This is an eternal, unavoidable Truth. That we (are forced to) defer to the state's enforcers for our revenge against someone doing us wrong changes nothing.
The line about "being better than the enemy" in reality simply means that the one saying it wants someone else to do the fighting for them, so they can sit on the fence of Virtue, their self-image of immacualte intellectual virginity/innocence intact.
Since the topic is cancellation, i.e. unpersoning, and that touches on inquisitorial tactics and practices, I have a third thing to say:
Calling for "dialing it down", "meeting half-way", "two wrongs don't make a right" is what bullies, tinpot dick-taters, petty desktop dominators and other such always say, when someone snarls and seems ready to fight back. It's a trick, always was and always is. They fear your counter-attack, because then the above-mentioned fence-post-slitherers must choose a side actively and publicly.
And that comes with a real cost, a cost they fear to pay - therefore they will bleat and appeal to saints and philosophers and pseudo-Christos-figures and whatever faked ideal they can, to get you to desist and put on the yoke of "being the better person".
Ever hear a (your?) teacher say that, when the bullied kid tried to fight back? Ever hear the teacher, parent, other adult say "shake hands and make up" when the designated victim actually managed to get the upper hand?
Yeah. Same thing here. The sycophantic enabling cowards wants you to crawl into your hole, let them speak on your behalf, make you feel shame in advance for wanting justice - all so they can go on to be pristine and clean, while letting you and others suffer.
Revenge is justice, and justice rests at spearpoints' end.
Platitudes such as "two wrongs don't make a right" or "violence never solves anything" are observably false. Violence, historically, has decisively solved more issues than any other factor in history. Meanwhile, to respond to a wrong with a proportionate "wrong" is the only way to balance the scales ... and is therefore, in fact, always right.
These are the sentiments of the nursery, appropriate to women minding squabbling children, and wholly useless on the field of battle.
If I recall correctly, didn't some Christian Spanish spend a few hundred years clearing Spain of Muslims? Generally worked from North to South, I think. We're learning that harsh lesson now. There are 'religions' who are very opposed to getting along and do not respond to calls to play nice now.
Indeed, and it was. To clarify where I am going - having experienced violence myself, I fully understand how it goes. The bully aint going to stop because you ask him nicely. Although I was a shit fighter, I stood my ground. What I see is that the white hats are seeking to break the cycle - the bad guys pervert everything and when it gets too nasty for them, they hide, often underground. Regroup and come back for more. I think we’re moving into a world where violence will be used - like military forces around the world putting bad guys to rest right now, as well as guerilla warfare in terms of a new kind of warfare. Burning Bright calls it asymmetrical warfare. Took me awhile to grasp it. Plus shit what a writer. Makes me a wee bit sad.
That seems all but inevitable at this point. Having placed themselves beyond reason, having made themselves impossible to negotiate with, having become the enemies of civilization, options are narrowing dramatically.
Did violence really solve any issues? Clearly, at the end of violence one has a winner. But are there any fewer issues afterwards - surely for every issue which is solved for Peter, there is now a new issue for Paul.
Do you have children? Did you teach them to hit each other every time one of them did something wrong? Wow - I bet you lived in a quiet, joyous and peaceful house :-) If every time somebody hits you, you hit back then surely all we will all ever do is fight?
Didn't somebody once say "blessed are the peacemakers"?
I teach them to use their judgment and to defuse a situation if possible, using violence only when absolutely necessary to defend oneself or one's possessions if they are under immediate threat.
I didn't teach them to hunt down the weakest member of the bully's gang, jump on him when he's alone, and smash his skull. :-)
Yes. I'm not certain that I was correct to do so - but either I was not intelligent enough to see another path, or violence is in fact justifiable under some circumstances.
I am not at all sure that the home depot lady qualifies as one of those circumstances (and I recognize you are not proposing to literally beat her up, but the point remains).
And by your logic, if a nuclear strike were launched against the US, would you launch back and destroy the planet and all of humanity (let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that nuclear weapons are real and would destroy the planet instead of a psyop)?
1. That's not true. Both sides have to convince the other they are willing to do so. That's different from actually being willing to do so.
2. Since you are not in charge of any nuclear triggers you do not have to convince anyone - you are free to state your hypothetical intent honestly.
3. Personally I think MAD is just another insane part of the psyop - a way of getting us all to buy into an astonishingly unethical, inverted doctrine - that it is "OK" to threaten the destruction of humankind as a tactic.
Ah, there it is, that complete nonsense. It’s all about having a quiet home by telling the victim to quietly take it. When my older child hits my younger child I give her the belt. She even agrees it is justified. I can’t allow my child to become a monster who uses violence against smaller people. And I won’t teach my smaller child to take abuse.
In my grade there was a boy whose brother died of cancer. The school had him clean out his dead brother’s locker. Later that day a bully started attacking him and he beat the shit out of that bully. He got in trouble. I remember him asking “What was I supposed to do? He was attacking me?” And the teacher says “Turn around and walk away.” And he said “Turn my back on someone attacking me?!” Everyone knew that the rule against defending yourself was unfair but the adults at that school were terrible. They didn’t want to deal with the bullies so it was easier to tell the victims to take it quietly.
William F. Buckley conservatives stay losing. Or, more ungenerously, cuckservatives. The right can't get a single punch in without the Buckleys running in to hold the right back and scold them. Meanwhile the left takes heads left and right and the Buckleys shrug and write about how nice it would be if the left embraced the gentleman inside and stopped curbstomping the right. It's like those competitions where the ref is clearly biased towards one side. It's team left + team dignified cuckservatives vs team right. Thanks a lot.
It would be one thing for them to lay down and get cancelled with a noble upturned nose, it's another to demand the same behavior from others. Why? What authority do they have to demand others lay down their livelihoods for their personal sense of decorum?
I cannot speak to the totality of the vast array of writers John Carter referenced since they have diverse opinions. But there's going to be a crowd that demands others surrender because they themselves are cowards. If anyone fights back, and wins, it proves that their surrender was done out of rank fear so they must stop it at all costs.
It ultimately does come down to the nature of violence. Yeah, it'd be nice to live in a non-violent world, no argument there. But holding back one side in a two sided fight is just wrong. Misguided at best, enemy action at worst.
I would qualify this. You are addressing, I think, human vengeance. (And having seen yesterday, a video of a group of hippos attack and kill a crocodile that had just eaten a hippo calf, it is an animal vengeance as well.)
Yet there is another law that is quite like the Newtonian — which is, that what one delivers to another, returns. This is an invariable and inexorable law that goes well beyond human existence on this mere earthly plane.
It is not a hope or a faith. It is a law and it is absolute. One needn't necessarily force the implementation of it — which is the human or animal vengeance. When I was much younger, I would not have believed it; but now, I see it everywhere. Christians know it as, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord;” Buddhists as karmic doctrine; etc. Because it has been known for millennia.
He may die, I may die, in fact: we are ALL GOING TO DIE. The manner of our death and perhaps giving our deaths meaning- will our children and their children have a world of freedom to live their lives in as once dreamed of in the dead and burned out husk of a country? Newsflash: the people in power are NOT going to give it up peacefully. EVER.
And what happens if you remove the religious arguement from your hypothesis?
I'll tell you: that the oppressor can live like a King for all of his days, without ever suffering any justice.
Which is why oppressors and kings, way back when they also were head priests of whatever cult was in fashion in a given place, found great profit in seeding minds with the lie of divine retribution after death.
That way, the serfs, thralls and slaves - all the kinds of human chattel - could find solace and comfort in deluding themselves in thinking that the taskmaster would himself suffer one day, without them doing anything.
A very useful tool, for a ruler. Not so much for the ruled.
It isn't a hypothesis. It is a conclusion. If one is riveted to the material existence of the body, and think that that is all there is, then, naturally, men behave like the animal because what keeps the soul within the living corpus is animal.
a zen thing i read once- how an apprentice returned to the master and told him " i understand, now master- all is illusion!" The master punched him in the nose and asked "what hurts"? lols.
I referred to a very great idea contained in some religions (and not others). But it is not a religious argument and it isn't even an argument. What you are essentially asking me to do is, to help you succeed in the position you have advanced, deny my conclusion and argue for you. You will have to do that on your own. I'm not about to compromise what I know for the benefit of your argument.
If you understand your own arguement, surely you have tried to break it or poke holes in it yourself, to test it?
And since your arguement very much hinges on there being some kind of spirit (or soul, essence, whatever) that separates humans from vengeful hippopotami, then you must have considered my question.
Also, what happens to your arguement if you assume animals, plants, streams, rocks and so on to have a spirit or spirits dwelling within?
I wouldn't ask unless I was interested in the answer, but you seem unwilling to answer for some reason - maybe you misconstrued my tone, or I came across as combative perhaps?
"Yet there is another law that is quite like the Newtonian — which is, that what one delivers to another, returns."
Counterpoint: Taking vengeance on the left is that Newtonian return of force. In that perspective telling the right to cut it out is going against the, "inexorable law that goes well beyond human existence on this mere earthly plane."
This idea of balance in the forces of the universe has indeed been around for millennia; the Chinese concepts of the Tao are perhaps the best known. Restoration of the balance, 'karma' if you will, is also known to occur when various forces create extreme unbalance in the Tao. In these days of extreme power of the female side of humanity in the Western world: the domination and terrorism of males by the 'hags of the wild hunt', murderous child sacrifice, perversions and degradations- balancing the scale is not going to occur without, as Enoch Powell put it, "rivers of blood".
Who is to say that such may indeed be necessary .... as "karma" for those who brought us to our current situation?
Karma refers to the results occurring in one’s next life because of deeds done in this life. It is not relevant to immediate this-world effects. Tao is not related to karma, its postulate and discovery having been made long before Buddha arrived and entirely unknown the one to the other until a millennia after Buddha died. Tao refers to an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, as it has once been translated, that enlivens all life through the Ch’i which pervades material form. It is singular, uniform and absolute. Yin and Yang are female, recessive and male, positive, aspects of material form.
"The word Karma literally means action. It may appear that Karma is happening to us, as if some outside force is causing good things or bad things to come to us. However, it is really our own inner conditionings and processes that are leading us to experience outer effects or consequences in relation to our own actions."
So, 'ackshually' then: I dint sign up for a course in comparative eastern philosophies. My off the cuff post put "karma" in quotes ( as in: oh so vulgarian slang?) for my fellow dirt clod people who give zero fks about the hows and whys of what is coming: "Rivers of Blood". And they deserve it, no matter what you call it.
If you think you know something will enough to talk about it, that's well enough. But if you don't, and you've learned something from my comment, then you ought to at least have the good graces to say that you learned something. Rather, you've said, "Who cares! I still think the way I do.". That is one of the funniest things I've seen so far today and thank you for making me smile.
I dunno. Picking on some poor woman because she taps out junk in an unreal medium in a few seconds and kicking her ass IRL somehow doesn't make me feel very tough or heroic. This person just does what she's told by dull, pop cutlure celebs and others who avoid the consequences.
Why would confronting someone doing something wrong or stupid need to make you feel tough or heroic?
Time and place, sure. Scape and scope and scale too, absolutely. Measured response, all the way.
But try this one on for size: You're working in a public school and one of your colleagues shows up sporting a t-shirt with the hammer&sickle (just to pick the first symbol I thought of), and is going to wear it in class.
Your choices then and there are to ignore it, or to challenge your colleague.
And that choice is no different than doing it online, it just feels different.
Thanks for your reply. It reminds me of road rage. You are in command of one medium, a fast-sexy thing, another metal object swerves and you both then get out of the object that makes you feel powerful or isolated or I don't know what and kill each other.
Yes, it may not be worth the effort for one thing. And another, picking up on your analogy of the colleague wearing a t-shirt: in a sane world they wouldn't allow that type of outfit, a sort of billboard, in the first place, but since we have to deal with this world I'd recommend you wear a t-shirt with an image of a cross on a Norman shield the same size as his hammer and sickle. That'll drive them all barking mad.
What I did, since I picked a real event, was that I pointed out to my colleague that we as teachers are to be impartial, objective, and factual at work, especially in class.
This he listened to and understood, though he being a junior had never heard about it, since teachers are no longer trained according to those three principles - quite the opposite in fact.
As my late father used to say, don't give a shit about people who don't give a shit about you.
If the "right" - which is really another term for "not fucking batshit insane" - needs to break a few eggs to create that civilizational course correction omelet, then so be it. The left's project is unlimited, ours isn't. When we finally achieve the "just leave us alone" state of a rational society, then we can stop going after idiotic cashiers and uni accounts-payable clerks who can't shut up on TikTok. Until then, do what needs to be done. If it's a bit ugly and dirty, well, it's not like the other side operates under decent restraints and traditional norms like we do. Marquess of Queensbury and all that.
I mean, just give me back the society I knew in, say, 1986, and I'll be happy.
It's important to periodically remind ourselves what all these metaphors actually mean. In this case, it's backlash against actual calls for assassination, which I can only hope culminates in a new cultural norm recognizing Godwin's Law. I am very tired of having to explain to friends and colleagues that Trump is not a fascist.
Fifteen years ago the left was destroying men's lives for privately whispering jokes about dongles. For fifteen years the right has asked them to stop. It literally took calling for the death of man whose politics aren't far off from a 90s democrat before the right said "Fuck it, we'll do it your way now." The right isn't talking about cancelling all lefties. The right is cancelling people who publicly wish death on the rightwing candidate for frivolous, made-up reasons.
To the contrary, I am all in favor of an expansion to cover support for drag queen story hour, child gender transitions, black lives matter, and forced vaccinations.
Agreed. I have these restless notions - fueled by bourbon - of creating a secret network of librarians that quietly take over manager and director roles and, over time, force out the blue-haired, septum-pierced nonbinary freaks that have made my profession a laughing stock.
I would rephrase that to “we shall put down our knives once our enemy’s have fallen from their shattered hands.”
All of this talk of mercy assumes the enemy is capable of surrendering. Fuck look at ukraine, the GAE is getting ground into paste but refuse to surrender or negotiate, because they spirtually cannot. Hell both China and Russia call them “agreement incapable”. The left is spiritually unable to surrender, not to nature, to god, to reason, or to even brutal force.
Even if our cities were nuked into glowing rubble the war would continue as long as one leftest was alive to fight reality.
Hmmmmm. So you would like to go back to a more civil time. And you think that the best way to get there is for those people who still behave the way that people used to behave in that more civil time to stop behaving that way, and instead to start imitating the behavior of those people whose behavior so horrifies you?
No way, fren: I'm shooting (heh) for 1950s jim crow and no jews in the country club: where I caddied for White MEN who owned hardware stores, dairies, lumber mills, etc.
The person whose views most aligned with my own is Charles Haywood. Nonetheless, I was touched by Nina Powers’s take on the issue. Here is a woman who has really suffered at the hands of the left, and she still wants to engage with these people and try to improve them. She would be fully justified in wanting to call down fire, and brimstone upon them. But she has so much personal decency that she still wishes them well. As a matter of her personal character, I find that admirable. But as far as surviving, and then prevailing in a conflict for the survival of our civilization, and our personal survival, a much harder attitude is necessary. The right must build political power, then take political power, by all lawful means, then use that power to tear up by the roots every last trace of this moral and spiritual sickness, what Elon Musk calls the “woke mind virus“ which destroyed his son. The verb Musk used was “destroy” and anything less will not solve the problem.
This is essentially my view, in all respects. Compassionate voices are to be respected, treasured, and protected; they're our conscience. But for now we need to turn our conscience off. When the left has been neutralized, we can start forgiving people.
I would not say we turn off our consciences. I would phrase it differently. The personal is not political. I may turn the other cheek to humble my own pride, when a dispute is strictly personal. When an attack is not just on me, but on my family, my friends, my country, my civilization, it is not a matter of personal humility, it is no longer just or moral to simply let it go. The attack, made by others, with their methods, which I did not choose and do not want to be involved with, nonetheless imposes upon me a duty to defend. Duties can arise from objective circumstances, without regard to our preferences. That duty in turn does not call for a naive or childish or thoughtless and probably futile response. That would be about my personal anger or desire for vengeance, and might even be counterproductive. The duty to defend must be exercised with prudence and should aim at actual effectiveness. It will likely require time, organization and serious effort. So, it is not a matter of turning off the conscience, it is a matter of applying the correct frame of analysis.
To bring this back to tangible things, notifying the vicious woman's employer of her misconduct, which could cause her to lose her job, is a minor but nonetheless justified act of defense. The fact that the woman foolishly exposed herself to retaliation is her problem. She is part of much larger, vicious, destructive movement. Pushing back against her individual bad conduct may help to mitigate the effect of the kind of thoughtless malice she was demonstrating, because it may cause others to think twice. But until the right actually has political power, such targets of opportunity will be rare.
Schmitt emphasized the distinction, made by the Romans, between hostis and inimicus - the public vs the personal enemy. In the former case we must be impersonal and cold, taking whatever measures are necessary to preserve and defend the body politic.
There are degrees of leftists. So, there may be exceptions. Some people go along with the herd, as you have noted. Some are literally mentally ill. Some are self-deluded, more or less culpably so. Some have malicious motives, but are ignorant of the larger issues. Most DEI commissars are probably pure bureaucrats and would say whatever words were put in their mouths by whoever paid their paychecks. Some have found ways to make money off of all of it and are simply venal. Some, the worst, know exactly what they are doing. All may be hostis, in Schmitt's sense, but many are less culpable than the worst of them. We could take all this into account, in the hoped-for event of victory, where magnanimity would be prudent.
There are distinctions, but at this point all I see are enemy soldiers in the enemy uniform. How they ended up in that uniform is of little interest to me. We can worry about fine distinctions when we are, so to speak, processing them through the POW facilities.
The analogy you are making is to an open war, in uniform, a stand-up fight. This is not that. We on the right are not even at state 2 guerilla war yet. In a guerilla war, undermining the enemy and getting its army to rot out from below by undermining morale and creating doubt in the moral superiority of the cause, encouraging cooperation by individuals on the enemey side, foot-dragging, whistle blowing, sabotage, and defections is a key tactic. It is sticks and carrots. The various levels of commitment on the other side are seams that can be attacked by various methods of persuasion.
Exactly. We may choose, as individuals, to absorb evil without retribution while also speaking out against it. However, on a societal level, the different rules are required.
Ethics aside, the normalisation of violent protests and the celebration of political violence will eventually generate a reaction. The regime is becoming more and more reliant on displays of rage and aggression and on making contrived excuses for this. The mood is getting more volatile. The default setting of hominids under unendurable conditions is to chimp out. Sooner or later this is what we are looking at.
The Irish are entirely justified in burning down "welcome" centers for the flood of 3rd world immigrants they do not want but which are imposed on them by people who hate all ethnically homogenous countries.
For Socrates, conscience was akin to an inner voice or divine sign that guided him away from wrongdoing. To neglect doing what is necessary may also be a form of wrongdoing, but one should never turn one's conscience off.
A man may have to kill other men to save his kin and kith. The man who does this will never be the same one he was before these acts. Did he lose his conscience? Some may. Many men will never be the same; as a child of a WW2 vet, listening the men of his age during my childhood, it was obvious they did not feel, did not think they were not the same as when they went off to war. Listening to my grandfather who stayed home and talked about how his boys came back 'changed'....
Some of those men were not good to be around as a child.
Conscience is a gift of peaceful times. Be grateful for it, and understand that it is not something useful in war.
“Bloodshed never will succeed,” he said. “Since the beginning of history wholesale murder has been committed thousands and thousands of times without resolving anything. It will be committed thousands and thousands of times again without yielding a better result. Each war merely sows the seeds of a future war.”
Nina does seem to understand the psychology of the left correctly. It's about people who feel themselves to be irredeemably defective finding meaning in belonging to a group instead, where they can take out their rage on the outsiders who made them feel bad.
Quote from Pascal at the beginning of Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer:
"Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and see that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against the truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults."
"...for the survival of our civilization, and our personal survival, a much harder attitude is necessary."- this will not happen with "...take political power, by all lawful means.."
You obviously still suffer under the delusion that the left is going to allow such means. They WILL NOT let go of political power, peacefully- PERIOD. end of discussion. GET OVER IT.
There is nothing back there, friends, it is GONE, dead, buried, waste no flowers on it.
Violence will be necessary - when the time is right! It is yet too soon, frens. It is all collapsing and dying in front of us. Be patient, be prepared, have a local community standing ready - perhaps a young man will rise and pull the sword from the stone... I plan to be merlin. lol.
oooo. so hurtful. i might melt. lol. oh i forgot- i can call you a FED, too! is that worse than a bag of shit? sure got your panties in a wad. jeez dude. or maybe dudette, what with all your concerns over the "v" word. lols.
In more than 20 years of running a forum I have found that the most essential rule is to immediately remove any _personal_ attacks on the other users. Attacks on points are great, and to be encouraged, but as soon as it's clearly personal, productive debate has ended.
I subscribe to the Ender Wiggin way of thinking: when someone is preying on you and has made it clear that this predation will continue as long as the predator enjoys it, and by some skill or good fortune you happen to get the upper hand for a moment, you have to put the boot in hard enough to make sure he will never try to prey on you again. (The "boot" here being social censure and possible job loss, which is less than they ultimately intend for us.) That's not pleasant, and you shouldn't enjoy it too much, but it's necessary if you don't want the predator to pick right back up where he left off as soon as he gets to his feet again. The enemy is mostly people who only enjoy the fight when no one fights back, so we're already seeing positive effects from what so far amounts to some very mild flexing in their direction.
The one caveat that I can see is when the person is truly an innocent bystander who was just trying not to get in social trouble from insufficient compliance with the current thing. There will be many people who put a rainbow flag on their social media profile at some point; that doesn't mean they're all down with globohomo and should be punished for each example. But someone who literally called for the assassination of the other party's candidate for president is not an innocent bystander. Plenty of liberals are able to restrain themselves from that extreme in public, even if they think it in private. To say that that person shouldn't be held accountable because she's just a mimimum-wage cashier is the same argument the left makes that we shouldn't punish the mugger because he's disadvantaged.
I sympathize with the queasy feelings of the take-the-high-road folks--again, we shouldn't enjoy this too much--but I don't find their actual arguments very persuasive. Their suggestions for alternative action tend to be vague or unworkable, as you pointed out regarding going after the elites instead of the ground troops. Their fears of "becoming like them" are countered by looking around at this very discussion, which never takes place on the other side. We're already not like them.
Ender spends the rest of the series beating himself up for what he did to save humanity, and trying to make amends for it. Maybe we'll do some of that later, but you have to survive and win first.
Exactly. We can wallow in guilt after we win. If we don't win, it's curtains for our civilization.
If I recall correctly, earlier in the book, Ender responded to bullying in the war school with massively disproportionate brutality. Which ended the bullying.
I weighed in somewhere in the middle; I won't join in, but won't stop right-wing cancel squads. We do need to fight back and strike at them.
I'll be honest, I'll probably lend background support and promos for right-wing cancellers if only out of spite against the Left. I bloody hate what they've done to Western Civilizations like those of the French, Germans, English, Irish, Inuit, Spanish and so on.
So I say, the left comes after me I'll fight back, they come after my buddies I'll fight back, the right strikes first good. Screw the left, and if it takes using their stratagems to win this decades long Cold War, then do it.
I'm especially pissed at how they've used art-industries such as Publishing to totally destroy entire Civilizations since WWII. So fuck 'em and hang them by any means necessary. Like I said, I'll sit on the side-lines, run promotion, marketing, fiction and otherwise logistical support dunno how much it'll help but so long as it helps fellow Nationalists and lovers of art and culture I'm here.
What they've done to Western Europe, particularly over the last decade, is a crime of historical proportions that demands, in many individual cases, punishments incomparably more severe than cancellation.
Yeah, I think I'll co-opt the leftist tactic of letting others do the dirty work, and then being all shocked and indignant, like, "How dare you associate that unseemliness with me? I never advocated any such thing. But have you considered that your chickens are coming home to roost? Also, you're crazy, it's not happening...but also it's good that it's happening."
But what does the 'right' do? Nothing particularly good neither. They are just dancing around the fire on the opposite side while you are being boiled in the pot.
Growing up in a tough neighborhood, there were many fist fights. I recall my teachers constantly repeating the mantra “fighting doesn’t solve anything” which was contrary to my experience. Every fight I was in tended to solve everything. Even if I lost, if I inflicted enough pain on my opponent, they were reluctant to pester me again. Those that refused to fight or inflict punishment on their tormentors were shown no mercy. Pacificism implied weakness.
Personally I feel that the attempted assassination, the celebration of that attempt and the encouragement to future attempts are in a different class altogether from previous acts. They should not be tolerated. In fact, we are now in this situation because we gave a pass to those who advocated lesser forms of political violence (Floyd Riots, Maxine Walters on any random day, etc.) And let us be clear this has come from the very top of the Democrats Party with only slight subtlety (e.g., Joe Biden’s July 4th appearance at Independence Hall, Kamala Harris running a slush fund to post bond for violent rioters, calling Trump “Hitler”, reducing Trump’s Secret Service detail, eliminating RFK’s Secret Service detail, etc.) They are clearly trying to ‘Becket’ both of the opposing candidates.
Remember the Covington Catholic story? The Left spared no one, no matter how low their position in life. Nick Sandmann, the high school student who smirked at a Native American banging a drum in his face, was ruthlessly persecuted for his political beliefs, without an ounce of mercy in sight. (Even some on the establishment Right joined in on the side of the cancellers.)
The argument here is not simply about revenge. Instead, one must understand the tactics of the Left. The only thing the Left responds to is power on its own terms.
Me: A lot of people that identify with the right, especially centrists, really don’t have the stomach for what needs to done. They are in denial about what’s happening right now. America is in the middle of a communist revolution. It hasn’t gone completely hot yet, but it probably will if the Left isn’t punished for their sins. Cancelation should be understood by them to be the least of their problems if they persist. As Kurt Schlicter says: they’re not going to like having to live by their new rules.
Ah yeah, I read the AM story but forgot to include it. I be agreed completely of course. The national bullying of a high school kid was yet another moment when the left abandoned any claim on the moral high ground. Not that they have not provided such moments in abundance.
American Indian, please! The Indians call themselves Indians. The leftist "Native American" term has oozed into the mainstream, like "gender" for sex, "CE" for AD, "Hebrew Bible" for Old Testament, "African American" for black, and many other subversions of language.
Fortunately, some of the more egregious attempts failed comically, like "bonus hole".
I think explicitly calling for the assassination of a presidential candidate - on any side - is beyond the pale and should elicit consequences. Home Depot meemaw will easily find another minimum wage job and be fine after a few weeks, and probably won't make bloodthirsty ragepoasts for a while.
Not the best example because you don't punch back. People here want to vote for another thug and think this thug will punch in the face the first thug but at the end both thugs are exploiting you.
Where does the power to cancel come from? This is not an ideological or moral question but a pragmatic one. In the case of the former, I'd say "right" rather than power.
What people and institutions give us the power to cancel one another? These have not changed. Why are they suddenly allowing members of the right to cancel members of the left?
The failed assassination of a presidential candidate might have something to do with it.
In general however there's a certain irresistible power that comes from raw numbers, as seen with the boycotts of the last year or so. This is quite independent of formal institutional power, and at the moment, literally the only avenue of influence the right can draw upon.
Most of us rational folks will posit that cancel culture is awful. But until every side has had their noses rubbed in it, nobody will learn & move forward. This IS war. If you’re not fighting dirty, you’re not fighting hard enough. The whole “take the high road” is of value only to our enemies. Even David had to pick up a stone at some point.
There's a necessary distinction to be made between the normies and the true believers. The latter cannot be reasoned or negotiated with, and probably cannot be reprogrammed. In most cases they simply need to be removed from positions of influence, and permanently banned from holding them.
In re: the idea of right-wing cancel squads, it seems to me that there's a happy medium: cancel the m*****f*****s, but remain collegial about it. Remember that "A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger." (Proverbs 15:1).
So, yes, cancel the m-f-ers, but do it with a smile on your face and a song in your heart! That should infuriate them even more ...
One other point concerning whether or not to take on the lib-cancelers: If the idea of cancelation isn't specifically addressed in Alinsky's rules for radicals, it's probably because he didn't think of it, else it would have been. And attempts at applying those rules need to be challenged head-on, one at a time. Ignoring them is like ignoring the one (or two) cockroaches you see scuttling across your kitchen floor when you turn on the light for a late-night snack: they're not likely to kill themselves, but they WILL propagate uncontrollably.
One final thought. Mattias Desmet introduced the concept of mass formation in his brilliant book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." In it, he posits that perhaps no more than 30 percent of a particular movement is necessary to "program" the remaining 70 percent into a mindless (i.e., not thinking for themselves) mass. This argues strongly for aiming hard and relentless cancellation efforts at the liberal elites (even though some of them may actually be members of the mass). I HIGHLY recommend Desmet's book.
Excellent, very even-handed overview of the debate on this topic of whether we should support the redirection of cancel-culture towards those who initiated it in the first place. I would liken it to a malicious neighbor who cuts a hole in a sewer line and attaches a hose leading to your front door. You wake up and find your yard full of raw sewage. You can contact the folks at the utility company and wait for them to stop the flow of sewage, or ... you can take the hose and reroute it towards your neighbor's house and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Obviously the best case scenario is not to deal with sewage in the first place, but here you are. Go ahead and call the utility and try to get a more permanent solution, but with sewage continuing to flow through the hose, you can't stop the flow of sewage, but only change the direction it flows. It's best to direct its flow back towards the malicious neighbor who caused the whole mess in the first place.
There will always be censorious, tattle-tale types. The Left encouraged and deputized them and unleashed them on the Right (and by "Right," I mean anyone who is not insane with cultural Marxcissist ideology). We cannot eliminate the censorious, tattle-tale types from the public discourse -- at least not right away. So it's probably a good idea to redirect them back against the Left. But ... don't join their ranks, because that will seriously damage your soul.
I came in after dealing with an almost identical situation, to find Carter's post in the mail when I sat down for coffee after washing up.
We had torrential rains here yesterday and today, so our sewage well flooded around noon. This we discovered when the wife tried to use the washing machine. The laundry room looked like a Pride-parade: full of shit.
For the last 90ish minutes, I've been holding a drainage-pump on a rope, lowered into the well as the "water" level dropped. The wife, meanwhile, directed the other end of the hose into the forest.
Your comment brought about much-needed catharsis and stress-release, so thank you. And your point was well-made too, to boot!
This used to afflict the old part of my home town. Storm drains connected to the sewers, leading the latter to flood people's basements during particularly heavy rainfalls. City spent a lot of money fixing that.
Not our first rodeo, so no worries there. The laundry room is built as an extension from the main building.
(Which is a very fancy way of describing a room that's 140cm*200cm.)
The well is old and has sunk a bit since it's about a century since it was made. A better lid, and perhaps a heavier pump installed into the well to prevent flooding is on the table as solutions.
It's weird though. Sewage, lumps of feces, black water, et detera - that I can handle. Sure, it's filty and unsanitary but do it right and it's no problem, just a hassle.
Trying to parse the municipal rules for different kinds of waste-handling solutions. . . bring on the I-hug-myself-jacket!
There's an aspect of vengeance of course. Realistically, however, we need to use the tools that our enemies create for us. Stochastic terrorism is a tool they employ to ensure compliance even in the face of breaching all manner of decorum. Similarly, we need to punish them first for creating this social weapon, and second for employing it. Being righteously angry is not a sin, merely giving into wrath is what we should be careful of.
Right now we've been on the back foot for decades. We need to seize the initiative when it's possible to do so. Once we win, we can review whether or not it's worth it to be 'better' than our enemies. Until that time, however, we're very much in a fight for our lives and for our civilization. We know what they will do to us if they win. We're very much at a point where aiming to "respect a diversity of tactics" in resisting their violence and tyranny is completely justified. If they are not punished when they're on the back foot then they will not learn. Being the better person in this case is a demand for appeasement of our enemies. It's been well identified that any act of concession to them will be taken as an act of weakness.
We have few choices here but to utilize their tools. We have permitted them develop the tools to control the culture. Now is an opportunity to wield those tools in the service of cultural good. Failing to do so is itself an act of weakness and cowardice.
I have only two things to say:
Revenge /is/ justice.
This is an eternal, unavoidable Truth. That we (are forced to) defer to the state's enforcers for our revenge against someone doing us wrong changes nothing.
The line about "being better than the enemy" in reality simply means that the one saying it wants someone else to do the fighting for them, so they can sit on the fence of Virtue, their self-image of immacualte intellectual virginity/innocence intact.
Since the topic is cancellation, i.e. unpersoning, and that touches on inquisitorial tactics and practices, I have a third thing to say:
Calling for "dialing it down", "meeting half-way", "two wrongs don't make a right" is what bullies, tinpot dick-taters, petty desktop dominators and other such always say, when someone snarls and seems ready to fight back. It's a trick, always was and always is. They fear your counter-attack, because then the above-mentioned fence-post-slitherers must choose a side actively and publicly.
And that comes with a real cost, a cost they fear to pay - therefore they will bleat and appeal to saints and philosophers and pseudo-Christos-figures and whatever faked ideal they can, to get you to desist and put on the yoke of "being the better person".
Ever hear a (your?) teacher say that, when the bullied kid tried to fight back? Ever hear the teacher, parent, other adult say "shake hands and make up" when the designated victim actually managed to get the upper hand?
Yeah. Same thing here. The sycophantic enabling cowards wants you to crawl into your hole, let them speak on your behalf, make you feel shame in advance for wanting justice - all so they can go on to be pristine and clean, while letting you and others suffer.
Revenge is justice, and justice rests at spearpoints' end.
Hear, hear. Well said.
Platitudes such as "two wrongs don't make a right" or "violence never solves anything" are observably false. Violence, historically, has decisively solved more issues than any other factor in history. Meanwhile, to respond to a wrong with a proportionate "wrong" is the only way to balance the scales ... and is therefore, in fact, always right.
These are the sentiments of the nursery, appropriate to women minding squabbling children, and wholly useless on the field of battle.
If I recall correctly, didn't some Christian Spanish spend a few hundred years clearing Spain of Muslims? Generally worked from North to South, I think. We're learning that harsh lesson now. There are 'religions' who are very opposed to getting along and do not respond to calls to play nice now.
Violence was indeed very successful at regaining Iberia. More recently, it was successful at ensuring it didn't fall into the hands of the communists.
Indeed, and it was. To clarify where I am going - having experienced violence myself, I fully understand how it goes. The bully aint going to stop because you ask him nicely. Although I was a shit fighter, I stood my ground. What I see is that the white hats are seeking to break the cycle - the bad guys pervert everything and when it gets too nasty for them, they hide, often underground. Regroup and come back for more. I think we’re moving into a world where violence will be used - like military forces around the world putting bad guys to rest right now, as well as guerilla warfare in terms of a new kind of warfare. Burning Bright calls it asymmetrical warfare. Took me awhile to grasp it. Plus shit what a writer. Makes me a wee bit sad.
That seems all but inevitable at this point. Having placed themselves beyond reason, having made themselves impossible to negotiate with, having become the enemies of civilization, options are narrowing dramatically.
Did violence really solve any issues? Clearly, at the end of violence one has a winner. But are there any fewer issues afterwards - surely for every issue which is solved for Peter, there is now a new issue for Paul.
Do you have children? Did you teach them to hit each other every time one of them did something wrong? Wow - I bet you lived in a quiet, joyous and peaceful house :-) If every time somebody hits you, you hit back then surely all we will all ever do is fight?
Didn't somebody once say "blessed are the peacemakers"?
When your child is being bullied, do you tell him to take it like a bitch? Or to punch back?
I teach them to use their judgment and to defuse a situation if possible, using violence only when absolutely necessary to defend oneself or one's possessions if they are under immediate threat.
I didn't teach them to hunt down the weakest member of the bully's gang, jump on him when he's alone, and smash his skull. :-)
So you do, in fact, teach them that there are acceptable uses of violence.
Yes. I'm not certain that I was correct to do so - but either I was not intelligent enough to see another path, or violence is in fact justifiable under some circumstances.
I am not at all sure that the home depot lady qualifies as one of those circumstances (and I recognize you are not proposing to literally beat her up, but the point remains).
And by your logic, if a nuclear strike were launched against the US, would you launch back and destroy the planet and all of humanity (let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that nuclear weapons are real and would destroy the planet instead of a psyop)?
In order for MAD to be a deterrent, both sides must be willing to kick the nuclear football. Basic game theory.
1. That's not true. Both sides have to convince the other they are willing to do so. That's different from actually being willing to do so.
2. Since you are not in charge of any nuclear triggers you do not have to convince anyone - you are free to state your hypothetical intent honestly.
3. Personally I think MAD is just another insane part of the psyop - a way of getting us all to buy into an astonishingly unethical, inverted doctrine - that it is "OK" to threaten the destruction of humankind as a tactic.
Ask the Nazis. Or General Tojo. Or the Carthaginians.
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.”
I quoted that same passage elsewhere in the thread.
"And people that forget that always pay."
If I'm arguing with my neighbor over the fence line and I kill him, I've settled the question. Well done me.
Back to the nursery, I see.
I fail to see why this is "back to the nursery".
My comment was intended to both
- agree that violence indeed "settles" issues
- question whether settlements of such type are always just, or productive, or positive for humanity.
I think that is a valid point.
Ah, there it is, that complete nonsense. It’s all about having a quiet home by telling the victim to quietly take it. When my older child hits my younger child I give her the belt. She even agrees it is justified. I can’t allow my child to become a monster who uses violence against smaller people. And I won’t teach my smaller child to take abuse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyhfHQ_7Skg You were this close here. I wanted to know more.
Fantastic book, horrible movie.
May God have mercy on my enemies because I will not.
GeneralGeorge Patton
In my grade there was a boy whose brother died of cancer. The school had him clean out his dead brother’s locker. Later that day a bully started attacking him and he beat the shit out of that bully. He got in trouble. I remember him asking “What was I supposed to do? He was attacking me?” And the teacher says “Turn around and walk away.” And he said “Turn my back on someone attacking me?!” Everyone knew that the rule against defending yourself was unfair but the adults at that school were terrible. They didn’t want to deal with the bullies so it was easier to tell the victims to take it quietly.
William F. Buckley conservatives stay losing. Or, more ungenerously, cuckservatives. The right can't get a single punch in without the Buckleys running in to hold the right back and scold them. Meanwhile the left takes heads left and right and the Buckleys shrug and write about how nice it would be if the left embraced the gentleman inside and stopped curbstomping the right. It's like those competitions where the ref is clearly biased towards one side. It's team left + team dignified cuckservatives vs team right. Thanks a lot.
It would be one thing for them to lay down and get cancelled with a noble upturned nose, it's another to demand the same behavior from others. Why? What authority do they have to demand others lay down their livelihoods for their personal sense of decorum?
I cannot speak to the totality of the vast array of writers John Carter referenced since they have diverse opinions. But there's going to be a crowd that demands others surrender because they themselves are cowards. If anyone fights back, and wins, it proves that their surrender was done out of rank fear so they must stop it at all costs.
It ultimately does come down to the nature of violence. Yeah, it'd be nice to live in a non-violent world, no argument there. But holding back one side in a two sided fight is just wrong. Misguided at best, enemy action at worst.
nailed it!
I would qualify this. You are addressing, I think, human vengeance. (And having seen yesterday, a video of a group of hippos attack and kill a crocodile that had just eaten a hippo calf, it is an animal vengeance as well.)
Yet there is another law that is quite like the Newtonian — which is, that what one delivers to another, returns. This is an invariable and inexorable law that goes well beyond human existence on this mere earthly plane.
It is not a hope or a faith. It is a law and it is absolute. One needn't necessarily force the implementation of it — which is the human or animal vengeance. When I was much younger, I would not have believed it; but now, I see it everywhere. Christians know it as, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord;” Buddhists as karmic doctrine; etc. Because it has been known for millennia.
Karma's a bitch, and we're her children. Meaning: the Lord helps those who help themselves.
You are welcome to experiment then and see what you get out of it.
He may die, I may die, in fact: we are ALL GOING TO DIE. The manner of our death and perhaps giving our deaths meaning- will our children and their children have a world of freedom to live their lives in as once dreamed of in the dead and burned out husk of a country? Newsflash: the people in power are NOT going to give it up peacefully. EVER.
75.
Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
fair fame of one who has earned.
76.
Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
the doom on each one dead.
From Hávamál;
https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html#wanderers
You initial sentence immediately threw my mind to the wise words of my ancestors.
Thanks, so far, so good.
My grandfather used to say that at the dinner table...
And what happens if you remove the religious arguement from your hypothesis?
I'll tell you: that the oppressor can live like a King for all of his days, without ever suffering any justice.
Which is why oppressors and kings, way back when they also were head priests of whatever cult was in fashion in a given place, found great profit in seeding minds with the lie of divine retribution after death.
That way, the serfs, thralls and slaves - all the kinds of human chattel - could find solace and comfort in deluding themselves in thinking that the taskmaster would himself suffer one day, without them doing anything.
A very useful tool, for a ruler. Not so much for the ruled.
It isn't a hypothesis. It is a conclusion. If one is riveted to the material existence of the body, and think that that is all there is, then, naturally, men behave like the animal because what keeps the soul within the living corpus is animal.
Ignoring the physical for the immaterial is a prescription for disaster.
You can be in the world and not of it.
But never deny you're in it.
a zen thing i read once- how an apprentice returned to the master and told him " i understand, now master- all is illusion!" The master punched him in the nose and asked "what hurts"? lols.
That is from your made-up Zen Joke Book. Many koan are humorous, but not in that way.
Ignore? That idea is not present in my comment, but rather it is your justification for certain actions you prefer. Go ahead, live the way you like.
It's clearly implied.
And what happens if you remove the religious arguement from your conclusion?
I referred to a very great idea contained in some religions (and not others). But it is not a religious argument and it isn't even an argument. What you are essentially asking me to do is, to help you succeed in the position you have advanced, deny my conclusion and argue for you. You will have to do that on your own. I'm not about to compromise what I know for the benefit of your argument.
That is not what I'm doing.
If you understand your own arguement, surely you have tried to break it or poke holes in it yourself, to test it?
And since your arguement very much hinges on there being some kind of spirit (or soul, essence, whatever) that separates humans from vengeful hippopotami, then you must have considered my question.
Also, what happens to your arguement if you assume animals, plants, streams, rocks and so on to have a spirit or spirits dwelling within?
I wouldn't ask unless I was interested in the answer, but you seem unwilling to answer for some reason - maybe you misconstrued my tone, or I came across as combative perhaps?
“Oppressor”
You surely mean gods appointed ruler.
"Yet there is another law that is quite like the Newtonian — which is, that what one delivers to another, returns."
Counterpoint: Taking vengeance on the left is that Newtonian return of force. In that perspective telling the right to cut it out is going against the, "inexorable law that goes well beyond human existence on this mere earthly plane."
Bingo.
This idea of balance in the forces of the universe has indeed been around for millennia; the Chinese concepts of the Tao are perhaps the best known. Restoration of the balance, 'karma' if you will, is also known to occur when various forces create extreme unbalance in the Tao. In these days of extreme power of the female side of humanity in the Western world: the domination and terrorism of males by the 'hags of the wild hunt', murderous child sacrifice, perversions and degradations- balancing the scale is not going to occur without, as Enoch Powell put it, "rivers of blood".
Who is to say that such may indeed be necessary .... as "karma" for those who brought us to our current situation?
Karma refers to the results occurring in one’s next life because of deeds done in this life. It is not relevant to immediate this-world effects. Tao is not related to karma, its postulate and discovery having been made long before Buddha arrived and entirely unknown the one to the other until a millennia after Buddha died. Tao refers to an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, as it has once been translated, that enlivens all life through the Ch’i which pervades material form. It is singular, uniform and absolute. Yin and Yang are female, recessive and male, positive, aspects of material form.
Wrong, karma means "action".
Actions have consequences.
Not all consequences are immediate, but many are.
Some consequences take longer than others.
No, it does not. You ought to read a bit.
"The word Karma literally means action. It may appear that Karma is happening to us, as if some outside force is causing good things or bad things to come to us. However, it is really our own inner conditionings and processes that are leading us to experience outer effects or consequences in relation to our own actions."
https://www.swamij.com/karma.htm
Just a suggestion: Maybe try and stick to your area of competence going forward.
So, 'ackshually' then: I dint sign up for a course in comparative eastern philosophies. My off the cuff post put "karma" in quotes ( as in: oh so vulgarian slang?) for my fellow dirt clod people who give zero fks about the hows and whys of what is coming: "Rivers of Blood". And they deserve it, no matter what you call it.
If you think you know something will enough to talk about it, that's well enough. But if you don't, and you've learned something from my comment, then you ought to at least have the good graces to say that you learned something. Rather, you've said, "Who cares! I still think the way I do.". That is one of the funniest things I've seen so far today and thank you for making me smile.
You can't do good to yourself without doing good to others. And: what wrong you do to another, you also do to yourself.
I dunno. Picking on some poor woman because she taps out junk in an unreal medium in a few seconds and kicking her ass IRL somehow doesn't make me feel very tough or heroic. This person just does what she's told by dull, pop cutlure celebs and others who avoid the consequences.
Why would confronting someone doing something wrong or stupid need to make you feel tough or heroic?
Time and place, sure. Scape and scope and scale too, absolutely. Measured response, all the way.
But try this one on for size: You're working in a public school and one of your colleagues shows up sporting a t-shirt with the hammer&sickle (just to pick the first symbol I thought of), and is going to wear it in class.
Your choices then and there are to ignore it, or to challenge your colleague.
And that choice is no different than doing it online, it just feels different.
Thanks for your reply. It reminds me of road rage. You are in command of one medium, a fast-sexy thing, another metal object swerves and you both then get out of the object that makes you feel powerful or isolated or I don't know what and kill each other.
I'll take your word for it - I've never experienced it.
Angry at reckless drivers I've been a-plenty, but that's because they've been putting others at risk, and I guess that's not quite the same?
Getting mad because someone overtakes me or cuts me off, nah, not worth it.
Maybe that's an important principle re: the topic of unpersoning (cancelling)?
Is it worth it?
Yes, it may not be worth the effort for one thing. And another, picking up on your analogy of the colleague wearing a t-shirt: in a sane world they wouldn't allow that type of outfit, a sort of billboard, in the first place, but since we have to deal with this world I'd recommend you wear a t-shirt with an image of a cross on a Norman shield the same size as his hammer and sickle. That'll drive them all barking mad.
What I did, since I picked a real event, was that I pointed out to my colleague that we as teachers are to be impartial, objective, and factual at work, especially in class.
This he listened to and understood, though he being a junior had never heard about it, since teachers are no longer trained according to those three principles - quite the opposite in fact.
As my late father used to say, don't give a shit about people who don't give a shit about you.
If the "right" - which is really another term for "not fucking batshit insane" - needs to break a few eggs to create that civilizational course correction omelet, then so be it. The left's project is unlimited, ours isn't. When we finally achieve the "just leave us alone" state of a rational society, then we can stop going after idiotic cashiers and uni accounts-payable clerks who can't shut up on TikTok. Until then, do what needs to be done. If it's a bit ugly and dirty, well, it's not like the other side operates under decent restraints and traditional norms like we do. Marquess of Queensbury and all that.
I mean, just give me back the society I knew in, say, 1986, and I'll be happy.
Indeed. We can put down the knives when the left does.
It's important to periodically remind ourselves what all these metaphors actually mean. In this case, it's backlash against actual calls for assassination, which I can only hope culminates in a new cultural norm recognizing Godwin's Law. I am very tired of having to explain to friends and colleagues that Trump is not a fascist.
Fifteen years ago the left was destroying men's lives for privately whispering jokes about dongles. For fifteen years the right has asked them to stop. It literally took calling for the death of man whose politics aren't far off from a 90s democrat before the right said "Fuck it, we'll do it your way now." The right isn't talking about cancelling all lefties. The right is cancelling people who publicly wish death on the rightwing candidate for frivolous, made-up reasons.
To the contrary, I am all in favor of an expansion to cover support for drag queen story hour, child gender transitions, black lives matter, and forced vaccinations.
Agreed. I have these restless notions - fueled by bourbon - of creating a secret network of librarians that quietly take over manager and director roles and, over time, force out the blue-haired, septum-pierced nonbinary freaks that have made my profession a laughing stock.
Is there any profession that the blue-haired have not reduced to a laughingstock?
I would rephrase that to “we shall put down our knives once our enemy’s have fallen from their shattered hands.”
All of this talk of mercy assumes the enemy is capable of surrendering. Fuck look at ukraine, the GAE is getting ground into paste but refuse to surrender or negotiate, because they spirtually cannot. Hell both China and Russia call them “agreement incapable”. The left is spiritually unable to surrender, not to nature, to god, to reason, or to even brutal force.
Even if our cities were nuked into glowing rubble the war would continue as long as one leftest was alive to fight reality.
Hmmmmm. So you would like to go back to a more civil time. And you think that the best way to get there is for those people who still behave the way that people used to behave in that more civil time to stop behaving that way, and instead to start imitating the behavior of those people whose behavior so horrifies you?
Well - good luck with that.
No way, fren: I'm shooting (heh) for 1950s jim crow and no jews in the country club: where I caddied for White MEN who owned hardware stores, dairies, lumber mills, etc.
The person whose views most aligned with my own is Charles Haywood. Nonetheless, I was touched by Nina Powers’s take on the issue. Here is a woman who has really suffered at the hands of the left, and she still wants to engage with these people and try to improve them. She would be fully justified in wanting to call down fire, and brimstone upon them. But she has so much personal decency that she still wishes them well. As a matter of her personal character, I find that admirable. But as far as surviving, and then prevailing in a conflict for the survival of our civilization, and our personal survival, a much harder attitude is necessary. The right must build political power, then take political power, by all lawful means, then use that power to tear up by the roots every last trace of this moral and spiritual sickness, what Elon Musk calls the “woke mind virus“ which destroyed his son. The verb Musk used was “destroy” and anything less will not solve the problem.
This is essentially my view, in all respects. Compassionate voices are to be respected, treasured, and protected; they're our conscience. But for now we need to turn our conscience off. When the left has been neutralized, we can start forgiving people.
I would not say we turn off our consciences. I would phrase it differently. The personal is not political. I may turn the other cheek to humble my own pride, when a dispute is strictly personal. When an attack is not just on me, but on my family, my friends, my country, my civilization, it is not a matter of personal humility, it is no longer just or moral to simply let it go. The attack, made by others, with their methods, which I did not choose and do not want to be involved with, nonetheless imposes upon me a duty to defend. Duties can arise from objective circumstances, without regard to our preferences. That duty in turn does not call for a naive or childish or thoughtless and probably futile response. That would be about my personal anger or desire for vengeance, and might even be counterproductive. The duty to defend must be exercised with prudence and should aim at actual effectiveness. It will likely require time, organization and serious effort. So, it is not a matter of turning off the conscience, it is a matter of applying the correct frame of analysis.
To bring this back to tangible things, notifying the vicious woman's employer of her misconduct, which could cause her to lose her job, is a minor but nonetheless justified act of defense. The fact that the woman foolishly exposed herself to retaliation is her problem. She is part of much larger, vicious, destructive movement. Pushing back against her individual bad conduct may help to mitigate the effect of the kind of thoughtless malice she was demonstrating, because it may cause others to think twice. But until the right actually has political power, such targets of opportunity will be rare.
Schmitt emphasized the distinction, made by the Romans, between hostis and inimicus - the public vs the personal enemy. In the former case we must be impersonal and cold, taking whatever measures are necessary to preserve and defend the body politic.
Leftists are, without exception, hostis.
There are degrees of leftists. So, there may be exceptions. Some people go along with the herd, as you have noted. Some are literally mentally ill. Some are self-deluded, more or less culpably so. Some have malicious motives, but are ignorant of the larger issues. Most DEI commissars are probably pure bureaucrats and would say whatever words were put in their mouths by whoever paid their paychecks. Some have found ways to make money off of all of it and are simply venal. Some, the worst, know exactly what they are doing. All may be hostis, in Schmitt's sense, but many are less culpable than the worst of them. We could take all this into account, in the hoped-for event of victory, where magnanimity would be prudent.
There are distinctions, but at this point all I see are enemy soldiers in the enemy uniform. How they ended up in that uniform is of little interest to me. We can worry about fine distinctions when we are, so to speak, processing them through the POW facilities.
The analogy you are making is to an open war, in uniform, a stand-up fight. This is not that. We on the right are not even at state 2 guerilla war yet. In a guerilla war, undermining the enemy and getting its army to rot out from below by undermining morale and creating doubt in the moral superiority of the cause, encouraging cooperation by individuals on the enemey side, foot-dragging, whistle blowing, sabotage, and defections is a key tactic. It is sticks and carrots. The various levels of commitment on the other side are seams that can be attacked by various methods of persuasion.
So are you suggesting that the Walmart lady deserves to be in a concentration camp?
Exactly. We may choose, as individuals, to absorb evil without retribution while also speaking out against it. However, on a societal level, the different rules are required.
“When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
To forsake our own conscience (or turn it off) puts us at great peril.
And to allow our conscience to prevent us from doing what is necessary, is also a great peril.
'Conscience makes cowards of us all'.
Ethics aside, the normalisation of violent protests and the celebration of political violence will eventually generate a reaction. The regime is becoming more and more reliant on displays of rage and aggression and on making contrived excuses for this. The mood is getting more volatile. The default setting of hominids under unendurable conditions is to chimp out. Sooner or later this is what we are looking at.
See: Ireland.
The Irish are entirely justified in burning down "welcome" centers for the flood of 3rd world immigrants they do not want but which are imposed on them by people who hate all ethnically homogenous countries.
For Socrates, conscience was akin to an inner voice or divine sign that guided him away from wrongdoing. To neglect doing what is necessary may also be a form of wrongdoing, but one should never turn one's conscience off.
War, in actual fact, requires that the conscience be muted. In peacetime it can be turned back on again. It has always been thus.
This is why women are not appropriate to war.
Amen to that! I can't even watch war movies, I feel so sorry for all those lovely young men. (Not to mention all the poor horses and dogs.)
A man may have to kill other men to save his kin and kith. The man who does this will never be the same one he was before these acts. Did he lose his conscience? Some may. Many men will never be the same; as a child of a WW2 vet, listening the men of his age during my childhood, it was obvious they did not feel, did not think they were not the same as when they went off to war. Listening to my grandfather who stayed home and talked about how his boys came back 'changed'....
Some of those men were not good to be around as a child.
Conscience is a gift of peaceful times. Be grateful for it, and understand that it is not something useful in war.
“Bloodshed never will succeed,” he said. “Since the beginning of history wholesale murder has been committed thousands and thousands of times without resolving anything. It will be committed thousands and thousands of times again without yielding a better result. Each war merely sows the seeds of a future war.”
Jacques Novicow
Nina does seem to understand the psychology of the left correctly. It's about people who feel themselves to be irredeemably defective finding meaning in belonging to a group instead, where they can take out their rage on the outsiders who made them feel bad.
Quote from Pascal at the beginning of Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer:
"Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and see that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against the truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults."
Nina is very insightful. Great writer, too.
"she still wants to engage with these people and try to improve them"
Women typically take longer to learn the hard way then men do.
Rather women tend to develop Stockholm syndrome.
"...for the survival of our civilization, and our personal survival, a much harder attitude is necessary."- this will not happen with "...take political power, by all lawful means.."
You obviously still suffer under the delusion that the left is going to allow such means. They WILL NOT let go of political power, peacefully- PERIOD. end of discussion. GET OVER IT.
There is nothing back there, friends, it is GONE, dead, buried, waste no flowers on it.
Violence will be necessary - when the time is right! It is yet too soon, frens. It is all collapsing and dying in front of us. Be patient, be prepared, have a local community standing ready - perhaps a young man will rise and pull the sword from the stone... I plan to be merlin. lol.
No posts, no notes, FED? Advocating violence FED?
Old Coyote -- OLD BAG OF SHIT -- FED.
oooo. so hurtful. i might melt. lol. oh i forgot- i can call you a FED, too! is that worse than a bag of shit? sure got your panties in a wad. jeez dude. or maybe dudette, what with all your concerns over the "v" word. lols.
First and final warning. Keep the tone respectful to the other commenters, or you're gone.
In more than 20 years of running a forum I have found that the most essential rule is to immediately remove any _personal_ attacks on the other users. Attacks on points are great, and to be encouraged, but as soon as it's clearly personal, productive debate has ended.
This is basically my policy, but I give people a grace period to clean up.
Contarini called me an "old bag of shit"- and worse- a FED- ( lols ) and my response gets a warning and he does not?
Very well, my response to his post was not 'respectful', I admit. Very difficult to not be so in the face of his insults. I will do better.
Advocating violence may be unlawful, Fed.
I subscribe to the Ender Wiggin way of thinking: when someone is preying on you and has made it clear that this predation will continue as long as the predator enjoys it, and by some skill or good fortune you happen to get the upper hand for a moment, you have to put the boot in hard enough to make sure he will never try to prey on you again. (The "boot" here being social censure and possible job loss, which is less than they ultimately intend for us.) That's not pleasant, and you shouldn't enjoy it too much, but it's necessary if you don't want the predator to pick right back up where he left off as soon as he gets to his feet again. The enemy is mostly people who only enjoy the fight when no one fights back, so we're already seeing positive effects from what so far amounts to some very mild flexing in their direction.
The one caveat that I can see is when the person is truly an innocent bystander who was just trying not to get in social trouble from insufficient compliance with the current thing. There will be many people who put a rainbow flag on their social media profile at some point; that doesn't mean they're all down with globohomo and should be punished for each example. But someone who literally called for the assassination of the other party's candidate for president is not an innocent bystander. Plenty of liberals are able to restrain themselves from that extreme in public, even if they think it in private. To say that that person shouldn't be held accountable because she's just a mimimum-wage cashier is the same argument the left makes that we shouldn't punish the mugger because he's disadvantaged.
I sympathize with the queasy feelings of the take-the-high-road folks--again, we shouldn't enjoy this too much--but I don't find their actual arguments very persuasive. Their suggestions for alternative action tend to be vague or unworkable, as you pointed out regarding going after the elites instead of the ground troops. Their fears of "becoming like them" are countered by looking around at this very discussion, which never takes place on the other side. We're already not like them.
Ender spends the rest of the series beating himself up for what he did to save humanity, and trying to make amends for it. Maybe we'll do some of that later, but you have to survive and win first.
Exactly. We can wallow in guilt after we win. If we don't win, it's curtains for our civilization.
If I recall correctly, earlier in the book, Ender responded to bullying in the war school with massively disproportionate brutality. Which ended the bullying.
"There will be many people who put a rainbow flag on their social media profile at some point"
Does that hold true if we replace the Pride-flag with a swastika, or the hammer&sickle?
Or do we - us humans - have a personal responsibility to research and understand and be aware of what we choose to show our support for?
I can tell you one thing, no one gives the windmill of friendship the benefit of the doubt.
I weighed in somewhere in the middle; I won't join in, but won't stop right-wing cancel squads. We do need to fight back and strike at them.
I'll be honest, I'll probably lend background support and promos for right-wing cancellers if only out of spite against the Left. I bloody hate what they've done to Western Civilizations like those of the French, Germans, English, Irish, Inuit, Spanish and so on.
So I say, the left comes after me I'll fight back, they come after my buddies I'll fight back, the right strikes first good. Screw the left, and if it takes using their stratagems to win this decades long Cold War, then do it.
I'm especially pissed at how they've used art-industries such as Publishing to totally destroy entire Civilizations since WWII. So fuck 'em and hang them by any means necessary. Like I said, I'll sit on the side-lines, run promotion, marketing, fiction and otherwise logistical support dunno how much it'll help but so long as it helps fellow Nationalists and lovers of art and culture I'm here.
What they've done to Western Europe, particularly over the last decade, is a crime of historical proportions that demands, in many individual cases, punishments incomparably more severe than cancellation.
Yeah, I think I'll co-opt the leftist tactic of letting others do the dirty work, and then being all shocked and indignant, like, "How dare you associate that unseemliness with me? I never advocated any such thing. But have you considered that your chickens are coming home to roost? Also, you're crazy, it's not happening...but also it's good that it's happening."
Kek
Good point
But what does the 'right' do? Nothing particularly good neither. They are just dancing around the fire on the opposite side while you are being boiled in the pot.
Growing up in a tough neighborhood, there were many fist fights. I recall my teachers constantly repeating the mantra “fighting doesn’t solve anything” which was contrary to my experience. Every fight I was in tended to solve everything. Even if I lost, if I inflicted enough pain on my opponent, they were reluctant to pester me again. Those that refused to fight or inflict punishment on their tormentors were shown no mercy. Pacificism implied weakness.
Precisely so. Violence tends to solve things with great finality.
Personally I feel that the attempted assassination, the celebration of that attempt and the encouragement to future attempts are in a different class altogether from previous acts. They should not be tolerated. In fact, we are now in this situation because we gave a pass to those who advocated lesser forms of political violence (Floyd Riots, Maxine Walters on any random day, etc.) And let us be clear this has come from the very top of the Democrats Party with only slight subtlety (e.g., Joe Biden’s July 4th appearance at Independence Hall, Kamala Harris running a slush fund to post bond for violent rioters, calling Trump “Hitler”, reducing Trump’s Secret Service detail, eliminating RFK’s Secret Service detail, etc.) They are clearly trying to ‘Becket’ both of the opposing candidates.
Excellent point. Leftist calls for violence regularly result in violence. We've tolerated their nonsense long enough.
Watertight arguments here: https://agentmax.substack.com/p/alls-fair-in-love-and-war/comments
And also:
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-home-depot-lady-must-be-canceled/
Remember the Covington Catholic story? The Left spared no one, no matter how low their position in life. Nick Sandmann, the high school student who smirked at a Native American banging a drum in his face, was ruthlessly persecuted for his political beliefs, without an ounce of mercy in sight. (Even some on the establishment Right joined in on the side of the cancellers.)
The argument here is not simply about revenge. Instead, one must understand the tactics of the Left. The only thing the Left responds to is power on its own terms.
Me: A lot of people that identify with the right, especially centrists, really don’t have the stomach for what needs to done. They are in denial about what’s happening right now. America is in the middle of a communist revolution. It hasn’t gone completely hot yet, but it probably will if the Left isn’t punished for their sins. Cancelation should be understood by them to be the least of their problems if they persist. As Kurt Schlicter says: they’re not going to like having to live by their new rules.
Ah yeah, I read the AM story but forgot to include it. I be agreed completely of course. The national bullying of a high school kid was yet another moment when the left abandoned any claim on the moral high ground. Not that they have not provided such moments in abundance.
American Indian, please! The Indians call themselves Indians. The leftist "Native American" term has oozed into the mainstream, like "gender" for sex, "CE" for AD, "Hebrew Bible" for Old Testament, "African American" for black, and many other subversions of language.
Fortunately, some of the more egregious attempts failed comically, like "bonus hole".
I think explicitly calling for the assassination of a presidential candidate - on any side - is beyond the pale and should elicit consequences. Home Depot meemaw will easily find another minimum wage job and be fine after a few weeks, and probably won't make bloodthirsty ragepoasts for a while.
Indeed, I doubt her life will be permanently ruined.
Unlike many on the right, who were, in fact, permanently ruined.
If someone punches you in the face, you punch them back. Anything less makes you a coward. It really is as simple as that.
Not the best example because you don't punch back. People here want to vote for another thug and think this thug will punch in the face the first thug but at the end both thugs are exploiting you.
Where does the power to cancel come from? This is not an ideological or moral question but a pragmatic one. In the case of the former, I'd say "right" rather than power.
What people and institutions give us the power to cancel one another? These have not changed. Why are they suddenly allowing members of the right to cancel members of the left?
The failed assassination of a presidential candidate might have something to do with it.
In general however there's a certain irresistible power that comes from raw numbers, as seen with the boycotts of the last year or so. This is quite independent of formal institutional power, and at the moment, literally the only avenue of influence the right can draw upon.
The assassination attempt on Trump was an inside job - by the deep state.
https://planetwaves.substack.com/p/update-on-trump-rally-incident-astrology?publication_id=824951&post_id=146895862&r=u3tge&triedRedirect=true
Very obviously a deep start assassination attempt.
Most of us rational folks will posit that cancel culture is awful. But until every side has had their noses rubbed in it, nobody will learn & move forward. This IS war. If you’re not fighting dirty, you’re not fighting hard enough. The whole “take the high road” is of value only to our enemies. Even David had to pick up a stone at some point.
I see how we can reprogram the NPCs if/when Good comes to power, but don't the spiteful mutants have wiring issues?
There's a necessary distinction to be made between the normies and the true believers. The latter cannot be reasoned or negotiated with, and probably cannot be reprogrammed. In most cases they simply need to be removed from positions of influence, and permanently banned from holding them.
In re: the idea of right-wing cancel squads, it seems to me that there's a happy medium: cancel the m*****f*****s, but remain collegial about it. Remember that "A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger." (Proverbs 15:1).
So, yes, cancel the m-f-ers, but do it with a smile on your face and a song in your heart! That should infuriate them even more ...
One other point concerning whether or not to take on the lib-cancelers: If the idea of cancelation isn't specifically addressed in Alinsky's rules for radicals, it's probably because he didn't think of it, else it would have been. And attempts at applying those rules need to be challenged head-on, one at a time. Ignoring them is like ignoring the one (or two) cockroaches you see scuttling across your kitchen floor when you turn on the light for a late-night snack: they're not likely to kill themselves, but they WILL propagate uncontrollably.
One final thought. Mattias Desmet introduced the concept of mass formation in his brilliant book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." In it, he posits that perhaps no more than 30 percent of a particular movement is necessary to "program" the remaining 70 percent into a mindless (i.e., not thinking for themselves) mass. This argues strongly for aiming hard and relentless cancellation efforts at the liberal elites (even though some of them may actually be members of the mass). I HIGHLY recommend Desmet's book.
It's very similar to broken windows theory. If trivial infractions are punished, more severe crimes will be inhibited.
Excellent, very even-handed overview of the debate on this topic of whether we should support the redirection of cancel-culture towards those who initiated it in the first place. I would liken it to a malicious neighbor who cuts a hole in a sewer line and attaches a hose leading to your front door. You wake up and find your yard full of raw sewage. You can contact the folks at the utility company and wait for them to stop the flow of sewage, or ... you can take the hose and reroute it towards your neighbor's house and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Obviously the best case scenario is not to deal with sewage in the first place, but here you are. Go ahead and call the utility and try to get a more permanent solution, but with sewage continuing to flow through the hose, you can't stop the flow of sewage, but only change the direction it flows. It's best to direct its flow back towards the malicious neighbor who caused the whole mess in the first place.
There will always be censorious, tattle-tale types. The Left encouraged and deputized them and unleashed them on the Right (and by "Right," I mean anyone who is not insane with cultural Marxcissist ideology). We cannot eliminate the censorious, tattle-tale types from the public discourse -- at least not right away. So it's probably a good idea to redirect them back against the Left. But ... don't join their ranks, because that will seriously damage your soul.
I loved your sewage pipe metaphor. Laughed my ass off during that whole episode, man.
My favorite part was when you suggested that she was actually complaining that in her day, CIA assassins knew how to shoot. Comedy gold.
Thanks, and glad you enjoyed it.
Serendipity!
I came in after dealing with an almost identical situation, to find Carter's post in the mail when I sat down for coffee after washing up.
We had torrential rains here yesterday and today, so our sewage well flooded around noon. This we discovered when the wife tried to use the washing machine. The laundry room looked like a Pride-parade: full of shit.
For the last 90ish minutes, I've been holding a drainage-pump on a rope, lowered into the well as the "water" level dropped. The wife, meanwhile, directed the other end of the hose into the forest.
Your comment brought about much-needed catharsis and stress-release, so thank you. And your point was well-made too, to boot!
What a horrible situation.
This used to afflict the old part of my home town. Storm drains connected to the sewers, leading the latter to flood people's basements during particularly heavy rainfalls. City spent a lot of money fixing that.
I hope nothing in your house was damaged.
Not our first rodeo, so no worries there. The laundry room is built as an extension from the main building.
(Which is a very fancy way of describing a room that's 140cm*200cm.)
The well is old and has sunk a bit since it's about a century since it was made. A better lid, and perhaps a heavier pump installed into the well to prevent flooding is on the table as solutions.
It's weird though. Sewage, lumps of feces, black water, et detera - that I can handle. Sure, it's filty and unsanitary but do it right and it's no problem, just a hassle.
Trying to parse the municipal rules for different kinds of waste-handling solutions. . . bring on the I-hug-myself-jacket!
There's an aspect of vengeance of course. Realistically, however, we need to use the tools that our enemies create for us. Stochastic terrorism is a tool they employ to ensure compliance even in the face of breaching all manner of decorum. Similarly, we need to punish them first for creating this social weapon, and second for employing it. Being righteously angry is not a sin, merely giving into wrath is what we should be careful of.
Right now we've been on the back foot for decades. We need to seize the initiative when it's possible to do so. Once we win, we can review whether or not it's worth it to be 'better' than our enemies. Until that time, however, we're very much in a fight for our lives and for our civilization. We know what they will do to us if they win. We're very much at a point where aiming to "respect a diversity of tactics" in resisting their violence and tyranny is completely justified. If they are not punished when they're on the back foot then they will not learn. Being the better person in this case is a demand for appeasement of our enemies. It's been well identified that any act of concession to them will be taken as an act of weakness.
We have few choices here but to utilize their tools. We have permitted them develop the tools to control the culture. Now is an opportunity to wield those tools in the service of cultural good. Failing to do so is itself an act of weakness and cowardice.