Self-destruction: An Overview

From The Atlantic.  This article appears in the July 2019 print edition with the headline “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning.”

I hope people will find the bits I have quoted from this article sufficiently intriguing and provoking to go to the source and read it in its entirety.   It is well worth the time for both right and left wingers.   

Unlike the author of this article, I loved 1984 much more than Brave New World from the beginning.  I have always realized that the answer to the question, “How did he know?” lies in an error in the question itself. It’s not how did he know what would happen in politics, it’s how did he know the nature of human beings.   There is so much that is so very obvious if you step outside of your culture and your society for even a moment or two. But doing so is profoundly difficult for the vast majority of people.  >“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell wrote.<

Today it doesn’t take much to make either the right or the left surrender their freedom and even their intelligence.  Rationality is not a valued commodity under any circumstances and in today’s fetid atmosphere of passions it has almost entirely vanished from public discourse. >Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.<

>Orwell didn’t foresee “that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.”<

While the right wing’s abandonment of sanity is based almost entirely on fear and the resultant rage and so is easy to understand, the left wing’s movement in this direction is rooted in the desire for a perfect utopian justice. >Progressive doublethink—which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind—creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice—a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.

For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance—even its subject matter—is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value.<

The articles author points out that today >...intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police<

Finally,  I must agree with his conclusion that >Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. ...Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.

Again, I suggest you read the original article, Conservative or Liberal, it is well worth your time.  As for me, to quote an old and rather silly parody song about the days of the Troubles in Ireland, “Me, being strictly neutral, I bashed everyone in sight.”

Note: my apologies for the poor proofreading. My health is really not good at the moment and I’m just not up to the effort.

Sauce For The Goose...

In response to an article in which liberals defended their mildly violent protest in which they prevented a Trump supporter from speaking at their university lead me to respond:
The problem with freedom of speech is that it means freedom of speech for the people whose speech you despise. I support freedom of speech, not its suppression.

My friend M toughtfully responded:
Me too Jim. But this is indeed a tough call... and I believe it's the second time he's cancelled a speech because of protestors; if not him it was someone like him. So who's in the right? He had the right of free speech, but so did the protestors...
So trump threatens to pull federal funding from the school?! It certainly was not the school's fault! trump is all powerful, or so he thinks...

I agreed with her point, but added:
Let me go to extreme focus, meaning let's look at it much more extreme but somewhat similar case so as to throw light on this one. It is reported that at one point after a meeting with "Bomber" Harris, who planned the terror bombings of German cities in retaliation for similar attacks by the Nazis, Churchill asked him, "Are we beasts?"

My answer is, yes, you were beasts. It was wrong for the Nazis to do it and it was wrong for us to do it.

There was actually a plan pushed by some in Washington that after World War II Germans be limited to a smaller number of calories than required for human health. The point being that half starved Germans can't start another world war. Decency ruled the day, so the Germans are among our best allies today. The horrific war crime committed by the French and British after World War I in which they deliberately continued to starve Germans after the Armistice is little known now, but was one of the most important bases for the rise of Hitler and the start of World War II.

We are in not in a fake culture war but a real war for fact, science, reality, and common decency. I don't want us to use that as an excuse to abandon the moral high ground.

Look At The Funny Man, Mama!

The original post was of a smirking man holding up a sign which said "I'd rather be a conservative nut job than a liberal with no job and no nuts."

ME: Mindless hate, fact free hate.

HH: (Apparently HH miss posted this thinking that the meme he was responding to said something about Washington.)

Washington's quote is a bit out of context... here is the actual quote (per the best information I have been able to find)

A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a Uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for military supplies.

The proper establishment of the Troops which may be deemed indispensible, will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangements which may be made respecting it, it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the Officers and Soldiers with a due regard to economy.

HH: Jim... what the hell are you babbling about? Has your bigotry and leftist indoctrination clouded your mind? Have you become a "tolerant liberal"?

(He added a picture showing a screaming, shrieking maniac attacking racists and etc. Apparently conservatives believe that liberals are not really tolerant because they don't tolerate racists. I guess liberals are also supposed to tolerate murderers. Conservatives don't understand that tolerance is not about accepting cruel or savage acts, tolerance is about tolerating difference and dissent.)

ME: I'm not a liberal. I'm a pragmatist. Your bizarre assumption that liberals have no jobs and manly men are conservatives is clearly that hate mongering, so I said so.
Look in the mirror and see the hate staring back at you.

HH: OK Jim... you have shown yourself to be an abject idiot... now where is that block button!

ME: You're so afraid of me you have to block me? So typical, so sad.

You see, we aren't angry at you. You aren't powerful or important enough for anger, much less hate. You are an endangered species, well on the way to extinction.

You think we get together and rage at you. We don't. We get together and we do one of two things, or sometimes both. We either laugh at you or we express our deep pity of you. Once you ruled the world. Now you're an endangered species. You are one small minority of a shrinking minority. I find it very sad, but I have to admit you are also pretty funny.

ME: PS, Obviously you think you responded to a meme referring to Washington. But if you look at the top of this set of posts you'll see that Washington is not mentioned. There's a man holding up a sign. Read what the sign says. Then you'll understand what I said.

NOTE: I wonder if HH ever did look up and see what he was actually responding to?

UPDATE:

S commented on my blog post: Jeez!!! I am sorry you had to put up with that idiot's rants. Glad you didn't back down. He was a classic bully. If you don't back down, after a while a bully will simply slink off to hide under the rock from whence he slithered out.

ME: Honestly, I feel a little bit guilty. If he just had not jumped on me, I would've pointed out that he had misposted under the wrong meme. It's funny because it could've happened to anybody. But, of course he's one of those conservatives who believe everyone who opposes him must be a liberal -- liberal meaning two things 1. everybody he disagrees with and 2. crazy evil satanic monsters from…I don't know…The Black Lagoon?
Still, he was such an easy target.

A La Carte

Been a busy couple of days, So I'm lumping together some of my Facebook responses to make a single post here.

In response to a left-wing group posting the video snippet that declared that Sean Hannity had raged about those Republicans who refuse to support Trump, I responded:

Point 1: that's the calmest rage I've ever heard. Foolish exaggeration is the Republicans' territory. Democrats please don't wander into that room or I will be compelled to start jumping on you with both feet just like I do on the Republicans.

Point 2: Sean Hannity is not upset that people refuse to blindly follow Trump. Sean Hannity is upset because he just learned that if you pander you must go along with whatever the crowd commands. You don't get to lead. Panderer and leader are mutually exclusive concepts. Sean Hannity is upset that Sean Hannity can't issue orders and be obeyed. He thought he was making public opinion. He just realized that he's been caught in a riptide.

He don't like that.

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in response to a post taking apart the arguments of gun worshiper John R. Lott, Jr.
(author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws), I posted:

A careful analysis of the easily falsifiable claims of one of the leading gun advocates in this nation. Everyone should read it. Conservatives and Republicans won't. This is because this is a set of facts which contradict their emotionally satisfying superstitious belief system. Those who advocate thoughtful gun control should read it because then they will know how to answer those who refuse to let facts interfere with their emotionally satisfying superstitious belief system.

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In support of my friend, Charles in his dialogue with a conservative extremist after that individual condemned him for joining Alice in Wonderland, I posted:

I find it a delightful irony that those most divorced from reality and most insistent upon living in an alternate universe are those who most often accuse realists of being deluded.
Ask any UFO nut. He will decry your incredible stupidity and foolishness for not realizing that the aliens have been running the earth for centuries perhaps even millennia.
Hollow earth? Bigfoots? (Bigfeets? Bigfeet?). Hillary Clinton as super villain mass murderer par excellence?
What a fool you are, if you ignore the obvious facts!
I repeat an earlier post I made today:

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
Charles Bukowski

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3768070/The-equation-transform-physics-Researchers-say-ER-EPR-quantum-mechanics-fits-theory-general-relativity.html

Two points: First, from what I read here there does seem to be a difference between a wormhole and quantum entanglement. Both ignore or at least dispense with the space part of the continuum. OK. But quantum entanglement does not permit one particle to change instantaneously in the future or in the past in response to a change made to its partner particle in the present (unless that explains the spooky action at a distance). Wormholes are time machines as much as they are transportation machines. That would seem to be a profound difference between a wormhole and quantum entanglement.

Second, I'm not sure why The author included the video "explanation" of the theory by the theorist. Undoubtedly it makes things crystal-clear to those who understand advanced mathematics. Since I have trouble with high school level geometry and algebra, he might as well have been speaking Mandarin or perhaps even Sanskrit. I expect anyone who viewed the article would be unlikely to be familiar with such advanced mathematics and so I wonder why it was included.

Which brings me to my own question regarding spooky action at a distance. Bobby, I assume you will be seeking a position at a University now that you have your PhD. I also assume you will make friends with everyone in sight as you usually do. If one of those people deals with quantum theory maybe you could ask him a question that's been bothering me. If we have multiple dimensions in excess of the four currently known and which are curled up into a very tiny state, is it not possible that the information which seemingly travels faster than light in a quantum entanglement situation is in fact traveling through one or more of those dimensions? Information traveling at the speed of light across such a tiny dimension would seem instantaneously transmitted

I assume this will result in an amused chuckle from said quantum physicist. That's OK. I don't deny my ignorance of quantum physics. I would just like to know why I'm wrong.

A Sea Change

Washington Journal's opening headline today read:
Speaker Ryan: "Don't lose faith in government".

This is a statement which would have been utterly unthinkable and considered to be a death sentence for the political career of any Republican just a few weeks ago. CSPAN Twitterers and callers were shocked that he dared to say such a thing, many noting it seemed unbelievable.

You all know I was convinced that Ronald Reagan was one of the worst presidents in American history and how happy I was when Bill Clinton, a liberal Democrat, became his replacement (although I despised Clinton, It seemed that he had to be better than Reagan). You also know how bitterly upset I was when one of the first things Mr. Clinton said was that, "The era of big government is over."

It was a capitulation. It made it clear that from now on Democrats would act like conservative Republicans. It was a declaration of their complete cowardice. It was the equivalent of the Emperor of Japan declaring to his people that, "We must now endure the unendurable." Like Clinton and Ryan the Emperor lacked the courage to simply say the truth and had to wrap it up in obscure phraseology. He didn't come out and say "Hey guys, guess what? For the first time in 2000 years, Japan lost! See, it turns out that we are not the island chosen by the gods to gloriously rule the world, we're the island that just got the crap beat out of it by the gaijin , the blue-eyed, hairy stinky, racially inferior barbarians. I hope you're not mad about all that war stuff I got you into."

From the time Clinton crumbled, Democrats were terrified to do anything except pretend to be conservative Republicans. It was disgusting the way they pandered to their new masters. And then Barack Obama won the presidency. And he said in effect, "The Reagan revolution is over!", because he said the government wasn't automatically bad. He said the government of the people, by the people, and for the people was good as long as it met the needs of those people and served them well.

Republicans of course kept right on chanting "Four legs good; two legs bad!" No wait. Wrong chant. They chanted about how government was automatically bad and smaller government was automatically good.

So did the terrified and cringing Democrats. It was so bad they even tried to distance themselves from the successful president of the United States during elections. Those Democrats often found themselves losing those elections. The few Democrats with the courage to stand up for and stand with Obama had a better chance at winning. The Reagan revolution was finally weakening.

Now that the GOP has so successfully terrified a large segment of the American populace, split America into old white men against everybody else, made so many Americans believe that feelings of terror and rage were much more real than mere facts or reality itself, even the Republican leaders are realizing just how much they've damaged this country.

I repeat, Speaker Ryan today declared the foulest and filthiest possible Republican blasphemy. He declared that we must restore trust in government.

Just as Bill Clinton's declaration removed the spines of his fellow Democrats, Mr. Ryan's declaration is an admission of failure. He even criticized identity politics, among other issues. Identity politics is all the Republican Party has offered since Ronald Reagan was running for president by opposing welfare queens.

The Republican Party has destroyed itself just as the Democratic Party destroyed itself when Democrats gave up on what they believed and began to pander to the new masters in Washington. Pail Ryan's declaration sounds much like something a liberal Democrat would have said. It marks the recognition among the Republican leadership that they have destroyed not only this country, but their own party.

The coffin of the Reagan revolution has been nailed shut. It's now on display for mourners to parade by and express their sadness over the death of their beautiful conservative dreams.

The question now is whether the Republican Party can reform itself as the Democrats managed to do (although it took them decades) or whether the party will go the way of the Whigs and the Know Nothings.

There's actually a bigger question. How long will it take us to repair the damage the GOP has already done to America and how much more damage can they do before they recognize that zombie Reagan is no longer a good leader for the party?

I don't expect the fanatic Republicans become as submissive as the Democrats did. They will not go quietly into that good night. Nevertheless, even their own leadership can now see the wreckage Republicans have made of their home states (Kansas is a good example). Reality has this fact about it. You don't have to believe in it, but it's still there and it will deal with you, even if you refuse to deal with it.

The Source Of The Nile

On Facebook, I posted a pic indicating the need to check facts before reposting.  Sorry, I can't figure out how to paste it here.

A friend reponded with the insightful query, why should my sources be trusted and his not?  I responded:

My friend, and you are my friend, you have a good heart and I need you to keep me informed of other opinions.  But when I repost, I first check multiple sources, including nonpartisan.  Don't get upset, but your sources are all partisan, right wing party organs which have been caught in factual errors again and again.  From my point of view, you are trusting the right wing equivalent of Pravda and the Daily Worker.  When a left wing source says something, I check it with nonpartisan sources. I don't trust liberals any more than those of conservatives, I only repost their claims when they are confirmed.

You might be surprised to learn that my liberal friends sometimes are upset by my stances.  Sometimes I am opposed to left wing democratic positions.  I am apalled, for example at the silliness of many university leaders in pandering to the childish urge to make the world look pretty.  We have a right to free speech, not to prettiness. I oppose hate crime legislation.  While some feminists are reasonable, some are hate mongering bigots. I have dear friends who are tolerant atheists, but I can't stand arrogant extremist New Atheists.  I could go on, but honestly, I am neither consistently liberal or conservative.  I try to use facts to make a fair judgement in each case.  

I admit to being an old conservative, insofar as I am a conservative.  I did, and still do, like Ike.  The new conservatives strike me as similar to the New Atheists.  Smug, self satisfied, and uninterested in facts.

In short, the liberal organizations who generate the posts I repost are not my source. I fact check them because I don't trust them to be accurate and only repost what is confirmed, the rest I ignore.

Let me end by noting that lately I have seen a number of individuals posting demands that either the reader agree with them or defriend them.  This appalls me.  You and I disagree and we discuss those disagreements.  You keep me thinking and make me defend my positions with thoughtfulness and care.  This is a good thing.  Keep the dialogue flowing.  Keep talking.  Shutting someone up by shutting them out just makes you isolated and rigid.  Above all, let us remain friends.

Tinkering With Rights And Authority

I sharply disagree with this editorial. The Tinker decision, in which --...the Supreme Court proclaimed that schoolchildren don't “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”-- is a poor one.  Schools (k-12) are dedicated to education. While discussions of current events are critical to fulfilling that function, political protest can be profoundly disruptive.  The learning environment requires  mutual effort and cooperative interactions, while protest is defined as disruptive and conflict oriented.

Furthermore, the authority of the school is undermined by the Tinker decision.  If we insist that free speech rights can not be limited for students, how can the school limit vulgarity or defiance?  Why can a student not wear pornographic images?  Why must a student be silent while the teacher lectures?

Of course students do not lose their rights at the classroom door, but the nature of the educational experience does limit those rights under the special circumstance of attending classes.

The issue of the classic concept of schools acting in loco parentis, that is as a parent in the absence of the actual parents, has been deeply eroded, but surely some level of authority must exist if schools are to function.

Court ruling shows hazy high school freedom
http://lat.ms/1Dnd8Wg

A Pox On Both Their Tweets

In response to the hysteria over the movie American Sniper:

Sorry it took me so long to respond. But I think a response on this particular debate is essential. Both sides have chosen extreme positions presenting a typical forced choice-false dichotomy situation. The truth lies between the two extremist positions.

What did Michael Moore actually tweet? Here are the quotes: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes, and invaders r worse."  And later, "What would Jesus do? Oh, I know what he would do – hide on top of the roof and shoot people in the back!"

While fully supporting Mr. Moore's right to say whatever he wants, I have a right to respond.  My response is:  My uncle killed by a submarine in World War II. Submariners are cowards. Or, my uncle killed by artillery in World War II. Artillerymen are cowards. Or my uncle killed by bomb in World War II. Bombardiers are cowards.  

Exactly the same logic applies.  Each one of these individuals killed from a distance without being directly open to return fire from the individual killed. Does Mr. Moore suggest that all these men are cowards? What about men who fire a missile? What about men who plant a landmine and are long gone by the time it explodes? Tankers who fire from an armored vehicle?

I don't like Michael Moore. I haven't liked Michael Moore ever since I first heard of him. He reminds me of a liberal, although admittedly quite a bit milder, Rush Limbaugh. My opinion of him has not improved in this current debate.

Soldiers do their duty. Sometimes that duty is ugly, cruel, and brutal.  The justification for such actions is that they are done to protect our country, and our loved ones at home, from the forces of evil. War is an evil which is sometimes the lesser of two evils. As long as we do need to go to war, war will be ugly. 

Yes, it would be nice if we would all be so perfectly Christian we would never need to go to war.  I am certain Jesus would refuse to go to war. Does Mr. Moore suggest that we should never go to war even if attacked as we were in World War II? I doubt it.  His uncle certainly went to war, even though that's not what Jesus would do.

Moore is is just as much an emotionalist as are his Republican opponents. Facts don't matter. Only what feels right to them in their guts is correct.  

I must add that Mr. Eastwood pointed out that a movie about how soldiers suffer when they come home and how their families suffer from the horrors of war can't really be called a movie that glorifies war.  Mr. Eastwood's political opinions are childishly naïve, but I have to agree with him on this one. By the way, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't have an opinion about it. I do have an opinion about extremists who take a movie and turn it into a huge sociopolitical issue.

I don't like them.

A Terrorist Is A Terrorist, For A' That

I thought that this response which I made an old friend's musings about where all these vigilantes are coming from was worth posting on my blog.

When the left went crazy in the 60s and 70s with bank bombings and attempted assassinations, Democratic officials condemned them. I can't recall a single elected official supporting any of the left-wing terror of the time. When the right wing nut cases started exploding, especially after the election of Pres. Obama, the right wing embraced them. Numerous elected officials, including congressmen, currently praise the crazies. That's why the left wing crazies died out pretty quickly and the right wing crazies just seem to keep on getting stronger and stronger.

Perhaps even more significant is the response of the media. The media uniformly and universally condemned left-wing terrorism back in those decades. Fox News and many other right-wing party organ, propaganda machines regularly praise and encourage this type of vigilante behavior. There is a causative relationship.

Do I Know You?

A long delayed response from Facebook to a friend who was concerned about a rather sharp remark I made. It was aimed at the person she was quoting, not at her, and I've made that clear. However,  the question still needs answering, just exactly where do I stand?

 Where to start? Well, as I have so so many times, I despise liberals and conservatives both. I refuse to consider myself a liberal. A progressive, yes, but not a liberal.  

Today in many school districts it is so horrible a violation of school rules for a boy to make a gun shape out of his finger that the child is likely to be  suspended or even expelled. In some cases it is apparently against the law because police have been called into the "incident".  This attitude is a direct gift from the liberals to all of America. Criminalizing little boys for acting like normal healthy little boys is the product of diseased minds.  America's war on children is a liberal war on children.  I have no doubt of that.

On the other hand, the conservatives have declared war on just about everyone and everything except the narrow, tiny minority who completely agree with them.

In the 60s and 70s I put most of my effort into condemning the liberal extremists. The Students for a Democratic Society, the protesters who  burned American flags and praised Ho Chi Minh, and all their supporters. I was disgusted by every symbol of Che Guevara I ever saw. Back before my prodigal daughter decided to shun me, I was driving with her and saw Che's face painted on the building. I expressed my disgust. Her response was, "Who?"  That pleased me. This once ubiquitous symbol of left-wing insanity wasn't even recognized by the next generation. That was years ago. His popularity has continued its resurgent rise. That's sad. The only bad thing about Che's death is that it came years too late to save many of his victims.

If you are interested, my political attitude is well expressed by my blog post: http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/2014/03/heil-stalin-aka-vodka-vs-bourbon.html.

As far as Obamacare or the ACA, it's just about the worst imaginable law possible. It has only one good thing going for it -- It is a big improvement over the way things were before it was passed. That is not to say is a good law. Is a rotten, bad law. But again, it's better than what we had before it passed.  This nation can do much better. We can join every other industrialized, every other wealthy, every other civilized nation, in the world and pass a proper single-payer system. We are the only wealthy, powerful, industrialized, nation that has not done so.

I think of the ACA in terms like this: if a starving man is granted access to all the garbage cans in town, his condition has improved very much. It is certainly better that he has access to all that fresh, not yet rotten garbage, than if he died of starvation. On the other hand, it really could be a lot better than that. Couldn't it?

And  my reference?  Let's just say that while I considerate it harsh, but accurate, I am certain that there are probably millions who, if they heard it, would say it was inflammatory.  To put it another way, this particular man is one of what ever brassy Ann Coulter refers to as "our blacks".

He is a brilliant and gifted neurosurgeon...well, here's a link that expresses my feelings: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/16/ben-carson-was-a-role-model-for-black-teens-until-he-sold-out-to-the-right.html

For anyone who happens to read this and has encountered my ideas before you will find a lot of repetition contained in this statement. But that's because while I may have said it to you, I haven't said them to everyone.

Anyone interested my positions can take a look at:  http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com.  Just use the taglines philosophy and politics to get my views in those areas.

So I'm accustomed to liberals considering me a conservative and conservatives considering me a liberal. But I am neither. And I never will be. Both are ideologies. Both require you to have certain shared convictions. If I share convictions with you, is because we happen to agree, not because I know what I'm supposed to believe.  I work very hard to look at the facts. I believe that reality is real. I believe that only a fool refuses to face the facts.  Over the years I've had to give up many a cherished position; positions that were emotionally deeply satisfying to me, but which conflicted with reality. It hurt. But I was true to my beliefs and my philosophy. That was more than adequate compensation for what I lost.

People think I'm crazy when I say that you can be a progressive and be a liberal, or be a progressive and be a moderate, or even be a progressive and be a conservative.  A conservative progressive is someone who believes we should continue moving forward not go back into the past. They just want to go carefully and thoughtfully forward and make sure that what we are doing is the right thing. One example of a person I would regard as a conservative progressive is Pres. Eisenhower.

The reason people are shocked by this concept is that ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has been driving everyone out of the party who did not agree with their rigid doctrinal declarations. To be a conservative was not sufficient. You had to be a particular kind of extremist conservative, otherwise you were declared a RINO and expelled from the party.  This is made Republican Party more and more a religious organization and less and less a purely political one.

This from the party that considers the left to be "politically correct"!

So that's a summation of who I am. You can't assume anything about where I stand on a position unless you have a good grip on the facts. You can be fairly certain that wherever they lead, I will be there. Other than that? I can only repeat that when I navigate I navigate with the stars which are actually there in the sky. I consider one of the most awful statements the entire history of philosophy to be the comment made by Plato, "If we are to discuss the cosmos we must not look at the stars."

PS,

I can't even begin to get into religion. It's enough to say that I am a deeply religious, but--surprise surprise -- a very independent thinker who prefers my God like I prefer my whiskey, straight.

Heil, Stalin! Aka, Vodka vs Bourbon

Watching C-SPAN's book TV, as I do every weekend, I found an interesting presentation by a man named Ronald Radosh. I had never heard of him before, but found his presentation amusing and interesting. He was talking about his new book, "Commie". His presentation, in a bright and witty fashion, demolished the bizarre, idiotic and even insane pretensions of the radical left. I knew as I listened to him that I would need to report on this in my blog because he so deeply reflects why I have nothing but contempt for extreme liberals and will not call myself even a moderate liberal.

I found little or nothing to which I could object in regard to any of the points he made, in fact I find them exactly in agreement with the points I make about the radical left. However, being a skeptic born, I found myself wondering if, since he was presenting himself as a reformed addict, he was actually reformed, or if he had instead, as I so greatly feared, merely substituted an equally poisonous, equally mindless, equally bigoted, right-wing extremism.

It didn't take long during the question-and-answer period to determine that he had done exactly that. Mister Radosh, who is so proud of having finally freed himself from the poisonous ideology of extreme left-wing liberalism in which he was raised, has merely substituted the almost identical poisonous ideology of extreme right-wing conservatism.

To put it succinctly, he is so incredibly proud that he is now a reformed vodka drinking alcoholic, but somehow misses the fact that all he has accomplished is to change into an active bourbon drinking alcoholic.

In other words, he has only exchanged one addiction for another. He is just as mindless, just as bigoted, just as determined to refuse to face any facts or realities which contradict him as he ever was. There really is no difference in his condition. He remains as sick as ever. He is the same person he always was. He is a sad, unfortunate, and helpless man. What he is helpless to do is to think clearly. What he is helpless to resist is his own mindless, extremist way of thinking. He is a slave to his own hysterical emotions. He poisons his own intellect.

To use a different analogy, let us go to extreme focus. There was a time in European and American history when people were presented with a forced choice/false dichotomy. Either you were a Nazi because you were anti-Stalinist or you were a Stalinist because you were anti-Nazi. Obviously, there was actually a huge middle ground between these two extremes, but many refused to see it. It has been noted many times by historians there is little difference between a Stalinist and a Nazi in terms of how they treat their citizens or run their countries. The only difference is in the ideologies which provide the justification for their brutal, extremist actions.

It is so sad to see what is clearly a brilliant mind poisoned by ideology. However, I also find this to be quite normal. We find ultra liberals who say they have freed themselves from ultra conservatism as often as vice versa. The real problem never lay in the ideology which this person once believed was so true. The flaw lay in the fact that they were always what Hoffer referred to as True Believers. That is, deeply flawed personality types that are incapable of facing reality and prefer to live in their warped dystopian fantasies.

Perhaps Hoffer should have referred to them as true followers. Although many of them have the intellectual capacity to lead, all too often they lack the emotional security and confidence which is required to understand and think independently. They prefer to surround themselves with the mass of their fellow apes in the troop. Let someone else be the leader. They are only content to follow, securely surrounded by their fellow travelers.