'Somehow' - The Critical Insurrection being waged in the minds of our 'Critical Thinkers'

Rene Descartes led The West into its first Critical Turn in thinking: "masked I advance":

I began this series of posts on 'The Critical Insurrection' five years ago (here, and here), by noting that despite the heated talk of insurrection at the time, the real and ongoing insurrection against America has had very little to do with what happened in our capital on the day of Jan 6th (a bitterly laughable claim). Much more to that point, are the innumerable insurrectional ideologies that have beset America with a century and more of attacks, whose most significant aspect is not those attacks we see still to this day, but the acceptance of that behavior by so many amongst us. That indicates where the critical damage is being done, not in open rioting, but within the ideas being thought within our minds, and so masked, the insurrection advances.

The various forms that 'Progressive Education' has taken over the last two centuries, have enabled the insurrection to advance unseen, by progressively purging the Western Mind of its history & literature. Too often lost in the distractions of rising illiteracy rates, falling test scores, and calls for more 'education reform!', is the reality that without the natural defenses that those lessons of history & literature had provided, we've become less able to identify, let alone confront, the ongoing insurrection that the enemies of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West, have been executing against us.

What lessons?

The Anchorage School District puts a warning label on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

The most obvious ones we lack today, are those that were once commonly learned from those now mostly forgotten stories, such as the one I referenced in the 2nd of these posts, where Hercules fought the Hydra, the many-headed monster that grew two new heads for each one that was cut off. In that adventure, Hercules & his companion Iolaus realized that they couldn't defeat the hydra just by cutting off its heads, because for each one they severed, it grew back two more to attack them with. What they soon realized was that if after Hercules cut off a head with his sword, Iolaus quickly cauterized its stump with his torch, it could grow no more heads from that neck, and so as they severed & cauterized one neck after another, they soon rendered the many headed Hydra, headless, and were able to bury what was left of the beast under a massive stone.

Sure, I realize that many (not you, of course) might be saying:

"Swell story Van, but we're not facing many headed monsters, and we have no swords or torches to cut and cauterize them with if we did! What we need are STEM skills, not stories!"

, and my reply to that, is:

Stop being so naive.

For those with eyes to see, the plain fact is that we are fighting a many headed monster, and it is devouring both our children and our society, and it is our willful ignorance of that, that has made it so easy for the beast to lay us low.

So yes, shallow perceptions aside, the fact is that:

• we most definitely do have a monster confronting us in the guise of a govt whose power has broken free of its proper limitations, working in league with an 'educational system' designed to make you unwise enough to accept it
• its many heads stem from fraudulent rights and perverted virtues that're supported by a long neck of unjust laws & new 'norms' that've grown out of the boldest of its lies
• we do have a sword: Truth, and we do have a flaming torch to cauterize the necks we sever: Principled arguments rooted in metaphysics, causality/logic, and ethics, which provide the high degree of truth needed for unseen errors to be found & corrected and for lies to be exposed, which is what it takes to ignite & burn sophistry with the heat of a thousand suns

The sheer quantity of meaningless facts being waved about in front of our faces, distracts most of us from being able to see the principles that underly them, and that is at least partly due to what we've been 'educated' to look for importance in, and what we habitually dismiss as irrelevant. Those valuable lessons which go unseen within everything from the fables of Aesop, to the mythic adventures of heroes like Hercules (the painting "The Choice of Hercules between virtue and pleasure", went 'viral' in our Founders' era), and the biblical tales such as Samson who "slayed a thousand with the jawbone of an ass", are what our modern 'thinking skills' oriented education, effectively blind us to.

One would have to be a fool, or one so dis-educated as to be indistinguishable from one, to dismiss such gems as little more than 'Talking snake stories', but achieving that level of cognitive blindness is and has been the point of our pro-regressive dis-education, and having achieved that state of mind by the early 20th Century, is what made it child's play for our experts in 'Progressive Education' to then discard Greek & Latin, and Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas, and even Shakespeare, from the minds of the last several generations that their beast has been busily 'educating'.

“In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.” ~Joseph Sobran

The West was able to achieve what it had, through how it learned lessons from its foundational stories, and recovering both those stories and how to read them, could do that for us once again, if we would just stop doing everything else but that. It's worth considering, that one uncomfortable lesson that those stories are ready to teach us, is that a STEM Skill centric people - having skills without understanding - is the intended result of cutting all the tall poppies down to size.

Some of you (not you, of course) might be saying:

"Oh come on... give me even one example of a 'lesson' like that applying today!"

Ok, tell ya what, here are three relevant lessons worth learning from Hercules & the Hydra for the price of one:

1. By imagining yourself in the position of the monster that grows two new heads for every one that's lost, you might learn that the monster wants to provoke its opponents to rush in and cut off one of its heads, because that's how it gets enough heads to overwhelm them with.
2. Knowing that the Hydra wants to be attacked by bold & impetuous heroes whose tempers can easily be inflamed, teaches you that it's wise to consider a situation carefully before rushing in to attack what you're being provoked with.
3. From stories such as these you learn that those who're ignorant of such lessons, are more prone to following their natural (ignorant) reactions to rush in where angels fear to tread, and so assist the monster they're battling against, to defeat them.
   • Bonus Lesson: No Hydra wants you to learn lessons such as these, from stories such as those!

Provoking you to rash actions is how such monsters go about killing and eating you, or as Saul Alinsky put it when radicalizing students into Leftist activism:

"Their reaction is your action!"

Is this just theory? No, and a quick check of recent history abounds with the consequences of allowing the hydra to provoke the rash behavior of popular opinion, again & again... here are three off the top:

• Ten years ago when trans-gender bathrooms and drag-queen story hour emerged, the public was outraged and demanded change!... which was then exploited through policies ensuring gender affirming care, porn in public school libraries, and further diluted and reduced the presence and position of women in society through the zealotry of 'trans women are women!', men beating women in women's sports, and men being named as 'woman of the year'
• Twenty years ago when parents were angered by convoluted math problems and the vapidness of assigned 'texts', they rushed into their school boards and loudly demanded change! (to what? for what?) and more rigorous testing (testing of what? for what?), and 'struck down Common Core!' (or so they thought); which on the one hand helped usher in the ideological intensification of SEL, CRT, and DEI, and 'School Choice' on the other (the 'choice' isn't what you think it is), both of which add additional bureaucratic facts, policies, reduced understanding, and ever worsening results
• A hundred years ago sensational stories about political corruption led to a big push for more 'democracy!' and the first wave of campaign finance reform being waved in We The People's faces, which resulted in passing the 17th Amendment... which reduced meaningful representation for every person, incentivized corruption, and transformed the federal govt into the untouchable hydra that We The People are still battling against today

And as you begin to notice that provocations and insults are routinely deployed to get us to attack the obvious issues being waved in front of our faces, it's worth remembering Alinsky's other favorite training phrase:

"The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution!"

C.S. Lewis: "The Screwtape Letters"

, and remember that their tactics are all about provoking you to react to the latest outrage in as shallow a manner as possible (anger & miseducation being the preferred one-two punch of monsters everywhere & everywhen), so that it can intensify our reactions and advance its divisiveness forward over our positions, positions which, lacking the perspectives which those lessons could have provided a solid foundation for, become more easily overrun, and prone to collapse before the critical insurrection.

The treasury of the West, from Homer to The Bible, from Virgil to Dante, and Shakespeare, abounds with meaningful lessons and truths which reveal its foundations in the rock of what is real and true, and those can still be as readily communicated to us today, as they were to our Founders in their era, and so provide the metaphysical stability needed to fill the mind, body, and soul, with far more than 'just stories', and the Hydra gnos that.

I've noted before, how at the outset of the pro-regressive transformation of what we had known education to be, into the malicious creature it is today, an astonished essayist commented in the late 1800s that:

"...The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, and learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most farcical in our scheme of education..."

The Palmerworm is adept at showing how seemingly useful answers are used to suppress and violate vital principles, such as: The Anthropological Line

, and he said so because to think that what literature transmits to our understanding can be thought of as being only a secondary branch of a 'STEM' education, rather than the soil, root and trunk of what an education is developed through, was still recognized by most people in his day to be completely absurd. Since then, however, that has become the norm, as anyone trained in 'Critical Thinking Skills' today would tell you (like my college professor troll), and they'll find ready support from those on 'The Right' who will jump at any opportunity for still more 'education reform' (which mainly enlarges the schools' bureaucracy and further diminishes the education they provide) to boost those test scores, provide 'accountability' and ensure improved 'thinking skills'. But take note:

• What do stories provide?: grammar, context, theme, plot, characterization, through which readers develop a basic understanding of logic, causality, ethics, and the ability to infer principles through, and learn lessons from, what they've read.
• What do stories not provide: Answers.
• What does modern schooling train you to seek and accept?: Answers.

Being trained to seek surface answers leads a person to neglect their awareness of underlying structures of principled understanding which are revealed through attention to theme, plot, and character development (you did learn about theme, plot, and character development in school, right? ...and that it was one of the most important lessons to learn...?), and not just those found in stories & literature, but in other narratives as well. That habit of mind is vital for developing a solid depth of understanding about what you've read or heard, and without that, the habit weakens, you become comfortable with its absence, and ever more willing to accept whatever 'answers' you're given, as substitutes for having given the serious consideration to a matter that's required to come to a conclusion about it that's worthwhile - actual, not artificial intelligence. 

Excellent demonstrations from Courtenay Turner, on how to see the larger story being lost behind the 'answers' that're given, in:
"The Simulation State" and "The Factory Reset"

Don't forget:

striking off the monster's head is the easy part...

...as the monster intends it to be

, and that requires it to do nothing more than wave the easy answers of divisive facts in our faces, to get an ill-considered reaction from us. And unless you actually understand the issue which it inflamed your reaction to, then even if you manage to cut the head off the neck you're being faced with, you'll lack the depth of understanding that's needed to generate enough heat to cauterize its bloodied stump, and so you enable the hydra to sprout still more heads for tearing us all apart with.

A Grimoire of philosophical spells: "Hegel and the hermetic tradition", by Glenn Alexander Magee

That lack of depth in our understanding (Note: this isn't a matter of intelligence, but of what is left unconsidered by even the most able thinkers), is what inclines us to lash out at every provocation, which is what has been on full display in the usual responses to issues like students being led (by their teachers and administrators) out of school to protest for 'Black Lives Matter!' or 'Ice Out!', as the Woke Left & Woke Right (or just Pro-Regressive, for short), shout that "It's about white supremacy!' or 'It's about hating white people!", both of which advance a common narrative of racial division. What's then able to go unnoticed in those (deliberate) appearances, is that the actual issue is not about race, race is just what they know they can rely upon to provoke a rash response from both you and their friends on the 'other side'.

The issue is never about the apparent issues of education, or race, or illegal aliens, or about what 'gender' you identify as, but the churning that happens on every ideological front, as with the 2nd Amendment where the dialectical churning from each side ('Left' or 'Right') making it all about guns - for or against - diverts everyone from thinking about the individual rights that the 2nd Amendment secures to us by preventing the government from infringing upon our right to keep and bear arms (Note: it says 'arms' in general, not 'firearms' in particular) - that churning is the insurrection in action.

The pattern to be noticed emerging from that, that of a provocative distraction, reaction, action, is the footprint (and mating call) of the monster that we're actually facing (which is not the guise of govt that it wears, but the monster beneath that mask), and 'somehow' that pattern mirrors how we've all been taught to think about and approach the issues of the day.

The initial provocative distractions and the public reactions to them - 'transgender bathrooms', 'low test scores', 'teachers unions' - seize upon surface facts and easy answers, and then - 'somehow' - with an action of philosophical sleight of mind (have you noticed how activism around hot-button issues like 'freedom of speech!' and 'Don't cancel me!', typically intensify the problems they purport to be concerned with?) the underlying issue slips by and progressively metastasizes (reproduces?) and sprouts two new heads as matters steadily worsen.

Whichever head of the hydra is being battled, as we react to the distracting movements that the hydra churns up around an issue, the doors to the halls of power are swung wide open by our impetuous heroes calling for 'Change!' from all sides, and the only thing that can be counted upon, is that it will result in still more policies, media denunciations, and more, as the spiritual and political corruption of the Hydra's venom seeps in deeper and spreads still further... which is the 'Left, Right, Left, Right, Forward... March!' of the revolution.

Eric Voegelin:"Science, Politics, and Gnosticism"

How has that 'somehow' been accomplished? Well, in a word - and this word might be a bit provocative itself: Magic

I know, many (not you, of course) are probably saying:

"Really Van? Magic?!"

Yes, but, because the word 'Magic' has multiple meanings, it's important to clarify that what I mean by that has less to do with the hocus-pocus sense of a Merlin the Magician, and more to do with the skilled stagecraft of a philosophical Houdini. Much of what has been attributed to complex issues (1st cousin to 'hocus-pocus') like 'rising illiteracy', 'trade wars', 'the decline of the family', are in fact the natural consequences of simple perceptions, decisions & actions we're routinely led into, whose import is effectively obscured and hidden from us by the artful misdirection & subterfuge (much of which is done unconsciously) of those who put on the airs of an expert (magician).

"Can you define a woman?"
, "No...I'm not a biologist"

No doubt most of you (you too?) are pushing back on even that 'stage magician' identification of the term, but I'll ask you: What is it that you have in mind to explain what has enabled bearded men to publicly identify as woman, and to do so with the assurance that thousands if not tens of thousands of highly educated people will accuse you of 'transphobia' and 'hate speech', for objecting to their ludicrous claims? If the sum of your assessment of that is something to the effect of

'Oh...hell-If-I-Know...somehow!'

, then I submit to you, that your exasperation and acceptance of it, is that same sense which both the stage magician and the philosophical sorcerer cultivate, because to be successful they both need their audience to have that level of misunderstanding about the tricks they're performing upon them "Wow... somehow he pulled a rabbit out of a hat!". Just as the stage magician uses sleight of hand to appear to pull a rabbit out of a hat, the philosophical sorcerer uses a conceptual sleight of mind to slip impossible ideas into what 'everyone knows', in order to do what every sane person would otherwise say is insane to even consider. And they do this with the assurance and expectation that they will be applauded for doing so on the national and international stage, just as the stage magicians are applauded for tricking their audiences in Las Vegas.

We'll put legs under this as we go through this series of posts, but I submit to you that if the audience 'knows' only those apparent 'answers' that the magician gives them ("you can see there's nothing in this hat") and doesn't understand the nature and causes of what they are seeing happen before them (such as how to conceal a rabbit), then those 'answers' they think they know about the trick, coupled with their misdirected attention and absence of interest in understanding what has happened, means that their audience's understanding of events differ very little from either sense of those observing a magician perform 'Magic'. I contend that nothing less than the widespread shallowness of understanding that is compatible with either sense of 'Magic', could have enabled someone to confidently identify as 'trans', and to feel assured that you would be penalized by the rest of the audience for heckling their performance.

This sort of 'Magic' should not be dismissed as mere trickery, as that same power it has to amuse, can be used to dismantle and destroy friendships, families, and entire societies & civilizations, by presenting poisonous ideas as desirable cure-alls. I submit to you that the artful stage management of philosophical 'Magic' is not only real, but exceedingly effective in its misdirections ("I think therefore I am") and wand-waving ("Teach how to think, not what to think"), and other such techniques of conceptual sleight of mind, that induce the mindset of seeking 'just the facts!' , along with a willingness to accept the appearance of obvious 'logical answers', which serious students of literary myths & monsters would balk at, even as it dismisses those studies as only so much unserious jibber-jabber (and with a sly eye cast towards religion). That soph-satisfying sense of superiority, is a 'tell' of how easily such spells of apparent 'understanding' can and have been performed upon us, without our noticing.

Deceptions such as these have not only enabled the Pro-Regressives to bury us under layers and layers of the hydra's provocations, but they also whisper to us why it is that they operate in this way. Antonio Gramsci (who, BTW, was decades late to the pragmatic propaganda party) infamously identified the West's 'Cultural Hegemony' - that western culture being the result of the philosophy, religion, history, stories and myths of the Greco/Roman - Judeo/Christian civilization, has dominated all others - as the greatest defense against, and threat to, his Marxist's ideals, because he saw that our regard for our stories and religion and the understanding of them, was far more central to and foundational for that 'Cultural Hegemony', than any scientific and technical aspect of 'progress' in the modern world (none of which could have occurred without them).

What it is that Gramsci & others before him intended by attacking the West's 'Cultural Hegemony' and why, and how that was meant to be wielded against The West, by 'defenders' of The West using its technological powers against itself, is what we need to identify, sever, and cauterize into lifeless stumps, in order to bury the headless beast beneath an unmovable stone. Only then, will we be able to re-secure a sound understanding of America, within the minds of Americans today, and tomorrow.

Using 'Critical Thinking' to identify the nature of that 'somehow', progressively clarifying its footprint, profile, and purpose, and the familiar and trusted appearances it operates through and hides behind, is what this series of posts will be digging into.

Memorial Day - A day to remember those who died for... what?

Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, is a day set aside to remember and honor those who have died in the armed forces of the United States of America. If we are to honor and memorialize those who gave their lives, can we do so properly without being mindful of what it was that they offered up, and lost, their lives in defense of?

After all, unlike the service members of other nations around the world who pledge their lives in defense of the nation, or the homeland, or the government or crown, the members of our armed forces do not. They did at one time, prior to 1789 members of the armed forces swore allegiance to the United States of America, but afterwards, with some short lived variations for officers, members of our military first give their oath as:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;....",

and only in pursuance of that, do they also swear

"and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Although that is most assuredly a solemn service to the nation, their lives are not sworn primarily to the nation, or to the government or to the President. They swear to support, to defend and to protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance, to, the Constitution of the United States of America.

Can any decent person, with that in mind, especially on this day, dare to think of that document as being simply a piece of paper? Or that the Constitution they sacrificed their lives for, was primarily created for the ability of politicians to jockey for power, to bargain for benefits and to increase the influence of one political party or another?

I do so hope your answer to that is No.

The Constitution is not simply a piece of paper, and it is far more than a set of rules to define how government is to operate. Its laws were created by men in order to preserve and protect that which is by nature necessary for our being able to live our lives as human beings. Not just regulations, but laws written under the principles of Natural Law, designed to harness men's baser (and also inalienable) faults - such as ambition for power - to serve the purpose of preserving and defending the highest of political aspirations: liberty and justice for all.

The Constitution doesn't simply define our laws, but their limits.

The Constitution, which would not have been passed by We The People, without the promise that it would be immediately amended with what became the Bill of Rights, those first ten amendments to it, is not simply paper, but words which harness the power of We The People to protect a select few rights which were understood as being necessary to prevent a tyrant from successfully rising amongst them or their posterity.

The Constitution was not designed to make the operations of government efficient, smooth and easy, but was instead deliberately designed so that its branches and operations would serve to slow, stall, and kill any implement of power - aka: Law - which some significant body of representatives of We The People (whether in the House, Senate, Executive or Judiciary) might see as being a threat to their liberty to live as human beings.

Those men and women we honor on Memorial Day served and died, not in defense of a government, or a leader, or for a piece of paper, but for the rule of laws which recognize, uphold and defend the right of human beings to live their own lives in liberty, and respectful of others right to do the same.

Can we honestly honor the dead, without honoring what they gave their lives for?

Please keep that in mind the next time you hear someone talking about getting around the Constitution - for the Constitution is the reason why there are so very, very many, whose lives are honored and memorialized on this day, and so very, very many others, whose lives were so deeply affected by their loss for the remainder of their days.

Trolling the troll's projections: The dark shadow of a he/him's 'Critical Thinking'

Before starting in on a new series of posts, there's a certifiable wacademic professor at a public state university local college, that has presented me with a useful illustration of the pro-regressive mind and the failures of the practice of 'Critical Thinking' which that series is going to explore. But before getting into the meat of that... taking the 'Comment Banner' of my blog to heart (only visible in mobile mode now, I dunno why), I'm first going to have some fun with my troll to "...be suffered and battered with glee, Trolls will be fed and booted for free..."

My greeting for trolls

My email & blog had been free of this troll's shadow for a year or so, but my post on the ICE insurrectionists triggered it into commenting once again, which mostly amounted to:

• "Why are you so stupid!?"
• "Why are you think you're so smart!?"
• "Why are you so racist!?"

, and as he/him slid into the usual flurry of spastic comments which add nothing of value, I reinstated comment moderation on the blog once again. But then it occurred to me on looking through the gibberish he/him has submitted, that it might be instructive to take note of how the mind of an academic he/him troll operates, and what it considers to be meaningful and meaningless, as that demonstrates the mental signature of our 'educational system's ideal 'human resource'.

The first thing one notices about this self-unaware troll who is paid to teach far too many students about Drama, is that despite expressing a lofty self image (mostly by way of telling me just how much more he/him understands, than I can ever hope to), the language he/him utilizes to 'engage with' opposing ideas, betrays a rather low turn of mind that is intent on crudely provoking emotional responses, and distracting from what he/him doesn't want said or read, which if unchecked, disintegrates, confuses, conflates, and subverts, the target audience - you, and me.

The shadow of a troll

He/him's latest comment happens to be one of he/him's more coherent efforts, which I've put in the inset half-way down this post to hit the lo-lights of, but before getting to that, I'd like to pick through a few of he/him's typical trollings to give you a feel for the dramatic atmosphere cultivated by this troll:

"...The reason I found myself back here is because I happened to remember the fun we used to have, you posting bullshit on the internet, me pointing out how it makes no sense to anyone with an unwashed brain, and you refusing to learn anything at all -- the blog isn't about learning, after all, it's about proselyting everything you "know" to be right...."

I first crossed paths with he/him several years ago on a CRT thread on facebook, which quickly devolved into he/him calling me names, misrepresenting what I'd said, denying what he/him'd said, and then as the untruths became too difficult to navigate, he/him deleted his original comment thread with all of my replies with it, and started in again from a different angle. As he/him's comments got nastier on my personal page and spilled over onto those of my friends & family, I blocked him, and as his manic attempts to comment shifted to this blog, I turned on comment moderation for only the second time in 15 years. He/him sent me emails too, but as I had no interest in or intention of engaging with someone who'd demonstrated how willing they were to mis-state, misrepresent, and outright lie, I imagine that on receiving no further attention, he/him thankfully faded away.

IOW, despite this troll's smiling picture, the manner he/him expresses in those comments that've made it onto my posts, such as: "For want of a... word?...", and the worse ones which himsoph is more comfortable with making that didn't make the cut ("...so conceited... stupid...EVERY FUCKING COMMENT..." ), belies a person with a very angry chip on the shoulder, and little of value in he/him's wording to compensate for that, and so comment moderation is on once again.

And yet... some of he/him's comments do give me a chuckle, such as:

"...how many times are you gonna lean on the pronoun "joke," Van?"

My dear shallowAsstro shadow, I'm not repeating the he/him pronoun "joke" just because I think it's amusing how defensive you are over what you attempt to identify as, I'm repeating it because including Trans-Friendly pronouns in your bio - especially as a teacher of other people's kids - is a sign of an understanding of identity that is based upon ideological appearances, and indicates an unbalanced mind in an unreasonable person. And seriously, when someone advertises the unbalanced nature of their worldview, it should be noted and pointed out, especially as the views you regularly espouse are even more extreme than the 'manifesto' of your fellow he/him teacher that shot up the Washington Correspondents' Dinner.

Still more amusing is how aggravating it has apparently been to he/him that naming of their Blogger account after an 'Astro' van in honor of my first name, failed to get under my skin. I didn't think it was even worth half an eyebrow raise, but my use of 'asstro' and lack of acknowledgement of its van'ness, irritated our shallow shadow of a he/him:

"...But if you hadn't yet realized my account was a spoof on yours, you've got some catching up to do, Van ..."

Weirdly, he/him somehow assumed that someone named Van, who was raised in Van Nuys, and drove a Van, and has heard 'Van' jokes all his life, would somehow find the use of 'astro' to be inventive & full of startling wit. If they gave out participation trophies for trolling, he/him would surely deserve one.

That is Sad. But it gets sadder still.

He/him has recently taken to using my profile pic, as the profile pic of the blogger account he/him created to troll me with. Yup.

When I complimented him on his upgrade, he/him updated the accounts' profile pic with a more recent picture of me (which my daughter took of me in my office, for promotional use by those who asked me to speak at their events, podcasts, or interviews), and submitted another delightful comment:

"...Speaking of profile pictures, you positioned yourself in front of your impressive library of all the books from which you've read one line and immediately misunderstood the entire text -- the same library you use in every single image of yourself: this blog, the poorly made advertisements to the confusing "talks" you give, now this recorded podcast...."
, and,
"...Re: your likeness: is this some soft admission of a body image issue? Is that why you're still using a 20-year old profile photo? Or why your house only seem to have one room?..."

My first reaction to that is that I'm not the one using other people's pictures for my profile pic! ദ്ദി( • ᴗ - ) ✧
And next, what sort of man does the thought of "a body image issue" occur to? Oh... right, a 'he/him'... got it. Sad.

As to the setting of my profile pic, the fact that books are central to the nature of this blog, and as my office is filled on all four walls with those books which I enjoy reading, it seems weirder to me that you'd ask why I set my profile pic "...in front of your impressive library of all the books", instead of seeing it as the most obvious setting for it (what else in my house would you prefer, the kitchen?). You may disagree. Enjoy that, won't you?

As to why I haven't updated it in years, I was and still am quite pleased with having caught a pic of my wife adjusting the light behind my head in my office, and I have no interest in, and can see no reason for, updating it. And again, enjoy that, won't you?

I'll grant you, a he/him might find it weird that someone might find enjoyment in their wife, their office, and the books they've gathered over the course of a lifetime, but what I think is really weird, is that a drama professor who dislikes me, my way of thinking, and my blogging about that, would give even a second thought to me or my blog... let alone engage in sustaining a manic spate of submitting such 'thoughts' as he/him has, to me.

Sad, sad, sad.

As to "...misunderstood the entire text...", it's no surprise that the possibility of coming to differing judgments is an alien concept to our shallow wacademic troll, but I'm very much aware that two people can read the same book carefully and all the way through, and come away with very different interpretations of its meaning and implications - that's not (necessarily) a result of subjective relativism, but can be because of how much attention one does, or hasn't given, to connecting the concepts down to their metaphysical roots (hi he/him!).

For my part, some of what I've learned from those books in my 'impressive library', and from life, is that what you 'know', doesn't make you smart, or wise, or able to reason well. But doing so does give you the means to check other people's statements against what has been said, and helps in forming a model for attempting to reason your way through a matter (rather than asserting, accusing, and insulting), to your best understanding of what something means in the context of what you can understand to be real and true, and what that portends.

What I offer on this blog, is my effort to do just that. For most healthy people, if my take is not to their liking, this blog is ever so easy for them to avoid. But for he/him... not so much.

That's both sad, and weird, but does anyone else wonder what the 'root cause' of this weirdness is? He/him expresses the same weirdness by peppering his comments to me with other such assertions, such as that I:

"...sure seem to want to present yourself as an intellectual -- while spending all your time attacking the people who actually put in that work..."

, and I guess my first response to that is: Is this the kind of language and behavior that a he/him thinks of as being the norm for an 'intellectual'?

But to he/him's point, I have no interest in being seen as an 'intellectual', not because I think "the work of the mind" is in any way bad, or that I wouldn't leap at the opportunity to spend all my time doing that for a living, but because the term is typically used just as he/him-soph is doing, to insinuate that having an interest in and knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, is somehow above the heads of the 'typical' plumber (or software developer). But such interests are not and should not be thought of as being out of the reach of 'regular people' - having and pursuing such interests was considered the norm for any respectable person from our Founders' era through the mid-1800s - and I not only distrust those who use such terms to portray such interests and pursuits as something 'exceptional' and beyond the reach of 'most people', I roundly condemn them for doing 'that work'.

And as to he/him's tired charge that:

"...You're very good at assuming you're smarter than/more correct than everyone in the room;..." and that "...You immediately continue this self-superior vanity by saying that you were immediately more informed than ALL OF WRITTEN ACADEMIC HISTORY..."

, the fact is that unlike some trolls that come to mind, you won't find me portraying myself on my blog, or anywhere else, as being smarter than other people nor do I make a habit of calling those people who disagree with me: 'stupid' - in fact I often caution against that, as such easy and satisfying assumptions tend to blind you to your own mis-assessments.

What's instructive about he/him's comment though, is how often such charges come from what is expected of me to think and do, because of what he/him assumes I must be ( Hi Descartes!: "...I might take, as a general rule, the principle, that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true..."). What I have learned, and what he/him's schools should have ensured that he/him had learned before being let loose to instruct students in their thinking, is that the first person to question in any disagreement, is yourself. If I don't see an obvious issue with my take (and yes, sometimes I do... sometimes 'the moment' gets away from any of us), then I try to question the person I'm talking with, about what the basis for their position is, and see if I can square that with what I understand to be real and true, and how they think I've got that wrong. What I don't do in such disagreements, is presume that their position is a result of a lack of intelligence on their part.

When, IMHO, someone is uninformed or otherwise seems to be failing to take note of relevant history & philosophy, I try to pose those questions that are most likely to reveal what it seems to me to have been missed. It doesn't always work, but it's always worth trying.

I didn't always do that, I was once (!) an arrogant little know-it-all, as I've noted in posts and interviews (which, BTW, he/him really dislikes), about the time I was brought face to face with the most obnoxious of opponents - me - by a friend of mine who, realizing how full of myself I was on a subject, saw that if rather than wasting time on bandying answers back & forth with me, he asked me a few questions that required some thoughtful responses from me, he could bring me face to face with mysoph and hoist me on my own petard:

"... when the questions a friend asked me about the statements of knowledgeable authorities that I'd been repeating & defending as if they were unquestionably true, led me to recognize that... they just weren't so. And worse for those labels that I'd taken pride in wearing, once I began following those questions that he'd raised, it didn't take long to realize that those authorities I was turning to next, for help in defending the first ones with, weren't any better..."

It was following that encounter, that I discovered that I was not only mistaken, but that who I'd taken to be TWKB (Those Who Know Best), were themselves either mistaken or misrepresenting what was available to be known by anyone who bothered to look beyond the carefully selected quotations they'd been commenting on, and that is what sent me on my Blogodidactic quest to go back to Homer and begin reading my way forward in time through the original sources myself, rather than solely trusting to other's commentary on them. A key point there, is that I went back to see for myself - not because I thought that I was so brilliant, but because I'd realized that I'd been worse than ignorant; I'd been comfortable with being one of those "who knows so much that just isn't so", which was a realization that rattled me enough, that the memory of it keeps me on my toes to this day. Whatever conclusions I've come to, I have come to them the hard way, and when confronted with opposing views, I question both those views and my takes on them, as a means of deepening my understanding.

Honest criticism is a great value. Trolling... not so much.

How relevant can a troll be?
Ok, troll whacking aside, how is this wacademic's trolling relevant to you? It's tempting to write this all off as the shallow drama of a weird teacher that's not worth giving another thought to. That drama isn't what is worth our attention here. While it is sad that our shallow shadow of a he/him seems utterly unable and/or unwilling to consider opposing views as honest judgments, or to question he/him's own assumptions (gasp!), or to entertain the possibility that things could be other than he/him presumes them to be, but what is worth taking note of, is that 'somehow' someone that our educational system has groomed into being a professor that's worthy of instructing college students in their thinking, 'somehow' thinks that it's appropriate to respond to differences of opinion, with 'thoughts' such as:

"...your impressive library of all the books from which you've read one line and immediately misunderstood the entire text..."

Our shallow shadow of a college professor clearly assumes that disagreeing with he/him's assessment 'is proof' that you're either a fool or that you haven't read more than one line of a book, which he - a college professor - expresses in such arbitrary and baseless assumptions and insults as shown here and worse ones not shown, and all made with the expectation - hope - that they would be publicly viewable. That he/him considers such 'criticisms' worthy of he/him's position (and, by extension, of the institutions he/him represents), adds to the already abundant evidence that behavior such as that is the strange fruit of our 'educational' system.

A white liberal woman says conservatives don’t have student loans because they’re 'uneducated.' Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/DhSOMAVZhz

— Genius Tech (@Geniustechw) May 6, 2026

Critical Thnking in action!

No doubt some, maybe even he/him, would reply:

"That's not fair, we teach students how to engage in critical thinking! This was just a case of responding to a perceived injustice!"

, and I'd reply

"Yes. You teach thinking as a skill, as a technology to be utilized where its useful in much the same way as a cordless drill is, and laid aside where not, in much the same way a slave is taught useful skills. What you don't do, is educate a person into understanding and caring about what is good and worthwhile, and how to recognize and behave in accordance with that, in every aspect of their life. IOW: Education."

Now, fun & jabs aside, I assume that Shadow Zimmerman is probably, to his friends, family, acquaintances, students, etc., a decent, intelligent, caring kind of guy. But with such comments as these in mind, what also comes to mind is the old saw that writing your thoughts down (even in a comment box) produces more structured and coherent thought than simply speaking your mind does, and so I do wonder what sort of real-time stream-of-consciousness version of these comments to me, might follow from he/him encountering another person's 'wrongthink' in person, and in the moment? And I do wonder how aware most people are of how someone that is so chockfull of 'thinking skills' as he/him is (with little or no apparent foundation for them), might suddenly 'express himself' when encountering 'wrongthink' in the moment? And what sort of behavior might accompany that?

Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you: The 'Critical Thinking' of a he/him/his college professor:

"Hi, Van!

I think the fun back-and-forth is over for you, but I can't help but point out a fun little inconsistency in two posts two weeks apart from 2021. I wish I had done more back then to challenge the silliness of your arguments, rather than just attack the obvious false statement that no social studies textbook excludes information on Jefferson being a slave owner.

Aaaaanyway. I noticed that in this post you offer an amuse bouche of your silly theory on diversity that you were nearly brave enough to read aloud in a room of your peers. God I wish that would've happened and I could've been there. You're very good at assuming you're smarter than/more correct than everyone in the room; but incorrectly white-mansplaining racism in the classroom to a Black teacher with a PhD in education is especially misdirected.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanywayyyyyy. In this post you say that diversity is a given between "any three" Americans, but that valuing this diversity is "unAmerican" because "to value diversity as such in America, is to value what divides one person from one another, and to focus upon that will rend them apart through the failure to focus upon what there is that is present to each of us which could and should bring us all together as one." VERY interesting to see the "Classic AmErIcAn liberal" argue for such a collective emphasis here. It's sorta counter to almost everything you say. Hell, you don't even identify as a "classic liberal" anymore, because classic liberalism actually respects every individual's right to self-knowledge and self-guidance. Your new label is as liberal as the Nazis were socialist.

Not only is emphasizing "what should bring us all together as one" counter your whole schtick, it ALSO contradicts your attack on "inclusion" from that stupid speech that never was. You say there that inclusion is bad, because it's "a collectivist term which is not urging the use of good manners in welcoming and including everyone, It explicitly means recognizing only those traits that are approved of as being representative of a group (which is itsell bigotted at best), and entails actively condemning any individual choices that vary from those Inclusive Identities."

So, let me get this straight: inclusion is bad because it doesn't honor individual traits, only those shared by the group? Yet diversity is also bad, but ONLY WHEN it... honors individual traits instead of those shared by the group? What the fuck?

Is that being too harsh? It's all too clear that our shallow shadow of a he/him is far from being the only 'educated' person who exercises 'Critical Thinking' like a fool skating upon thin ice (see 'critical thinker' video in inset). And if any still doubt that... perhaps we should ask those at the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner for their thoughts on what sort of behavior they'd expect to receive from an 'educated' he/him identifying teacher of the year?

No, I'm not simply casting aspersions, I'm asking a serious question: Is he/him teaching that manner of 'thinking' to he/him's students? It seems to me to be pretty farfetched to think that that's not the case, and that, I think, is something for all of us to be concerned about, and it is what goes to the center of the issue that the coming series of posts will be diving into - what are our schools teaching, when teaching 'Critical Thinking'?

Of the 'inconsistencies' he/him says he wants to point out (because they are objectively untrue, or because they conflict with a narrative?), he/him whines:

"...I wish I had done more back then to challenge the silliness of your arguments..."

, in reaction to what I'd noted had occurred at a school board meeting, which had myself and the crowd groaning outloud:

"...a lady who claimed that she was 'raised a good conservative', and was shocked, shocked I tell you, when she left the backwoods of Missouri and went away to college and discovered that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. We were also treated to a speech by a student currently in the 12th grade, who also claimed that she never knew that Thomas Jefferson had owned slaves until someone outside of school enlightened her..."

The lady who made the claim in 2020, was in her 20's. I was on Missouri's 2017 Curriculum Framework committee for Missouri's school curriculum - grades 6 to 12 - part of which involved examining and discussing the previous curriculum framework which was what was in place throughout the whole of her schooling, and unless she paid no attention in school (or to anything in media), that wasn't possible. On top of that, anyone who's had kids in our schools over the last 20 years, knows damn well that one of the most consistently repeated lessons in those SS books, worksheets, and 'recommended readings', is that of drilling home that "THE FOUNDING FATHERS WERE SLAVE OWNERS!!!", and their claim to have been somehow ignorant of that, was what made their comments so obviously ridiculous.

He/him responded with:

"... your silly theory on diversity that you were nearly brave enough to read aloud in a room of your peers. God I wish that would've happened and I could've been there..."

Firstly, trolls we've got enough of at school board meetings.

Secondly, I'm happy to report that I've repeated that 'silly theory' of mine in much greater detail in presentations to audiences (a slide from one of those here), to radio & podcast hosts, to legislators, and directly to state and local administration and faculty. What he/him is unwilling or unable to identify about the identity politics of 'Diversity', is what I go into in those presentations and in posts like this series, where any honest reading of the original sources reveals that 'Diversity' is intended to instill divisiveness through the manipulation of appearances that are intentionally deceiving, so as to achieve ideological and political ends. The slide notes that the harsh realities DEI delivers are a direct result of its promises:

• What we're led to expect when Diversity is promised, is a sense of ‘Everyone is invited!’, but what we immediately experience is the population being divided up into 'protected classes' (few concepts are more un- and anti-American than that) like "... BIPOC, non-Black POC and gender fluid, non-binary, two spirit...", etc, while unprotected classes and those 'adjacent' to them are found wanting and are increasingly excluded from polite discussion.
• We see Equity promising more fairness, but what we immediately get are quotas that require unequal treatment in order to force equal (meaning: 'equal' + penalty points) outcomes where all the tall poppies are cut down to an 'equitable solution'. 
• We see Inclusion promised as “Welcoming”, but what we immediately get are lists of words & actions deemed to be non-inclusive and potentially offensive to some marginalized classes, and so power will be used to exclude them and fix the 'injustice' through enforced conformity of speech and action. IOW: ‘this is what *democracy* looks like!’
• What we see is that DEI appears to be all about Race & *whiteness* - don’t let the enemy choose the battlefield for you to fight on – it's a trap! DEI is about power, and race is just the most convenient means of seizing more of it

But being as he/him views the world through a post-modernist lens that denies our ability to understand anything to be objectively true, right, or wrong, he/him isn't making such graphic comments because he/him thinks I'm 'wrong', or only as the histrionics of a drama queen, but as a demonstration of the narrative nature of how he/him was taught to react to and denounce 'wrongthink'.

Likewise with he/him's criticisms of my reading comprehension, is he/him's utter failure to comprehend (or abide by) the meaning of the words he/him uses & abuses in those comments against my post on E Pluribus Unum. I'd said regarding race, creed, color, etc. in America, that "...any gathering of three or more people will be filled with such diversity..." and that the reality is that those particular differences are both prevalent and irrelevant, because what really matters are those principles which the Declaration of Independence identify as the foundations of America, and it's those that are the true strength which unites us through the common human nature we all share in. It's our recognition of that which makes liberty and justice for all, possible and attainable. To which he/him replied:

" ...VERY interesting to see the "Classic AmErIcAn liberal" argue for such a collective emphasis here. It's sorta counter to almost everything you say....."

Firstly, seeing that key principles are Common to all, is not the same as or equal to imposing Collective policies upon all! The "Collective" concept of diversity is a quantitative one which derives its power from collecting as many quantities of adherents into as large a basket of fragmented identities as possible, to force the desired outcomes. OTOH, the principles of the Declaration are qualitative, in that they are as real and true and vitally important about the nature of being human for one person, as they are for three hundred millions of them, and they do not vary amongst them.

Having the frame of mind that views the world through principles, rather than particularities, is what enables a person who's concerned with what is real and true and meaningful, to unite with any other essentially likeminded person, in a state of liberty established under a rule of law that's dedicated to upholding those ideals, regardless of any accidentals of birth, sex, class, color, or ethnicity. The prevalence of that understanding was what enabled Jefferson to propose those pillars of the Declaration of Independence, such as:

"...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

, as 'an expression of the American mind', and pointing that out and pointing it out often, has pretty much been the point of nearly everything I've said and done here.

In equating those principles with collective thinking, he/him fails to understand (or deliberately misrepresents) that DEI is an ideological construct for gaining political power in a manner that is fundamentally oppossed to America's founding upon the qualitative reality of our common human nature. As DEI's supporters are both unwilling and unable to acknowledge that, he/him can only denigrate the latter by misconstruing it as a 'collective emphasis' that:

"...contradicts your attack on "inclusion" from that stupid speech that never was..."

DEI 's inclusion, excludes the Declaration's self-evident truths, the Imago Dei of one human nature, that enables Americans to become Out of Many, One, while retaining our unique differences as accents which everyone can engage with, appreciate, and engage in without anyone being reduced to, or ordered about on behalf of them (St. Patrick's Day, Chinatown, Cinco de Mayo, etc.).

Having no argument against those concepts that endanger DEI's narrative, he/him resorts to ridicule, insult, and misidentifying the principle of all men are created equal regardless of accidents of birth and 'identity', as "a collective emphasis", and for arguing against that narrative, he/him labels me as being "... as liberal as the Nazis were socialist. ..." [which is truer than he/him fears, see W.E.B. DuBois pic quote].

It is of course possible - however unlikely - that he/him simply misunderstands what I mean, but of course if understanding what is and is not real and true was important to he/him, he/him wouldn't 'identify' as a he/him, and whether or not he/him understands the matter, he/him hates the concept so much that he/him would rather see it destroyed, than risk it being communicated to others.

Just for fun: W.E.B. DuBois comparing the variations of how both Communism & Nazism implement Socialism

Here's the issue: he/him's quantitative view engages in a conceptual 'See and Say' level of word recognition that is blind to the underlying meaning those concepts that are integrated into, under, and through them - more like arranging Scrabble letters on a flat surface, than building a structure up and out with Lego blocks - he/him requires only the shallowest of appearances sake to 'justify' yelling 'racist!' to attract a diverse quantity of likewinded allies into collective actions, no matter how incompatible their interests might be (hello supporters of Hamas & LGBTQ), so as to negate those qualities that would enable people to achieve real unity, and he/him feels 'good' about the virtue signaling of doing so. That's Critical Theory, in practice, and what's interesting is that the substance of it was being practiced long before Adorno & the Frankfurt School came up with the moniker of 'Critical Theory' (more on that to come).

He/him declares:

"...You say there that inclusion is bad, because it's "a collectivist term which is not urging the use of good manners in welcoming and including everyone..."

No, you sad shallow shadow of a he/him, I said those pretty promises of manners and the like are how DEI gets the power to do what it does, not why DEI is bad. I say why DEI is bad, is because it is destructive to that principled understanding which enabled America to adopt the motto of 'Out of many, one", and because it is opposed to the revolutionary understanding gained by uniting around principles of what are real and true, rather than chasing after meaningless & divisive particularities of race, class, sex, etc.. DEI is hostile to what makes it possible to achieve governing a nation "Of the people, by the people, for the people", and most of all I say DEI is bad, because DEI's nature is to portray what is false, as being true, in order to gain and maintain power over society (Hi SPLC!), and because what all that amounts to is evil, I say that DEI is (at best) bad.

Knowingly or not, what he/him is implicitly affirming through he/him's pronouns and shallow thinking, is portraying what is evil, as being 'good'. And so I unreservedly say that DEI is not only bad, but that those indoctrinated into its methods are too often unable to recognize that, which is how DEI transforms the woke into a real and present danger to our (and their) happiness and prosperity.

But he/him is not just innocently mistaken about any of this, he/him has gone to college, studied abroad, has been and is employed as a professor (now(?) at Yuma AWC college), and he/him's offensive manner, willingness to insult and deride, and feel superior in the process, are attributes of the ideal that our school systems aim at seeding into their students habits of thought. He/him promotes the narrative that blinds he/him to the racist nature of being arrested by surface attributes of skin color and 'mansplaining' (what a concept for a he/him!), and scans for particular narrative 'answers' that can be associated by appearance and added to the quantities used by likewinded people to 'justify' not only forcing their position upon those who disagree (AKA: Activism - check your school's grade-level expectations), but to then indoctrinate the children of those who don't accept the narrative, which they've determined is 'right think'.

It's that manner of thinking that matters, because those involved in seeking after surface answers to support their resentful purposes, is a proven path to injury, death, and ruin, on a local, national, and worldwide scale, and it is dangerous to write off this shallow shadow of a he/him's positions on DEI, as just a pathetic narrative, as he/him's virtue signaling has roots that are both broadly shared and which run deep, reaching back to Mao's Cultural Revolution, the USSR's Holodomor, the Nazi Holocaust, and on back through the Terror of the French Revolution, to Rousseau's theory of the General Will, which is what enabled such differing events, purposes, and even opposing narratives, to achieve real and terrifying political power, over and over again.

No Rousseau!

Each variation relies upon the pragmatic 'See and Say' (abandoning metaphysical realism for the verbal putty of nominalism) mindset of seeking approved answers to bring about useful ends, instead of a principled understanding. This is the point of the end of he/him's comment above, accusing me of not seeing that what Rousseau literally said, was that:

"...If a legislator begins using their particular will to guide the laws of the land instead of the general will of the state's subjects, they are no longer in a way Rousseau argues is good..."

, and for he/him, the words are neatly arranged like scrabble tiles or verbal selfies to direct attention 'The words are right there! Are you blind?!', and anyone pointing out what those words actually mean, imply, and have enabled in practice (in what way does Rousseau's General Will restrain the Legislator from imposing their will upon the people?), is, in he/him's conceptual 'See and Say' mindset, an illiterate reading of what's right there on the surface of the page in black and white and red all over ( as words severed from meaning tend to be).

And there you have the surface seekers problematic pattern in a nutshall:

Yes - it is a fact that right there on the surface in black & white, Rousseau says the Legislator should align with the General Will of popular opinion.
No - That does not in any way ensure 'liberty', or express concern for individual rights (it damns them with faint praise for 'human rights' (which mask the collectivist's repudiation of them)), it only ensures that those who don't bother to understand what words and concepts mean and must mean when put into practice (and restrained how?), jeopardize themselves and everyone else, by blinding them to the disaster that will follow from putting those words into practice, as its supporters excuse those failures on technicalities.

Years ago I used to wonder how people like he/him didn't understand that if 'the people' (or those claiming to speak for them) wanted to 'round up da Joos! and gas them!', then in any system operating under the power of the General Will, the Legislator would use that power to do just that, without any pesky principles of individual rights slowing them down. But it has since become apparent to me that they do get it, and that they do want 'the state' to have that power - so long as the he/hims' control it - to force 'right think' upon all that engage in 'wrongthink'.

No doubt he/him fans of Rousseau will yelp at that, but the fact is that Rousseau began his theories by asserting that those most basic individual rights found in property & marriage were the egregious errors and abuses at the root of society's problems (decades before Marx), and saw marriage and all responsibilities as impinging upon and corrupting the hedonistic state of the noble savage's 'free love' eden:

"...whereas in this primitive state, as there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, every one took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one night in the same place; males and females united without any premeditated design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them together, nor had they any great occasion for language to make known their thoughts to each other. They parted with the same ease..."

, and that civilization's invention of language, marriage, and property brought ruin, because:

"... with love arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions.."

, for as Rousseau 'reasoned', what came of people allowing people to defend that property which they created, doomed us all::

"... The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows..."

, and in that origin, the collective of 'society' is pitted against, and must be made to triumph over, not only the individual, but the very nature of what a human being is. This theory of the General Will, recognizes and values an individual person only in regards to their adding to the quantity of bodies that provide 'democracy's power to direct and control behavior by imposing this or that policy upon all, for the 'Common Good'. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' in such a world as that, there's only what the power of the General Will seems to support... and who it is that decides what that is, is the Legislator, who Rousseau imagines possessing:

"...This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move..."

What, are you going to tell me that Rousseau says 'right there in black and white!' that the Legislator should live up to his fine ideals? Well, pardon me as I point out that in the mind of the Legislator and their supporters, they are, and always have been, and always will identify as having the very finest of ideals, which they must have the power to implement as idealistically (read: ruthlessly) as seems to them to be necessary, as was expressed right after Rousseau's time by the 'Incorruptible' Maximillian Robespierre, justifying and celebrating The Terror of the French Revolution:

"...The hatred of bad faith and tyranny burns in our hearts along with the love of justice and the fatherland. Our blood flows for the cause of humanity. This is our prayer, these are our sacrifices. This is the cult we offer you...."

"...the metaphysical firewall
of God-given inalienable rights ..."

, which was echoed a century later in the German Fatherland through Carl Schmidt's 'Führer Principle', and by Lenin, and then Stalin, and Mao, and Pol Pot, Che and Castro, etc., - each of whom had their disagreements with particulars of Rousseau's ideas, but fully embraced and utilized the spirit of his General Will to breach what Courtenay Turner calls the "the metaphysical firewall..." of the nature of what a human being is, and without which, their "...God-given inalienable rights" are simply denied for the 'Common Good'.

NOTE: The 'Legislator' doesn't utilize the General Will as an opponent to 'democracy' - far from it - those who see themselves as being 'Those Who Know Best' (the he/hims of their day) utilize 'democracy' as the justification for their exercising power without restraint, and the individual who objects is seen as an obstacle to their serving the 'Common Good', and so, as Rousseau said, that:

"...means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;"

That is not enlightened thinking, it is not a call for liberty, it's only how modern Pro-Regressives cover up for engaging in their ancient and barbarous quest for power over all.

Truly revolutionary thinking!

In the same way that a he/him will assert that "Communism will work this time...! If we just....", even though a meaningful understanding of what that means demonstrates that it will inevitably fail horrifically every time it's attempted, and it will do so because when the General Will is bound to the power of the state, through the Legislator, and is unrestrained from violating individual rights to achieve its aims, then structurally speaking that system has, does, and must, lead to tyranny & oppression. Every single time it's tried.

And you should most definitely keep in mind that Rousseau's smiling face can be found in probably every 'soCIal sTudIEs' book in America, as a defender of 'Liberty!' (get your kids out of the schools!).

The truly revolutionary concept of our Founding Fathers, is that the nature of what a human being is, is what individual rights are derived from (to think, speak, act, associate, defend the fruits of such actions, etc), and which must be upheld and defended in order to have a just society. That is utterly incomprehensible and offensive to such shadows of a he/him, who see only physical attributes and utilize 'our democracy' to provide the cover for those mass quantities of people supposedly in agreement with he/him, to ensure that power is what will be imposed "über alles" (the General Will donchaknow).

But even worse than he/him's bizarre and anti-American ideology, is the fact that he/him was taught to think this way, and it is that manner of thinking that modern education has been instilling in Americans for generations, and as the existing memory of the old habits and manners fade away, it has been taking over our public conversations and interactions.

All is very much not well with 'Critical Thinking' in America, and we'll see how and why that came to pass, in the coming series of posts.