The Progressive Death Spiral

In yesterday’s post we alluded to the causes of a death spiral in aviation, which results from the pilot instinctively responding to it with actions that amplify it.  

I asked my fine feathered friend how one exits the loop, and he said you have to ignore sensory information and “trust the instruments,” which generally involves doing the opposite of what the brain is telling you to do.

Now, I don’t have an inordinate interest in aviation, but I do want my pilot to have more than a passing interest. But we all have an interest in how the progressive brain responds to crises by making them worse -- which then justifies the next round of progressive “solutions.” It’s a brilliant scam, nor will it end until we hit the ground. It’s gotten to the point that we can actually make out the contours of the terrain below, but it doesn’t matter. The ship of state is not about to pull out now.

So many aphorisms:

Modern man resolves his problems with solutions worse than the problems.

The reformers of current society persist in decorating the cabins of a sinking ship.

With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.

Liberal ideas are congenial. Their consequences are disastrous. 

The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.

The leftist emulates the devout who continue venerating the relic after the miracle has been proved to be a hoax.

The liberal mentality is an angelic visitor impervious to earthly experiences. 

He is called a liberal who does not understand that he has sacrificed freedom until it is too late to save him.

Note that the progressive -- the tenured pilot -- is never adequately trained in instrument flying, so he systematically ignores the very data that would counter the death spiral. 

For example, there are instruments that inform us about crime, inflation, budget deficits, illegal border crossings, adolescent mental illness, post-vaccine excessive deaths, the Biden crime family influence-peddling scheme, a failed educational establishment at every level, etc.  

Now, some on the right believe the left knows all about the instruments, but not only doesn’t care about them, but actually wants to crash the plane — the old Cloward-Piven strategy. 

Whatever the case may be, it is rarely helpful to attack motives, as the left always does with us. But at the same time, it is rarely helpful to address their arguments, because a leftist cannot be “informed” with fact and logic, rather, must be deprogrammed, converted, and often exorcised.  

That we win every argument scarcely matters, for there is a religious component -- to be precise, an ideology that partakes of religious categories and impulses -- that cannot be confronted head on, as all readers know by now. 

Anyway, *coincidentally*, yesterday I read a passage by Lonergan that perfectly encapsulates our present civilizational nosedive:

For the flight from understanding blocks the insights that concrete situations demand. There follow unintelligent policies and inept courses of action. The situation deteriorates to demand still further insights, and as they are blocked, policies become more unintelligent and action more inept. What is worse, the deteriorating situation seems to provide the uncritical, biased mind with the factual evidence in which the bias is claimed to be verified (emphasis mine).

There you have it: the Obama-Brandon death spiral, a feedback mechanism of  ever-increasing amplification of stupidity into an ever-tightening spiral of deadly…. PROGRESS! 

Yes, anyone can see the progress, if only you ignore all the idiot lights flashing on the console.  

Now, what I did not know until reading this Reader is that Lonergan’s whole project was aimed at pulling us out of the death spiral of civilizational decline. But what if the plane has already broken into pieces before it has hit the ground? 

If that’s the case, there is no putting the pieces back together. Rather, each of us is just clinging to a fragment of the plane and hoping to remain airborne. Or maybe attempting to rebuild the plane in mid-descent, reminiscent of the Apollo 13 astronauts who had to improvise their way out of certain death while on board the craft.

It also reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire, for which elites tried to blame Christians. The more things change…. 

The question is, “How can human intelligence hope to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains?” 

Best I can do is keep you updated as I make my way through the book.