John Hayward Profile picture
10 Feb, 13 tweets, 2 min read
Stupidity is extremely useful to statist politicians, not just because stupid people are easily manipulated, but more importantly because they believe the world can be remade to fit their incorrect beliefs if enough force is deployed. This is the basis of most left-wing populism.
Stupidity is aggressive, while ignorance is passive. Stupidity refuses to seek out knowledge, rejects information that does not fit its preconceptions, and destroys what it does not understand. The defining characteristic of stupidity is the refusal to admit ignorance or error.
The refusal to admit error is also a key characteristic of statist politics. The State is never wrong. Its programs never end. It acts with absolute confidence that it can do everything from managing trillion dollar economies to rewriting human nature and controlling the weather.
This is the bridge between collectivism and individual foolishness: the promise that with enough power and money, the collective State can force the real world to change, making foolish conclusions valid and incorrect beliefs "true." The more power needed, the better!
Trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity... and the core operating principle of statism. The answer to every failure is invariably: "We didn't try hard enough!"
Look at the delirious persistence of the belief in "free lunches" - the absolute conviction that government can make things "free," and the recent corollary that if something is not "free" then people are being "denied access" to it.
This belief is objectively stupid. Even very small children grasp the idea that no limited resource or product of human labor can be "free." But statist politics weaponizes stupidity to nourish the belief that "free stuff" can be conjured out of thin air by virtuous politicians.
The increasing dominance of our politics and culture by weaponized stupidity is a complete inversion of the idea that laws should conform with nature, thus placing the lightest possible burden upon the greatest number of people.
Instead, weaponizing stupidity allows the statists to create laws that impose the GREATEST possible expense and burden upon the largest number of people, forcing us to accept that obviously foolish notions are "true" and behave accordingly.
There is little power to be harvested by fashioning a government that is consistent with natural law, human nature, common sense, time-tested traditions, and the healthy ambitions of free people. Do the opposite, however, and your power can be unlimited.
Intelligence can lack knowledge - it allows for that possibility and seeks to learn what it does not know. Intelligence can make mistakes, even painful ones - it learns from them. Intelligence is not infallible - on the contrary, it constantly accepts that it could be wrong.
Everything about socialism and the modern ideal of the authoritarian central State rejects these precepts of knowledge in favor of their opposites: truth is defined by power, questions are treason, the State makes no errors and allows no one to suffer (and learn) from theirs.
Our diminished notion of free speech is a great example of weaponized stupidity, and that attitude is seeping into every aspect of our lives. The powerful will tell you what is True, and you are not permitted to disagree with their "consensus." You will be made stupid. /end

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More from @Doc_0

12 Feb
Is it possible to fight against totalitarian statists without ever compromising conservative "principles?" Is it better to play "fair," and constantly lose? Can you grapple with monsters without becoming a monster? That's the question at the heart of the schism on the Right.
This schism long predates Trump, but it became much more heated during his 2016 campaign and presidency. It's a question asked in many ways on a variety of subjects. It launches endless accusations of hypocrisy, insincerity, opportunism, foolishness, and weakness.
One of the big problems with academic conservatism is that it acts like the great debate over how to order our society has only just begun, as if we can hold an enlightened conversation between Right and Left over how much freedom we should have and how big the State should be.
Read 23 tweets
11 Feb
Also, we're still feeling the cultural aftershocks of Hitler betraying Stalin and the Left turning against Nazism. The constant message is that only left-wingers are allowed to throw around Nazi analogies willy-nilly because Nazism is supposedly the "opposite" of leftism.
Obviously the people howling for Gina Carano's scalp have no principled objection to comparing modern political trends with Hitler or the Holocaust - THEY do it ALL THE TIME. They are never criticized or censured for going overboard, trivializing the Holocaust, etc.
The real issue is that almost a century later, the Left is still hysterically obsessed with painting Nazism as "right-wing" ideology. They erupt into gibbering neurotic fits when anyone points out that fascism was originally seen as a form of socialism and allied with communism.
Read 8 tweets
9 Feb
It's striking how the great anti-bullying crusade of the new millennium was immediately followed by bullying becoming the universal instrument for social and political change. Bullying was mainstreamed into adult society, not eliminated from schools.
Judging from the results, you would think the ubiquitous anti-bullying seminars of the past generation were actually training camps for bullies and oppressors. The standard tactics of the schoolyard punk are now employed daily by self-righteous bullies in legacy and social media.
The basic mentality of the bully - preying on perceived weakness, asserting strength and dominance to compensate for insecurities - has become universal. An entire generation has been taught to act like cafeteria shakedown artists.
Read 14 tweets
8 Feb
"Woke" ideology, in all its toxic forms, is a machine designed to make law-abiding people feel like criminals so they will accept the expansion of the punitive State. That's why the Woke are so big on forcing public confessions and apologies from high-profile targets.
Notice that a standard feature of all these coerced confessions is the ritual admission of ignorance, gratitude for receiving a politically correct re-education, and a declaration that many others are guilty of the same sins and desperately need the same re-education.
Translation: there are many other criminals like me, and the State must be given more power, and more eager assistance from loyal cadres, to find and punish them all. Many of these criminals are unaware of their crimes and must be taught to feel guilty, as I have been taught.
Read 16 tweets
5 Feb
When you see a group of politicians as frantic to criminalize all challenges to their legitimacy as the Biden Democrats, you can bet they're planning to massively abuse their power. You don't equate dissent with sedition unless you're expecting a LOT of dissent.
Questioning the legitimacy of authority is actually a healthy tendency. It's a primal human impulse: "Who are YOU to tell me what to do?" America was born from serious questions about the legitimacy of rule. A good system encourages such questions, confident it has solid answers.
The problem is that American government long ago grew far beyond the boundaries of legitimacy envisioned by the Constitution. It does all sorts of things our Founders would not have considered legitimate exercises of authority by their constitutional republic.
Read 19 tweets
4 Feb
This is one of the most concise summaries of the totalitarian ethos I've ever seen.
If Congress is serious about taking a bipartisan stand against peddling divisive falsehoods and manipulating public anger for political profit, then whatever happens to MTG should also happen to AOC.
Of course, we all know that won't happen, and AOC succinctly expressed why: in a totalitarian system, the Good and Righteous People of the Ruling Party get to fudge as many details as they please in their pursuit of Deeper Truth. Facts themselves are politicized.
Read 11 tweets

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