The Columbia House Seduction

In the same way people can’t look away from a car crash, I’ve been watching a mix of videos of libs owning cons and cons owning libs, and I have exhibited the same pattern of behavior of most people when they experience such an incident. We first can’t help that our attention is consumed with the spectacle, immediately hope nobody was seriously hurt or killed, make a comment about the extent of the damage and almost immediately begin to theorize about the conditions of the people who were unfortunate enough to be involved, and as we drive away, start trying to explain how it happened with maybe thirty seconds of observation.

I would guess there is better than a 99% chance that whatever scenarios we cook up will be wrong.

I shared a clip from a talk by Peter Boghossian yesterday and that clip contained a statement that I have been completely unable to forget. He said, “It is better not to learn anything than to learn not only conclusions that are false, but methods that take you away from reality.”

Look, I know people who post such videos as I have been hooked on watching do so because it shows a win—nobody posts their “L’s” but setting aside that many of them show there are a lot of people out there who wouldn’t know a reasoned debate even if it walked up dressed as a Killer Clown for Outer Space and slapped them in the face, there is a pattern. Typically (not in every case) the con argues that the lib’s premise or defense ignores the truth and in the other case, the lib argues that the con’s truth is wrong (sometimes correctly).

But there is a difference between basing an argument on faulty information and just inventing a reality where you are correct.

Boghossian also posits that we have given people tools to create false images of reality through what he calls “standpoint epistemology”. This is defined as using “lived experience”, “my truth” or simple identity (I am a member of X group. Because I am X, I am always right and you are not allowed to question my position).

His illustration was that “Every single person knew what a woman was up until five minutes ago.”

If this situation was contained to casual debate or discussion, it could be ignored but unfortunately for all of us, that is not the case. Elected officials are making policy decisions and passing laws and regulations based on standpoint epistemology, encumbering people who live in the world where reality exists. Social influencers are changing mores to accommodate identity driven “logic”, emotional reasoning, and lies.

The premise that every idea and position is equally valid is ludicrous, but it is wrapped around the Marxist idea that there is no objective truth, history is worthless, and nobody should feel bad just because they are a moron with completely insane concepts of reality.

And that is where we are.

When honest debates are rendered impossible, power over the debate rules becomes the objective.

If you break down the primary enabling premise of any governing structure that takes power away from the individual, it always seems the control of reality is the goal—more accurately, it is the control of the perception of reality because reality is inherently logical and rational, it either is or is not.

This desire to evade reality begins with simple things. Denying the simple laws of economics, avoiding situations where someone’s feelings are hurt because they believe something stupid – and false, garnering support by telling people something can happen that can’t possibly happen, or that human nature can be changed by fiat seems to be some of the most historically popular seductions.

That is sort of the Columbia House “10 Records/Tapes/CD’s for $1” introductory level (those of you under 50 might have to look that one up) that seduces people to join up with ideology variants like “democratic socialism”.

Then it gets worse.

Progressively worse, if you will pardon the pun.

Just a couple of days ago, I repeated something that I have been saying for a very long time about “democratic socialism” and how it contains the inherent contradiction that while genuine democracy disperses decision-making among millions of individuals, all variants of socialism require central planners to make many of those economic decisions on society’s behalf, and if you are going to control economic decisions, you must also control behavioral decisions as well.

As people inevitably disagree over priorities like what should be produced, who should receive scarce resources, how wealth should be distributed, and which industries should be favored, planners must increasingly override individual choices to keep the plan intact. When citizens, businesses, or voters resist those decisions, governments face growing pressure to regulate, compel, and eventually restrict economic and political freedoms to preserve the plan.

In 1944, economist F.A. Hayek concluded that the more comprehensive socialist planning becomes, the less compatible it is with the individual liberty and open political competition that define a functioning democracy.

Hayek also noted that, in such governing schemes, “the plan” must not be questioned because the rank and file in the hinterlands might start to doubt it, and that means the end of free speech and in the end, of truth.

In other words, every baby step toward even the soft embrace of warm and fuzzy socialism ends in a forced wet kiss of autocracy as a matter of process. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but it will eventually happen.

Sooner or later the bill comes due.