The Other McCain

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

None Dare Call It ‘Decadent’

Posted on | December 5, 2012 | 20 Comments

“Television, naturally enough, is biased toward compelling visual imagery, and in almost all cases the charms of a human face take precedence over the capabilities of a human voice. . . . It is the teller, and not what is told, that matters here.”
— Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (1994)

“The 19th-century cult of success . . . measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. . . . Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.’ . . . The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captains of industry gave way to the confidence men, the masters of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

“A twisted mind far gone in the helpless decadence typical of liberals everywhere.”
— “E-Mail to a Troll,” Sept. 27, 2012

Virtue proverbially is its own reward: The honest and industrious live happier and more successful lives than lazy liars. All that should be necessary to encourage virtue is to point out this fact to youth, to assure them that patiently doing the right thing will ultimately bring them greater esteem than trying to cut corners and take the easy way out.

Alas, the knowledge of virtue is obscured in a culture of superficiality, where transient symbols of success — youth, beauty, and status goods — are celebrated without regard for personal character. Television peculiarly encourages such superficiality. TV-viewing is habit-forming, and the habits of mind it fosters are evident in the unthinking ways in which ordinary people have become image-conscious, like Hollywood stars whose success is often more dependent on their appearance and reputation than upon their ability and character.

Attempts by ordinary people to emulate (however superficially) the celebrity lifestyle are usually comical, but occasionally quite tragic:

Authorities investigating the robbery and fatal stabbing of an 18-year-old Olney man at the Woodley Park Metro station are looking for at least three more people, a homicide detective testified in D.C. Superior Court on Monday.
The detective, Robert Arrington Jr., said the three can be seen in footage of the attack from Metro security cameras but have yet to be identified. His testimony came during the second day of a preliminary hearing for four of the nine teenagers charged in the Nov. 17 robbery and slaying of Olijawon Griffin.
The incident began when Griffin was robbed of a $400 Helly Hansen jacket, an iPhone and a baseball cap near an Exxon gas station in Adams Morgan. Griffin was fatally stabbed about 20 minutes later at the Woodley Park Metro station when he and a group of his friends happened upon those who they thought had robbed him.
One of the nine defendants at Monday’s hearing, Chavez Tyrek Meyers, 17, has been charged as an adult with murder. He is accused of approaching Griffin from behind and stabbing him in the chest. Four others have been charged as adults with armed robbery, including three who were in court Monday: Deon Jefferson, Immanuel Swann and Gary Maye. The fourth charged with robbery, Tyvell Smith, is scheduled to have his hearing Dec. 10. The four youngest suspects, two 15-year-olds and two 16-year-olds, have been charged as juveniles and were not present. . . .
Prosecutors played a video from the Metro security cameras. Beau Perrizo, a detective with the Metro Transit Police, identified each of five defendants visible in the video and what they were wearing. One of them, Perrizo said, was wearing a Helly Hansen jacket of his own. According to court papers, Jefferson was wearing Griffin’s Helly Hansen jacket when Griffin arrived at the Metro.

So we have here a case in which teenagers were willing to kill or die for a $400 Helly Hansen jacket and an iPhone.

The readership of this blog includes many adults of substantial wealth and professional success. How many of you own a $400 jacket? How many of you — people with expensive homes, six-figure salaries and money stashed away in 401(k)s and mutual funds — go to work every day dressed in modestly-priced clothes? How many of you are astonished at the very thought of teenagers owning a $400 jacket, and can’t even comprehend the idea that this particular high-status brand could become de rigeur as a fashion statement among teenagers?

Of course, if you want to risk death on your next Metro ride, you can buy a Helly Hansen jacket via our Amazon Associates links, although I don’t see why this particular brand is so coveted by style-conscious teenage murderers. Maybe famous athletes or music stars wear Helly Hansen.

My point has little to do with the fashion choices of teenagers, and much more to do with the culture of superficiality — the obsession with image and status — that this ugly incident symbolizes, a phenomenon now so pervasive that we usually take it for granted. During the 1980s, when the term “Yuppie” was first used to describe the young upwardly-mobile professionals whose consumer choices made them a coveted demographic for advertisers, one sometimes saw a bumper-sticker that expressed the ethos of that set: “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”

This toy-collector mentality, the tendency to define one’s self through the accumulation of material objects symbolizing one’s social status, is childish at best and dehumanizing at worst. If the purpose and meaning of your life consists of the acquisition and possession of consumer goods — getting more toys — then your life is pretty damned meaningless, isn’t it? Genuinely successful, happy people don’t live that way.

Such a lecture may seem strange coming from a Shameless Capitalist Blogger — shop our Amazon Holiday Savings now! — but my enthusiasm for economic liberty does not mean I embrace the shallow “more toys” mentality that leads to kids killing each other over $400 jackets. In fact, much left-wing hostility to capitalism is motivated by a perverse materialistic envy that presumes to redistribute happiness by redistributing wealth.

Liberalism disregards the natural connection between virtue and success, and tends to derogate both. Liberals are enraged, for example, by any suggestion that sexual promiscuity is harmful and immoral, and erupt in indignation at what they call “slut-shaming.” If sluts cannot be shamed, neither can the chaste be praised and, as liberalism becomes ever more ascendant in our culture, “virgin” becomes a dirty word while marital fidelity is mocked as hopelessly obsolete.

“Everybody lies about sex,” liberals told us during the Lewinsky scandal, and one suspects perhaps they even believed it.

The “transvaluation of all values,” which once appeared possible only to the febrile imagination of Nietzsche, is now an established fact in a decadent culture that derides virtue and praises vice. However, Ross Douthat observes that none dare call it “decadent”:

After all, if children are not the only good in human life, they do seem like a fairly important one, no? Maybe even, dare one say, an essential one, at least in some quantity, if the pursuit of the wider array of human goods is to continue beyond our own life cycle?. . .  And if that basic obligation exists in some form, then surely there comes a point when a culture in which it’s crowded out by other goals, other pursuits and yes, other pleasures can be aptly described as … what’s the word I’m looking for … decadent?

Read the whole thing. Even if Douthat went to Harvard, he is still occasionally right and, after all, he is replying to Matthew Yglesias, that latter-day Marat whose neo-Jacobin hatefulness almost makes one wish for a 21st-century Charlotte Corday to answer him.

“Almost,” I said.

 

Category: Culture

Panic in the Hamptons: Tax-Hike Talk Inspires ‘Fire Sale’ on Mansions

Posted on | December 5, 2012 | 18 Comments

Static calculation meets dynamic reaction:

Hamptons homeowners have launched a selling spree, offering fire sale prices to get rid of their properties before higher capital gains tax rates are expected to kick in Jan. 1.
Top brokers expect more than 30 closings on big-ticket properties priced from $1 million to $25 million.
“There is a frenzy here right now,” said Enzo Morabito, a long-time Hamptons-based broker with Douglas Elliman. “People know they save money if they sell now. I have very willing sellers and hot buyers who want to take advantage of the low interest rates that might go away next year as well.”Morabito reported eight closings on transactions involving his team before New Year’s Day, including a $14.9 million estate in Water Mill and a $6.9 million mega-mansion in Bridgehampton.
“They know they lose money if they wait till next year,” he said.
Capital gains taxes are expected to rise during negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” as lawmakers close a yawning budget gap. The rate may rise as high as 39% on short-term investments, but is expected to jump about 5% on long-term gains.

Some people are so stupid (we call them “Democrats”) as to think that their soak-the-rich tax plans are aiming at fixed targets. However, tax policy provides incentives for action, and the desire of the rich to protect their assets and income against exorbitant taxation will inevitably result in action that falsifies any “rosy scenario” projection of how much revenue could be gained by such measures. There are always unintended consequences to liberal policies that counteract (and often completely negate) whatever positive results are achieved.

Democrats like to talk about the need for government “investments” in infrastructure. Too often, this consists of paving a road with good intentions, without regard for the proverbial destination.

 

Category: Economics, Taxes

‘Outreach to the MSM Community’

Posted on | December 5, 2012 | 14 Comments

Listen to internet radio with Fidelis Radio on Blog Talk Radio

 

Last week, I was interviewed by Rebecca Diserio of Fidelis Radio Network and Monday, Becca Lower posted a transcript of the first half of the interview. Tuesday, Becca posted the second half of the transcript, including this:

[Republicans] have people whose expertise — supposedly — is media, right? And these people are called media consultants. Meanwhile on the left, they have people who are experts on the media who are called “network news anchors.” People who are called “Pulitzer prize-winning journalists.” People whose job titles include “Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Post.”
The problem is that this disconnect between the conservative movement and the Republican Party and mainstream journalism — how much of this can we blame on liberals, and how much of it is the fault of the Republican Party itself?

This is something that conservatives, who believe in personal responsibility, should take seriously: If we all agree that media bias is a problem — and I believe we do — shouldn’t we ask why the Republican Party has been so ineffective in addressing this problem? The GOP spends millions annually on “media consultants,” and what do they have to show for it? Isn’t it irresponsible to scapegoat the media as a means of exculpating Republicans? Doesn’t the GOP’s consistent failure in this regard suggest that maybe it’s time to try new strategies? The interview continues:

In too many cases, I think, the idea of a Republican press operation is to make sure that nobody in the press corps ever gets close to the candidate. . . . This idea of treating the press as the enemy, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
And you know, people have talked about outreach: “We need to outreach to the Hispanic community, we need to outreach to the black community.” Well, how about this? We need to outreach to the MSM community. Because there are probably a few — God bless them, most of them are to the left of Lenin in their politics — but there are a few of them, there still are a few people in there who care about real facts, who care about budget projections that involve actual numbers, people who actually care about economic reality . . .

Please read the whole thing at Becca Lower’s blog and don’t forget to show your appreciation by hitting Becca’s tip jar — I did.

 


Category: Media Bias, Republicans

A Shot Of Marco Rubio

Posted on | December 5, 2012 | Comments Off on A Shot Of Marco Rubio

by Smitty

Via Byron York, Marco Rubio’s Jack Kemp Dinner speech.

Category: Uncategorized

‘Like Hell’

Posted on | December 4, 2012 | 6 Comments

John Hoge has shared his thoughts on today’s decision in the Virginia case of Walker v. Kimberlin, et al. When I met Mr. Hoge today for the first time, I told him that his services in documenting the legal proceedings in the case had earned him a special invitation to attend Blog Bash at CPAC. From a National Bloggers Club press release:

“We are profoundly discouraged that Aaron Walker has been denied the opportunity to prove his case,” said Ali A. Akbar, President of the National Bloggers Club and a target of the online harassment himself. “We’ll solicit donations and launch new efforts to protect free speech from thugs like Brett Kimberlin.”
“Stop shining light on Brett Kimberlin’s efforts to suppress free speech? Like hell.”

Read the whole thing.

Category: Uncategorized

Let EGAD Times Roll

Posted on | December 4, 2012 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

Even Greater American Depression:

via Nice Deb

Category: Uncategorized

GOP To Palin: “‘Go’ Wobbly?”

Posted on | December 4, 2012 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

Emphasis mine:

C’mon Now, GOP, Don’t Go Wobbly on Us
by Sarah Palin on Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 12:10pm
Please read and pass along this article. We send good conservatives to D.C. to fulfill the promises they made to the electorate, and yet when they stay true to their word the permanent political class in their own party punishes them. This won’t be forgotten come 2014. Right now the GOP establishment is more concerned about the opinion of the media and the Georgetown cocktail circuit than they are “we the people” who hired them. For all this new talk of how the GOP needs a “populist movement,” it would do them good to remember they already have one; it’s called the Tea Party movement, and it won for them the majority they now enjoy in the House.

– Sarah Palin

A related Twitter hash.

Just for the sake of argument, let me posit that John Boehner is NOT a sellout, a tool, a double agent, a doddering buffoon, a sad little throne-sniffer, a spineless sycophant, a Ruling Class meat puppet, and an obsequious piece of work.

Instead, let us assert that there is some sort of method to his madness, with some plan forthcoming:

When that fullness

waxeth timely, friend,

why, then, fancy

whispering the formulation?

Update: Belvedere rounds it up nicely, recalling a gag that I omitted from this post earlier. Let this be known as the “Day of the Short Teaspoons”.

Category: Uncategorized

WALKER V. KIMBERLIN: DISMISSED

Posted on | December 4, 2012 | 83 Comments

MANASSAS, Virginia
Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Richard B. Potter has just dismissed Aaron Walker’s civil lawsuit against Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser and Ron Brynaert. Will have further details momentarily.

UPDATE: Today’s hearing began shortly after 11 a.m. and was over by noon. Several preliminary motions had been consolidated into one hearing, and the motion heard first was Kimberlin’s motion to dismiss. Clearly, Judge Potter had already decided to grant Kimberlin’s motion, but went through the formality of a hearing.

Acting as his own attorney, Kimberlin argued first, and showed a disposition to argue the facts of the case rather than to argue law.  Walker’s attorney Dan Backer objected to this, and his objection was upheld, Judge Potter ordering Kimberlin to stick to the law. Backer briefly countered each of Kimberlin’s points, and then Kimberlin was given an opportunity to respond, once again arguing facts more than law.

Then Judge Potter called a 10-minute recess and returned to read a decision — dismissing the case — that quite obviously took a lot longer than 10 minutes to write. In other words, the judge’s decision was written in advance of the hearing.

UPDATE II: John Hoge is here at the McDonald’s where I’m filing this. My co-blogger Wombat is here, as is Walker’s attorney, Dan Backer, who is obviously disappointed. Particularly disturbing was that Kimberlin never complied with discovery requests in the case, while Walker did — and Kimberlin used documents supplied by Walker to argue that the case was without merit, while Walker never got the opportunity to depose witnesses in the case.

“The precedent set here is just terrible,” Backer said, talking about how Judge Potter ignored Kimberlin’s violation of court orders to seal the discovery materials. “Why should anyone comply with discovery?”

Backer discussed the possibility of appeals in either the federal suit in Maryland or the Virginia suit, but for today it’s a complete bummer.

UPDATE III: Da Tech Guy writes that “the big story is not so much the details but the emboldening of some very bad characters.” It’s actually worse than that: It’s not just bad characters, but bad behavior that have been emboldened. Why shouldn’t everyone with a grudge resort to the methods Kimberlin & Co. employed against Walker?

The targeting of political bloggers, the cyberstalking and harassment, are all now acceptable tactics for which there is evidently no legal recourse. Thanks, Judge Potter.

UPDATE IV: Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks!




 


Category: The Kimberlin Files
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