Topic: Thoughts on the Politicization of Absolutely Everything

[Glock32]

I ran across another very good article at a site I have not previously visited, Chicago Boyz.  Do read the comments too, there are some very good ones.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44037.html

Thoughts on the Politicization of Absolutely Everything

by David Foster


One reason why American political dialog has become so unpleasant is that increasingly, everything is a political issue.  Matters that are life-and-death to individuals…metaphorically life-and-death, to his financial future or the way he wants to live his life, or quite literally life-and-death…are increasingly grist for the political mill. And where that takes us is that:

People who disagree with your agenda are “attacking” you or “robbing” you.  How commonly do you hear dissent described in precisely those terms nowadays?

When the government controls everything, there is no constructive relief valve for all this pent-up tension.  It all boils down to a “historic” election once every couple of years, upon whose outcome everything depends.  They’re all going to be “historic” elections from now on.  That’s not a good thing.   (link)

I’m reminded of something Arthur Koestler wrote, in his great novel Darkness at Noon.  Rubashov, the protagonist, is a dedicated Communist who has been arrested during the Stalin purges of the 1930s.  (Although Stalin is never named in the novel, he is only referred to as “Number One.”)  During the interval between his arrest and his execution, Rubashov has plenty of time for thought and reflection:

A short time ago, our leading agriculturist, B., was shot with thirty of his collaborators because he maintained the opinion that nitrate artificial manure was superior to potash. No. 1 is all for potash; therefore B. and the thirty had to be liquidated as saboteurs. In a nationally centralized agriculture, the alternative of nitrate of potash is of enormous importance: it can decide the issue of the next war.  If No. I was in the right, history will absolve him, and the execution of the thirty-one men will be a mere bagatelle. If he was wrong…

Rubashov of course was incorrect in his assertion that “If No. I was in the right, history will absolve him, and the execution of the thirty-one men will be a mere bagatelle”…even if the dictator had been correct on this specific issue, the system of top-down rule and suppression of dissent absolutely ensured that there would be other issues, with potential for equally or even more disastrous outcomes, on which he would be wrong, and his wrongness would guarantee catastrophe.

When everything is centralized, the temptation to deal with dissent in a draconian manner becomes overwhelming.  Just as Rubashov (at that stage in his thought process) justified Stalin’s ruthless suppression of dissenters on agricultural policy, so do many American “progressives” today seek the silencing of  those who disagree with their ideas. It will not be surprising if they escalate their demands to insist that dissenters should not only lose their jobs or be imprisoned, but should actually be killed.

Of the many excellent reader comments (including one from Fran Porretto), this one was particularly good:

Veryretired Says:
July 9th, 2014 at 8:37 pm
Collectivism is a religious movement, a Christian heresy, in many ways, even though it is usually hostile to traditional religious beliefs. Once a person grasps that central element, then the endless lunacies carried out in its name, and in pursuit of the earthly paradise it promises, become comprehensible.

It is the gnostic element of collective dogma that underlies the smugness and arrogant superiority that characterizes their attitudes. Collectivists truly believe that they possess “hidden wisdom” akin to the mystery cults that once infested the Roman Empire, and which reared its head again in the Gnostic heresy during the early Christian era.

Marx talked about turning Hegel on his head, but in fact he was merely another of the acolytes of the European philosophical school of the 19th century that created endless idealistic and animating forces to power and explain society. There were any number of others, and their intellectual and cultural heritage was the gruesome collection of political monstrosities that blossomed in the 20th century to plague mankind, literally, in a way not seen since the “Black Death”.

Collectivists cannot comprehend the truth of Acton’s warning about power, and are fated, inevitably, to prove its validity over and over again.

There are several millennial cults which have predicted the second coming, even giving the date and time of the final judgment, and then either withered or struggled desperately to recover from their failed predictions.

We can see this same pattern again and again in the various permutations of collectivist ideology when they gain power and confidently predict the imminent arrival of their perfect society, only to cast about in a panic of increasingly hysterical scapegoating when one calamity after another results from their policies.

Collectivist ideas fail because they are not of this earth, much as so many religious and other magical forms of thinking fail when confronted with a stubborn reality of physical and economic laws, and the actual composition of human nature instead of their fantasized “collectivist” nature.

The increasingly vicious and brutal aspects of collectivist regimes are a result of the same mindset that allowed inquisitors to torture and burn in the name of the preacher who gave us the
Sermon on the Mount, confidant they were doing god’s work as their victims screamed and begged.

So too do the disciples of the collective shrug at the mountains of corpses their comrades have left across the globe, justified by their faith they were serving the common good, and building the socialist utopia that was just around the corner, once everybody got in line.

Why is everything politicized? Because everything, and everyone, belongs to the collective.

Resistance is futile.

[Pandora]

Good find, Glock.  T'anks.

[Libertas]

Read CB posts before, this is one of their better offerings, not sure how many hits they get, first time I found them I think it was one of those forays into the rabbit hole where you chase one link after another....I forget when or what but their name stuck with me.

As for real life and death, plenty of that coming I think...

[Weisshaupt]

via IMAO



This is the problem. Politics has now become a winner take all game for every aspect of our lives, and the LEFT want it to be that way.
All of us must be willing to sacrifice ourselves to get this Scorpion Free Shyt Army off our backs, and fundamentally hte left just doesn't think we will do it.
After ll, if the situation was reversed they would be too cowardly to try so they assume we are.