Oh holy honking horseshit hahahaha! A popular, longtime diarist posted some complete claptrap, and I’m here to dismantle it and refute it, on principled and ethical grounds. Primarily, the diary is rank hypocrisy, because it indulges in shaming others for the words they use to shame others, including criticisms of appearance, which do actually fall within the ethical human liberty of speech. Thus, it’s dishing out criticism of others to others for their criticism of others. Pot calling that ol’ kettle black once again. And it’s not like little shitler didn’t ask for it: he dishes it out on the reg but seems incapable of taking it, which is another hallmark of hairpin hypocrisy rounding on itself.
It should also be pointed out that this is yet another example of us lefties unilaterally disarming ourselves in the face of the right OVER SPEECH AND SPEECH ALONE. Jesus fucking Christ on a crutch people (and I write that as a lover of Jesus and his words, but no xtian), leap for the smelling salts, not the fainting couch and your pearls. Imagine the world of human discourse WITHOUT insults, fair or not. What happens to comedy? How dull and bland does it become? What’s worse, who would be left for sanctimonious lefties to insult? What’s being done here is not simply hypocritical, but a display of the left’s own vast insecurities, and not in a good way. Does caring about others’ feelings matter? Sure, but only when those feelings are about something that matters, and not just anything. Appearance is an aesthetic, that’s all, and there’s a YUGE difference between aesthetics and ethics, between looking good (or not) and doing good (or not). Do people make unfair assumptions and take unfair actions on the basis of aesthetics and appearance? Absolutely, everyday. So what’s the ethical distinction between good and bad, right and wrong here? It’s on the basis of HARM, not hurt. If someone uses their power, not simply their speech, to cause harm, usually as an act of domination, then it’s unethical. If someone merely hurts another’s delicate fee-fees, then grow a thicker skin for Buddha’s ever-suffering sake. Politics ain’t beanbag and the left’s school-marming strong-arming fake outrage ain’t gonna make it be so. Oh, and btw, it’s TRUE that little shitler has a fat ass, amongst many other profoundly ugly things. Grow some integrity and get over yourselves. If you can’t say the emperor has no clothes, and a fat ass and ridiculous combover to boot, then you’ve ideologically blinded yourself with your own indoctrination. Self-control is one thing; mutual and self-censorship is quite entirely another.
[NB: To those who will likely come at me for allegedly not knowing what the categories of “good and bad, true and false, right and wrong” actually are, here is my very own reply: it’s an example of something that I call “cartesian dialectics”. It’s an innovation actually. Enjoy and you’re welcome :D]
Also too, this is yet another fetid example of the corrupting influence of psychology and psychologizing on libs, progs, rads, and other lefties. Psychology has been deployed by elites as a mode of social control and domination, because it usefully elides the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, replacing them with a medicalized sick or well. Now, anybody can make ethical distinctions and judgments, and we do all the time, just as the diarist attempted to do and spectacularly failed at. But only EXPERTS can make distinctions between sick or well, crazy or sane, though everybody else indulges in it, but in really nasty and internecinely destructive ways, which are very useful to our malevolent overlords and adversaries. Psychologizing is useful as a weapon to marginalize and silence critics and their criticism, which is why elites adore it, and btw, by elites I mean white people in white supremacist culture, which includes all the whiteys: chicks, dudes, and special categories; in DKos, including myself. This is the origin of that bane upon public existence known as “mental illness”, a category mistake dispatched with extreme prejudice by the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, MD, in his magisterial “The Myth of Mental Illness”. But as broseph Paul Krugman has repeatedly lamented, zombie memes never die, no matter how many times you apply the double tap, they just shamble back into public discourse to eat more brains and minds of the unwary and unwitting. So, here’s a difference between a lot of y’all and me, m’kay? I try to do good and y’all try to “be nice”, and intimidate and compel others to “be nice”. I prefer to be good rather than nice, because I noticed a while back that good people aren’t always nice and nice people aren’t always good. Experience has taught me this in spades. I’d rather err on the side of being good (ethical) rather than being nice (polite). Elevating etiquette above and beyond ethics is doubleplusungood. So you can’t junk the Miss Manners routine CITS. It don’t wash, especially not with me.
[An aside: for those who doubt my criticism of psychology as undermining ethics, I can provide no better evidence than the collusion of top-ranked psychologists and the American Psychological Association in Cheney-BushCo’s global torture chambers. Read all about it. Moar. MOAR. Oh, but this was merely “enhanced interrogation”, amirite? Hey, at least it’s a more polite euphemism than the true word “torture”.]
But since I doubt y’all will believe me, largely because of your overweening self-righteousness, let me throw some other folks’ ideas at you. Let’s begin with the late French philosopher Michel Foucault discoursing upon parrhesia, or radical integrity in speech, and hence deed:
So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life. When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death.
and
To summarize the foregoing, parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.
This is an excerpt from the British literary theorist, critic, and marxist
Terry Eagleton’s witty and charming recent book "Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America." It is titled "Abuse" and sums up perfectly the butthurt reactions of my countryfolk everywhere to criticism. Enjoy!
"Americans, however, are more concerned than the British by another kind of speech, namely, abusive language. Hawthorne's scarlet letter no longer stands for adultery. What used to be argumentative is now abusive or insensitive. It is insensitive to raise your voice, vigorously dissent, display images of emaciated African children, or criticise the conduct of a nation in the presence of someone who supports it. In a society which finds the negative and critical discomfortingly hard to handle, anything which disturbs one's serenity can be nullified by being consigned to the category of abuse. Birds which sing too loudly at dawn are abusive, aggressively violating one's aural spaces. People who wear bright scarlet shirts are being visually abusive. They might even be at risk of being sued, or at least of being forced to buy you a pair of shades. Gutters which drip water on one's head are guilty of abuse, as are pieces of grit that are negligent enough to lodge in one's eye. They, too, may be at risk of being taken to court. Floors which refuse to stop swaying when one is drunk can be indicted for criminal irresponsibility.
To tell someone that their beliefs are a lot of rubbish is most certainly considered insensitive, even though it is an essential part of the democratic process. The idea that one should respect other people's beliefs simply because they are other people's beliefs is plainly absurd. It is like claiming that one should admire the cut of people's trousers simply because they are people's trousers. If my beliefs are arrant nonsense, I expect you to have the decency to tell me so. It would help if you did not call me a slimy little rat in the process, but it is not indispensable. Do those who urge respect for the creed of Rastafarians extend a similar welcome to the doctrines of the Moonies? Is the belief that men after death will get to rule their own universe, but women will not, to be greeted with reverence simply because it is held by Mormons? Can nothing be said to be plainly ridiculous as long as it is touted by a minority? What about those American Evangelical sects who are preparing to film the Second Coming, and engage in intricate technical debates about where best to set up the cameras?
Tolerance does not mean respecting viewpoints simply because they are viewpoints. It means accepting that ideas which make you feel sick in your stomach should be granted as much of a hearing as those that send an erotic tingle down your spine, provided such views do not put others at risk, and provided you have done your damnedest to argue their advocates out of their fatuous or obnoxious opinions. Otherwise you are simply buying your tolerance on the cheap. Dismissing whatever one finds offensive as 'abuse' is a distinctly American brand of intolerance." pp. 26-27
As a corrective for the left, I suggest a vigorous course of The Dozens. I learned it from my Black American sisters and brothers, just as I have learned almost everything I know about freedom.
So, that’s about all that I have to say here. But before I bid my fond farewells, here’s a coupla memes to leave you with. Feel my love kossacks, it’s legit.
