophical ideas that have infiltrated into our culture.

Blogging has allowed me to imagine that I am doing something to fight against these forces of collectivism and postmodernism. I hope that it has been the case that Dr. Sanity has had some positive impact in fighting this battle.

I am truly grateful for all my loyal readers and the support and comments you have made over the last 7 years. When I first started blogging, I had no idea that my psychological blog would reach so many people, and I have been pleasantly surprised that people actually read it and debate the ideas (Dr. Sanity has had over 4 million visits over the years!).

I'm not giving up on blogging, but I would like to focus on other areas of my life right now. It's definitely time for a change!

Perhaps I will return to write about the Presidential Election next year.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on. Be well.

THE LEFT'S FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

Victor Davis Hanson has a sobering piece in IBD on how there are "Bubbles Galore in Lives Lived in the Abstract". He cites just for starters, the housing, pension and higher-education bubbles:

There are disturbing commonalities to these expanding bubbles — and others like the recently enacted health care entitlement on the way. The rich and connected seem exempt from the impending reckoning, and the poor assume that government will offer them debt relief. Those in between are on their own and will have to pay more for receiving less.

America is not creating enough wealth to justify the notion that everyone should go to college, get a higher-paying job than their parents, buy a nice, affordable house and retire earlier and with more money than did prior generations.

We have forgotten what wealth is — and how tenuous the good life is. Riches are created by educated and skilled workers who directly translate natural resources into commodities that make life easier. The nonproductive sector in government, law and banking must facilitate that process with efficient and transparent financial and political systems.

Instead, we are failing to provide our college graduates with unique skills that make them rare assets in the global competitive arena.

Meanwhile, our more talented and better-trained workers are suing, subsidizing and regulating more than ever — instead of searching for more oil and gas, supplying more water to productive farmland, fast-tracking nuclear power plants, manufacturing machines and consumer goods, or devising new and more efficient ways to help others to produce such food, fuel and products.

In other words, we are living the good life in the abstract that we have not quite earned in the concrete.

Another way to think about what Hanson is saying is that ideals are abstract. They may or may not have any connection to the real world. The problem with the so-called "idealism" of the progressive left is that it is completely abstract and utterly utopian, and does not take into account something essential: REALITY

For starters, the idealistic and progressive intelletuals of the left consistently refuse to acknowledge the reality of human imperfection.

The squalid utopian fantasies of socialism, communism--or any variant of Marxism for that matter--appeals primarily to people who refuse to acknowledge their own human imperfections, and hence their own capacity for evil. They don't want to admit it, but those who are drawn to the leftist view of the world, tend to see themselves as superior; above all the other boring, ordinary human beings around them; more virtuous, more compassionate, smarter; and of course, much better qualified to decide what's best for lesser beings like you and me.

It is extremely ironic, considering the left's rhetoric to the contrary, to realize that it is conservatism and its underlying priniciples that fundamentally embrace the awful truth about human nature; and understand that the reality is closer to your average selfish, lazy, superstitious, and money-grubbing con artist than to that utopian "ideal" or "new" man--so prominently promoted in the rantings of communists, socialist, or any collectivist or totalitarian.

As a consequence of understanding that fundamental truth about human nature, conservatism and its economic policies (i.e., capitalism) are able to harness even the most negative aspects of human nature to bring positive good both to the individual and to the larger society as well. Yes, that means allowing people to pursue their own selfish happiness (without initiating force agains others); as opposed to "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Benevolence toward others is up to the individual and a voluntary matter in the former system; but it is forced upon you by the omnipotent State in the latter (and that has all sorts of negative ramifications which I won't go into right now).

Next, the idealistic and progressive intellectuals of the left also refuse to acknowledge the reality of how wealth is created and how capitalism is able to produce it so well and their systems are not.

Their fundamental economic assumption is that the only way to get wealth is to steal it from someone else, because they simply cannot imagine how to go about creating it. It is a zero-sum game for them; and thus, all their political policies are imbued with an infantile economic primitivism--of the sort a caveman, whose only strategy is brute force, would come up with: Ugg hits Grog over the head with his big club to get his "rightful" share of nuts and berries--and that's the only economic theory they can understand.

This economic blindness about the creation of wealth is the origin of what Ayn Rand calls "the looter mentality." It is the mentality of the parasite who wants the benefits of wealth without the effort of having to create any; who is always demanding "his 'fair' share" of wealth without the necessity of providing any value to anyone. Looters are people who think that wealth just appears out of nothingness and that it is perfectly justifiable to steal it from someone else, since it is a zero-sum game; and therefore it is a matter of "social justice" to redistribute it according to their whim.

Capitalism does not pretend that those messy negative human emotions like greed or envy can be "stamped out" by the will of a tyrant or a "benevolent" State. It accepts human nature as a given and provides a system through which humans are able to pursue their own happiness which allows them to sublimate and redirect those negative emotions to better both themselves and incidentally the larger society.

As economic systems go, capitalism a miraculous psychological breakthrough and promotes more of that elusive "world peace" (or is it "whirled peas"? I forget) ; and it is why capitalism dovetails so nicely with political systems that promote individual freedom and democracy.

On a more fundamental and philosophical level, the idealistic and progressive intellectuals of the left refuse even to acknowledge the reality of A=A and 1+1=2, particularly when such realities conflict with the pretty ideas in their heads.

This is the ultimate consequence of accepting the metaphysical and epistemological tenets of postmodernism.

Of course, abstract ideas are important and are used to understand and describe reality. But they are not a substitute for reality, nor are they allowed to ignore reality when humans attempt to implement them in the real world.

The political left regularly compares their pretty little abstractions with reality and astonishingly, they find reality wanting! So instead of abandoning their useless but lovely abstractions, they happily abandon reality so that they may continue to blow bubbles.

I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams they fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.

RHETORIC VS REALITY

Eric Allie captures perfectly the difference between rhetoric and reality in this cartoon:



Obama, the perfect postmodern President is a master at the art of rhetoric--which is at the heart of all progressive postmodern leftist attempts to obtain and consolidate power. With postmodern rhetoric you can "talk" tough, but carry a limp stick. You can say whatever your audience at the moment wants to hear and still be philosophically consistent when you do exactly the opposite. Or you can say the opposite to a different audience (just like these guys) since truth is not the objective; only manipulation and deceit to achieve the desired political effect.

It's a sleight of hand known as using "contradictory discourses" and it is a political strategy where truth is rejected explicitly and consistency is an extremely rare phenomenon. As I said, what matters more than truth (or honesty) is achieving the desired political outcome (i.e., getting others to believe what you want them to believe about what you believe).

It's all very postmodern; very philosophically chic; and very Obama and the left.

What's important to the postmodern demagogue is the language's effectiveness at achieving the desired result. Stephen Hicks wrote in Explaining Postmodernism[pages 175-177]:

To the modernist, the "mask" metaphor is a recognition of the fact that words are not always to be taken literally or as directly stating a fact--that people largely use language elliptically, metaphorically, or to state falsehoods, that language can be textured with layers of meaning, and that it can be used to cover hypocrisies or to rationalize. Accordingly, unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality.

For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality....

For the postmodernist, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rehtoric. Rhetoric is persasion in the absence of cognition....

Hicks goes on to note that:

Language is a tool of social interaction, and one's model of social interaction dictate what kind of tool language is used as....

And so given the conflict models of social relations that dominate postmodern discourse, it makes perfect sense that to most postmodernists language is primarily a weapon.

This explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language. Stanley Fish, as noted in Chapter Four, calls all opponents of racial preferences bigots and lumps them in with the Ku Klux Klan. Andrea Dworking calls all heterosexual males rapists and repeatedly labels "Amerika" a fascist state. With such rhetoric, truth or falsity is not the issue: what matters primarily is the language's effectiveness.

If we now add to the postmodern epistemology of language the far Left politics of the leading postmodernists and their firsthand awareness of the cirses of socialist thought and practice, then the verbal weaponry has to become explosive.{emphasis mine]

Got all that? Now if you'd like to have a perfect example of how a slick leftist/ postmodernist uses language and rhetorical skill to manipulate and produce maximum effectiveness depending on his audience; and the way a modernist (i.e., someone connected to reality, truth, and reason) unmasks them and reconnects them with reality (whether they like it or not), then check out the differences between Obama's SOTU speech and Paul Ryan's response.

You might also note the rise in ad hominem attacks directed at Ryan who is able to clearly and logically (and without all the "winning the future" BS) express the illogic of the Obama's failed approach to the economy. This tactic too, is a direct outcome of postmodern rhetoric. All threats to the effectiveness of their message must be attacked, just as Sarah Palin has been demonized ever since she became a visible and popular figure in the GOP. George Bush, of course, is the perennial fallback guy to blame for anything that goes wrong in the world (Chris Matthews recently blamed him on Hardball for the riots in Egypt--and, I don't think it was to compliment him); and meanwhile, Obama's trusty minions hardly notice the cognitive dissonance required to compare the empty suit with FDR one minute and Ronald Reagan the next.

In postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the left and its mouthpiece Obama have found the perfect epistemological, ethical and political vessel to reassert their ideology--an ideology that requires the willing suspension of reality by its adherents to "win the future."

YA GOTTA DO WHAT YA GOTTA DO

This op-ed from Heather Wilson is interesting as a follow-up to my post on "Bringing Forth Monsters" and how today's postmodern educational system is creating non-thinkers:

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.

Unlike many graduate fellowships, the Rhodes seeks leaders who will "fight the world's fight." They must be more than mere bookworms. We are looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership. The undergraduate education they are receiving seems less and less suited to that purpose.

An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for. A student who wants to study comparative government doesn't seem to know much about the important features and limitations of America's Constitution.

When asked what are the important things for a leader to be able to do, one young applicant described some techniques and personal characteristics to manage a group and get a job done. Nowhere in her answer did she give any hint of understanding that leaders decide what job should be done. Leaders set agendas.

I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable.

What Wilson is describing are the inevitable consequences of a philosophy that celebrates moral relativism and encourages nihilism even as it discourages rational thought. The philosphy is postmodernism.

These college students are the poster children of progressive postmodern intellectual 'thinking'; steeped in the political correctness of our day; marinated in the metaphysics and epistemology that are the foundation of its moral relativism. They go to college to learn to think and instead learn how not to. They believe in nothing and stand for nothing. They are taught to mindlessly mouth the same old tired and worn self-serving platitudes of a defunct and dangerous world view.

Here is more information to absorb, if you are not convinced of the dead-end intellectualism of today's postmodern thinkers (and read Zombie's entire essay and how he gets to this conclusion):

It’s not that the essay’s author, former New York Times Bureau Chief and current anti-imperialist professor-activist Stephen Kinzer, is wrong about his facts: it’s quite true that life under a totalitarian police state is often safer and more secure than living in lawless anarchy. That’s why the war-torn masses throughout history sometimes clamor for peace even at the cost of their own freedom. Yet forgotten in Kinzer’s approval of oppressive societies is that wannabe dictators always use this excuse to justify their crushing of human rights: We need to remove your freedom in order to guarantee your safety. Never mind that the new regime was usually one of combatants endangering the citizenry in the first place.

No, the issue is that Kinzer seems to have just now woken up to a phenomenon that many of us have known about for quite some time — that the human rights movement “has in recent years become the vanguard of a new form of imperialism.”

The only error in that statement is the word “recent.” The notion of “universal human rights” was formulated in the West and is the basis of Western civilization; and the the notion of bringing these “Western values” to oppressed and backward peoples has been the goal not just of the modern human rights movement but of missionaries, do-gooders and yes, even the American military for quite some time.

Kinzer has freshly arrived at the blinding and quite correct realization that the “human rights movement” and “Western imperialism” are one and the same. And having become aware of this, you’d think that as a human rights activist, he’d have a life-altering epiphany: Perhaps I’ve been wrong about what I call “imperialism” this whole time. Maybe it is a force for good after all.

But no. Standing on the brink of a psychological breakthrough, Kinzer turned the other way and instead had a breakdown. Pinioned by the idée fixe that America and imperialism and Western values are always and irrevocably wrong, when faced with the fact that human rights are a subset of Western values, Kinzer felt he had no choice but to discard his belief in human rights. Which must have been quite difficult for someone who formerly regarded himself as a human rights activist, but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

This is why you can't argue with that biochemistry major who wants to be a doctor and supports Obamacare. Supporting shit like this is WHAT YA DO--if you want to describe yourself as a "caring, compassionate person". You can't even debate the issue with him or with the person who thinks the great powers should give up nuclear weapons--I mean, who cares about the practical, real-world outcome of that? RHETORIC is more important than reality. FEELINGS are more important than reality (in fact, they are obviously the ONLY reality to this generation of 'leaders' and 'thinkers'). GOOD INTENTIONS always seem to trump how things actually work out in reality.

Jonah Goldberg calls this the "decline of leadership."

As depressing as that is, the reality is more than that.

I think we are witnessing the consequences of having the best minds of several generations systematically hobbled and and mutilated by the gurus of political correctness and moral relativity. I think that the essential nihilism of the postmodernism intellectual craze is coming to full fruition and that the decline of leadership is just one obvious symptom. Even more insidius is a steep decline in the ability to think that is coupled with a real contempt for reason, truth and objective reality.

Joseph Stalin once pointed out that, "Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Our children have been deliberately targeted for decades; they have been in the crosshairs of the dead-end philosophy that drives the postmodern progressivism of today's 'intellectual' elites. Sadly, those elites have scored a bullseye.

No, there are no psychological breakthroughs on the horizon for these reality-challenged minds, or for their mentors. There is only the mindless parroting of the dysfunctional ideology for which they have gladly sacrificed their souls.

But hey! Ya gotta do what ya gotta do!


[Political cartoons by Eric Allie]

BRINGING FORTH MONSTERS

This study should come as no shock in these postmodern times:

An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.

Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn't determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin....

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.

The findings are in a new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia.

How proud postmodern thinkers must be that the minds of our next generation have been prepared for the new politics of the political left, which are essentially the same old collectivist politics of the left.

Postmodern philosophical ideas that have permeated all aspects and levels of western culture. Looking back, it is hard to know when this nonsense became so egregious, but I first began to notice it in the early 90's; and when my daughter started school, I became mildly concerned because it already seemed to be established and entrenched in the elementary school curriculum.

In order to have achieved that coup, these ideas must have been around for at least a generation; and absorbed by key people who would later be in positions of educational, artistic and political power and able to multiply the vector of its transmission and inculcation into a new generation.

Ideas are a powerful force in the world. Those who doubt that statement have never studied philosophy and the history of ideas.

Bad ideas are like a potent stench that try as you might with perfumes and deodorizers, you cannot eliminate until you finally break down and take out the trash. Of course, humans can function somewhat with the pervasive smell; but the only reason they survive when bad ideas are driving their actions is because the idea(s) are never applied consistently. If they were to apply the ideas consistently, then they would simply be overcome from the toxic fumes.

How can such ideas thrive? It is relatively easy when you "deconstruct" the Western philosophical tradition and introduce moral relativity; contradictory discourses, deceptive rhetoric; and a pervasive contempt for both reason and truth. The latter attitude, in particular, allows one to develop an amazing and mind-boggling talent for being able to ignore objective reality under any circumstance, expecially when said reality punctures your ideological bubble.

These college students are the children of postmodernism; steeped in the nihilism of our day; marinated in its metaphysics and epistemology. They go to college to learn to think and instead learn how not to. They believe in nothing and stand for nothing. They are taught to mindlessly mouth the same old tired and worn self-serving platitudes of a defunct and dangerous world view. They will become the minions of the left.

Since they do not know how to sift fact from opinion, they can be easily manipulated by postmodern rhetoric.

Since they cannot objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event; they will be easily fooled by superficial appearances and not persist in getting to the truth of a situation. They will believe anything, because they believe nothing. (Here is a counter example of a leftist (via DA TECH GUY) who is beginning to question the rhetoric; who remains in possession of her rational faculty. She should beware, because, by questioning the rhetoric, she is well on her way to becoming rational and rejecting the entire leftist world view--she just doesn't know it yet).

Stephen Hicks writes (pp 195-7)about Jacques Derrida , a well-known postmodern thinker and the creator of "deconstruction"--a literary and philosophical process eagerly taken up by the dead-enders of communism and socialism--which aims to undermine and obliterate the whole of Western philosophical tradition that is the foundation of reason, truth and objective reality:

Derrida too recognizes the kind of world that psotmodernism is bring about and declares his intention not to be among those who let their queasiness get the beter of them. Postmodernists, he writes are those who do not

turn thier eyes away when faced by the as et unnamable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in the offng, only under the species of the non species, in the formless, mute, infant and terrifying form of monstrosity.

The bringing forth of monsters is one poetmodern view of the creative process, one that heralds the end of mankind....

Postmodern thinkers inherit n intellectual trdition that has seen the defeat of all of its major hopes. The Counter-Enlightenment was from the beginning suspicious of the Enlightenment's naturalism, its reason, its optimistic view of human potential, its individualism in ethics and politics, and its science and technology. For those opposed to the Enlightenment, the modern world has offered no comfort. The advocates of the Enlightenment said that science was to be the replcement for religion, but science has offered the specters of entropy and relativity. Science was to be the glory of mankind, but it has taught us that man evolved, red in tooth and claw, from the ooze. Science was to make the world a technological paradise, but it has generated nuclear bombs and super-bacilli. And the confidence in the power of reason that underlies it all has, from the postmodernists' perspective, been revealed to be a fraud. The thought of nuclear weapons in the clutches of an irrational, grasping animal is frighteing.

While the neo-Enlightenment thinkers have come to terms with the modern world, from the postmodern perspective the universe has been metaphysically and epistemologically shattered. We cannot turn to God or to nature; and we cannot trust reason or mankind.

But there was always socialism. As bad as the philosphical universe became in metaphysics, epistemology , and the study of human nature, there was still the vision of an ethical and political order that would transcend everything and create the beautiful collectivist society.

Yes, there is always the "perfection" of socialism in the back of the minds of the leftists today; as they slowly but surely push this country toward that waking dream nightmare. And they have a new generation of mindless minions who will vote for a smooth talking, talented non-entity and make him an American Idol. An idol to be worshipped.

In a piece titled "Socialism is Back" Kevin Williamson writes (and please take the time to read the entire essay or to buy Williamson's book):

The aim of public education is, and has always been, to make members of the public more standardized and thus better suited for incorporation into The Plan. It is unsurprising that socialists have taken up the cause with verve. President Obama, speaking to an audience of schoolchildren, described in some detail how he expects the schools to produce students who will serve the needs of the state; unsurprisingly, he cast the situation in terms of his own agenda, emphasizing health care, racial discrimination, and job creation:

What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills, and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Obama here is describing a right of eminent domain over the lives of American children, without putting it quite in those words. Obama may be a radical of some sort, but that speech could have been given as easily by George W. Bush or Mitt Romney, and its assumptions would have been precisely the same: The public provision of educational services is understood today, and has long been understood, as a component of national economic planning. (Just don’t ask whether it works!)

Unfortunately, it works to bring forth the next generation of socialist 'monsters' whose lack of critical thinking skills and ability to be swayed by irrational, but slick political rhetoric will assure that they are appropriately worshipful of the Central Plan and follow the will of the Planners.