Sorry for the sensationalist headline. But now that I have your attention:
The following is a reply I posted to Marie3 on Booman’s recent article Casual Observation. She wrote:
The ugly side of the libertarian coin. Which is why most decent people outgrow any fascination with libertarianism within the six months from which they first encounter this seductive sounding political stance in late adolescence.
Go read the whole thread for a more balanced view of what I was talking about if you wish.
Read on.
…most decent people…
Sigh…
There it is again. A variation on the “everybody knows” riff.
From my comment here, on Booman’s recent “Quote of the Day: Bobby Jindal” thread.
…everyone knows it to be true.
Apparently not.
Obviously not.
The key word here…the key word in almost all “politics”…is the word “everyone.”
Everyone knows…
Everyone knows what?
That Obama was born in Hawaii?
No.
That Moscow is the capital of Russia?
No.
That Barack Obama is nothing more than a slick PermaGov centrist wrapped up in Democratic sloganeering?
No.
Etc., etc., etc.
“Everyone that we agree with” is the “everyone” of political rhetoric.
Jindal looks like a freshly hatched chicken. God only knows what kinds of machinations got him the governor’s chair in Louisiana. “Agree” with him? Why? He is as wrong as is almost every professional pol in the business of getting elected. He’s not even a gnat on Trump’s massive neck.
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
AG
Your “decent people” appear to be people with whom you agree, Marie.
Who are we to say that no “decent people” believe other things than do we?
My grandparents were “decent people” on both sides of the family. They went to church; they stayed married…sometimes for the sole reason of raising their children well…they fought wars in which they believed; they took care to harm no one who did not threaten them and their families. They also had no fucking idea about what it means to be a minority citizen in this country, thought that women belonged in the house raising children, would never have dreamed of voting for a black dogcatcher let alone a black president, lived in strictly segregated neighborhoods, had absolutely no use for people whose sexuality was different from their own…including people who had sex out of wedlock even if they were heterosexual…and cast a squinty eye even on Christians of other denominations. My parents…one a member of a rabble-rousing NYC Irish Catholic Democratic family, the other a member of a semi-rural, rock-ribbed Protestant Republican family whose history in the NYC area went back to the 1630s…had to elope and go join the Royal Canadian Air Force and fight in The Battle of Britain because their families were so opposed to the relationship. Do you not have “decent people” in your family who never evolved to the level at which you exist in terms of social beliefs? I’m betting that you do.
We all do.
So now…back to the problem at hand.
It is often said that you cannot legislate morality. I’ll go one step further. You cannot legislate evolution. It either happens or it doesn’t. How many millions of the roughly 325 million Americans (not counting however many millions of so-called “illegals” are here, most of whom work for people like you and me washing dishes and delivering food, etc. at wages so low that they that defy imagination) absolutely, positively resemble your ancestors and mine in their beliefs. Given the low tide 28% approval rate of people like Butch II when he was in office, it looks to me like fully 1/4 or more of U.S. residents are right back where my grandparents lived in terms of societal evolution. That’s pushing on 100 million people. Plus…they’re the ones who own most of the guns. Can we somehow “legislate” their obedience to what we consider higher socially evolved notions? On the evidence of the last 50+ years, the answer is a resounding “No!!!” Are they dying out? I sometimes wonder. Given the Trump phenomenon, I wonder more now than at any time in the past. So I say…give them their own damned country/countries and let’s see who wins that competition. My bet? The country/countries that operate on the principle of human ecology will win and the others will degenerate into satellite states like the many small Eastern European countries that now waver back and forth between being part of Europe and part or Russia.
But that’s a real minority opinion.
At least for now.
It’s a dream.
So it goes.
We will see how long it remains a dream.
Another 8 years of the bullshit in which we have all been forced to live by the oligarchy and there are going to be a lot of people looking for a way out.
On all sides of the societal evolutionary scale.
Watch.
AG
