Pretenses To Ignorance

     On many an occasion when someone says “I don’t know why...” or “I’m not sure why...” and concludes with some unpleasant observation, it’s equivalent to saying “I don’t want to know.” When the unpleasant observation pertains to a person or a group thereof, the speaker’s agony can be very nearly visible.

     There are many things we’d rather not know. Why there is evil. Why the things we value are inherently scarce. Why the speed of light is a limiting condition. Why the observance of so many holidays is now on Monday, such that garbage collection is canceled. But we do know the reasons for those things, and pretending that we don’t, or that we’re uncertain about them, is a hindrance to analysis and planning.

     Less than a month back I noted Andrew Cuomo’s plaint to President Trump about the recent limitation on the federal deductibility of state and local taxes:

     New York Governor Andrew Cuomo requested a meeting with President Trump over tax reform that he claims is hurting his state’s revenue. He went whining about New Yorkers leaving for Florida where taxes are cheaper. Cuomo could, of course, lower taxes and stop giving free everything to foreigners in the country illegally. His meeting turned into a lecture on fracking and late-term abortion, and he came back empty-handed.

     The leftist Democrat went to discuss a $10,000 cap on the on federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). Cuomo is citing the provision for a drop in over $2 billion in tax revenue.

     THE PRESIDENT TELLS HIM TO LOWER TAXES, FRACK AND STOP KILLING BABIES

     “I told the president myself today: SALT repeal is hurting us. And if you hurt New York, you’re harming the economic engine of the nation,” he bragged after the meeting.

     New York State is losing tax revenue because high earners are leaving the state. Mind you, New York State has been losing population for quite some time. The major reasons are high taxes, an unfriendly business environment, and young New Yorkers seeking out less expensive climes. Cuomo knows that the “SALT repeal” is a marginal factor, as it’s been in force for only one year. President Trump, a lifelong New Yorker whose business is operated from a Manhattan headquarters, knows it too.

     But for political reasons Cuomo must pretend otherwise. It chafes him that President Trump refuses to play along. Trump has never been one to let others save face by shifting the blame for their choices onto his shoulders. Cuomo knows that too, or should have.

     Are you in any real doubt about the Left’s agenda for the United States? I’m not. Their sole priority is power. They’ll sacrifice anyone and any value to gain and increase their power. It couldn’t be simpler. But a lot of highly placed Republicans in Congress pretend that they can’t understand their adversaries’ behavior. Who gains from the pretense?

     Anthropological and sociological verities are similar. Why are black-heavy neighborhoods crime-ridden and impoverished compared to nearby white enclaves? Blacks are more predisposed to aggression than whites, and aggression makes it difficult and dangerous to run a business where they predominate. But maintaining the pretense that “we’re all exactly alike” is more important to a lot of people than acknowledging the well-confirmed facts and acting on them.

     Then there’s economics. Great God in heaven, economics! The pretenses there are beyond enumeration. We know that no good or service can be free of cost. We know there’s no reliable relationship between the price of a good and its cost of production. We know that beyond a certain magnitude of intrusion upon the freedom to produce and trade, businesses will haul stakes. We know that rewarding a behavior will elicit more of it, while penalizing that behavior will cause it to decrease. But politicians pretend otherwise; their antisocial occupation requires it.

     Pretenses such as the above can be mortally harmful to a society. Ours is tottering. But those who maintain the pretenses are indisposed to relinquish them, at least publicly.

     Allow me to quote you the concluding passage from a book: Dreams Come Due, first edition, by “John Galt:”

     The future (of what is left of freedom) depends upon the producers’ changing the direction of America, while they still outnumber the parasites who live from their efforts.
     In closing I would like to wish you:
     HAPPINESS,
     which will depend on your giving up illusions of justice in law, taxes, regulation and monetary affairs, and reality in government;
     SUCCESS,
     which will depend on your refusal to buy any bond or other form of debt instrument denominated in currency as opposed to money, and a personal dedication to reality at all times;
     WEALTH,
     which will unfortunately depend on successful speculation and exchanging your currency for precious metals (money) to protect you against empty government promises of stopping inflation; and most important;
     FREEDOM,
     which is waiting to be reclaimed by its rightful owner (you) if you will take personal responsibility in helping to control government (and envy) by cutting its supply of your currency and credit, and limiting its power to the legitimate functions for which it was originally formed.

     That’s the vision of a capable analyst whose eyes are unclouded by pretense. It’s the attitude of a man who knows what’s what: that force cannot create, but only destroy; that the differences among persons and classes of persons are real and cannot be papered over; and that by allowing the federal government to ignore our Constitution we have permitted exactly the sort of tragedy the Founding Fathers composed it to forestall. Realism with a capital R.

     It’s time for that, I think.

Quickies: The 21st Century Goebbels Brigade

     You might be interested in the “Sad Puppies” controversy in the world of science fiction, or not. You might have been interested at one time, but have grown tired of it. One way or another, it’s still in progress:

     The Morlocks seem not to realize that everyone not of their particular camp is repelled rather than attracted to stupid lies. Intelligent people are repelled because of the stupidity and honest people are repelled because of the dishonesty.

     Of course, I may be too optimistic. For what if this behavior is purposeful, not the product of incompetence? It takes a particularly neurotic, morbid, and cynical sort of self-hatred to voice a lie one knows has no chance to be believed, but to utter it anyway, knowing your fellow neurotics will be attracted to the siren song of morbid cynicism. If they are doing such a thing on purpose, one wonders at the psychology.

     http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/sad-puppies-2015-hugo-awards-20150814

     ....I invite the readers to list the half-truths and full out lies involved here.

     This contretemps remains important for several reasons:

• It is emblematic of the Left’s determination to control all expressive media.
• It demonstrates their hatred of facts and their preference for slander and vilification.
• It lays bare their disdain for the standards of morality and ethics honored by the rest of us.

     That such persons should claim to labor in the name of “justice” is the greatest verbal perversion I can imagine. Orwell never coined a better one. But then, as Hayek has observed, attaching the word “social” to any wholesome thing automatically inverts its meaning, transforming it from a virtue to be pursued to a poisoned stiletto thrust at the heart of Christian-Enlightenment civilization.

     Wright continues:

     I do not mind lies, if told for good reasons, like a thief trying to win my trust in order to rob me. The lying thief at least has a proper human respect for private property. He merely wants it to be his, rather than mine. But lies told for no reason, a lie that no one would believe, a lie about a column where anyone could click the link, see what was written, and know it was a lie — what is the point or purpose of that?

     Indeed, as barefaced and easily refuted as their lies are, they keep on with the tactic. Why? Because they hope to beat us down, to weary us so completely that we surrender the field to them rather than continue to fight.

     Do not surrender the field. There is no more important battle than the battle for the primacy of truth: facts over opinions, reason over shrieking irrationality, and tempered argument that accepts no other ingredients, with true justice – the defense and maintenance of rights – as the outcome.

The Perils Of Op-Ed: An End-Of-Year Reflection

As I’ve been doing this since 1997, you might think I’ve had both the time and the inclination to ask myself “What the BLEEP! are you doing, moron?” at least once since then. And yes, I have, on occasion, wondered why putting these pieces out as regularly as I usually do is important enough to me to spend an average of an hour and a half each day writing and posting them.

The matter becomes especially puzzling when I find myself with little or nothing to say...no subjects of compelling interest uppermost in my thoughts.

Well, we all have our little foibles. Among mine is a need to say those things that, in my sometimes exclusive opinion, need to be said but aren’t being said by others. It’s equal parts a belief in my own powers of expression and a commitment to Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

(Excuse me? No, I don’t wear that any more. The tights no longer fit, and capes have been out of style for decades. Besides, ever since that encounter with gold kryptonite...oh, never mind.)

Still, it’s healthful to ask oneself “Why am I doing this?” about everything one does, at least now and then, and to ponder the soundness of the answers. Especially this business of opinion-mongering. Who’s listening? What effect am I having on him? Am I happy about that effect? Would I change it if I could, and if so, how?

In case you’re curious, Liberty’s Torch, like Eternity Road before it, on average welcomes about 300 readers per day. That’s an estimate rather than a measurement, as it’s founded on Blogger’s “page load” counter and a typical ratio of about 3.3 page loads to one unique visitor. It’s not a particularly large readership, but if the comments that arrive here are any guide, it’s a passionate one. I appreciate it greatly, am pleased to have it, and will happily feed it prose until I become physically, mentally, or emotionally unable to continue.

In part, I do this for you, Gentle Reader. But only in part.

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Not long ago, in my little non-fiction book An Indie Writer’s Odyssey, I wrote:

Cruising SmashWords for reading material—hey, I can’t spend all my time writing these sententious pieces—I’ve noted about two dozen writers who’ve described themselves as “best-selling.” Inasmuch as I read four or five books per week and I’d never heard of any of them before, it occurred to me that others might find this appellation as mysterious as “award-winning,” and as worthy of explication.

Many, many periodicals maintain “best-seller lists.” Which organ you read will determine which of them you’re familiar with. New Yorkers tend to think of the New York Times and the list that appears in its Sunday Book Review section, and indeed, for a considerable spate of years I was unaware that other “best-seller lists” existed anywhere. But there are many; pick up the regional dailies from other cities and you’ll find one in each—and the books listed there aren’t guaranteed to match those listed in the Times.

It’s legitimate, albeit barely, to deem oneself a “best-selling writer” if one has ever-so-briefly occupied the #20 slot on the best-seller list of the Rat’s-Ass, Nebraska Rumor and Stink: circulation 23, motto: “Road Kill Pics Page One Above-The-Fold.” After all, the Rumor and Stink—a fine publication, really; their coverage of homosexual necrophiliac bestiality scandals is unequaled by any periodical outside Zimbabwe—has a perfect right to publish whatever sort of nonsense it deems “newsworthy,” guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of these United States. But to grasp the full significance of being one of the R&S’s “best-selling writers” requires a bit more information:

• How is the list composed? Does the publication solicit sales figures nationally, regionally, or only from very local sellers? Does it include books sold over the Internet, and books distributed in electronic form? Does it even bother with sales figures? “Best-selling” doesn’t have to mean “Most-selling.”
• Does the list deliberately exclude certain categories of books? It’s been the case since Gutenberg that if all category restrictions are removed, the best-selling book is the Bible, and in places 2 though 10 are various cookbooks.
• How often is the list updated? A list updated once per week will show results quite different from those of a list updated once per year—especially since most booksellers don’t keep sales figures around for that long.
• Does the list have an agenda? That is, does it exist primarily to promote the works of certain writers, or of writers in the publication’s area of circulation? Does it exist to push works with a particular social, cultural, or political slant? Oftentimes these little qualifications won’t be mentioned even in the small print.

The relevance, just in case you’re wondering, is this: Writers of all sorts write to be read. We yearn to be read. Some among us would sell their children into slavery for a single week on the Times best-seller list. (I can’t: I don’t have any of my own, and the C.S.O. has steadfastly refused to “lend” me hers.) To be read is to receive confirmation that one has said something that others have found valuable, or at least temporarily diverting. That’s why so many of those SmashWords writers describe themselves as “best-selling,” whether honestly or not: by telling a potential reader that many others have read their works, they’re hoping to induce him to join that “multitude.”

The genesis is, of course, a desire for significance: importance to others. Everyone wants to be significant to others, even if negatively so. Why do you think serial killers put so much effort into what they do?

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Most of us who blather on the Web don’t get anything for it. I certainly don’t. But then, I would reject an offer of compensation, for a simple reason: He who pays the piper calls the tune. The moment my incentives are altered by accepting money for my opinions, I’ll start to think about what might affect those payments. As long as I do this entirely because I want to do it, I’ll be free to say what I damned well please.

(By the way, note how this contrasts with my perfect willingness to accept payment for my fiction. That’s entertainment, a wholly different business.)

But the perils of op-ed don’t begin and end with keeping the paychecks (if any) coming. Indeed, that might not be the worst of them. There’s a constant temptation to ask oneself “What do my readers want me to say?”

If you succumb to the lure of telling people, however defined, what you think they want to hear, how can you claim to be of any importance to them? You’re pandering: feeding their opinions back to them, whether out of a hope for approbation or fear of negative feedback. Indeed, it’s worse than that: in suppressing your own sincere convictions, you’re doing your readers a disservice, by denying them the possibility of learning something from you, even if it’s only how passionate they are about their own convictions.

I’ve said some massively unpopular things in my years writing for the Web. The feedback has cost me a couple of friends. It’s occasionally blown me (temporarily) out of pixels. But in retrospect I don’t regret a word of it...and I’ve learned how important it is not to let such feedback throw me off my stride.

Either you honestly believe what you’ve written and have written it for that reason above all others, or you’re deceiving your readers in search of some extrinsic reward. There is no middle ground.

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All that having been said, no matter what one says, one is always telling someone what he wants to hear. That’s another of the perils of op-ed: overvaluing the positive responses to one’s words.

Consider these two pieces:

• Mark Levin’s tirade about “blood on the Administration’s hands;”
• Melissa Melton’s outraged citation of the frequency of police homicides.

I shan’t dispute those writers’ assertions, nor shall I question the sincerity of their convictions. Yet ponder this: they’re telling some fraction of their readerships what they want to hear. How large is that fraction, and how important is it to those writers that they continue to receive approbation from it? Imagine that at some later time, evidence is presented to them that causes them to question the accuracy or the validity of their previous statements. Would they react honestly, or would they succumb to the temptation to wave it aside without a rigorous examination and evaluation?

In our time you cannot avoid telling some what they want to hear, and others the exact opposite. If that matters to you more than the accuracy of your observations and the validity of your conclusions, you’re either pandering today or will pander tomorrow. In other words, you’ve abandoned honesty in favor of popularity.

Popularity matters most to pop stars and politicians. That’s not an outright condemnation of popularity. Ask Bill de Blasio how important it is to retain the approval of certain groups. Then ask yourself whether you’d be willing to sacrifice your personal integrity for popularity, as virtually every politician of our day seems to feel he must.

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The Year of Our Lord 2015 is almost upon us. I intend to keep on as I’ve been doing. If you approve, fine. If not...fine! I receive nothing for my labors here, and I intend that it shall always be so. (Of course, it helps that I don’t need money, but...well, it does help.) What you read here will always reflect exactly what I believe – and that will be founded on what I think I know. If you believe I’m wrong, I’ll give you the opportunity to convince me, provided you can do so without insulting me or denigrating something I value.

As with insults and denigrations, so also with appeals to authority. I reject all such “arguments.” Anyway, a great many of them are fabrications. As Socrates said to Confucius during one of their televised debates, “Dude! Don’t go putting words in the mouths of historical figures.” (Confucius’s reply that “They don’t let you put stuff on the Internet that isn’t true!” was ruled out of bounds by moderator Zoroaster.)

There are many temptations in the world. Fortunately, I can resist those of op-ed. As for the others, Don’t Ask!

Happy New Year from your Curmudgeon Emeritus!