People who think like adults argue like adults; therefore, people who want to think like adults, are obliged to argue that way. It can be tough to do sometimes. First thing to keep in mind is that you have to engage the ideas and not the people pushing them. What tends to get you bogged down here is pattern recognition: It is an entirely valid argument to say, for example, “I notice women who push the crappiest and silliest radical-feminist ideas have hyphenated names.” Certainly it is not politically correct, but if you think you’re noticing the trend because the statistics would support it, and not just because instances of the trend make a deep emotional impression on you, then it’s a valid pursuit to call it out & ponder what it might mean. But it’s teetering on a brink because the line between pointing that out, and saying some very silly things, can be fuzzy. “All women with hyphenated names have very silly and crappy radical-feminist ideas” would be an invalid generalization, clearly unfair to hyphenated-name women who happen to have sensible ideas. As well as a disservice to the person thinking it.

The salvation is to simply keep a decent and rugged tethering to the facts. Statements with “all,” “none,” “always” and “never” are to be viewed with deep suspicion, and upon receiving the inspection they deserve, will tend to wither and implode much more quickly than most others. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi said, only a Sith deals in absolutes. Of course, that in itself is an absolute statement, so…hmmmm…let’s move on.

For this reason, I don’t like observations like “liberals are stupid” or “liberals are mean.” It sounds like something a frustrated third-grader might say…and, there is the other matter that it isn’t true. Have I not met some liberals who are pretty darn smart? Of course I have. How about nice liberals? That one is a bit tougher, I’ll admit. Certainly I can round up for you a lot of liberals who like to think & say how nice they are, in short order and without putting much effort into it. But you would be well within your rights to say, Try Again Freeberg, it doesn’t count because the liberal is not as nice as he or she thinks he or she is. This would happen quite a few times, in fact you and I would eventually achieve some proficiency in recognizing this muted-down streak of effeminate-male anger, like Captain Hawkeye Pierce getting ready to explode into some self-righteous monologue about whatever. The “aggressively non-threatening NPR male” rage Harry Stein was writing about.

But, at least among the women, there are some liberals who are genuinely nice. One Aunt by marriage, on my Mother’s side of the family tree, comes to mind. These types do genuinely mean what they say when they indulge these fantasies about a “fair shake” for the latest fashionable minority/victim group. They just don’t understand the wretched ultimate effects of the policies they favor as they indulge these fantasies.

Here’s the thing about generalizations, though: Because generalizations fail so often due to their well-understood intellectual fragility, they are, in fact, extremely valuable. That would not be the case if they could be easily debunked all of the time. But contrary to popular belief, they fail often because they can be easily debunked — pay attention to this part, now, it is critical — almost all of the time. Almost. They are like the canary in the coal mine. Fragile, therefore first to expire, therefore there is meaning to be inferred from any situation in which they’re not expiring.

All too often, you take a large group and apply a generalization to it, which upon encountering reality & the facts, implodes almost instantly. But then you carve the large group into smaller groups, reapply, and after a few rounds of division you find the generalization works. Or, at least, you’re lacking in any facts that will vanquish the same generalization again, and you’ll have to allow it to survive, tentatively. This is possibly the beginning of understanding a cause-and-effect relationship. In our example of the genuinely nice liberal, who never seems to be a male, theory: It is more important to males to achieve cosmetic superiority to other specimens, than it is to females, because of the “peacock” attribute of the male psyche. And, the effort to achieve cosmetic superiority to other specimens is exactly where liberals lose their genuine nice-ness, as well as where their credo ceases to make any sense. I’ve criticized them for this many a time, and I’m not done yet: Making a perfect new world in which we’re all equal-equal-equal, to show how much more worthy you are compared to other people? The contradiction is completely devastating, completely unworkable — and not very nice at all.

All of this is a lead-in to my observation that the easiest generalizations about liberals, which crash and burn instantly when we review our factual encounters with real-life, real-smart, real-nice liberals…suddenly find new life when we divide the arithmetic set of “liberals” just a tiny bit. And my “didja notice” moment here is, the number of times we need to divide this arithmetic set in order to give the generalizations a new leasehold on life is: once, into two sets. A simple, clean bisection. I actually noticed this quite some time ago, and have since reviewed the generalization to see if it’s be knocked into the dirt by reality yet again. With that one bisection, the re-pulverizing has yet to occur. Perhaps it will later, but for now the newer set of generalizations seems to be like a good one, and it’s certainly durable.

From this exercise, I perceive two halves. I value this perception rather highly, for if it continues to hold up, it may lead in to a road-map to liberalism’s eventual defeat, at least within this chapter of American history.

You have the ones like the kindly old Aunt, along with the not-so-nice peacock males and all others who aspire to be like her. Somewhere in their hearts there are these good intentions. This is why I’m throwing truly nice people into the same pot as not-truly-nice people, melting ‘em all together and calling it a day: They all have it in common that they sincerely want other people, strangers who they’ll never meet, to have an easier time in life. Some of them have mixed motives — “I’m going to look like a better person than that other guy, over there, because I said something positive about gay people” — and others don’t. They favor policies that ultimately hurt the people they want to help. But they know not what they do. One of my favorite examples: Raising the minimum wage. I’ve explained it over and over to them, you’d think the idea would manage to get across: This does nothing to actually “raise” a wage, what it does is outlaw jobs that pay anything below a certain amount, which is being increased. Can we agree on that? I’ve been genuinely surprised to find out the answer is, YES, we can agree on that, until such time as we have to form an opinion about an issue, then the typical response is to just keep clutching to the same opinion they had before. Like a baby to a blanket.

Other examples: Affirmative action in contracting and hiring, to soothe and cool whatever residual racial tensions there may be. The predictable effect is toward the opposite. Raising taxes to cover a city’s, state’s or nation’s tax revenue and budget woes. Showing those dirty, rotten companies how ticked off we are that they are “gouging consumers,” but smacking them with a whole new layer of burdensome fees and regulation. All these policies have a predictable effect more-or-less completely opposite from what was intended, and yet these types will line up to support the same policies over and over again, thereby bringing a lot of harm to the people they claim to be helping.

People in this group claim to care, and on some level they do care. They’re just not thinking things out all the way.

Now, the other group exploits the first group. These are vicious cold-hearted bastards who know perfectly well that Barney Frank caused the housing crisis, Fast and Furious would get innocent people killed, that gun control does nothing to make a city any safer, that when it costs companies more money to bring a product to market they just pass it on to the customer. These people know all about all of this. They just don’t care.

These people are usually employed in some capacity, such that they achieve a higher level of compensation, job security, or both when the wretched policies go into effect and innocent people are hurt by them. Hillary Clinton doesn’t really think it makes no “difference” who caused the attack in Benghazi. Joe Biden doesn’t really think you’re a lot safer if you fire your shotgun twice. President Barack Obama doesn’t really think more lives would be saved by His “extra background checks.” These people are just plain liars. They know the truth is very different from what they’re saying, but they don’t give a hang.

Those are your two groups of libs: The ignorant, and the apathetic. Evidence-impervious, and scruples-devoid. No, they’re not trying to be uninformed, or to hurt people; these are not their central motivations. That’s the whole problem. Both groups have bigger fish to fry.

From all I have observed, liberalism over the last few years has been making some great progress in moving, as they say, “forward.” Battle after battle after battle, in the congressional districts as well as in the nation’s capitol, is resolved in their favor, often with the “progress” locked in somehow so that their opponents can never reverse it, even if there’s a sea-change at some future date. The gun control thing was the first notable exception, at least in the last year or two. By & large, since 2007 or so they’re winning every single argument. And if there is one single reason for this progress of theirs, I would say it is this: The division between the ignorant and the apathetic is hard to pick up. We’re living in a time in which it’s become toned-down, and subtle. It’s so hard to see, that even people who watch politics all day every day won’t notice it’s there; instead they’ll insist on calling the whole movement “liberals.” That matters. Advancing liberalism is really all about sales pitches, from the apathetic to the ignorant. And it succeeds when the ignorant agree to the purchase. The feeling right now is that these two groups are one and the same, so the ignorant have no reason to decline.

I further perceive that the winning streak will come to a stop, and reverse, if and when this division is re-emphasized, highlighted so that it is easier to see. We’re all guilty of being ignorant now and then. But who wants to buy something from some shyster who is obviously hoping you remain ignorant? Isn’t that when you hang up on the telemarketer, car salesman, real estate crook or MLM crony? That’s when liberalism stops; when the ignorant-commoners realize they are not peers with the apathetic-elites, and that the two groups do not share common goals. From that, will come the realization that the policies that are being sold to them, are not conducive to the objectives they want to achieve. But it comes only from that epiphany, which may be sudden or slow. A smooth-talking smiley-faced Republican can’t explain it to them. They have to learn, from their own experiences, that they’ve been sold a bill of goods in the years gone by, and the attempted-fleecing is still taking place.

In other words, they have to learn on their own to start taking a sensibly jaundiced view of things. It’s part of growing up.

The problem is: Too many of them think they’re already doing that, by reciting ridiculous and useless homilies about “Oh well, all politicians are crooks,” as if they are magical incantations that can somehow make bad ideas into good ones.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing News.

Over at Rotten Chestnuts, our collaborative blog, one of our co-conspirators has launched a blog-post category called QUILTS — an acronym for “Questions I’d Like To See [Asked].” With the opening of the George W. Bush library, the air is suddenly thick with talk about the legacy of our 43rd president…which was supposed to be a toxic chapter of our country’s history we would never, ever, ever want to recall again. But the time has come to give that another re-think.

The man of the hour predicted this himself, and the day might be here. Gas costs half of what it is now? Businesses looking to expand, doing real work for real people who really want the work done? Triple-A credit rating? Who wouldn’t want to go back?

Our liberals, that’s who. Well, they’ll never admit it, anyway…

We have two problems here. One, there are people who agree with me, that if it’s possible for me to buy a gallon of milk for $3 instead of $4, then I should be able to. If government has a role in that, then its role should be to make sure I can buy milk for the lower price; at the very least, it shouldn’t be trying to make it harder for me to get hold of the milk…or the refrigerator in which I’ll be putting it…or the linoleum for the floor upon which it sits. Or the house with the floor. But — those people would support the liberals in saying, no, let’s keep going “Forward” because they don’t want a guy like Bush in charge. They’re repeating what they’ve been told to think, you see, and what they’ve been told is that George Bush is something of a “douche.” They’re neck-deep in personality politics, and the policies, and their effect, can’t achieve relevance. A little bit of name-calling and these folks suddenly have answers to all the questions. Although, we’re still waiting for things to get better…

Problem Two is simpler: We have people who don’t agree with me. We have people who want high prices. A lot of them aren’t shy about saying this should be government’s job. They’ll never say “make it harder to get hold of” the gas or the milk or the refrigerator or the linoleum or the house or the labor that went into it all…they may never admit to being “in favor of higher prices.” But they’re opposed to the prices being lower.

So. Question I’d Like To See Asked:

Should goods and services be made accessible to the consumers who want to buy them?

Notice I said “accessible,” which might affect the outcome of a poll. It’s not escaped my notice that when people talk about nationalizing health care, they use the focus-group-tested word “access” a lot, which seems to enjoy positive appeal. I’m under the impression we have two Americas right now, an America that seeks to pay for the things it uses up for its own benefit, and another America that doesn’t want to pay for anything. Whoever advocates for a certain policy change, and advocates smartly, will seek to heal that divide but only heal it in service of the goal they’re trying to achieve. “Access to health care” is language carefully crafted for consumption by people who want to get some health care, but not have to pay for it. You’ll notice, in my question, the effect is the opposite: consumers who want to buy them. My meaning is, pay for them.

President Obama, by and large, has been consistent in making all sorts of things more accessible. But only for the people who don’t want to pay for them. For the rest of us, life’s been getting tougher and leaner.

Gas costs double, and it’s much tougher to get a job.

A lot of that is by design. He said He would fundamentally transform America. Say what you will about the rest of His promises, but there’s one He’s managed to keep. We are “fundamentally transforming” America from a country in which people pay for the things they consume, into a country in which they don’t.

And a lot of people like it.

So: QUILTS. Question I’d Like To See Asked. Should prices be lower? Should it be easier for people to buy things? It’s certainly a fair question; I keep hearing a lot of people say they want “the economy” to get better, stronger, more robust, resilient, whatever. Well, in my world that would mean more selling & buying. My idea of an “economy” thrives on consumer confidence; when I’m a consumer, my “confidence” comes from an understanding that replenishment of supplies is affordable, and so is the acquisition of equipment, risk is manageable, payoff is bigger & better. That the opportunity is out there. They seem to have a different idea of what an “economy” is.

Some folks say the media is in the pocket of the democrat party. Other people say that’s bull-squeeze. It would be much easier for me to doubt it, if I were to ever see my question asked in a major media channel that actually counts for something. As it is, we have to leave it to the wild-eyed silly right-wing blogs, like mine. Which I find interesting.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

Who’s squirming harder: The gentleman appearing from 2:24 through 3:03 pronouncing “if guns are outlawed then only outlaws have guns” to be a “weak argument,” but unable to explain his rationale…or me, watching him. Him, I suppose, if I could film my first reaction in the web cam and measure it…I’m probably just slightly wincing. But it seems like I’m doing more. Lots of proxy embarrassment.

They’re not teaching ‘em what to think, they’re teaching ‘em how to think. That’s what we’re told…well…I have issues with both the what and the how.

This business of rephrasing the question that is sufficiently simple and crystal-clear, at least in my universe, that if the answer isn’t a slam-dunk, the question itself ought to be easily understood. What is that?? I see it at 0:28, and then I see it again at 1:44. I heard it in the recording of that original American Castrati guy (since removed) who “didn’t support the troops.”

Here’s what I think: Too much development of communication skills is taking place in the classroom environment. Now if I’m right about that, it raises another issue that these students are a bit old to still be developing their basic communication skills…but let’s let that go, because I speculate that the problem began before they graduated from high school. I conclude all this from the pattern I’m noticing, in which as the verbiage plays out and the speaker approaches a crucial point, the enunciation becomes more and more muddled and unclear, and riddled with phonetic and rhetorical ambiguities; a reasonable observer would expect the opposite to take place. Questioned about why you think the things you think, as you approach the point that substantiates it all, you should want your phrasing to become precise & concise. Crisper. Clearer.

These muffin-heads are doing the exact opposite. And with a remarkable consistency.

It is as if they are counting on being interrupted before they get to the part where they hang themselves.

I have a bit of a beef with the next generation being taught, en masse, how to talk this way. Especially when it influences how they think about things — which, it certainly does appear to.

Maybe they need to spend a few minutes listening to this guy.

Ya know??

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing News.

File this one under “philosophy,” or for clarity’s sake, “How come it is, we think we know the things we think we know?” In these contentious times this doesn’t get a lot of attention. People get so passionate and caught up in what they think they know, that all their energy starts to be plowed into repeating it over and over, and they can’t spare the residual ergs to recall how they decided it was so. But if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that this is precisely when we should re-inspect.

I recall a lengthy dialogue some decade or so ago, with a cousin of mine shortly after I “discovered” that our family, like many others, was descended from Henry Borden of Headcorn, Kent, who apparently left this earthly plane in the year 1470, and therefore we were distantly related to Lizzie Borden of the “took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks” fame. With the little boxes all drawn in and the lines neatly connecting them, the task arose to answer the question: How probable is this? And the answer is rather disquieting. Not only do we have no way of knowing, but much of what is recorded in genealogy is that way, for that is what genealogists tend to write down. “He married her on such-and-such a date, and then they had these children on these dates.” The what-is-known, every couple generations, is plotted or scrawled into a big sheet of butcher paper or some such, then rolled up for safekeeping. The how-do-you-know-that, on the other hand, very seldom enjoys the same benefit of forever-documentation. Even the guy who makes a breakthrough by getting hold of an old property tax document or passenger manifest, tends to footnote the boxes-and-lines very poorly, or not at all.

For the record: I “know” of this Borden link because of an ancestor in the early nineteenth century who had a certain name. Uncle Wally traced us back to that guy, and then I found that name, itself, benefited from some relatives who had done the research on the priors, so I made the link. Is it a strong link? Hell no. This is not a rare name. Although the geography and dates do line up rather nicely. But that’s all we got. No, I’m not putting a lot of faith in it.

Speaking of families: Competence, or lack thereof, of a family member can lead to conflicts that drag on for years. Of course this is always lots of fun. I have noticed those who plead for incompetence tend to use “externalized” arguments, as in, “Everyone who’s ever met him says [blank].” They do this rather consistently, so that they can’t do what I just did in the paragraph above: “I think I’m descended from this peasant out in fifteenth-century Kent, England, because such-and-such.” This is, of course, Philosophy 101 stuff: You can either answer the basics of “How come it is you think you know the things you think you know?”, or else, you can’t.

“Externalysis” would be a process of rejecting this fortifying knowledge, this “supporting documentation” if you will, keeping in mind only the tasty and tantalizing conclusion. Yeah, baby! I’m related to an axe murderer, innit cool? As it happens, I’m not too fond of the idea of being related to an axe murderer. (The other side of my family, according to legend, is also descended from axe murderers, so I’m not too keen on cluttering up the family tree with these types.) Some other people might find this enthralling. Emotionalism, I notice, is one of the most popular reasons for engaging in this externalization, this remembering-the-conclusion, forget-the-supporting-documentation stuff. People reach conclusions logically or emotionally, and if they reach them through logic they have a tendency to remember the logic. If they don’t, they don’t.

People who reach conclusions by way of emotion have a tendency to argue through the emotion. What else can they do? There is no other option. “How many children have to die before you support gun control” is a great example. Their plan is, when there is convincing to be done at some future time, they’ll do the convincing the same way they got convinced: With an appeal to emotion. Trouble is, it might not work, and if it doesn’t work then they just repeat it over again. It gets embarrassing to watch.

I’m reminded of a comment made a couple months ago when a lengthy argument meandered along about the global warming scam. The other side came back with a false argument that, although the scaremongers had been caught perpetrating fraud, in theory the skeptics were also capable of fraud therefore we should all pretend the scaremongers hadn’t engaged in fraud. I thought this was making my argument for me, since my position was that “We have global warming because all the scientists say so” is such a weak argument that it might as well be rejected summarily, in favor of something more logically resilient that might persuade toward the same outcome, assuming such an argument could be assembled at all. The way I said it was “I choose to internalize my reasoning processes,” to which the other side replied, “Have no idea what that means.”

Oh noes! The dreaded “We win, because we can’t understand you” rebuttal. If high school debate was a poker game, this would be like the straight flush. It burns!

Well if the phrasing is clumsy, it’s clumsy because I’m describing an unfamiliar concept; in my defense, if my phrasing is clumsy because the concept is unfamiliar, this is something that should not be the case. People should know why they know the things they think they know. And it should be readily apparent to all, including the guy who thinks-something-because-of-something, whether such a process is internalized or externalized.

Externalization is certainly valid, and can be valuable. However: If we are laboring toward a common objective of concluding something as reasonably as possible, whatever that conclusion may be, we all become obliged to use reason. In such a situation, I would offer that a certain conclusion should be viewed with a jaundiced eye when all of the arguments supporting that conclusion are, by nature, externalized.

Here, I will define it as best I can: You are failing to internalize, if you are capable of reaching a conclusion sufficiently satisfactory that it becomes your final opinion about the issue for the indeterminate future — yet if, subsequent to that, someone asked you to explain your rationale you wouldn’t be able to do it. The phrase “sufficiently satisfactory that it becomes your final opinion” is significant, because let’s be honest: Once we cross that point, most of us feel pretty safe allowing it to start coloring our biases. The longer we stick to an opinion, the harder it becomes for us to accept something different, and the more work there is for someone to try to convince us of something different. A capable thinker is a stateful thinker, and those who wish to change our minds about it at a later time, no matter how much they might like to, can’t enjoy the luxury of a clean slate. If they could, then that would mean we aren’t capable of learning.

I’m seeing this Boston bombing yesterday has yet to take the gun-control issue out of all the Internet-arguing going on…and from this, I see a rather durable pattern in which the pro-gun-control people are externalizing. They’re externalizing everything, from what I can see. “Justice Stevens said this,” “Justice Scalia said that,” “we already do background checks and that’s not unconstitutional.” It’s true that stare decisis is a valid legal concept, in fact a very influential one that often determines the final outcome. But that is not an absolute, and it cannot be one, for — let’s be honest again — it is an exercise in bureaucracy-making. The thinking is completely externalized: “It’s that way because it’s always been that way.”

I would liken it to visiting a campsite. Just about all of us, conservatives and liberals alike, recognize the virtue involved in preserving a good, healthy environment, especially when we get our flabby butts outside and see nature up close. In my experience with Boy Scouts, the best troops made it a rule to “leave the campsite in a condition better than the way you found it“…not just as good as. This externalized judicial-precedent argument, ultimately, invites a bunny-trail debate about exactly this: If logic is a campsite, have we made it our goal to leave it in as good a shape as the way we found it, or better? It’s actually a pretty important difference. Such a dialogue deliberates about whether it is our place to cure flaws, and to make right what was once wrong.

This is not an across-the-board condemnation of stare decisis. I would say it is a perfectly legitimate function of the Supreme Court, or any higher court for that matter, to issue a writ of certiorari on the finding of a lower court, haul the matter in for a good argument/questioning/decision thrashing, and overturn the opinion on stare decisis grounds. This would be an exercise in making sure justice is even, that people aren’t receiving disparate verdicts for identical situations based on who’s hearing the case. It may be a futile goal, but it’s still a noble one.

But I think we all would, and should, object to stare decisis being an eight-hundred-pound-gorilla absolute. It is, by its nature, externalization; you may find it convincing, but without appealing to a completely different argumentative structure to reach the same conclusion, you can’t explain why to a skeptical audience. And you know the old saying, “You’re always gonna get what you always got, if you always do what you’ve always done.” If we’re constantly reaching conclusions because that’s the way it’s always been, nothing ever gets better.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

This was a Facebook post, but it’s really more appropriate here. I didn’t think of blogging it because there’s no one particular event actuating the thought…but it should be written down and preserved for posterity.

In America, the moderates decide the elections. Moderates are not well-informed people. They call themselves “independents” but they’re not. They make their decisions pretty much blindly, by removing the two extremes and accepting without reservation whatever happens to be in between.

That’s good for surveys and scientific samples. Let’s see how it works with politics.

President Obama is not a manager of anything at all; like most accomplished politicians, He is merely a figurehead of a political movement. As such, He could best be seen as merely a proposal. And the proposal is this. One day you’re just minding your own business, and President Obama drives up in a big truck and says “I’m going to take money away from you, since you did not vote for Me, and I’m going to give all your stuff to the people who did vote for Me.” He uses phrases like “just a little bit more” a lot, but even a third-grader could see He has no limitations in mind at all. Obama has no more comprehension of “alright that’s it, I’ve redistributed enough” than your favorite dog does of “alright that’s it I’ve eaten enough.”

That’s the proposal. Three answers materialize, the first one from you: No.

The second answer is a beat-down against the first: “You’re just saying no to President Obama because He’s a black guy.”

The third answer comes from some Michael Moore type of character, who waddles in and opines with some nonsense that private property is mythical, and the house, everything in it, and the bank accounts never belonged to you in the first place.

So. We have: No; “You’re just saying no because it’s a black guy who’s asking”; and, It-was-never-yours. Remove the two “extremes” and blindly accept the middle. What do you get?

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

A “dry run” at not-solving a phony problem, so we can get our pretend-to-solve-it skills at peak performance [for] when we start not-solving the real ones.

Words of wisdom from me, over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging.

Veering off on a tangent, in a piece of correspondence, I elaborate “off line”:

People are frustrated, bored, want to go through the motions of building something great and grand. But…They are destroyers, not creators. You ask them what they’re building, they can’t answer. You ask them what they’re destroying — they can. You ask their political opponents “What are those people over there trying to build, and what are they trying to destroy?” and the answers you get back, are identical to the answers you got from the participants in the movement themselves; only the terms are less glittery, less flattering. Example: The democrats want an “estate tax” and the Republicans call it a “death tax.” They disagree on the terms, but they agree on the implications of it and how it is supposed to work. What does it build? What does it destroy? Nobody can say what it builds. Well, it turns out a lot of human energy is going into things like that. Building things is scary. If someone comes along to quiz you about it, you have to say how it’s all supposed to work. And then when you actually do it, you have to get everything right. That means developing skills. Otherwise you do something stupid like put the wrong kind of fuel in the President’s limousine.

So in anticipation of the scrutiny and the assault of other destroyers, people find it easier to be destroyers; they’d rather do the quizzing, than be the ones who are getting quizzed.

I remember a very smart guy, the Chief Financial Officer for a company I once fooled into hiring me, and promoting me…came up with a real gem, which I must paraphrase and probably paraphrase poorly. Here goes. In government, even the people at the very top of the structure lack the authority to make anything go. But everybody, all the way down to the mail room, can bring the authority needed to put a stop to something. Everyone can stop something. Nobody can make it go.

Well, it isn’t true of just government. Authority and wherewithal to make things go, to build something new, are rare things. Because these things are rare, they are therefore precious. That the discipline involved is difficult to master, makes them even more rare and more precious. The authority and wherewithal to destroy such efforts, to bring them to a stop, are in abundance. The ritual of the destroyer quizzing the creator, obliging the creator to stop his creating if he can’t answer each question honestly, accurately, completely and to the satisfaction of the person asking. Doing that kind of quizzing is easy and fun. Being on the receiving end of it is frustrating, and not fun.

This is where I become truly embarrassed when I hear about the wrong fuel being put in the President’s limousine. The problem isn’t quite so much lack of skill. Heck, who am I to criticize, I never did find out if it was gas in a diesel engine, or diesel in a gas engine, and I’m at the point where I don’t give a hang. The problem is that it just wasn’t taken seriously, and I know why. The leadership is in the business of destruction because destruction is easier. They like to pretend they’re building something cool. They can’t say what it is they’re building. And, they lack the greater discipline required to build things.

Quoting Spock again:

As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing News.

On the “Jedi mind-meld,” Sulu says the President got it right so that settles it…if we recognize an appeal-to-authority argument as valid. I’m afraid, though, if this demonstrates anything at all, what it demonstrates are the many flaws in that form of argument. To use one’s good name as a lever for moving insincere ambitions is a sultry and seductive temptation in the human condition, and it lives in the forever. None of us are immune. I recall Vint Cerf, recognized as the father of TCP/IP, weighing in with the notion that Al Gore was right to accept credit with the “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” remark.

By internalizing the reasoning process and taking our own initiative to peek into the water wells, we can see President Obama is just as wrong now as Al Gore was then. Actor George Takei’s actual argument, granting him the benefit of every available doubt, amounts to “Star Trek and Jedi knights both have something to do with peace.”

Dignifying it with a response — and I’m conflicted about that, but I’ll go with it — Takei makes the mistake of neglecting thing-that-is-non-partisan-or-darn-well-should-be Number Eight:

8. [blank] and [blank] are meaningfully different; what works for one does not necessarily work for the other.

Jedi mind tricks put the ideas in. Vulcan mind melds get the information out. In and out are opposites. They are not the same. Note this is after ignoring, for no reason whatsoever other than it is injurious to the point Takei is trying to prop up, that “Jedi mind meld” is a portmanteau of sheer nonsense. The phrase doesn’t exist. It’s a botch, plain & simple, and one feels a bit silly descending to the level of pointing it out.

And, since I’m merely a fan of both franchises, whereas Takei is an actor on one, and yet I got it right and he got it wrong, this settles any outstanding disagreement about the appeal-to-authority, as well. I find the whole business to be strewn with gaping defects in logic, and fallacies both formal and informal lying hither and yon. Sincere presenters of assertions have no reason to use it, none whatsoever. Unless it is their intent to outsource the reasoning processes…which, if they really are sincere, they’ll come out and ‘fess up that this is what they’re doing, and offer due deference to anyone who undertakes the more disciplined work of internalizing those processes.

Putting it more simply: We have enough bovine feces floating around out there and we don’t need more.

Which brings me to that other thing:

What a telling exchange. And unfortunate for the President, in that the character deficiencies He is showing here, are easily recognizable to many of us. His saving grace is that this “many of us” probably doesn’t overlap statistically, in any great measure, with His constituency, since the defect becomes most glaring when it is in your proximity and you’re trying to get a job done.

Just look at what happened here.

Reporter: It seems like you’re not taking any responsibility for what happened here.

Obama: Oh yeah? Name one thing I could’ve done differently. Just one.

This particular exchange doesn’t fit the image that the President was trying to put together here. He’s trying to present Himself as the grown-up in the room, the cool but inwardly frustrated ambassador of good will, trying to get something done.

But those among us who’ve encountered the personality type, understand this is the type of guy stopping things from getting done. The “nothing is ever my fault” guy.

There is another point to be made here. My son and I have been exploring this in recent years: A lot of times in life, you’re going to look around at the wreckage of your latest failure and see yes, President Obama’s viewpoint is right here, there is absolutely, positively nothing I could have done differently. That is okay as an initial observation. It is not okay as a final conclusion because it just isn’t how productive people think. They don’t say it out loud and they don’t allow the thought in their heads. EVER.

If it isn’t your fault, you make it your fault. Really, that is what you do. For if it does not depend on you in some way, then what hope do you have for making it better?

So: We do not say “those assholes at the car lot really saw me coming, they really took me for a ride. Reamed me good.” We do not say things like that if we want to be productive people. We say “I really made a mistake going to that car lot.” See the difference?

A lot of people won’t. Seems the guy in the White House right now is one of those people. And, what’s even worse is, He seems to think it’s awfully important that we know this about Him.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing News.

On the whole climate change thing, as far as the science goes, my position isn’t too remarkably different from blogger friend Phil’s. I think it is perhaps measurable lately, due to our inevitably sharpening skills and technology in measuring things, that human activity is having an impact on the environment around us. But not in any way remarkably different from the effect any other species has on its environment, as the environment certainly has an effect on all those species. It is a relationship involving mutual dependence and mutual effect.

This is simply not the question crying out for resolution, I think. Or if it is, then this thing we lately call “science” is clearly not the tool to be deployed in answering it, for we lack certainty in our understanding of what the tool is. You can’t draw a straight line with a straightedge that isn’t straight, and you cannot use one enigma to resolve another. This thing we lately call “science” is different from the science I know, in two meaningful ways. First, at key points in its exercise, it is evidence-immune. Climate models assume a certain warming from carbon, this will release a certain quantity of water vapor, a climate sensitivity is presumed by which this water vapor will continue to heat things further, and by such-and-such a date the temperature will be up so-and-so degrees. It doesn’t happen, so this climate sensitivity number is re-computed with this objective in mind of “Hooray! We’re still doomed!” And so the “science” triumphs. Trouble is, it’s triumphant over reality itself, and when that is the objective then it’s not science anymore.

The other thing is, its foundations are all screwy. Real science is impure and flawed, by nature, since it is exercised by impure and flawed humans. It cannot strive toward purity, it can only strive to maintain awareness of its own flaws and find ways to tamper down the effect of those flaws. I’m hearing this phrase “peer review” thrown around quite a lot; it seems to be lost to history, that this is supposed to be peer review’s purpose, to try to sift the flaws of the human condition away from the work, and minimize the effect of the vestigial remnants that can’t be removed. This thing we lately call “science” seeks to exacerbate the effect of the flaws of the human condition. It uses peer review to keep them in. We saw this in the University of East Anglia e-mail scandal, which isn’t supposed to count anymore because…quite predictably, just like Atlas Shrugged villains…the institutions involved convened a big fancy panel which then cleared the key players of any wrongdoing.

That is, of course, what institutions always do when they prove the Conquest Rule a bit too well (#2, organizations not explicitly right-wing sooner or later become left-wing), and then get caught at it. These elements are constants in the equation. Some blue-ribbon-panel, filled with functionally anonymous VIPs in which the rest of us are supposed to place unlimited trust. Ooh, a panel! And, a clean bill of health from the panel. Well okay then, move along folks. Nothing to see here. Wouldn’t want to question the panel.

But the fact remains. You cannot settle questions in nature or anything else, using an implement to settle the questions that is, itself, questionable. I have no doubt that the climate is changing, none whatsoever. That is what it is supposed to do. Who ever said otherwise? I have a lot of doubts in some of the other things, like the tipping-point concept first and foremost. But when people use the “science” to show me I shouldn’t be questioning this or anything else, I’m noticing the differences between real science and this square-quote “science.” There’s a lot of anti-science and red-dot science involved in this weird brand of science they use. Which is to say, it’s more important to get rid of information than accumulate it, and it’s more important to figure out what’s going on by way of feeling than by way of rational thought. After a time, the only similarity I can see between real science and the “science” being used to convince me of the tipping point, or other things, is the word itself.

And it becomes unavoidable to conclude that we must be studying the wrong thing. Knowns cannot be delivered to us by way of an unknown. Can’t draw a straight line with a straightedge of questionable straightness. The science, itself, must be studied.

And based on all I’ve seen over the years, going back to the beginning of Al Gore’s crusade about this, before his vice-presidency during which time he did little or nothing about it (link goes to video that auto-plays): This doesn’t seem to be science, as we have known it and understood it through the hundreds of years before that time, but a big bundle of pathologies.

In my opinion, we are way too quick to accept the label, to trust it unconditionally. Good science doesn’t demand trust. This “science” does. Well, we should not comply. We should study the pathologies that give rise to it. We should be studying these before we find out what it has to say. We cannot depend on this new-age brand of “science” to minimize the effect of human frailty against its effectiveness in finding the right answers. Because it doesn’t believe in those frailties. First step to reducing the effect of something, is to believe it is there, and this “science” doesn’t reach that first step, so it cannot reach any subsequent one.

I have identified twelve. They are generally distinguished from one another although there are exceptions to this, in that some are strongly related, and in some places overlap considerably. Each one of the twelve could reasonably be described as a personality disorder, with greater logical defense than many other foibles and eccentricities that really are diagnosed as personality disorders. And, on a side note, that has always struck me as a bit odd and weird about the way we do things in this modern day and age: We think of things that are not disorders as disorders, and think of things that really should be considered disorders, as not disorderly. Both with mental and behavioral health, we do this.

But the following should be diagnosable. Diagnosis is the first step toward treatment. Not-diagnosing is the first step toward taking things more seriously than they should be taken, and I think that’s the mistake we’ve been making here.

1. If I can’t have it, neither can you (wealth and income)

This has long been recognized as a telltale sign of mental instability, at least since the heyday of mystery novels during which time many villains sought to eliminate their former belles who found new suitors, with the motivation of “if I can’t have you than neither can he (or anybody else).” We know this is not a proper way to think. And yet much of the global warming legislation proposed, particularly in the international accords, is based on this charter principle of “developing” nations being given waivers to pollute more than the “developed” nations. The public at large, generally, doesn’t understand how bad the situation is.

To be sure, when you start to consider the economic consequences of implementing some of the solutions proposed, it does make sense. In the same way that a waitress making minimum wage would be completely devastated if she was taxed at the same rate as a millionaire, the developing nations would be similarly devastated if called on to implement the same targets as a developed nation. But that’s just justification for the same progressive politics we see with our tax system, and in both cases, progressivism is the point: Those who have more, should be taken down a peg.

If you have tall poppy syndrome and like having it, that’s all very helpful. But let’s be honest, that has nothing to do with saving the planet. If we’re in imminent peril because “humans” have trashed the environment, we wouldn’t be starting with the objective of granting some of those humans a break. That would make no sense. But if we’re out to redistribute resources and re-align the balance of power among nations, then it would make lots of sense. Well, that’s the way climate repair is done. So what really is the mission? What really is the goal?

Climate change “science” hurts people. Because it is supposed to.

2. If I can’t have it, neither can you (sense of purpose)

Where tall-poppy syndrome has to do with taking the advantaged down a few notches, crab mentality has more to do with sharing a fate. “I don’t care whether not I live, so long as you die.” It is said that if you carry a crab to a kitchen in a bucket, you need a lid on the bucket, but if there’s more than one crab then you don’t need to worry about the lid. Every time one starts to crawl out, the others will pull him back in.

Climate change “science,” when it is channeled into political action, invariably fosters an attack on achievement itself. It seeks to elevate the cost of energy, so that it can elevate the cost of building things that help people. It does this under the guise of helping people. This is not just irony; it is derailment of the entire argument, for no responsible or effective thinking can proceed from a point where some meaningful thing is conflated with, and perceived to be identical to, its opposite. The real goal here is to equalize sense of purpose. Some people manage to have one, and some people don’t. The ones that don’t, rather than focusing their energies on coming up with one, seek to attack the productive livelihoods of others.

3. Collectivist organization (lucre)

Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle and other works, and noted socialist candidate, hit the nail on the head here: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Ayn Rand, speaking through John Galt during the famous fifty-page speech, hit the nail on the head again: “The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master.” Climate change champions who speak of this “science,” don’t show the curiosity that is associated with real science. Their minds are all made up. They’re in the mode of “when do we get to the fun part, where I tell everyone else what to do and they go do it.” They aren’t seen wanting to learn anything, for a simple reason: They don’t want to. They intend to be the masters. They think the new world order will result in a “salary,” or some other kind of bonus or livelihood, or power.

4. Collectivist organization (creativity inhibit) (partially redundant with #2)

You can tell a lot about people by the way they observe and celebrate human achievement. We’ve got a lot of people walking around among us who make a lot of noise celebrating what key historical figures have done in the past to help us out here in the present; but, they don’t celebrate these things the way normal people do. Just as a sentence can be framed in active voice versus passive voice — “I picked up the ball” versus “The ball was picked up, by me” — inventions and discoveries can be described in the same way. The person who actually did the thing, can be singled out for emphasis, or for de-emphasis. This is essentially the difference between old and new Star Trek episodes: Captain Kirk did this, Captain Kirk did that…fast forward a hundred years, you see “The Federation” has become some umbrella corporation, existing for the purpose of removing individual identity from any notable achievement. “Starfleet scientists” came up with this or that. And you can’t go faster than Warp Five.

We don’t need to wait for the faster-than-light engines to be invented to see this in action. People are scared of individual achievement right now. They find the collectivist lifestyle to be a soothing tonic, because it dulls down the sharpness of human victory. You didn’t build that. Nobody should be able to accomplish anything unless they’re in a group effort.

For the achievements we require tomorrow, we can always count on government. Government is like Starfleet: Safely anonymous. No one individual will get the credit.

5. Turnstyle (you can’t make a living until you punch our dance card)

For centuries, it has been a human ambition we don’t like to discuss, to become a turnstyle in the middle of the linear progress of others. This pathology doesn’t seek to diminish the success of others, or to obstruct it, quite so much as to tax it. And so we have college classes that purport to enhance the future earning capacity of the students that attend them, but don’t do anything to make it happen. We have commission after commission after commission, and board after board after board, awarding and revoking licenses and certificates. These pieces of paper are tickets, in the sense that if you do not have one, then you cannot “enter.” You cannot practice. Some of them are enforced by law, and you can be arrested or fined for doing X without having Y.

For no practical purpose, since the members of the board do not have the confidence of anybody. Oh, the board does, but the people on them who make the actual decisions, do not. For the most part, nobody involved even knows their names. But their decisions are supposed to be infinitely wise, and therefore, unquestioned.

It is true that a certification process can be used to elevate quality, enhance order and diminish chaos. That has the possibility of being the intent, and also the effect. It does not necessarily follow that these are the case. Certifications can be used by big companies to keep little (newer) companies out of the market. And they can be used against the big companies, too, by their governments.

Some people are motivated by this. Obviously, if that is the motivation, it isn’t too helpful to anybody else, so it’s fair to call it out when the possibility exists.

6. Repent for the End of the World is Nigh (partially redundant with #5)

Another sad thing about human faults and frailties that we’ve seen for centuries, is this curious thing: A lot of people look forward, with breathless anticipation, to the end of the world. I mean, the imminent end of the world. Months or weeks from now. Curiously, never “sometime today” or “this coming Thursday” or anything like that. There has to be at least enough time for a media sensation to slowly build so people can become famous. It’s been going on so long that it is impossible to declare some constant window of time, since the history of “here comes the end of the world” stretches backward deep into the middle ages, and further, to when information flowed much more slowly. But throughout all that, it’s a constant that people look forward to the last page of human history being turned in the great massive book, and that they should be among the ones around to see it.

And it seems once they get that far off the beaten path, most of them continue onward to include this other vital ingredient: “We” caused it. Yes, God’s pissed at something we did, or we’ve been hurting the environment…I remember when it was we were endangering the species and doing a lot of littering, and we wouldn’t have any water to drink. Nowadays, we’re spewing stuff into the atmosphere and making it hotter.

The fear that these people don’t want to face, is this: In this massive dusty diary of human existence, from its birth to its eventual demise, we are somewhere in the middle. That notion fills them a dread they cannot even fathom, can’t keep it in their heads for a microsecond. For that means, there is nothing exceptional about us, save for the good and bad things we do. We won’t be around to sing Amen. You and I won’t be around to see the back cover slammed shut. We’re just insects, living for a season, and if we want to be immortalized as special insects then we’d better get busy.

These people fancy themselves as being imbued with some special power to appreciate human mortality, thinking themselves keenly and uniquely aware while everyone else stumbles around in ignorance, with false delusions of immunity from eventual death. The truth is the exact opposite of this.

7. Look at Me! I’m Doing Good!

Virtue junkies.

8. Look at Me! I’m Doing Good! And You’re Not! (#7 is an absolute, this is a relative)

Smug.

9. Look at Me! And Stop What You’re Doing! Right Now! Do What I Say! Or We’re All Screwed!

This is the central plank of modern liberalism itself. We saw it with ObamaCare and a whole bunch of other progressive ideas throughout the last hundred years. Here, I’ll describe it, and you should take note of how detailed I can get as I describe it — and yet, you cannot tell from my detailed description exactly which legislation I have in mind, or even if I have one in mind, since it applies to all of them.

There is a plan. The plan is going to involve some benefits, along with some obligations. Those who are to enjoy the new benefits are not necessarily to be the same as those who labor under the new obligations, but that’s just the way things are going to have to be. We are all to be put under the protection, and effect, of the plan. The plan is very important. A crisis awaits if we do not implement the plan. The plan will cost, but the cost of doing nothing will be considerably greater. We must “act,” as soon as possible, and this action has to involve invoking the plan, right now. There is to be no opt-out from the plan. It must affect everybody whether they want it to or not. The plan cannot be tested out in a sandbox. It has to affect everyone, on the production floor as it were…we’re pretty sure it’s going to do what it’s supposed to do, or in any case, you should not be allowed to suggest otherwise.

Even though the plan should be imposed on everyone, only a few people among us should have any say in figuring out further details of the plan. Some people will have to leave the room, because they lack the “qualifications” to suggest anything constructive. They lack understanding, and/or sanity, and/or good pure clean motives. They should leave so we can have our grown-up talk. Yes, the plan applies to the commoners, but only the elites can say what the plan is going to be. In fact, that is most of the plan; a lot of monologuing about who can’t shape the plan. We are not allowed to point this out in mixed company lest an argument ensue, but those who have the greatest faith in the plan, seem to believe most strongly in that aspect of it. Some loathed people among us should be stripped of any & all influence, particularly with the details of this plan that has not yet been fully formed.

But on their way out of the room, could they please leave their wallets and purses behind. We like their money. Just not them.

10. It Are Science. I Talks Science. It Makes Me Teh Smarts.

In the same way a guy with a little dick feels the need to drive a big, impressive-looking, cherry-red sports car…some people feel the need to discuss scientific findings in great detail, even as they demonstrate highly questionable understanding of what those findings really mean, or of the way science really works. One wonders why they feel the need to do this. It obviously has to do with defining their identities, just like the guy with the sports car. They’re compensating for something. I don’t know what, exactly. I imagine the answer to that would vary from case to case.

11. Creation vs. Destruction

It’s easy to define this problem; it’s done through the defining. If you like to go through the motions of building something big and grand and remarkable, but can’t define what exactly it is, then you’re probably afflicted with this personality disorder. If your enemies would be able to easily define what it is you seek to destroy, and you in large part would agree with them about this, then that pretty much settles things. You would then be a destructive agent masquerading as a creative force.

There’s a lot of this going around, in this day and age. I’m not sure why. Since I’m already in trouble for using one Star Trek metaphor, I’ll dig deeper by imaging it has something to do with what Spock said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: “As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.”

12. I Just Like Winning Arguments

Because it’s normal, natural human behavior to want to win, and not want to lose.

It’s not normal to make that a central, primary objective though. To lust so strongly after the “me smart, you dumb, me win, you lose” thing that you support the realignment of international balances of power, toward the benefit of complete strangers, just so you can win an argument. That’s as much a personality disorder as anything else. Well, just about anything else.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing News.

Me, about three weeks ago…

And that gets into a fifth perception-discrepancy that arouses conflict, the perception of time. Liberals do not view time the same way normal people do. But that is truly a post for some other day.

Looks like the time has come. The Limbaugh Letter arrived last night, and on page twelve there’s a critical review of the Affordable Care Act, starting off with some bizarre quotes like “lower costs for young adults” from an official fact sheet, “How Health Insurance Reform Will Help Young Adults.”

As we around these parts noticed last year, and many times since then, libs are awfully free and easy with that word “will”:

…[A]s humans are warming the globe, and this warming will cause disruption of agriculture, inundation and salinization of arable lands, increased desertification, mass extinction, human migration with its attendant political destablization, and as this is avoidable, most people would combine these scientific findings with their personal morality to try and find solutions, especially as those solutions are readily available, and have many other salubrious effects. But that’s just ourselves. We happen to be rather fond of the little apes you call humans. Call it a peccadillo.
:
[D]eveloping nations will have to learn to control their emissions too. Ignoring the legitimate concerns of each nation will never lead to joint agreement. The obvious solution is for the developed nations to develop and export new technologies to the developing world. And that is what is going to happen. However, the longer the delay, the more expensive the solutions, and the more damage done to the environment.
:
[T]he sooner people address the problem, the cheaper the transition and the less the damage to the environment.
:
The accumulation of carbon currently in the atmosphere is primarily from the U.S. and other industrialized countries, not China. China is emitting much less than the U.S. per capita.

However, all countries need to begin making the transition as soon as practical.

Like Severian said,

I’m trying to recall the last time I’ve heard a liberal say “I don’t know” about any matter of consequence. Ask ‘em where the nearest post office is or the price of rice in China, and they’ll happily admit ignorance. But ask them what we should do about genocide in Darfur, or the regulation of the entire world economy, or the navy’s defensive doctrine on the Pacific rim, and all of a sudden they’ve got all the answers…. [ellipses in original]

Of course, in a sophisticated world economy like what we have today, it is very rare that a consumer is directly involved in acquiring the thing he wants to consume. This makes it worth the effort to categories the commodities according to how much we care about the bringing, once they’ve been brought. A gold ingot or a share of stock, these things are fungible, entirely interchangeable with their equals, possessing no sentimental value. If you have the gold ingot delivered to your front door for some reason, once it’s there all you care about is that it’s there. Maybe the guy lost it while he was bringing it to you, and then found it again. As long as the delivery is made, it doesn’t matter to you. Such knowledge might affect your decision to order another ingot by the same means, but that’s out of scope, this order is complete.

French Toast isn’t like that.

A lot of other commodities are not like that. Information isn’t like that. It’s much closer to French Toast; you want to know what happened to it while it was in the process of being produced, before you consume it. It can be important.

Especially when predicting future events. The example under our inspection is health care costs being lowered. In this case, and many others, liberals are absolutely sure of what is going to happen. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius demonstrated the mania anew a few weeks ago on the White House website:

January is the perfect month for looking forward to new and great things around the corner.

I’m feeling that way about the new Health Insurance Marketplace. Anticipation is building, and this month we start an important countdown, first to October 1, 2013, when open enrollment begins, and continuing on to January 1, 2014, the start of new health insurance coverage for millions of Americans…
:
The Marketplace will offer much more than any health insurance website you’ve used before. Insurers will compete for your business on a level playing field, with no hidden costs or misleading fine print.
:
There is still work to be done to make sure the insurance market works for families and small businesses. But, for millions of Americans, the time for having the affordable, quality health care coverage, security, and peace of mind they need and deserve is finally within sight.

But reality says otherwise. Note that this article is nearly three years old; we’ve had our warning for awhile now.

One of the promises of Obamacare has been that it would reduce health care costs. The day after the House passed the Senate’s version of health care reform, this headline says “Health Care Companies Pull Stock Market Higher.” Clearly, money is being bet on health care costs increasing, putting more money, not less, into the health care sector.

That should not be surprising. In a free market setting, individuals decide how much they want to spend on various services, including health care. With increasing government control, spending on health care will increasingly be a political decision, not the aggregation of individual decisions. Health care companies already have their lobbyists, who pull for more generous reimbursements. Consumers (the elderly on Medicare, the poor (and increasingly middle class) on Medicaid, etc.) will exert political pressures for more benefits. Political allocation of resources will surely increase costs.

Taxpayers won’t like the idea of higher taxes, already a part of Obamacare, so expect the bulk of the increased cost to push the budget deficit higher. Essentially, Congress has looked around the world and decided they’d like to shape our public sector to be more like Greece. At least, by not being on the leading edge here, we can see what’s coming.

The post contains a link to the original article, which doesn’t work anymore. But there are other copies lying around the Internet, like here for example. The article makes a lot of attempts to explain the stock price up-tick. It contains a lot of rosy language about a “string of improved economic reports,” which hasn’t aged very well, and there are a few litanies about uncertainty being lifted. This can have a buoyant effect on stock prices. But the logic remains: When the stock price goes up, there has to be demand. Demand means, someone is putting money in. Why would they be putting money in if they thought the industry, as a whole, was going to be sucking up less money? Is this more of the liberal fantasy about businesses being regulated into more profitable operating models, which left to their own devices, they wouldn’t be smart enough to reform on their own? Or was it a matter of these investors believing in that, and that’s why they were buying the stock?

If that’s your explanation, you can keep it. Yes, I could be wrong…but…I don’t think that’s it.

I previously identified time as one of the five pillars of STACI, the implicit guarantee that liberal ideas will always fail. Indeed, the evidence that they’re winning most-to-all of the elections lately, is our assurance that liberals never apply the same policies toward their own objectives that they insist the rest of us apply to ours. When they run political campaigns they behave like perfect little war-hawk, take-no-prisoners, “yes this IS the hill I want to die on” conservatives. I’ve often had the view that this one paragraph I scribbled together about the time thing, deserved more attention.

The future, to them, is as clear as our own past is to us. Clearer, even. There’s no Rashomon Effect; you ask a hundred liberals what the climate will do over the next century, you get back more-or-less the same answer. But the past, on Planet Liberal, is murky, much like our own future is to us. Detroit elected a bunch of lefty politicians and the place went to Hell, but of course, the truth has to be more complicated and nuanced than that — even if it isn’t. Even though, as you take the time to look into more and more metropolis cities that dogmatically elected liberals everywhere for generations at a time, the result is constant, and after a time becomes rather predictable. It doesn’t matter. Things are still foggy.

Like the narrator says at the beginning of Braveheart, “Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes…” See, that’s part of the problem. When it comes to crafting an argument, on Planet Liberal quantity trumps quality. Say it enough times from enough different directions, and after a time it becomes true that Franklin Roosevelt singlehandedly brought an end to the Great Depression. Not only that but you become an idiot, and evil too, for even daring to question it.

If I were a Republican strategist, trying to implement my doctrine of driving a wedge between liberals and casual-consumer-of-news centrists they are trying to recruit, I would concentrate my resources toward the perception-of-future thing, and away from the perception-of-past thing. Liberals muddying up the past, making simple things appear complicated and complicated things appear simple, sound like they know what they’re talking about. And the stuff they’re saying, is just repetition of what’s been heard many times before already, so it certainly sounds true. It isn’t immediately revolting to the low-information voter. The same cannot be said about the liberal waxing lyrically about future events, how it’s all going to go down. The lack of uncertainty about any of it, that thing Severian was talking about — it’s just creepy.

I believe this is the hole in their armor. Because they don’t think there’s anything wrong with this; they think they’re scoring points, coming off as confident and strong. But I think, on average, they’re freaking people out. Again, lest I be guilty of the transgression I reveal in others…I’m fully aware I could be wrong about this. But it would be nice to see it tested.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.