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An Inspiring Message of Virtue and Hope from a Brilliant Leftist…
A friend of mine from high school (“Betsy”) went to a near-Ivy League level college. And she deserved to; she’s extremely hard-working and an absolute genius. I admire her. She’s brilliant, she’s beautiful, and she apparently married well because she is now an assistant teachers’ aide at an elementary school library at her daughter’s school, and she lives very comfortably. She lives in Tracy, California (about an hour east of San Francisco), and is an extremely politically active Democrat. She posted the following on her Facebook page today (emphasis mine):
The City Council of Tracy will be discussing whether to become a “Sanctuary City,” meaning the city will not enforce state and county rules that have been established to limit business activities during covid. I encourage people to read the Council’s agenda item to understand the implications of taking this action. I encourage people to read the report. My understanding is that the county and state can still do their own enforcement of business restrictions. The City of Tracy is really doing more education than enforcement already and is not really interested in punishing businesses. And, the City stands to lose a lot of state Covid-related money that has already been committed if the City Council declares we are a sanctuary city. I absolutely understand that businesses are suffering during this time. I’m just not sure that making a Tracy a sanctuary city will actually improve conditions for businesses. I’m happy to hear other perspectives if people want to share specific ways in which this declaration could help businesses and be worth losing the state Covid-related money the City is getting.
This is so wonderful, on so many levels. If I were to attempt to convince Betsy of the absurd structural defects of leftism, I would read this very passage to her. Very slowly. Which is silly, because she’s much more intelligent than I am.
But let’s break this down.
So her hometown, Tracy, California, is attempting to become a “sanctuary city.”
Over the past few years, a ‘sanctuary city’ was one that did not enforce immigration law against illegal immigrants. But in this particular case, ‘sanctuary city’ means one that does not enforce COVID-19 executive actions against small businesses run by American citizens that are attempting to survive against the destructive efforts of their own governor. Whoever came up with the name for this current bill is a genius.
Next, Betsy says that the state and county governments are doing most of the enforcement of these diktats anyway, while the government of Tracy was helpfully engaged in the smiling happy joyfulness of education, and is not as interested the mean-spirited unpleasantness of ‘punishing businesses’ as the state and county governments are. That’s nice.
And lastly, it is important to vote against this, because Betsy’s hometown of Tracy ‘stands to lose a lot of COVID-related money‘ if they don’t go along with the tyrannical impulses of the state government. After all, this doesn’t really have anything to do with principles or viruses. Come on, little people – don’t get all hung up on distractions like ethics or illnesses. This is simply about getting as much money from other people as possible.
Don’t get caught up in the COVID-related stuff about diseases and sick people and stuff – this is only about money and power. So relax, and feel free to vote against this.
Betsy makes no effort to defend the state’s COVID policies. She simply argues that this is just about money. And you should vote in favor of taking away more money from other people. Simple. I mean, come on.
Remember that money and power are virtuous when held by the proper people. Just let us worry about the details, and do as we say. And sleep well tonight. As Betsy helpfully explains, good leftists like herself think only of money and power. Don’t get distracted by principles or ethics.
So an extremely intelligent, well-meaning leftist writes on Facebook that her neighbors should vote against becoming a sanctuary city and allow the state and county governments to punish businesses, so she and her neighbors can continue to steal money and power from their fellow Californians.
What an inspiring message of virtue and hope!
Betsy has ten times the brains of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and all the rest of them. I have enormous respect for her.
And this is the very best she could come up with. To her, this is a positive message of hope.
In the next presidential election, about half the American voters will vote Democrat. Almost all of whom are not nearly as intelligent or well-meaning as Betsy. And still, they’ll vote Democrat. Think about that for a minute.
No, really. Think about that for a minute. Their view of leftism is likely to be less intelligent and less virtuous than Betsy’s description above.
And still, they’ll vote Democrat.
My God…
Published in General
I hope that on the day Betsy questions one of the left’s latest sacred beliefs that you or another conservative friend are there to help her up after she gets slapped down hard by the thought police.
I would expect her response to be “Thank you, may I have another?”
Given their argument for their conclusions, how can we who are willing and able to think rationally persuade those who are willing and able to think rationally that they are wrong?
We know that the only three possibilities exist for changing the minds of rational humans: convince them that
is wrong.
Which of these is the answer, do you think?
I don’t mean to disparage those others of us who support the American cause but who are not willing and able to think rationally. I myself am never willing and able to think rationally, except in those exceptional cases where some teacher of the past has changed me. I didn’t accept John until Paul had broken me down.
People hate thinking. Leftism let’s you use minimal brain power and is therefore more pleasant to most people. So is religion and superstition. All are always popular.
I don’t think it’s thinking that people so much hate: they think all the time and come up with choices in various scenarios that would surprise you for their intricacy. It’s the doing. Money allows anyone to eat, drive, relax and watch tv without putting out the time and physical effort to provide the wherewithal to do these things.
Heh, Tracy is in the county just north of us. Now I’m not certain about all the cities in San Joaquin County, but I do know that their sheriff made no secret of the fact that they would most assuredly not have anything to do with this stupid edict.
This is the first I’ve heard of the state withholding money for such a move. For that reason, I question the whole thing. I seriously wonder if the county Board of Supervisors’ vote on this would make any difference at all if all the involved LE agencies have washed their hands of the whole thing anyway.
Most people isn’t I. I had to go through a lot of thinking before I got religion. I hope you go through something like that. I don’t think true religion is popular. I think vanity is. There are a million false religions but they are all variations on one, vanity. That’s what all my thinking was, insofar as I thought it could do what I needed to be done.
I see that I cited the Board of Supervisors rather than the City Council. All the same. I haven’t heard of any other political entity, below the state level, considering such a thing. Interesting, too, because Tracy is now mostly a bedroom community for the Bay Area.
My husband and I were at an informal dinner party one evening. It was a small gathering put together by our friend who was the town librarian. She had a vision for expanding our library system. We had three “villages” in our town–the towns on Cape Cod were formed out of existing villages that were linked by crooked cow paths–and each one had its own library. Of course, we had three copies of many of the books, and to our librarian, this was wasteful. She also wanted to join the state’s new (and horrible at that time) computer system. (When I think back to how bad the early computer systems were, it’s hard to believe our society kept investing in them. :-) )
Implementing her vision would be very expensive. The small group was assembled to talk about the financing. It was a fascinating discussion. One thing I learned, for example, was that two of the tiny libraries were largely self-supporting. The town contributed very little of our tax revenue to those two libraries. They ran the way so many little churches do: they had members who paid dues to belong to them, volunteers to work in them, volunteers to sit on committees that ran them, and monthly fund raisers of one sort or another–bake sales or used-book sales.
At any rate, one of the gentlemen at the dinner party was a Yale guy. He was so close to the Yale caricature, complete with the tennis sweater over his shoulders and white sneakers. It was hard not to laugh. He was excited about our librarian’s vision for the libraries, and he said, “We can fund this. If we can get this together in six months’ time, we can get a federal grant for it. It won’t cost us anything.” He was so happy to make this announcement.
My husband and I were dumbfounded. Where did he think the federal government got its money? :-)
Money is really important because the necessity for it and its existence force clarity. Nothing focuses the mind the way real dollars do. Or at least the minds of some people–clearly, not our Yale friend’s mind. :-)
This is the high cost of sending so much local money to Washington: those dollars disappear into a big blob of money. The individuals who sent them there can’t see them or find them ever again.
After a while, people really do lose the best part of the existence of money–the mental clarity it forces. There’s a huge difference between thinking about something and dreaming about it and actually putting your hands on the physical resources to do it. Money is a necessary and hugely helpful bridge between those two human endeavors–the dreaming and the doing.
So, so, so true. Money plays a vital role in society. Once you start giving it away for free, it’s not even really money any more. It’s lost its ability to measure the value of things.
If there is going to be negative reactions you would have expected, “Oh my gosh! People will Die!!!!” But that is not what we see. Instead it almost like both sides acknowledge that the restrictions are not going to save any lives. When Governor Newsom was caught at a party, no one said, “Is he OK? He should go into quarantine.” The concern was over appearances. So how much of our COVID response is about, you know . . . COVID?
This could be one of those yard signs or bumper stickers we’ve been talking about:
Leftism:
Money and Power are virtuous
when held by the proper people
They totally believe that.
The problem might not be academic success, attractiveness or industriousness but the lack of a rational moral order informing one’s view that supporting the government taking money from a host of strangers to fund things that you believe your community needs while destroying the livelihood of your neighbor is not a virtuous act in the short and long term.
Sick societies, deprave philosophies and amoral world views produce almost irrefutable positions.