The Violent and Dirty Minds of the Compassionate Left (4.07.10)

Still mulling over the idea of "learned incapacity," the notion that "proper execution of every calling requires the disabling of certain kinds of intelligence. In a sense, you could say that certain cognitive specializations require a form of willed stupidity. Or, in Bion's language, you could say that certain otherwise normal people disconnect the links in their own mind in order to understand the world in terms of their specialty. They presumably have a choice in the matter, at least initially, whereas a mentally disturbed person engages in unconscious "attacks on linking," a primitive mental process that dismantles the scaffolding of the mind so as to prevent certain unwanted meanings from being "entertained."

But the dividing line between mental health and pathology is much more blurry than you might realize. Bion even said that all human beings have a "psychotic core" of the personality, a point of view with which I agree. This accounts for the very thin line between civilization and barbarity, a line which conservatives instinctively respect and appreciate, whereas leftists always take for granted. This is why the leftist is always complaining that things aren't better, whereas the conservative intuitively realizes how much worse things could be, and stands in awe of the structures of civil society that help turn beasts into men, generation by generation, one beast at a time.

And of course, this is why the conservative is horrified by the idea of tinkering with the very foundation of civil society, marriage, just to satisfy the inappropriate curiosity of mentally and spiritually disabled leftist social engineers, whose "learned incapacity," when merged with a political program, quickly goes from the mere absence of wisdom to the active presence of a destructive "willed stupidity." It is a form of hysterical blindness, except that the blindness consists of a large lacuna in the field of thought rather than the field of vision.

And like all hysterics, the personality of the willfully stupid leftist goes from being a centripetal thing, so to speak, to becoming a centrifugal event. I am sure you know people -- perhaps at a certain time of the month -- I didn't say that -- whose personalities are "events." As soon as they walk into a room or in front of a TV camera, you cannot be unaware of them, because they won't let you be. I'm not talking about charisma or about benevolent love, which also radiate from certain people. Rather, this is a person whose energy "agitates" those around them, and inducts them into their particular psychodrama. In short, it is "acting out" as a replacement for "thinking." This is why, for example, there is a total disconnect between the action of Iran and the thought of Britain, or the thought of Israel and the actions of Arab Muslims. It is why CAIR is obviously not a "civil rights" organization but a violent one. And it is also why Hillary or Edwards or Obama want to steal your money -- a violent action, not an idea.

Think of how an utterly insignificant person such as Anna Nicole Smith, even in death, has the moronic world of the MSM dancing to her tune. She is still an "event," but then so too is Karl Marx, whose faux system of thought continues to agitate minds and spur action in the present. He cannot stay buried in his dustbin, because his ideas are just too tempting to certain sick minds in need of intellectual cover for their acting out. It is as if he were the prophet of an anti-religion that substitutes action for thought. Except not "as if."

This in itself is a fascinating idea. It was one of Freud's first observations, and yet, it remains unappreciated, for we must always ask ourselves, "when is action action, and when is it a substitute for thought in order to unburden a disturbed mind?" At the same time, we must ask "when is thought thought?," because for many on the left, a thought is not an idea but an object to be used for some primitive purpose such as releasing aggression or blocking certain unwanted meanings.

Political correctness -- the cognitive Swiss Army knife of the left -- is an example of a collective attack on linking. It also deceives the person who engages in it, because PC is always able to operate freely under the pretext of "compassion," when it is actually quite aggressive and even violent. The leftist cannot be consciously aware of this violence, because one of the purposes of political correctness is to allow the leftist to behave violently while denying it -- and even tell themselves that they merely have "compassion," or "inclusiveness," or "tolerance," or some other benign motivation. This is the interior Lie that precedes and facilitates the exterior lie. Obviously, no politically correct leftist is able to tolerate the simple truth, which is that I am a violent liar using pseudo-thinking to attack others and impede their ability to arrive at truth.

However, the person on the business end of political correctness is well aware of the primitive and bullying violence, which is one of the reasons he is not a leftist. A sane person recognizes that Truth is without question the highest societal value, higher than love, higher than compassion, and certainly higher than democracy, i.e., the collective will -- which will simply devolve to the will to power in the absence of truth.

Truth is a "public" event that is replicable in others, whereas a lie is a private event that must be imposed upon others. I am reminded of the image of an ant hill. From what I understand of entomology -- which is not much -- ants possess a "private" stomach and a "public" one. If an ant with an empty stomach happens upon an ant with a full one, they bonk heads in such a way that the "have" will spit up something from his public stomach and share it with the "have not." This is a very efficient way to keep everyone fed, and it was obviously a mechanism selected to enhance survival of the group. (Hold that thought; we'll come back to it.)

As we were saying the other day (recalling a quip by Dennis Miller), there is the "earth" and there is the "world," two very different things. Human animals evolved on the earth, but the human being lives in the human world, which is not a physical object or space, but a subjective field of shared meaning. It is a virtual or "transitional space" that, to a large extent, "thinks" us, rather than vice versa.

For example, we are all born into a field of implicit meanings called the "family." Although we have one word for this arrangement -- "family" -- this obscures the fact that each family has its unique idiom and is different from the rest. Whoever we are in essence -- in other words, despite being born with a true self -- this self will still have to come into being and articulate itself in this or that family -- which may be a healthy family or an unhealthy one. And the internalization of the idiom of an unhealthy family may cripple us for life; instead of ushering our true self from potentiality to actuality, it may crush the self for reasons embodied in the pathological family structure, which holds the "unthought secret" of that family's past traumas in its encounter with the Real; families exist within an arc of intergenerational time no less than space.

Likewise, we all must articulate our selves in this or that culture. A culture is like a musical instrument through which we will "play" the self. Some cultures, such as in America, are like a symphony orchestra with a great range of instruments and countless different scores to play with, while some cultures are like a rusty harmonica with most of the holes blocked. If you are unlucky enough to be born in the Islamic world, you are essentially given a broken kazoo to express the full range of your humanness. That's if you're a man. If you're a woman, you don't even get the kazoo. Perhaps you can express your humanness by batting your eyes in this or that unique way.

There was a time not too long ago when the university was the place to go to see all the amazing instruments and hear all the beautiful scores. I know of no sane person who believes this any longer. Rather, the university has been hijacked by the willfully stupid for the purposes of acting out. Of all the institutions in America, it is ironically the one place where the ideal of Truth has been successfully dethroned and violently replaced with various faux substitutes such as "diversity" or the absurd anti-Truth of relativism.

Back to the anthill. In order for humans to efficiently move about in psycho-spiritual space, there must be a way for them to "bump heads" and share truth with one another. Isn't that why you come to One Cosmos, to bump caps with other Coons and pass a little truth from mind to mind? We live in strange times, for, on the one hand, the development of the internet means that human ants are able to bump heads and exchange truth in an instantaneous way never dreamt of before.

But what is going on with those pissanthills -- dailykos, or huffingtonpost? What are they exchanging when they bump heads? -- for it certainly isn't "thought," much less "truth." What is it? For one thing, it is violence -- always violence. In fact, one needn't go to the fringes of the left in order to sense this pervasive violence against the human spirit, for it now infects the mainstream. I can no longer read the New York Times or the L.A. times without being very aware of the violence -- of journalism as "event," or spur to action, rather than thought.

With regard to the dreadful L.A. Times, this violence used to be confined to the editorial pages, which I suppose one can tolerate. After all, there are polemicists across the political spectrum. But what I found so objectionable is the gradual permeation of this violence into every other part of the paper -- the entertainment section, the "lifestyle" section, the sports section, and even the real estate section -- which might, for example, disingenuously feature a homosexual pair, not for the purpose of conveying useful information about real estate, but for the purpose of ham-handedly indoctrinating readers with a leftist agenda -- a covert attack on the traditional family.

I suppose the last straw for me was when the political correctness began infecting even the sports page. I remember once about 15 years ago, there was a despicable manufactured controversy about the Lakers' announcer Chick Hearn, an absolutely beloved and legendary figure in L.A. sports. I listened to him from the age of 10, and a part of me died with him in 2002, since which time it just hasn't been the same, hoops-wise. Hearn is without a doubt the greatest basketball announcer in history, having spontaneously come up with most of its colorful vocabulary, such as slam dunk, dribble drive, popcorn machine, finger-roll, frozen rope, airball, yo-yo-ing up and down, give-and-go, garbage time, bunny hop in the pea patch, didn't draw iron, nervous time, no harm no foul, tosses up a prayer, count if it goes, heart brrrrrreak!, and many others.

Anyway, one time Magic Johnson was bringing the ball up court and Chick said something to the effect that "his eyes are rolling around like a pinball machine!," which they were. But sure enough, there was a press inquisition into whether this was a racist comment, since it supposedly brought to mind minstrel shows and degrading images of blacks with their eyes bugging out of their heads. As always, the racist left is obsessed with race but attributes this obsession to others, for who else but a twisted leftist would make this absurd connection?

Then, about a decade ago, the same thing happened when a player made a slam sunk and held onto the rim. Chick says "give that man a banana!" Once again, the foul-minded race baiters came out of the hardwood, wondering if Hearn realized what a racist comment this was to equate blacks and monkeys. Again, what kind of sick mind would make such a connection?

I suppose the same people who equate hurricanes and racism, or confuse liberation with occupation, or who cannot tell the difference between Israel and the Muslim savages who wish to destroy it, or who saw Karl Rove's goofy rap routine and wonder if it was actually a racist insult.

And don't you dare laugh. This isn't funny, it's homophobic.

Speaking of which, if you don't have any Lou in your collection, you may be somewhat culturally deprived -- or at least not a true coonnoisseur. After all, Natural Man might very well be the Coon anthem.

Raccoon anthem, you foul-minded racist troll.

But, you know, things are changing nowadays. It's a new day, babies. Folks want to take their own lives into their hands and make their own choices. No longer do they wanna go along with the program 'cause everybody say it's right. You know what I mean? Let me tell ya what I'm talkin' about, ya see, 'cause...

I want to be, happy and free
Livin' and loving for me
I want to be, happy and free
Livin' and lovin' for me
Just like a natural man (like a natural man)
A natural man (like a natural man) --Lou Rawls, Natural Man