It’s Time to Rethink the Reality We Live In
Look, it ain’t 1895 anymore. Does the American government tremble because of Ford, General Motors, U.S. Steel, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and other mighty enterprises, many of which have collapsed completely?
No. It is the opposite. The corporations tremble before the government regulators who have the power to tie them into knots. And their main response is not to fight but to flee abroad.
Oh, mighty General Motors saved by the great Obama (Hooray! Hooray! … for the great messiah of business) with billions of your taxpaying dollars in order to create employment… in China!
Do workers living in hovels fear the boss telling them they are now out of work with no unemployment or pension, that their hours are increased, that they are going to be thrown out of their company homes because they were ten minutes late to work?
No, it is the unions—at least where such things survive in the heavy industry — that have the whip hand. The government is 100 percent on their side.
Do the big-bellied capitalists blow cigar smoke into the faces of newspaper editors and threaten to cut off advertising unless scandals are covered up? No, it is the government’s scandals that are covered up. And if anything, the companies are made to face unfair charges.
The corporate executives want to look good. They want people to say and write nice things about them. They want to be regarded as good corporate citizens. They spend money running image ads about how they feed songbirds instead of doing breakthrough research.
They can’t even get oil-drilling going off most of the coast at a time when America has no energy independence, prices are sky high, and the economy needs a boost.
What is reality here? Yes, there were such times in America of bullying plutocratic greedy polluting capitalist super-villains, but that just isn’t 2012.
Modern-day liberalism is not true liberalism. It’s more of the Woodrow Wilson brand of elitism with the added feature of “do as I say, not as I do”.
This is why modern “progressive” style liberals believe that the exhaust from their limousines and bizjets does not add to the threat of climate change they are so determined to avert. Or at least the one they are so determined to use to remake our civilization into something more to their liking.
We could legitimately ask if the whole climate change argument, like any other “liberal” dogma, has any validity at all except as a tool for acquiring political power. But asking progressives to explain or justify their actions usually just gets you branded a monster.
Traditional liberalism ended about 1964. After that, the “New Liberalism” that had previously been the philosophy of Wilson, and after him Adlai Stevenson, took center stage. Fundamentally, it was genteel totalitarianism predicated on the idea that there is a small, elite group that is “fit to rule”, and everyone else should just obey them. We used to call that monarchy, when the group in question was chosen based on heredity. Today, they are self-chosen on the basis of fealty to a philosophy. Another term for this is “religious cult”.
It’s interesting to note that the differences between Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy in 1960 were smaller than those between “progressives” and everyone else today. Ike was a Republican, JFK was a Democrat, and both of them were in favor of a nuclear deterrent, peaceful nuclear power, the space program, a flat tax, and the Interstate Highway System.
Today, progressives define all of the above as radical right-wing positions. They wouldn’t even send a man to the Moon, no matter how economical the method, due to the environmental impact on Mare Tranquilitatis.
The progressive crowd seems to be a mixed bag of delusional social reformers who dream of creating a Utopia, people who want to feel good about themselves for being “compassionate” and “caring”, and people who see the progressive agenda as an excuse to hurt other people, and break things they don’t like- ranging from power plants to the Bill of Rights. Mainly for the fun of it.
What all of the above have in common is contempt for those they regard as somehow less “perfect” than themselves. In the case of the first and third types, that contempt is absolute to the point that they would be happy to erase those they despise from the Earth, if they could somehow survive the method themselves. They are the de facto leaders of modern progressive “liberalism”, which is the reason it often appears dangerously crazy to anyone not in the clique’.
The followers of all of the above are mainly in two groups. One wants to be “popular”, and tends to go along to avoid being accused of being in any way “different”. They tend to perceive themselves as “nonconformists” while conforming to those around them. (I can only assume that they find actual thought painful.)
The other type really don’t know what it’s all about. All they know is that progressive liberalism lets them do whatever they want, as long as it’s not “conservative”. Meaning they can smoke pot all day and never be told to go out and get a job.
Neither group will ever produce a leader. However, both groups are vitally necessary for leaders to have around. You can’t be a leader without someone to follow you around. (Even if they aren’t much use beyond that.)
All of the above, together, have done a wonderful job of running our civilization into the ditch. They are now standing around it, kicking it, and wondering why it “won’t go”.
Except for the ones who are reaching for sledgehammers to finish smashing it. Because to them, that sort of thing just feels good.
Modern-day “liberalism” has pretty much destroyed itself. I’m wondering if we can stop it from destroying the rest of us, too.
clear ether
eon
Good essay. I hope its theme provokes a search for the truth on where we are today and points us toward a hopeful future.
I submit that there is a single event that has lead us to where we are today. It took a few years to become evident to almost everybody. That is the near collapse of the banking system upon which our capitalist economic system is dependent. Lots of theories abound as to why it collapsed but I have not seen any real effort to find out what really happened, why, and what to do about it..
That we’re told trillions upon trillions of dollars/yuan/euros/etc disappeared practically overnight boggles the mind. Where did it go? Who caused it? What is to be done about it? Nobody really knows. So neo-communists suddenly appear claiming capitalism is a fatally flawed system that must be replaced by a benevolent state that will protect society. In response defenders of capitalism state the problem was too much government control. Neither argument makes a lot of sense to the average American. If capitalism is so weak that a few government mandates, such as mortgage loans to poor credit risks, can give it a near fatal cold, then it seems something is not quite right about the system. Yet capitalism more than any other economic model has immeasurably improved the lives of billions throughout the world. The poorest of the poor in America live better lives than the richest of the rich a hundred years ago. It’s all confusing. Is there a problem with capitalism or one of its pillars, banking, or is it that the world it serves has changed so it must change too?
Yet the American public knows that something fundamental in their lives has changed; they fear capitalism needs adjustment or replacement but no one is sure with what. So along comes Obama, the con artist and pseudo-intellectual, offering hope and change and the American public grasp at it in 2008. So here we are in 2012, and it’s clear Obama and his administration were just a bunch of lying crooks taking advantage of America’s fear to advance their own self interests. So we have Romney as the alternative, a man who made the capitalist system work for himself. The question is can he make it work for us? While I certainly support Romney as the best choice we have for President, I can’t help but wonder if we’re still missing the reality that the world has changed in some fundamental way and we’re still trying to wrap ourselves in our perceptions of an idyllic past that never really existed. The America I admire is the one where pilgrims and all that followed came here to build a new life, shedding their old world past, and facing new unknown threats and challenges. They met reality as it existed and turned it to their advantage. I wonder if we have the same courage to face the world as it is today and turn it to our advantage.
You’ll beat cancer. Stay strong and keep writing.
I do not live in the world the leftist lives in. Nobody I know does. I believe the leftist makes his own dystopia – it’s in his mind. The real world is what it is.
The entire “progressive” mentality is predicated on being a “rebel”, fighting a valiant struggle to liberate the world from the evils of (Insert Name of Appropriate Part Of Existing Civilization Here). It’s “outlaw chic” carried to its irrational conclusion.
Even when progressives are in charge, as now, they still are shouting “Fight The Powerrrr!!!” at the top of their lungs. The fact that they are “The Power” seems to make them just that much more frantic. I suspect because they are terrified that someone is going to come along and take it away from them.
Which is why they dislike democracy, except when they are in charge. The progressive ideal is a combination of “Free speech for me, but not for thee” combined with “One man, one vote- once”.
This probably explains why progressives seem to be perpetually at war with reality itself. Of course, the trouble with being engaged in a war against the real world is that reality has you outnumbered, is much better armed, and has several millenia more worth of combat experience.
This probably explains why progressives keep losing- to reality.
cheers
eon