Maverick Philosopher

The Projection of 'Weird' . . .

. . . is a weird projection.

Unwilling to acknowledge her own intellectual and moral deviancy, Kamala Harris projects her abnormalcy into the likes of J. D. Vance.  She is followed in this by her sycophants in the mainstream media.  This is psychological projection so extreme that it takes the breath away.  "The flamboyantly incompetent imbecile Harris," to borrow an apt appellation from our friend Malcolm Pollack, is the weirdest cackling gasbag of vacuity to come along in a long time. I don't have time at the moment to rehearse the litany of inanity on this sick specimen of flip-flopping mendacity, but in the run-up to November I will not hesitate to do so. 

The mountain bike beckons so I'll hand off to Tucker.

Michael Anton on "Celebration Parallax"

Here:

More tellingly, this charge is an example of something I call the “celebration parallax,” which is explained here. In brief, the celebration parallax holds that the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it and, crucially, the perceived intent of the speaker.

So if someone says that the U.S. is experiencing levels of immigration that are unprecedented in human history, if it’s presumed or suspected that he might have doubts, then he is an evil racist. But when Bill Clinton or Joe Biden makes exactly the same point, well, that is A-OK! Because they are “good guys” who welcome “an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop” (Joe Biden’s words). By the way, I leave to readers to intuit the difference between “unrelenting” (Joe’s word) and “ceaseless” (my word) and the reasons why the former is A-OK but the latter is somehow “racist.”

Political Perceptions

Only a leftard could come up with this  knee-slappingly risible explanation why 'No Labels' didn't stick:

The other problem with the No Labels operation is that there already is a moderate, bipartisanship-minded political faction in the United States. It is called the Democratic Party. For better or for worse, that party continues to be the home of nearly all of the remaining “institutionalists” in U.S. politics, and party leadership has repeatedly, over the past decade, passed up opportunities to engage in retaliatory procedural maneuvering in response to GOP constitutional hardball, preferring instead to stand up for a long-vanished consensus politics that has virtually no support on the other side of the aisle.

President Joe Biden not only leads that institutionalist party, but he is also its most vocal and successful backer of bipartisanship as a governing and political philosophy.

Another Reason to Pity Leftists

Leftists lack self-awareness. (That is what is called a generic statement.) They claim, against the evidence of his first term, that Donald J. Trump is a 'fascist,' a dictator, etc.  This is pure projection. Projection is a psychological defense mechanism. Not willing to admit their own totalitarian tendencies, lefties block them from view by projecting them into Trump, thereby displaying a remarkable lack of psychological self-transparency. A member of the MavPhil commentariat nails it:

Memo to the Left:

DJT will be a dictator? You don't say ! 

Maybe Donald Trump will: forbid me to use tungsten light bulbs, take away my gas stove, force me to drive an electric car, outlaw my propane-fired forced air house heater, and make me rewire my house for electric heat, to the tune of thousands of dollars, and force me to use [invented] "pronouns," and thus unwillingly participate in another's mental illness ! [As when a confused teenage girl, under peer-group pressure, lacking critical-thinking skills, allows herself to be surgically mutilated so as to change her 'gender.']

You mean Trump will be a dictator like that?

Really ?

Further question: should we pity leftist fools or hate them? Hate has its uses. It energizes and inspires ameliorative action in a way that pity does not. Is there not such a thing as righteous anger? That's a rhetorical question, a declarative in the guise of an interrogative. It declares: there is such a thing as righteous anger!

Pity or hate? If they are projecting, then perhaps pity is the appropriate response. But many if not most of these bastards are lying. Truth, we know, is not a leftist value. Ergo, etc.

Liz Cheney: Profile in Political Projection

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one attributes one's own unacknowledged feelings, desires, intentions, attitudes, etc. to others.  Extending the notion into the political sphere, the political projector accuses the other side of doing what he and his ilk are doing but will not own up to doing. I happened across a very clear example on CBS this morning.  It severely tested my ataraxia.

Projection is standardly understood as the offloading of the negative onto the other, but it is also often a mistake to project positive feelings, values, and attitudes into the other. Such projection may get your irenic self killed, as I argue in a Substack article, aptly entitled Beware of Projecting . . . your values and attitudes into others.

Radical Islam's Threat to the Left

Substack latest.

Why don't leftists — who obviously do not share the characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists — grant what is spectacularly obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom to reject religion, universal suffrage, the emancipation of women, opposition to cruel and unusual penal practices, and so on?   In particular, why don't leftists recognize the grave threat radical Islam poses to them?  Why do leftists either deny the threat or downplay its gravity? Given their atheism and pronounced libertine ‘wobble,’ they would be among the first to lose their heads under Islamic law (Sharia).

Here is a quickly-composed  list of twelve related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on discussions with friends. 

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your attitudes and values into others.

Leader of the Stack. Excerpts:

We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

It is dangerous to assume that others are like we are.  (I am thinking right now of a very loving and lovable female neighbor  who makes that dangerous assumption: she has a 'Coexist' sticker affixed to her bumper.)

Liberal 'projectionism' — to give it a name— can get your irenic self killed.

 

[. . .]

 

There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism.  For classical liberalism alone is tolerant of deep differences and is alone respectful of our equally deep ignorance of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Why must we be tolerant? Because we do not know. The classical liberal  is keenly aware of the evil in the human heart and of the necessity of limited government and dispersed power. So he is justified in making war against fanaticism, one-sidedness, and totalitarian systems of government whether theocratic or 'leftocratic.'  It would not be a war of extermination but one of limitation. It would also be limited to one's geographical area and not promoted abroad to impose the values of classical liberalism on the benighted tribalists of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Finally, can American conservatism and the ideology of the Democrat Party in its contemporary incarnation peacefully coexist? Obviously not, which is why there is a battle for the soul of America. Either we defeat the totalitarian Left or we face a nasty trilemmatic trident: acquiesce and convert; or accept dhimmitude; or be cancelled in one’s livelihood and then eventually in one's life.