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Friday, June 21, 2013

Assuming bad intentions

Posted on 10:37 PM by Unknown
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The Western ruling elites could be basically decent, well-meaning people who want good things but - through lack of knowledge, personal greed and other types of selfishness, short-sightedness etc. - end-up doing (and trying to do) mostly evil things...

OR

They could be basically evil people whose strategic goal is to destroy good things wherever and whenever they have the opportunity - but who are somewhat restrained from doing so with maximum long-term efficiency by defects such as laziness, cowardice, spite and short-termist comfort-seeking; plus being hampered and confused by that fact that they are not wholly evil and residual good elements will sometimes divert the motivations and sabotage the plans of the primary evil components.

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We are agreed, therefore, that the secular Left politically correct leadership of all Western nations and all major institutions have done and are doing great evil, and are planning and propagandizing to do more great evils; and will not listen to anyone who points-out the facts, but rather the opposite: they will ignore, sideline, lie about, exclude, suppress-by-whatever means the truth - will violate common sense and call it sophistication, and will outlaw anybody learning from their own personal experience...

This we know.

But people retain considerable uncertainty about the basic set-up leading to this situation.

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The mainstream secular Right continually try to explain the bad things of modern life by a kind of Marxist analysis which purports to demonstrate that although most people are damaged by policy X, the political leadership will benefit from it - and this is (it is argued) why they are doing it.

For instance it is common sense and personal experience to know for sure that mass immigration will lead to the destruction of any society sooner or later; and the fact that the secular Leftist elites aggressively promote this policy is obvious; but the usual explanations focus upon ways in which the elite leadership will benefit (personally and in the short term) from this policy (cheap labour, cheap servants, getting elected etc).

But this type of analysis and explanation assumes that the key opinion formers are basically good people, who want good things, but who have been corrupted by short term selfishness into pursuing policies which are harmful to more people and over the longer term...

(It is also to assume the primacy of Marxist analysis: the primacy of economic motivation. A double error.)

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This is certainly not self-evident. Indeed common sense and personal experience suggests that the opposite is likely - that people are naturally very reluctant indeed to do anything which benefits them personally and in the short term when it obviously leads to the destruction of their society - including the world in which they will themselves live during old age and their friends, family and own children will have to live-in.

What this economic analysis is actually assuming is that the ruling elites are basically decent in the motivations, wanting the same things as everyone else, but seduced into the pursuit of selfish and short-termist behaviours about a few specific bad things like mass immigration, simply because they have been corrupted by power.

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This does not make common sense.

On the one hand, the economic (secular Right) analysis assumes that the ruling elites are essentially good-motivated people who have been corrupted by power into long-termist (strategic) pursuit of their own short-termist selfishness

(for example mass immigration is being promoted now because will lead to cheap labour and electoral dominance in 5, 10 or 20 years)

- and yet, on the other hand, somehow, the predictable long-term massively destructive consequences to themselves and their friends and families of sustained mass immigration do not affect their policies.

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The standard secular Right explanation for the wicked policies of the elites therefore assumes that the ruling Western elite are long-termist about achieving benefits but ignore inevitable long term harm; that they think strategically about economics, but about nothing else.

In a nutshell: the mainstream secular Right argue that the  dominant Leftist elites are strategically short-termist - which is an oxymoron.

This analysis does not make plain sense - of course it can be tortured into a semblance of sense by the addition of complex qualifiers; but that amounts to the same as saying it does not make sense. 

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The actually-existing Western ruling elites are not like normal people. 

Therefore we should not judge them as if they were like normal people.

Especially we should not assume that they are motivated like normal people.

In particular we should not assume that their motivations are 'basically good'.

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Some significant and dominant proportion of the Western ruling elites are basically evil in the sense of strategically seeking the destruction of good and good things, wherever and whenever they are found.

If they see a good marriage, or a happy family, an innocent child, or a beautiful building, or encounter a man of honesty and integrity - then their response is to hate it and want to deface it or destroy that goodness: break-up that marriage, pop-the-bubble of that family and rub their noses in filth, tattoo that child, demolish and replace that building, and corrupt that man of integrity into acts that violate his conscience.

If they encounter an argument which proves conclusively that their policies will certainly be widely destructive of good things and promoting of lies, ugliness and vice; they will inwardly nod, think 'thank you', and proceed with even greater determination having heard confirmation that this is a valid plan which will achieve its objectives.

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The Western ruling elites will and do pursue evil policies even when they know that these policies will surely harm themselves, their families, and be destructive of everything they value and indeed love.

In fact it is not a case of 'even when' they know the policies will be destructive of good, it is 'because' the policies are destructive of good: that is what evil means.

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And it you ask how it is possible for a person to be active in pursuit of evil, then I advise you to read the Old Testament (or Tolkien) for numerous examples.

Such people are not so much to be regarded as the ultimate origin of their own evil, but in the grip of evil; consenting to and embracing evil by an act of will which feeds upon itself.

But don't ever expect acknowledgment of truth from evil. It is characteristic and intrinsic of evil to lie.

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People ask which is most likely "cock-up or conspiracy?" - incompetence or active planning?

Un-ask the question, these are not the options. Things are much worse than that.

The options are basically good people accidentally doing harm or purposive evil deliberately destroying good.

And it makes a big difference which is true; because if you treat purposive evil as if it was accidental harm, you will not stop it, but make matters worse.

When the destruction of good is actively (albeit covertly) being sought via policy; then starvation, disease and violence are seen as a feature, not a bug.

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