Who's the enemy? — even if we knew, would that help?

07 October 2020

In the United States, figuring out who's actually out to get us . . .

. . . is (apparently) just too difficult.

Instead, we wear our enemy's gang colors. Partisan gang membership gives our lives meaning.

This weird reversal of sound thinking would be sad, if its stupidity were not so obvious.

Consider three varied perspectives — all accurate — and all-encompassing

Peter Van Buren recently blew up the Democratic Party's pretense at virtue:

After four years of complaining Trump is an old, white, draft-dodging man linked to corruption, the best the Dem process could cough up was an even older, white, draft-dodging man linked to corruption.

The Lincoln Project stuck a similarly sharp screwdriver into the Republican eye. The Project excoriated Toddling Donny for superspreading his Klan with COVID, even after he knew that he was infected:

None were warned he was positive.

If Donald Trump doesn't care about these people closest to him . . . why should we think he cares about us?

Combining those two obliterations of allegedly opposing partisan virtue, Ted Rall added that:

While talking heads on CNN and columnists for the New York Times virtue-signal their concern for the latest murderous president [:]

policemen are shooting unarmed people of color in their cars and in their homes with impunity,

renters who lost their homes to the COVID-19 lockdown are being evicted,

unemployment benefits still haven’t been renewed,

[and]

people in the Middle East are getting blown up by Hellfire missiles . . . .

The moral? — Political gang membership prevents us from recognizing . . .

. . . who is actually out to get us.

It is a pity that more Americans cannot be aroused enough to take a look around. Instead, most of us wander around, shouting in (and into) emotional fogs.

This is by oligarchic design, of course. That design's success demonstrates how easily people are manipulated, just by tugging on their laziest and least insightful impulses.

Given characteristic human mindlessness, there seems to be no antidote to this truth.

That lamentable condition arguably demonstrates the wisdom of Burkean conservatism. Which, at its base, merely appoints authoritarian mechanisms and imaginary deities to lead herds of mindlessly gesticulating human sheep around.

Admittedly, I have trouble seeing traditional conservatism as constituting a path toward beneficent progress in governance and socioeconomic advancement.

On the other hand, after 7 decades, I am also convinced that humans are — for the most part, and certainly so in large numbers — incapable of genuine democracy and the self-aware self-discipline that is necessary to keep that form of governance running.

History is comprised of teaching us this lesson, over and over again.

Thus, one can see why spiritually insightful folk are attracted to the idea of some vaguely described original and eternally condemning sin.

In only mild contrast, scientifically minded folk merely see Homo sapiens as a particularly nasty and destructive species.

What is clear, is that both views take humanity to the essentially the same violent and characteristically oppressive end place. Way too many devils in our flock, by either evaluation.

This reminds of a Marine Corps tee shirt that an artillery officer once gave me:

"Kill for peace" — it said.

It was funny then. Still so, now.

Absurdity's core ironies (paradoxically) keep us upright and struggling in the storm.

PeteFree.com

Who's the enemy? — even if we knew, would that help?