Analyzing the Mind of the Left (pt. 3)

"One of the most insidious aspects of life under despotism is that it can create an existential ennui among the subject, a barely conscious layer of hopelessness and helplessness, which then becomes a tacit participation in allowing the despotism to continue."

First of all, Mr. Lewis, in his rush to dazzle you with his vernacular, misdefines "ennui." "Ennui" means boredom. What he meant to say was "malaise." That's the result of using a thesaurus in a vacuum without being sufficiently well-read to understand the contexts in which the word should be used. Ok, I'm nitpicking so let's move on...Let's crack these little nuts such as "existential ennui," ""barely conscious layer of hopelessness and helplessness," and "tacit participation allowing the depotism to continue." Again, "ennui" should be "malaise," but the use of the term "existential" is key to Lewis's point. The French existentialist, Albert Camus, is a hero of the Left. Camus joined the Algerian Communist Party in order to work politically towards expanding the rights of Algerians. Camus saw communism as a means to an end, but was never a devout Marxist-Leninist. Nevertheless, Camus' appeal to the Left arises from his commitment to revolting against one's state in life. Camus' philosophy, reduced to one sentence is: "Human beings are caught in a constant attempt to derive meaning from a meaningless world. This is the ‘paradox of the absurd’." Life is absurd because it has no meaning despite our heroic attempts to impose meaning on it without considering the possibility (and, in fact, dismissing out of hand the possibility) that life has no meaning at all. Without getting too far into the weeds, Camus believed that existential authenticity demands that we admit to ourselves that our plans and projects are for the most part hopeless and in vain – and struggle on regardless. This, for Camus, is existential revolt – to affirm the absurdity of life and continue. As Camus said:

"Revolt … is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity … [It] is certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation which ought to accompany it".

To sell his point, Camus used the attitude of revolt in the mythological figure of Sisyphus.

"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."

According to Camus, Sisyphus is heroic not because he suffers his fate, but because "he is superior to his fate." Sisyphus does not weep and lament his fate. Out of scorn for the gods who condemned him to this fate, he affirms his labor, and concludes that all is well. Fixing his eye on the stone at the bottom of the hill, he trudges down the slope to retrieve it. Camus says: "One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy."

To revolt is to affirm the absurdity of existence and continue. As Camus muses:

"It may be thought that suicide follows revolt – but wrongly. … [R]evolt gives value to life. … To a man devoid of blinders, there is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it." (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus).

(Note: Much of the above was plagiarized liberally from various websites on topic).

Lewis believes that the Egyptian people (pre-Jan. 25, 2011) were living in a state of abject existential malaise. They had very little meaning in their lives due to a natural reaction to 30 years of despotism (actually, the despotism predates Mubarak and his predecessor, Sadat. It goes all the way back to 1952 when the military deposed King Farouk-last scion of a 150 year dynasty, took over Egypt, and established a "republic" that was nothing more than a Soviet puppet-state. I assume that, since the original Egyptian revolution installed a communist-friendly regime that distanced itself from Russian influence only when President Sadat wisely decided to side with the US in the late '70s, Lewis doesn't want to tack on 28 more years to Egypt's history of oppression. In Lewis's mind, communism, by definition, can never be oppressive). In this barely conscious existence, the Egyptians knew they were oppressed, but had little motivation to throw off their chains. Then, according to Lewis, freedom surfaced ex nihilo in the malaise-stricken minds of the Egyptians and they knew a priori what path they needed to take towards democracy. Purely spontaneous, purely organic. Pure horse-hocky. Anyways, as the argument goes, the Egyptians have achieved existential authenticity by revolting and casting off the yoke of their oppressor. "I rebel; therefore, I exist" as Camus said.

The World is in a State of Utter Chaos...and There is No Way I Can Keep Up with It.

The Middle East is on fire. Every Arab nation with the exception of Saudi Arabia is in a state of revolt or at war. Our oil prices are about to skyrocket off the charts. Stateside, there are public union employee protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Illinois. Van Jones, the unions, and the other communist/socialist agitators are calling for protests in every state capital. There are a large number of protests scheduled for this Saturday. Meanwhile, while the public's attention is on the protests and the growing violence in Libya (and the potential increases in crude oil prices), the President and his Attorney General unilaterally decided that discrimination against gays is unconstitutional and any law discriminating in such a way is subject to heightened scrutiny. In short, the President, without any Supreme Court precedent or legislative action to support him, has decided, apparently, by executive fiat, that: 1) his Department of Justice will no longer defend the US government in lawsuits filed against the Defense of Marriage Act; and 2) that, the DOJ is going to subject state laws that discriminate against gays to the same standard that they use in prosecuting cases of discrimination on the basis of age, gender, and race. Said differently, the President is extending rights to a complete group of people based solely on their sexual orientation. It is rule by edict. King Obama has no qualms about circumventing the law when it doesn't comport with his political agenda. It is a spit in the face of judicial process and the legislature. Congressmen and the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court: you are now officially irrelevant.

By the way, this is the same President who, as a candidate, defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Why is he backtracking now? (More on that later). When the Iranian government hanged two gay men for the simple fact that they were gay during the recent protests in Iran, where was the President advocating on behalf of human rights and the rights of gays in particular?

The President is backtracking on a campaign position because that was never really his position. He wanted to appear more centrist to further his attempts to fool Americans into believing that he wasn't a died in the wool radical. Not only did he lie during the campaign, but, now, his minions want you to believe that this has always been his stated position. Whatever.

The other reason is the following: the labor movement is up in arms over austerity measures taken by state governments that are on the brink of insolvency. The states can no longer continue to fund public employee pensions and other benefits at their present levels. There simply is no more money in the states' coffers to continue paying these ridiculous pension plan and health insurance rates. As a result, we have the aforementioned protests in a number of states protesting what our esteemed Union Sock Puppet in Chief labels an "attack on unions." How does that connect to today's letter from Holder?

If the Justice Department takes that position, then doesn't it follow that states can no longer have laws that prohibit gay marriage? Doesn't it also mean that public employee benefits and, indeed, private benefits such as health insurance, retirement, etc., have to be extended to gay and their partners? Isn't this going to impose a greater financial burden on states who now have to extend the same benefits to the partners/spouses/etc. of gays as they do for heterosexuals?

Analyzing the Mind of the Left pt. 2

Let's break down Mr. Lewis's article:

“While many have been surprised by the seemingly sudden uprising in Egypt, the real question isn't about how it happened but why it didn't happen sooner.”


Actually, the question that everyone should be asking is “why now?” Why did it take 30 years under Mubarak for the people to revolt? Does it have to do with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran? After all, Mubarak stepped down on the 32nd anniversary (yes, to the date) of the Shah’s ouster in Iran. For a culture where everything carries symbolic meaning, that date cannot be a mere coincidence.

The Egyptian military has taken over the government, dissolved parliament, and suspended the constitution. Military leaders promise that a committee will be appointed to amend the constitution. I assume that the military leaders will be the ones to elect the members of the committee. Can someone tell me how this revolution is any different than any number of revolutions that have occurred in the past? Another question: the people are complaining about, not only oppression, but the lack of basic necessities like food and housing. The Egyptian constitution already created a democratic socialist state that provides for the feeding, clothing, and sheltering of its people. Why, then, do they want to amend the constitution? The skeptic in me says that the new constitution most likely will decrease individual liberties as opposed to increasing them.

But, let's get back to Mr. Lewis's post and answer his rhetorical question. The revolt in Egypt happened now because it was planned that way. Glenn Beck has already done an expose on this and a full discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of what we are doing now, but, suffice it to say that, first, you have the Obama State Department's direct involvement in encouraging revolt. Research the Alliance of Youth Movements and the backgrounds of its constituent organizations. Look at the role of Wael Ghonim, the Google executive. Go to the international union, socialist party, and communist party websites. This coup was staged from the beginning.

Found this EXTREMELY sobering piece on Monty Pelerin's World

According to the Bank of International Settlements, the Central Bank for central bankers, the use would have to cut spending by $2 trillion EACH YEAR FOR 20 YEARS in order to get spending back to 2007 levels.

As promised: The Mind of the Left (WARNING: Read at your own risk)

Our first case study is one Laurence Lewis, a frequent blogger on The Daily Kos. I Googled Mr. Lewis to try to get some insight into his background, but without result. Suffice it to say that he fits the profile I created in my post below to a tee. Let's start this analysis by reading one of Mr. Lewis's quotes in its entirety. This pretty little piece is called "Egypt is the future:"

"While many have been surprised by the seemingly sudden uprising in Egypt, the real question isn't about how it happened but why it didn't happen sooner. Despite brave and noble opposition efforts by various individuals and groups over the past decades, it seems nevertheless to have been taken for granted by much of the world that the Egyptian people would live under oppression indefinitely. It seems to have been taken for granted that the revolutionary movements that have shaken half the globe in the past half century somehow couldn't touch one of the world's oldest nations, as if that very ancient history stultified the very modern Egyptian people. Of course, most of the efforts within Egypt have been ignored by much of the world for decades, and if noticed at all, were mostly written off as but spasms of extremism. So the surprise at current events is not, itself, surprising. The grace and humanity of the current revolutionary opposition is a wake-up call not for Egypt, but for the world.

One of the most insidious aspects of life under despotism is that it can create an existential ennui among the subject, a barely conscious layer of hopelessness and helplessness, which then becomes a tacit participation in allowing the despotism to continue. To Franz Fanon, a rebirth of consciousness was necessary, a violent reawakening to the basic rights and responsibilities that are every human being's birthright. That decades of seemingly thuggish stability could be blasted apart so quickly in Egypt speaks to the fragility of that consciousness of suppression. Fanon spoke to a different era, for in these events we see that no existential cataclysm was required. It took but a whisper, a breath, a candle flame, and a people thought to have been completely denuded of will exploded into such full possession of their own unique ability to create their own history that it's clear they had never lost it. It wasn't even dormant, it was lying latent, just barely beneath the surface, where the merest hint of possibility resonates and concatenates. This is a warning. This is the future. This is a reminder of the strength of the human spirit.

The industrialized world has built much of its wealth off the theft, enslavement, and exploitation of less militarily powerful people. The Age of Colonialism and Imperialism couldn't last forever, but in many places it was replaced by but the Age of Neo-Colonialism and Neo-Imperialism, which in some ways was less messy for those reaping the financial rewards. Occupation and the garrisoning of military personnel could be outsourced to locals, with the extra added bonus of further enriching the arms merchants, often by a process of ostensible foreign aid which was, in reality, just recycled back to the home land as corporate welfare disguised as arms purchases. The war profiteers didn't even need wars, and local despots had shiny new toys with which to keep themselves in power and their people under constant threat of violent and torturous repression. As others have pointed out, the tear gas canisters used in Cairo, the tanks rumbling through its streets, and the military jets thundering in its skies, all were made in America. To some, no doubt, this is cause for patriotic rejoicing.

That the West has had to continually recalibrate its response has been revealing, but again not surprising. So many assumptions are failing. That a long transition was floated would have been laughable, had it not been so absurd, but the quick flip from that to the possibility of a quick exit for Hosni Mubarak while his hand-picked successor leads the interim regime is no more likely to be acceptable to the people actually on the ground in Cairo--particularly given that hand-picked successor's role in the brutalities of the Mubarak era, and his deep ties to the CIA. It's fascinating watching the West fumble for answers while ignoring the answers already presenting themselves by the people leading the revolution. But Mohamed ElBaradei is considered suspect to the West, despite his being a secularist, and as much European as Egyptian. Of course, some won't forgive him for having had the temerity to complicate the fervor to invade Iraq by insisting that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. A temerity all the more unforgivable because he was proved right. But even worse has been ElBaradei's insistance on allowing the weapons inspections process to work in Iran, once again, and this time more successfully, undermining the chickenhawks' desire to invade and destroy yet another Muslim nation that has done nothing to merit being invaded and destroyed. And it is perhaps most interesting that Iran itself considers ElBaradei a thorn in its side, which means the Western neocons and the Iranian theocrats are united against much of the rest of the world in reviling a Nobel Peace Prize-winning diplomat.

But these latter day imperialists are not only consistently wrong and deranged in their movable blood lust, they are also on the wrong side of a critical turning point in world history. They don't recognize the realities of the world in which they live, and they certainly won't recognize the world that is evolving. And they will hate what they do recognize. But they are not now holding the reins of power, and the most curious aspect of the larger state of geopolitical confusion has been the inability of those that do now hold the reins of power to create a clear separation between its approach and that of the antideluvians who are perhaps genetically incapable of anything else. What is happening is obvious. It's not that the West must meddle or force itself on the Egytpian people, it's that the West can do best by but helping to clear the path that the Egyptian people themselves are defining. Convoluted half-hearted solutions are not the answer. The answer is right there, on the ground, in Cairo. It's not only about trying to protect the opposition, it should be about helping them to be heard and empowered. In the end, doing so would be quicker and easier and much less invasive.

Another undeniable dimension of the Egyptian revolution is that the internet once again has played a key role in redefining political possibility. The WikiLeaks revelations seem to have helped inspire the Tunisian uprising, and there is no question that access to the internet has opened worlds of information to peoples all around the globe, people who otherwise would have little access to information that was not directly controlled by their governments. It hasn't received much notice, but Chinese authorities have revealed their own worries by restricting news and discussion of the revolution that is rocking North Africa. The Mubarak regime itself quickly shut down the internet and Blackberry texting. On the other hand, in an attempt to be proactive, Jordan's King Abdullah has sacked his entire cabinet. But perhaps most interestingly, the unrest has yet to hit the oil-rich Middle Eastern states, where local governments are not alone in keeping a close watch. The leaders of the industrialized world have been slow and cautious in responding to Egypt, but their real fears lie in their not knowing what to do if the revolution expands. Current attempts to comprehend and to figure out a path forward will be considered all but politically trivial if the world's economy is potentially to be thrown into chaos. And that's the real secret to what is happening in Egypt. Because the Egyptians, like the Tunisians before them, hardly were alone in but awaiting a reason to believe in the possibility of hope. People around the globe share the yearning, and access to information has become a critical means of empowering that yearning.

It long has been as absurd as it is cruel to expect that the current system of economic and military imbalances can last forever. It long has been as absurd as it is cruel to expect so many people to suffer so much for the financial benefit of so relative few. A world so dominated by the North and the West cannot continue forever. The forms of Colonialism and Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism and Neo-Imperialism have evolved and refined, but the most basic truths have remained the same. People everywhere deserve their basic human rights. Those suffering from a loss of basic human rights will not tolerate it forever. And those responsible for the suffering are going to have to help end it if they are going to claim their own basic sense of humanity. Tunisia and Egypt are not the end. They are barely the beginning. The pace of change cannot be foreseen, but the responsibility of people of conscience could not be more obvious. The world's economic powers no longer can thrive off the exploitation and subjugation of others. The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are by, of, and for the people of Tunisia and Egypt. But the larger story is about us."

What erudition, no? No, not really. More like typical close-minded wannabe revolutionary far Left drivel. In the following posts I will take salient portions of Mr. Lewis's post and analyze them on a historical, contemporary political, psychological, and maybe even a religious level. Stay tuned.

Marxists tell us this shouldn't happen

Today, the Egyptian military dissolved that nation's parliament and suspended its Constitution, citing, as justification, that the November and December 2010 parliamentary elections were rigged by the ruling party. The military also said that it is forming a committee to recommend amendments to the Egyptian constitution.

Why would they want to amend their constitution when their country is already a socialist utopia? "The Arab Republic of Egypt is a Socialist Democratic State based on the alliance of the working forces of the people." (ch. 1, art. 1). What? There are food shortages, high unemployment, and abject poverty in a socialist state? How is that possible? Oh, because they had a dictator that stole billions from the people. But I thought EVERYONE was equal in a socialist state. You mean, the ruling elite of socialist countries get privileges that are denied the average citizen?

Why would the Egyptians want to amend a constitution that guarantees them "cultural, social and health services?" (ch. 2, art. 16) Or one that guarantees "social and health insurance services" and provides that "all citizens shall have the right to pensions in cases of incapacity, unemployment, and old-age?" (ch. 2, art. 17). Or one that says education is a guaranteed right? (ch. 2, art. 18). Are you telling me Egyptians have all of these freebies from the governmentt and they still are starving and can't find jobs? How is that possible?

Finally, Egypt's constitution also provides that the "national economy shall be organised in accordance with a comprehensive development plan which ensures raising the national income, fair distribution, raising the standard of living, solving the problem of unemployment, increasing work opportunities, connecting wages with production, fixing a minimum and maximum limit for wages in a manner that guarantees lessening the disparities between incomes." How could a planned economy not increase the prosperity of Egypt's citizens? It even allows private ownership of property as long as it is used in "the service of the national economy within the framework of the development plan, without deviation or exploitation" or "contradict the general welfare of the people." Government control of the economy and property and still there is poverty? Marx help us!

The Left is like Sodom and Gomorrah, only not like you might think

Do you remember reading in Genesis when Abraham asked God if he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find just one good man? I hold the same sentiments for the Left, except, instead of good men, there appears to be a dearth of independent thinkers. In my travels through the blogosphere, I see, time and time again, a narrative that is replayed in an endless loop before the mindless Leftist masses: the US is an evil and imperialist nation, Republicans hate women and the poor, corporate interests run the government, the government is the only solution, etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. There is no deviation from the accepted script: not one person is willing to step out of the hashish cloud to say "wait, a second. Are you sure about that?" The Left's entire worldview is based on those same empty and baseless assumptions and no fact or argument will extract the predispositions from their mind. It is as if they all still believed in Santa Claus, only instead of Santa Claus their myth is a slightly less-violent version of a jihadist's wish list.

In the next few days, I am going to review some of the material from Leftist websites like the DailyKos. I will deconstruct several of the posts and try to find some insight into the Leftist mind.

Keep in mind: these anti-US, anti-capitalist automatons are the products of our post-secondary educational system. They are educated, in a formal, non-classically liberal, indoctrinated sense of the word, but have no common sense. Most likely, they have never gotten dirt under their fingernails or have had to earn their keep by the sweat of their brow. They don't know what it is like to suffer. They are part of an entitlement culture: they expect a good job straight out of school with excellent pay and benefits and to be placed on the track to management and a corner office before they have paid any dues. They expect mom and dad to feed, clothe, and house them for as long as they require and, after they leave because their parents have become too bothersome or oppressive, they expect for that safety net to remain there for as long as they need it. To them, God is for fools and reactionaries. He is an impediment to the free expression of their ids. Their spirituality is found in natural surroundings, yoga, or, in most cases, the sexual act. They have been raised on violent movies, violent video games, and violent wars played out on television for the duration of their existence. They are narcissistic and, worse, desensitized to other's pain and suffering. They have no concept of history as they live only in the moment. The "history" they learned in college is most likely Howard Zinn and they have no clue that their hero was a communist who admitted that his goal was to become part of history, not tell it. Thus, they are forever doomed to repeat it and repeat it they will because they believe that socialism is the panacea for the world's ills. What could be wrong about everybody being equal? Because they have no frame of reference or clear perspective, whether from their parents who probably wanted to be their friends as opposed to parents or teachers or from their formal education whose sole purpose was to create Leftist clones, they will never realize the lessons of history: socialism has failed, in all of its manifestations, time and time again.

Why did the MSM not cover the fact that the Obama Administration disregarded a direct court order?

On February 2, 2011, federal district court judge Martin Feldman cited the Department of Interior for contempt for violating a court-ordered injunction. Here are the highlights of the Order (bear with me because it is a little long):

"The facts of this case are well-known. As Deepwater Horizon's April 20, 2010 explosion gave way to a massive oil spill, the President of the United States formed a bipartisan commission—the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling—and tasked it with investigating the facts and circumstances concerning the cause of the blowout. The President also ordered the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a thorough review of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and to report, within thirty days, "what, if any, additional precautions and technologies should be required to improve the safety of oil and gas exploration and production operations on the outer continental shelf." The results of this review were published on May 28, 2010 in an Executive Summary and Safety Report, and offered the appearance that it had been peer reviewed by a panel of scientists—a claim which was publicly repudiated by several of them. Invoking this study, the Secretary of the Interior ordered a moratorium on all drilling at depths greater than 500 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. The plaintiffs in this case soon challenged the lawfulness of the moratorium. On June 22, 2010, this Court granted the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered the Administration not to enforce the moratorium:

[Defendants] are hereby immediately prohibited
from enforcing the Moratorium, entitled
‘Suspension of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)
Drilling of New Deepwater Wells,' dated May
28, 2010, and NTL No. 2010-N04 seeking
implementation of the Moratorium, as applied
to all drilling on the OCS in water at depths
greater than 500 feet.

In that Order, this Court found that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Secretary's decision to issue a six-month blanket moratorium against all companies involved in deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was arbitrary and capricious and, therefore, unlawful. The government apparently notified operators that suspension notices issued under the first moratorium no longer had legal effect and ordered BOEMRE1 personnel not to take action to enforce the moratorium. It is undisputed, however, that deepwater drilling activities did not commence after this Court’s Order. Instead, over the next two weeks, the Secretary of Interior repeatedly affirmed his intention and resolve to impose a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The government appealed the Court’s injunction Order, and sought a stay of the preliminary injunction pending appeal. On July 8, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected a stay, over one dissent. Four days later, on July 12, 2010, the Interior Secretary issued a twenty-two page decision memorandum rescinding the first blanket moratorium and directing BOEMRE to withdraw the suspension letters issued under it; but the Secretary also ordered the agency to issue new blanket suspensions based on a second moratorium. The second moratorium disabled precisely the same rigs and deepwater drilling rigs and activities in the Gulf of Mexico as did the first one (although it superficially, rather than continue the 500-foot depth standard, purported to restrain all rigs that use subsea blowout preventers or surface blowout preventers on a floating facility); the second
moratorium was to apply also through November 30, 2010, the same expiration date that the first moratorium anticipated. The government defended the new moratorium's justness, explaining that though similar (identical) in effect to the first, it addressed the technical concerns highlighted in the Court’s first Order.

The second moratorium was then lifted on October 12, 2010, the same day the parties were to submit some additional briefing. Still, however, no drilling permits have been issued for activities barred by it as of this date. That was October. In November 2010, it also was exposed that an important White House official had changed the Safety Report before its public release, which created the misleading appearance of scientific peer review."

In short, the Department of Interior decided to tell the court "screw you," we are going to stop the drilling anyway. Fortunately, Judge Feldman wasn't going to let the Administration get away with this.

The plaintiffs also stress that the government did not simply reimpose a blanket moratorium; rather, each step the government took following the
Court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance: the government failed to seek a remand; it continually reaffirmed its intention and resolve to restore the moratorium; it even notified operators that though a preliminary injunction had issued, they could quickly expect a new moratorium. Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this Court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt of this Court’s preliminary injunction Order. To the extent the plaintiffs’ motion asserts civil contempt based on the government’s determined disregard of this Court’s Order of preliminary injunction, it is GRANTED."

Apparently, the Obama Administration is willing to not only disregard and circumvent Congress (i.e. FCC Internet regulation and EPA carbon emission standards), but, now, they act in open defiance of the judiciary.

Hornbeck's general counsel commented that “What is striking about today’s ruling is that it holds the government, acting through its highest levels, in contempt of a federal court order.” The only downside: the government has to reimburse Hornbeck for its attorney's fees and litigation costs - using our tax dollars.

My question, though, is after 24/7 media coverage of the BP oil spill this summer, why isn't there a single peep about this ruling and the Administration's intentional manipulation of a court-filed document in an attempt to get what it could not achieve by playing by the rules?