Author Topic: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish  (Read 1040 times)

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Offline Luis Gonzalez

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The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« on: December 26, 2013, 02:57:32 pm »
The infrastructure of manufactured intelligence has become a truly impressive thing. Today as never before there is an industry dedicated, not to educating people, but to making them feel smart. From paradigm shifting TED talks to paradigm to books by thought leaders and documentaries by change agents that transform your view of the world, manufactured intelligence has become its own culture.

Manufactured intelligence is the smarmy quality that oozes out of a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni and the rest of the gang who tell you nothing meaningful while dazzling you with references to international locations, political events and pop culture, tying together absurdities into one synergistic web of nonsense that feels meaningful.

There's a reason that there's a Tom Friedman article generator online. But it could just as easily be a New York Times article generator that sums up the hollowness of the buzzword-fed crowd that is always hungry to reaffirm the illusion of its own intelligence.

We all know that George W. Bush was a moron. And we all know that Obama is a genius. We have been told by Valerie Jarrett, by his media lapdogs and even by the great man himself that he is just too smart to do his job. And it's reasonable that a genius would be bored by the tedious tasks involved in running the most powerful nation on earth.

But what is "smart" anyway? What makes Obama a genius? It's not his IQ. It's probably not his grades or we would have seen them already. It's that like so many of the thought leaders and TED talkers, he makes his supporters feel smart. The perception of intelligence is really a reflection.

Continue.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2013, 02:59:35 pm »
From the article:

Quote
Intelligence to a modern liberal isn't depth, it's appearance. It isn't even an intellectual quality, but a spiritual quality. Compassionate people who care about others are always "smarter", no matter how stupid they might be, because they care about the world around them.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline alicewonders

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2013, 03:03:13 pm »
That's an excellent point - "style over substance" - that's what matters to liberals. 
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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #3 on: December 26, 2013, 04:41:48 pm »
From the article:
Quote
Intelligence to a modern liberal isn't depth, it's appearance. It isn't even an intellectual quality, but a spiritual quality. Compassionate people who care about others are always "smarter", no matter how stupid they might be, because they care about the world around them.

Solutions are also subject to the same hypocrisy.  It doesn't matter whether a solution actually solves what it's supposed to solve; all that matters is that it makes the proposer look like she/he really cares.  Hence Obamacare, which liberals trumpet as being the final solution to health care because it makes them look like they really do care about the least among us, despite the fact that it will beggar the poor and the middle class and enrich liberals and the very insurance company executives whom liberals love to claim they hate.

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2013, 05:11:23 pm »
As he often does, Mr. Greenfield makes a trenchant observation in defining Liberalism as the font of "manufactured intelligence".

It is also tautological nonsense, as Greenfield concludes in his last paragraph, circular logic repeated endlessly in the echo chambers that now constitute our cultural and governmental institutions.

But its purpose is not merely to make Liberalism's proponents feel both noble and wise, but to deny legitimacy to those who disagree and disapprove, specifically by ignoring conservative arguments in favor of name-calling invective.
"The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Offline 240B

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2013, 06:04:24 pm »
Savage summed it up with Liberalism is a mental desorder.
 
It is one thing to be a smarmy liar, like Clinton and Obama, but the most disturbing are the blind faithful. These are the 'true believers.' These are the people who cannot comprend that there is the slightest possibility that they may be wrong about anything.
 
They worship themselves and each other as they take communion from each other, which consists primarily of bullshit from the sixties and early seventies.
You cannot "COEXIST" with people who want to kill you.
If they kill their own with no conscience, there is nothing to stop them from killing you.
Rational fear and anger at vicious murderous Islamic terrorists is the same as irrational antisemitism, according to the Leftists.

Online GourmetDan

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2013, 06:22:03 pm »
That's an excellent point - "style over substance" - that's what matters to liberals.

But they're so 'sincere'.

Reality obeys the diktats of 'sincerity' doncha know...




"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." - Ecclesiastes 10:2

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Offline Scottftlc

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2013, 07:52:06 pm »
The "science" of global warming, wrapped up in a nice little package.
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
You can't open your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view

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Offline Chieftain

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2013, 08:25:36 pm »
That's an excellent point - "style over substance" - that's what matters to liberals.

Symbolism over Substance as well...the Dhimmies have used this ruse for decades to incrementally get us to where we are today.  And for the most part, the Republicans have played along to get along.

The problem is the two parties.  They answer to nobody but themselves, especially not the people they purport to represent.

The United States has the absolute worst form of Government on the whole planet.

...except for all the others.....

 :beer:

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2013, 09:32:46 pm »

The United States has the absolute worst form of Government on the whole planet.

...except for all the others.....

 :beer:

Winner! Winner!

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"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline Lipstick on a Hillary

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2013, 10:22:40 pm »
Symbolism over Substance as well...the Dhimmies have used this ruse for decades to incrementally get us to where we are today.  And for the most part, the Republicans have played along to get along.

The problem is the two parties.  They answer to nobody but themselves, especially not the people they purport to represent.

The United States has the absolute worst form of Government on the whole planet.

...except for all the others.....


Uh huh.  Daniel Greenfield weighs in again...


"America is the left’s economic fantasyland because it has so much that they imagine that it will take a long time to bankrupt.

Europe is dominated by parliamentary democracies where it would have been difficult for an executive to stay in office on popularity and racial guilt after his actual policies had been completely discredited. In a parliamentary democracy, the 2010 midterm elections wouldn’t have just meant a Republican House of Representatives, but would have booted Obama out of the White House."



A Left-Wing America Stands Alone

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #11 on: December 26, 2013, 10:29:27 pm »


Solutions are also subject to the same hypocrisy.  It doesn't matter whether a solution actually solves what it's supposed to solve; all that matters is that it makes the proposer look like she/he really cares.  Hence Obamacare, which liberals trumpet as being the final solution to health care because it makes them look like they really do care about the least among us, despite the fact that it will beggar the poor and the middle class and enrich liberals and the very insurance company executives whom liberals love to claim they hate.

Liberalism is the politics of emoting as opposed to conservatism's politics of achieving.

When progressives get their "yes we can" on, conservatives tend to rain on their parade with things like math and logic. This pisses progressives off, because financial reality has no place in their progressive dreamthink of a society. They hate right-winger financial realists because they kill their collective feel-good buzz.

That doesn't mean however that flight-of-fancy politics are the sole property of one side of the political spectrum. The very term "conservative" identifies the issue with right-wing politics: the idea that things can be preserved unchanged in a world where the only constant is change. In essence, just as progressives tilt imaginary lances at real giants, conservatives tend to fight real giants with wooden swords. Not everything that can be imagined be achieved, and nothing ever remains unchanged.
 
Insofar as solutions are concerned, progressives do not place as much weight on the actual solution of a problem as they do the appearance of the desire to solve it, which is somewhat what Greenfield says here. The blame for failure is assigned to those who oppose the plans, so it's never the actual plan that fails, it's always the non-adherence to the progressive groupthink of a portion of the population that's at fault. 

Conservatives on the other hand, walk a weird road where the only way to realize the ideology's social agenda, is to engage the force of government thus violating the Jeffersonian ideals of small government and limited regulations, the very tenets of conservatism.
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

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Re: The Left is Too Smart to Fail - Sultan Knish
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2013, 12:11:59 am »
Liberalism is the politics of emoting as opposed to conservatism's politics of achieving.

When progressives get their "yes we can" on, conservatives tend to rain on their parade with things like math and logic. This pisses progressives off, because financial reality has no place in their progressive dreamthink of a society. They hate right-winger financial realists because they kill their collective feel-good buzz.

That doesn't mean however that flight-of-fancy politics are the sole property of one side of the political spectrum. The very term "conservative" identifies the issue with right-wing politics: the idea that things can be preserved unchanged in a world where the only constant is change. In essence, just as progressives tilt imaginary lances at real giants, conservatives tend to fight real giants with wooden swords. Not everything that can be imagined be achieved, and nothing ever remains unchanged.
 
Insofar as solutions are concerned, progressives do not place as much weight on the actual solution of a problem as they do the appearance of the desire to solve it, which is somewhat what Greenfield says here. The blame for failure is assigned to those who oppose the plans, so it's never the actual plan that fails, it's always the non-adherence to the progressive groupthink of a portion of the population that's at fault. 

Conservatives on the other hand, walk a weird road where the only way to realize the ideology's social agenda, is to engage the force of government thus violating the Jeffersonian ideals of small government and limited regulations, the very tenets of conservatism.

I generally agree.  However, the distinctions between and among liberals and conservatives are not completely symmetric.  With respect to change, liberals/progressives generally tend to monolithically prefer "the new" to "the existing," will adopt "the new" almost uncritically but retain "the old" only to the extent that they haven't yet found a replacement for it.  There is some gradation amongst liberals in their relationship to "the new" - some will willy-nilly adopt the novel solely and strictly because it's novel, others will require a little more evidence of the utility of some novel concept or object, but all of them share in common a rabid rejection of "the old" as being inherently evil simply for being "the old."

While a respect for "the old" is a common theme to all conservatives, its actual value to them and its relationship to "the new" varies.  Some conservatives refuse to accept anything that wasn't around 200 years ago - the Constitution as it existed in 1789 is still a relative novelty to them - and some would prefer to go even further back - although, surprisingly, I've yet to meet a conservative who would prefer things as they were prior to the birth of Christ.  Some, however, merely give to "the old" a presumption of priority over "the new" and are willing to abandon "the old" - in an orderly fashion, not willy-nilly - once it's been shown that "the new" is better than "the old."

Conservatives of the first sort tend to be more dogmatic and more inclined to use the coercive force of The State to suppress "the new" and protect every jot and tittle of "the old" no matter how odious is the latter.  Conservatives of the second sort are more like sticks-in-the-mud who prefer to hold onto the tried-and-true and not risk everything on novelty for novelty's sake.  They tend to be less dogmatic and more inclined to use the coercive force of The State to protect themselves from the depredations of others, whether "conservative" or "liberal."  In other words, conservatives of the second sort tend to be more like the classical liberal of John Stuart Mill ("liberal" being a term that has nothing in common with its meaning in current American political discourse, although still consonant with things like the Australian Liberal Party).