Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Leftism and hate

I often point out the hate motivation that drives lots of Leftists. That does appear to upset some conservatives. Leftists are so constantly accusing conservatives of hate that some conservatives seem to think that it is not genteel to use similar language. "We should not stoop to their level" seems to be the thinking. Or maybe they hope that by not speaking about hate they will make all talk of it go away.

But that is exactly what preachers of Leftism want conservatives to do. Leftists know full well how much hate and anger burns in their own hearts but they also know that public awareness of that would discredit them. So they do all they can to prevent awareness of their motivations from rising to the surface -- by loud cries of good intentions, shallow arguments that what they want is all "for your own good" AND by accusing others of being what they really are -- using "projection", as psychologists call it.

And projection is a very effective and very old strategy for deflecting attention from your own weaknesses. Even Jesus was aware of it when he admonished people to get the beam out of their own eye before worrying about the speck in someone elses' eye (Matthew 7: 3-5).

We can see this hate of everything that is about them most clearly in the case of extreme Leftists. Communists and their ilk openly preach revolution -- destruction of the entire "system". And in their various campaigns in democratic societies they are often calling for something to be "smashed". I remember a time in Britain when "smash Maggie Thatcher's government" was a popular Trotskyist slogan.

And their chronic anger explains why Leftist policies are so uniformly boneheaded and fail to take account of all the factors involved. When you are angry, you haven't got the time or energy for calm and mature contemplation. You just seize on the simplest available alternative to whatever it is that you hate. And you don't really care if the alternative isn't a good one. All your energies are focused on attacking the status quo.

What it is that makes the Leftist so burnt up inside could be many things -- from being born ugly to a feeling that they are not getting the recogntion that they think that they deserve for their talents. And I should stress here that I am talking about the preachers of Leftism, not necessarily the poor schmucks who get conned into voting for them.

The Leftist hatred of the existing system can show up in all sorts of ways. Even I was a little surprised to see some freaky-looking female poindexter on the Leftist "Alternet" site getting all excited by some recent egghead pronouncement to the effect that the English language as we know it is dying out(!). The claim is that English will become fractionated into mutually unintelligible dialects in the next few hundred years. The Leftist lady comments:
"Although I am the daughter and granddaughter of English teachers and spent many years in an English department earning a PhD, I relish the prospect of my language changing and becoming incomprehensible to me. Maybe that's because I spent a year learning to read Old English, the dominant form of English spoken 1,000 years ago, and I realize how much my language has already changed. But my glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn't entirely inspired by knowing language history. It's because I want English to reflect the lives of the people who speak it. I want English to be a communications tool"

"Glee in destruction". That's pretty clear, isn't it? And it's all an absurdity. First the printed word and now the broadcast media are making English more uniform. Far from fractionating into different dialects, English worldwide is becoming standardized on the usage of the world's largest English-speaking community: popular American usage. I myself used an Americanism above that would so far be not be generally understood in my own country of Australia: "poindexter" (meaning a geek or what the British would once have termed a "swot").

I am in fact a native speaker of a form of English that meets a lot of incomprehension in America. When I am writing and when I am overseas generally, I deliberately do not use the full range of Australian expressions -- but even then I quite often get tripped up. I use expressions which I think are standard but which are not. However, much as I love my native Australian language, it is constantly borne upon me that young Australians have lost a lot of their old Australian idioms and use American expressions instead (using "guy" instead of "bloke", for instance). English is quite plainly progressing towards worldwide uniformity, not fractionation into mutually unintelligible dialects.

So our sad Leftist lady will have to put up with something important NOT being destroyed. And note the characteristically pathetic rationalization she uses for her pervasive hatred of the status quo: She wants English to be "a communications tool". As if it isn't already!

Update:

An interesting email from an American reader:

"The internationalization of English doesn't come just from the spread of Americanisms. Last week I saw "gobsmacked" used by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. I first learned the term reading British blogs. I've also heard youngish Americans use "bloke." We've come a long way since the American distributors of Mad Max decided they would have to have the film dubbed into American."

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The Charlton Heston the Left won't tell you about

Not very many people will remember that Charlton Heston picketed a segregated theater premiering his own movie; or that he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr on the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. All at a time when no one in Hollywood was willing to speak out against racism. It's more likely that he'll be remembered as the six foot three inch tall actor, who played Moses and Ben Hur, and later became the president and spokesman for the National Rifle Association advocating the right to keep and bear arms; or recall that he opposed affirmative action. But Heston the marcher and Heston the NRA president come closer together if one recalls that in the actor's mind at least, racial segregation helped the cause of Communism. The fight for freedom took many forms, but underneath its varied guises it was always the same thing.

Part of the problem with Charlton Heston wasn't that he was inconsistent, but that he was too consistent. And the common mistake, even of the Old Bolsheviks, was to suppose that following a set of principles was better following fashion. Those who wonder whether Heston had wandered off should ask themselves whether Martin Luther King, had he lived, might also have remarked to the nation's First Black President that "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns." After all, King was a Republican and nobody remembers that either.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Absolut apologizes for expanded Mexico ad: "The Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers. The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan 'In an Absolut World,' showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence. But the ads, which ran only in Mexico and have since ended, came as the United States builds up its border security amid an emotional debate over illegal immigration from their southern neighbor. ... The ads sparked heated comment on a half-dozen other Internet sites and blogs."

General election coming in Italy on April 13 & 14: "The Left?" asks Silvio Berlusconi. "The Left says it loves the poor". He pauses: the banner-waving supporters braving the rain in Piazza del Plebiscito, Naple's main square, wait for the punch line. "So it does. The Left loves the poor so much it creates more of them every time it gets into power". The crowd erupts, even though it has heard most of Mr Berlusconi's jokes before. He turns his fire on Walter Veltroni, the earnest, bespectacled new leader of the Centre Left and his opponent in next weekend's election. "Veltroni? He leads the Bikini Party - it shows a lot but covers up the Communist essentials". Another roar of approval, to the sound of Mr Berlusconi's campaign song "Thank God for Silvio". The two leaders are fighting a final battle for undecided voters, estimated at between twenty and thirty percent, in a country disillusioned with its chronic political instability, economic decline and self serving elite."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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6 comments:

davidhamilton said...

The word "poindexter" is completly new to me, a well-educated native speaker of American English. It does not appear in my Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary.

Anonymous said...

"What it is that makes the Leftist so burnt up inside could be many things -- from being born ugly to a feeling that they are not getting the recognition that they think that they deserve for their talents."

I have heard two consistent theories of Leftist passion.

One is that since most Leftist leaders in a wealthy country are among the High Society rich social class, there is a primitive evolutionary psychology explanation that is similar to the one used to explain why the hand axe remained of non-evolving design for many tens of thousands of years: that our DNA instills in many modern people a deathly fear of BEING envied. The theory is that our distant ancestors evolved to use spiritual theories for advantage/disadvantage, and so a smart kid who invented a better axe (or improved spear thrower or something as obviously demon-powered as a crossbow or a gun, explaining why gunpowder was used only for fireworks in China, for centuries). The *displayed* sign of genius in a normal individual in a pack of 50-150 hunter gatherers would often result in him being KILLED by the leaders (alpha males) for showing them up, or killed by his neighbors for having figured out how to win the favor of the gods. Witch burning is a historical example of this sort of "evil eye" thinking. THUS, many people still harbor genes to strongly want to AVOID BEING ENVIED, and since the USA represents capitalism at its peak, we, as a country are indeed and for good reason ENVIED. So the hatred of "the system" and effort to pull it down or cripple it is really based on the FEAR OF BEING ENVIED.

A second theory is that most people, statistically, are extroverts who by textbook definition have a tendency to find it uncomfortable to be alone. This can, in free capitalistic societies lead to EXTREME DISCOMFORT in many people. Wanting to destroy (hating) the SOURCE of this discomfort is an obvious result. According to the book 'The True Believer - Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements' by Eric Hoffer of 1958, all mass movements have been based on not so much hatred of self but exposure of self to the bright light of individualistic societies, meaning people crave freedom FROM freedom, as a means to escape the existential horror they derive from not having their identity itself wrapped up in a cause, especially now that religion is no longer appealing to well-off intellectuals. He speaks of how most fascist movements were initially seeded by failed artists and writers (Hitler the painter etc.) who started writing or giving speeches on everybody joining a great cause that would join a glorious past with a glorious future (Islamofascism anyone?). Usually, utter fanatics take over (Hitler being an exception to this rule since he was a fanatic to begin with), pushing the initiators aside and rallying the masses to revolution. Finally, opportunists and ladder-climbers take over, and create a new hierarchical society from the ashes of revolution, usually resulting in a stable government along with chronic continuous poverty, with a FUTURE PROMISE of prosperity (echoes of Christianity). The police state nature of the final government, as in the fanatical stage, encourages in common men the urge to spy on their friends and neighbors for signs of individuality, and this encourages fanaticism too. So in this theory it is EXISTENTIAL DREAD OF SELF ISOLATION that forms the thrust of the movement, and facts be damned, junk science or Big Lies included, the PROMISE of an escape from autonomous selfhood is the thrust of mass movements.

What is common in the two theories is DISCOMFORT WITH SELF AS AN AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUAL, and a simple cause and effect result is hatred of one's society if that society praises this state of being as an ideal, as is the case in many Western countries, the worst example being the USA, which makes members both enviable AND their own masters.

The second theory is a quantitatively different (albeit subtly so) hypothesis than your pet theory in which self-hatred is a given is merely projected outwards, for it is not based as much on self-hatred as upon self-autonomy. It is qualitatively different in the extreme from your theory that Leftists merely harbor hatred towards everything and everybody, just because they are hateful.

Witness Al Gore or Michael Moore. Just LOOK at these guys. They ooze the look of men who look bad naked, yet can't stop looking at themselves in the mirror, and CAN'T STAND how powerless they are to destroy capitalism, even to the point of creating Big Lie movements (Bush is Hitler and The Sky is Falling).

So how would one diffuse such evil, for is not willfully trying to destroy functioning civilizations evil? Give them toys to chew on? The UFO cult Scientology comes to mind. The solution I expect America to take is to elect a radical president and then set a practical congress against him. Safer that than a radical congress against a practical president, meaning many against one.

-=DrNikFromNYC=-

JR said...

There are over a million hits for "poindexter" on google

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poindexter

Anonymous said...

Texas becoming a part of the USA was in some real sense due to a Mexican civil war in which Mexicans living in the part of Mexico known as Texas revolted. The USA has already offered to buy Texas. It was the Mexicans in Texas who started the war, AGAINST MEXICO. The USA sided with Texas and kicked ass, so Texas was bought with military might instead of cash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War

Anonymous said...

The first time I heard the name Poindexter was in a Felix the Cat cartoon. Poindexter was a brainy youngster, apparently the nephew of "The Professor", who was frequently the villain, though "Poinzy" always remained good. You can see a couple pictures at a Felix the Cat store at:

http://www.shopfelixthecat.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=FTC&Category_Code=collectibles

He's the one with the glasses and traditional graduation cap. It wouldn't surprise me if he's the reason that Poindexter is associated with brainy people.

Anonymous said...

I found a better picture of Poindexter here:

http://www.felixthecat.com/friends-poindexter.htm