Lefty Likes his Spankings

If you “caring” stuff doesn’t work and thinking people don’t want it, the next best thing is making yourself suffer. When that doesn’t get you anywhere, make the general population suffer.

Now let's objectively review the initiatives in the neolib agenda: Environmentalism, global passivism, overpopulation, socialized healthcare, and promoting government intervention into all aspects of life. All of these priorities require individuals to sacrifice their lifestyles, their income, and/or their basic comforts.

This past week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted, "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory..." in order to sacrifice ourselves to the gods of global warming. As presidential candidate Obama said, "We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times..." He seems to indicate that he wants us to starve and freeze.

Most of these initiatives involve the inflicting of pain and misery. Tom Daschle, in his book "Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis" says health-care reform "will not be pain free" and that seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of having them treated. In other words, you will suffer a slow agonizing death under government mandate.

As a final phenomenological exercise, impassively observe the level of neolib support for this agenda. It has not appeared to wane. In fact, neolib fervor continues to increase as the promised level of suffering increases.

All of which are initiatives that require the general population, the proletariat, if you will, to suffer, and requires nothing from those who call for the self-flagellation other than self-congratulation. Tidy, isn’t it? It’s a revision of what used to be called the martyrdom complex – only this time around it’s seen a lot more like the way Jihadists do: a martyr dies in the process of initiating the murder of others, and doesn’t necessarily meet their end by holding fast to their principals.

According to Rancour-Laferriere, increasing Russian masochism coincided with the rise of the Soviet Union and Communism, although it was pervasive in the soul of Russia prior to that. The conclusion to this analysis is that as neolib moral masochism increases, so does the emotional need for an all-powerful master to govern them. As the governing master becomes more dominant and disciplinarian, the masochism is reinforced and the spiral continues.

Thus: enter the promised one, whose very being suspends disbelief, inspires embarrassingly servile hagiography, and a suspension of all skepticism over the political abuse of power or a belief in the need for a balance of their idol’s power.

They are not, nor have they ever been “the reality based community.” As ever, while they play at rebellion fantasies from their easy chairs, they repeat the act of licking the boot that kicks them. In their difficult relationship with the concept of power, the contemporary left, like the central Europeans of the past century favor constructing unchecked power over a population they deem untrustworthy, semi-consciously with the idea that that very untrusted mass could never include them – it’s as if at least knowing of ones’ intellectual confinement is a comfort. So long as you can get something for nothing (or at least perceive it that way) what do you care if the ambers in the stove are actually dim. Better to put another ragged blanket over your shoulders than risk anything else – besides, you’re enjoying your revolutionary dreams, aren’t you?

Consider the hatred of federalism in the construction of the EU in deference of something that seems more democratic and “flatter” but certainly isn’t – it doesn’t seem to tend in the direction of a separation of super-state, national, provincial, and local powers. It looks like a similar sort of complex where the politically active are constantly having to duel with their own instincts to seek a centralization of powers as though the public cannot be trusted, that the pain of debate and discourse may be voted away in a desperate bid to eradicate even the smallest reminder of disagreement or anger. Because they’re scary, must be controlled, and might remind us that sometimes we aren’t always right..