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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Deploracism

Today's attempt at witticism is to coin a new word:

deploracism




noun
1.a belief or doctrine that certain worldviews held by various groups of people in the United States determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that the progressive worldview is superior and has the right to dominate or that the worldview held by white male conservatives/libertarians is inferior to the others and deplorable.
2.a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine;discrimination.
3.hatred or intolerance of white male conservatives/libertarians.
This was taken from the dictionary.com definition of racism and modified very slightly. Whereas racism is considered evil by many, deploracism is wholeheartedly embraced by the ruling class and considered to be the height of morality by that class to the point that a presidential candidate (Clinton) enthusiastically noted that her opponent's supporters were a "basket of deplorables." That statement was quickly defended and embraced by many mainstream media outlets. For example, from the venerable NY Times: "What Clinton said was impolitic, but it was not incorrect."
No, probably not incorrect, but it does leave a problem. There are an awful lot of us deplorables and it might not be terribly easy to dominate and oppress us. To have a large part of the population at odds with right thinking people is likely to tear the country apart. It might be possible to find compromises that would allow everybody, even the deplorables, to peacefully coexist, but the rampant deploracism embraced by the ruling elites excludes that possibility.
Angelo M. Codevilla, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of International Relations at Boston University, believes that the conflict between the elites and deplorables has ended the United States that was once a constitutional republic:
Over the past half century, the Reagan years notwithstanding, our ruling class’s changing preferences and habits have transformed public and private life in America. As John Marini shows in his essay, “Donald Trump and the American Crisis,” this has resulted in citizens morphing into either this class’s “stakeholders” or its subjects. And, as Publius Decius Mus argues, “America and the West” now are so firmly “on a trajectory toward something very bad” that it is no longer reasonable to hope that “all human outcomes are still possible,” by which he means restoration of the public and private practices that made the American republic. In fact, the 2016 election is sealing the United States’s transition from that republic to some kind of empire.
I've noted in the past that I've felt that I've gone from citizen to serf in my lifetime and Codevilla's description of those like me as subjects is close enough - I'm definitely NOT a stakeholder:
In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class's chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.
As noted above, there's nothing new in the stakeholders considering us deplorable. In fact, deploracism is the unifying core of Progressive politics:
Progressivism’s programs have changed over time. But its disdain for how other Americans live and think has remained fundamental. More than any commitment to principles, programs, or way of life, this is its paramount feature. The media reacted to Hillary Clinton’s remark that “half of Trump’s supporters could be put into a ‘basket of deplorables’” as if these sentiments were novel and peculiar to her. In fact, these are unremarkable restatements of our ruling class’s perennial creed. [...]
If trying to persuade irredeemable socio-political inferiors is no more appropriate than arguing with animals, why not just write them off by sticking dismissive names on them? Doing so is less challenging, and makes you feel superior. [...]
Hillary Clinton’s attack on Trump supporters merely matched the ruling class’s current common sense. Why should government workers and all who wield the administrative state’s unaccountable powers not follow their leaders’ judgment, backed by the prestige press, about who are to be treated as citizens and who is to be handled as deplorable refuse? Hillary Clinton underlined once again how the ruling class regards us, and about what it has in store for us.
Being one of the deplorable animals is an uncomfortable position to be in.
How far will our rulers go? Because their network is mutually supporting, they will go as far as they want.
Things have often turned out poorly for societies' deplorables and I suspect it will turn out poorly for us as well. The conflict will intensify and I believe that by the end of this century the United States will be unrecognizable and there will potentially be a lot of bloodshed, not only within our borders, but all over the world since the United States is still an important player in holding together western civilization.
We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.
I guess the good news is that I probably (hopefully) won't live to see the worst parts of the revolution. Too bad for future generations though.

29 comments:

Hey Skipper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hey Skipper said...

Whereas racism is considered evil by many, deploracism is wholeheartedly embraced by the ruling class and considered to be the height of morality by that class to the point that a presidential candidate (Clinton) enthusiastically noted that her opponent's supporters were a "basket of deplorables." That statement was quickly defended and embraced by many mainstream media outlets. For example, from the venerable NY Times: "What Clinton said was impolitic, but it was not incorrect."

That is where they are wrong, again and again and again.

Remember when I asserted racism is a word that should only be used by the appropriately licensed?

[Bret:] Well, I guess I wouldn't qualify for one of Hey Skipper's licenses to use the word racist.

Here is how to qualify. Racism is a form of groupism, which attributes to the individual putative characteristics of the group to which that individual is linked.

Harry’s diatribes against “gun nuts” are a perfect example. Some gun owners do nutty things with guns, therefore, every gun owner is a gun nut.

The problem is hiding in plain sight: groupism always (which means “as often as I can think of at the moment") involves a false syllogism*, and gets away with it by hiding one of the premises.

Harry, on gun nuts, implies, but does not state, the minor premise: Some gun owners do nutty things with guns. Every gun owner owns a gun. Therefore, all gun owners are gun nuts.


Without the false syllogism, there is no racism/sexism/homophobia, et al. Which means anyone making the charge in its absence is evidencing a complete failure of critical thought. Hillary!, in her deplorables moment, was doing just that. Worse, she fails to recognize that, by far, the chief purveyors of groupism come from the left.

That is why, rather than defend myself against the charge, I demand Harry, or the clown car that is Crooked Timber, justify themselves. And, without exception, they can't. Actual any of the deplorable-isms is so rarely found that, outside the fever swamps of a couple websites, their advocates can scarcely be found.

Want to help stop the plague? Get in their face. Every. Time.

(Completely, and I do mean totally completely off topic, I think I just figured out that the process for determining a valid syllogism is precisely the same as dimensional analysis in an engineering equation. The classic example of a syllogism is: All Men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal. Abbreviated, and arranged as subject-object: M/m, S/M :: S/m. Bret and Clovis will recognize what I'm getting at here: Men/mortal, Socrates/Man -- man cancels, leaving S/m. As it happens, part of the interview process at FedEx was to separate valid from invalid syllogisms. No kidding.)

erp said...

... part of the interview process at FedEx ...

For pilots or for all employees?

Hey Skipper said...

I've noted in the past that I've felt that I've gone from citizen to serf in my lifetime ...

That journey requires doing nearly unimaginable violence to the word "serf".

Hey Skipper said...

erp: pilots, so far as I know.

erp said...

Skipper, I can do more than imagine being a serf because like Bret, I feel we are now at the mercy of our rulers who control every aspect of our lives and can swoop down through their multitudinous agencies and take away not only our freedom, but our homes and savings if we don't toe the party line.

Clovis said...
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Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

---
[Bret] I've noted in the past that I've felt that I've gone from citizen to serf in my lifetime ...

[Skipper] That journey requires doing nearly unimaginable violence to the word "serf".
---

Considering the USA once had slavery and real slaves, I get your point, Skipper. Yeah, maybe Bret doth protest too much.

Or maybe not. After all, to the extent your freedom is guaranteed only if you hide behind shadows in order to not be crushed, is it freedom?

I also do not think the line above is true for the USA, AFAIK. But it sure is true for Brazil, for example.

So at which point serfdom status is recognized? Does it need to be a physical one, or a psychological one is enough (where your freedom is permeated by fear of losing it)?


Harry Eagar said...

Even the gun owners who do not do crazy things with their guns often subscribe to the NRA, which does nothing it advocate for gun nuttery.

And it's not like, say, disagreeing over tax policy. Little kidsare getting killed. Dead is dead.

It isn't even possible to get the supposedly not crazy gun nuts to deplore that. I know. I've tried

erp said...

Harry, perhaps you could rephrase your last comment or one of the guys could decode it for me. You seem to be saying that little kids are getting killed by the NRA.

In inner cities from sea to shinning sea, kids and adults of all ages are getting killed by violence in their neighborhoods with and without guns and tax policy has done more violence to kids and other living things than guns nuts could ever hope to do.

Got anything to say about that?

erp said...

Big Brother is the problem, not the NRA.

Hey Skipper said...

I support the NRA.

More little kids get killed by drowning than guns. Dead is dead. Yet the anti-gun zealots won't stir a hair in their heads to eliminate the scourge of children that is the backyard swimming pool.


[Clovis:] Or maybe not. After all, to the extent your freedom is guaranteed only if you hide behind shadows in order to not be crushed, is it freedom?

No government, anywhere has ever not abused power in one way or another, at one time or another.

That said, I'm having a hard time thinking what it would take for me to become the target of official ire that wasn't patently unsafe, hurt someone else, or amounted to fraud.

Yes, I am sure if digging went deeply enough, it would be possible to find the odd exception. But that doth not serfdom make.

Harry Eagar said...

Do I have anything to say about that? I do, as a matter of fact.

Your fantasy past never existed. As Lewis Thomas wrote of training as a doctor in the 30s, there was rheumatic fever on every poor street. About 20% of poor kids got it then.



Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] [erp, your] fantasy past never existed.

Perhaps you could quote erp to the effect of what fantasy past she is appealing to. I can't find it.

More little kids get killed by drowning than guns. Dead is dead. Yet the anti-gun zealots won't stir a hair in their heads to eliminate the scourge of children that is the backyard swimming pool.

I notice your hair remains notably unstirred. Why?

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
That said, I'm having a hard time thinking what it would take for me to become the target of official ire that wasn't patently unsafe, hurt someone else, or amounted to fraud.
---

Should I take from this affirmation that Erp, Bret and Howard's perceived slights against their freedoms is a figment of their imagination?

I can see that Harry thinks so, yet he is on the opposite political spectrum. Since your views match many of the other contributors of this blog, what's your take here?

erp said...

Harry, are you really saying that the filthy rich didn't die of all the many ills that prevailed in the bad old days before vaccines? Vaccines, BTW, which are now eschewed by the elites who have gone so far as to reverse the rule that school children must have their "shots" before entering the public school system giving these diseases a new lease on life.

When I went to meet my newest grandchild two years ago, I had to have booster shot for pertussis because it was rampant in the San Francisco area -- and possibly elsewhere as well.

Harry, mazel tov -- you and your cohort are really a piece of work.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Should I take from this affirmation that Erp, Bret and Howard's perceived slights against their freedoms is a figment of their imagination?

"Figment of their imagination" is too strong.

Take erp's reference to Big Brother. Yes, that happened. And perhaps for a good reason: "Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation."

Or not. Either way it is not, as alleged in the story, an invasion of privacy: "The investigative tactic concerns privacy and guns-rights advocates, who call it an invasion of privacy." No, it isn't. Not even close. Moreover, the tactic doesn't yield anything that doesn't already come from the paperwork required to buy a gun (yes, even at gun shows). Worse, it is more likely an own goal. By swamping themselves with data, all most all of it useless, they are just as likely to hurt themselves as help.

Also, I think it raises real issues of proportion. If a license plate reader recording publicly available information is intolerable, then how should we think of stop-and-frisk?

Similarly, I don't find Bret's objections persuasive. From one of his posts on the subject, "I've gone from citizen to serf. I've gone from consenting to be governed to being governed because of the state's monopoly on violence." Since one of the prerequisites for a functioning state is it's monopoly on violence, then that is a completely worthless criterion for assessing serfdom. It is just as true of the US as North Korea. In which society is the word "serf" more resonant?

Not a hard question, and the difference has nothing to do with the state's monopoly on violence.

And yes, the rich and influential get a better deal than the rest of us. But just like the monopoly on violence, that is true of all human societies ever. The question is whether that difference, in the US, is so egregious as to put the rest of us into serfdom.

Sure, it is easy to point out anecdotal affronts to our notions of liberty. Sure, the power to tax also entails the power to spend money very stupidly. Yes, the regulatory state needs trimming. But taking all those things together isn't even remotely like actual serfdom, unless one is to drain the word of all meaning.

Harry Eagar said...

Everybody died of infectious diseases, but the better-nourished, less overworked rich died at lower rates. In many cases, far lower rates.

A number of diseases (measles was one) had lost a great part of their lethality before a vaccine or antibiotics arrived. Better living conditions are suspected as the explanation.

The rich seldom suffered from rickets while in the slums over 90% of children did.





Clovis said...

Skipper,

----
And yes, the rich and influential get a better deal than the rest of us. But just like the monopoly on violence, that is true of all human societies ever. The question is whether that difference, in the US, is so egregious as to put the rest of us into serfdom.
----
Well, let me compare that with Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the USA:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Somehow, they failed to write 'the rich and influential shall get a better deal than everybody else'.

I was given the notion that American Exceptionalism was related to the 'all equal under the law' thing. Was it just a figment of the collective imagination?

If that was never the case, where else rests the American Exceptionalism, in your opinion?

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I was given the notion that American Exceptionalism was related to the 'all equal under the law' thing. Was it just a figment of the collective imagination?

Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution repealed human nature. And while it would be a fools errand to argue that the rich don't get treated exactly the same as the poor in the US, I think it very likely the difference is far less here than most places in the world, and not greater than any.

Equality under the law is a perfect ideal that reality can never live up to. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have it as an ideal, though.

If that was never the case, where else rests the American Exceptionalism, in your opinion?

American exceptionalism is solely down to one thing: adherence to a set of ideals, rather than any notion of nationality, race, creed, ethnicity, etc.

Of course, that set of ideals excludes certain things. One cannot believe, for example, in fundamentalist Islam and adhere to the enlightenment set of ideals laid out in DoI.

Which we would be wise to highlight every now and again.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
And while it would be a fools errand to argue that the rich don't get treated exactly the same as the poor in the US, I think it very likely the difference is far less here than most places in the world, and not greater than any.
---

Well, if so, I don't think the word "exceptional" means what you think it means.

Also, ideals which you are supposed to never live up to aren't "ideals", they are only ink over dead trees. After all, living by one ideals is what is supposed to be exceptional.

As an Air Officer, you took an oath to abide by the Constituttion. Why the heck did you pledge your life to something you don't believe in??

erp said...

Clovis, I don't like the term, American Exceptionalism* and I don't feel we are exceptional. I do think we share ideals in common and people from all over the world many of whom left everything familiar and dear to them to come here to share our equality under the law. In bygone days much more a reality, not perfect, as Skipper correctly points out, but pretty darn near so.

*And on Real Clear Politics, Robert Samuelson wrote that "the most interesting fact to surface in the ensuing debate over "American exceptionalism" is that the phrase was first coined by Putin's long-ago predecessor, Joseph Stalin." Sep 27, 2013

Harry, the "poor" kids in the U.S. today are still malnourished. Not because they are monetarily poor, but because they have no families to take care of them and their diet consists of junk food. The poor were, as were we all, far better off before the government took over their lives.

Hey Skipper said...

Off topic ...

No such thing as voter fraud?

Harry Eagar said...

Some people are slow learners. I would class anyone who, at this date, relies on O'Keefe that way. I note, simply, no evidence whatever to back up the allegation.

As for who may be deplorable, I nominate the Doraville patriots (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/13/three-percent-militia-georgia-muslim-mosque-isis-doraville) or perhaps the ones from Garden City (http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/15/kansas_terrorists_wanted_anti_muslim_attack_in_garden_city_to_end_in_bloodbath.html).

erp said...

... and here's the evidence

Harry Eagar said...

You do know O'Keefe fakes videos? Apparently not.

erp said...

Harry, you're projecting again. Faking vidoes is your side's stock-in trade.

erp said...

Part One as Promised.