Obsisto, Ergo Existo.
"I oppose, therefore I exist", has replaced Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) in the philosophy of the American political left.
I'm so sick of parsed, half-assed pronouncements that immediately become the basis of interminable arguments that have no relevance or conclusion.
Kamala Harris’ speech last week was such an event.
Based on a single cherry-picked sentence out of a 200 plus page document from the Florida Department of Education, which had been pre-distorted by the left-wing propaganda machine, Harris concocted a narrative that Florida was teaching that slavery wasn’t that bad because the slaves gained benefit from the skills they learned while they were in captivity.
There’s some truth to that, but that isn’t what the Florida Department of Education said.
Never mind what the document said when you need a narrative that will anger your constituency, especially if it is race based. During a speech to black sorority members at the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority National Convention in Indianapolis, Harris told the audience that they were being gaslighted by “extremist” Republicans even as as she gaslighted them about the history curriculum.
“Just yesterday, in the State of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it - we who share a collective experience in knowing we must honor history and our duty in the context of legacy.”
Of course, Harris was met with the usual sounds of barking and clapping from the trained seals ready to be gaslighted, complementing Harris on her “Yas, Qween!” moment.
Again, not what the Florida documents said. According to Twitter’s “Community Note” attached to tweets by people praising Harris’ speech:
“For additional context, the new law doesn't say slavery was good, or that it benefited the enslaved. It states that in some instances, the skills they developed were of personal benefit, but also teaches that slavery itself was and is bad, and should be remembered as bad.”
In an unanticipated turn of events, Scott Jennings, a CNN panelist speaking in a rare moment of clarity for CNN, broke with the other Democrat operatives seated around the table on Jake Tapper's show (with Dana Bash hosting) saying:
“Well, it’s amazing to me that how little Kamala Harris has to do that she can read something on Twitter one day and be on an airplane the next to make something literally out of nothing. This is a completely made-up deal. I looked at the standards, I even looked at an analysis of the standards, in every instance where the word slavery or slave was used. I even read the statement of the African American scholars that wrote the standards - not Ron DeSantis, but the scholars. Everybody involved in this says this is completely a fabricated issue and yet look at how quickly Kamala Harris jumped on it. So, the fact that this is her best moment, a fabricated matter, is pretty ridiculous in my opinion.”
If you look at 90% of the issues today, they are caused when people, predominantly on the left, speak about an issue when they lack understanding of that issue, uncritically assert their conjecture as iron-clad fact, or deliberately misstate the issue for political purposes.
A few weeks or so I wrote about what Cass Sunstein (Mr. Samantha Powers) called “preemptive activism”, which in today’s world involves the government doing something of dubious constitutionality (or in some cases, known unconstitutionality) based on little more than concocted reasons for doing it. One very good example was Biden’s EO/rule change for OSHA to mandate the Covid vaccine in companies over 100 employees. OSHA doesn’t have that authority, Biden knew it, even his Chief of Staff at the time, Ron Klain, said it was an “effective workaround” of the Constitution.
The result is the damage was already done in the months it took to get to the Supreme Court and for the Court to officially declare it unconstitutional and order it stopped.
The rhetoric coming out of Washington has a lot in common with Sunstein’s idea. The objectives of the language are propagandistic, only intended to elicit a desired reaction or response. I can remember the communist idea of “revolutionary truth”, a myth, that when employed, was the puzzle piece necessary to complete the picture puzzle progressives wanted to see – when in fact, it is nothing more than a convenient lie, because it is any statement that advances the revolution – whether it is true doesn’t matter.
Most of the time, Democrats and their allies in the media are just reflexive contrarians. The trouble with such kneejerk contrarianism is that when the dominant position is also right and moral (which it tends to be in most cases, but not all), those who have a psychological need to oppose everything are forced into reflexively taking the position opposite of right and good, which is, of course, wrong, and evil.
René Descartes proposed “I think, therefore I am” whereas the contemporary left says, “I oppose; therefore, I exist and that makes me relevant.”
At this point, we should recognize that Marxism is premised upon this reflexive contrarianism. Marx declared the only correct response to the dominant culture was spiteful contempt, indignant anger, and constant subversion.
Were the dominant culture mostly evil, as Kamala Harris attempted to cast the State of Florida, that might be a decent response – but neither Western civilization nor its American variant – not even in Florida – are mostly evil, so what we are seeing today is that Marx’s prescription is itself an urging away from good and towards evil.
"A few weeks or so I wrote about what Cass Sunstein (Mr. Samantha Powers) called “preemptive activism”, which in today’s world involves the government doing something of dubious constitutionality (or in some cases, known unconstitutionality) based on little more than concocted reasons for doing it...
The result is the damage was already done in the months it took to get to the Supreme Court and for the Court to officially declare it unconstitutional and order it stopped."
This is a strategy that I believe started with Obama, though it may pre-date him. It was certainly the topic of my musings in my recent piece, "Catch me if you can" - https://curetsky.substack.com/p/catch-me-if-you-can-a-great-plot
Forget the constitution. We will rule by fiat. Now, try to stop us.
"Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!"