Here's a blog that linked to an old post from Over There in reference to Protein Wisdom:
http://tehsqueakywheel.com/blog/?p=3659
Apparently, PW got into a huge pissing contest with Patterico, who also got tangled up Over There a while back:
http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1065
Teh Squeaky Wheel doesn't seem to provide a link to the PW/Patterico fight, but I was struck by the comments I read here at the post linked by TSW, many of them by you:
http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1677
It reminded me of something I've been thinking about a lot as I've followed the health care debate, which is this: The hardest thing in the world is to prove the dead obvious.
Water is wet, women are different from men, and the government can't run anything efficiently. The only thing it's any good at is what can't be done by any other kind of organization -- e.g., build an overwhelming military. Very few things fall into this special category.
That's what's so infuriating about ALL the conservative pundit debates on healthcare. It's all about finding some way -- simple, sophisticated, clever, logical, legal, economic, etc -- to prove what should need no proof: if the government takes over health care completely, many many more people will die younger than they need to or should.
And once you've said that, what more CAN you really say? Can any of you prove that water is wet? If you have to prove it, haven't you defeated yourself in advance by even attempting it?
But what do you do instead, if anything?
Fair Warning. Good responses here just might get reproduced Over There. But don't let that inhibit you. If you don't want to be quoted, just say so here and you won't be.
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The vast majority of voting-age adults will already have had more than enough exposure to post office, the DMV, and various other government-run agencies to form their own opinions.
ReplyDeleteIf those experiences weren't enough to make that necessarily negative impression, there's nothing you or I or anyone else can say that's going to convince them. Whatever proof we could provide is going to fly directly in the face of what they've already resigned themselves to accepting.
When you look at the big picture, this isn’t about just health care. This is about everything. It's about being an American, as you said in your latest post, IP, and it is especially about leftist principles and thinking in general. They might be able to explain themselves on one issue, but very often they have to use totally contradictory logic to explain their position on another issue. That’s why they usually fall back on lofty rhetoric, personal attacks, how mean you are, or how much they care about the little guy. Orwell had their number. It’s all about doublethink:
ReplyDeleteTo know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the world “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.
Then again, in what must be some kind of dark joke by the publisher, there is an afterward in my copy of “1984” by Erich “Freedom is Slavery” Fromm. In it, he describes how capitalism threatens to turn the Western world into Orwell’s vision of the future, saying that corporations are becoming too much like “Stalinism”, which he does not associate with socialism because Stalin betrayed socialist dreams with “reactionary state capitalism”.
How do you talk to people like that? Beats the hell out of me. The only hope I see is that they might eventually come around if the holes in their ideology are pointed out enough since most of them live in an echo chamber and are never challenged intellectually. If nothing else, it makes me even more confident in my own thinking to make them reveal that they have none. There are some of them out there who eventually turn away from the dark side, though it may take years. My Orwell bio is admittedly shaky, but didn’t he start out as a committed socialist?
More of what we're talking about here:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090819/ap_on_re_us/us_fact_check_health_poll
The money quote:
President Barack Obama's lack of a detailed plan for overhauling health care is letting critics fill in the blanks in the public's mind.
NO SHIT! You think that might be part of the problem? If this genius had a subscription to Metalkort she would have seen that we were on top of this issue a week or two ago. Can I write for the AP? These are the same morons who initially didn't care about reading the bill at all. So why would we want to pass some vague bill of 1,000 pages that is full of generalities, not specific, whose meaning will ultimately be determined by the government? *cricket, cricket*
Plus this journalist assures us that there is no provision for giving illegal aliens taxpayer funded health care. Hey jackass, how about a provision for denying illegal aliens health care since they're already getting it? Does she expect us to believe that the day after the bill passes illegals suddenly won't be getting health care anymore?
I wanted to throw something at my computer, but you know, that would be counterproductive. Just a little bit of that deadly right wing rage spilling over that we've heard so much about.
*twitch*
*twitch*
Debating issues is foolish, Bulldozer. Whether it be "healthcare" or anything else. It's a losing strategy. Stop chewing the blue pills. We are the only ones who care about the answer. Simply by discussing the issue you've already lost. You're playing their game.
ReplyDelete"Let's nationalize healthcare."
"No."
"Let's compromise, we'll only nationalize two-thirds."
Where is going? An even split? I don't think it's the direction you want. But once you jump on that escalator you can drag your feet as much as you want but it only moves in One direction.
Stop chewing the blue pill. The one that deludes you into thinking that arguing about Issues is a meaningful endeavor. They don't, pardon my language, give a flying fuck in a shitstorm. They don't care fuck all for your arguments, whatever those are. But they are happy to let you argue. It makes you look stupid.
This isn't about issues. It's not about logic. This is a worldwide cult. It is waging a holy war against everything honest and good. This beast has aspirations that span generations. You think this is bad? You can't even imagine how bad it is going to get. This cult has been spreading for a long time now. Those who do not join voluntarily are pushed to the margins. Those who publicly refuse it are reviled outcasts. And their children are being indoctrinated with the cult's lies every single day of their lives. The cult's members are happy to enable its advance in exchange for temporal power. And the cult itself has one single ambition - to spread its twisted religion over everything in creation. Forever. And it's winning.
You're concerned about a rational debate of the issues? Issues are a tool the cult creates as a means of spreading its twisted faith. And it doesn't care about logic or reason. It doesn't care if you manage, with great effort and personal cost, to "win" a particular argument. It doesn't even care what the Issues are. It just wants to spread the Seeds of its twisted, nihilistic faith as far and as fast as it can. It will use any and every inch of ground in which to do so. It is waging a crusade. Rationality ain't got nothing to do with it.
I think vampires make a good analogy. I like vampire stories. It seems vampire stories are "in" these days. Even pubescent girls are gaga over "good" vampires these days. There was a time when everyone understood that no matter how good looking, mannered, cultured, rich, powerful, or pleasant the vampire was, and no matter how much it wined, dined, danced, or otherwise enchanted you, and no matter how many times it saved your life or stopped itself from biting you, and no matter whether it fed on rats or chickens or cloned blood or "the guilty" - it was an unnatural undead bloodsucking fiend whose soul was damned to hell for all eternity, because that's what a vampire is.
Now, when the vampire has you cornered. When it has converted or hypnotized or enslaved everyone around you, when its fangs are released and about to sink into its next victim: you have two choices. Expose it to the Light, or hammer a Stake through its heart.
Stop arguing about "issues". Start shedding a Light on Truth. Or grab a hammer.*
* I do not advocate nor do I support the hammer and stake option at this time. It is piecemeal, bloody, dangerous, and "innocent" people tend to get hurt. Besides, it is vital to have a clear force advantage on your side. I favor the sunlight option for now. When you truly show the Beast in its true form and expose it as the vile, evil thing it is, all its twisted lies unravel, and it turns to dust.