I came across the above pointed observation of A Lily Bit just as I started writing my last post about being Cassandra of the obvious. My whole post is about the same sentiment, that angry frustration and desperation of not being able to stop the harm that can be clearly seen coming.
Come to think of it, half of my blog is about that feeling in some ways. I wanted to comment on it but there is not much I can add. I can only make the frustration worse.
I would have to point out that the things we are right about suck on purpose.
That we are not heard because people do not want to hear us, they do not want to see reason, they do not want to let go of their feel-good phantasies. Then, at the same time I came across this note of Yuri Bezmenov right next to it:
Here is the full article, here you can read it, and here is the quoted comment:
It is important to note, that David Litt, the author of the article and a former Obama speech writer is not suggesting dialogue or reconciliation. He is full of contempt and condescension, but he is willing to make sacrifices to exploit his relative. (Read the article)
The comment of Lee from Phoenix is vicious, sleazy and stupid, but apparently, it is highly recommended. By now, it is probably even higher, but I will NOT subscribe to the NYT to find out. The key is this:
“That doesn’t mean that there is no path forward. But that path is repentance and change – not cuddling and comfort. Calls for unity ring hollow when they come with no accountability.”
What Lee wants is unconditional surrender to his (and the left’s) benevolent dictatorship, no matter how harmful, insane and delusional those ideas are.
The attitude expressed is typical, but the most fascinating part of it is the also very typical lack of self awareness.
Lee from Phoenix cannot even conceive the possibility that the people he so vehemently detests have exactly the same contempt, disdain and feel the same righteous indignation about him and the likes of him as he (Lee) has for them. The negative feelings and the moral judgements are reciprocal. I find Lee’s comment disgusting, but I feel the same way about him, as (most likely) he would feel about me.
I was tempted to say exactly, but there are some differences.
My moral condemnation of the left rests on solid evidence, reality and reason.
I would be ready, willing and able to explain, demonstrate and debate, but I don’t think that someone like Lee could meet any of those three conditions and cannot do any of the three actions named. Lee and the left can only insult, bully and suppress.
The right is far less likely to walk away from a discussion than the left.
They are far more willing to compromise and far more willing to reconcile than the left.
I am never the first to walk away from a debate.
I also do not walk away from people just because I disagree with them.
I do not seek the company of the annoying, boring and stupid, but I am far more likely to walk away from a boring conservative than an interesting liberal.
What makes the left special is the vehemence of their hatred for those they disagree with.
My impression is that conservatives are mostly just puzzled and amused by their opposition. They can never muster and match the vicious hatred of the left.
Lee has a list of allusions and insinuations about the crimes of the right. Most of those are thought-crimes, most of the time just opposition to the murderous ideas and practices of the left.
As I pointed out in The American two-state solution and in Concerns, left and right,
the problem is not that the likes of Lee don’t want to talk, reconcile or compromise, but the fact that they cannot even conceive the possibility of an alternative, best described by the quote of Harley Price:
“Liberals are not so much opposed to the other side as incredulous that there is another side”
Nothing outside of their bubble is worthy of consideration either morally or intellectually.
Lee from Phoenix says :
Human decency should never be up for negotiation.
… That doesn’t mean there is no path forward. But that path is repentance and change.
In other words, complete submission to the leftist agenda.
While the left is literally killing us with wax mandates, with actively supporting criminals and criminality, with facilitating and encouraging self-destructive behaviour, with championing abortion, and in the case of Canada, with assisted suicides.
And all of that before their support for an unsustainable economic and demographic future, enslaving future generations with their profligate spending today.
Anything the left does is deeply and fundamentally immoral. I would challenge anybody to prove me wrong, but the comments like that of Lee from Phoenix clearly shows that they cannot.
In his post The Involution of the Liberal Mind John Carter makes the point that the left is getting completely unhinged.
What used to be ideological differences turned into indisputable dogmas, which morphed into delusional, reality defying phantasies of wishful thinking.
As John Carter points out:
“It isn’t just that they use fictional references as metaphors or allusions. That’s a very human thing to do, and the right is certainly no stranger to Tolkien analogies. But liberals seem to do this a lot, with only the most tenuous connection back to reality. Their inner world is a series of self-referential fantasies. The right uses fictional references as metaphors to explain facts; the left substitutes fictional metaphors for facts, and then forgets that it does this. (emphasis mine)
…for us to end up in
“… a war of divergent, mutually incompatible realities, which cannot be reconciled even at the level of basic facts about the world.”
He describes an interaction very similar to the one I mentioned in DEI is dying
“The mindworm parasitizing her consciousness had detected a threat to its structural integrity, and ordered its host to remove herself from the interaction before she consumed a malinformative infohazard. She didn’t even pretend that this wasn’t what she was doing. I’d never before seen something quite like it.”
I experienced this so many times that it no longer surprises me.
What really sucks, is not my own contempt for the left, but the sad fact that I am slowly getting resigned to it. I am losing faith in the possibility for a dialogue.
I am afraid that the political discourse is coming to an impasse and there is no peaceful resolution to it.
What sucks the most, is that I’m afraid, that I will be right again.
Give me hope with a comment.
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Both of these are displaying the same condescending arrogance:
They are educational…..
Something interesting about progressivism is that it worships "progress" in society and politics, but not in thought processes. Lee from Phoenix's comment is fixed in time at the point of reviling the choice of his conservative family members' political stance. But has he thought out what this means? Has he progressed through this characterization? If so, he would have to conclude that his family members actually want to see more poor people, want to see women suffer needlessly from a belly disease named pregnancy, and want to see harm come to people just because they have different skin color.
Is it likely anyone wants to see those things? Could you believe your family members want to see this? Maybe you can believe they want to do terrible things to people of different political views because those views actually threaten their perceived well-being, but to think they actually want more poor neighbors is insane.
The worst thing Lee's family members have really done (from his perspective), is be wrong about what is the best way to fix things. He wants to end his relationship with loved ones because they aren't as smart as him. Yes, maybe their opinions will make the world worse if Lee is somehow correct about everything else; but then wouldn't the right thing be to bring them closer and talk with them rationally?
That was well thought out Zork! You cannot reason with a human meat grinding machine that refuses to be reasoned with, as many of us have found out the hard way. Wasn't is JFK who said that "Those who refuse to make peaceful revolution possible, make violent revolution inevitable?" This was another great post and on another Sub-stack I've been following "Lies are Unbecoming' Luc Lelievre has been great at picking apart the systematic failures. I'll leave a link to some of his work for your review and consideration.
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/dilution-a-civic-anatomy-of-institutional