Taking a Knee in Protest

Bill, you, of course, are taking an intelligent, informed and logical approach to this issue.  I can't say the same of any of the atheletes I've heard interviewed (or the typical 'news' pundits commenting on the issue).

When that group of Marxists came to Columbia University in 1935, bringing their Frankfurt School's Critical Theory it was like an intellectual Pandora's box had been opened.  What was released has been evolving and spreading ever since - an ideological disease.  Some of the more recent offspring of Critical Theory are parts of political correctness:  "Ethnic Studies," "White Privilege," "Gender Studies" and so forth.  (Note: just because some of these 'concepts' are studied, taught and proselitized, they shouldn't be mistaken for a conspiracy.   Conspiracies, by comparison, are are weak, fallible and could never demostrate this level of longevity and effectiveness.  No.  Better to view this as an evolving, malevolent ideolgogical disease - and one that can manifest in individuals as a psychological disorder).

Political correctness is the heavy-duty weapon for cultural transformation and it includes creating a dissenting criticism for all things in the culture that bind us to any core values relating to individualism, rationality or liberty.  Tradition itself is attacked as part of the historical chain of values and ideas.  This includes symbols of our nation such as the flag or the anthem.  There is a kind of blindness in the evolution and application of whatever specifics arise in the far Left's emotionalism.  It is like a virus.... evolving in its own way, attacking, weakening, and even destroying its own host.  And all in an almost mindless fashion.

The motivations of any given actor, like one of the atheletes, isn't much use in explaining this phenomena.  They are more like deeply infected individuals.  And, as such, more like symptoms of the PC disease (and carriers). 

Tim, I'm very happy to hear that you're getting good things from my book.  That's really nice to hear.  (I'm working on a new book - strictly on political correctness).

Are you close to understanding this issue?  Yes, absolutely!  I think you have it exactly right. 

In the absence of logic, the Left often uses unwarranted associations for the tactic of demonizing their opponents (people, concepts, and symbols).  And the level of irrationality can be stunning.  How does someone make the leap from an unsubstantiated, non-specific claim of some kind of nation-wide racial oppression to damning our national ideals as symbolized by the flag?  (Bill's post above identifies the mistakes very clearly.)

We find ourselves trying to interpret the underlying principles at work in minds that don't grasp principles as products of logic.  It puts us in the place of attempting to understand effects and trends... much like epidemiologists trying to understand the destructive effects of a virus as it works its way through an area.

We know that the football player isn't some intellectual arch-enemy trying to change the culture for the purpose of introducing socialism.  Instead, for him, emotionalism is the substance of his tribal way of understanding the world - it is how his morality is held and transmitted.

With tribalism comes group think.... which really isn't "thinking" but rather repeating group-cant, faith-based utterances (even if the faith is unrelated to any known religion), and emotional rants.  It isn't an accident that so many progressives demonstrations occupy themselves with mindless chants.  The use of logic is reduced to getting most statments to roughly relate to the conversation at hand and be at least somewhat grammatical.  But the logic required to think critically and to think independently has been given up - a tribal membership requirement.

This lack of reasoning is dangerous to our culture.  It allows - even encourages - conflict while removing the needed means for intelligent conversation.  There are people with deep angers, but no real understanding of those they are angry with.  They 'think' they have 'reason' for their anger, but no longer have the means to examine their beliefs.  They want to bring about change, but they have tossed away concepts like 'consistency' and 'causality.'

Huge numbers of people have become like The Borg.  Selected pieces of progressive ideology that they have accepted become like an infection that repeatedly encourages them to shut down independent thought till they have joined the collective mind.  As an example, in many parts of Black subcultures we see the ideas of white privilege, ongoing racial oppression, race-based inequality, and systemic racism - all alleged to be the heart and very nature of America today - are the elements of progressivism that individuals choose to program themselves with till fully assimilated into their wing of the progressive Borg.  A few of them hold positions in today's culture that get them into the news.... like those athletes taking a knee.

Because progressivism isn't just a set of beliefs, isn't just a political movement, isn't just a part of some people's personal identity, but is also a way of thinking, it can affect the way a person uses their consciousness at a deep enough level to alter them psychologically.  Progressivism, when someone chooses to take it in, and chooses to pursue it with enough intensity, is like an infection that can progress till the person suffers repeated disconnects from reality - a form of delusional 'thinking.'

Ideas drive history.  But, of necessity, they do from inside of humans.  And we humans are subject to emotions and to motivations that can be destructive.  Bad ideas that mate with destructive emotional patterns and do so in way that spread through a culture while evolving towards whatever succeeds in convinving others to join a destructive movement whose theme is anti-rationality, anti-individualism and anti-liberty is a very dangerous thing.  Many Objectivists and a few of Conservatives have discovered and articulated the principles behind progressivism and its danger, but not the blind, viral, mental-emotional disorder nature of it that lets it spread without the need for any over-arching conspiracy.

Back before the beginnings of history, collectivism was made to work using shear force.  Over time, force was combined with some form of faith (faith used to subdue the victims minds and will to resist.)   This proved more effective.  Social evolution was selecting for the most effective mechanisms in the political ecological niche of totalitarianism.  The move was to get the populace to whip itself and thus require fewer political overseers.  Progressivism gets people to join there Borg by having them change more than just some primary moral positions, but also their way of thinking and interacting.   They accept the very idea of being overseen by the elite and join in a crusade to condemn anyone who doesn't agree.  It can only succeed fully - and the social evolution will move towards - the abandonment of reason and independent thinking.

Sorry, but the idea that the playing of the national anthem at sporting events signifies respect for the Constitution and its limits on government power, is pure non-sense. 

The hyped up "patriotism" at sporting events, in schools where the Pledge of Allegiance is or has been recited, and at western rodeos is the product of the American war state. "Patriotism" washed over American culture, starting with the First World War; and it engulfed us again in the Second World War, during George HW Bush's invasion of Iraq, and in the wake of 911. Today patriotism has literally nothing to do with respect for the limits on government power spelled out by the Constitution. After all, the great majority of Amerians are not aware of and do not understand the importance of limits on state power. If by some miracle the limits were once again respected by law, Americans would angrily and stridently object. 

At rodeos, they fly attack helicopters over the stands after playing the national anthem; the crowd goes crazy, cheering, waving their arms, celebrating American power. To anyone so asleep they cannot grasp the obvious, the celebration of American power is about "freedom", but the term has no objective meaning to people. "Freedom" means American power in military engagements, killing and destroying any so targeted. Freedom means supporting the troops and honoring those who sacrifice. Freedom means thanking military, police and firemen "for their service".

The giving thanks for "service" has nothing to do with the maintenance of individual freedom at home; people are not friendly to that idea. Just try arguing that monopolies are products of government intervention, that licensing laws protect professional cartels, that competition protects consumers, that government spending cannot cause economic progress, that social security is a welfare program that should be phased out. Those ideas are not deserving of protection to cheering football and rodeo fans and others; what they cheer is US military power, that they believe shines glory on them.  

This infatuation with the power of the U.S. government to wage war and win, negelects any thought about what constitues just or unjust wars. The concept of individual rights is largely lost to Americans, and so the issue of whether some particular military action is aggressive or defensive never occurs to anyone. Sorry to say this, but that characterization also applies to most who frequent this website, in my experience. 

I don't know how to stir you folks to think. American military action killed 3 million Vietnamese peasants; it killed, or gave impetus and support to the killing, of half a million in the Phillipines in the Spanish American war; and I have read somewhere that to date, US military actions have killed a total of 4 million muslims. I don''t know to exactly what extent these claims are correct, but the number of deaths is large enough that my central point stands. These wars have nothing to do with freedom for Americans. 

Objectivists who applaud the war state claim to favor individual freedom. However, trampling the rights of Americans was the currency that paid for prosecuting the wars mentioned above, plus the First and Second World Wars  (neither of which was fought in defense of American freedom from an aggressor: please read about Pearl Harbor and FDR's persistent campaign to provoke Hitler into attacking US military ships on the north Atlantic).  None of these twentieth century wars could have been paid for without massive taxation and inflation, a tax of another kind. The First and Second World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, all used drafted soldiers--those are slave soldiers, of course--as cannon fodder. Read the eye-witness account of William Manchester, who was a fighting marine in the Pacific campaign, wherein the conquest of islands routinely required the sacrifice of huge numbers of American soldiers, often more than 40% and sometimes two thirds or more, of the tens of thousands of war slaves forced into the attack against the entrenched Japanese. 

I have yet to read an honest acknowlegement of such obvious facts by almost anyone on this site. It is as though some people simply refuse to see that which upsets their customary view of the world. It is as though people lead with their feelings about such matters and demand that reality adjust to their temperment. 

We are becoming a hard core authoritarian state, and not slowly; but you folks wring your hands about mystics of the left refusing to salute the flag. Talk about cognitive impairment.

Mark: I don't know how to stir you folks to think. American military action killed 3 million Vietnamese peasants;

This is absurd -- as if all Vietnamese deaths were caused by Americans. Were no South Vietnamese killed by North Vietnamese or vice-versa? R. J. Rummel's Statistics Of Vietnamese Democide is not easy to decipher, but Mark's assertion doesn't pass my smell test. There are also some death statistics here. American soldiers certainly did not kill all those 254,256 ARVNs! Vietnamese deaths caused by America's military is a small fraction of the 3+ million.

Emotional outburst, indeed!

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/03, 3:15pm)

Mark: Your posts validate my thesis.

His reply is a great example of confirmation bias.

Mark: Merlin doesn't care a whit. Three millions murdered? Naw. USA!!! USA!!! Not a thought about what constitues injustice in warfare. Just his pretense that American wars are Just, because they are American.        ...         Count me out.

Oooh, he's a mind-reader, but a lousy one. That Americans murdered 3 million Vietnamese is patently absurd. The stats I showed above proves it dead wrong. Do I believe it was a just war? No, America's involvement was a result of awful political decisions, mainly by LBJ along with a few of his pals. 

Good riddance!

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/07, 6:57am)