SEEING WHAT’s IN FRONT
of YOUR NOSE
A Sampling from an Ongoing Colloquy with Two Liberals
Well, dear friends, in the never-ending battle of one set of perceptions and assumptions against another this really does say it all:
"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
~ George Orwell
I couldn't agree more, but one deadly serious question hangs in the air:
How could it be that two individuals can gaze intently at ONE particular object for a protracted period of time, and see TWO entirely different things?
I've blithely explained it away many times by referring to the Parallel Universe Phenomenon, but that doesn't begin to explain it.
"For now we see through a glass darkly ..."
Will we EVER be able to comes to grips with the Truth -- whatever it may be?
Four authors have told us well in advance exactly what we are doing to ourselves:
E.M. Forster - The Machine Stops (1909)
Aldous Huxley - A Brave New World
George Orwell - Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty-Four
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
I find it highly ironic that these authors all considered themselves creatures of the left, [I'm not quite sure about Forster, who came from a more decorous age, but given the constrained circumstances of his personal life it seems likely].
At any rate, despite their acknowledged Marxian-Fabian-liberal-progressive-socialist orientation, the dystopian societies they described in brilliant, painfully evocative detail most closely resemble the nightmare worlds created by the Russian, Chinese, North Vietnamese, Cambodian, North Korean, and Cuban Revolutions.
It doesn't matter whether despotism parades under the banner of Communism, Fascism, Islamism, Puritanism or the Roman Catholic Theocratic States that produced The Inquisition, the Star Chamber, and hundreds of other murderous foul deeds.
TYRANNY is TYRANNY no matter what banner it parades under, and what the left advocates, however unwittingly, IS in fact TYRANNY, even if it is falsely crowned with golden haloes, clothed in white robes and outfitted with angels' wings.
I know you on the left can't see it, and so you are likely to say I am either insane or a vicious liar –– or both. The truth, however is that we are looking at precisely the same things, and each of us is seeing something that bears no resemblance whatever to what the other imagines he sees.
It's quite confounding –– or should be. We need to look more deeply into it.
Oh well, HAPPY NEW YEAR and the best of luck to everyone regardless of our differences.
~ FreeThinke
A LIBERAL BLOG HOSTESS ANSWERS:
FT, perhaps you don't see it when tyranny is promoted on the right?
A few examples:
The proposal by a rightwing conservative governor of Virginia to to have vaginal probes forced on girls and women by the state, which have absolutely nothing to do with any medical procedure.
The various laws passed by conservative governors in conservative states that make the legal medical procedure--abortion--more and more difficult for girls and women for whatever reasons they, their families, and their doctors deem necessary. That amounts to state-enforced pregnancies on girls and women.
The efforts by conservatives to use their religious beliefs to deny equal protection under our Constitution for our gay brothers and sisters to marry the person they love.
That too is tyranny of the state--the state imposing the will of the religious few on the many. A distopian idea if there ever was one.
There are many other examples of conservative ideas of state enforced transgressions on people's liberties.
ANOTHER ANSWER from YET-ANOTHER LIBERAL:
FT, You pose an excellent question, kind sir.
How could it be that two individuals can gaze intently at ONE particular object for a protracted period of time, and see TWO entirely different things?
Let’s try to answer that, shall we?
First, what “particular object” shall we apply in this case? And then let’s identify the separate observations and frame them as well as possible into an understandable picture, and, then we can see how the two perspectives diverge and how the view from each perspective may shape the observations.
You see, without explanation, you reached quite a shocking and accusatory conclusion with “what the left advocates, however unwittingly, IS in fact TYRANNY”.
Is tyranny the particular object you have chosen in your question? Or is it the political satire of tyranny by the authors you mention?
This reminds me, there’s one sentence that strikes me at the moment.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Yes we know this satirizes Stalinism and dictatorships but...
Has our secretive and almost unrestricted “money is free speech” factor in our elections taken us to the point where some animals are “more equal” in the right to speech than others?
There are many other examples of conservative ideas of state enforced transgressions on people's liberties.
Amen. The war on drugs is one of the most oppressive and enduring of these transgressions.
A few examples from Bush/Cheney come to mind as well. The 2000 election, overturning democracy, decided by conservative Supreme Court cronies of the Bush Cartel comes to mind. Torture, Warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, voter registration suppression, and poll access restrictions are a few more that pop up instantly.
THE LIBERAL BLOG HOSTESS INTERJECTS:
Also, FT, there are very many Americans who are hopeful for the health and safety of this beautiful country BECAUSE Mr. Obama is our president.
FT RESPONDS:
"Also, FT, there are very many Americans who are hopeful for the health and safety of this beautiful country BECAUSE Mr. Obama is our president."
Of course, and THAT, dear lady, is PRECISELY the problem that afflicts our nation, and has placed her on The Critical List.
Our common Enemy is TOTALITARIANISM –– in ANY form. I have said that thousands of times over many years long before we met.
The difference between "my side" and "yours," if we must use such terminology, is what-appears-to-be fanatical, unswerving loyalty of the left to crypto-Marxist ideals, while we "on the other side" are fragmented in our loyalty to the one party that purports to represent "our" beliefs and goals, but in truth does no such thing.
We frankly detest the Democratic Party and most of its authoritarian accomplishments cloaked in the guise of benevolent "advances." The fruits of these machinations appear –– to us –– to be largely deleterious to the best interest of Americans who still want to remain free to exercise self-determination.
None of that means, however, that we wholeheartedly embrace the Republican Party. I, myself, believe the GOP has grown unduly complicit with the supposed "Opposition." The GOP appears to me to be weak, spineless, and suffering from hopeless confusion about the nature of its identity.
How many on "your" side would say that about your own party apparatus?
Not many, I suspect.
I don't wish to entangle myself in an endless dispute over whose brand of satire, scurrilous rhetoric, name-calling and outrageous caricatures are more offensive. It's a waste of time.
A key tactic of the left is to exhaust opposition by asking the same questions over and over and over long after they've been more-than-adequately answered. The technique –– and I see it as that, because few of you deserve to be called "stupid" –– is part of the Critical Theory dreamt up by Antonio Gramsci and brilliantly adapted by The Frankfurt School of which every leftist is an ardent disciple -- whether he, she or it REALIZES or ACKNOWLEDGES it or not.
This is why attempts to argue with "Progressives" –– or whatever you're calling yourselves these days –– usually end up in a shouting match. Leftist Utopians have rendered themselves impervious to the logic of anything that runs contrary to their aims.
It really is as simple as that.
Most of you treat every challenge as an "outrage." Which is, of course, an outrage in and of itself.
All the best to you anyway for 2013.
~ FreeThinke
THE LIBERAL BLOG HOSTESS SUMS UP:
FT: "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING:
"A key tactic of the left is to exhaust opposition by asking the same questions over and over and over long after they've been more-than-adequately answered. The technique -- and I see it as that, because few of you deserve to be called "stupid" -- is part of the Critical Theory dreamt up by Antonio Gramsci and brilliantly adapted by The Frankfurt School of which every leftist is an ardent disciple -- whether he, she or it
REALIZES or ACKNOWLEDGES it or not.
This is why attempts to argue with "Progressives" -- or whatever you're calling yourselves these days -- usually end up in a shouting match."
FT:
"TYRANNY is TYRANNY no matter what banner it parades under, and what the left advocates, however unwittingly, IS in fact TYRANNY..."
FT, you are aware, are you not, that using all CAPS is, in cyber talk
actually "SHOUTING!?"
It appears that it's you, not any of the liberal/progressives here that is
shouting while making a point.
