Thursday, October 03, 2013

Obama, Messiah of False Slack

Now, when I say the left is antichristic, this isn't just my opinion, but theirs, since they are defined by their rejection of transcendence in general. But this isn't just a negation or opposition, but rather, an inversion -- an inversion of the good, the true, the beautiful, and the One, among other transcendental and archetypal categories uniquely accessible to man (and without which man is not man).

In fact, yesterday I started watching this new lecture by Evan Sayet (posted at Ace of Spades), whose "grand unified theory of liberalism" exactly comports with this assessment. He attributes the pathology to their absence of discrimination, which results in seeing all differences as invidious. It's a very efficient way to commit intellectual and spiritual suicide, because it turns false to true, bad to good, ugly to beautiful, and divisiveness to unity.

Perhaps it's less inflammatory to identify Obama as a messiah of false slack. Obamacare, for example, is the greatest theft of the nation's slack since its founding. I say this because it diminishes not just our liberty, but assumes control of our lives and our most sacred property, i.e., the body. Let's face it, it's difficult to pursue happiness if the death panel decides you've had enough.

The slack that Obama pretends to give us is entirely false. The state cannot produce slack, but can only steal one person's slack and give it to another. James Taranto has pointed out that Obamacare will work beautifully, so long as people ignore its incentives -- that is, so long as the young, healthy, and stupid pay too much for their health insurance in order to subsidize the old and ill. And if they refuse to behave irrationally, then the state appropriates their slack in the traditional way, by fining -- er, taxing -- them at the point of a gun.

The really frightening thing about Obama is the "superior ignorance" nurtured by his confinement to the leftist looniversity bin, which encouraged him to regard unfounded opinions as inerrant truths. For example, his long-time membership in that racist, anti-American religious sect can only mean that he must take this diseased Marxist aberration for normative Christianity -- and take normative Christians for noxious and ignorant "bitter clingers."

But I think the real source of Obama's omniscient ignorance is that he is our first postmodern president. True, Presidents Clinton and Bush were ivy league educated, but this was when it still meant something -- before the leftist takeover of higher education. Also, the fact that Obama was a benefactor of the "diversity" fraud, means that he had even less cognitive equipment than the typical student to resist the neo-Marxist indoctrination he was about to receive.

In any event, by the time Obama attended college in the 1980s, it was possible -- even likely -- that one could pass through the university without once encountering any serious opposition to leftist indoctrination -- like one of those subatomic particles that can pass through the earth without touching matter. Dennis Prager often mentions that when he speaks on college campuses, students routinely approach him and tell him that they have never heard conservative ideas in any of their classrooms, except in a caricatured, straw-man way.

Is it any wonder that this remains Obama's primary mode of argument when it comes to addressing conservative objections? You know, "some people say that we should hunt down children of the poor and bury them alive in shallow graves. But Democrats don't believe that. We have a better idea."

Weak-minded postmodern leftists live in a kind of hermetically sealed ignorance that they call "education" or "sophistication." And this is why they feel no need to condescend to the level of those who disagree with them, since we are not just a priori wrong, but evil, misguided, and malevolent as well. These haters project their hatred into us, and then react to the hatred.

As recently as a few hundred years ago, mankind at large was mired in a slackless existence that hadn't changed all that much for the average geezer in thousands of years. It was war, famine, plague, tyranny, oppression, cruelty, poverty, illiteracy, backbreaking toil, early death, very bad smells, and repeat as unnecessary.

However, one place on earth took a great leap forward into the realm of slack, a realm that left wing medullards and proglodytes take for grunted today. The engine that drove this expansion of our slack was the free market, accompanied by its enablers -- i.e., necessary conditions -- such as private property, civil rights (founded upon the sanctity of the human person), and the rule of law.

Some say this slack doesn't really exist, that it's all a big con job by the powers that be, and that we are condemned to a world in which everything averages out to zero.

Thus, for example, the only way to have health insurance for all is to charge too much to some and not enough to others -- as if the problems of shortage and price aren't a result of government interference with the free market. Healthcare costs only began spinning out of control after massive state interference in the marketplace.

Linear-thinking leftists never understand the non-linear system of incentives they are putting in place when they enact complex legislation, so they inevitably must introduce more legislation to deal with those baleful consequences. Never forget that the government programs of the 1960s were sold as a way to end poverty, not to make it a permanent feature to justify the need for more big government.

The penultimate lie of the left -- following on the heels of absolute relativity -- is that the state is the source of our slack, or that it can even create slack, which is an intrinsic metacosmic heresy. Look at Obama's oft-cited claim that he created or saved X number of jobs. But the government can only "create" jobs by taking money out of the job-creating private sector, so he is truly selling us false slack, an entirely meretricious something-for-nothing, or "turd made fresh."

The state can surely protect slack. In fact, that is the president's primary job. His oath is to preserve and protect the Constitution, which is the guarantor of our unencumbered pursuit of slack. But with FDR a line was crossed, and people began looking to the state as the source of slack, and we can all see what has resulted.

When people depend upon the state for their slack, the pool of slack is gradually dissipated in one way or another. For the state only has three sources of slack: taxation, printing money (as if slack grows on trees!), or borrowing. Two of these come down to outright theft, while the third is simply deferred theft from future generations. My son will have less slack because of Obama's larcenous actions today.

The bottom lyin' is that Obama is trying to increase the slack of the takers by stealing it from the makers. This will never work, because in the real slack-generating economy, nothing happens until someone sells something -- until there is a voluntary exchange of value resulting in an increase in slack for both parties.

But in the anti-slack world of the left, nothing happens until the government forcibly takes something from someone. Thus, the whole foul enterprise is rooted in involuntary transactions masquerading as slack.

However, this can't go on forever, because the problem with leftism is that you eventually run out of other people's slack.

14 comments:

Open Trench said...

Great post, Bob. You are second only to Theodore K the Bomber in your ability to rip Lefty a new one. The Manifesto does you slightly better, I'm afraid.

I am not being entirely sarcastic; I just read Obamacare and I am appalled at this complicated and unfair fiasco.

Either go single payer or don't. Anything in the middle is offensive to the principle of efficiency.

As usual the indigent will be too drunk or lazy to apply for anything, let alone put in a tax claim. What a joke.

I get my supply of slack from the Government and I find it to be of high quality, but I also keep a supplier on the side too. Each citizen should cultivate slack from all sources, and each citizen should have a mantra to chant.

Can't have too much slack.

John Lien said...

I get my supply of slack from the Government and I find it to be of high quality

You're welcome.

I can't really talk. My employment is based on the fact that the FDA requires such extensive, redundant, clinical trials from Big Pharma.

So, thank you, inflated-price drug purchasers out there.

mushroom said...

Yes, we all have to adapt to the existing environment. But the point is that the slack in the government sponge is not going to disappear. Even Warren Buffet doesn't have a room full of gold like Scrooge McDuck. He only has assets. Gates doesn't have 54 billion in Benjamins in the basement vault. All the assets these guys have are doing something.

The reason corporations like Google and Bank of America like big centralized government is because it cuts down on the competition. They have the lobbyists, contacts and resources to get the regulatory exemptions and legislative loopholes written in specifically for their benefit.

ted said...

Bob, you've ended my love affair with Obama, and got me to start a new one with Harry Nilsson. Oh the fickle ones.

julie said...

Linear-thinking leftists never understand the non-linear system of incentives they are putting in place when they enact complex legislation, so they inevitably must introduce more legislation to deal with those baleful consequences.

Along those lines, and also related to the other day's remarks regarding complementarity and inequality, I'm reminded again of the distinction between male and female, who are necessarily different from each other, and the effects leftism has had on reducing marriage, fertility, and traditional families.

Gagdad Bob said...

Ted:

Nilsson is a national treasure -- the American Beatle, for sure. I sprung for the Big Box, and am still making my way through it. I'm hoping the new biography will place his later albums in context, and help the listener get more out of them, since they are regarded as lesser works by most Harryheads.

Gagdad Bob said...

I think the trick is to take the later works on their own terms, and not compare them to the magical early ones -- just as it's not helpful to compare the Sinatra of the 1970s to the Sinatra of the 1950s.

Gagdad Bob said...

Similarly, I wasn't able to appreciate 69-72 Elvis until I forgot about 54-60 Elvis.

Open Trench said...

Here's what a raving Luddite had to say about conservatives.

Not that I buy in, but it does generate some thought.

"The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of
traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological
progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that
you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the
economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other
aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably
break down traditional values."

Rebuttals?

Gagdad Bob said...

This moron is reversing cause and effect. Positive change is a consequence of traditional values. This has always been understood by conservative classical liberals, most especially, our founders. Neither democracy nor free markets will function with the wrong values, i.e., the values of the left.

Gagdad Bob said...

For details, see Prager's Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

mushroom said...

That's the problem with the label "conservative". I just want freedom for myself and everyone else. I want people to be able to make their own choices, win, lose or draw. The government's only role in a healthy republic -- which ours is not, is to act as an impartial referee.

Only "good" people are capable of maintaining such an open society. When families are destroyed by government policy and traditional venues of inculcating values are marginalized or taken over by the irresponsible, the system will break down. The result will be tyranny in one form or another. It has very little to do with whether we travel by horseback or jetpack.

Gagdad Bob said...

The virtues do not evolve. They are the low-entropy carriers that make high-entropy change possible.

Open Trench said...

I am hearing from you technology and economic growth are not harmful to traditional American values, but instead are a product of them.

I would tend to agree with that. I see some intact families deeply immersed in the information age and all it brings.

I also see intact and happy families that by your criteria are deeply pathological, in that the parents are Democrats, voted for Obama, etc.

To be honest Bob, I haven't seen or heard evidence at the community/families level that Obama or the Democrats have any significant negative influence on children or society. It might be happening where I can't see or hear it but I do get around.

Since you are alleging actual harm, I was wondering if you could talk about individuals who, in your first-hand knowledge (i.e., you talk directly to them) have been harmed?

I am ready to believe, but ask only you "show me the money" so to speak.

Thank you.

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