roachboy

this is funny.
what does it mean?
let's think about it for a few minutes, shall we?

when it suits a conservative purpose, some folk on the right are all about notions like "objectivity" and "responsibility" from which you would assume follows a commitment to accurate information and a willingness to admit mistakes and/or problems and/or even bigger dysfunctions---but then, when it suits a conservative purpose, you see these same folk defending absolute relativism, a kind of "my premises are my premises and because they are my premises they are mine and you can't falsify them."

the maintenance tool is a kind of hydra that springs from the usage of the term "liberal biais" which operates as a mechanism that enables the dismissal of information you dont like. "the liberal" is a perverse being that follows the conservative around, negating whatever is said, just by standing it on its head. so a conservative will argue "x" and at the same instant, somewhere in space, "the liberal" will argue "-x"....the timing is amazing---it's like "the liberal" is everywhere and takes what conservatives say as his or her sole objects of attention. every conservative is a world-historical figure, so every conservative draws down the zeitgeist upon themselves, the positivities and their negation, all at once. it is, i imagine, a burden.

and "the liberal" is assumed to flourish best in particular, controlled hives. one of these is named berkeley.

so nonsensical was doomed from the beginning.

anyway, you see this in the above--the claim here is that conservatives have their own special type of "truth and reason" when it is convenient to have such things, and the validity of this special type rests on the claim which precedes it in the sentence:

"I think what people like you fail to realize is that highly educated, self aware, independently thinking people like me.."

so what holds this together is the self-image of the believer.

when it is convenient, one's "independently thinking"-ness is demonstrated by simply refusing to acknowledge dissonance. in this way, such operators maintain consistency of worldview in the face of mountains of evidence that, if admitted, would trigger a movement like "self-awareness" (in the sense that checking for errors in a proof is not the same operation as you see deployed in the proof). this is a form of independence, i guess....but i think of it as independence in the sense that a balloon has it when you let float into space.

investment in this machinery is not uniform, though, even amongst folk who identify as conservative. because any coalition encompasses a range of people, there are necessarily a range of meanings attached to the characterization "highly educated, self aware, independently thinking people" and not all of them believe that there are at least two separate types of reason, one for conservatives and another for everyone else, that is, for "the liberal"....no, this is a particular understanding of how one goes about being conservative.

it doesn't do justice to the tradition of conservative thinking.
but that is a topic for another post someday.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite