Say it like it's 1937

Three particulars of the times : vertical invasion by vandals, dominance by the stupid, betrayal by proper men. As to the first : vandals invade, not from other continents but from the bottom. Redditards. They somehow float to the top. To the second point : in the plainest and most literal sense, the stupid came to power. Thus in spite of any economic interest and all political sapience they do stupid shit, like the indolent imbeciles they are. Thirdly : instead of opposition, proper men take on stances of well-meaning expectative, pretend not to see, not to hear, betray in a word. They shirk from their duty. "Impartial" and trustful, at the most they take note silently. They're the superlatively guilty.

The chunk comes from a Romanian jewⁱ (convicted as suchⁱⁱ), who was also (inexplicably!ⁱⁱⁱ) an obscure Orthodox monk (surrounded in recent days by a very lively cult). It was lifted by the anti-Stalinist-socialist agentura of the Rooseveltian-socialist sect, because it seemed to them promising of broad appeal (especially to non-socialist minds), and broadcast from their vehicle at the time (Radio "Free"^iv Europe), so it's not like it weren't well known^v before my act of mercy^vi above.

And it was written in 1937, which is to say too soon to know the tree "by its fruit" ; but plenty late enough to know the tree by its tree. The author didn't yet know what "Nazism" is^vii ; though he knew Hitler.

Then again, neither do you, though so do you. Sieg hail!

1. This phrase, "a Romanian jew", denotes just about everyone, by the way. You don't ordinarily realise this, but then again... [↩]
2. The national-socialists didn't much act on it ; the middling brother did. [↩]
3. In the same sense of "inexplicable" as found in the perenially plebeian "I don't see how". This jew was inexplicably a monk just like the hundreds of thousands of "improper Germans" who were also Great War veterans, somehow. Inexplicably! How'd the rapacious cosmpolite die for its country one generation and conspire towards its demise the next generation, anyhow?!

   Inexplicable!

   Ultimately, the indictment of mediocrity consists of a lenghty list of crimes of lese-imagination. [↩]

4. Free in a sense very much alligned with the "freeing" of, say, Mosul. [↩]
5. "Well" as an epithet, applied to anything, pointedly and by definition implies your exclusion. Because nothing can be well that you're involved with, and therefore of fucking course it's well known and you didn't know about it before, of your own power, in your own time. That's why it was well known ; and now that you know about it, it's actually slightly less well known than it was before. Such is your obscurantist nature. [↩]
6. Acts of mercy are intrinsically ambiguous in a moral perspective. [↩]
7. To a certain standard of knowledge :

   An observation about the middle class: they have it deep inside their psyche that though they are taught to make prejudicial judgments based on hearsay, they are not allowed to show that they made them. The middle class think they are lawyers.

   That kid was up to no good. You knew it as he walked to Louie's table, even before he opened his mouth. You knew it. But Louie/we were constructed to act only on what happens, not what you think is happening. Since the kid was polite, Louie had to be polite back, even though the kid was obviously being a bully -- you're not allowed to respond to that. "Hey, I was just being friendly!" And prove he wasn't. The kid offers to shake Louie's hand, "Hi, I'm Sean," and Louie has to shake it because so far the kid is being polite. We relate things to our future cross examination: "isn't it true, sir, that sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never harm you?"

   Since we're already knee deep in race: back when I lived in various bars in NYC, I frequently saw what I assume to be intelligent people allow what I assume to be dangerous black males come up to them at 2 am and ask them if they knew "the way to get to 44th St." Just for my Danish and German readers who generously donate, here's a geography lesson: Manhattan is a grid, in numerical order. Asking a New Yorker which way is 44th St. is like asking a Florida orange farmer which way is sky. But these white devils were willing to put their lives at risk -- not because they didn't want to appear racist, I saw the same hypnotized compliance when the perp was a white guy -- but because they are amateur lawyers: "he didn't do anything bad to me first." So we follow the script: guy asks for directions= "ten blocks up make a left." Guy pulls a gun= "look, I have 50 bucks, just don't hurt me."

   [...]

   The Bully Dialogue -- where they spend ten minutes chatting nicely even though both of you know you're eventually going to get stuffed in a locker -- is another Cognitive Kill Switch, which is about reversing power and dominance. The aggressive "Hi, what's your name, that's a nice shirt you got there" works because you're not willing -- you feel you're not allowed -- to respond to the situation for what it is: a bully trying to dominate the conversation. You feel obligated to reply to their words, and not the meaning. So the bully gets to bully the conversation for ten minutes, after which point it hardly matters whether you get stuffed in a locker or not.

   There's a model for everything in childhood. In this case it's when the parent, rather than a direct confrontation (i.e. teach the kid how to be a man) tries to lead and trap the kid, like a jealous woman trying to catch her man in a lie. "So, Tommy, how was school? Anything interesting happen today?" At this moment everyone knows it's a trap. Dad knows what happened, and Tommy knows what happened, and now Tommy knows that Dad knows, but Tommy still has to say, "oh, nothing really, " all the while thinking, "oh, great, I got to play this nutty game now? When I turn 18 I am so outta here."

   [...]

   This is a video of Lil Wayne's deposition about some nonsense that is beside the point here. Big surprise: Lil Wayne doesn't take the proceedings seriously. I know, I had to make sure it was really him, too.

   I'm no judge, but he looks like he's in contempt, certainly contemptuous, and at 2:45 makes some serious threats against the lawyer: "you know he [the judge] can't protect you in the real world?" Watch that part, empathize with the lawyer. How did you feel? Did you feel intimidated?

   Note that no one reigns him in, no one stands up to him, no one ends the interview, no one demands nothing. Part of this is deposition theatrics, but even the attorney's demeanor changes, he starts acting the way a person who doesn't want to show he's intimidated starts acting. He gets flustered, he pauses, he backs up. Wayne is 5'4" and by all accounts has chronic bronchitis, but everyone is intimidated by him. Why?

   The first fear is an instinctual one: the lawyer could physically fight back if he had to, but when he looks into those cold eyes, he has a sense that there are no limits, everything is on the table -- from insults to decapitation, anything could happen. That's the fear of the uncanny, which we experience outside of a horror movie when we face: masks, artificial faces, psychopaths, and even ordinary objects which we are told are uncanny (mirrors, basement freezers.) "I don't know what he's capable of" means "I know very well what he's capable of, and it's everything." That's the kind of fear that fits a street fight, but it has no place in a court; he may want to decapitate you, but he won't be able to. So why are you afraid?

   The interesting thing about being taught that violence is wrong is that of all the lessons we were taught -- no means no, all men are created equal, a bird in the hand is something something -- that lesson actually stuck, it became part of our core identity. Most "normal" people aren't afraid of the consequences of violence (pain) as much as of the violence itself. Fighting itself is bad. The lawyer isn't afraid of getting hurt, he is afraid of there being a fight. Wayne may be the aggressor but the voice inside asks, "what did you do to provoke him? Why didn't you stay away from him?" This fear is so primary that the lawyer backs down from Wayne for Wayne's sake, not to avoid getting hit but so Wayne doesn't have to hit him. Wayne is feared not because he's good at winning fights but because he's good at starting fights, and its oddly been indoctrinated in us that it is everyone else's job not to provoke fights with those you know will fight, even if you're in the right.

   I want to point out how this dichotomy is very much predicated on a difference between people, not a sameness, and it's felt to be part of the hardware, not the software. There's you, who "knows better", and there's him, who "fights", and that's just the way it is. And since you "know better" it's your responsibility to not let this get out of hand. Pro-gun proponents can be seen as the logical consequence of this position: ok, I'll accept your societal commandment not to fight, but I want to preserve my right not to have to back down, either. The sad, logical retort to this, and I'm going to term it the "liberal" position not because I'm slamming liberals but because it comes from a place of compassion, though, when I write this out explicitly, is really just a kind of kind of classism: "it's best just to back down from them... because that's they way thems are."

   To get people to be more afraid of fighting, even in self-defense, than the physical pain of an assault takes a lot of years of training, good thing we jump on it early. First off: associate getting hit with guilt. Even if it's not your fault, it is still felt like it's your fault, and this can be verified by every woman in a domestic relationship, which is why they stay. This isn't innate, we learn this: your parents hit you only when you do something "wrong"; parents separate their fighting kids, "both of you go to your rooms!"; a schoolyard fight is never judged according to fault, the school punishes both people equally; "zero tolerance" says the institution that cares nothing about justice, only the preservation of power. "Nothing gives you the right to hit another person!" Nothing? Seriously?

   The only people who learn that getting hit isn't synonymous with guilt are those who get hit inconsistently, randomly -- having older brothers, abusive parents, constant fights with other kids in the neighborhood, etc. You'll observe a certain characteristic true of all bullying: the victim never fights back at all. He takes his beating, as if to show that he can take it, his strength is in not being broken. Why not at least throw a few weak punches? This is why the terrible father's typical advice to his bullied son, over the protestations of his useless wife -- "stand up for yourself! Just punch him back, and he won't bother you again!" -- is absolutely correct yet impossible to execute. The problem isn't that the kid is afraid of the bully only, he's (more) afraid of the system -- that he'll get in trouble if he fights back, or that he doesn't trust that system to protect him if he fights back and the bully escalates. The parents and school raised the kid to instinctively be ruled by the system, and now suddenly they are advising him to rebel? The bully's doesn't have this fear, he has already opted out of the system. And so the victim, after getting beat up, hears how it was his fault: "You know he's a jerk, why did you go near him? Just stay away from him."

   This is why, on the day that the victim does, finally, "fight back", it isn't by squaring off and throwing an uppercut -- it's overly violent, vicious, excessive, and that's not because he needs to overcome the bully but the bully and the system that in effect was protecting the bully, the system that controls the way he sees the world.

   [...]

   That power of being a lawyer isn't inherent in being a lawyer, it only exists if everyone else believes you have it, and Wayne chose not to believe it, so the lawyer didn't have it. The whole fight is taking place inside both men's heads, which is why Wayne is winning. So how could the lawyer get over his fear, what would he have to do to not be intimidated?

   Flip the question: how is it possible for someone with no power (Wayne) to be able to scare those with more power? The answer is to do what Wayne does instinctively: make the fight into a different kind of fight. He doesn't accept his "role" as defendant, as someone at the mercy of the court's rules. Wayne doesn't just not let himself be intimidated by the lawyer, he doesn't see him as a lawyer, as an agent of a larger, massively powerful structure that could crush him into oblivion. He sees him as a bag of soot he could easily punch. And because the lawyer's power was given to him by the court -- the lawyer doesn't see it as really who he is (he doesn't believe in roles, but identity) -- it is, essentially, paper mache, and Wayne's blows right through it. Wayne makes him doubt himself and his power, and so he responds as a powerless man.

   It's not knowledge. It's faith, obviously enough. Why's it not obvious to you ?

   I mean... science, right ? The reason faith's not self-obviously faith to you is your... faith in... science, a "kind" of science miscast as a repository of faith and as such entirely unrelated to anything to do with knowledge.

   If The Rational Method (of Voltaire & co) built The Industrial Revolution (latest installment, there are historical equivalents), then this here Contemporary Devolution was most certainly built by The Irrational Method. Amusingly enough I wrote spoke extensively on this topic some twenty-five centuries ago ; but unfortunately I seem to have misplaced it all. Drats! [↩]