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The Danger of Making Ruthlessness Seem Reasonable
I use a lot of dangerous drugs. Well, not me personally, but on my patients. Of course, I use dangerous drugs only when the disease I’m treating is more dangerous than the drug. In diseases that are not life-threatening, naturally I avoid dangerous drugs and try to stick with safer therapies. Chemotherapy drugs can save your life, but they can also have significant side effects. Side effects that you would not tolerate if you were treating a sinus infection. But if you have cancer, and you’re trying to avoid dying, it may make sense to take a chance on side effects – even very serious side effects. In truly desperate circumstances, there are few actions one would not consider, no matter how drastic.
That’s what always bothered me about the great leftist / progressive / socialist leaders of the 20th century: Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, and so on. They saw a problem and took drastic measures to fix it. When I consider the horrifyingly drastic measures they took, I wonder, “What possible problem did they see that warranted such drastic actions? Who on earth could have possibly thought that was a good idea?” Even for those who lack sympathy for others, killing millions of people is no small thing. They claimed that they were trying to save or improve their countries for their citizens. Which some considered to be an adequate reason. Think about that. And then, think about Greta Thunberg.
There are many facets of the global warming fraud that I find concerning, but what bothers me the most about it is that its adherents claim to on a mission to save the world. Ok, so what would you not do to save the world? At that point, any action could be considered, right? Even horrible side effects are worthwhile in this case because the patient is dying and we’re desperate. So no action, no matter how drastic, is off the table.
It’s easy to chuckle when a self-important 16-year-old girl explains that the world is ending. It’s ridiculous.
Well, it may be ridiculous, but it’s not funny.
These people are dangerous. Their polarizing extremism encourages ruthless actions that would otherwise be unthinkable. Just ask a dead German Jew from 1943.
A few days ago, at a town hall on CNN, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained her concern about President Trump with the following statement: “Civilization as we know it today is at stake in the next election, and certainly, our planet. The damage that this administration has done to America, America’s a great country. We can sustain. Two terms, I don’t know.”
Not that long ago, Mrs. Pelosi would have said no such thing. She might have said, “I have serious disagreements with Mr. Trump’s policy proposals, and I don’t like where he is taking this country. I hope my fellow American citizens will choose to vote Democrat in the next election. Let me explain why I think that would be a good decision.” And she would then outline her specific disagreements with Mr. Trump, and how she would propose to do better for the American people than he would.
This is how the Republicans won the House in 1994. The “Contract with America” explained what they saw as problems, and how they intended to fix those problems. It worked – they won.
I’m not sure that approach would work now. As I often say, I hope I’m wrong about this. But American politics has changed. And more importantly, American society seems to have changed.
There are those who think that the Democrats’ repeated impeachment attempts against Mr. Trump and other extremist tactics are due to their particular dislike for Mr. Trump. I disagree. If Mitt Romney or Scott Walker were president, I suspect the Democrats would be using similarly ruthless tactics. This shift in tactics occurred before, and independent of, the inauguration of Mr. Trump.
President Trump may be a response to this new approach to American politics, but he is not the cause of it.
It seems strange that such extremism and such vicious approaches to politics occur now, in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity, here in modern America. American politics were vicious and nasty in the mid-1800s, but slavery and other issues were on the verge of tearing our country apart. One can understand how such serious disagreements about such serious issues would lead to divisive politics.
But we’re not arguing about slavery and basic human rights anymore. We’re not even arguing about foreign wars or Prohibition. We’re arguing about transsexual bathrooms. It’s hard to understand such vicious political tactics in times of peaceful prosperity like these.
I’m not sure of the cause, but I suspect it started with the extremist environmental movement. Silent Spring was published in 1962. The Population Bomb was published in 1968. The cold winters of the 1970s led many to believe that we were all about to die in the next ice age.
All of those predictions turned out to be wrong, but the potential power of such messages was hard for some politicians to ignore. Particularly politicians who had no other compelling reasons for anyone to vote for them. Al Gore is an extreme example of this phenomenon, but many others on the left are using this technique now. And when one considers the success rate of leftist policies, one can understand why they use this approach.
A leftist politician no longer has to explain why socialism has never worked anywhere else, and how exactly it will work here. That’s a tough sell. All he/she has to do is convince voters that Republicans are evil capitalists who want to get rich by destroying the world, like a James Bond villain. And then convince those voters that global catastrophe is certain unless they vote for the leftist, who cares for the environment. Skip the details, just paint the picture.
At that point, no actions, no matter how drastic or ruthless, are off the table. Confronting and shaming people in public. Chasing the families of suspected conservatives out of restaurants. Scaring the families of prominent conservatives. Arresting elderly nobodies like Roger Stone in SWAT raids in the middle of the night, with CNN along to broadcast it worldwide. It seems vicious, but hey, we’re trying to save the world here, so it’s ok. Really. Are you with us, or against us? Are you evil, or nice?
These people are dangerous.
So when I hear Nancy Pelosi say, “Civilization as we know it today is at stake in the next election, and certainly, our planet,” I don’t laugh. When I hear Greta Thunberg say, “For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis, but we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer,” I don’t just roll my eyes. When I hear AOC say, “There’s no debate as to whether we should continue producing fossil fuels. There’s no debate,” I don’t wonder what she’s been smoking.
These people are dangerous. They make ruthlessness seem reasonable.
In the past, people have agreed to drastic actions simply to save their country, as they saw it. People actually voted for Adolf Hitler for little more reason than that. What if they thought they were saving the whole world? What would they not do?
Saul Alinsky.The impeachment charade is not a joke. Neither are climate protests, or boycotting businesses suspected of being insufficiently leftist, or economic sanctions against businesses in states that don’t enact your preferred policies regarding transsexual bathrooms. It may seem ridiculous, but it’s not funny.
This is scary stuff. And I don’t see a solution. This is just the way the left does politics now. It wasn’t just Hillary Clinton who learned a lot from Saul Alinsky. The Democrat party has decided that such ruthless tactics are reasonable. I suspect that things will get much worse before they get better.
I really hope I’m wrong about all this…
Published in General
Henry brings up a good point. With leftism’s unbroken record of misery and woe, I don’t understand why anyone promotes leftism. We’ve tried it, with dismal results. So are leftism’s proponents evil, or stupid? Neither makes sense to me. So I don’t understand. I feel like I’m missing something here…
You will most assuredly find that a large percentage of Ricochetti will agree with you. The Dems I know do not even begin to see the damage they are doing to the country as they truly believe they are the anointed ones who must save mankind.
No, they are. They are often true believers. “We can do it the right way this time, not like those folks who have tried it before. We’re smarter, and it will work for us.”
Maybe and maybe not. In any case, it’s good for the morale for those fighting leftism.
It is willfully ignorant. Today at college, I compared Mao to Stalin and Marx. I heard that Stalin was a reactionary authoritarian who wasn’t at all similar to Marx.
Also, apparently it’s a strawman to say that Bernie Sanders want’s to control the economy.
@drbastiat I blame the intelligentsia and to a lesser extent, people of faith not solidifying the argument that Communism and Marxism don’t work. Apparently if Marx or Trotsky were in charge, things would have gone great. I am pretty sure that is why Stalin was referred to as a reactionary authoritarianism. Stalin did appeal to the most racist version of Russian Nationalism and in a sense that was reactionary but he was still doing Communist stuff while holding supposedly reactionary views. Actually his views weren’t reactionary, wikipedia defines being a reactionary as wanting to return to a previous political state. The Russian Revolution never got rid of bigotry or Nationalism.
We failed to keep Communism on the ash heap of history.
Bernie Sanders is far less excusable than anyone in my college. He saw what Communism did and something in him just didn’t care. Whatever is in him that didn’t care is in alot of Professors and high school teachers. There is something in humanity that doesn’t care about humanity but cares about the ‘humanity’ in their head.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/how%E2%80%94and-how-not%E2%80%94-love-mankind-12177.html
As Prager says, leftists love humanity; it’s individuals they hate.
While conservatives like individuals.
The other situation that exists as part of the notion that Carbon Dioxide is triggering the End Times is that the same scientists that say this is true, also pretty much lay out the idea that even if every human on the planet quit consuming meat, using their hairdryers, aquarium heaters, marijuana grow green houses, and all the lights, cars, trucks and AC/heating units tomorrow, the carbon footprint has grown so much that the End would still Be Nigh.
This is not the best way of promoting the idea of having a zero based carbon footprint. If I am gonna die in 12 years anyway, I plan on going out with a bang.
I want to ask them “So, what do you have that those who came before didn’t have: Facebook and Twitter?”
We rejected a fascist world leader because his aims were selfish. But being ruled by a savior who has our own best interests at heart is a much easier sell.
I would hazard that laughter is our only defense. Anything else would make them stronger.
* build nuclear reactors
Freedom and disorder violate some people’s sense of aesthetics. I don’t know if that’s Bernie’s problem, but it’s a diagnosis that should be checked out.
The problem is finding one.
One of the horrors of the teaching professions is that ‘business’ will infiltrate teaching and shape curricula for its own ends.
Imagine a world where our children don’t graduate without strong reading, writing, and math skills.
Businesses want literate, numerate, and scientifically minded workers, and we can’t let them win.
True.
But their rage will make some of them smarter.
Both, depending on whether they are seekers of power or idiots of usefulness.
Firstly this time it will be different, and secondly the young aren’t told there ever was a last time.
Nah, lower-case saviors are a dime a dozen.
We’re not really arguing about the issues that make ‘news’ but instead whether the Progressives will be able to continue their destruction of Constitutional Liberty or not. Trump’s administration, coupled with Mitch’s Senate confirmations threatens imminent destruction of their ability to impose the Progressive agenda through court action, bypassing both Congress and the voters. That is the real, unstated issue. It is the only thing that explains the apoplectic rhetoric and the panic stricken attempts to overturn the 2016 election and/or prevent similar results in 2020 through intimidation and kangaroo court type proceedings in the House.
Greta Thornburg is an unfortunate victim of these unprincipled ‘leaders’ who are the real ones who have stolen her childhood. She is dangerous because those who have mis-informed and manipulated her have no limits to what or who they would use or destroy to accomplish their aims in the name of ‘the better good’. They do believe they are doing this for our own betterment which is what makes them so dangerous.
If Greta ever figures out just how she has been mis-used she will be erased from public conversation if not excoriated as a ‘traitor’.
The CS Lewis quote comes to mind, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I would beg to differ with you in one comment (approximate) “we are not arguing about basic human rights anymore….”
Oh, but we are and it’s over a chasm as wide or wider than that of slavery. What is that issue? Whether one has a right to simply be alive. Both self defense prohibitions (via gun and arms control tactics) and the killing of unborn children are of the same right to life issue and more basic than the rest, since one must at least be alive to debate any of the other concerns. Yet amazingly we have 2 mostly clear sides here where one is willing to broadly uphold one’s right to simply be alive and remain alive, while the other endorses the routine the killing of the most innocent and helpless among us and seeks to render those beyond that point generally helpless to defend the life that they have.
I think that on the contrary, our only defense is actively and courageously defending the institutions of our way of life, by our everyday local actions–our calendars and our checkbooks.
Mockery can become a paralyzing hypnotic, a way of withdrawing into a false sense of security, while unseen through our blurry eyes the Progressivists march on a broad front over the institutions upon which are free society depends for its life: our
When we mock the privileged celebrities, those who have been made stooges by the Progressivist revolutionaries, for their hypocritical behavior–self-flattering virtue signalling, and calls for the ordinary people to make sacrifices that the spoiled elites don’t require of themselves–we are falling stupidly for the true Progressivists’ lie: that they actually care about these social issues like “global warming”, “inequality”, and so on.
They don’t. Their agenda is advanced by more suffering, not by solutions to social problems.
They aren’t fools. They are cynical, deceitful, and cunning. They are in it for the long haul. They understand that ideas have consequences.
I agree that we shouldn’t give in to the notion that they care about what they say they care about, but I don’t see how that precludes mockery.
You are right. Not all of it is a problem.
We can’t blame Alinsky. These are tactics used by the Soviets and other communists to topple societies and governments for almost a hundred years. That it’s working here among our people is shocking and frightening. It must be stopped or there will be no alternative to civil war.
Meanwhile, from the utterly unnecessary carbon-emitting world of Hollywood:
Forty-two thousand “Likes.”
“We can’t blame Alinsky”?
Could you explain: who can’t blame Alinsky for what?
Congratulations, @drbastiat , on another Instalanche!
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1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
– David Burge (@iowahawk)
I don’t disagree with your point, but how, short of violence, does one purge the institutions you mention?