I really wish Bill, Scott, and Stephen would make a video about the Twitter discussions on whether two plus two equals four.
Yes. You read that right. Twitter is currently debating over whether or not the sum of two and two is actually four.
Of course the left isn’t claiming that it’s never four, that would be ridiculous. Their claim is that it isn’t always four: sometimes it’s five, sometimes it’s three, sometimes it’s undefined. Maybe it’s seventeen, who knows! You certainly don’t know, because you can’t really know anything for sure, all knowledge is just a social construct (and off we go) made up by racist misogynist supremacist dead-white-males…
I noticed two things a while ago that I didn’t put together in my mind until I was watching this arithmetic debacle a couple days ago: one is that a lot of people who know more about this than me were complaining about “postmodernism,” and the other is that the Democrats seem to be the party of the exception, rather than the rule.
I thought I knew what postmodernism was. I took art classes in college and knew about Duchamp and the rest, found-objects deconstructing what it means to be art. I read this essay about twenty years ago about how Perl is postmodern, and I thought I got that. But I didn’t really understand how postmodernism ties into politics.
I did notice a favorite tactic of the left though: whenever someone says something that seems reasonable, the left likes to come up with the one tiny case in which it’s not, and inflate that to the totality. You want to deport people who are here illegally? Well what about this six-year-old whose parents brought her here, surely not her, right? Or, you think that “woman” means “adult female human?” Well what about the 0.01% of transgender people?
At first I thought it was an emotional appeal, but 2+2=5 clarified it for me: it’s something much more insidious. No one can be emotionally attached to what two and two equals, so if it’s about short-circuiting peoples’ brains by appealing to emotion then why care about that? Because they want to attack the idea of knowledge itself.
They’re not saying that 2+2 never equals 4. They’re saying that sometimes it doesn’t. There are no objective facts, there is no objective reality, everything is whatever we want it to be, whatever we believe it is. Everything is games played with language and definitions and whoever is better at redefining the terms wins.
And they see no problem with this. They can’t imagine anything else, actually. To them we’re the ones who won’t acknowledge reality because they’ve reinvented reality in their own heads, and we stubbornly insist that the real reality outside their heads doesn’t match it.
Of course when this ideology gets in power, someone, somewhere, has to actually deal with the real world in some way. As long as it’s people arguing in academia about how things ought to be then their head-canon is just as good as the real thing, but eventually someone will need to harvest grain that isn’t there, or build a machine with parts that won’t fit, and the inevitable result is the Soviet Union, or Venezuela, or North Korea…
12 replies on “Arithmetic, Postmodernism, and the Party of the Exception”
I’ll comment substantively … when anyone asks what is 2+2, the context is assumed by ALL reasonable people to be base 10 integer arithmetic and therefore the answer is 4. There are contexts in which 2+2 has a different outcome, but those contexts have to be established explicitly, and none of them is ever used in every-day transactions.
Examples:
2+2 = 0 (base 4)
2+2 = 1 (base 3)
I found it – July 10 “2+2 = 7”
I am pretty sure they did make a video on the 2+2 thing a month or so ago. I can’t find it though. If there’s a search engine for the site I don’t know about it.
Excellent post
THIS is what scares me the most about everything that is going on, including riots and Covid, that the mob demands that we accept unreality as reality. They don’t just want us to say it, they want us to believe it. Because then they own us. I just can’t believe it has come to this. Talk about re-education camps! I have a deep seated belief that reality and decency will win in the end. I sure hope I’m right.
You’re right about reality winning in the end – there can be no other result. Unfortunately, we have no way to know when exactly “in the end” will be. Might be after the 2020 election, might be after we’re all long dead and microbes have evolved into the next intelligent life forms, millions of years from now.
Emma, I couldn’t have said it better myself. No matter how much I ponder the mindset of the left, I can’t come to any conclusion other than they are insane, delusional or simply evil. Except…my son, who in every respect is a decent, responsible, reasonable man, conducting himself and taking care of his family according to conservative principals, is politically left. He sure wasn’t raised that way, but you see, he spent 20 years being indoctrinated by leftists from elementary school to high school all the way to his PHD in geology. I’d hoped studying in the STEM field he might be shielded from the brain washing of postmodernism, but I was wrong. Unfortunately, educating him by his dad’s and my example wasn’t enough, and I made the mistake of thinking it would be.
I don’t know what it will take to open his mind to recognizing the destruction and devastation the far left will impose upon this country if the bedrock of America doesn’t prevail. I’m afraid it’s going to take a very harsh, perhaps deadly, lesson.
I’ve heard Limbaugh say that most people who call themselves liberals live as conservatives. I can only assume that your son was effectively brainwashed such that he has never thought his positions through to their logical conclusions, which are tyranny and destruction and death.
My 2 children have 8 years and 10 years of post high school education. I had them read Atlas Shrugged in their early teen years. It illustrated where liberalism leads. I am grateful that they are both staunch conservatives.
I wonder if some of that is due to the fact that they each run a small business, which keeps one grounded in reality! What kind of job does your son hold?
I congratulate you on raising your children so well.
My son does live very conservatively – married 10 years, stable happy marriage, 2 children, 5 & 8, neither ever put in childcare. They live within their means, with almost no debt. He and my daughter-in-law are both professionals. He’s a research geologist and she is a chemical engineer, so they make a good living, though they have chosen a lifestyle that is comfortable, not luxurious.
I introduced John to Ayn Rand when he was in high school, and he read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead (he needs to re-read them, along with 1984 and Animal Farm). His choices through out high school and college indicated he gained some philosophical influence from them. His dad and I had our own business where he worked part-time during summers. He earned a scholarship to study geology and was offered a full scholarship after graduating to study for a PHD at Notre Dame, which he attained within 4 years.
I never see signs of him demonstrating anything other than conservative values in his personal choices and conduct, so for that I am grateful. He talks like a democrat but acts like a conservative. Having read Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart” I learned that this isn’t unusual for upscale university educated professionals. Neither his dad nor myself have more than a couple of years of higher education, but running a business for over 30 years is an education that transcends formal education by a long shot.
We haven’t let our political differences drive a wedge between us, probably because we simply stay away from the subject, but I can’t help but feel some regrets that we don’t have that connection, because in all other areas I can take nothing but pride in him. He’s 40 years old, but I believe he will recognize the evils of the far left ideology if not now, one day, perhaps not too far in the future, especially if Biden is elected.
Gee, I’m sorry. You merely asked what my son does for a living, not a historical novel. Anyway, thanks for asking.
Lynda, I find it fascinating. You sound like a great bunch of people. I’m willing to bet that time will bring everything into focus for your son. By the way, I agree with you that running a business is an education in reality and hard work like nothing else. That’s why I was curious about your son’s job. I have observed that highly educated people who work for government or educational institutions or big corporations are able to believe the fantasy of liberalism because they are insulated from the reality of running a business. Small business owners believe in A is A more than anyone else! Thanks for being open. Bill Whittle people are special by definition.
Emma,
Thank you for your kind words of affirmation and encouragement. I needed them. You are one of the reasons I joined this wonderful group of Americans who congregate on this site. We need each other’s support in a time when many of our institutions have betrayed us.
Your observation is spot on about the insulation from reality within big government, universities and big corporations. How beguiling to believe that utopia is attainable. You and I know that it never will be. Creating, building, and risking everything in an imperfect world is what business owners do, and the experience is invaluable.
My experience has often been that what I fear or worry over seldom comes to pass, or works out to have been for the best anyway. In the case of my son’s political persuasion, I think you are correct that with time he will come to see the true nature of far left progressivism, and will reject it.
My best to you and yours.
PS – I think you might find this story epic:
https://www.chicksonright.com/blog/2020/08/09/business-owner-gets-mask-shamed-posts-epic-response/
Wow. That post about masks is perfect. It’s like he reached in my mind and said exactly what I believe and know to be true. Thanks for sharing