One of the most fascinating conceits of our ruling powerful elites — be they in entertainment, politics, governance, jurisprudence or news reporting — is the often repeated assertion of being some kind of underdog “speaking truth to power.” This comes with the concomitant illusion that anyone opposing them is paid by powerful interests.
Never mind that the ones making the accusation are usually in positions of power and receive recognition all out of proportion to their achievements, (no, really, Mr. Obama failed to deliver his first book, so they contracted for a second with an exponentially bigger advance. When he delivered an auto-biography instead of a book on race relations, it was taken and lionized. I challenge any writer/personage not of the establishment to replicate this feat.) Never mind that the dissenting voices often have to come out in less respected and far less rewarding channels, it is against those of us who speak the actual truth against those who yield actual power that the finger of mercenary interest is pointed.
To defend this absurd position, they descend to ever more recherché and counterfactual reasons as to why those who get little reward and no respect are actually the ones in power. Thus accusations of “White Privilege” are leveled against people who grew up in awful circumstances and made their own way, against people who are not in fact treated with any kind of deference and in fact against people who are not in point of fact white. And meanwhile those who side with them are considered to be “authentic” whatever the supposedly oppressed minority is.
For instance, take Mister Obama. I don’t deny that he has the outward appearance of a minority that was very mistreated historically. However, in his particular case, he is not the descendent of slaves but the descendant of slave dealers on his father’s side, and slave owners on his mother’s. Furthermore, for all the clamoring about his coming from nothing, he was raised in privileged circumstances, first in Indonesia, by his mother’s businessman second husband and then in comfort by his grandparents in Hawaii where he attended an exclusive private school and from where, despite his lackluster academic performance, he was wafted to the best schools in the land, likely through the means of connection and influence. (This like everything else about Mister Obama is a closely guarded secret, but it is almost impossible that he entered Columbia or Harvard on academic performance. Yes, it is barely credible that after high school he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and managed to work himself into a good GPA. However, having seen the man in action for close on to six years, I am morally sure if that were the case, his GPA, if not the substance of his courses, would already have been leaked and brandished about as supreme evidence of his genius. Since it – nor any IQ test result – has not been waved like a flag of triumph by his supporters in the establishment, it must be assumed that, like the performance we’ve seen from him since, it is at best lackluster and at worst disastrous.)
However, he’s considered to be underprivileged on the mere fact that he can tan and that his undertone is a little darker than younger son’s when he hasn’t been out in the sun for a long time.
In the same way, in our own field of science fiction, several people are lionized on the claim of being underprivileged and “excluded”. Mind you, none of them have been excluded in their lifetimes, and in fact maybe one of their grandparents was once addressed rudely. (Maybe, since they’re all a little younger than I. Depending on when their grandparents reproduced.) So, despite the fact that they’re all occupying academic positions for which we have seen no evidence of intellectual prowess, and the fact that the establishment in the field welcomed them with open arms and gave them fawning and attention all out of proportion with achievement, they are considered “victims” and run around twitter (which seems overripe for an application of Idiot be Gone) screaming of the “micro aggressions” performed against them, and telling everyone who opposes them that they should check their “privilege.”
This insanity, something that would make anyone from the outside laugh like an hyena (trust me, I came from the outside and the situation seemed like something out of a crazy fairytale to me) can only perpetuate itself by continuing claims of privilege where none exists and of victimhood applying to those in charge of the establishment. This is why the claims have grown increasingly more divorced from reality, like the screams addressed to Larry and I that we want to keep science fiction white and male (which would be a feat for both of us, unless we intend to get skin bleaching and in my case a rather more intimate operation) or that women didn’t work in the field or get any recognition before our present enlightened times, or that, in FACT none of them are safe at conventions where they might run into people who are paler than they are or – gasp – men with actual penises and all. It also accounts for their insane attacks of gamers because the gamers want to play games “for fun” leading them to the extreme ludicrous claim that there’s something wrong with escapism in entertainment. And we won’t even talk about shirtstorm, where the establishment thought it prudent and in fact eminently necessary to attack a man who, after years of work, landed on a comet, for wearing a cheesy, retro-sf t-shirt while talking about it.
This buffoonery which repels the general public when the general public sees it, is all they have.
And the reason they feel forced to keep up the pretense of being downtrodden and hard done by while basking in all the privilege and material rewards of elites everywhere is that they are a theocracy and the faith they used to climb to power is Marxism, with its extolling of the downtrodden and later (when the downtrodden of the west failed to rise and instead reaped the benefits of capitalism and moved to the middle class) the interesting “other” originating in third world nations. These later are held to be possessors of magical powers which render them capable of seeing with blinding clarity everything that is wrong in our society, capable of creating art that is better than anything we can do, and – very importantly – somehow still in need of the help of our elites to rise to any position of prominence. Which view is in fact racist and the powers attributed to these “minorities” – most often majorities in their own countries – nothing short of the ability that African Americans used to be believed to be born with of dancing or performing well in sports. Both of these are judging people by one broad, racial characteristic, and not as individuals. And let’s not forget the “can’t rise without us” (which is where all the magnified “micro aggressions” and imaginary privilege come from. They need to justify to themselves as well as others why people who, by virtue or color or origin are NATURALLY better fail to rise without their “help.”)
In fact, I believe part of Mister Obamas fascination with bringing in as many people as he can from countries where they (generally) tan better than us and grew up in misery, is not out of anything rational but out of this religious belief in the invincibility of the “other.” He’s thus sure that if he gets enough of them in, Marxist revolution will immediately arise and the American populace will be unable to defend themselves, because of the magical power of the “other.”
In fact, not only do those outside of the establishment – who point out the king is naked – go without any reward, they are, if they rise to enough prominence, the object of smear and whisper campaigns, kept out of what would normally accrue on performance alone, and – to make the irony delicious – accused of being sell outs. The tactics used against of us in the field of science fiction, for instance – not that we didn’t know of them, because in fact some of us overhear conversations, or used to take children to cons who understood far more than others thought and who weren’t immediately associated with us – were acknowledged to be the same the creature called Requires Hate used against the establishment (and as an attempt to leverage herself into it) the difference (and the reason the establishment was incensed) being that it was used against them.
Given this why do we persist? No wonder establishment personages think their challengers stupid. Many of us are working three times as hard as any of them and if we just said what they want us to say could be the greatest of them all.
Oh, because some of us are religious and taken to a mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the world will still believe our soul of more worth. And because some of us, though not religious, still have to wake up in the morning and look into their eyes in the mirror. And because some of us – me, all other considerations aside – have a devotion to the truth and refuse to kneel and say that we believe their story and not our lying eyes.
No wonder they do think we’re stupid. It’s something their little mercenary, social climbing hearts could never understand.
But here’s the thing: no elite that is as schizophrenic as they are can long stay in power. Their narrative being so anti-reality requires those seeking to join them to abase themselves to such a degree (like some gang members who have to commit a heinous murder to join) that the only the most craven will do so. These are also, for whatever reason, often not the most competent at whatever the field is.
They’re not often, like Chelsea Clinton, so guppy-stupid that even all the attempts to advance them and hand them “accomplishments” for existing fall flat (as did her career in TV.) But as generations go by and each generation picks the new luminaries based ONLY on loyalty to the party line, the quality of performance and competence keeps going down.
Take New Wave in our field. Its practitioners often held strange views of life, strange enough to repel the hoi polloi and those who bought the bulk of the books, but by and large, I challenge you to read them and not see the craftsmanship and the talent (with a few exceptions, of course.)
However those who came after them were a little less talented and trained. This was the period back in the nineties when I considered myself fortunate for finding writers who weren’t actively off-putting, and could only ever find one or two that I considered to rise above . And the current crop of establishment darlings, particularly the young ones (again with one or two exceptions) are cringingly bad or at the very best cringingly trite (which would be endurable without the encomiums to their Earth shattering originality.) Even the establishment can find no better reason to shower awards on them than the oft-repeated claims of vague discrimination and saying that women are overdue for recognition.
Like any elite that is incompetent at what its supposed to do, this means that they create a crisis that invites their replacement. In science fiction, where I’m concentrating because I know it better, (though arguably parallel processes are taking place in all other fields) they might have tottered on another generation or two, with each selling less, until the advances for first novels were zero and publication meant nothing except to the academics who need publication.
Fortunately Kindle intervened. Because indie publishing came into a vacuum and served underserved readers, it’s blooming against the wilting of traditional publishing.
This, of course, causes the establishment to rail against capitalism and to redouble its claims of “excluded” and “downtrodden” people. (Since they’ve been in charge of publishing since at least the forties, one has to wonder why they excluded and trod down on people, but instead, one is supposed to pretend to be dumb.)
The more pinched they get, the more we’ll hear claims of “speaking truth to power” and challenging “the man” when in fact they have the power and are the man (or more often the womyn, which is the position of power in current society.)
I advise mockery. Pouring mockery on them, and exposing the falsehood and base self-adulation of these people is not only funny, but it makes them writhe like slugs under salt.
And if you don’t feel like mocking, still point out their hypocrisy at every turn.
Expect them to become more shrill and multiply their claims to be “winning” and their deranged certainty that history comes with a directional arrow and that they’re the future.
I don’t recommend feeling pity for them, only because, as Roger L. Simon said “we almost lost our country” – or rather, in this case our civilization – to these buffons.
But they are, nonetheless, worthy of pity. They have nothing save the debasement that bought them their entry into the elite which, in its present eclipse, can give out fewer and fewer rewards, and each of them worth less. In my field, at least, most of them are in their forties. And they’ll have to get up every morning for forty years and look at themselves in the eye and confront the fact they sold their dreams for a mess of pottage.
Turn yours eyes away from them as we pass. The sad thing – for them – is that though history doesn’t have a directional arrow, some things always triumph: capitalism (which is a term for voluntary exchanges between humans and as such – despite attempts to suppress it by every king and satrap) has been going on since we’ve been humans; hard work; talent; a stubborn inability to admit defeat and – that most difficult one to them, because fourth generation leftists lack it as completely as the fairies of legend were said to lack it – creativity.
In the end, we win they lose. Ignore the screams. Shoulder to the wheel. We have work to do.
According To Hoyt 
One aspect of “Speaking Truth To Power” is that they still imagine themselves as Revolutionaries not the Establishment that they actually are (or at least some of them).
Considering the a big and fractured monstrosity their construct of reality is and the human capablity of believing six impossible things before breakfast it is not surprising that these people have deluded themselves into thinking that they are Revolutionaries.
(snark) Poor dears, they were taught from a very early age that terrible suppression is all around them. It would explain the hysteria, they already are working on the margins of reality. (close snark)
Seen on Twitter:
“Michelle tells blacks to eat fried chicken and Obama calls illegals fruit-pickers… which is the party of racism again?”
(snark) These people base their raison d’être on their recognition the plight of and their compassion for the suppressed. They must be better than everyone else who does not agree with them. This may be particularly those who outright disagree, who must be therefore suppressors, but also includes the poor benighted suppressed folks who need their help in consciousness raising. (end snark)
I advise mockery. Pouring mockery on them, and exposing the falsehood and base self-adulation of these people is not only funny, but it makes them writhe like slugs under salt.
Would it be rude of me to take this opportunity to push my latest on Kindle? It is called The Manual of Mockery.
Not rude. Carry on.
C4C &…
Note4Every1: RL got busy. Friends and game watching and went to see Interstellar. AWESOME!!!!
You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.
We’re considering going again Tuesday.
Sarah,
I kind of feel guilty I stirred the pot some then left those threads hanging.
🙂
If you pursue some threads to the dogged end all you end up with is sadly frayed string. If you leave them be they form an enticing fringe. Particularly with all the cat types around here.
(Purrr. Yawn. streatch. oh. Look! There is an idea just hanging loose over here. I what happens if I take a swat at it?)
😉
Yeah, and once you hit the tenth level of threading, it’s almost pointless to try to join in unless you’re already replying by email or the WP Dashboard.
woof woof woof. Leave my string alone you furry menace!
It reminds me that they want to be neo-hippies from the 60’s era. They have an idealized view of it. I was there (as a child) and it was not that fun. My parents moved away from SF because of the influences when I was five. (around 1966-67)
Recently, I watched a show about a child who was actually in the middle of the sixties revolution (about my age) in SF. As soon as he got old enough to take care of himself (about 14, I think) he went the exact opposite of his family’s values (free love, drugs, etc). He actually started his own business. The guy filming the documentary seemed a little disappointed that the boy (man then) hadn’t continued carrying the torch. I was laughing like a hyena.
Remember that the SF culture of the 1960’s enabled MZB, among others, to get away with what they did. And a lot of lives wasted themselves there. To say nothing of the intolerance to diverse ideas.
Yes – my uncle was a smart, bright teenager whose life was broken on SF culture. He changed his life about fifteen plus years ago when he saw the negative impact on his children. One of my favorite uncles btw. (ten years older than I am)
Isn’t there a recent car commercial for Subaru I think that visually portrays the anti-hippie?
Is this the one you’re thinking of?
No I was thinking of the one where grandmother hippie and granddaughter are hugging the tree
I liked that one. I thought that the thing about the tree was that it was where the grandparents met, and thus the romantic spot that the grand-daughter could thank for her existence. And it was funny because she couldn’t remember which tree it was, so they hugged several, and the parent/s was Very Confused.
At the very end you can see a city limits sign. It’s Woodstock NY. Grandma may not know grandpa’s name.
Oh, right. I remember the Woodstock sign. All the hills and trees look *just* like California, though.
(Sort of like watching Little House on the Prairie when you’re from Minnesota.)
I think I asked once “I thought the grass was greener in Minnesota?”
I had the same problem with Rockfish gap and the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia in general whenever I saw The Waltons.
But…but…but!
Woodstock, the festival, was not held in Woodstock NY. It took place in the hamlet of White Lake, in the town of Bethel. It wasn’t even in the same county as Woodstock.
Well, but it was in the same time zone.
Besides, Woodstock was a state of mind.
An insane, deranged, unrealistic, wholly out of contact with reality state of mind.
So you are saying it really wasn’t the right tree.
Oh, I like that one, too. Stuff!
No, actually, seriously… it’s sort of nice to see/hear a positive message. I don’t care so much about the fancy car, or even the big house (my needs are modest and all I can think is when I got around to cleaning it, what a huge job it would be because mess is a “closet space” sort of thing, it expands to fit the available volume.) but just to see a message that it’s okay to work really hard and okay to enjoy what you earn from working really hard? How often is that portrayed?
“Free Love” was a scam that allowed Hippie guys to get laid and pass around girls like party favors without committing to them, all while telling the girls they were being rebels and counter-culture by letting themselves get used.
The same scam is going on now, only with a different name.
One motive force of the feminist movement was the treatment they got from the leftist men. Since they could not admit that they were any worse than other men — nay, being left, they had to be better — they blamed all men.
And yet, the Feminist movement wanted them to be like men, including “Sexual Liberation” which was a brand makeover for “Free Love”, and still meant getting women to put out without commitment.
Free Love is as oxymoronic as Jumbo Shrimp. If it was free of any emotional connection then what you have made is not love.
That is the most brilliant summation of the issue I have ever read.
Hear hear!
Even the left figured that out, fortunately for them. Well, the center-left, anyway. Unfortunately, the Margaret Mead faction seems to have taken charge.
Yeah. Feminists nowadays tend to sound like Humanae Vitae on the topic — though the Pope had the insight to see the issues before they arose.
There’s a movie called Flashback, with Kiefer Sutherland, you might find amusing.
One of the fun aspects was its complete indifference to childhood — parenthood’s a drag, you know.
Yep – children pretty much raised themselves– some of the problems I see today come from that short period.
I remember that senator Boxer spoke about speaking the truth to power. Really Ms Boxer who is power?
Talking to herself again?
If I didn’t know she was already insane (almost to the Pelosi levels of insanity) I’d worry about her
okay
no I wouldn’t.
I just worry about the damage the silly bint can do
Hey, being from Michigan, I’m just glad we aren’t the ones who sent the Senate the greatest twit they have.
Michigan saves its huge twits for running Detroit
(oops, I misspelled Ruining)
btw, I R a displaced Yooper
I formerly considered myself liberal, more from lack of thinking about it at all than anything else, and have lots of friends and relatives who are reflexively liberal. It seems to me that the strongest bit of that identification is that they think of themselves as the good, nice people. Like this article: http://dailysignal.com/2014/11/18/msnbc-shrill-accident-liberals-really-think/
So I think one of the best ways to fight against their worldview is to undermine their sense of being nice. I’ve seen a number of possible humorous retorts mentioned, usually in non-leftist forums, such as “Why do you hate the poor people?” But I haven’t seen those techniques used against the leftists directly very often. I think it might be very effective over time.
<wanders off to compose a library of suitable ripostes…>
I use direct confrontation all the time, since popularity isn’t my goal in life, LOL. It does make people think sometimes….
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/11/22/famous-writers-never-give-birth-to-snakes/
I have adopted over time a view on certain issues that is at decided odds to the ones of my parents and their world of educated northeastern intellectual movers and shakers. They are very rarely, if ever challenged in their positions and are rather provincial, in that they think that everyone who is educated must think as they do. One holiday season The Spouse, The Daughter and I were up visiting them.
When my step-mother’s eldest, who had worked in a woman’s reproductive health center before going to medical school, found out that I had been volunteering as a receptionist at a Pregnancy Care Center. Horrified, she quite loudly accused me of being one of those terrible hateful people who and scream at them going into woman’s health centers. The rest of the room became embarrassingly quite.
I answered, ‘No, I volunteer in order to provide women a choice.’
Like this CACS
Recently the topic of never being challenged in their views came up in convo at home – in the age of information being so widely available. And so did this link, which I am not sure can be viewed in the US.
http://dontbubble.us/
Might be one of the answers why.
http://xkcd.com/
🙂
Being on ubuntu boxes (Lubuntu on the laptop in the garage and Kubuntu here) I got Pale Moon onto this one finally I find my searches being better now, PM doesn’t track like FF or Chrome and DuckDuckGo is default engine.
Might be now. This incident occurred in the late 1980s.
They read the NYTimes, they watched and listened to PBS. They went to parties with people like themselves. They attended lectures with speakers that read and listened to what they read and listened to, which includes that professor over at Penn, you know, Dr. Mann.
I have been noticing a push on topics for bing, google and youtube. I also notice that going to ANY Amazon site will provide me with immediate targeted marketing based on what I looked for, whereas I have to go repeatedly to certain out-of country news sites to get targeted for ads for those countries.
That search engine site does explain just why that is happening
True with my friends. Most of them don’t seem to really think about politics, not in the sense of considering what might the most likely long term results from doing whatever, and they fall for the ‘we are nice, we want to help people’ surface glaze of the left. Usually all the way, it seems. Think of the children, think of the poor, think of the environment… sounds good, doesn’t it, of course they want to consider all that when they vote, and then they, damn it, don’t THINK past that.
And the fact is, most of them never will think past the surface impressions, no matter what. Which is why images are so damn important, and why left has been so successful. They have learned how to play with the surface images, and with feelings, very well.
And because of this things like that shirt, and a few other recent developments, are encouraging. They mar that surface image. Making a man cry on television, on the day which should have been the greatest triumph of his life so far, over something as trivial as a gaudy shirt, yes, there are plenty of true believers who will support that with glee. But the nice people who want to keep on thinking of themselves as nice are less enthusiastic for that kind of shows. Most of them are pretty decent, and if we start to see enough of that kind of bullying they might finally start to drift away from the left. Or at least they will be easier to lure away, given enough incidents as this. Especially since now these stories can be circulated without the help of something like the official press or television.
OT: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/23/in-interviews-finlands-leaders-see-peril-in-standoff-between-russia-and-the-west/
You know you have family in the US, right? (Us.)
Yes, and thank you.
These current events are making me somewhat nervous. If Russia acts logically their behavior right now should be just intimidation and power games, and they will keep it all at the stage of show offs and not escalate. But Russia has the bad habit of not behaving logically. So yes, I am a bit scared right now. As far as I can guess we may be worse off now with our military, and military resources, than we were right before the Winter War, and they probably know that well enough. Our experts say that Russia is trying to scare those of us who are not in the NATO from even thinking about joining, but what if they start to think we are about to anyway? Which doesn’t look likely from this side, but who knows… And the Baltic countries are already in. So it would be safer, presumably, for Russia to attack us than them, if they decide to go for that. Who’d help us? Probably nobody. Just lots of talk, and finger waving, but no real help, like it has been with Ukraine.
And the unstable part of this whole equation: it seems that these current show offs by the Russians are maybe actually shifting the opinions here towards more NATO friendly – the prevailing opinion among voters during my whole life has been that it’s safer not to join, because if we are not a member we will not be seen as a threat by them, and so it will be easier to keep up friendly relations. But now more people are becoming worried about them. Which, who knows, might be making Russia too worried at some point.
Personally, I do think we should have jumped at the opportunity to join when Soviet Union fell apart, and it was a grave mistake that we didn’t. But considering the voter opinions back then, yes, it would not have been possible. Voter opinions molded through years of leftist propaganda in our press and schools and television.
And of course I’m angry. NATO may not be a real guarantee of anything, too much with it seems to depend on American politics, and well, if the leadership over there, when something happened, would happen to be similar to the one you have had during the last years… but it would be better than nothing, which is pretty much what we have now. I don’t exactly have faith in EU with this.
there is a reason the left NEEDS people who are not at all knowledgeable voting in great numbers. The ignorant are all that keeps them in office.
“Why do you hate the poor people?”
Add a version of this:
“I don’t, and I also don’t think we should create a ton more by following leftoid policies”
or reply with a question like they tend to do instead of answer:
Why do you love them so much you feel the need to create more?”
Some time ago I hit upon the tack of, when somebody attacks corporations, especially utilities, observing that such stock investment funds are typically known as “Widows & Orphans” funds because they are often the primary beneficiaries of such investment vehicles. I then demand to know why those criticizing these funds “hate widows and orphans.”
Corporate profit is funding your pension … unless you’re a California public employee, in which case you want to avoid knowing what your unfunded pension liability amounts to.
California’s Grim Pension Stats
Did you see Le Guin’s idiotic quote in apparent support of the traditional publishers? Ideology prevails over reason with these people.
Yeah, I read that interview. I like LeGuin’s stories and respect her as a writer, but I’m afraid that my conclusion there was that maybe she’s not thinking very clearly any more. She’s actually supposed to be an anarchist, I understand, but oddly her positions do end up feeling like they’re more aligned with leftists than the right. I would have thought that anarchists would be anti-leftists, since leftist solutions always seem government based. But what do I know…
Well, anarchists are just lefties for faux rebel types nowadays. During Occupy, they were calling for bigger, more powerful government. I suppose they’ve always been connected to the communists. After all, the last stage of communism is supposed to be when the all-powerful, all-controlling State suddenly gives up its power and everybody lives under perfect communism forever and ever.
And they have the nerve to mock religious people.
Anarchists, like the ones that came to power temporarily in certain areas during the initial phases of the Spanish civil war, were Socialist Anarchists, in that they were attempting to do away with all the elements they considered to be holding the workers from achieving true socialism: eg, private possessions, money, voluntary work and social positions…
To achieve this end they were forced to enact a series of laws and regulations of such intricacy and control, and, since people do not willingly submit to such crushing regulation, such ferocious penalties that really the citizens of these communes would have been better served by defecting to the Nationalist lines, besides the fact that they probably would have been shot out of hand there.
There is supposed to have been the only humorous book written on the Spanish civil war about the Anarchists, that I still have not found, that is supposed to have a section where the Toledo commune determined that to avoid the scourge of personal belongings they would decree nudism for the populace. In Spain. During a hard winter. It is perfectly normal for such people to be completely incapable of understanding reality short of being ground down under the press of reality, and when the wheels start to come off the only solution they can find is to do more of it.
“The Toledo commune determined that to avoid the scourge of personal belongings they would decree nudism for the populace. In Spain. During a hard winter.”
Seems legit.
There is supposed to have been the only humorous book written on the Spanish civil war…
I want to read that book.
The irony of pro-Republic side is to hear Orwell maintaining at one and the same time that it was the legitimate government, and that there had been a revolution. Which, by definition, de-legitimates it until it gets its act into gear.
Don’t you know that when Leftists revolt and seize power, it is immediately legitimate because the new regime are the “champions of the oppressed.” If anybody else should revolt, perhaps to through Leftists out of power, they are illegitimate because they’re “victimizers.” (Borrowing from the phrases up-thread) The fact that they don’t see this as hypocritical says more about Leftists than about anything else.
both sides were claiming to be the legitimate government of Spain, by tradition and by better care for the continuation and well being and defense of the state. Franco has also been criticized, (long after his death of course) for prosecuting members of the the prior government for legal actions taken prior to the coup attempt, so you could say that close adherence to the niceties of the law may have been neglected.
You could also say that such levels of bloodshed and violence will not be forgiven without retribution. No matter who wins.
And for further reading I’ll provide a link:
http://jim.com/cat/blood.htm
Grrrrrrrrrr !!!!!!!!!
Not all anarchist believe in the same things, and they all seem to fold themselves under the umbrella of Libertarianism. This is why I don’t self identify as Libertarian.
This is also why I couldn’t stand most the whining masses of OWS.
The anarchists are not Anti-Left.
The anarchists were not anti-left in the ninteenth century. Sure, a lot of the anarchists then were violent criminals with victims, given a coat of prettier paint. Anarchism was syncretized freely with more incompetent ne-er-do-well philosophies like socialism, communism, and labor theory.
Anarchism lost a lot of its luster when people realized the degree to which it was a cover for robbers, murderers and such who mainly objected to being punished. The USSR pumping so much funds into its own flavor of the crud may also have been a factor.
Anarchists today appear to merely be some sub flavor of left.
That explains it. I tend to mentally associate anarchism with an extreme form of libertarianism. Different animal completely I see.
That would be anarcho-capitalism, like our very own Statist Josh — Hey, Josh, represent!
Thanks! Sarah,
I’m come in late to this party. Still catching up on my e- mails.
😉
Not all anarchists are morons. Mad Mike identifies as “anarcho-libertarian”, though his definition of anarchy might be different than bog-standard Occutard.
I sure hope so as I am one.
But the verdict is still out.
My name is an ironic nickname.
😉
Because some idiot accused Josh of being a statist.
Though we can also think of it as my being a State of one.
😉
I believe i will decline this opportunity to speculate regarding the State of Josh.
An army of one?
An army of one is only viable of the one is a bolo – or Godzilla!
even BOLOs need help sometimes.
Yep, especially when it comes to controlling a territory after the territory’s army has been destroyed.
The Bolo (and Godzilla) are very good at destroy armies but not as good at controlling territory.
I don’t like Freehold (as a place to live) that much. I like his world Churchill better.
Time was that libertarian and anarchist were used more or less synonymously. But in a rare example of a language growing more precise, libertarian came to mean a minarchist state.
I dunno.
On the one hand, libertarian suicide bomber aside, Libertarians never really had the reputation the Anarchists did. Bomb throwing anarchist become idiom for a reason. Whether you want to blame Ferdinand more on the anarchists or the Serbian Black Hand is may be up to you.
On the other hand, ignoring modern attempts at rebranding, Libertarianism and Anarchism have a common feature. In positing a removal of government restrictions, they seem to ignore the possibility that sufficient might use that freedom to choose to enforce some rules.
Sort of the flip side of the magic government totalitarians.
So long as Americans behave as Americans, simply getting a foreign ideology on the books won’t, on its own, fundamentally transform society.
BobtheRegisterredFool,
How?
Without the entrenched preestablished governmental institutions and the publics acceptance there of, how would you go about forcing the rules that you would want?
How to ignore government inconveniences in one easy step: http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-the-next-prez-and-the-obama-way-1416528052
You may have to Google for the title of the article to see the full text. “The Next Prez and the Obama Way”.
You band together and use force. Indeed, people have historically done so; that is how we acquired government in the first place.
An anthropologist working among the !Kung recorded an instance where a man who had committed multiple killings was ambushed and shot full of arrows. Then every adult in the vicinity poked the corpse with a spear, indicating that this was a collective undertaking.
+1
In the same way that employers enforced their rules back in the bad old days. Look up “company store” or the Pullman labor disputes.
I recall hearing an anecdotal history of a man who took a job (back in the 30s) at a farm, harvesting (IIRC) strawberries for a week. By the time the company had deducted his room, board, work clothes, equipment rental, damages to plants and other such fees from his pay, he was deeper in debt and had to work another week to pay off the arrearage. Which put him into a deeper hole every week. It was only through the kindness of a couple of Japanese ladies working at the farm that he was able to get out of debt and into another line of work.
I particularly recall his comment that even after Pearl Harbor he was never able to hate “the Japanese.”
RAS,
It’s better if I google Pullman Strike.
And How did that workout for Pullman?
Oh, that’s right he had to call in the Government to break the strike. It only became possible to oppress the work force because he did not have to waist his own time and resources to do so.
The reason I asked the question is I wanted people real look at what it would take to rule the world. Without the institutional infrastructure already in place you would have to spend time and resources to build them. You will have to develop a revenue stream supply stream, any time and revenue diverted is time and revenue that could have been used to grow said revenue stream. As there is no government monopoly force so you will also have to spend time an energy keeping others from taking over before you do. (The crab pot works in our favor here.) You need to keep your workers and soldiers happy, so they won’t strike or stab you in the back.
Sound like a lot of work to gain a lot of head ache, and that you would need to be an Alexander level Genius to juggle all them balls.
You guys make it sound so easy to force your will onto others, when in actuality it would be a lot of hard work and sleepless nights.
Might interest you I support shop unions, but can’t stand trade unions. Shop unions as a way to keep business owners honest is a good thing. Both party should have the best interest of business in mind of wanting to keep it healthy.
Pullman used government thugs to give a patina of legality to his strikebreakers. Plenty of others found it simple enough to hire ad hoc thugs. What do you think happened in the Lincoln County War? Thugs are always cheap to hire.
You forget that the infrastructure is in place. The world is not starting from zero and any attempt to take things back to that are futile — it ain’t gonna happen. You can use the power structure to protect rights or strip them, but there will forever be those willing to reap the peasants. The Magnificent Seven is a myth. The Law requires force to defend it against those who would ride roughshod over those weaker than themselves, and our duty as citizens is to maintain the Law in its rightful purpose.
You talk about power infrastructure as if it were a fire threatening to consume us all, ignoring the fact it is, when controlled, our primary protection against threats of beasts and a cold cold world.
RES,
Fair enough, but the price of Government is forever vigilance and watering the tree of Liberty from time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
But answer this, do you think Obama has the know how to built the infrastructure organize at that level. It one thing to co-opt institutions already in place, and it’s another to have to build them.
Do you think the people backing Obama couldn’t? Obama is but the tip of an iceberg.
Regardless, the structure exists and nobody has proposed a realistic way of building it down.
RES,
Soros?
Do we not have our own backers. Our we helpless to fight back?
I think not.
And the solution (IMO) is to teach Self- Reliance. Starve government and it will shrink. The more we don’t need Government the less hold it will have on us, the less we will be willing to pay for services we ourselves don’t need.
Soros?
Pfui.
We’re talking Google and Zuckerberg. Why else do you think he pushed Net Neutrality and more H1B slavery?
It would be much easier to manage if there were a single bogey man that you could take out so as to fix the mess.
Unfortunately what is needed is to replace local politicians who eagerly accept state and federal monies with strings attached. Take out state politicians who eagerly take federal monies with strings attached. Then take out federal politicians who try to buy their local constituencies with offers of money (with strings attached). While the President may set a tone, and veto spending bill, he alone can do little to change where the ship of state is headed.
If there is anything we can learn from the Progressives is to take a long haul view. To prepare for the future they started by taking over the institutions of leaning from the universities on down.
We have grade schoolers who are being assigned to write their representatives in Congress and the President letter about the evils of fracking … Why? The government schools are not teaching self-reliance, they are teaching ‘You did not build that.’
CACS,
Agreed.
Some kind of force is going to rise, be it bullies, thugs, gangs, organized crime or one the people choose to put in place to defend themselves against bullies, thugs, gangs and organized crime.
I admit that I do have a rather jaundiced view of people. I believe Rousseau was wrong. The human is not at heart a noble savage, destroyed by society. It has been humans that built society in all its various forms. The craftsmanship is telling.
We live in a Fallen world. It will not be redeemed until Christ returns.
For the non-religious, “Dilbert is the operations manual.”
Overheard at a breakfast in a hotel lobby in Springfield Mo:
“I used to like Dilbert, until I realized I am the pointy headed boss.”
I have often though I should have turned around and assured the speaker that he couldn’t be the pointy headed boss, because the pointy headed boss would never have such an epiphany.
tl;dr; see Mary and RES
Without the entrenched preestablished governmental institutions and the publics acceptance there of, how would you go about forcing the rules that you would want?
Firstly, such a population as you seem to describe does not and cannot exist. Young boys form bands without any need for instruction and training.
Any significant tendency otherwise would have long ago been eliminated from the species. A population consisting solely of lone wolves each content to go to hell their own way would’ve gotten wiped out in short order by the tribe over the hills which could actually produce warbands.
Secondly, I was attempting to address an American population properly classified as such. Not some real or theoretical lawless population. Nor some population so beaten down that they would do anything they are told.
Thirdly, I would not feel confident of the rules I want being enforced in such a case. Partly because my wants conflict, and partly because there isn’t really any plausible situation for my wants to be enforced upon a population of any great size. The rules now are a compromise, and their enforcement an approximation.
Fourth, a de facto law against x can be created by x annoying enough people willing to do something about it.
“Any significant tendency otherwise would have long ago been eliminated from the species. A population consisting solely of lone wolves each content to go to hell their own way would’ve gotten wiped out in short order by the tribe over the hills which could actually produce warbands.”
Wouldn’t take that long. Man individually is not a better predator than a leopard; it is only his ability to use the fruits of humans as a species that gives him a chance.
I’m all for giving the “anarchists” who show up at the leftoid protests what they want … just shoot them out of hand and be done with it.
That’s what they claim to want, right?
People like that forget that some of us are better at dog eat dog, no rules living than they could ever hope to be … we just prefer NOT to live that way.
Some moroons don’t like being told what to do. That don’t believe in government; even self government.
Herein lies a problem. There are times when any movement will find themselves co-opted by others for their own purposes, or a splinter will go off the deep end. We also have people adopting designations that really don’t really apply.
Does Eric Robert Rudolph really represent what it is to be a Christian? The same question can be asked regarding the actions taken by Westboro Baptist. It is convenient for those who object to Christianity to think so. But that does not make it so.
So, for example, not all anarchist at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries were bombers. Nor are all Muslims desirous to behead everyone who disagrees with their particular interpretation of Muslim. Hell, not all American liberals want to create a socialist workers paradise in the US.
Too often we simplify by sorting into groups, forgetting that even within those there is great differentiation. (Hey, just look around this place.)
” I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible.” Eric Robert Rudolph
Kinda settles that one in my eyes.
No, no — Rudolph was a “Right-wing Christian Extrrremist.” It said so in all the news coverage. They have editors and fact-checkers on relief, so they couldn’t have gotten something like that wrong.
He claims what he did was entirely justified and therefore not wrong.
From Wiki:
LeGuin is not an anarchist.
her novel of an anarchist utopia is actually run by a dictatorial government that prevents people from being able to work or have families live together, using an excuse there is a “famine”. And if you protest, well the hoi polloi get subtle instructions to spontaneously throw you out or kill you (although this part is muted in the novel)
They delude themselves about its being merely a coordinating system. Most of the tyranny of the anarchist utopia is the social constraints.
Maybe she’s an antichrist? It is almost an anagram.
Be fair. Evidence is conclusive: the main cause of famine is dictatorial government.
+1
K,
Look up socialist anarchism.
F’ers give us Free-market Anarchist a bad name.
Josh, have you been reading or listening to Jesus Huerta de Soto?
He does write and lecture in English, though he is admittedly at his best in Spanish.
He is talking recently more about anarcho-capitalism, what he calls the anarchy of private ownership, which he defines as the right to do for yourself in your own best interest.
No I have’t, but I will now.
😉
It’s sad, but not surprising to see yesterday’s progressives coming out in favor of the Establishment. I also get a hoot how she and others seem to think capitalism is like socialism, in that it was something someone invented one day and tried to impose on the rest of us, and that they can one day replace.
The free market isn’t perfect, but it’s a system that naturally developed from human interactions. That’s why all attempts to supplant it are doomed from the start.
It was invented one day. By Marx, who needed to invent something to contrast with socialism. Prior to his invention, there was only commerce.
+1
Sigh. True. I know the word “capitalism” was coined by Marx, but writing “free market” sometimes feels odd.
We could go back to the term “Manchesterism”
I like the term free market.
and when “outlawed” by communists, it just moves underground. There is a reason in Russia that most of the big businessmen millionaires came from their Mob ranks
Today’s Establishment are the students of yesterday’s progressives.
Let me plug some of our esteemed hostess writing at PJM, where she address that with her usual insightfulness:
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/11/22/famous-writers-never-give-birth-to-snakes/
(Apologies Sarah if you mind…)
Ah, and of course, the Demented Guardian Whinger has decided to weigh in on Le Guin:
damiengwalter.com
(My first attempt to use Do Not Link, hope it works)
Seems like somebody with such a tenuous grasp of reality is in danger of loosing his grip with all the flailing about.
But I do like how he’s grabbing the realm of imagination for the bigoted few. It really gives me hope for the future of genre fiction. 😐
That makes this tweet of Damien’s even funnier:
“Damien Walter @damiengwalter · Nov 18 Science fiction is a commons. You don’t need anyone elses permission before pitching your tent on the territory.”
I presume he typed this with a straight face.
Yes indeed. This is a good advertisement for INDIE. Does he even realize that?
Well, despite his elitism, Damien does seem to support indie. Broken clock, and all that.
But he only supports authentic indie, I betcha.
Yeah, he probably supports it because he thinks he’s sticking it to capitalism.
*chortle!*
That’s really all I’ve got. What else can be said?
“passionate intensity”
What a choice of phrase.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
-W.B. Yeats
Sorta-kinda tangential:
I see all the things you address here, and while my anger and irritation swells with each outrage, my larger and more overriding emotional response is born of frustration and a little bit of loss.
I’d like to see the vile progs fall to the wayside, forgotten to history and left in a blurred (and illegible) footnote. Let’s just get that out there early.
But, I’m frustrated by all the bright, creative people we’re losing to misinformation, lies and cultural corruption. I see so many people, trying so desperately hard to live a good life by the lights of the corrupted culture that surrounds them. It bugs me. It saddens me.
VP’s are the minority, they can’t be anything but. True believers have swallowed and are complicit in so many lies they’ve blackened their soul and they can’t help but know it. The bulk of the people lending some degree of support or another, though — those people are like most. Political theory and practical application just aren’t central concerns in their lives. They’re ignorant of what they’re supporting. (Why else do the true believers pounce so hard on accusations of Marxism? The truth of the philosophy is one that cannot be allowed free.)
For me, I don’t just want to win the political battle (and I really want to win that battle, I tire of this nonsense) I want a devastating victory in the cultural battle. There are so many of us — Odds, fringe, extreme — who will never fit comfortably in any conventional political culture. But I want to build an America where we, and the others on the fringe, can live and thrive and be free. Not be mainstream (a mistake I think the left makes), how and why? Just live and thrive and be free.
While we fight in incremental steps to hammer down the political nonsense that’s infesting our institutions, I’m going to aim to undermine the things that have driven so much support to the left. They are emphatically not the party of inclusion and acceptance (we’ve gotta face it, some of us will never be accepted by any but our own), they’re the party of manipulation and deceit.
I’m gonna fight for the culture. We win, they lose, I’m for it. Let’s get as many on the winning team as we can.
I’ll now let this tiny tributary flow back into the main topic.
Barring a Gestapo/NKVD, culture is stronger than politics. If we win the culture, the politics will take care of themselves. That is the reason Human Wave is so important, imao.
Even with a Gestapo / NKVD, politics is only temporarily stronger than culture.
and politics (can’t believe Sarah hasn’t already invoked Breitbart here) is downstream of culture, and where the real fight is. One reason that I was so pleasantly surprised by Interstellar. Thinking about it now, it was a very good move for Christopher Nolan to keep it so tighty under wraps until it was out. So, fight for it in your own house, and then in your neighborhood, and push out.
+1
I think the best thing on the left’s world view I’ve seen in a while is from Danusha K. Gosha:
“[The left rushes] to cast everyone in one of three roles: victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed.”
That’s why the left can do the mental gymnastics to imagine that they, the ruling class of oppressors, are “speaking truth to power.” They must be speaking truth to power because they are the champions of the oppressed.
Keep fighting the good fight, Sarah. We love you.
The only difference between “victimizer” and “champion of the oppressed” is who is being defined as the “victim” in the specific context.
All the lefty spec writers have going for them is their mutual support of the One, True Way of Thinking that infects everything they produce. That’s the only way dreck like If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love can receive such unwarranted adulation.
I like your call to arms. You’re right – we have work to do.
This may amuse:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/11/the-queen-of-the-tyrant-lizards/
No comment on the Benghazi meme?
On what? precisely? I’ve talked of Benghazi before, this post is about more general trends.
My Benghazi meme: a bunch of protesters at Hillary’s campaign stops, and every time she starts going on and on about her accomplishments, they shout “At this point, what difference does it make???”
Please. PLEASE! Do it.
My comment on that report can be summed up thusly: a successful cover-up does not equal innocence, and if nothing else it shows that our intelligence community needs an enema.
Yep.
The thing with Leftists is to use their own Moral Authority card against them …
any time I find myself in conversation with a Leftist who runs on about how “racist” people of pallor are because a disproportionate number of blacks are criminal/poor/dysfunctional CUZ SLAVERY!! I will ask if they are descendents of slaves, like I am; and if not, they must submit to my Moral Authority.
The sputtering response is always delightful.
(snark) ‘hem. Some people’s slavery is more equal than others. (close snark)
I’ve been amused by Obama’s academic career. We were blatantly lied to by the MSM when he campaigned as an intellectual. No SAT’s, grades or IQ tests have ever appeared. He was known in Hawaii for belonging to the Mauii Wowee crowd. There has never been one story of Obama working a summer job or the cafeteria at Occidental for book money- something every working class -and most middle class students can claim.
Its clear he got onto the Affirmative Action escalator at some point- if not his initial college application (Occidental is not easy to get into) certainly when he was able to transfer to Columbia. It would be interesting to see that paperwork- which might have been “Twofer” squared (how many African Americans come from Hawaii?). Another rumor that may veer off into Birther loonyness is that Obama claimed to be born in Indonesia- another way to con the bizarre Ivy League admissions policies. What are the odds that those papers would ever be leaked?
Consider: we’re six years into his presidency. He can never run again. But his academic career is better classified than national security secrets these days. What’s wrong with this picture?
You forgot the bit where he managed to be the only editor of Columbia Law Review who never wrote any articles before or during his stint as editor. (IIRC.)
what? It’s not obvious to you he is so damned smart they can’t embarrass the rest of us with his brilliant grades and Thesis?
What happened is they got caught twice claiming their competitors were stupid then had two candidates who had lower grade points than the “stupid” guy who admitted to not really doing his job in university, so they just tell us how brilliant they are then hide any and all evidence.
You see, he is just so brilliant that he was bored in school.
Just like the world constantly disappoints him by not living up to his ideals.
I was bored in school too, but I aint doing stupid stuff in the Whitehouse.
Being an intellectual ought, in any reasonable world, be an automatic disqualification for the presidency.
I can’t agree. “Intellectual” used to mean somebody who worked with his mind, was widely read, and had background in a number of scholarly subjects. Thomas Jefferson was an Intellectual, So was John Adams. It shouldn’t be a REQUIREMENT, but it shouldn’t disqualify either.
The problem being that the Progressive Secularist Statists have taken over the term “Intellectual” and ruined it for everybody else. One has to make a distinction between an “Intellectual” and a “Western Intellectual Twit, One Each (™)”
As I wrote in the present tense, the present meaning of the word ought rule. As presently defined in this nation, the only one whose president is a suitable topic of conversation, being a recognized intellectual indicates such a mastery of conventional wisdom as to disable any capacity for rational thought.
While this would undoubtedly disqualify a few good persons, such as Thomas Sowell, the risk/reward calculation clearly indicates being an intellectual as a near insurmountable barrier to rationality. I strongly suspect that the intellectual class would disavow Professor Sowell from membership were they able, and they have taken great strides toward ensuring no such dissident ever again receives such recognition, creating active barriers to their entry to college and any hope of advancement through academia.
Every day and in every way they endeavor to prove the rectitude of William F. Buckley’s preference for the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory.
Every day and in every way they endeavor to prove the rectitude of William F. Buckley’s preference for the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory.
Alphabetical sequentialism!
Intellectual is what the Progs claim to be, and no the Emperor is not naked you dullards. *rolleyes*
He may not be naked, but he is covered in that glittery crap strippers sometimes spray on, and there’s a wool pom-pom attached to his schvantz.
Naked would be an improvement.
I could have gone without that image for 20 minutes past eternity, thank you. 😎
You almost netted yourself a keyboard there. Almost.
“In the same way, in our own field of science fiction, several people are lionized on the claim of being underprivileged and ‘excluded’.”
Don’t know who they are, since I haven’t been paying attention to such talk lately.
Dear Sarah,
They say that if you wear the cape long enough, it begins to wear *you,* and becomes part of who you are.
It worked for the real Batman:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/rosenwald-md/post/who-is-the-route-29-batman-this-guy/2012/03/28/gIQA8nPjgS_blog.html
It’s working for you.
As requested, I have checked my privilege…and find it to be a figment of an unknown someone’s imagination. So when asked, say “I have checked my privilege, and find it to be a figment of YOUR imagination.” Use as and when appropriate, or as you wish.
Ooo… *cackles evilly*
You need to check your “Different from Me” privilege, lady, whatever the hell you are! 😉
Good grief. I just followed your link to read her speech. She does indeed sound like a crazy old crank.
But really, it’s not the case that she has changed all that much. She was always a socialist, whose anarchism could not be more than a pose given the totalitarian nature of socialism. She might talk about freedom but she hates actual freedom because when people freely choose to engage in commerce on terms that she does not approve of she gets angry.
Wikipedia quotes her as saying “Democracy is good but it isn’t the only way to achieve justice and a fair share.” which is a good enough reveal of her longing for a way to force people to live as she wishes. What other “just as good” way? Leninism? Stalinism? Maoism? Chavezism? Some impossible-to-implement anarcho-socialism which will immediately collapse into fascism or Stalinist? Feudalism with an hereditary nobility? Kings and popes? Or maybe we should live like the Yanomami and other stone age tribes in a state of subsistence agriculture and constant warfare? She may be a skillful storyteller, but her political ideas are about as sensible as Reg Shoe in Terry Pratchett’s “Night Watch”. (“‘You mean we’ll be in a famine situation?’ said Reg, the light of hope in his eyes. ‘If we aren’t, Reg, I’m sure you could organize one’, said Vimes.”)
LeGuin said “Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
So, if not enough people will freely choose to buy the books that she likes, she wants to overthrow “capitalism” and replace it with a system in which we will all be forced to subsidize the writers she favors.
And so we see that although she starts out talking about “the aims of art” she ends up talking about the aims of politics. (Although she never admits this, of course.)
It’s funny how quickly so-called anarchists reveal themselves to be power-mad kooks.
Judging by last Thursday, we’ve gone back to the divine right of kings.
Grrrrr…
Five will get you twenty that she cannot offer a definition of “art” that doesn’t depend on tautologies and have loopholes you could drive an Abrams through.
While i am sure she knows it when she sees it, if you cannot define it you don’t know it.
You could drive a Bolo MkXXXIII through.
hoi pol·loi
ˌhoi pəˈloi/
noun derogatory
the masses; the common people.
“avoid mixing with the hoi polloi”
synonyms: masses, common people, populace, public, multitude, rank and file, lower order(s), plebeians, proletariat; More
My accent notwithstanding, Russian is NOT one of my languages. I know what it means, I’m iffy on the spelling.
awww, you fixed it! 😀 (And it’s Greek, acushla. Isn’t English the veritable linguistic minefield? When you see us stealing stuff it’s polite to pretend not to notice.)
Myself, I suspect Our Hostess is in fact an Evil but Beautiful *alien* Space Princess, and some of the language holotapes skipped tracks on the trip out. I treasure the Hoytian Variations and wonder how they hatched from her fevered brain. (I am remembering “hoi pollo”, which would also be funny. “The Common Chicken”? It should be promulgated and encouraged.)
Paraphrased (because I likely misremember it):
“It is said English borrows from many languages … this is incorrect,
What it does is it follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head and rifles their pockets for loose phrases and words”
(btw, I searched the quote and all I find are other paraphrases … heh)
The version my wife and I have on T-shirts is:
“English does not “Borrow” from other languages — English follows them into alleys, clubs them on the head, and goes thru their pockets for loose grammar.”
like I said, everything seems to be a paraphrase. It wasn’t until down below I have seen the “original”
I have a t-shirt with this on it.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle(*) their pockets for new vocabulary.”
James Nicoll, rec.arts.sf-lovers, 1990.
(*) Misspelled (per the author, misspelled) riffle in the original.
The first sentence makes for much better search terms but is awkward to put on t-shirts. 😉
My word, google has the original post archived.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/rec.arts.sf-lovers/5tQFnNbvN80/1pfKcGbEYckJ
Wow.
That sure is some archived history there.
I am remembering “hoi pollo”, which would also be funny. “The Common Chicken”? It should be promulgated and encouraged.
Yes. It could amply describe a certian class of the American voter or a certian class of the body politic or certain politicians.
While we’re at it: Buffoon.
And it was a bowling shirt, not a T-Shirt. A very popular style of shirt in the Rockabilly crowd.
And I was thinking it was Hawaiian shirt (if they want ‘offensive’` they should go to the Pipe Line! and see what the surfers and observers wear. Note: the vast majority of these are only offensive to the easily offended though some are in appallingly bad taste.)
There is even a trope for this- “The Man is Sticking it to The Man”:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheManIsStickingItToTheMan
Must… resist…. clicking… TVTropes…..
Failed.
You got troped in?
Lost about 2 hours this time. They actually have a good page on the American Political system (Which I looked at assuming it would have a terrible leftist slant, but was mostly pretty balanced)
Yeah, lack of time is why I don’t click some of the links. Especially with tropes.
There is near perfect parallel in climate alarm both on the “science” side and the popular activist realm.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
I wonder which historian will be the first to tell America the truth of this President’s “rise” to power.
What is truth?
I have unfortunately lost the links, but 8-10 years ago Al Gore made a speech in the Middle East- Qatar or Emirates IIRC- where he vented against Muslims being discriminated against in the US after 9/11. That was a prime example of phony “speaking truth to power.”
‘who point out the king is naked’:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/
As to corrosion of competence;
One who lost everything, one
for whom, in the end, nothing
could be done, comes to mind.
For future reference, in case someone finds this after the cartoon Mr. Maner mentioned is no longer on Day By Day’s front page, this is the cartoon he was referencing:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/obama-in-the-pen/
Day by Day is my second stop every morning. Mr. Muir reassures me that this is actually happening and I haven’t gone mad.
“It’s funny how quickly so-called anarchists reveal themselves to be power-mad kooks.”
Not to mention how happily and easily the ostentatiously egalitarian adjust to an aristocracy — as long as they are the aristocrats.
“…screamed to Larry and I…”??? Sarah, you do mean “…to Larry and me…,” don’t you?
Sir, I write these unpaid, early morning, before coffee. If it comes out in English, count your blessings. I refuse to spend time editing that could be better spent writing fiction, for which I actually get paid.
At least she has a proper excuse if she slips up and speaks in tongues. For those of us who grew up with English as a first language and Bad English as a poor substitute…
But yes, editing for books. It’s better that way all ’round. *grin*
Gamergate happened because gamers have a well tuned b.s. detector. I had given up on science fiction, and almost fantasy deciding all the good authors were dying off and the socialist P.C. influence ruining it like everything else… then I discovered Baen, a little nitch publisher, hiding all the good works of good authors. Indie publishing is great. I’m a fast reader and $0.99 to try a new name is risk-free.
I liked Heinlein’s ideas on art. The first wave takes an idea and uses it to make art we understand and enjoy. The followers see the form and technique, when we don’t understand/enjoy… it must be our stupidity. This degenerates to crosses in urine bottles and giant posters of soup cans, posing as art. Did you see that Hitler watercolor on auction? He was an artist.
Our so called ‘betters’ have defecated on every form of human expression they touch, and demand we appreciate it or we’re stupid. I have better things to do, if it is only playing tug with my puppy. Obama’s book was raved over, and no one read far enough to get to eating the dog. I believe it was Scalia that said requiring the Court to read the ACA would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Obama does his little amnesty thing, and then goes out on the trail to raise support/sell the idea, and to rake in money. It is the only thing he knows how to do. Missouri had a young delinquent stealing cigars, fighting a cop, getting shot… Now, no one wants the truth or justice, just another reason to riot. Somehow, all these things (islamoterrorist too) are all my fault. Good intentions do not guarantee good results, and then, when you have good intended people in Ft. Lauderdale getting good results of feeding the homeless, they are shut down. Blame that on me too, I’m just sitting here basking in my white privledge and I’m enjoying it way too much to be bothered. (actually, I was just diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, so don’t get too close when I start cursing them as ‘F’ often comes out a little moist.)
where did that avatar come from?
If your actual avatar doesn’t load, the system loads a random monster avatar that’s based on the IP address it sees from you.
If you don’t have a profile picture for wordpress, it gives you one.
Thanks! Apparently I hit post before I hit facebook. I prefer Sarah to think of me as a Gentleman than an other sophont 🙂
Nominate themes here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2094310-january-2015
The tactics used against of us in the field of science fiction, for instance – not that we didn’t know of them, because in fact some of us overhear conversations, or used to take children to cons who understood far more than others thought and who weren’t immediately associated with us – were acknowledged to be the same the creature called Requires Hate used against the establishment (and as an attempt to leverage herself into it) the difference (and the reason the establishment was incensed) being that it was used against them.
I enjoyed the post, but found the above sentence incomprehensible.
Requires Hate was a troll who was trolling the Left from the Left, and they admit she used the same tactics they use on us. The thing in dashes: I already knew about it, because kids report stuff they overheard. So do friends.
When the people in question don’t know that the kid just sitting there is the son of Milady Sarah, or some bloke standing near by isn’t “one of theirs” stuff comes out and gets to the ears of those they were speaking about.
There is another reason some among us adhere to Truth: LAZINESS.
It is far far easier to abide by Truth than to keep track of and adjust your views and history to the changing fashions of lies. Notice that even such accomplished dancers of lies as Hillary Clinton have been caught wrong-footed, spouting the wrong adherence at the wrong time.
Since most people can’t afford the full-time army of history-re-editors that the Clintons, Obamas and such like enjoy, clinging to the Truth is the only viable option.
Speaking of Truth to Power, file this under The Shape of Things To Come:
Picks
Are green politics heading for history’s dustbin? — A. Watts, WUWT
Marion Berry, human being — Matt Labash, Weekly Standard
Obama proclaims his restraint — R. Shabad, The Hill
What The Daily Show didn’t show — Nolan Finley, Det. News
Feminism’s “trivial bullshit” — Ashe Schow, Examiner
Israel’s new hero not Jewish — Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
Economic consequences of amnesty — Joel Kotkin, DB
And in the Iran talks… — Sanger & Broad, NY Times
Posted on November 23, 2014 by Paul Mirengoff in Benghazigate, Obama Administration Scandals
More on “more than fair”
Yesterday, I wrote about the report on Benghazi issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The report found essentially no fault on the part of the CIA or the military in its response the attack in Benghazi — findings that I consider sound.
The report also finds that the administration’s subsequent narrative about the attack was the product of a “flawed” process. What’s more it finds that aspects of the narrative were inaccurate. However, it did not find willful deception or bad faith on the part of any administration official.
The administration and its supporters will, I assume, construe the lack of such findings as exoneration. They should not.
The Committee made no determination one way or another as to the motivation and thought processes of Susan Rice and other administration officials involved in the post-attack spin. It found neither bad faith and dishonesty nor their absence.
Why didn’t the Committee make such findings, one way or the other? The main reason, I suspect, is that the Republican members wanted bipartisan agreement as to the facts (including the fact that Rice’s comments were inaccurate). Keep in mind too that the House Intelligence Committee is something of an island of bipartisanship in the stormy seas of Capitol Hill, which is probably a good thing given the vital and sensitive nature of its work.
Republican members must also have been mindful that Trey Gowdy’s special committee is tasked investigating the Obama administration’s post-attack behavior, among other things. Thus, the honesty and good faith of Team Obama (or the lack thereof) remains the subject of an important, well-publicized House investigation. Indeed, by not opining on this subject, the Intelligence Committee invites Gowdy’s committee to focus sharply on it, and precludes any valid claim that the issue was resolved by another committee.
That said, I still would have preferred a report that was fair, rather than “more than fair,” to administration. For the reasons I discussed yesterday, such a report would have inferred bad faith and dishonesty by Rice and probably others. However, I understand why the Republicans on the Committee settled for less.
Team Obama and its friends in the media may try to create the impression that the administration has dodged a bullet on Benghazi. In reality, it hasn’t.
Rather, a bipartisan House committee has found that key statements by the administration about Benghazi were false. And it has left for Gowdy’s committee the task of determining Whether the false statements were bad faith efforts to deceive.
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Posted on by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy
Renewable Energy Will Never Work, But Can Nuclear?
Via the indispensable Watts Up With That? come two of the most interesting articles I have read in a very long time. The first is by two Google engineers who were charged with thinking creatively about how to replace fossil fuels with renewables. After four years, Google shut down the project. The engineers concluded that it simply couldn’t be done:
At the start of RE
As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. …
Incremental improvements to existing technologies aren’t enough; we need something truly disruptive to reverse climate change. What, then, is the energy technology that can meet the challenging cost targets? How will we remove CO2 from the air? We don’t have the answers. Those technologies haven’t been invented yet.
Note that these engineers are not climate skeptics; they assume that the global warming theory is true. On that assumption, renewable energy simply can’t make a significant difference.
The second article is a comment on the Google engineers’ analysis by Lewis Page in The Register. Page elaborates on the impossibility of renewable energy making a significant dent in carbon dioxide emissions:
Whenever somebody with a decent grasp of maths and physics looks into the idea of a fully renewables-powered civilised future for the human race with a reasonably open mind, they normally come to the conclusion that it simply isn’t feasible. Merely generating the relatively small proportion of our energy that we consume today in the form of electricity is already an insuperably difficult task for renewables: generating huge amounts more on top to carry out the tasks we do today using fossil-fuelled heat isn’t even vaguely plausible.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
That’s the bad news. The good news, Page argues, is that we already have the disruptive technology that is needed to replace fossil fuels–energy that is cheap, readily available and can be both distributed and dispatchable: nuclear power. Nuclear energy, he argues, is made expensive only by a ridiculous degree of over-regulation in the name of safety.
Both of the linked articles are brief and should be read in their entirety. Is Page right about nuclear power? I am not sure how low the true cost of electricity produced through nuclear energy could go, but I will say this: if climate alarmists really believed the claims they make about global warming–I don’t think they do–they would be agitating tirelessly for lightly-regulated nuclear energy.
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Posted on by John Hinderaker in Beauty pageants
Miss World 2014: A Preview
I didn’t cover the Miss World pageant last year because the organizers, fearing possible terrorism in Indonesia, canceled the swimsuit competition. This year the event returns to London, its original home. The finale will be on December 14, but the contestants have already arrived and the sports events are under way.
More than ever, it seems that beauty pageants mirror the themes of current news headlines. This year, most tragically, domestic violence intruded, as Miss Honduras, María José Alvarado, was murdered, along with her sister, by the sister’s ex-boyfriend, the evening before she would have flown to London.
There are always a few countries where the local pageant takes a weird turn. Like, for example, Uganda, where the Miss World contest was taken over by the Army as a means of promoting agriculture. Seriously:
This was certainly a beauty pageant with a difference. The swimsuit section was cast aside for an army-style boot camp, the milking of cows, and showing your skills at handling goats and sheep. At the awards ceremony, contestants were quizzed on farming techniques, as the hosts believe agriculture is a “Ugandan value” and should be celebrated.
f21a4994-972b-4383-903e-da69a8c09f1f-2060×1236
Then there is the competing World Muslimah Award, which has just wrapped up:
HT: Powerline, powerlineblog[DOT]com/archives/2014/11/miss-world-2014-a-preview[DOT]php
Oh my dear LORD!!!!! Whence did all that extra verbiage come? Everything between the picture and “Then there is the competing …” was NOT supposed to be there. Curse you, miscreant cursor!! Cower and shrink from my wrath, tiny comment window, hiding unwanted text from my view!!
I’ve found it a good idea to type up my responses in a text-only notepad lately, if it’s going to be long.
Sigh. I do a lot of my prep in Notepad prior to posting, but that wasn’t supposed to be long. My concern was whether the linked picture would come up, and NP isn’t very useful for that.
But the report on Benghazi has done what it was intended to: it’s now a tool liberals can use to mock anyone who was concerned about the event and try to shut down further discussion.
I refer to it as “Speaking tripe to nitwits”, but I’m not a nice person.
I always thought it was more “Stun the pretentious idiots with ineffable twaddle,” but there kind of was a reason why my favorite character in the Dragonlance series was Raistlin Majere.
And my list of books to read just keeps getting longer. Thank you.
*chuckle* You’re welcome. The original two trilogies are The Dragonlance Chronicles and the Twins trilogy of books. There’s a whole series of books that delves into the past of the Heroes of the Lance, and a few piles of anthologies, though my favorites would have to be the Dragonlance Tales set. My other favorite character is Tasslehoff Burrfoot.
Was reading a chapter of Dragons of The Hourglass Mage out loud to my hubby before sleep last night. (I tend to reread books I have already read as a wind-me-down before sleeping. Books I haven’t read act more like coffee.)
Some fun facts about the leftist chic radicals:
1) They say they want a revolution
2) They don’t really want to do all the dirty work involved in a revolution- shooting guns, getting shot, or going to real PMITA jail.
3) They want all the oppressed groups to do their revolutionary dirty work for them
4) After all the nasty revolution is done, they expect that the oppressed groups will put them in charge
Until then, they’re pretty much happy to live the bourgeoisie lifestyle they decry
Well, no.
This is true of MOST of them, bit it’s true of most of most revolutionary movements. There is a hard core of dedicated idealists who ARE prepared to go to prison, to fire the guns, to plant the bombs, to live underground. And it is from that cadre of hard core nuts that the next Stalin or Pol Pot will arise, assuming we don’t shoot the bastard.
The Revolution may end up using “The Oppressed” (™) as their shock troops, but there will be a network of Che and Lenin types actually masterminding it. Just WHICH Che and Lenin types will determine which kind of revolution we get; right now it looks to be an Islamotwit revolution. A lot of the leaders of that are from wealthy backgrounds. The LEADERS. The rank-and-file are the sheeple. But to say the movement is nothing but sheeple is to underestimate them badly.
Funny, there are those who while making a near saint of John Lennon certainly haven’t actually understood what was written by him.
They don’t so much want a full revolution as they want a turning of the wheel that stops with them on top.
Oh Fortuna! velunt luna status admirabile
Ehh. Revolutions are passe. The earth completes revolutions all the time and everyone else is just a poseur.
One thing we ought to remember is that the past Elites have gone through similar phases of delusional self-justification. The Aristocracy in Europe certainly did so, clinging desperately to the idea that simply being “in trade” was disreputable as the industrialists grew the economy and improved the lives of millions. Much of the anti-industrial Revolution claptrap we wallow in today is the product of people of the landowning class (and those that identified with them) desperately clinging on to their elitism in the face of their irrelevancy.
The Planters of the Old South had all kinds of excuses for the Slavery their social position depended on, and those excuses got increasingly bizarre after the Civil War as they tried to justify their stupidity.
Other examples will no doubt occur to the student of history.
The Leftist Establishment may pride itself on being modern and up to the minute, but they are actually only The Old King (http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_oldissue.htm)
Whatever else we do, we must never lose sight of the fact that they are not new, they are not “scientific”, they are not about any kind of justice any more than any of their ancestral cliques. They are the same, old, tiresome bunch of self-important swine that have poisoned society since before writing was anything more than “that new fad”.
And we are not immune. Each passing elite has been followed by another, driven by the same disreputable impulses – the same sins. IF we were to become the establishment tomorrow, while many of us would at least TRY to live up to Mrs. Hoyt’s sub-header and leave the world alone, there would be those who simply could not resist the urge to meddle. And in time, left unchecked, they would be the next elite that desperately needed a guillotining.
What I’m trying to say is, they aren’t SPECIAL. And, sadly, in all probability, neither are we.
There are, in every generation, a host of people who disagree with Jefferson, believing “that the mass of mankind was born with saddles on their backs, and a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.” This is a desire that takes
bothevery sidesof all political argument.It is just a matter of the right rider. Today’s MSM has proven eager to provide the blinders necessary to keep the beast’s attention focused where its riders wish.
And, ultimately, this is why I respect so many Christians, even though I’m an agnostic. Because there ARE masses of people who want to be told what to do.
And in the end the argument against it is not that is damages the ridden – they will damage themselves anyway – but that it damages the riders.
That has always struck me as a very Protestant point of view. It may well,exist in other brands of Faith, but it is in Protestant cultures that it makes any headway at all.
There is a consonance between certain fields where extreme self-confidence, to the level of arrogance, seems a requisite for success. Surgeons, fighter-jocks, a few others, are known for obnoxious personalities. It has long struck me as likely that such fields which require critical split-second decisions on life and death matters attract or construct such arrogance as a tool to prevent freezing-up, the one “decision” which almost guarantees death.
Certain other professions, such as college lecturers and actors, seem also to be prone to personality types who are arrogant if not downright full of themselves. This is likely consistent with knowing oneself the center of attention, at least in some portion of the day’s work, and of being unquestioned in one’s assertions.
Those fields all require a certain achievement, a level of earning the respect received. To be a slave master without having done a thing to merit such “achievement” strikes me as being especially injurious to one’s character.
Of course, as the English admonish: No man is a hero to his valet. How difficult it must be for a hero to tolerate such disrespect. What punishments might he be tempted to inflict?
Sarah, you really need to read (a href=”http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/scotus-tackles-free-speech-vs-true-threats-in-facebook-posts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29″>this one. I’m afraid he’s right about the outcome.
Screwed up that link.
Bravo. Excellent article. I had not realized how far back the rot was going. Ironically, or perhaps not ironically at all, the late 1980s was when I stopped reading science fiction for pleasure. I thought at the time it was because I had entered the field myself, but in hindsight it was because all my favorite authors had died, and writers who replaced them (with the shining exception of Gene Wolfe) were not as talented and imaginative.
In case any missed John’s ping back link:http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/11/what-went-wrong-with-sff/
Must read
Yes. Very good. I should have said.
Has anybody noticed that nerd culture, like gamers, sci fi, anime, comic books, and other types of nerdy con goers have proven to be particularly resistant to these leftist SJW d8ictator types, just like we earlier had proved resistant to the petty dicttors from the moral majority. On the other hand most other parts of the establishment, like academia, media, the gov supported scientific establishment, politicians, bureaucrats, and even most corporations, have pretty much caved to them, and either have been completely taken over, or cringe in fear paying danegeld. Only us nerds still resist, perhaps along with some religious/rural bitter clingers, and a small number of entrepenours who think their main profit center should still be in manufacturing/sales/research, rather than their gov lobbyists. I think it is because nerds never really worried about popularity or fitting in (except perhaps with their fellow nerds), our main worry was enjoying whatever particular nerd pursuit we loved. It also helps that we are generally intelligent, have good bs detectors, and since many of us end up in technology we know how to solve real problems, instead of demanding undeserved compensation for imaginary ones.
I wouldn’t call Chelsea Clinton “stupid”, just untalented. Or blandly mediocre. It’s her being thrust into positions where she doesn’t belong that makes the contrast so glaring. It’s not her fault (except for her willingness to go along with it) that she is. Most of us are. And it’s OKAY. The world and history are founded on the mediocre. The foundation and progenitors of all those of talent and excellence.
Just usually the mediocre aren’t thrust into the limelight and paraded around like some prize heifer and fawned over so ridiculously that no one with any pride would ever allow themselves to be put into that position. But maybe she’s just deluded. Her parents and all those around them are such consummate liars and sycophants that Chelsea may be dim enough to be unable to judge herself accurately.
Both her and Obama are such obvious failures and it makes such a contrast with what the “elites” are claiming about them that the lies and their true purpose become unavoidable for all to see.
Perhaps this’ll provide the impetus for a preference cascade against the cultural and fiscal progressives that will reduce their influence for a century or so.
“ … usually the mediocre aren’t thrust into the limelight and paraded around like some prize heifer and fawned over so ridiculously that no one with any pride would ever allow themselves to be put into that position.”
Insert gratuitous snark about Charley Windsor.
I kept halfway expecting her to rebel against her parents and ‘come out’…
… as a conservative, of course. What did you think I was saying?
Hillary would literally kill her if she came out as a conservative. Or at least have her killed, The full Vince Foster treatment.
She’s just the next generation in a family of grifters.
C4C. Growl. Casts hard meaningful look at WP.
*hands RES a virtual sledgehammer*
I advise mockery
I advise mockery and derision.
Ha, I advise mockery, derision and … ribaldry!