Monday, March 21, 2016

The Mind Of The Left

Here's a good article I thought you all might enjoy reading and pondering.  A snippet:
"Economics are not usually considered part of a culture, but for red-diaper leftists, their attitude to economics is cultural. It is part of the core, sacred narrative. They usually have a child-like view of economics, which they often have inherited from their parents. This is probably why the doubt triggered by their first tax shock is so easily forgotten for leftists. The child-like view is comfortable and familiar. Once amnesia sets in and comfort returns, discussions of economic reality are seen as right-wing propaganda.
Leftists hear big numbers and picture Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, not infrastructure, maintenance, specialized equipment, transportation, training, payrolls, etc. 
For leftists, industry has so much money. Businesses make huge profits. The price of everything is too high. The government has billions. They want to keep it all for themselves and their rich friends. So leftists believe that these evil people must be made to spend the money on things the leftists themselves choose."

Thanks to Vox Day for the great find.   A slice of his thoughts on the article:
"It's an interesting glimpse into what, for me, is an entirely alien mindset. I find it easier to understand those from very foreign cultures, including the English, the Italians, and even the Japanese, than I do a left-wing 2.0 American. While I correctly noted their fixation on narratives and the childish nature of their magical thinking, I was always mystified by their delusions of intellectual brilliance.

I put it down to their education and credential fetishes, but the author makes clear their belief in their intelligence is actually due to the fact that they are so deluded, they believe they are actually producing the solution to all the various problems they encounter by virtue of repeating their magic mantra: more government spending.

Of course, their concept of government is childish too; it is essentially a magic combination of a 365-day Santa Claus with a friendly Sunday School god whose got the whole world in his hands."

23 comments:

  1. Michael Faraday really nails it with this one. I can feel the BERN from here. :))

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    1. lr it's much, much worse than you think, sadly.

      Take a look at this article from Institutional Investor.

      The movement to obliterate market economics is being led by the ostensible stewards of those markets themselves.

      Because commerce is profitable, but graft more so.

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    2. (I apologize as that linked article is long, boring and dense, feel free to just skim it. No quizzes. But it's abundantly clear that actual classical liberalism and market economics has no friends among the elite anymore).

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    3. This is the craziest thing I've ever read. EVER.

      It's neither boring nor dense. It's utterly terrifying that people actually believe this shit. It's more terrifying that they are in positions to enact these psychotic, delusional programs, burning through trillions of dollars while living in a psychotic fantasy-land, and attempting to drag the rest of us into their mental illness. What. The. Fuck.

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    4. You're welcome. ;)

      Yeah, it's one thing to read shit like that in Mother Jones. Quite another to read it in Institutional Investor.

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    5. An institutional investor is just another term for USG and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, verdad?

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    6. Not wholly owned - not yet.

      My father did institutional investing - he managed the equity allocations for several large pension funds. He worked in that industry from the early fifties until his retirement in '99. I still correspond with his proteges in the business, and have a good familiarity the business.

      In America, post war, large institutional investors (insurance companies, pensions, endowments, mutual funds, etc) were as independent of government control as any in the history of capitalism.

      I can verify that neither my father nor his firm was USG in any way shape or form.

      If anything - and yes, I am receptive to arguments about "the Cathedral" and the tentacles of education and culture which bound the public and private sector elites together - it was government that was constrained by institutional capital, not the other way around.

      That said: yes, institutional capital management is becoming more and more subject to the constraints laid out by the activist industrial complex. And the managers of that capital have themselves bought into the activists narrative - for career safety, if no other reason. (Institutional managers may take risks with your money, but never with their own career - sorry dad, wherever you are, but you know this has always been true).

      The article I linked is a case in point. Cthulu embraces all.

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    7. And as someone smart and widely misunderstood pointed out to us more than 10 years ago, strangely, Cthulu ONLY swims left.

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    8. Yes, that's the reference.

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  2. I read the linked article yesterday at VD's site, and I have to say that I don't buy it. As a former radical leftist myself, it appeared to me to be written by what a standard-issue "conservative" thinks a leftist believes. The people written about here are characticures of leftists, not real, existing people.

    VD is good at a lot of things, and I admire his leadership and the vigor at which he fights. But he has two things working against him: 1) as a former libertarian, he still believes that an aspie-like over-analysis of matters from an economic perspective is determinative, when it clearly, clearly is not; and 2) as a principled expatriate who left the U.S. for political reasons, his life outside the U.S. has been for that length of time where one grows out-of-touch with the nuance of the U.S., a VERY fast-changing entity.

    In any case, none of the real red-diaper babies (my definition: one or both parents in CPUSA or one of the main Trotskyite parties) I knew very well were anything like this profile.

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    1. Jourdan, the garden variety leftists I encounter in Portland - and there are a lot of them - do fit this profile very well.

      Some are out and out communists, some closet commies who claim to be "democratic socialists", and some are intersectionalist SJW who are less interested in class struggle and more interested in special pleading.

      But all believe that rich white people and corporations are holding out on "the people", and the neo-liberal oligarchs are implementing "austerity" purely to be sadistic and cruel.

      "There's plenty of money. Just need to tax it and spend it".

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    2. I agree that it is a type of lefist mind-set. I just don't think it's the "red-diaper baby" type. Folks raised in the CPUSA culture are much more hard-nosed than this.

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    3. Jourdan, I don't agree with VD on several matters. However, I staunchly support his fight against the SJW insanity that has infested every aspect of our culture. His battle to reclaim the science fiction/fantasy genre is epic, as well as his leadership in the largely unknown Gamergate War.

      Psst...I'd love to read a post about the "red-diaper baby" folks you are familiar with, and how they differ from the folks described in the article. *hint hint* :)

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    4. I'd second that Jourdan.

      I've only known a couple authentic RDBs, and there's no clear trend I can discern, except that they are more hard core statist than SJW.

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  3. Some are out and out communists, some closet commies who claim to be "democratic socialists", and some are intersectionalist SJW who are less interested in class struggle and more interested in special pleading.

    And what, do you suppose, do they make of their President posing for photographs in front of a mural of Che Guevara in Cuba?

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    1. One is often at the mercy of host countries when one is doing a state or other diplomatic visit. There are plenty of pictures with Nixon with giant portraits of Mao, for example.

      Much more worrisome is how the President carries himself. I didn't used to put much stock in the rumors about Barry's sexuality, but, wow, it's getting pretty hard to ignore his prancing around like a lightfoot dancer giddy from the smiles he got from this cute guy who works at Starbucks.

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    2. He's as presidential as Richard Simmons. No wait, I don't want to insult Richard Simmons...

      I am viscerally repulsed by his antics in Cuba. He can't exit the stage quickly enough. Begone little man!

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  4. Oh hey looks like Belgium just "absorbed" another terrorist attack.

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    1. Of all the European countries, Belgium deserves it the most. They can attack Belgium as much as they want. They've asked for it, they've enabled it, they've provided it material aid; let them reap their harvest.

      As for us, the Americas is a BIG place. They can't attack us if they aren't here. I think Trump understands this.

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    2. Belgium has reaped what they have sown. Still, it's a damn shame.

      At some point, Europe will either completely capitulate to the Caliphate, or they will take up arms and slaughter the invaders (and the idiots who imported them). Either way, it will be ugly.

      Does anyone see a middle road? Peaceful deportation of millions upon millions of people back to whatever hellhole they were born in? I don't see that being an attainable solution.

      So we wait for the next terrorist attack. And the next. And the next.

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  5. This guy kills me, a real Twitter artiste.

    Conservative Pundit ‏@DemsRRealRacist Mar 22

    The challenge of Muslim extremism is real, but we can meet it with humanity, courage, and an omnipresent totalitarian surveillance state.

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