[FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

Wed Sep 1 17:23:40 EDT 2021

Dave, 

Hmmm!  I cop to having thought you a pain in the ass, from time to time, but never you "an immoral idiot "   It's hard for me to take any moral stance with a straight face.  

But I think you may confuse two issues:  One is the stupidity of all laws.  All laws speak to matters that they weren't really designed to speak.  Was the stop sign at a desolate Kansas intersection designed for the driver, fleeing from an onrushing tornado?  The law is a blunt instrument and we have always to balance the gains from making it with the losses it imposes.  

The other is the fascist idiots (and timorous fools) that are hired to enforce laws and get pleasure from doing so.  These we need to stand up against.  What would have happened if your boss had written a respectful letter stating the reason for the signs and appealing the directive?   By the way, is there any cultural implication here?  I will bet there are Americans who are reluctant to put their butt on any surface that somebody else has put their butt on. 

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, September 1, 2021 3:13 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Liberal dilemmas

Nice try glen, but I said I was afraid of the liberals, progressives, and democrats, not the radical fringe left, precisely because the former do have control of the government and do use that power to enforce their, mostly, non-"woke" ideology. 

The fact that Harris was a prosecutor reinforces my fear, because prosecutors are trained and steeped in an absolutely binary mindset: seeing their adversaries as purely evil, bad, guilty because I think I can "prove" to a judge/jury that you are, or irrelevant because I cannot. Transferred to pure politics, you either agree with me or you are the enemy and must be destroyed.

Of course all attorneys are pretty much trained in this mindset and elected officials are over represented with attorneys — no wonder we have devolved to extreme partisanship — neither side can admit to any redeeming value in the other.

Liberals and Democrats may not be fully woke, but they do not lack for woke ideas that they feel compelled to impose on others.

Nick, I do not fear you as a person, at the moment, but I would be terrified of you if you had the chance to enforce many of your bleeding heart liberal ideas, e.g., hard-line re-distributive taxation. (The fear is motivated by your conviction that you are right. I remember a conversation we once had where I was arguing that welfare, food banks, homeless shelters, etc. were counter-productive and you were as close as you could ever be to denouncing me as an immoral idiot.)

And Marcus, two examples of personal harm from liberal diktats:

Trivial: at the store we get a lot of tourists from countries and cultures with sanitary practices quite different from the US. In the bathroom we had as poster, stick figures in profile, one standing on the toilet seat in full squat with a red X superimposed. The other seated, feet on floor with a green check mark. We were forced to take them down because a Federal government employee happened to see them, deemed them to be culturally offensive and in violation of a Federal rule (I do not remember which one, but can find the letter that was sent to the store and the company that owns the store). As a result, I and/or other employees must, at least twice a month, clean up offensive and unhealthy messes.

More significant: I have had my curricular materials censured and have had my job threatened on a number of occasions because it was deemed inconsistent with liberal values. Ironically, many of these events occurred when I was teaching at a Catholic university where I could, with impunity, challenge religious orthodoxy, but not liberal woke snowflake orthodoxy. I was once censured by the University of Wisconsin HR department because a female student filed a sexual harassment complaint because I had a meeting with her in my office where I had three Salvador Dali prints on my wall and "she was forced to look at breasts the entire meeting." Her complaint was upheld because neither the content of the Dali prints nor my intent or rational for having them in my office mattered — only her subjective feelings. At Highlands I was forbidden to offer Honors courses or any opportunities to earn extra credit in a class by tackling extra hard problems (these were software courses) because doing so was racist and unfair — simply because more non-Hispanic students obtained the extra credit or the honors designation.

Not personal, but a relative: multi-generational ranch with Federal grazing right. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years were spent enhancing the Federal land, containment ponds for water that reduced erosion and flash flooding without diminishing runoff contribution to watershed; planting of native grasses, elimination of  deadwood, etc. etc. End result was the ability to safely and sustainably graze X number of cattle. About five years ago, BLM issued a new policy dictating the maximum carrying capacity of Federal lands. The math was based on lowest common denominator. The policy was, at the behest of preservation groups, written with the specific intent to minimize and eventually eliminate the use of public lands for grazing. (Also mining and motorized recreational vehicle use.) Bottom line, allotment was taken away because it violated the numbers — not because there was any evidence of actual harm.

Many more on request.

davew

On Tue, Aug 31, 2021, at 4:56 PM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> Since we're mostly old people on this list, some older than others, it 
> might be useful to suggest that "liberal" no longer means "left" in 
> most lefty circles I travel. Liberals are just slightly to the left of 
> the middle. Basically, liberals are now moderates. It's not the 
> liberals that are "woke". It's the lefties.
> 
> And the lefties are definitely *not* in control of governments. The 
> liberals are. People like Biden are war-mongering, capitalist 
> liberals, though he's shifted left to some extent. Harris was a 
> *prosecutor* for Yog's sake.
> 
> And I *think* I'd even argue that the lefties aren't "progressives", 
> either. A friend of mine, who worships Voltaire and the Enlightenment, 
> describes himself as a Fabian, starkly conservative compared to most 
> of the lefties that surround us. Fabians are (were?) progressives. 
> Lefties seem to be more revolutionary, "radical", or nihilistic, as 
> willing to throw bombs at government as your staunchest righty.
> 
> That person in the comic is *not* a lefty, not by a long shot.
> 
> On 8/31/21 3:23 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> > I reacted to the comic with the mental observation that, to me, 
> > conservatives seem heaven bent on telling people what they *cannot* 
> > do or think; while liberals are hell bent to telling you what you 
> > *must* do and think. (If you don't do as they say you are, at 
> > minimum, stupid or, more likely, evil and subject to punishment 
> > (even if that is just shaming and ostracism.)
> > 
> > And I am terrified of liberals (progressives, democrats) because, at the moment, they have the power of government enforcement of their diktats.
> > 
> > davew
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Aug 31, 2021, at 2:31 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> >> Thank you, Glen and Frank. Seeing the image, and whether authoritarian or not, I couldn't help but relate. There have probably (right or wrong) been a number of times in the last month where the very same narrative ran through my mind while in line for coffee or groceries or whatever. I appreciate that the comic said nothing of vaccination, whether those in the crowd were or were not. I guess I read the comic as being an individual's feelings "in the moment", regardless of whether the causes are low-blood sugar or post-lockdown social anxiety or the sense that there is a breach of social contract or ...
> >>
> >> What I like about the comic is that it could be a great way to poll the country (a'la one of those New Yorker comic contests we sometimes talk about on vFriam). We could produce a second comic with a person without a mask surrounded by masked individuals. Then with thought bubbles cleared, hand both images to people and ask them to fill in the bubbles for both comics. I can imagine that collecting the comics at the end would give a richer picture of the kinds of thoughts and feelings people actually have than the strangely averaged forms I often receive.
> 
> 
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
> 
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