A Tale of Two Comments
Please take note of the following two comments:
This one was left here on my journal (http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/10/a-parcel-of-their-fortunes/comment-page-1/#comment-105612) by someone who tags himself DaveOn.
He is aggressively defending the beating and robbery of Bristol Palin, or, which is the same thing, smirking at those who say there is nothing funny about a young woman being beaten and robbed. His argument, such as it is, is that it is wrong to criticize Leftists for their sadism on the grounds that, uh, LOOK! SQUIRREL! Or something to that effect.
And this on Vox Day’s website (http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/disclose-and-disqualify.html#c8168654568952773097) Written by one calling himself Tacitus:
The aggressive condescension and derision of the social justice warriors isn’t meant to produce belief directly; rather it rewards the in-group with the pleasures of malice, punishes the out-group, and gets members of the out-group and potential dissenters in the in-group to shut up, creating an illusion of consensus to which intimidated people who feel outnumbered and outmatched accommodate their opinions.
Please compare the two comments, dear reader. Not only does Mr. Tacitus have Mr. On’s number, he describes him to a ‘T’.
Mr. On seems to have no ability to understand nor answer an honest argument. If he is typical of the Progressive Left of Morlockland (and I have no reason to believe he is not) then we can make some tentative conclusions about tactical approach to life, based on his philosophy:
To him, words are weapons, meant to wound, not to carry information, and certainly not meant to convey the truth from one rational and honest mind to the next.
We have seen in this case that his speech has no content, or rather, it has the same content as a cowboy whistling and shouting at a herd, so that by trained response to stimulus, the cows might move hither or thither, move or halt, as commanded.
It is all meta-message. He is not talking about the facts of the Carol Costello case, he is talking about himself. He is telling us he is our superior in intellect and moral stature.
He is not meeting any challenger in the lists of debate. He is counting coup. For those of you unfamiliar with American Indian lore, the braves of the Northeastern Tribes, in order to win bragging rights, rather than striking an enemy in battle, would sneak up and touch them. The touch did not harm the enemy, but it inflated the status of the brave who accomplished the feat. It was a meaningless ritual behavior.
The Morlocks are nowhere near as civilized and bold as the Iroquois, but they do impersonate this one cultural habit. The Morlock does not present his arguments and evidence to convince the jury of the truth of his case, and win the case. There are no winners and no losers in their mental universe, because winning and losing is unfair. There are, instead, the Elect and the Reprobate, the Saved and the Damned, and the Morlock demonstrates that he is of the Elect by going onto enemy blogs and grunting and strutting and counting coup. DaveOn can now boast to himself, if only inside his own mind, that he bearded the lion in his lair by anonymously writing gibberish and eructing scorn onto a hated Conservative thinker.
He cannot be criticized for falling to carry a debate, or make a point, or make sense, because sense and debate is no part of his worldview.
It is like recycling. These are things Morlocks do because they are Morlocks, the way a Boy Scout salutes a flag because he is a Scout.
The snarling sneers from this barbarian with flies infesting his armpits and pretense of superiority when talking to civilized and educated men is not bravado.
The barbarian merely assumes this pose, merely pretends to be intelligent and self aware, as part of the parrot call he was trained to recite. HE was convinced by these means. Some barbarian by grunting and strutting and throwing out his chest convinced Mr. On that he must conform to the tribal faith, the tribal cult, and so Mr. On grunts and struts. He is not deliberately trying to be illogical: he knows nothing else.
The idea of an equal conversation between equals is alien to the Progressive mind: it is not part of their worldview. There are little brothers to dominated and abuse and trample, there is Emmanuel Goldstein to hate, and there is Big Brother to obey and from whose hand comes down dominion and abuse, and from whose jackbooted foot, trampling.
A boot grinding a human face forever. That is DaveOn’s world. That is the world produced by a belief that all things are relative, all things based on a power struggle between weak and strong, that the ends justify the means.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
Actually, and I know bringing facts into these discussions is annoying, if the police witness a criminal act being perpetrated they actually are (at least in the variety of locales I checked via Google) obliged to intervene.
You are correct that they can’t act if a crime hasn’t taken place which makes dealing with stalkers and threats tricky legally speaking, but if they see a fight start they will get involved and break it up.
And, again, facts before I depart, Bristol appears to have been telling porkies. I am sure that in your 20 years as an officer a drunk who committed an assault never ever did that eh?