You Might Be an Idiot If....
I can remember the exact moment—that singular point in time when the political white noise abated and the epiphanies began to flow like wine. It was then that the walls came tumbling down. Like Joe Louis stalking the fleet-footed Billy Conn for the KO, there was no place left to run. I tried, however, oh, how I tried! But, when the revelation came, it came with all the subtle beauty of a pulverizing left hook to the jaw.
I was in the middle of reading the latest issue of “Z Magazine” a radical leftist publication founded by a small group of Noam Chomsky acolytes. They were having a large gathering of like-minded folk discussing how to bring about the great socialist utopia that was, apparently, just around the corner, when someone asked the inevitable question “Yeah, but how are we going to do it"? Surprisingly, no one had actually thought it through that far. The how, the why, those all important, yet, devilish details were carefully hidden in plain sight.
A hush seemed to fall over the room and suddenly, amidst a roar of approval, someone with authority spoke up and said, “We’ll just do it"! Yes, that was it, “We’ll just do it"! Exactly how you would establish who has authority and who doesn’t in a radical, egalitarian utopia, was beside the point. It seemed that they knew, and that was all that mattered. If it involved some process using ESP or mystical incantations (of the non-religious variety, of course), that would be good enough for now, the details could be worked out later.
That was the moment when the awful realization hit me like a ton of bricks, “These people just might be idiots.” I thought. Exactly why it took so long to see this was well beyond my meager abilities as an amateur psychoanalyst. It was all too evident that they had nothing to offer but complaints, which they would recite aloud like an Old Testament prophet quoting from a secular bible. From those complaints, they wove narratives of oppression of every kind. Class based oppression, racial oppression, sexual oppression, you name it and they had a classification for it. The only thing necessary was the word “Oppression.” With that one word you could conjure and convey evil of every kind. And, with all that oppression, they needed an oppressor to do the oppressing, so the term “White Men” became the all-encompassing banner under which oppression could be readily identified. Not “White People," which involved women, because women were oppressed too. So, men it was—particularly the white kind.
I had begun to have my doubts a few issues earlier, when the editor and chief, the “Big Socialist Kahuna” had published his life’s work called “Participatory Economics.” This sounded serious. Like it might be filled with alternative theories of human interaction as it relates to how and why people behave the way they do when it comes to money. But, as he began to explain his thesis, which consisted mostly of anecdotes about how the five or six people that worked at “Z Magazine” shared responsibilities, I began to suspect that something was amiss—with the vague possibility that he might be an idiot already taking form in my mind. I attempted to ignore this. The choice of who the “Great Satan” might actually be “Us or Them” politically speaking, was too much to process. Maybe if I cranked up the volume on a Bob Dylan tune it would do the trick “It’s alright, Ma, I’m only bleeding” somehow seemed appropriate.
But there were other problems as well. Once you peeled away the lofty sounding rhetoric you were left with basically the same theory that my mom had come up with for my sister and I when it came to who did what chores on what days. The fact that he was the boss didn’t mean he was too big to take out the garbage. The garbage was everyone’s problem, so they’d share the responsibility. I could only scratch my head and ask myself why I hadn’t come up with this theory and pocketed a big pile of Capitalist greenbacks. Probably, because I wasn’t fourteen anymore.
I was in the middle of reading the latest issue of “Z Magazine” a radical leftist publication founded by a small group of Noam Chomsky acolytes. They were having a large gathering of like-minded folk discussing how to bring about the great socialist utopia that was, apparently, just around the corner, when someone asked the inevitable question “Yeah, but how are we going to do it"? Surprisingly, no one had actually thought it through that far. The how, the why, those all important, yet, devilish details were carefully hidden in plain sight.
A hush seemed to fall over the room and suddenly, amidst a roar of approval, someone with authority spoke up and said, “We’ll just do it"! Yes, that was it, “We’ll just do it"! Exactly how you would establish who has authority and who doesn’t in a radical, egalitarian utopia, was beside the point. It seemed that they knew, and that was all that mattered. If it involved some process using ESP or mystical incantations (of the non-religious variety, of course), that would be good enough for now, the details could be worked out later.
That was the moment when the awful realization hit me like a ton of bricks, “These people just might be idiots.” I thought. Exactly why it took so long to see this was well beyond my meager abilities as an amateur psychoanalyst. It was all too evident that they had nothing to offer but complaints, which they would recite aloud like an Old Testament prophet quoting from a secular bible. From those complaints, they wove narratives of oppression of every kind. Class based oppression, racial oppression, sexual oppression, you name it and they had a classification for it. The only thing necessary was the word “Oppression.” With that one word you could conjure and convey evil of every kind. And, with all that oppression, they needed an oppressor to do the oppressing, so the term “White Men” became the all-encompassing banner under which oppression could be readily identified. Not “White People," which involved women, because women were oppressed too. So, men it was—particularly the white kind.
I had begun to have my doubts a few issues earlier, when the editor and chief, the “Big Socialist Kahuna” had published his life’s work called “Participatory Economics.” This sounded serious. Like it might be filled with alternative theories of human interaction as it relates to how and why people behave the way they do when it comes to money. But, as he began to explain his thesis, which consisted mostly of anecdotes about how the five or six people that worked at “Z Magazine” shared responsibilities, I began to suspect that something was amiss—with the vague possibility that he might be an idiot already taking form in my mind. I attempted to ignore this. The choice of who the “Great Satan” might actually be “Us or Them” politically speaking, was too much to process. Maybe if I cranked up the volume on a Bob Dylan tune it would do the trick “It’s alright, Ma, I’m only bleeding” somehow seemed appropriate.
But there were other problems as well. Once you peeled away the lofty sounding rhetoric you were left with basically the same theory that my mom had come up with for my sister and I when it came to who did what chores on what days. The fact that he was the boss didn’t mean he was too big to take out the garbage. The garbage was everyone’s problem, so they’d share the responsibility. I could only scratch my head and ask myself why I hadn’t come up with this theory and pocketed a big pile of Capitalist greenbacks. Probably, because I wasn’t fourteen anymore.
From there he pontificated furiously about how all the people with all the really rotten jobs should get paid the most. For instance, if you were a sewage worker or someone who handled nitroglycerine on a regular basis while riding a motorcycle on a bumpy mountain road at night, you should automatically get paid more. The problem, of course, was that all the best and the brightest would be blown to bits trying to make a buck driving motorcycles loaded with explosives, leaving only those who had actually never studied or developed a skill to run it all. But, like most things, they hadn’t really thought it through that far. Like so many political ideas, it sounded good. If it was being orchestrated by people with no real world experience in the various fields that they sought to control, that was just another pesky detail. They had an abundance of faith, though. Faith in their own wisdom as the final arbiter of truth and goodness. If that didn’t work, they could always say they weren’t Republicans—and that would be good enough.
This was typical of leftists. I had been one, after all. It wasn’t about limiting the power of the powerful, but changing who held the power. If that meant that a small number of people had a tremendous amount of power, far greater than any Multinational Corporation ever could, it was only temporary—until they worked things out. At some later date the power would cheerfully be handed back to the people. And, with Fidel Castro’s fifty-year, iron-fisted rule of Cuba, they had an effective working model for inspiration.
Scholars and college professors like the aforementioned Noam Chomsky liked to say these ideas had never really been tried—not really, they hadn’t. Of course, that was only true if you excluded the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, which was is in our own hemisphere, the history of monarchies dating back many thousands of years from just about every nation and tribe around the world. There were other socialist dictatorships as well, like Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Pol Pot etc., etc. But, once you took those out of the equation, you had nothing. Who could complain?
Some would say a monarchy is definitely not a socialist’s idea of government. But once you’ve centralized power into the hands of a few enlightened people, you might just as well have a king. If Fidel Castro or Kim Ill Sung could pass Cuba and North Korea down through the family like an heirloom, what difference does it make?
That all of these lofty notions could be put to rest by anyone with a modest degree of objectivity and a hint of knowledge about economics and history didn’t matter. Which is why it was, and is, so damned hard to change directions once your ideological ship has set sail. Who wants to acknowledge that they, too, might be an idiot? The true critic never needs to actually be able to do the things that they write about or that they wish to turn into law. Politicians being the best (or should I say worst) examples of this kind of thinking. They only need to sound like they know what they’re talking about to the throngs of human cattle just waiting to be herded to greener pastures—or the slaughter—depending on who's doing the herding.
Eventually, the short attention span of the true believer soon enough compels them to take up new causes, leaving the old ones behind—and all that remains are broken promises, the careful lies and the slogans. “Hope and Change,” “Every Man a King,” and the ever popular “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” are a few of the populist sayings that indicate just how mentally malleable people can be when they’re so inclined. Ignorance, it would seem, knows no partisan boundaries. Bad ideas are bad ideas no matter where they come from.
Yes, I recognize that Congress, at times, functions much like a monarchy. Politicians take root and remain in power through generations of change—and money influences everything. There is a big difference, however, between a system that is designed to centralize power and one that does so because it’s been corrupted. A system built on a broken model can never really be fixed, it can only be managed. And, like all broken models, it will take great effort, as well as cost, to sustain it. That should be obvious, but all too often isn’t! It’s that inability to distinguish between the two that is the real issue.
Mark Magula
This was typical of leftists. I had been one, after all. It wasn’t about limiting the power of the powerful, but changing who held the power. If that meant that a small number of people had a tremendous amount of power, far greater than any Multinational Corporation ever could, it was only temporary—until they worked things out. At some later date the power would cheerfully be handed back to the people. And, with Fidel Castro’s fifty-year, iron-fisted rule of Cuba, they had an effective working model for inspiration.
Scholars and college professors like the aforementioned Noam Chomsky liked to say these ideas had never really been tried—not really, they hadn’t. Of course, that was only true if you excluded the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, which was is in our own hemisphere, the history of monarchies dating back many thousands of years from just about every nation and tribe around the world. There were other socialist dictatorships as well, like Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Pol Pot etc., etc. But, once you took those out of the equation, you had nothing. Who could complain?
Some would say a monarchy is definitely not a socialist’s idea of government. But once you’ve centralized power into the hands of a few enlightened people, you might just as well have a king. If Fidel Castro or Kim Ill Sung could pass Cuba and North Korea down through the family like an heirloom, what difference does it make?
That all of these lofty notions could be put to rest by anyone with a modest degree of objectivity and a hint of knowledge about economics and history didn’t matter. Which is why it was, and is, so damned hard to change directions once your ideological ship has set sail. Who wants to acknowledge that they, too, might be an idiot? The true critic never needs to actually be able to do the things that they write about or that they wish to turn into law. Politicians being the best (or should I say worst) examples of this kind of thinking. They only need to sound like they know what they’re talking about to the throngs of human cattle just waiting to be herded to greener pastures—or the slaughter—depending on who's doing the herding.
Eventually, the short attention span of the true believer soon enough compels them to take up new causes, leaving the old ones behind—and all that remains are broken promises, the careful lies and the slogans. “Hope and Change,” “Every Man a King,” and the ever popular “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” are a few of the populist sayings that indicate just how mentally malleable people can be when they’re so inclined. Ignorance, it would seem, knows no partisan boundaries. Bad ideas are bad ideas no matter where they come from.
Yes, I recognize that Congress, at times, functions much like a monarchy. Politicians take root and remain in power through generations of change—and money influences everything. There is a big difference, however, between a system that is designed to centralize power and one that does so because it’s been corrupted. A system built on a broken model can never really be fixed, it can only be managed. And, like all broken models, it will take great effort, as well as cost, to sustain it. That should be obvious, but all too often isn’t! It’s that inability to distinguish between the two that is the real issue.
Mark Magula
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