Yes, I know those aren’t real words. My mother used them to describe something that was truly awful, and that’s what came to mind when I considered the news of the week (both foreign and domestic) and the prospect of discussing it on tomorrow’s podcast. Then it occurred to me that the perfect (and perhaps only) way to survive this week’s news is to intellectualize it — to analyze the whole mess in terms of its root cause: altruism. So that’s what we’ll do, tomorrow at 5 p.m. PST. Sign up if you’d like to join in live and contribute your two cents (now inflated to $5 thanks to the debt deal).
UPDATE: I just noticed that GoToWebinar was doing something totally unprecedented : asking you to give me your mailing address just to register to attend my live webcast. I have fixed it, so now all you need is name and e-mail address to register (and no, I will not spam you with e-mail, either). Sorry, not sure how that happened!
Don't Let It Go 
Oh dear….this must be about the helicopter crash?
Yes, plus the debt deal and the stock-market plunge and credit-rating downgrade. Way too much terrible news in one week…
I’m looking forward to the podcast tomorrow. I find such news disappointing as well. I wish the United States was involved in fewer wars and fighting the necessary ones differently.
For me, dealing with the horrible economic news can be as much of a challenge as the ensuing economic turmoil. I have to keep in mind that I did everything I could to protect my finances, and there is nothing I could do to stop the dopes in DC from evading the debt problem. Besides, worrying (or in my case, obsessing) about it could do more harm to my health than our failing economy….especially with ObamaCare on the horizon.
Alec
Then it occurred to me that the perfect (and perhaps only) way to survive this week’s news is to intellectualize it — to analyze the whole mess in terms of its root cause: altruism.
Altruism and egalitarianism are the drivers of everything that happens in today’s politics. Altruism has always been mankind’s dominant ethics, even during the American founding. But it has often been restrained by better philosophic trends. In the West since Kant (and Comte I suspect), altruism has been unleashed. Somehow it has been combined with Marxist/Rawlsian egalitarianism in the last 50 or so years to create the virulent strain of it that dominates today’s Left and much of Conservatism. How that happened is an interesting historical/philosophical question.
Altruism has gotten worse in my lifetime, as has egalitarianism. From the 80s to today the culture has gotten worse. I look back at the Regan era now as decade of relative utopia. Witness that: today’s Feminism and the war against men is worse, environmentalism and the war against industrial civilization is worse, welfare-statism is worse, inflationary central banking is worse, multiculturalism’s war against Western Civilization is worse, racial egalitarianism’s war against white people (especially white males – notice the way they are constantly depicted as wimps, idiots and losers in TV commercials) is worse, black inner city violence is worse (the past two summers has seen horrible black on white crime including black gangs targeting white people for beatings; this happened just two days ago in Milwaukee; a terrifying prospect is the high probability of an all out race war as the welfare state collapses) as is the massive rape of white women by black men, Hollywood is a Leftist cesspool, the military has become a social services organization, diversity laws have dumbed down essentially every profession in existence (all in the name of “disparate impact” which as a lawyer I’m sure you are aware of), etc, etc, ad nauseum. These are all manifestations of altruism and egalitarianism.
Something for you to consider for your show: how does today’s altruism differ from traditional Christianity’s altruism? I think it does significantly. I would say that the Christianity of old stressed sacrifice of human joy for the purposes of salvation of your soul in the afterlife; the inevitable consequence of believing in Original Sin. But today’s egalitarian Leftist altruism stresses sacrifice in the name of equality which is usually expressed as sacrifice in the name of racial or gender egalitarianism.
Basically the villains are Kant and his disciples. Christian ethics was secularized and it is THAT version of altruism which is destroying the West.
Thank you for this; I hope you don’t mind, but I plan to quote you on the show.
Just an addendum to your list of horrible concretes: a friend of mine reports that today, in a movie theater complex in Times Square in New York, two teenagers peed on the carpet in the foyer leading to one of the theaters.
One positive thing is that GoToWebinar in asking for an address uses that information to email the air time in the recipents time zone.
Ah, yes. So maybe I should still keep the requirement of putting in the state and country. Thanks!
Thank you for this; I hope you don’t mind, but I plan to quote you on the show.
I’m honored. I really look forward to hear your views.
As to the teenagers peeing in the movie theater, I have seen public urinating increased over the last 5 years. One black mother let her 5 year old son just pee right in the middle of Burger King last week; two feet in front of me. Then they just up and left; the urine all over the floor. Post-60s America is unrecognizable from pre-60s America.
It just seems like the twilight is upon us. We live in a value-less culture. Post-modernism says there is no objective knowledge – so there goes morality right out the window. And now the savages are out of their cages and rampaging. How long can the last?