Imprisoned By Freedom

You want to know why I hate "Identity Politics"?

Well of course you do, that's why you keep coming back here to listen to my incoherent rants and raves.  God bless your eternal hope and persistence.

Anyway, this form of hysterical mass insanity called "Identity Politics," that's where we were...

The stated goal of Identity Politics (IP, so I don't have to keep writing it) is to beat everyone with sticks and force them into group-think circles where everyone constantly reinforces the same stupid ideas to the point of reductio ad absurdum.  It also seeks to increase tolerance by forcing everyone to be the same, so there are no differences to argue about, as long as you only believe what some brain-dead basement dwelling, YouToob filthing numbnut wants you to believe - assuming you can make any sense out of the incoherent, illogical ramblings.  Also, the IPers want to classify everyone as a victim so that they can be defended against...oh, I don't know, how about Evil While Males (gotta have an enemy).

In a nutshell (a highly appropriate expression in this case), IPers want to be everyone's overprotective stage mother.  They want to create a victim out of you, wheel you out on stage for the applause, then toss you off a cliff.  The whole theater is so absurd as to make Ionesco roll over in his mausoleum.

The IPers hate adulthood, hate anyone who takes personal responsibility, and especially hates anyone who forms an independent thought without checking the Political Correctness Dictionary first.  In other words, part of the mass insanity is Hallucinating Feminists 3.0, who vehemently deny their own X-X genes exist and detest anyone who looks and behaves like a woman so that they can be overprotective mother to the world.  Such delicious juxtaposing irony.

Another fine bit of lunacy is the grotesquely fat and ugly males (I avoid the term "men" in this case) who sit in their overprotective mother's basement and troll online commenters in the hopes of drawing the attention of a dominating Hallucinating Feminist 3.0, for a little self-abusing video hot chat.  These idiots are victims of their own idiocy whose undeveloped psyches crave mental punishment by similarly deprived virtual dominatrices in order to derive some small portion of approval from someone, no matter how horrific and shrill they look and sound.

The foul-smelling, unsocialized boobs what to place everyone in ever-shinking circles of defined behavior or decoration, until ultimately we are left with seven billion kindergartners who are powerless to help themselves, much less anyone else.

Once upon a time, we had legal systems that applied equally to all humans, regardless of any other factor: rape, assault, theft, murder, etc. were equal crimes against everyone.  We once also believed that everyone was free to go about their business - assuming they didn't injure anyone else by it - and if you didn't agree, you could mount a reasonable argument, change the channel, walk away, or not attend.

Now we have increasingly narrower laws that single out people for "special" protection.  Never mind the chilling resemblance to Nazi "special treatment," this is inherently racist, sexist and segregationist - AND THE IPers ARE PROMOTING IT!  Yes, you read the right.  The very people claiming to be all=tolerant and all-inclusive are the very ones creating smaller and smaller boundaries for everyone...and using the legal systems to do it.

This, ladies and gentlemen, I present as proof-positive that the IPers are freaking insane.

We are, as a society, faced with a large group of overprotected mental midgets whose experience with the real world is limited to waddling down to the nearest university - not for education, but to receive scripts so they chant in unison, bang pots in unison and scream obscenities in unison.  This is the very definition of infantile behavior, which seeks to emulate others so as not to appear individual or step outside the playground rules.

This kind of behavior is what pre-highschoolers did before they had the tools to express themselves in complete sentences or appreciate uniqueness.  We should recall the burning need to "belong" to a group and the social imperative to ridicule other groups to make us feel more important.  We also should recall that upon maturity, these activities seem so unimportant and even silly.  As adults, we learn to leave people the hell alone and form bonds with a variety of people in order to expand our range of knowledge and influence.

We must also admit that we created these idiots.  We allowed entitlement and self-esteem to become rampant rallying cries.  We kept our children in protective boxes - now called "safe zones" - to protect these children from media-induced fears of "crime", "drugs" and "danger"/  I put all those in quotes, because for most of us, those feared things never existed.  They were manufactured phantoms that we should have been mature enough to dismiss.

To be fair, the techniques and theories of people like Edward Bernays are highly effective and work amazingly well on the unsuspecting mind.  Our guilt lies in the fact that we, as mature and hopefully educated adults, left our minds unguarded.  We allowed the media to seep into our deepest nightmares and scare us into submission, fightening us into inaction and silence.

Yes, a great amount of fault lies with the media masters, but we must accept that we were primed to receive the messages uncritically.  Walter Cronkite could never speak a false word, and no one bothered to check his facts.

It is the utmost irony that at the very moment we have a powerful tool like the internet at our fingertips, we have become the most passive and accepting of mental manipulation.  Granted, many of us are awake to the siren song of the media, but millions more are not, and the IPers are the most vulnerable.  They have no tools for critical thinking, having spent their lives being inundated with condoms on bananas, Global Warming and other horrific lies.

These grown children have been taught to regurgitate information, not analyze it.  They have been taught that every utterance of "authority" is the Absolute Truth.  They have been taught that cognitive dissonance is a normal way of being.  They have, in fact, been isolated by their own minds.  In other words, they are like a child with a chain saw.  They have an incredible powerful, dangerous and destructive tool and no one has shown them how to use it properly.

So here we are, with thousands of noisy, undisciplined children for whom the media is like a Big Mac - looks good in the picture, satisfies an urge and has no redeeming value whatsoever.

Can they be saved?  Judging by China's Lost Generation, a similar politically-motivated social phenomenon, the answer is a discouraging NO.  Sure, some will rescue themselves by possessing superior metal faculties, or even by accident, but for the most part, these children in adult bodies will burden society for several generations to come (assuming the problem is corrected soon).  The IPer's feelings of superiority, entitlement and self-absorption are set in place and only extraordinary effort on the part of the individual will cure it.  It is nearly impossible to get someone to realize an error when they have been indoctrinated to deny their own senses and self-preservation.

The one satisfaction is that if these sad, lonely people ever manage to breed, their children will perforce reject their sensibilities, as all children naturally do.  The children will seek alternatives to the constant harping and haranguing of their parents and, with a bit of luck, find a much more sensible Universe waiting for them.

The Angst And The Apathy

Well, the proverbial cows are coming home to roost, to butcher a couple of metaphors at once.

What I consider to be one of the most cloying, namby-pamby and ridiculous movements in history is finally starting to pay dividends in the form of an entire US generation - termed the Millennials - who have no spirit or identity at all, outside of their complete lack of motivation.

About 20 years ago, the slimy liberal education system won out and instituted the "self-esteem" movement.  The idea was that the smarmy leaders of this movement (think bowel here) didn't want our little babies to ever feel left out, incapable or to get their feelings hurt, because this would damage their precious little psyches.  Instead, the reward system was reversed, and instead of glamorizing achievement and exceptional contribution, these sick psycho-babble numbnuts began rewarding every meaningless utterance and finger painting that the class morons made.

This has produced an entire generation of individuals who have no volition at all.  The smart ones are not motivated to achieve because there's no incentive, and the stupid ones are not motivated to try because they get rewarded for sucking up air and generating heat.

I never thought that I would agree with Martha Stewart on anything but recipes (occasionally), but when I saw this article the other day, I had to think that perhaps she does have some redeeming value.

Where I depart with Martha is that I don't entirely blame the kids.  I put most of the onus on the parents and the system they created.

Having bought into the Socialist programming, the parents completely forgot that Capitalism requires, nay demands competition.  By raising a generation of emotional basket cases who think that that they are owed the world, the parents have done a massive disservice to their progeny.

The whole Self-Esteem (bowel) movement posited that children receive permanent psychological damage from losing.  Games were modified or banned if there was the least possibility that someone could lose.  It also claimed that competition is harmful and everyone should receive everything in equal dollops, rather than the exceptional ones getting bigger dollops.

This had a two-fold effect on the kids.  The exceptional ones decided there was no point in striving to achieve, because no matter how well they did, the morons got the same attention, adulation and rewards.  Meanwhile, the morons came to believe that they didn't have to strive harder because they could sit in a corner and drool and get the same attention, adulation and rewards as the geniuses.

Result?  An entire generation who doesn't care.  The exceptional Millennials figure there's no point in trying and the moron Millennials believe they will receive all the benefits without trying.

Add to this rather toxic mix the Psycho-Babblists, who told everyone that they should never control their emotions.  They had to let it all out the very nano-second they felt anything.  They told us that if we controlled our emotions in favor of rationality, we would all end up damaged goods.

As a result, the Millennials are emotional basket cases, too.  The least little discomfort will cause them to break down in hysterical blobs.  They can't deal with human society out of fear they will face a situation that causes them emotional pain.  Without the capacity to reason, the Millennials are at the mercy of marketers and advertisers, who can easily push emotional hot buttons to make an entire class of society do whatever they want.

Put all this together with technology that allows these under-achieving, emotional kids to retreat from real interactions and disappear into a digital world of their own making.  The cell-phone zombies are people terrified of interacting with real life.  If they look up, they may encounter something that will cause emotional damage or require them to achieve a goal.  Instead, they retreat into Pokemon Universes.

Part of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be laid directly at the feet of Socialism.  The Russians had built a society in which no matter how much or how little one worked, one received the same (poor) return: everyone got the same squalid apartments, went to the same mediocre schools, and stood in the same lines to buy the same useless toilet paper.  There was no incentive to excel, so the economy ultimately collapsed because of it.

The US, being incapable of learning from history, pursued the same course.  It added the same Edu-Babble and Psycho-Babble that destroyed the Soviet system.  Now, the US is harvesting the first generation of useless and unmotivated individuals.

The Millennials want to enter to workforce at the upper management level, or better, have all the perks and pay without the work.  They want everyone to stop and acknowledge their emotional outbursts.  They want everyone to be absolutely equal, even if that means bringing everyone down to abject poverty, rather than lifting everyone up.

All of this came about because somewhere back, someone convinced the rest of us that Capitalism was evil.  Since people weren't educated enough to distinguish between Mercantilism and Capitalism, they were sold down the river and this Socialist rubbish became institutionalized in the US.  The Millennials are the consequence.

One of the most profound aspects of culture is that it requires a continuity of education from one generation to the next.  If the chain is broken for even one link, there is a very real risk that it can never be repaired.  With the Millennials, there is a very real risk that US culture has been destroyed forever.  If this generation is unable to overcome the failure of their parents to give them a proper education, then the nation may be irreparably damaged.

Given that Millennials are already without motivation, emotionally impaired and unable to educate themselves due to a lack of tools, the situation is dire.  If they are not able to change themselves, there doesn't seem to be a will or ability on the part of their seniors to do it, either.  As it exists now, the US is most likely lost.

Given the horrors that country has unleashed on the world in the past century, that may not be entirely bad.  However, the founding principles of the US were rooted in the Enlightenment, which represents the first time in history that humanity began to codify individual rights and promote concepts like equality under the law.  Since the US has squandered that rich heritage, it may be quite some time before another generation takes up the fight that brought down the monarchies of Europe and began the long fight to end slavery, both political and abject.

The Millennials, while seeming ridiculous and pitiful on the surface, may represent the end of the Enlightenment, at least for this epoch in history.  This is no doubt by design, and the ongoing effort to make those who believe in a malevolent "elite" out to be "conspiracy theorists" and thus unworthy of attention have effectively prevented the majority of people from seeing the problem, and rather dismissing it as pure fantasy.

Perhaps you think I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but I think the case cannot be overstated.  The Edu-Babble, Psycho-Babble and Socialist movements can be traced with some accuracy to various "elite" groups, and it seems rather certain that they have manipulated systems to install these programs to achieve the current ends.  The reader can find ample research on these matters.

The issue becomes one of trying to reverse the damage before it is too late.  Can an entire generation be remediated?  That remains to be seen.  Without the will or desire on their part, as well as the ability of the previous generations to repair the damage they have done out of (willful) ignorance, there is little more to do than sit back and watch the return of medieval servitude and the destruction of centuries of philosophical and societal advancement.

The damage has been done.  The question is, what will we do to fix it, if anything can be done?

Destroying Paradigms In 3 Clicks Or Less

"OK, guys, get your tablets out and navigate over to Google, but don't enter anything yet," I was talking to my 8th graders.  Officially, this class is called Conversational English, but really its Critical Thinking 101 - a kind of Aristotelian discussion group.

I continued.  "Now, who believes the Earth is experiencing global warming right now?"

About two thirds of the hands shot up.

"You're wrong," I stated matter-of-factly.  "Who believes that the last ice age ended 150,000 years ago, or so?"

Nearly all hands shot up.  "Well, you're wrong again."

I always enjoy that particular look on a student's face when they are trying to juxtapose new information with dogma.

"OK, type this into Google: Oxygen-18 ratio for the last 500 million years."  Some furious clicking and tapping noises.  A pause while the information downloaded.  Some murmurs.

"What you are looking at is a graph of oxygen-18 isotope ratios in the fossil record as a function of global temperature changes.  Notice anything?"  I was listening for the sound of paradigms crashing.  There is was...

"What conclusion can we draw from this graph?"

There was a pause while they digested the information.  Then a rather timid voice spoke up...

"Earth is in a cooling period right now?"

"Good!  And what else comes to mind while you look at this data?"

"The ice age isn't over?"

"Nice.  And...?"

"The Earth is much cooler than average right now..."  The voice was getting stronger, more certain.

"Excellent!  Don't close Google yet.  Type in: comparison of atmospheres of Venus, Earth and Mars.  And while you're waiting, who can tell me what is the supposed cause of global warming?"

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?"  We were back to timid again.

"How much carbon dioxide is there in Venus' atmosphere?  (95%)  And in Mars'?  (95%)  And in Earth's?"

There was a pause.  I love these pauses.  You can smell the smoke of gears grinding.

"0.05%"

"Well done!  Now, if Venus is a hellhole, and Mars is a freezer, and they both have the same amount of CO2, and Earth is in the middle with only 0.05% CO2, what can we conclude?"

"Maybe CO2 isn't the problem?"  I waited.  I didn't want that in the form of a question, but a declarative statement.  "CO2 isn't the problem," said another, more assured voice.

"Exactly.  And looking at the relative positions of Venus, Earth and Mars in the Solar System, what obvious conclusion can we draw regarding global temperatures?"

"Venus is closer to the Sun and Mars is farther away, and Earth is in the middle.  So..."  Pause.

"Go on..."

"So, the closer a planet is to the Sun, the warmer it is," the voice was less hesitant.

"Doesn't that make more sense than a few puny people driving their puny cars and changing the entire climate of a planet?"

"Seems more obvious, I guess," said one particularly bright mind.

"So, when someone tells you that something exists that defies logic and observation, what is the first thing you should do?"

"Check the data!"

They had gotten the idea.  Not that I wanted them to believe any particular thing, but I wanted them to verify for themselves anything anyone tells them...especially if it's a government office of any kind.  Question everything.

There's a whole generation coming up that believes in Easter Bunnies and Santa Claus because every single textbook in every single class spews dogma, rather than facts, and invites blind obedience rather than critical thinking.  As Mickey Rourke said in Barfly, "This far and no further."  We have to stop beating fairy tales into our kids' heads or they will be incapable of dealing with the real world.  In fact, they will be incapable of seeing the real world.

Next topic: GMOs.