1984 – King of the Douchemonkeys edition
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.
It’s hard out there for us conservative douchemonkeys. We have to both believe in the fallibility of man and the fallibility of the institutions of man and try to explain why one follows the other to enlightened soulless lothariolds who embrace the institutions of man as a bulwark against the impulses and fallibility of men. The same men who run the institutions. It’s difficult work and it makes us thirsty.
The battle is complicated by the seething hatred the “tolerant” “liberals” feel for us. For example, Polyskeptic stumbled across this gentlemanly corner of the web, found himself completely unable to grok humor, and told me “fuck yourself. I know what you said, and I don’t respect you. The world will be better off when you and the rest of you conservative douchemonkeys die.”
Twas a logophilic knife to my fragile super-ego, a salvo against my genuine concern for all of mankind. If I am terse, it is only because time is of the essence. Polyskeptic, you polyamorous atheist, where is the love? As President Obama said, “Look at Sandra Fluke and ask yourself, ‘Do I want this woman to breed?’” Sorry, wrong quote. I was distracted by my butthurt over centrist, pragmatic, [insert meaningless cliche here] leadership that definitely has nothing to do with free shit.
What I meant to quote was that bit about the red states and the blue states, the liberals and the conservatives, the dogs and cats living together in harmony, and getting Loggins and Messina back together. It was electrifying, but it quickly scurried into the ether as such peripatetic pillow-talk is wont to do.
So, you Tea Partying, neo-con, far right theocracy/patriarchy toting morons out there, get over it and grow up. Your privilege has been showing )except for to yourself), and you need to get out of your mental cave. Your god is an illusion, your patriarchy is divisive and harmful, your misogyny hateful, and your traditions are often absurd and destructive.
I’ll be as clear as I can; you are on the losing side of history, and are hurting the world around you, including yourself.
The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
As I am graced with bonhomie, I am genuinely saddened by the blinding rage against the other that Polyskeptic feels, the bigotry and prejudice that clouds his mind. Whereas I speak of destroying a cloying and subjugating ethos, he yearns for the destruction of the flesh and blood adherents to an ethos he personally detests. But the state needs loyal soldiers and we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, so carry on, my friend. You are a unique and special snowflake.
ps. “Douchemonkey” is offensive to women, cleaning products, and animals, you pig.
So, here’s the thing. I never claimed to be a tolerant liberal. I’m progressive, but tolerant? Oh no….
http://polyskeptic.com/2011/12/24/the-mythology-of-harmony/
You paint a nice picture of cut-out liberals, but in this case you guess wrong.
Also, your post was not funny, not even a little bit. I didn’t fail to grok the humor, there simply wasn’t any. The post was just stupid.
signed,
the pig
Does management know about this? You’re not exactly sticking with the official sales pitch. I actually respect that.
“I’ll be as clear as I can; you are on the losing side of history, and are hurting the world around you, including yourself.”
Oh lordy, I am a sinner and I shall burn for my evil patriarchin’, contradiction pointin’ out, dislogic highlightin’, history mentionin’, authority questionin’ ways.
Tell me brother, what can I do to repent to the great Goddess?
How can I wash the stain of original sin (my evil hetero maleness) from my evil, eeevil ol’ hide?
Tell me!
I am just beside myself with guilt and grief here…
What-ever can I do?
I find it telling that you utilize the Biblical notions of sin, punishment, etc to make your “joke.” I reject such concepts as part of the fundamental problem. There is no goddess as there are no gods. And the mistake is not being heterosexual and male (so am I, and I am not ashamed of that), but of apparently missing the larger view of gender roles and other considerations of being human.
There is no need for guilt, just need for exposure to ideas which challenge the worldview you seem to have, which is damaging to our culture.
What you can do is get your head out of your ass and listen (or read) the views of other people who you disagree with, rather than be an asshole.
@shaunphilly
I can see that part of that one went over your head.
You’re not the only atheist in the room here, mate.
Many of us have come to the conclusion that conservative Christianity is the least of our worries, and the sacred cows held by several within the so-called freethought community are more worthy of a good skewering.
Well, perhaps we are misunderstanding equally, because I was not assuming that you were a theist by that comment. The fact is that such ideas as sin and so forth are concepts that atheists can have, and they are just awful concepts.
I’m assuming you are referring to Freethought Blogs there? Well, if so I have not been afraid to challenge such people (even in person) but I will admit that I agree with people like PZ more often than not.
It’s not conservative Christianity per se that worries me, it is non-skeptical thinking, faith, and selfishness that worries me. It’s Randian “philosophy” that bothers me.
On a more serious note, isn’t it funny how every zealot triumphantly places himself at the end or near end of an “inevitable, inexorable, march of history”? All the stuff that our furry friend is so passionately fighting for has both appeared and subsequently disappeared many times in many different places throughout the course of history.
I sincerely doubt that we will ever see an end to the likes of his kind. On the other hand, I am even more convinced that this type is not going to bring about the end of history (or should I say herstory?, heh) either.
As far as I am concerned, his desired version society has already hit or neared its apex for this epoch, and is on track for a decline of some sort.
when did I say anything about an end to history? I merely say that progress, while it has ebbed and flowed throughout cultures and places, is moving towards a greater perspective of rights. Things like LGBT rights, feminism, and other form of legal equalities are where our culture is headed, even if social conservatives don’t like it.
“I’ll be as clear as I can; you are on the losing side of history”,
which appears to me to be a succinct and clear statement that there is some specific, deliberate, result in mind.
You can do the semantic back-paddle if you like now, but I can still see through it. (“I never said I wanted to kill his poodle! I just said that I wanted to change its physical status from living to deceased.”)
What’s more, this oh-so-noble “greater perspective of rights” you wax so poetically about is an obfuscation of the reality of the situation, which is not so much a push for high-minded ideals of liberty and fairness, but rather a vindictive and deliberate grab for both power and vengeance.
I can understand where the anger is coming from, but if you want to engage the conservative part of society, you had better realize that mighty platitudes proclaiming your noble intentions will be summarily dismissed and ignored if they do not match up to your actions.
“which appears to me to be a succinct and clear statement that there is some specific, deliberate, result in mind.”
No, you are conflating progress (I actually prefer the word process) with teleology.
“…which is not so much a push for high-minded ideals of liberty and fairness, but rather a vindictive and deliberate grab for both power and vengeance.”
Bullshit. When people who have been historically shafted by oppressive cultural/political norms, the desire to make up for some of that is not a grab for power, but a demanding to have some power rather than continued oppression. I suggest you read about the concepts of privilege and intersectionality, which are relevant here.
I don’t think you do understand where my anger comes from at all. And I will not accommodate to you by bowing down to your damaged feelings when I point out that you are a cancer on society. Ignore me if you like, there is little I can do to prevent that.
Until we accidentally the economy again, and find ourselves embroiled in the ancient struggle, red in tooth and claw.
When life is nasty, brutish, and short, no one will prevaricate about gay rights, or care about the welfare of anyone outside his tribe.
Global warming brings war over water to the First World. Or, if that’s not your bag, glaciation in a new Maunder Minimum drives conflict over land not buried by ice. Either way, the rednecks you so despise for their backwards views will probably be much better off. They, at least, know how to operate a firearm.
Even in the absence of catastrophe, the welfare state is unsustainable: if you keep paying unintelligent people with low future-time orientation to have children, they’ll multiply like bacteria in a bottle, until they are drowning in their own excrement. The center cannot hold.
Look, I have no personal issue with any of the members of the Democratic rainbow coalition; many are friends and acquaintances. I don’t agree with many proposed Republican policies (like high payroll taxes and low capital gains taxes, a legacy of Reagan), either. However, continuing to vote for an open-borders welfare state is not going to end well. It’s one or the other: a homogenous society with a safety net, or a ruthlessly libertarian ethnic kaleidoscope.
@Spoos,
except, nobody is arguing for a welfare state, a nanny state, or anything like that. That’s a conservative spin on the argument, And I know nobody, including the socialists I know, who want that.
And I know plenty of liberals who know how to handle a firearm and how to survive. It is true that there are a lot of annoying hipsters who are pretty clueless and amusing, but all political spectra have their idiots. I am equally willing to (and do) criticize when liberals are stupid, I just tend to agree more often with them on values.
It’s s cumulative effect; we disguise our entitlements by giving them acronyms and spreading them across numerous programs. I grew up in a shithole and saw how people gamed the system so as to avoid work. Now, that mentality is trickling up. Granted, Obamacare is actually a corporatist boondoggle that is going to smash some pocketbooks, but many strong supporters *think* they’re going to get something. Same with contraceptives. Great, they’re free, if you have insurance. Mickey Kaus is probably too conservative or contrarian for your tastes, but he did argue persuasively that Obama gutted welfare work requirements, thus shifting it from gap-filler to full entitlement. Medicaid will be expanded to try to cover over the looming insurance gaps. SNAP provides food. All the levels are being indexed up to higher multiples over the poverty rate.
We have a nanny state, we just give her more pleasing euphemisms.
Can’t seem to get this to nest properly, so:
We -have- welfare programs. WIC, Medicaid, TANF, etc. Child support is leveraged as a means of (ineffectually) reducing the welfare rolls.
Honey Boo Boo’s family is an excellent example of the behavior such programs incentivize: children by multiple men to maximize payout by the system. Multigenerational families taking tips from Grandma on how to suck harder at the government teat.
Admittedly, in the context of EMTALA and Medicare/Medicaid, mandating health insurance is a good way to force people to pay more into the system before they’ve smoked their way to lung cancer, for example. The current non-system is pretty clearly non-functional.
If we keep supporting people who are not productive members of society, we will end up with too many of them to afford to continue supporting them, yes?
By the way, immigration ties in as welfare/social safety net programs are utilized more by immigrants and even more by illegal aliens.
@shaunphilly:
“When people who have been historically shafted by oppressive cultural/political norms, the desire to make up for some of that is not a grab for power, but a demanding to have some power rather than continued oppression. I suggest you read about the concepts of privilege and intersectionality, which are relevant here. ”
Two can play at the “Bullshit.” game here. I suggest you read up on history, which is much more pertinent than some tenuous theories on “privilege and intersectionality” (which, as far as I can see, are mere political assertions camouflaged as sociological research). You can start by reading up on Rwanda, and seeing where the application of “social justice” led that country.
“I don’t think you do understand where my anger comes from at all. And I will not accommodate to you by bowing down to your damaged feelings when I point out that you are a cancer on society. Ignore me if you like, there is little I can do to prevent that.”
Really? Why that is simply magnificent. Not only am I a cancer, but a special cancer, one with feelings – feelings that you have apparently deeply wounded. Now, I haven’t ignored you thus far, my angst-ridden fellow citizen, but my time is at least somewhat valuable, so let me leave you on this note:
You seem like a fairly bright chap, but you have a few issues to sort out. As irritating as you can get, I simply can’t bring myself to hate you because you remind me of an earlier version of myself. In time, you will learn and come to a greater understanding of the way the world works. What’s more, one day, you will discover that the crew you’re currently rolling with (and so vehemently defend) has neither the best interests of yourself, nor your loved ones, nor the rest of society at heart. When you come to terms with that, you will be ready to help fight for the future of this civilization.
Until then, keep a skeptical eye on the world and keep asking questions about what you see.
Since shaunphilly loves to make positive assertions without any supporting evidence, I’ll feel free to make assertions and the evidence has already been supplied by shaunphilly himself. You, sir, are a blind fool! A testament to the government run education system that’s aim is to produce unthinking robots just like you. Cheers!
Actually, I went to private school. I also have a BA and an MA. Not that any of that makes me smart or correct, necessarily, only that it means that your guesses are incorrect concerning my government indoctrination.
This conversation is lacking evidence on both sides, but it is a comment conversation so that is to be expected. But I do feel this conversation balances on a question of values, and not facts solely. My values, in short, rest on fairness and compassion for society at large, and am not convinced of this problem of mass “gaming of the system,” which is a problem comparable to the claims of voter fraud, which seemed a veiled attempt to suppress popular voting, especially against minorities in the cities in states like Florida and Ohio. In other words, this gaming of the system, Romney’s 47%, is a lie. Half the population are not looking for free handouts, they are looking to survive in a financial crisis brought on my greed and selfishness by people who don’t care to contribute their fair share..
I got caught up in family time this evening, so I have not had time to respond to some later comments in full, and some of that ended up here. I will not continue now, as I am recovering from a cold and need rest. Perhaps tomorrow.
The voter suppression efforts did work extraordinary well this time around. Romney crushed it in most of the swing states. Or did he get crushed? No matter.
I mention gaming the system, but I didn’t claim it was a mass occurrence. Rather, it’s that many groups have learned to vote and lobby their way into spoils. Why did Walmart support Obamacare before passage? Which candidate called for breaking up the banks or ending too big to fail? Where are the favored sector employees demanding to pay a heavier portion to their own pensions or for their health insurance costs such that their contributions are in line with non-favored groups? Did homeowners call for an end to the mortgage interest deduction in hopes of a flatter tax structure?
This isn’t about a cabal that refuses to pony up its fair share. It’s bigger than that. A healthy enough share of the electorate is attempting to make us a full social democrat country without the concomitant tax increases on everybody. That dog won’t hunt.