Friday, November 20, 2015

An Open Letter to a Dearly Beloved

Look, the Left, we need to talk.

I'll admit, I haven't always been the best partner. When you were shouting about Social Justice, I was more concerned with Civil Liberties. When you wanted to experiment with centrally planned economies, I insisted on acknowledging realistic market values. And then there's the whole Abortion thing (but I know you don't like to talk about that).

It's natural for an interfaith marriage to have some friction. I'm a Christian, and last I checked, you were an Atheist Wiccan. A Sufi Buddhist? It's hard to keep up with what religions you find acceptable.

But even if I might forget what your belief of the day is, I will always remember those early, exciting years when we would stay up all night, just cuddling and hurling insults at each other.

There was also plenty that we agreed on. Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Religion. That people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin or the style of their genitals. That the Pharisees who care more about lining their pockets than washing feet are not true Christians. The good stuff that made your barbed insults sting like kisses.

I don't know where along the line things changed. Maybe it was when I graduated college and had to start working for a living. That certainly had a strain on our relationship. My days no longer had enough hours to listen to your latest outrages and rambling discourses. Results and real-world applications started to matter.

You encouraged me to go back for a graduate degree, but that only made things worse. When you're an undergrad, professors keep up the façade of caring about truth. They keep their nihilistic existential nightmares tucked safely beneath the bed. But being a grad student meant rubbing elbows with the profs on a more intimate basis. The masks started slipping.

Yes, there were professors who cared about truth behind their professional personas, but I can't count the number of times I was told the truth didn't matter. That collecting evidence and looking for answers based on that evidence was missing the point.

You see, I romanticized you, the Left. I always thought it was the Republican Wall-Street types that wanted money for nothing. We were the ones who cared about Truth, Justice, and if not the American Way, then the Nobel Path. Grad school wanted to take my money and give me nothing in return. Worse, they wanted to take away my evidence and replace it with Nothing. And while I was foolishly ready to part with my money, I could not accept their Nothing.

I remember when you used to call me out on my belief in God because it was based on faith instead of evidence. Evidence was everything, you said. It's where the rubber meets the road, where Philosophy becomes Science. We could speculate all day, but a theory that cannot survive contact with reality was not worth a damn.

It was one of the few solid arguments you had. I could not prove God. I could not scoop Him up in a jar to show you or point a telescope towards Him. He was neither beneath the microscope nor among the stars. I had no direct, scientific evidence.

I loved your insistence on evidence and Science. The facts kept me grounded when I was tempted to fly off into mystical revelries. It reminded me to treat my opponents like human beings, as rational creatures that deserved evidence. I kept my faith, but acknowledged that not everyone shared it.

When did you give up on evidence, the Left? When did you decide it no longer mattered? These days, it's like I don't even recognize you. Last time we talked about Science, you denounced it as a mind-control tool of White Heterosexual CIS Shit Lords. The Left I remember could spend hours rhapsodizing about the egalitarianism of Science, how its reliance on objective facts meant that no race or gender could monopolize it. What happened to that, the Left?

Yesterday you told me that asking a Person of Color to explain their point of view was "privileged and gross." You told me that asking for evidence that a female video game character was a Male-to-Female transsexual proved that I hate transsexuals. Every time I try to understand you, you push me further and further away.

I love you, the Left. Ever since we stood up together to protest the censorship and unjust wars, I have loved you dearly. But I don't know what's happened to you.

What happened to the feisty, passionate one that I loved? I remember a time when you could not argue enough, when I thought you would never have your fill of debate. Once you thundered challenge and swung your fists without rest. You wore a dazzling suit of armor and bore a bloody battle flag. And though we bickered at times, I fought beneath your flag without hesitation.

Who has silenced your thunder, oh Left? Who has stilled your fists? Who has stripped you of your armor and exposed your nakedness, that you should shrink from your enemies? Why does your banner lie ruined on the ground? It is no longer a flag of blood and battle, but a torn and muddy rag.

I do not know this shrieking violet who can only hurl insults from behind a wall. I do not know this Scientist who hates evidence, this Academic who hates facts. I do not know this Warrior who dares not leave the Safe Spaces.

I look upon you as the corpse of a dear friend. While others may shrink back at your rotten putrescence, I wish only to cradle your broken head in my arms.

I would split the Red Sea for you, that you might march out boldly from your Safe Spaces. I would give you cold facts instead of warm fuzzies. I would teach you again the glory of defeat and the shame of retreat.

There is no glory in battle with straw men, and even less with shadows (I have seen the Shadow Hunts in the walls of your Safe Spaces). You told me once that reality has a Liberal Bias. Why do you flee from it? You told me once that it was your duty to Transgress. Why won't you step beyond the walls of your prison cell?

I love you because of who you are, but I cannot love what you are doing to yourself. How can I support your decision to cut yourself off from the world? How can I love what harms you? That love is reserved for your enemies.

This is difficult, but I think we should go on break for a while. Maybe start seeing other ideologies. You need to figure out what's really important to you - equal rights or procrustean laws. I will wait for you. Not forever, but I will wait. And I will never forget who you were - who I pray you can be again.

17 comments:

  1. Hey Rev,

    "There is no glory in battle with straw men, and even less with shadows (I have seen the Shadow Hunts in the walls of your Safe Spaces). You told me once that reality has a Liberal Bias. Why do you flee from it? You told me once that it was your duty to Transgress. Why won't you step beyond the walls of your prison cell?"

    Good stuff. You should come over to the Dark Side. We don't give a fuck about 'feelz'.

    Could you please do a post that goes into detail about this part:

    "But being a grad student meant rubbing elbows with the profs on a more intimate basis. The masks started slipping.

    Yes, there were professors who cared about truth behind their professional personas, but I can't count the number of times I was told the truth didn't matter. That collecting evidence and looking for answers based on that evidence was missing the point."

    I would love to hear about examples of this. What subject were they teaching? Were you studying? Examples of them tossing out truth and evidence and saying it didn't matter. I bet they were not STEM professors. That is the thing, the leftists have taken over the easier, more bullshit so called 'social sciences' (that have about as much to do with science as does Scientology). They have totally destroyed what little value there was in them. Now they teach classes on watching TV and other bullshit. Don't forget the grievance studies (Lesbian Guamanian Marxist studies)! They then force students who want a decent grade to regurgitate the professor's own insane Marxist mantras back to them. The leftists have also taken over the administrations and shut down free speech. They also tell male students that they are all would-be rapists and force them to take classes teaching them that rape is bad, because otherwise they wouldn't already know that. Lets not forget "micro-aggregations!"

    There are a couple of good things coming from this, though. First, the rest of the country is realizing what a dumpster fire so called 'higher education' and 'leftist thought' has become. Second, the crazy leftist students and SJWs are eating their own in many cases. I bet that most of the administrators who have just lost their jobs at the universities considered themselves good liberals and have most likely worked in the past to shut down descent from the right. I am OK with watching the US university system burn. It is so full of dead, rotting wood that it has had this coming for a long, long time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm the same guy from just above. I am also the guy who was talking with you about HBD back under the post: "Killing Vox Day: Part Three - What Type of Victory?" It has been about two and a half months since we started our talk about HBD. Almost a quarter of a year. Do you have any thoughts or questions about any of the links I gave you to check out, or really anything else about it? Did you watch the long "Make the World Flat" video or the talk by Professor Douglas Whitman of Illinois State University discusses human subspeciation?

      What do you think about the left's goal of flooding the west with Muslims?

      Hope you are doing well.

      From your friend, Anonymous White Cis Hetero Ableist Patriarchal Oppressor.

      Delete
    2. Hey Anon. I've been working on a nickname for you. Maybe an anagram of AWCHAPO (Anonymous White Cis Hetero Abelist Patriarchal Oppressor). APACHOW? Or maybe just Chapo?

      Anywho,

      Academia:

      Some of the "grievance studies" material is quite good in itself. The issue, as I see it, is when the professors only consider the students to have learned if the students come to agree. You can learn and understand material without agreeing with it. You can read a Koran without becoming a Muslim, yo.

      Maybe I will post some of the incidents later. The difficulty is, I don't want to "out" particular professors. Call it a lingering sense of feudal loyalty, but I don't like attacking people who taught me.

      HBD:

      Has it really been that long? Dang. I'm going to level with you on two fronts. I haven't done much in the way of research other than creeping on the HBD blog because 1). I'm busy and it's a lot of work and 2). The material is way out of my knowledge base.

      I realize that these are excuses rather than reasons, and grant you full permission to gloat/make jokes at my expense.

      "What do you think about the left's goal of flooding the west with Muslims?"

      I've been tweaking my Lefty facebook friends with cognitive dissonance posts - "Yes, because the religious fundamentalists we have are working out so well for us." "How's this for a Left-Right compromise? We'll let in unlimited refuges, but only if they're against gay marriage." The general response has been a mixture studied ignoring and appeals to principle.

      What I'm getting at is, I have the vague suspicion that this is all virtue signaling. The Left doesn't give a shit about Syrian refugees as anything other than a concept, which is why they avoid talking about the refuges' beliefs or the practical consequences of letting them in at all costs. Most would recoil from a "IRL" Syrian Muslim, let alone a society created and run by Syrian Muslims. It's all theory, no dirt.

      Delete
    3. "Maybe I will post some of the incidents later. The difficulty is, I don't want to "out" particular professors. Call it a lingering sense of feudal loyalty, but I don't like attacking people who taught me."

      How will you be outing them if you just give examples? You don't have to give a name or even what school they work for. In any case, I don't see that you owe a so called 'teacher' anything when they themselves say that the truth doesn't matter. If a 'teacher' is knowingly spreading lies, then they don't deserve the position or any respect whatsoever.

      "I haven't done much in the way of research other than creeping on the HBD blog because...."

      What HBD blog are you talking about?

      "1). I'm busy and it's a lot of work and 2). The material is way out of my knowledge base."

      Yeah, I get that other stuff in life can take up time, but if you think it is worth knowing about, I am sure you would make time for it. As to it being outside your knowledge base, the only way for it to get inside your knowledge base would be to go over the materials.

      "......and grant you full permission to gloat/make jokes at my expense."

      Why would I do that?

      I tell you what, how about one evening or part of a weekend where you would most likely just watch TV or mess around on the internet or something, just sit down and watch the video "Make the World Flat". It is really long (3 hr 40 min), but it goes over a ton of stuff. Then if you have any questions or objections to it, you can let me know and give me a time stamp for the part you have a question or objection to. I am NOT the one who made the video, though, so my response would just be that. There are many others who know much more about the subject then I do, but I will do my best to help you out, though.

      The link is:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-e5XjlmZA

      "I have the vague suspicion that this is all virtue signaling."

      Yep.

      One of the things that I find sad about the lefts view of things is the fact that off these millions of refugees entering the west, most of them are not Syrian, and 70% are unattached fighting age males. The left would have us believe that they are all just freedom loving guys who totally want to work are are not going to live off welfare or attack us. The Islamic State's fighting force is only about 25 to 35 thousand strong. There many, many times more fighting age males among the so called 'refuges'. If they all love freedom so much, why the fuck are they not forming an army and kicking the crap out of ISIS? So either they are cowards who just want taxpayer gibsmethat, who I don't want in the west, or they are Islamic sleepers, who I don't want in the west. Not sure how letting them in helps anyone but those who what big government (got to spend more on both welfare and security, got to take away more freedom to keep us safe from the refugees and the refugees safe from people who don't want them here).

      The US spent half a billion dollars trying to train these fucks, yet only got five fighters out of it. FIVE. We could have payed for a fully trained and equipped western mercenary army to go in and fuck up ISIS for that! I don't feel sorry for these fucks at all.

      Delete
    4. Wow, I typed way to fast in that response. Please ignore the many typos.

      Delete
  2. Hi Rev, a wanderer from Vox Popoli here.

    Having read a bit of your writing I would describe you as a classical liberal, which I regard as a good and honourable position to hold. However despite claiming the title of "liberal" the left as it stands now is completely illiberal. Progressive is probably a better description, although what they are progressing towards, or indeed whether any human being would want to live there is a matter of conjecture.

    Like Diogenes you carry a lamp looking for an honest man, but I fear you will not find one there.

    List the things that you value, and then look for a political ideology that reflects them. I think you may be surprised at who you find yourself lining up with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know people in that wing who are basically decent people, but when "trigger" topics come up, it's like they suffer a personality inversion. The cognitive dissonance is real at frightening.

      It's clear what they think they are progressing towards: a world without want, harm, or suffering. A world without prejudice or hate. Not the worst world imaginable.

      But breaking eggs to make omelets doesn't work if you're trying to save the eggs. Either individuals matter, and we should not violate their rights, or individuals do not matter and we should not try to save anyone.

      Delete
    2. "It's clear what they think they are progressing towards: a world without want, harm, or suffering. A world without prejudice or hate. Not the worst world imaginable."

      Yeah, because that kind of utopian thinking has always worked out so well in the real world.

      Delete
  3. Rev: There's another blogger, who uses the handle "Neo-Neocon." She wrote a very interesting and profound series of posts about her own political transition from being a standard-issue Northeast US liberal to a more conservative position. I think she's about a generation older than you, since a lot of her political identity was formed during the Vietnam War, but I think you will still find it a good read. The link is here:

    http://neoneocon.com/category/a-mind-is-a-difficult-thing-to-change/

    ReplyDelete
  4. I wonder that it took so long for the scales to fall from your eyes.

    The left haven't changed at all; not in the tiniest particle. They always talked a good game to encourage things like collectivism and a better world but they have never delivered anything but misery and cruelty beyond measure. I hope that you find joy in the greater world of tolerance, dissent, disagreement, argument and friendly kerfuffles.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I wonder that it took so long for the scales to fall from your eyes."

      There is a certain aspect of human consciousness (conscience, even), that wants to ignore the harmful actions of allies. But sometimes, you do need to shoot at allies.

      I've been discussing this with some of my meat-space liberal friends. They have similar reactions to me: disbelief at first, followed by "it's just a radical fringe," followed by uncomfortable recognition of the "radical fringe - just the tip - anyone who disagrees is evil" pattern.

      But I think clamping down on freedom of speech may end up being The Line. My roommate, who is okay with everything from polygamy to bestiality to killing born infants (not a typo!) isn't even okay with it. He said something along the lines of "When did we get on the wrong slippery slope?"

      Again, this is a guy who is okay with killing three-year-old, but the idea of clamping down on free speech/personal freedom is too much.

      Delete
    2. Not a friend you should ask for emergency babysitting.

      Delete
    3. No, but he's great for hiding bodies.

      A fun game to play with his type is "are children property of their parents?" If they are property, then the parents are free to raise them as they see fit (ie, religious, which is the true sticking point). If they are not property, on what basis can the parents decide to end their lives?

      Delete
  5. You may find interesting a book I read a few months ago: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Disagree About Politics and Religion. The author (instinctively liberal) examines how we do moral thinking. A significant part of his conclusions is that humans have six moral bases upon which we do moral reasoning. Care vs Harm is the most obvious, but we also have Loyalty vs Betrayal Sanctity vs Degradation and three others. The thing is, leftists tend to think in terms of 3 of these foundations, while conservatives tend to work with all 6.

    This explains, among other things, why conservatives understand liberals better than the reverse. We understand their concerns, but think other questions must be taken into account. A large part of what worries us, though, is completely alien to them.

    A really good book. Someone like yourself, who feels caught in the middle, might like it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You're going to be with us on the Dark Side soon. What kind of cookies would you like for your 'Welcome' basket?

    ReplyDelete