patrick.net

I was recently sampling wine at a tasting room in Placerville, CA, which happened to be located across from the El Dorado County Court House. There was a noisy and peaceful demonstration in progress at the Court House. The signs proffered in protest had simple phrases: Habeas Corpus Counts, Transitioning is Life Affirming, Save DEI, Trump or Musk is Hitler or a Fascist. All of the posters expressed slogans that were intended to elicit an emotional response and were presented as if ideological analysis was unnecessary.

All rhetorical arguments include, either independently or in combination some form of the following three classical components:
1. Ethos, an appeal to authority
2. Pathos, an appeal to emotion
3. Logos, an appeal to logic or reason

The protesters mentioned above relied almost exclusively on pathos. I have noticed a similar trend prevalent in the comment sections of Substack essays or Newspaper articles that allow for comments. Stock phrases are used to define a person’s viewpoint in lieu of reasoned discourse. ...

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

A majority of the voters in the 2024 election saw through the legacy media’s propaganda and lies. They rejected, for a myriad of different reasons, the falsehoods and misrepresentations sermonized within the media’s coverage of the Harris campaign. However, a still significant number of voters supported the Democratic platform. A platform which was primarily focused on hatred of Trump. That animus has not diminished. A Scott Rasmussen's Napolitan News Service poll conducted in April of this year found that 28% of Democrats believed America would be better off if Donald Trump had been assassinated. What is the mental construct that allows for such irrational hate in the first place? How do you rationalize a moral equivalency between opposition to a policy and death for the advocate of that policy? Driven by hatred of the man they consider akin to Hitler, they unquestionably support the opposite position of any Trump policy regardless of how absurd that may be. ...

A moral philosophy without stable boundaries grounded in objectivity has inherent dangers. It can promote selfishness, and foster a disregard for the property, life and liberty of others. It explains why Luigi Mangione who murderer the CEO of a Health Insurance Company is a hero to some. It explains the progressive’s justification for destroying someone else’s Tesla. Counter intuitively, it also explains the manifestation of intolerance to any opinion contrary to one’s own. If relativism is the guiding principle, then fanatical defense of a personal viewpoint is mandatory. It explains why there is a minority cohort locked in by Trump Derangement Syndrome. They are incapable of accepting any truth other than the one they created for themselves, regardless of the fallacies, inconsistencies or outright stupidity of their position.

Relativism breeds political intolerance which is justified by the bias misinformation propagated by the media. Nietzsche also said, “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

They don't have to report to Bass.

They don't have to report to Bass.