The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Reconciled to Servitude

Posted on | November 21, 2014 | 77 Comments

“Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”
Aldous Huxley, 1946

That passage was quoted by a commenter in reaction to an earlier post about a typical specimen of 21st-century “education,” and I thought it deserved its own post. What Huxley was describing is how sexual promiscuity — a life lived in pursuit of meaningless thrills — is ultimately incompatible with liberty. Thrill-seekers claim to be liberated when they are in fact enslaved by their own passions.

Heedless of basic decency, lacking self-respect and sturdy discipline, the sexual slave requires a master — someone to tell him what to do, and to provide for him what the slave is incapable of providing for himself, including a sense of purpose in life. To be a good servant — “Life is good! Vote Democrat!” — gives the slave pleasure. And he pursues his own pleasure, having gained “the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio.”

Dopehead daydreamers are everywhere now. One sometimes encounters them online, ranting furiously about “social justice.”

It’s important to remember that, although these people exist in real life — that is to say, there are actual human beings running those batshit crazy troll accounts — they are as altogether artificial in their politics as they are in their online personas. They themselves have never done a goddamned thing for “social justice.” They simply enjoy mouthing these slogans about “oppression” and “patriarchy,” etc., because posing as Our Moral Superiors is an emotional compensation for their own obscurity and worthlessness.

They are the Nowhere People — rootless, without loyalty to family, community or religious tradition, and thus “free” to create for themselves imagined identities and idiosyncratic belief systems. Although they usually think of themselves as unique individuals, they are really sheep in a herd, predictable and therefore ultimately boring. Any politics, as long as it’s not conservative politics; any religion as long as it’s not Christian religion; any sexuality as long as it’s not normal sexuality. One notices that the Nowhere People are seldom husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Idle narcissism is incompatible with the dutiful commitments of marriage and motherhood.

This afternoon I encountered Nissa on Twitter as @cuntxmuffin_ — nice handle, Nissa — when she trolled into my timeline. Why was she trolling me? I don’t know, but her Twitter profile lists her interests as “feminism, cross stitching, true crime, horror & iced coffee,” and links to her Tumblr page entitled, “I Only Exist Because I Dream.” What does she dream of? Oh, the horrors of transphobic bigotry, the joys of tattoos and nose rings. And what kind of life has she led?

I’m originally from Massachusetts and lived a good portion of my life in Nebraska; but I’ve lived in south Texas for five shitty years now. I’m moving to San Antonio soon tho, so lets be friends if you live there.
I’m 19 but I like to think i’m an old lady at heart.
I like cross stitching, coffee, feminism, knitting, girls, sometimes boys, beards and booty, cats, baseball, laying in my bed, and true crime. I’m a second year college student studying criminal justice.
Tell me some cool secrets and lets be friends
Party on, dudes

OK, so the 19-year-old bisexual feminist college student decided, randomly, that we needed her to lecture us about U.S. history.

The Nowhere People, living in the Brave New World. There is no point in arguing with these creatures, who are evidently content to remain ignorant. They are reconciled to their own servitude.





 

Comments

77 Responses to “Reconciled to Servitude”

  1. bfwebster
    November 21st, 2014 @ 3:33 pm

    Thanks for the “Brave New World” quote. I believe that — with the fall of the Soviet Union — it has become far more relevant as a dystopic novel than “1984”.

  2. JeffS
    November 21st, 2014 @ 3:55 pm

    Here’s a song for the Nowhere People, courtesy of the Beatles:

    He’s a real Nowhere Man
    Sitting in his Nowhere Land
    Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

    Doesn’t have a point of view
    Knows not where he’s going to
    Isn’t he a bit like you and me? (No.)

    Nowhere Man, please listen
    You don’t know what you’re missing
    Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

    He’s as blind as he can be
    Just sees what he wants to see
    Nowhere Man, can you see me at all?

    Nowhere Man, don’t worry
    Take your time, don’t hurry
    Leave it all ’til somebody else lends you a hand

    Doesn’t have a point of view
    Knows not where he’s going to
    Isn’t he a bit like you and me? (No.)

    Nowhere Man, please listen
    You don’t know what you’re missing
    Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

    He’s a real Nowhere Man
    Sitting in his Nowhere Land
    Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
    Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
    Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

  3. TheOtherAndrewB
    November 21st, 2014 @ 3:59 pm

    People like Nissa serve as a cheerful reminder that there is an upside to our impending societal collapse: People like this will become totally irrelevant once we are all fighting tooth and nail for our daily bread. I picture her in the ruins of a burning city screaming “Where’s the patriarchy!!!!!” Not much comfort, but I take what I can get.

  4. Fail Burton
    November 21st, 2014 @ 4:00 pm

    I looked at luckymuffin’s Twitter feed and it’s what you might expect if you crossed a sociopath with the droning of an insect or an unthinking robot.

  5. Barry and Jesus Make a Quorum | Regular Right Guy
    November 21st, 2014 @ 4:18 pm

    […] Reconciled to Servitude […]

  6. Squid Hunt
    November 21st, 2014 @ 5:07 pm

    Unthinking is what bugs me the most about these people. Not a single original thought. They’re just relay stations broadcasting someone else’s ideas. You can’t even have a good debate with them because they either destroy their own argument with inconsistency or they stand back and throw smug, self righteous condescension at you. Pointless and yet their influence is disastrous and you can’t let it stand unchallenged.

  7. RS
    November 21st, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

    i didn’t completely review the Twitter feed, but I assume the discussion concerned the American Indians. It reminds me of one of my favorite days at our local art museum which had an exhibition of Native American Art from the Plains, including very intricate bead work sewn on dresses, moccasins and so forth. I listened to a very earnest woman telling her child how “white people” had destroyed the plains “horse culture” in order to steal the Indians’ land. I couldn’t help myself: I piped up and let her know those horses came from the Spanish and the beads she was admiring came from French trappers.

    One of the best moments of my life. Her expression was priceless.

  8. Fail Burton
    November 21st, 2014 @ 6:33 pm

    It’s amazing how many feeds are like that one to another. And the sheer hostility, smug moral posturing and general sociopathy is amazing as well. For people convinced how edgy they are they come off as complete rednecks incapable of an original thought.

    Is social justice the new tattoo and nose-ring for conformist nobodies without an exciting day in their lives? This pelicanmuffin thinks she’s an old lady at heart? I’d say more like an old fish-wife in a dark ages village with the retarded intellect of a five year old.

    In an old movie a fortune-teller tells a gossipy old woman her worst possible fate: that every day will be exactly like the one before. Instead of handing out pamphlets about fisting, schools should teach what a doorknob is, hand out E.M. Forester’s “The Machine Stops” and tell people to stay off the internet and go outside. We seem to be at the point where social justice warriors make video-gamers look like Ernest Hemmingway.

  9. Jerry Beckett
    November 21st, 2014 @ 6:38 pm

    I can’t wait to go home tonight, snuggle up with the Mrs., and whisper sweetly into her ear “I love you, my little cunt muffin…”. And she says I’m not romantic.

  10. Adobe_Walls
    November 21st, 2014 @ 6:57 pm

    When the time comes what are we going to do with these people? Assuming they survive, what skills do they have? What do they have to offer in terms of contributing to their own, let alone anyone elses survival?

  11. Phil_McG
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:20 pm

    Starbucks is hiring.

    Maybe she could find a job in the exciting world of hotel reception management, like Andria_XX.

    The wonderful thing about market-based economies is that almost everybody can contribute. Even college graduates.

  12. Phil_McG
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:21 pm

    She’s only 19 though. Most of us are insufferable at that age.

  13. CBDenver
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:26 pm

    Thanks for the Huxley quote. I have often thought that sexual freedom is how unfree people delude themselves into ignoring how politically, socially, and economically enslaved they are.

  14. Matt_SE
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:27 pm

    That was always the debate: which way would the dystopia fall? I see elements of both 1984 and Brave New World today.

  15. Matt_SE
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:30 pm

    The thing that always kills me about the left, especially in universities, is that they’re bribing people with their own sex.
    One shouldn’t need permission to get it on.

  16. Benjamin Martin
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:31 pm

    I’ve always found it odd that some people define legalized homosexual sodomy as a measure of “liberty”.

    Anti-biotic resistant gonorrhea for all! Liberty!

  17. JadedByPolitics
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:36 pm

    those “some” people call themselves libertarians of course they are anarchists!

  18. JadedByPolitics
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:38 pm

    OMG that is funny went to a Indian festival in Great Falls same thing, my eldest son was like we gotta go before you blow a gasket…LOL!

  19. Benjamin Martin
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:39 pm

    I remind them that General George Washington drummed homosexuals out of the Continental Army.

  20. JadedByPolitics
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    I will steal that and use it “liberally” to those calling themselves libertarians 🙂

  21. Benjamin Martin
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:42 pm
  22. JadedByPolitics
    November 21st, 2014 @ 7:46 pm

    linked saved, thank you sir!

  23. Phil_McG
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:09 pm

    It is though. The government shouldn’t be throwing people in jail just because they like gay butt sex. We’d lose half of our best entertainers if they did. I like my Elton John sitting at a piano singing “Daniel”, thank you very much. Not breaking rocks in some godforsaken penitentiary because he got caught playing Rocket Man.

    Gay marriage is a different kettle of fish entirely – that was an assault on liberty in my view, especially given the dishonest way it was imposed.

    But legalising sodomy between consenting adults? It’s far from being among the most important liberties, but it is a question of liberty all the same. I see it as in much the same vein as the right of an adult to buy tobacco products without some horrible little government busybody trying to stop him.

  24. Finrod Felagund
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:13 pm

    Not to mention that they think “proof by assertion” is valid for them and no method of proof is valid for you.

  25. Benjamin Martin
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:15 pm

    The act of homosexual sodomy is a criminal act. Does not the state have a moral obligation to punish criminal behavior?

  26. Fail Burton
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:30 pm

    When I was 19 I had no circle of friends who serially complained about everything under the sun and reviled complete strangers in their millions based on their race and sex. Being 19 isn’t a license for bigotry.

  27. Fail Burton
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:30 pm

    When I was 19 I had no circle of friends who serially complained about everything under the sun and reviled complete strangers in their millions based on their race and sex. Being 19 isn’t a license for bigotry.

  28. Adobe_Walls
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:37 pm

    I was thinking of more desperate times and circumstances. Though IRC Andria_XX couldn’t get the job at the hotel, lamenting how her degree couldn’t even get her that ”low” level of employment.

  29. Daniel Freeman
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:47 pm

    I think not, since otherwise the state would have a corresponding moral obligation to revoke bad laws. Law is a human practice, not a computer program, so we generally just let bad laws fall into disuse.

  30. Finrod Felagund
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:53 pm

    Odd bit of trivia: male-on-male rape in the UK is legally called ‘non-consensual buggery’.

  31. Finrod Felagund
    November 21st, 2014 @ 8:59 pm

    That brings to mind the old saying that the quickest way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it vigorously.

  32. Finrod Felagund
    November 21st, 2014 @ 9:07 pm

    When I was living in Oklahoma City in 1994, I read that the ratio of marriages to divorces in Oklahoma City for 1993 was 0.89.

    We came up with the theory that people got married, moved to OKC and got divorced.

  33. Benjamin Martin
    November 21st, 2014 @ 9:24 pm

    How is homosexual sodomy not a criminal act? It has always been considered a criminal act, in virtually ever single civilization on earth.

    Across the entire world, through every cultures, homosexual sodomy has been considered a criminal act.

  34. Ed Driscoll » Huh. I Thought Bill de Blasio Would Have Been a Clinton Supporter
    November 21st, 2014 @ 10:11 pm

    […] Stacy McCain describes the sort of person who’s a Socialist Justice Warrior obsessed with ending “man-spreading” as being one of the “Nowhere People:” […]

  35. Freddy At Night
    November 21st, 2014 @ 10:44 pm

    +1 for use of the term “buggery”…

  36. CBDenver
    November 21st, 2014 @ 11:00 pm

    Just ran across this article from Brussels Journal about the same issue. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3582

    “The state strips away your personal, economic and political freedom, yet grants you sexual freedom in return, boldly hailing itself as your liberator. Sweden in 2008 is a society with no real freedom of speech if you deviate from the ruling ideology. The more crushing ideological censorship and political repression become, the more frantic the displays of “sexual freedom” get. Sex is freedom; freedom means sex, and only sex.”

    “State authorities present this as liberation of women and sexual liberation, b ut it is actually about breaking down rival sources of power: The traditional Christian culture and the nuclear family. This leaves the state more powerful since it can regulate all aspects of life and, most importantly, can indoctrinate the nation’s children as it sees fit, without undue parental interference. The state replaces your family, raises your children and cares for your elderly.”

  37. Julie Pascal
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:32 am

    I tend to think a big “so what” when it comes to what other people do (and what’s with the couple of commentors going on about “homosexual” sodomy, as if heterosexual sodomy isn’t sodomy? By any definition it’s every bit as unnatural,) and agree with you Phil that it’s a question of liberty but a relatively unimportant one.

    What sexual license often becomes, though, is a stand-in for all other liberty. We can lose our freedom entirely just so long as people have sexual freedom to point to as a representative of how free we are while freedom of speech or self-defense, religion, or the freedom of conscience in other areas is utterly destroyed.

    It seems to be, “Who cares about your speech and your bad ideas? I can marry a woman! Whoo-hoo! I have birth control and can hook up with four guys at a party and no one dares to call me slut. Whoo-hoo!”

  38. Charles G. Hill
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:38 am

    This is still true. A few weeks after our first batch of same-sex marriages, OKC saw its first same-sex divorce — a couple who’d been married elsewhere.

  39. Daniel Freeman
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 1:16 am

    I see that I was unclear. I was replying to your question, not your statement.

  40. Daniel Freeman
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 1:21 am

    So, how did the court decide which one to give privileges to, and which one to enforce obligations on?

  41. Charles G. Hill
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 1:49 am

    No issue and no commonly-held property, so it was basically a rubber stamp.

  42. Bob Belvedere
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:16 am

    Nothing. They would be parasites.

    Some hard decisions would have to be made. They could not be allowed to infect the Remnant.

    Give ’em three days worth of food and water and send them on their way.

  43. Bob Belvedere
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:20 am

    The thing these Totalitarian fools don’t realize is that they will also be leading themselves defenseless against those other Totalitarians who approach maintaining Power And Control a different way – say, the Mohammedins.

    The angry part of my Soul looks forward to watching this unfold.

  44. Fail Burton
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:38 am

    Pimplemuffin’s Twitter feed is typical of a new phenomenon in America: the sociopathic social justice warrior. They are always the same and go on about the same issues.

    The two characteristics they display are:

    1.)They conspicuously put themselves out there as unusually compassionate and forward-thinking people and typically spout the exact same patter about ending injustice gender feminists are most fond of. They are usually women.

    2.) The group they set themselves against is always a negative stereotype of millions of oppressive men, whites and heterosexuals. They then go on all-day Twitter rants about misogyny and racism that shows a feral sociopathic hatred towards such men and society as a whole.

    If you haven’t seen the Twitter feed of self-appointed tech guru Shanley Kane then you haven’t seen a Twitter feed. That is a rant that is now months long.

    This isn’t about being young. SF author M.J. Locke, the wife of SF Writers of America president Steven Gould (himself now writing tie-in novels for the new Avatar film) is in her fifties. Read this extraordinary post by her called “Patriarch’s Day, Part 4.”

    http://feralsapient.com/?p=470

    It is the usual gender feminist almost paranoid cant about the “unconscious bias on the part of men/whites” and how “patriarchy has exacted a major toll on me personally.” The first commenter (another woman SFF writer) remarks the post is “necessary in showing misogyny as a toxic gas in the atmosphere we breathe.”

    In a goofy feminist culture of extraordinary posts, it is one of the more remarkable I have ever read. McCain could have a field day with this post. Locke claims for herself a heightened sense of empathy about “racism, anti-gay phobia, anti-trans and other gender-identity phobias, fat phobia, ageism (at both ends), and disability.” She is one of the “brave soothsayers” who (after the usual “trigger warning”) then proceeds to go after white men hammer and tongs. She has the usual #NotAllMen disclaimer but with a section called “Dear Men.”

    Lord save me from ever being in the power of such compassion and social justice. Calling her site “feralsapient” is Orwellian irony.

  45. Phil_McG
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 5:25 am

    Used to be punishable by hanging (!)

    Poor buggers.

  46. Phil_McG
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 5:28 am

    I like to think Andria_XX is putting her Masters in peace studies to good use, making sure people have enough pillows and towels.

  47. Phil_McG
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 9:35 am

    “I should add that should McCain ever engage Shanley Kane on Twitter you’d see a short sharp all-out war.”

    I would hit the freakin’ tip jar like Ike Turner at a Tina Turner lookalike contest.

  48. The trade off for political and economic freedom | Law of Markets
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 10:09 am

    […] Via Stacey McCain […]

  49. Squid Hunt
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:07 pm

    Unfortunately, self righteous rhetoric and intellectual density makes it almost impossible for decent people to refute and negate this sort of person. It would likely be necessary that those that were capable and just would have to bleed such for the good of the whole just to stop them from taking over.

  50. Squid Hunt
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:10 pm

    Same morons, different train. What you are discussing is radical progressive ’60s activism.