The Tragedy of Consensus

What gets us into trouble is not so much our ignorance. It's what we know that just ain't so. -- Mark Twain

The regrettable reality is how many of us are susceptible to group think – the consensus understanding of anything that “everybody knows.”

We in the west like to think of ourselves as more civilized, more advanced and all that, but we’re just as capable of refusing to acknowledge reality and looking at facts placed in front of us. We’re not very different from the barbarians of old believing in potions, chicken bones and whatever hocus-pocus is shown to them. We’re susceptible to the same stupidity. -- Mathew in comment at Crusader Rabbit

I like Mathew's observation of our civility. Particularly our "intelligentsia" thinks themselves more civilized; they will see that there is hell to pay for anyone who dares suggest they’re not. Burn the evidence and the detectives who dared dig it up.

And it is not just our wannabe rulers.

Most of us react instantly negatively to anyone who dares violate our consensus. The reaction has been been described as having ones world turned upside down. Nausea is not an uncommon result.  So it is not abnormal when all of us, as a general rule, hate to fight the consensus we find surrounding us lest we find ourselves on the receiving end of that reflexive negativity and emotional outbursts. That is tragic; only made more so by those who exploit it. Sociopaths are tremendously successful in tiptoeing past that minefield while condemning most of the rest of us to the mines they themselves placed. Yet even the harshest of realities may never burst the illusions in some people. The proof of that is found in the reports of the last words of communist true-believers as they died in Stalin's Gulags: "If Stalin only knew [what a faithful comrade am I]." It is quite apparent that consensus and the fear of transgressing is so strong that, were zombies real, it would be manifest in its victims after death.

If I ever stop procrastinating I will complete the series of screeds I've begun about how consensus has been a terrible factor in why we are so divided in how we perceive our troubles and our enemies.

Although there are many national stories and news outlets and major talk show hosts who traffic heavily in fostering and maintaining consensus views, I have a couple of anecdotal examples of defense of consensus views. One is from the Left.  It is the rabbi with whom I differed over his new-age take on Genesis 22. He censored my rejoinders, and eventually deleted from his site that portion of our interchange he originally posted. However, his efforts are foiled by the wayback machine and copies of what he refused to publish. The second is from the Right. Tam did not delete our discussion, but her manner provides a fine demonstration of why the Right is no home for either principled conservatism or classical liberalism.

Neither example is of people influential enough to be considered significant members of the Downers. But their type sure as shooting aids the Downers by being so damned closed-minded and fearful of climbing out of the pit of despair and joining the Upsiders. That both will blindly continue what they've been doing and expecting different results is sad. That they are not alone is tragic.

More anon. Soon I pray.

Art of the Moment

This artful pic was captured yesterday by one of my offspring while escapading.

Click to view in original size

The Downer of SSM Openly Admitted by a Mediot

I just had to share this one line from a review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The depiction of a craven television media's employing all its flashy insincerity in the service of power comes so close to modern-day reality that it's chilling. [emphasis added]

From the mouths of the enslaved members of the outer party.

Pray my friends.

How America Became a Corporate-Fascist Clone of the Soviet Union

That dear readers is the title of the epic I will never write. Surely someone will because it's aching to be told.

One complex question: 
One complex question that I think leads to finding an answer to the question of my epic's title is this one.

How many people with portions of their pay invested in 401Ks and union pension plans realize how their savings have enabled the trustees of those plans to make a mockery of the promise of "publicly held" corporations?

Why is this question germane?
Certainly the trustees that manage that those plans are all carefully vetted corporate men and unionists (corporatists and Leftists? -- R & L Downers at any rate) respectively, who vote each other onto corporate boards of directors when each new proxy is sent out. 
They drink fine wine and eat caviar at annual shareholders' meetings as they battle amongst themselves: 

• what is their most favorable course of corporate and governmental directions?
• who in government are most certain to advance their goals?
• who in government is most certain to obstruct their goals? 
• who on K Street is the best choice to see their ultimatums get delivered?

How did America become a corporate-fascist clone of the Soviet Union?

Downers' Downers, No. 1

Yesterday I decided to take Ronald Reagan seriously enough to abandon the Marxist scale of Left and Right because there are too many Progs hiding out and influencing what we call the Right. While it takes some more than others to recognize that in the past they have influenced the Right to accept, incrementally, rule by the Left, they in the last dozen year or so have become more radical and have forced more aggressive compromises on all of us.

I have had enough. I do not think I am alone. So let me remind you again that Reagan said we do not have to accept the false notion of Left or Right; that we need to recognize there is really only an Up or Down.

Up to individual freedom, consistent with law and order, or Down to the ant-heap of totalitarianism.

Yesterday I labeled myself with the Ups. And I identified the enemy of us Ups and labeled them as the Downs.

Upsider is my label today (and may yet change again). Downers is what I may like for all time for all enemies of individual liberty.

That aside, here is today's news report exposing another of the negative effects on human life by the Downers. This time it was one life, tomorrow it could be more as we continue to let them run roughshod over all our values by force of arms.

LAX security officer bled for 33 minutes as help stood by, report says

An airport security officer lay helplessly bleeding after a gunman opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport as paramedics waited 150 yards away because police had not declared the terminal safe to enter, according to two law enforcement officials.

It would be 33 minutes before Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was about 20 feet from an exit, would be wheeled out by police to an ambulance, said the officials, who were briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe was still ongoing into the Nov. 1 shooting.

For all but five of those minutes, there was no threat from the suspected gunman -- he had been shot and was in custody, they said.

How many ways was this one human death unnecessary and how many was it indeed necessary?

Necessary in that:

• the Downers want and have used this death as an excuse to clamp down on citizens rights some more
• the Downers want more TSA armed despite the reports of their agents' unpunished misconduct.
• the Downers wanting the TSA to adopt even more of an Us versus Them attitude.
• the Downers undoubtedly want more than this, and I and my commenters reserve the right to call them on it yet.

Unnecessary in that:

• The help was not "standing by," they were prevented by the law officers compelled by Downer rules of engagement.
• Even armed volunteers were prevented from retrieving the bleeding man by orders of the Downers.
• Downers had offered no "medic" style training for rescuing wounded. Still don't. Disgusting.
• Downers have repeatedly hid behind their SSM built consensus that prevents non-felonious citizens from being armed in the first place. 
• "Gunfree" zones are respected only by the law-abiding and sane Downers know this to be true.
• I reserve the right to add to this list as they occur to me or my commenters.

Tweet
Tweet #Up_vs_Down

Envy As Admitted Federal Policy

Unbelieveably, the essence of Marxist class warfare, envy and its exploitation, was admitted today by "one of the prime architects of both the Massachusetts healthcare reform and the Affordable Care Act, Professor of economics at MIT, Jonathon Gruber." [source]

"That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who've been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return."

Sickening. Coveting the health of your neighbor is now fair game in contemporary America. Essentially this: 'If you are healthy, you deserve to be handicapped, and we have the power to do it to you.' You first Dr. Gruber.

Incidental report from the street:
I hear from soft-headed liberals who have been repeating the nonsense that gets aired repeatedly on SSM TV such as MSNBC declare that conservatives are anti-American because they disagree with President Obama. This revelation will not faze them in the least.

The real problem:
What is more of a problem are the conservative talkshow hosts who refuse to call this president a Marxist. And you know the old Leftist slogan -- "no enemies on the left." That would explain a great deal why talkers like Michael Medved and others at Salem broadcasting regularly call out others on the Right as traitors to the GOP before they'll call out Leftists as traitors to America. Or traitors to common decency. Or traitors to JudeoChristian ethics (thou shall not covet) such as this genius Gruber.

One Solution:
We of the TEA Party movement need to disassociate ourselves from the "Rightists" on the Marxist political spectrum of Left and Right. Let me repeat Ronald Reagan's vision for you. 

There is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: up to man's ages-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

I am not on the Right any longer. There are too many Downs over there. I'm with the Ups.

To Hell with Downs like Medved, Hewitt, Prager, and anyone else who thinks like them. They are unfit company for people who need to recognize and fight all the enemies of freedom.

Australians Teaching Americans What to Seek

h/t Crusader Rabbit.

Somehow the Aussies were able to overpower the propaganda stream of the ABC, their govt funded SSM, and threw out the Leftist PM Gillard. Now they have elected a non-collectivist parliament and Prime Minister quite contrary to what we have here in America.

It proves what can be done if common people learn to band together -- no matter their other differences -- for the sake of their very lives.

Now, dear God protect the new movement and its leaders from both lethal enemies and the allure of, and traps set by, those who ply evil ways.

Suitable Postscript for Much Contemporary News

While reading several bits of news, while in IMs with friends, and while reading commentaries at the blogs that I frequent, I remember this clip that I uploaded last year.

I think I may use it more from time to time after I comment on a contemporary story that was not possible in the America of the past.

The shocked American: "You mean there is nothing I can do in a legal way?"

The answer of the circumstance: "Mr. ____: this is not the United States... go back to America!"

Fatally Naive Americans

The Nov 3 WSJ has an op ed

You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor

I had great cancer doctors and health insurance. My plan was cancelled. Now I worry how long I'll live.

(h/t JWF)

It has as its closing lines

For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point. --emphasis added

Perhaps?  This bespeaks the fatal naivety of all Americans constrained by PC from stating obvious truths. 

What could pass as the Obamacare theme song is now 4 decades old. It has in its frankest of renditions the closing lines: 

"Won't you give it a try? 

 [Boom] 

Live and let die!"

For several decades I have witnessed and reported upon the fear in so many to speak of the dark side of the Sustainability movement. It is doubly upsetting to see it in those who claim to be God fearing. God fearing implies you accept the premise that all human life is sacred. Turning a blind eye to reports of a mounting threat to that premise (most unsettling to me when I've witnessed it in clergy) is more understandable when the threat seems hypothetical, but not from someone like Ms. Sundby while suffering the repercussions.

Ms Sundby still wants to believe that the machinations to which she is victim are only her imagination. So she writes "perhaps." I guess it makes her feel better. [Or perhaps the addition of perhaps it was required by the WSJ editor. In a world where damned consensus rules are expected to be understood, I doubt the editor needed to make a direct request.]

In a way, this makes Ms Sundby a martyr to Political Correctness. That she in her present circumstances is found still kowtowing to the consensus (to not speak of the Susnuts) ought to be eye opening for the rest of us.  The souls of people who martyred themselves in defense of innocent human life would not be amused.

Please enlighten me how to open the eyes of more while there is still time.

Really Sad

From Ed Driscoll at PJMedia.

Look at the anger in her expression and be very afraid should she have any say in whether or not you get to see a doctor.

As I posted a few weeks ago, the surname similarity (Jean Sibelius vs Kathleen Sebelius) causes me to associate this cold martinet with the Finnish composer who gifted us with the beautifully elegiac tune "Valse Triste" -- sad waltz. Her being in charge of implementing death panels is as far removed from the nostalgic feelings that an elegy seeks to evoke as anything you might consider.

So it is with some satisfaction to see this picture where the insult implied by the title of the book she has just been handed has finally dented the phony smiling facade of this supremely arrogant public servant who, when asked if she would resign due to stupendous incompetence, snipped "I don't work for my critics."

The sad thing is how much damage she and her bureaucracy will have done to America before we have a chance to legally see that she is punished for her maliciousness. This roll-out has been so bad it could not have been worse had it been planned that way.  Heads should roll for such enormous incompetence. The really sad thing is that they won't.

Fodder for Thought

My friend Paul emailed me this questionnaire that has not simply multiple choice answers, but opportunities to offer deeper thoughts on the questions raised.

I am sharing with readers all the responses submitted which were not one of the muliple choices provided. Five detailed responses in all.

I most certainly invite my readers to agree, disagree, or add and subtract to any of the answers I gave.

Additionally, you may find it useful to your own understanding of various issues to ponder these or other questions asked at the site; that is whether or not you submit your answers.

Think of it as a personal interview. Be careful not to be "push-polled" into giving an answer. An example of that is my answer to the question about Iran. At this point I do not know what should be done. Our national policy towards them was destroyed by Jimmy Carter. Every opening where we might have improved our relations were, in my opinion, bungled opportunities at best. All the worse ways of looking at how those opportunities were handled involve hidden agendas which invite open ended speculations which do little to solve the threats of Iran to the world today.

Do you support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)?

Yes

No

Add your own stance (this lowers the accuracy of your results)

So many times tort reform has been discussed as the ultimate answer, but it falls flat each time. It may be due to Congress being so full of attorneys and influenced by the lawyer lobby. Also the media so in line with them that this discussion is never given a fair airing or a chance. Medical costs have risen directly proportional to out of control court awards (legal liability passed along to every patient as a natural part of the cost of doing business). Tort reform (in conjunction with a more punitive AMA for bad doctors) is the single biggest solution to the escalating health costs.

The nation would be better served with understanding the legal costs being a major portion of this problem if its media were not so filled with stupid or corrupt people.

Should the United States end its trade embargo and travel ban on Cuba?

Yes

No

Yes, allow Americans to travel to any country they choose

Yes, end embargoes with all countries and allow U.S. businesses to do business with any country

Yes, lift the travel ban but keep some provisions of the embargo in place

Add your own stance

If we keep it, those caught violating ought to be prosecuted. Not prosecuting undermines respect for the law. It's so bad, it is probably too late for that. As it stands, open contempt for law and selective (political) enforcement has become commonplace, which is unfitting for a republic of laws and more fitting of fascist tyrannies.

 How should the U.S. deal with Iran?

Strategically eliminate their nuclear bomb making capabilities

Maintain diplomacy while discouraging use of nuclear weapons

Ignore their threats and cease all contact

Isolate through trade embargoes

Iran does not threaten our national security and there is no proof they are building a nuclear weapon

Overthrow the current government and instill a democracy

Add your own stance

I don't know now. Easier solutions were available in past opportunities. Much of the current problem stems from our political system not wishing to admit they failed to take advantage of those earlier and easier solutions.

Should the U.S. maintain a presence at the United Nations?

Yes

No

No, and remove the U.N. headquarters from the U.S.

Scale back our current involvement

Yes, and use the U.N. peacekeeping forces to protect U.S. interests

Add your own stance

The willingness of our politicians to kowtow to an international body filled with despotic regimes should be viewed as a threat not just to national sovereignty, but to individual sovereignty. The UN constantly provides an excuse for domestic despot wannabes to use treaties to eliminate the restrictions written in the constitution on what the Fed Govt is permitted to do. We should be a member of the UN for the purposes of exerting our influence but not to allow our Presidents to sign its treaties that will install tyranny on our shores. 

 Should the U.S. continue NSA surveillance of its allies? 

Yes

No

No, spying on our allies will severely damage our reputation abroad

Yes, surveillance of all foreign countries is essential to tracking potential terrorist threats

Add your own stance 

Wherever did the notion that we don't keep an eye on everybody become a common understanding? When Ronald Reagan said "trust but verify" that seemed to be a general statement of one of the purposes of any nation's overall foreign policy. When did it become considered to be the symptoms of some form of national paranoia to engage in surveillance? This has been around since the beginning of time, only in less technological forms.