Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • The Obsolete Man

    The Twilight Zone marathon is in progress at the SyFy channel. One of the best episodes of the series which ran from 1959-1964 is The Obsolete Man (1961). Rod Serling's opening narration is eerily prescient and eerily  relevant to our present police-state predicament:

    You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he's built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.

    "Logic is an enemy and truth is a menace."

    An accurate summation of the Biden regime. The most recent example of illogic: the defense of democracy requires the destruction of democracy  by banning the popular front-runner from the ballot on trumped-up charges when, as is obvious, the physically decrepit, mentally incompetent, morally corrupt, and political destructive Biden is the one who ought to be banned from the ballot  if anyone is to be banned, not that I am saying that any one of the current contenders should be banned from the ballot. For Biden is a traitor in plain dereliction of duty. If the Republicans were not lousy with feckless RINOs, Traitor Joe and his noxious entourage would no longer be befouling the White House. The Republicans' inability, or rather unwillingness, to give as good as they get is exasperating. Trump tried to teach them how to fight, but instead of learning from him and engaging the enemy, too many of them waste their time and energy attacking the only man who can turn things around. The well-fed Christie, flaccid in body and mind, is a USDA prime example.

    As for the assault on truth, the main players in the Biden administration are proven serial brazen liars: Biden, Mayorkas, et al.  Liars, plagiarists, Orwellian language-abusers: scumbags all. Is there even one member of that 'team' who does not exhibit one or more of the modes of mendacity? Got an example? Let me hear it.

    Serling via the Meredith character puts librarians in a good light. Rod in 1961 was no doubt thinking of Nazi book burnings. A mere 16 years had passed since the collapse of the Third Reich. But times have changed. Librarians are now too often anti-biblic in their banning of books and anti-civilizational in their promotion of pornography and other species of cultural garbage.  Librarians now are mostly leftist termites.  We have our work cut out for us.

     

    Obsolete Man

     

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “The Obsolete Man”

  • If you need an app to pray . . .

    . . . I will say a prayer for you.

    You don't even need the 'closet' referred to at Matt 6:6:

    But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (KJV)

    Tu autem cum oraveris, intra in cubiculum tuum, et clauso ostio, ora Patrem tuum in abscondito: et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. (Biblia Vulgata)

    Related words: closet, claustra, enclosure, claustrophobia, exclaustration. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Situational Awareness

    Another MavPhil public service message:  Don't walk around with your head up your app!

    You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. 

    And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure of  situational awareness. (Steve Tarani)  Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)

    Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!

    Don't be a pollyanna.  (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)

    Bill Vallicella

  • Gunfire Tonight!

    One of the exciting things about living out here in the Arizona Territory is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.

    Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don’t understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head’s unlucky possessor.

    Let’s see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob’s suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move. A body falling in the earth’s gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES. The body’s velocity is ever increasing. Now the momentum of a moving object — which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving — is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.

    Buk on New Year's Eve

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Gunfire Tonight!”

  • Alliteration

    A reader who likes my alliteration found this specimen in a post from 2010:

    The sobriety of solitary silence is superior to the sloughing off of self into the social . . . .

    Perhaps I overdo it. An argument against alliterative excess is that it could distract the reader from the content.  

    A good writer attends to his style, but does not permit style to get in the way of content.

    "Style is the physiognomy of the mind," wrote Schopenhauer to open his great essay, On Style.

    Here is a long list of literary devices. There I go, alliterating again.  I did not do it intentionally! It just came out like that. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Racism of Reduced Expectations

    To tolerate and excuse Harvard president Claudine Gay's  plagiarism has been cited by some as an example of the so-called 'racism of reduced expectations' (RRE). For what you are then doing by your toleration and excusal is lowering the standard for blacks when, or rather on the assumption that, they are as capable as any other group of meeting those standards.  Such a slighting  of blacks would indeed be racist.

    But is the assumption true? The assumption underpinning  RRE is that blacks as a group are the equal of Jews, Asians, and whites in respect of intelligence, intellectual honesty, love of truth, interest in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, commitment to the traditional values of the university, respect for high standards of scholarship, and the like. If this is the case, then it is indeed racist to tolerate and excuse the bad behavior of blacks such as President Gay, and in her case 'sexist' as well.  

    So whether there is racism here or not depends on whether the underlying assumption is true. Most establishment conservatives believe that it is.  They believe that blacks are the equals of the other groups mentioned in respect of the attributes mentioned. I don't doubt their good faith. Jesse Watters a few nights ago played the RRE card: to tolerate and excuse President Gay's plagiarism is to treat her as either incapable or unwilling due to her race of being objective, truth-seeking, and intellectually honest. It is to suggest black intellectual and moral inferiority when they are not inferior. Hence the racism of reduced expectations.  But if blacks as a group really are inferior when it comes to the appreciation and implementation of the values in question then the reduced expectations are justified and there is no racism of reduced expectations.

    My point is that reduced expectations are racist only if the assumption is true.  If the assumption is false then a reduction in expectations is in order  and there is no racism.  One is entitled to play the RRE card only if one has already shown or given good evidence for the truth of the assumption.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “The Racism of Reduced Expectations”

  • The Concept of ‘Standoff’ in Philosophy

    Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Hamas, DEI, Kronstadt, and Cognitive Dissonance

    I'll bet that most of you don't know what 'Kronstadt' refers to. If so, this article, clearly written, and not too long, will help.

    Bill Vallicella

    10 responses to “Hamas, DEI, Kronstadt, and Cognitive Dissonance”

  • Ruling Class Banana Republicans

    Rod Dreher.  Includes this nifty graphic from an IBM DEI indoctrination session:

    Whiteness

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Ruling Class Banana Republicans”

  • Academic Credentials

    How important are they? Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Academic Credentials”

  • Just Like a Libertarian!

    A member of the Cato Institute argues that the solution to the immigration crisis is to legalize immigration. Too stupid for words. Or maybe you disagree?

    Bill Vallicella

    20 responses to “Just Like a Libertarian!”

  • A Theory of Hell

    The 'pleasures' of hell explained over at Substack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Political Opponents or Political Enemies?

    If you are among the sane, reasonable, and morally decent, then you ought to consider leftists, and this includes today's Democrats, as political enemies. Here is one reason among many:

    Earlier this year, RCP [RealClear Politics] learned that it was one of many news sites that appeared on an advertising blacklist put out by a group called Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British NGO that advises advertisers and search engine companies. GDI labeled RealClear Politics as a high-risk news site for disinformation. All because we include voices they don’t like. That we pair such voices with those they agree with doesn’t seem to matter to them. 

    Alles klar?

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “Political Opponents or Political Enemies?”

  • Incarnation: A Mystical Approach

    A Christmas Eve Substack meditation that draws upon a mystical and possibly heretical passage from Juan de la Cruz.

    Bill Vallicella

    12 responses to “Incarnation: A Mystical Approach”

  • A Lefty Sees the Light

    Sasha Stone, An Ex-Democrat's Case for Trump

    Good advice:

    What the Democrats and Never Trumpers want now is to push Trump and MAGA back into the danger zone. They want more violence. They want riots. They want an uprising [so] that they can then bring in the military, weaponize dissent, speech, and ideology, and have the full backing of the American public. We’re almost there now.

    But don’t take the bait, MAGA. You can defeat them by being the calm, reasonable side. Make them the crazy ones. They are just waiting for any chance to exploit the law more than they already have. Don’t give them that chance.

    That's right. Stay calm. Speak out but don't overreact. No violence! No threats!  Don't fuel the fascism of our political enemies. You must  realize that they are not good people.* They hate you and they will crush you if they can. Step on their toes and you will get a jackboot to the face.  Anyone who will cancel your livelihood will cancel your life. Quietly prepare.  Hope and pray for the best, but prepare for the worst. Be ready should SHTF. These are very dangerous times. The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance.  Cf. Civil Courage and Practical Dissidence.

    The case for Trump is simple, four words on a red hat: Make America Great Again.

    Make America able to take a joke again. Make America understand basic biology again. Make America the land of the free and home of the brave again. Make it okay to be white, a Christian, a male, a Jew, a woman, a mother, an American again. Make Thomas Jefferson a hero again. Make movies watchable again.

    Make America a country where we can still say what we think without fear of banishment, public humiliation, or the loss of our jobs. Make America tolerant again. Make reality cool again. Make it okay to reward merit. Make it okay to be friends with people you don’t agree with.

    ———————

    *That's a generic a statement.  Of course there some good people on the wrong side, but they are useful idiots.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “A Lefty Sees the Light”

Latest Comments

  1. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  2. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  3. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  4. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…

  6. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/peace-has-been-murdered-and-dialogue?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=841240&post_id=173321322&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1dw7zg&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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