Anytime Israel does anything, the internet’s stupidity quotient goes up 500%. And while it’s nice (I guess that’s the word) to have the left’s virulent, disgusting anti-Semitism re-re-re-re-re-re-reconfirmed, I can’t hardly read right-wing sites anymore either.
(Look, y’all, it’s pretty simple: The Israelis are no angels. But they’re not controlling your mindthoughts with fluoridated water either).
We need a term for this. “Internet Israeli Affective Disorder,” or something. Any suggestions?
I don’t know why this Jeff Goldstein piece, which is very inside-baseball, got me thinking about this, but….
I imagine this is how 1946 felt. The specter of communism was looming. Evidence of Stalin’s, and Mao’s, bad intentions was massive and overwhelming. And yet the US didn’t have the stomach for more war, so we wrote off half the world to the reds, buying ourselves 50 more years of Cold War in the process.
Meanwhile, over in Britain, the Empire was finished, but a thousand old men refused to see it. Here’s Goldstein on the electoral fate of the Tea Party:
The TEA Party elections of 2010 gave many of us hope; the GOP establishments actions since then, however, have turned that promise to pessimism — reaching its nadir with the McDaniel “defeat” in Mississippi that it turns out was bought with GOP establishment funds and sold with leftist race-baiting rhetoric.
Mulling over a theory here… it’s totally mushy at this point, but it goes something like this:
For a certain subset of people, the power to name is the power to control.
Not literally, of course. But something like this really does seem to be part of the “delusional architecture,” to steal a phrase from abnormal psych, of Our Betters.
For instance, here. Morgan quotes economist Tyler Cowen:
If our domestic politics can’t handle changes in income distribution, maybe the problem isn’t that capitalism is fundamentally flawed but rather that our political institutions are inflexible.
In one sense, of course, he’s totally right — government interference accounts for way more “income inequality” than any inherent “defect” in capitalism. But on a deeper level, I’m starting to believe, the real problem is the belief that there’s such a thing as “capitalism” at all.
It’s a psychological tic — you can’t use a word that ends in “-ism” without thinking of a conscious agent. There’s no racism without racists, for example, or Buddhism without Buddhists. But here’s the problem: “racism” and “Buddhism” describe both actions and motivations. They’re value-laden by their nature. You can hire a white guy over a black guy without being racist, just as you can refuse to eat meat without being a Buddhist. Saying “Steve picked the white candidate instead of the black one” (or, “Steve ate the salad instead of the steak”) doesn’t necessarily imply anything about Steve’s beliefs or personality; saying “Steve’s a racist” or “Steve’s a Buddhist” does, by definition.
All that may seem like belaboring the obvious. But think about what it means for the word “capitalism.” It seems to presuppose that:
there are people out there who are properly described as “capitalists;”
therefore,
these people are actively working for the benefit of something called “capital.”
Here again, maybe we’re belaboring the obvious… if you’ve read Marx recently. But, as anyone who has spent any time “arguing” with Our Betters knows, they don’t read their own bullshit. And that’s dangerous, because while Marx certainly meant it that way — you can’t read The Communist Manifesto without visions of Rich Uncle Pennybags dancing through your head — he was pretty obviously wrong. In fact, it’s blatantly self-contradictory — you can’t have a ruthless war of all against all and a Billionaire Boys’ Club rigging the system for their mutual benefit.
And that, my friends, should really be belaboring the obvious. But it’s not.
Does not play well with others.
The reason it’s not, I’m starting to believe, is because the word “capitalism” gives those who use it a false sense of mastery. If you can label a phenomenon — if you can look at an event and go, “oh, that’s capitalism” — you have no incentive to look further.
How does this “capitalism” work, comrade? They don’t know, but they’re damn sure it’s wrong.
You see this everywhere in leftist discourse. The problem with energy markets, for example, is “deregulation,” just as the solution to Wall Street’s excesses is “regulation.” Which, to a cognitively normal person, suggests that the guy spouting off about “regulation” and “deregulation” has some specific statutes in mind.
Which laws do you want, comrade? They don’t know, but damn it, there oughtta be some.
And you can take it almost all the way down the line. We all know the horrors of Patriarchy, but let’s walk down the street together; you can point out all the actual patriarchs as we pass them. You want to end “corporate personhood,” but have no idea what could possibly replace it. Fine, ExxonMobil is no longer a “person”…. but then neither is the SEIU, the NFT, the Democratic Party, or Greenpeace, and now who’s going to save the whales’ pensions?
The point isn’t — or isn’t just— that Our Betters are woefully ignorant of all the stuff they so loudly, self-righteously support. It’s far deeper and more troublesome than that. Because here’s the thing: Their ignorance bothers them not a bit. I’ve never once gotten an answer to “which regulations do you want?” or “what happens when corporations aren’t persons?”, but five minutes after I ask it, I’m getting the same ol’ song and dance about “deregulation” or “ending corporate personhood.”
They don’t know, and they know they don’t know, and they don’t care.
The explanation for this, I’m starting to think, is that they feel the word is the thing. They think everyone’s as good at make-believe as they are, and since we all throw the words around, we’re somehow influencing reality. Naming it is controlling it. That’s why they think this rhymes-with-jackoff is really onto something with his blather about “frames” and “metaphors,” while the rest of us think it’s laughable. You know how to use the word “capitalism,” and so you somehow know what it is, in its nature, and if you change the word you change the thing.
In reality, of course, there’s no such thing as “capitalism.” People exchange stuff for other stuff, each person attempting to get the best possible deal to fulfill his needs. This has been true since we stopped swinging in trees, and probably before. To call that exchange “capitalism,” and the exchanged goods “capital,” is simply shorthand. And that’s all it is. Humans will be self-interestedly swapping stuff for other stuff until we’re back in the trees, and it doesn’t matter what word you use to describe the stuff or the exchange.
And, most importantly: You’re not better at swapping stuff, and your stuff is not superior, simply because you can hang fancy words on them.
But Our Betters are wired differently.
That’s what I’m starting to think, anyway. Thoughts?
UPDATE (8/6/2014):
Commenter Gary has a theory on this that I’d like to bring to everyone’s attention (used by permission):
I agree with you about the stupefying ignorance and misunderstanding of capitalism by the left, but this doesn’t strike me as a case of them thinking they’ve gained the power to control something by naming it. I think it’s just an instance of them naming something they don’t like in order to attack and vilify it. The superficiality is a natural consequence of the fact that their only interest is in sniping and smearing. Beyond that, they’re not interested in understanding (and in fact may be eager to maintain their ignorance):
How does this “capitalism” work, comrade? They don’t know, but they’re damn sure it’s wrong.
——————
If you can label a phenomenon–if you can look at an event and go, “oh, that’s capitalism” you have no incentive to look further.
You may be onto something here (I’ve seen this sort of thing happen elsewhere), but in the cases you mention–the left’s view of capitalism, deregulation and The Patriarchy–I think the process goes in the opposite direction. That is, they pick out something they dislike and have no real interest in trying to understand any further (since an honest examination might undermine cherished beliefs). Then they attach a label to it, a bullseye, and commence firing away.
Here’s a theory about how the two activities–slanderous attacks and naming things accompanied by a phony sense of mastery–might work together. If you’ve identified something you already despise, and vaguely sense that you’d better not know much more about it, then labeling it bestows a patina of objectivity and knowledge, the appearance that you’ve actually examined and learned about the thing you revile. It provides intellectual cover and a psychological excuse. After all, it’s unreasonable and dishonest to bad-mouth and disparage something you know little or nothing about.
The Federalist’s David Harsanyi, on a possible Elizabeth Warren presidential run:
Still, it seems to me that a lot of people are overestimating the appeal, uniqueness, and popularity of Warren. What’s most enticing about Warren right now is the perception of her, not the reality.
Right-o. And the American public has never, ever been bamboozled by an accomplishment-free nobody who deliberately bills him/herself as a blank slate upon which everyone can project their hopes and dreams….
I swear, it’s not Our Betters anymore. Now everybody seems to think history began this morning. For the record, I was saying the same kinds of things about Obama in 2007 that Harsanyi is saying about Warren now. The difference is, I’ve been paying attention for the last seven years. Sheesh.
I’m not the first to address this meme … but I wanna do it my way. And pile on, while I’m at it.
Holly Fisher, who posted this photo of herself after the Hobby Lobby decision, was … advised by her, ahem, “intellectual betters”, that all it was missing was a flag, a gun, and a Bible.
So Holly posted this.
To which her, ahem, “intellectual betters” responded:
So … sure. For those who have been intellectually impaired by moral equivalence …
Talk about Serendipity. I will swear on a stack of Bibles that I had no idea Severian’s latest post was on the same topic I’ve been kicking around since I got in a bit of a discussion over on facebook last week. I had literally typed this post up in notepad and came over here to paste it in and post when I saw his latest post. So … consider this is an unintentional but extremely timely follow-up to his post
On the left and increasingly on the far right, I constantly hear complaints, usually expressed with righteously indignant sarcasm, “well, Corporations have rights, Corporations are People just ask the Supreme Court!”
Just yesterday a letter to the editor of our local paper asked in what seat in what pew in what Church does Hobby Lobby sit?
People seem to have this idea of a Corporation as a Big Crime Syndicate Cartel Machine that somehow wills itself into existence and manipulates our lives in some sterile, unfeeling manner.
I think the problem boils down to one of understanding what a Corporation really is. Corporations have been demonized, Alinsky style into the perception way too many people have of them today.
Let’s take a look first at what a corporation is according to Webster’s:
Corporation:
It’s that second definition we’ll focus on as it is the most general and actually covers the other two.
It’s a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person.
Either a corporation is owned by everyone, or it is owned by the government, or it is owned by … a person or group of persons.
The first case is communism. That’s not what we have. The second case is basically fascism or some other form of socialism. The third is what we have here in America.
In the case of a business, a corporation is joined voluntarily. By people. It can be sued. Just like people. And it consists of … people. Whether democratically run or top-down dictatorially run, a corporation is a group of people exercising their liberty to act as a part of a whole toward a certain goal or goals … making brass bolts, building strip malls, serving food, selling craft supplies. There are for profit corporations, and non-profit corporations.
One of the goals of a for-profit corporation is obviously to make a profit. But it has other goals, too, and those goals are decided upon and guided along their way by … people.
In the end, it’s not the corporation itself whose rights are being protected, it’s the rights of the people who own it that are being protected — and in the case of a corporation itself being sued … it’s profits from the people who own it being taken. In the end, it IS people — they just decide by a set of internal rules how to pool their will collectively. And since ownership in (and employment by) a corporation is voluntary, there is no problem here.
The Supreme Court got it right. Corporations are people, and people have rights.
If a corporation wants one of the goals to be to build affordable housing for low-income people, that’s fine. If a corporation wants one of the goals to be to build luxury cars for the 1%, that’s fine, too. If a corporation wants one of its goals to be to promote reading, or gardening, or a clean environment … that’s fine, too.
And if a corporation wants to make it one of its goals to produce a documentary about a political candidate — or even to help get a political candidate elected — that’s fine as well.
People complain that a corporation has way more money than the average person and so the corporate “person” can has more to contribute and therefore has a louder voice … but … the same is true of a middle-class person over a poor person. And again, a corporation is typically a collective of people anyway. But since it acts as one entity, it is treated as one entity. The rights and responsibilities projected into it are the collective rights and responsibilities of its owners. Who are people.
I hope that clears things up.
As far as political influence goes, they are not the big bad wolves they are made out to be. (They CAN be, but so can any individual person.)
The Court had given corporations the power to “overwhelm elections,” fumed the New York Times corporation. A commentator from another corporation (MSNBC) declared the case the worst ruling since Dred Scott, which upheld slavery. President Obama said Citizens United “strikes at democracy itself.” Others called the ruling a “constitutional Frankenstein moment,” a “corporate takeover,” “radical,” “absurd” and “terrifying.” Some progressives launched a campaign to rewrite the First Amendment. Really.
How did the predicted hostile takeover of democracy by corporate America turn out? In the aftermath of the 2012 elections, the Times reported: “American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove, spent $104 million in the general election, but none of its candidates won. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent $24 million backing Republicans in 15 Senate races; only two of them won. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, spent $53 million on nine Republican candidates, eight of whom lost.” It was, as the paper noted, “A Landslide Loss for Big Money.”
Here at Rotten Chestnuts, our goal is to educate as well as entertain. Now, Our Betters, the liberals, are confused on many, many (many many many many many) points. But in the wake of the Hobby Lobby thing — which, we must note, is causing them conniptions on a lot of fronts — they seem most confused about the notion of “corporate personhood.” Heck, even progressive darling and 2016 presidential candidate Elizabeth “Dances with Socialism” Warren has gotten in on the act: Point eleven of her little manifesto (that’s a safe link to Vox Day) declares that
[We] believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies.
See what I mean? Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Warren was an academic specializing in corporate law — where, one assumes, the legal definition of “personhood” is a top-of-the-syllabus affair at freshman orientation — the rest of the left seems to have a problem with this, too. So I thought I’d explain it to them. And, special little snowflakes that they are, what better way to get the point across than by appealing to their narcissism? So, without further ado, here’s three ways corporate personhood benefits progressives.
1) It enables nonprofits. I hate to break it to you, Moonbeam, but when you sign on for that internship with Save the Termites, you’re actually working for The Man. From every leftist’s favorite objective information source, Wikipedia:
In the United States, nonprofit organizations are formed by filing bylaws and/or articles of incorporation in the state in which they expect to operate. The act of incorporating creates a legal entity enabling the organization to be treated as a corporation by law and to enter into business dealings, form contracts, and own property as any other individual or for-profit corporation may do.
But don’t worry! The two key things here are “form contracts” and “own property.”
2) Let’s take the second one first. The termites you’ve saved need somewhere to go, right? So the corpor organization buys a nice farm in the country for them. Now, if it were just you and a couple of buddies who bought this nice farm, and some kid who’s allergic to termites wanders in and gets bitten, you and your friends would be the ones footing the kid’s medical bills until the end of time. Because, you know, it’s your land, as you’ll discover when you get hit with the lawsuit. And when you have to pay your taxes. What, you think the government doesn’t want a bite of your assets in perpetuity? Welcome to the world beyond the EZ form, kiddo.
3) And speaking of medical bills, let’s look at the first part: “form contracts.” We’ll go ahead and assume that Save the Termites isn’t your typical soulless corporation, dumping all its employees onto the Obamacare exchanges to save a buck. We’ll also assume that you are the typical hypocritical liberal, who’s shocked at the exorbitant prices and shitty care available on the public tit, and so instead of doing the noble proletarian thing you’ll take the evil evil corporate insurance bennies Save the Termites offers.
Well guess what? If it wasn’t Save the Termites LLC, you couldn’t get that insurance. The evil evil insurance company would have to contract with each of you individually — since, you know, it’s just you and a couple hundred buddies, saving termites. And you know what, Moonbeam? You’re a shitty risk, actuarially speaking. Do you know how many exotic diseases termites carry? On your own, you’re uninsurable, and like most Americans you can’t afford even the most basic Obamacare-mandated coverage. But since Evil Insurance Corp can contract with Save the Termites as a corporation, it can spread out the risk pool. And now you get your “free” aromatherapy to deal with the trauma of knowing you work for a — gag! — company.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Moonbeam! Once you start to understand how this “corporation” thing works, you notice it everywhere. For instance, you socialists love the notion of group rights. In the old, bad, racist sexist imperialistic homophobic America, it was one person, one vote, and “rights” worked the same way. But — obviously — that’s just not socially just. I mean, look at Native American female senator Elizabeth Warren:
Back in the bad old days, she couldn’t hardly walk down the street without somebody calling her all kinds of awful racist, sexist names. Surely she never could’ve gotten into Harvard on her merits. So, for social justice purposes, we* decided that Indian-ness and female-ness trumped things like grades and accomplishments and all that other stuff from the bad old days. We* decided, in other words, that chicks and Indians — as a class — got special breaks that whites and dudes — again, as a class — didn’t. And what’s another word for a class of people? That’s right: A corporation. Look it up. It’s right there under number three:
any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body.
I saw this New York Times headline this morning, and I thought it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s not true, I’ve seen several things just like it over the years exactly as dumb. And it’s no accident.
A few years ago, Severian here brought to my attention to Frankfurt Critical Theory. It explains a lot. You can actually buy a Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory … there’s one on Amazon. Not a bad thing to have in your library for translating things the Left comes up with.
D’Souza’s book/film “America” brought something into focus I had been unable to put my finger on … and what it is is the core, basic building block of Alinsky’s tactics. They use shame.
Not the shame of “you know you’ve done something wrong”, but the shame of “other people will think you’ve done something wrong”.
This is why all the charges Klavan mentions in “Shut Up” and the ones D’Souza outlines in the book/film actually work.
They use shame because it targets the thing that is most valuable to an honest, decent, thinking person, and that is his reputation.
Since most people don’t know any particular individual, when they pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and demonize it… it works so well. All most people know about a person (or an organization) is what they hear from the people bashing them in the media.
So every day, these people scour the headlines and think, “how can I rationalize an angle on this story and twist it to make the people I want to discredit (in this case, The West) look bad?”
And they don’t care if it unravels upon inspection, because they know most people will never inspect it, and tomorrow they’ll level the charge again in a different context, or a new charge with the same kind of reason-defying rationalizations in a constant Critical drumbeat of propaganda, until enough people have heard so much of it they can’t believe it’s not true.
Read this. Then read this. The latter is a stream of Twitter reactions to the former. And it’s bizarre.
Consider the following sentence:
The New York Yankees are the best team in baseball.
Now, I disagree with that statement. I think it’s objectively false, and can marshal what I consider unbeatable arguments to prove it. Moreover, I find that statement distasteful, as all good people hate the Yankees. But I understand it. It’s basic English, maybe second grade reading level. It asserts your belief that the Yankees are the best team in baseball.
Simple, right? But Our Betters, the liberals, have a flabbergasting capacity to misunderstand simple sentences when they feel like it. Some are worse than others — we-don’t-understand-that is the jab in the Cuttlefishes’ combo punch of idiotic internet arguments — but check out that Twitter feed. Some choice cuts:
@scalzi BUT DUDE SHE COULD DEFEAT YOU IN ~*single combat*~ YOU ARE AT GREAT FEMALE RISK SIR
@scalzi So, a load of pseudo-intellectual twaddle to defend his insecure need for manhood only to be defined as “can lift moar than women.”
Exactly none of which appeared in either Morgan’s piece, or mine. The former might just be some very odd sarcasm — because Twitter — but think about that last one for a sec. Not only did neither of us say that, but that statement actually contradicts the entire point of both pieces.
The average man is stronger than the average woman. This is incandescently obvious to anyone who has ever spent any time in the real world. Anyone who claims to believe otherwise is either lying, or has put in a truly brain-boggling amount of effort to deny the evidence of his own lying eyes. That was the point, expressed in clear, grammatical, idiomatic English. And as such, “can lift moar than women” is actually the dumbest imaginable definition of masculinity. Since most women can’t hardly bench press a Diet Pepsi, claiming to be stronger than the average girl is like claiming to be better than the average third grader at algebra — technically true, but what’s the point? The comparison demeans us both, but Our Betters keep insisting we’re making it.
Or consider this gem of logic:
@scalzi: Isn’t it fascinating how they translate your “she can lift more than me” into “I can’t lift as much as her”?
Well, yeah, that’s how I translate it, because those statements mean exactly the same thing. There’s a boulder over there. You can lift it, and I can’t. Which means — follow closely now — that you can lift more than me, and I can’t lift as much as you. The proof is the boulder over your head, and my bulging hernia.
But always remember: Conservatives are the dumb ones.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be a liberal “argument” without
@scalzi how do you know what that site contains? I tried, but after a couple paragraphs I could NOT continue reading. It’s just..a mess
So you don’t know what we actually said, but you’re metaphysically certain we’re wrong.
Not that it matters – given the level of reading comprehension on display — but I’ll spell out my point here in itty bitty words:
Missing the point like this — and then boasting about it — makes you look retarded.
You’re embarrassing yourselves, and John Scalzi, and the cause of whatever it is you think you’re advancing by claiming that a guy bragging about being outlifted by his daughter is some kind of grrrl power manifesto.
If I’d written what I wrote on Twitter, and some dude Tweeted back at me
@severian haha ur right Redshirts sucked
I’d ban him on the spot, because he’s obviously not smart enough to understand the basic English of a 300-word blog post, and I don’t want my name associated with that kind of idiocy. I’d be ashamed to admit my writing attracts that kind of audience.
You all, on the other hand, brag about it. You advertise your ignorance. You revel in it. You act as if typing “I don’t understand that” is the same as refuting the argument you claim not to understand. To bring us back where we started: The Yankees either are, or aren’t, the best team in baseball, but claiming not to understand the sentence “the Yankees are the best team in baseball” doesn’t affect their record either way. It just makes every single baseball fan on the planet think you’re an idiot.
Which y’all are apparently cool with.
And I don’t understand that.
I went to see D’Souza’s “America“.
It was just what America’s doctor ordered.
It is a pantheon of Echo Stoppage presented in a way most 5th graders can grasp. If viewed by enough of the squishy middle, it is devastating to the Critical Theory attack that has so successfully brought us to this point in our history. An innoculation, if you will. If you have friends in the squishy middle, you should encourage them to see it as presenting a side of the argument they’ve never heard — and it includes both sides of the argument — and actually makes one. A coherent one.
And if you have kids from about 5th grade on up … you should take them. It would easily be the most effective inoculation they will get against their current and future “instructors” purposely skewed version of history. At least there will be questions in the backs of their minds.
I also got D’Souza’s book after seeing the movie. And I ran across this little passage, which reiterates “Stop An Echo” and its necessity and purpose … probably better than I did it:
“It should be emphasized at the outset that the domestic champions of American decline are not traitors or America-herers. They are bringing down America because they genuinely believe that America deserves to be brought down. Their actions are the result of a powerful moral critique of America, one that has never been effectively answered. Nor is it easy to answer. Most people, when confronted with the critique, go mute. Some respond with bluster; others want to change the topic. The ineffectiveness of these rebuttals makes independent observers believe that this critique cannot be answered.”
This is the driving force behind “Stop an Echo”. Answer, and answer effectively. Don’t Shut Up. Don’t bluster (makes you look out of control and hurts your persuasive power). Don’t change the subject. Answer it. Calmly. And know your sh*t. So read up.
And for people who haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, this movie (and probably the book but the movie is easier and more accessible) is a fantastic starting point.
If enough people see this movie, it could be devastating to the cause of “Fundamental Transformation”.
Hell, even Peggy Joseph (the ebulent “gas in my car, “mortgage” woman) has apparently had a change of heart and worldview.
Wake up America. Send her to see the movie.
