denialism

a briefing document

in progress

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introduction

I have long been interested in the empiric study of logic. This has also often led me to examine in much detail why individuals use bad logic. I take the empiric view that every individual is different and that all their reasoning is also different. (This last is very complex and I will not pursue it here. If you want to follow the chain of reasoning, start at Why Aristotelian logic does not work.)

It is obvious that the word forms used by individuals often contain much similarity. Frequently in the real world, using one sheet of paper has little preference over using another, even though the sheets are different in reality.

What has particularly interested me, when watching closely the pseudo-arguments put forward to justify leaving Saddam Hussein in power, is that they have been both ridiculous and repeated endlessly long after it must have become clearly obvious to any sane person that the ‘arguments’ made no sense at all. It is not the arguments, for example, from self-interest that may have varying degrees of plausibility that concern me, but arguments which went totally against facts or any sort of realism.

This combination of both repetition and implausibility has set me to writing this document, which I shall expand as I understand more of the details.

mental and emotional cowardice is the key

I have wondered and studied long to understand the effete, mindless and soul-less left.
I have wondered often how apparently intelligent people could embrace a cult that has so little to offer.

Or as Keynes put it in 1926:

“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.”
The End of Laissez-Faire

By watching in great detail the behaviour of many who subscribe to the nonsense, I am at last beginning to have some idea of the real driving forces behind those joining cult socialism.

In my view, the over-arching drive is cowardice. It is a cowardice brought on by living lives wrapped in cotton-wool, with no serious pressures to produce or take real responsibilities:
over-grown children protected from birth, protected from the real world by a powerful civilisation and the rule of law.

Unfortunately, this ‘protection’ tends to reduce people, who appear from their years and physical bulk to be ‘adults’, to remain as squalling children in a nursery, expecting their every wish and desire to be supplied by mummy in the guise of the state.

It has been observed that middle-class people raised in complex societies to complex philosophies and religions are the most vulnerable to cults. After years of exams and pressure, the cults offer them a simplistic world view where, to their relief, they no longer have the pressure to think and learn.

The cult plays on the idealism of the young raised in such an environment, tells them conformity to the group makes them ‘special’ and ‘caring’, meanwhile the cult takes the responsibility and stress of making decisions out of their lives.

This mindset at the heart of the socialist dream also reduces populations to a mental and physical slavery. Strangely, it is those under the full developed socialist dictatorships of soviet Russia and Iraq who end up developing the guts to oppose and fight for freedom. It is the christianist right, with its emphasis on individual responsibility, that fights to free the enslaved, while the socialists of the West under Socialism lite wander slowly towards the abattoirs of the unfree states that are the inevitable outcome of socialism.

Socialists populate and nurture mindless societies where ‘personality’ is expressed in fashionable (that is copied conformity) clothes, musak and slack pre-formed, cliched ‘opinions’ – another expression of cowardice in the drive to conform.

Just as socialism preys on the children of middle-class strivers, so also the jihadi cult masters with their political ambitions trade a form of Islam lite to the drones of the Middle East; an ‘Islam’ where mayhem and murder are no longer forbidden but encouraged and advocated. This is another fashionable route to ‘being special’ without serious work or study. Little wonder the apologists for the two cults are now joined at the hip; it is increasingly difficult to tell their slogans apart.

As you will see from the outline caricature in the Hanson article cited below, these people do not care for the poor, the oppressed, or the uneducated. They do not do anything productive or meaningful for others. Instead, they just whine and caterwaul when brave and more caring people do act.

I was particularly interested to note the pseudo-outrage of the left at the ‘emotionalism’ on the death of ‘princess’ Diana. You see Diana actually did act in a caring manner: visiting the sick, being open-hearted and working against the mines that blew off the legs of the poor and disenfranchised.

Now, why this pseudo-outrage?
I think it is because a person like Diana shows up the cowardly would-be cosmopolitan left, while the masses respond to a generous and caring person. The left wish to talk a good fight, but want nothing of the real, nasty, dirty world from which they carefully cocoon themselves in suburbia.

They simply do not care about the suffering in an Iraq, they just wish to pretend to care. I am amazed by how often the left accuse those who are brave and who do act of ‘cowardice’. I think this is a large key to their behaviour.

I believe they are projecting their own cowardice upon others in order to distract attention from their own real behaviour. All the obvious dishonesty and inconsistency in their ‘arguments’, all the contradictory reasons for leaving the Iraqis in the shit, all stem from a fear that they may be expected to act rather that lie around in their protected cotton-wool world without any responsibility.

Let alone, that they might respond to any request, let alone that they get off their steadily expanding bottoms and act to help others, or even be taxed that others with more guts continue to protect their narrow selfish ‘lives’.

“Perhaps the result of this frustration is that European intellectuals damn the United States for action in Iraq, but lament that they could do nothing in the Balkans. Democrats at home talk of the need for idealism abroad, but fear the dirty road of war that sometimes is part of that bargain - thus the retreat into "democracy is good, BUT..." So here we have the global throng that focuses on one purported American crime to the next, as it simmers in the luxury of its privilege, education, and sophistication - and exhibits little power, new ideas, intellectual seriousness, or relevance.

“In this context, the Iraqi elections were surely poorly attended, or illegitimate, or ruined by violence, or irrelevant, or staged by America - or almost anything other than a result of a brave, very risky, and costly effort by the United States military to destroy a fascist regime and offer something better in its place.”[Quoted from Victor Hanson]

Meanwhile, have a look at the real world as seen by the UN parasites who spend so much time whining about the freeing of Iraq, while being involved in the vast theft of money from the Iraqi people. The UN parasites, of course, are the self same people that the lefties want to be taken as the legitimate ‘moral’ authority:

“If Paul Volcker's preliminary report on Oil-for-Food dealt with the organisation's unofficial interests, the UN's other report of the week accurately captured their blithe insouciance to their official one. As you may have noticed, the good people of Darfur have been fortunate enough not to attract the attention of the arrogant cowboy unilateralist Bush and have instead fallen under the care of the Polly Toynbee-Clare Short-approved multilateral compassion set. So, after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the UN to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide.

That's great news, isn't it? For as yet another Annan-appointed UN committee boldly declared in December: "Genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated." So thank goodness this isn't genocide. Instead, it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group - which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead, and Polly and Clare don't have to worry their pretty little heads about it." [Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

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In response to a correspondent commenting on the criticism by the left of the emotion at ‘princess’ Diana’s death.

I am moving to the view that the justifications for ‘criticism’ do not relate to reality. It is very easy to construct excuses to justify ‘criticism’.

You will note a catalogue of such excuses for not removing Madsam in the accompanying Hanson item. What is particularly interesting (to me) is both the contradictory and the irrational nature of those excuses.

My case for mental and emotional cowardice being central to socialist behaviour is not built merely upon the Diana fest, but upon studying much detail over a long period. It interests me that apparently otherwise intelligent people can put forward ‘reasons’, reasons that are incredibly obvious nonsense, for opposition to actions that require moral ‘backbone’. This is far different from not understanding something or making some error of fact or logic. Here is obviously a dog which isn’t barking, although the proposers of the excuses are!

I have wondered long and hard how much is due to conformity, to imbibing the fossil press, or whatever. I have wondered if there were many different reasons; but on testing these variants, the only consistent reading I can make is, unfortunately, ‘cowardice’.

I mean to make no slighting reference to cowardice, after all, as G.B. Shaw puts it:

“As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little.” [1903]

But I must add from my own perspective, not facing cowardice I do regard as a ‘character flaw’, in the sense of being non-survival fit.

I do not even ‘condemn’ the cowardice, I do regard it as ‘immaturity’ in ‘adults’. However, ‘cowardice’ is far more dangerous to a modern civilisation than a little wallowing in unhappiness or, maybe looked at otherwise, the semi-maudlin celebration of a ‘good caring life’.

In the case of Diana, what was impressive amongst the left was the wish to denigrate her because she was ‘rich’, or ‘dressed well’, or had holidays. In my view, these criticisms were driven far more by envy than reasonable comment.

denialism

I’m beginning to understand the whiners, they are essentially cowards in denial regarding the real world. One thing is they want to believe the world is like infants’ playground. They want to believe the fairy tales they are fed where wishes come true.

“I was expecting the elections to have a very poor turnout. To come up with a wholly capricious result. To be seen by outsiders as inadequate. In short, to be a failure. I was really surprised when so many Iraqis voted. In some areas they were acting in complete defiance of the bombers' threats.

Why did the media mislead us so much?” [Quoted from a correspondent.]

The action in Iraq is protecting the oil-founded lifestyle of the whiners. They want to believe that they are good people who would not hurt a fly, but they keep right on driving their cars, going on flights to faraway places and buying goods flown from around the world. They want to hide from all this and find someone to blame.

And that is what politicians are for. The Denialists blame Tony Blair and George Bush for lying to them, where in neither case did they lie. The Denialists want someone to look after them, and to blame, and they want to shift the guilt they feel.

To do this no dishonesty or self-delusion is too great a price to pay.

It is evasion of reality.
It is living in a dream world.

the rumour mill: ‘bliar and bush will attack iran’

Of course, it may become necessary to discipline the Iranian dictators; that must be obvious to any person that thinks.

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week during a visit to Europe stressed diplomacy as the road to dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions and said the United States had no immediate plans to attack the Islamic republic.”

The chattering left are ‘translating’ this into America has “promised not to attack Iran”. I have little doubt that if it becomes necessary to attack Iran, the left moonbats will, on the basis of such statements as the one above, once more claim that they “have been lied to” or “mislead” by the administration.

In my view, such claims (already widely seen regarding Iraq) range between ludicrous and deliberately false.

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2005, 14 february

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the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/briefings/denialism.php

2270 words
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