The Decision of Truth or Deception
I am sympathetic to this story given the Neo-Neocon and Bookworm are at the top of my favorite list when it comes to reading blogs.
The basic story of redemption or change or the comprehension of different viewpoints over time, is very interesting. It’s not static or stagnant. It is very vibrant and dynamic, rather than parochial, it is cosmopolitan. Real cosmopolitan, that is, not limousine liberal cosmopolitan or NGO and UN Staffer cosmopolitan.
This is my response that I wrote under Neo’s post.
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Sake White 
August 4th, 2008 at 10:11 pm Neo, I agree with you that one should keep trying to change closed minds. But many of these minds are closed so tightly that there can be no discussion at all.
You may have read my comments on Book’s post there, but if you haven’t, then you might not realize that there are certain defenses built into people who have been lied to by propaganda yet don’t want to admit it.
Those defenses can only be bypassed by subterfuge, stealth, and cunning. You cannot openly come out and go toe to toe in honesty argument with them. Then their defenses come up and they have a way to exclude you and not listen. But if you pretend to be a neutral or an ally, and then you provide arguments to test and weaken the propaganda they have heard and believed in all their lives, then you have a chance.
Even if it only educates you, and does not change their minds, it will allow you a deeper and more insightful glimpse into why they think as they do. Once you find that, everything else becomes golden.
I am still trying to understand the mystery of the contradiction: how can people who so obviously benefit from capitalism be so anti-capitalist?
Guilt. They didn’t earn it. That means somebody has to blame. They can’t blame themselves, that’d be called introspection and taking responsibility. So they have to blame… you or the system or America or capitalist pigs.
It’s as if they really do not understand how the wealth is created.
Michelle never understood how her wealth was created. Oh, she worked and scheemed to get those increases, but she never accepts that the things she did to do so were unethical. And if people like her engages in unethical actions to get money, why shouldn’t the white boys have been doing so for centuries? She didn’t create wealth, thus the white boys must never have created wealth any ways. Michelle stole the money for her salary from a bribe her husband gave the hospital she worked out, so this must mean every rich person exploits and steals money in order to benefit.
Mine was restless mind interested in two things: how to free human beings from poverty and meaninglessness AND the truth about our condition.
The transformation from Leftist to true classical liberal requires such things.
Many potential classical liberals gravitate towards the Left given their rhetoric of being against oppression, exploitation, and what not. But eventually, if you pay attention, it’s all lies. They’re not against oppression. Look at their position in the Cold War, on Iraq, and for slavery in the Civil War. They’re not against exploitation, look at Al Gore at he exploits Global Warming for cash.
Eventually such things will turn the real classical liberals away from Leftism. Which is why so many Leftists were called useful idiots by the Soviets. A Leftist that has trained in Marxist revolutionary tactics and techniques, yet defects to classical liberalism, is a dangerous tool indeed to be left unattended to. For he is no longer a tool, then, for he now understands the score. The value of a tool rests in its ability to do what you tell it to do. A true classical liberal will realize where the Soviet Union was taking the world and would refuse their commands and desires. That cannot be allowed. Which is why the useful idiots cultivated by the KGB in America were one of the first to be slated for the wall once Communism reigned supreme in the US.
I never paid much attention to politics on tv until after 9/11. Everything I saw in the news was either unrelated to me or so grossly politically convoluted that I saw no reason to pay attention to it. It was only after seeing 9/11 happen on tv, as it happened, and watching the current events as they happened, that hooked me on political debates and what not.
I considered the nature of terrorism and their use of planes, with them still on it, as living guided bombs. I asked myself “what kind of a person could do such a thing, sacrifice their life just to kill people they don’t even know and had never offered them any kind of threat”. I considered the kind of monster that would do such a thing and I knew, to the depths of my soul, that with my experiences to that date, that I could not face that kind of monster with courage in my heart.
The acts of 9/11 were never social problems to me. Social problems like bar fights and disagreements can be solved with social skills. But this kind of violence is completely outside of society. It was war, with no rules and no traditions. Just killing people, however you could, whenever you could.
People kept treating terrorism as a social problem, though. They kept saying that if only we did what they wanted, gave them more support, gave them more money, or erased their political grievances, that they would stop. Since when has a murderer and evil villain stopped his actions because you gave him what he wanted? Even if you give up your own life, that doesn’t mean he won’t go to the next person and kill them as well.
Asocial problems require asocial violence. The only place that offered such knowledge and solutions were the Republicans, Bush primarily, and the US military. They killed, even if it was in a social chain of command framework due to orders. But they killed without a court decision, without debate, and with effortless ease seemingly. That kind of solution was the only one I considered even half way effective against the kind of monsters I suddenly realized inhabited the world in greater numbers than I had ever suspected.
Killing those monsters did not require social skills or solutions. And the ones who advocated such things, were no classical liberals to me.