I predicted it would get worse before it got better; what we now learn is that it will get worse before it gets worse before it gets better.It is not hard to predict the fire when you're holding the gas can and the Zippo and running like hell down the alley.
-- Andrew Sullivan, August 15, 2013
3 comments:
Over the years, I've come to realize that conservative accusations against liberals of moral relativism is simply projection. For a conservative, the mythical ideal is always in an unsullied past, with the dead bodies and broken lives conveniently swept aside to zoom in on some Leave It To Beaver whitebread family in a color coordinated Levittown suburbia that had No Problems Whatsoever. Any problems in that era were due to uncivility and un-Whig-like moderate actions like striking, sit-ins, or taking an oral contraceptive.
For the conservative, our forefathers were not racist, but misunderstood; not misogynist, but simply adhering to a "code of honor;" not rapacious, but "doing God's work;" not privileged, but simply a more elite breed of humanity; and above all, not responsible for a single god-damn action or word they ever did in their entire life, because they lived in "different times."
Conservatism is the cop-out, the escape hatch, the easy answer. It is the evasion of personal accountability and honor, because privilege equals power equals politics, so always punch down and kiss up.
"Who cares about racism!? I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about climate change!? I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about women's health?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about massive fraud, waste, and abuse by banks?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about worker's rights?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about education?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about government and taxes?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about the social inequality?! I'm conservative!"
"Who cares about gay rights or the rights of the HIV positive?! Oh wait, I do, but it's so liberal it comes back to being conservative, because something something Oakeshott."
"Who cares that a religious, nationalistic, fascist cult of ideological zealots that I helped foster have taken over my entire party? I'm not responsible for that! It was outside forces! I sprang into existence de novo in 2005, when I turned against the Iraq War to salvage my meager credibility as a political thinker! Did I say turned? I meant to say I was always against the Iraq War! It was Un-Reaganesque and Burke said something about the commons being unreasonable and the elite always being right because they were landed gentry, because I am a conservative with a small c, because apparently that distinguishes me somehow, like a nazi with a small n."
--Lit3Bolt
"And I wonder, still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain?"
Our Munchausen-by-proxy sociopaths have a strangle-hold on the public discourse. Those with the advantage of safe distance to behold their cascading failures effects as they trickle-down through the lives of we "little people" also have the advantage of never having to admit their part in the scheme.
We've crossed the Rubicon. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Can't go back. It is indeed, Opposite World.
We are left with the hand we are dealt. Have you ever considered the fact our culture today is just hippy-dom run wild with monopoly money. I am at the tale end of the "baby-boom" generation (like you, I assume) but, by my perspective, most of the policy makers and "movers and shakers" are just failed hippies, old cold-war codgers or their illegitimate offspring.
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