Thursday, April 23, 2009
Screech, screech, screech
There's something truly bizarre, weird and insane about the elites who insist loudly and screechily that "We do not torture", while happily going along with vastly worse violence.
Some of these approved forms of violence are good for the country, some are not; the point is that the elites don't complain about any of them while reserving a unique abhorrence for "torture", which seems to have a remarkably flexible definition.
I can't begin to understand, no, I can't begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to attempt to understand this attitude.
It's Martian to me.
The elites have no problem at all with allowing daily rapes and beatings in American jails, which house serious criminals, pot-smokers, the falsely accused, and poor folks who can't afford bail while waiting for trial.
They have no problem with abortion, including the recently acquitted Dr. Tiller's partial birth abortions.
They have no problem with gangs operating freely in every city, but they do have a problem with police attempting to control the gangs.
= = = = =
In attempting to understand this strange perversion, I can only hypothesize. It runs in the same track as the current Catholic disapproval of capital punishment, namely a total misunderstanding of the PURPOSE of morality combined with a suicidal ignorance of basic human nature and genetics.
The purpose of having moral rules, and laws and armies to assist the rules, is to maintain civilization, to carve out a place on earth where people can accomplish something higher than raw survival. Higher accomplishments require protection from brutality. Protection from brutality requires an accurate understanding of brutal people, and a firm hand in stopping brutal people. If you want calmness and peace, you must be willing to destroy those who destroy peace.
This was common sense, universally understood 100 years ago. And it's still understood in non-elite parts of America.
How did common sense disappear? Maybe I'm starting to understand as I think about it...... Look at the conjunction of two modern ideas: egalitarianism and individualism. If you believe all humans are identical, you can't bring yourself to say firmly "This one is bad. This one has spent his life destroying and harming others. We must destroy him for the sake of the rest." And if you can only think of the individual in isolation, you can't bring yourself to say "We must harm some individuals so that the vast majority of our citizens can live in peace." Only the individual counts, and every individual has the same value. (Which ends up being zero after the bad ones proceed to kill all the good ones without hindrance.)
Sidenote: Whenever you hear that peculiar screechy sound, the grinding of unlubricated mental gears, the Tourettish involuntary explosion of cuss words, you're hearing cognitive dissonance. Part of the screecher's mind still contains common sense, and it's crashing against the internally and externally contradictory elite ideology. ¶ 7:45 AM
Some of these approved forms of violence are good for the country, some are not; the point is that the elites don't complain about any of them while reserving a unique abhorrence for "torture", which seems to have a remarkably flexible definition.
I can't begin to understand, no, I can't begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to attempt to understand this attitude.
It's Martian to me.
The elites have no problem at all with allowing daily rapes and beatings in American jails, which house serious criminals, pot-smokers, the falsely accused, and poor folks who can't afford bail while waiting for trial.
They have no problem with abortion, including the recently acquitted Dr. Tiller's partial birth abortions.
They have no problem with gangs operating freely in every city, but they do have a problem with police attempting to control the gangs.
= = = = =
In attempting to understand this strange perversion, I can only hypothesize. It runs in the same track as the current Catholic disapproval of capital punishment, namely a total misunderstanding of the PURPOSE of morality combined with a suicidal ignorance of basic human nature and genetics.
The purpose of having moral rules, and laws and armies to assist the rules, is to maintain civilization, to carve out a place on earth where people can accomplish something higher than raw survival. Higher accomplishments require protection from brutality. Protection from brutality requires an accurate understanding of brutal people, and a firm hand in stopping brutal people. If you want calmness and peace, you must be willing to destroy those who destroy peace.
This was common sense, universally understood 100 years ago. And it's still understood in non-elite parts of America.
How did common sense disappear? Maybe I'm starting to understand as I think about it...... Look at the conjunction of two modern ideas: egalitarianism and individualism. If you believe all humans are identical, you can't bring yourself to say firmly "This one is bad. This one has spent his life destroying and harming others. We must destroy him for the sake of the rest." And if you can only think of the individual in isolation, you can't bring yourself to say "We must harm some individuals so that the vast majority of our citizens can live in peace." Only the individual counts, and every individual has the same value. (Which ends up being zero after the bad ones proceed to kill all the good ones without hindrance.)
Sidenote: Whenever you hear that peculiar screechy sound, the grinding of unlubricated mental gears, the Tourettish involuntary explosion of cuss words, you're hearing cognitive dissonance. Part of the screecher's mind still contains common sense, and it's crashing against the internally and externally contradictory elite ideology. ¶ 7:45 AM
