Saturday, December 14, 2013

Why We Fight

Let me set the stage, here.

What we have to open the ball is a pair of six- or seven-figure urbanites, people with individual "carbon footprints" bigger than the entirety of, say, feudal Japan, disagreeing politely over whether the greater existential threat to planet Earth is income inequality or climate change:

Gaze Upon the Face of the Enemy: The "meteoric... up and up" journalist and the guy with his own TV show bemoan "The Elites".
Then someone pops in to point out that both are caused by Capitalism! Disagreement solved!

Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, still another commenter points out that it all really started with tools and fire and it's been a downward arc of poor stewardship since then, especially with the excessive capitalist marketing of shiny technology consumption.

In other words, this deeply intelligent and more-reflective-than-thou individual tweeted that technology was bad. Most likely on an iPhone.

Put that in your bong and smoke it.

Irony is dead, hit in the head with a sustainable, hand-crafted, artisanal Best Made shovel.
.

21 comments:

Scott J said...

You're a touch gloomy today.

I prescribe range time. Preferably a match of some sort :)

og said...

This... this stupid, which can only be described as herculean, is the clear and present danger to our race.

Cybrludite said...

They don't like capitalism & technology? Fine. Ship their happy backsides off to North Korea & make them work in the fields for their daily rice ration.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

I would say, "The irony, it burns!", but as you say, it's already dead.

Don said...

I thought the "Capitalism. Done and done" guy was proposing a solution. I kinda wondered how he got into this mix.

Aaron said...

Thanks for finding the interesting illustration of homo progressivus spouting off nonsense while nodding sagaciously to each other.

They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and in their vacuous profundity they would proclaim themselves to be our betters. They are not.

Steve Skubinna said...

It's easy to write this off to ignorance.

What if it's evil? I mean, simply an outgrowth of the basic progressive totalitarianism that blighted the Twentieth Century? We already know that when these people say "we" in discussing bad behavior they don't include themselves.

It's the same fascist impulse the left has always had. We're the ones who have to sacrifice, who must surrender freedom and wealth for the common good. And when I say "we" above, I mean "Not those people."

Cybrludite said...

BTW, that Best Made shovel... can it be hammered into a receiver for an AK build?

Ed said...

Hmmm

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/global-cooling_b_4413833.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/19/opinion/frum-global-cooling-impact/

http://thebrigade.thechive.com/2012/12/06/diy-shovel-to-ak-47-50-photos/

Joe in PNG said...

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "And some said the trees were a mistake, and we should have never left the ocean in the first place."

Joseph said...

Irony is dead? I beg your pardon. Everybody Knows that if you not killed by a gun you're still alive.

Joe in PNG said...

And upon some reflection regarding the background, it looks like the Man is sticking it to the Man.

Steve Skubinna said...

This is secular Calvinism. For these people, their one percenter lifestyle is not only reward for their intellectual and moral superiority, but an outward expression of it.

Jim said...

First, congrats on the Instalanche! Very well deserved, I'd say.

Second, Cyberludite at comment #2. Perfect proposal. They want primitivism, let 'em have it, all they can handle, and then some.

Me, I just turned the furnace up a notch, poured a bourbon, and shall enjoy basking in my carbon footprint, ftw.



Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TC

Mycroft said...

Nah, North Korea would be kind of overkill for these guys. Instead, just sign them up for the next season of Naked And Afraid on the Discovery channel.

WhatWasLost said...

The older I get, the more convinced I am that leftists are the unintended byproduct of civilization, and more specifically the success of civilization. Once upon a time the foolish and delusional would be culled by the environment. When humans lived as hunter-gatherers, failure to deal with the world as it actually existed resulted in death. Now obviously the people who lived in these societies had many superstitions, but all of these were attempts to understand and to control that which was beyond their power or knowledge. When it came to the things that were within their grasp, they were profoundly pragmatic.

Then along came civilization and all of the advantages and protections it provides. Being wrong no longer resulted in an early death. Foolishness was no longer a capital offense with the penalty enforced by reality itself. People could entertain the most outlandishly flawed and incorrect ideas without ever having to fear that they would perish as a result.

The more advanced civilization became, the more protection it provided to the dunderheads. Today we live in the most advanced society the world has ever seen, and leftist nonsense has never been more prevalent. These people literally believe the most blatantly absurd and internally contradictory nonsense imaginable. Its almost like they are deliberately trying to be wrong, and playing a game of one-ups-man-ship to see who can come up with the most asinine sophistries. They are able to do this because there is no penalty. They can be as wrong as they like and get away with it.

Time and time again throughout history civilizations have perished, often quite suddenly. The reasons why are often a mystery. I believe that in many cases these past societies collapsed and faded away because they became so successful that their defective members were no longer being culled by the environment. Defective ideas came to be embraced, good ideas rejected, and before long the society collapsed under the weight of its own collective dysfunction.

If I'm right about this, what does it bode for us?

Ritchie The Riveter said...

Mycroft, I refer to that as the Rainbow Six solution, after the Tom Clancy novel of the same name, which features such ironic justice ... let them live out what they say they believe.

Just without the cameras, though.

At its heart the Climate Change Cult is simply a back door to jam Progressive socio-economic morality down our throats ... you can hear the internal conversations: "even though we might be wrong on the science, it's still the right thing to do."

It's another example of how Progressives are far more fundamentalist in their beliefs than the Christians they criticize ... and far more self-assured in the omniscience of the objects of their worship: themselves, even as they present themselves in a manner reminiscent of Romans 1:22, when it comes to the actual value of their thought ...

Despite their erudition ...
And academic pedigree ...
The Best and the Brightest look instead
Like a box of dim bulbs to me ...

White Knight Leo #0368 said...

This is why I'm an Objectivist. Ayn Rand saw this coming 60 fucking years ago.

Spartacus said...

HMMMM, seems lost on the whole lot of them that without capitalism they wouldn't have Kroger, Safeway or Whole Foods within a 15 minute jaunt. Without capitalism urban yuppies would be putting rats in their ratatouille. Oh, and please spare me the "we got 9mm's in the 'hood, we can take anything we want from you hicks in the sticks" crap, we have .300 mags, your 9mm falls about a half mile short of being effective.

Tam said...

"Oh, and please spare me the "we got 9mm's in the 'hood, we can take anything we want from you hicks in the sticks" crap, we have .300 mags, your 9mm falls about a half mile short of being effective."

Apparently "ignorance of the enemy" is a common fault.

I'm trying really hard to picture Klein or Hayes saying "(W)e got 9mm's in the 'hood," and just keep coming up blank...

global village idiot said...

Mr. Reynolds, read "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" by Kipling. Your answer is there.

And Tam, Irony is quite gloriously alive and thriving fabulously. Nitwits like those in the image above are its natural hosts.

gvi