I am emotionally excited and/or deeply hurt by what st_rev wrote recently. You better take me seriously because you've spent a lot of time reading my posts already and feel invested in our common tribe. Anecdote about how people are tribal thinkers.
That thing that happened shows that everything I was already advocating for is correct and necessary. Indeed it is time for everyone to put their differences aside and come together to carry out my recommended course of action. If you continue to deny what both you and I know in our hearts to be correct, you want everyone to die and I am defriending you.
I don't even know where to begin. This is what blueist ideology has been workign towards for decades if not millennia, but to see it written here is hard to stomach even for one as used to the depravity caused by such delusions as I am. The lack of socially admired virtues among its adherents is frightening. Here I introduce an elaborate explanation of how blueist domination is not just completely obvious and a constant thorn in the side of all who wish more goodness but is achieved by the most questionable means often citing a particular blogger or public intellectual who I read in order to show how smart I am and because people I admire read him too. Followed by an appeal to the plot of a movie. Anecdote from my personal life. If you are familiar with the obscure work of an academic taken out of context and this does not convince you then you are clearly an intolerant sexual deviant engaging in motivated cognition.
Consider well: do you want to be on the wrong side of history? If you persist, millions or billions of people you will never meet will be simultaneously mystified and appalled that an issue so obvious caused such needless contention. They will argue whether you were motivated more by stupidity, malice, raw interest, or if you were a helpless victim of the times in which you lived. Characters in fiction set in your era will inevitably be on (or at worst, join) the right side unless they are unredeemable villains. (Including historical figures who were on the other side, lest they lose all audience sympathy.).
Remember: it's much more important what hypothetical future people will consider right than what you or current people you respect do. And you and I both know they'll agree with me.
While sympathetic to this criticism I must signal my world-weariness and sophistication by writing several long paragraphs about how this is much too optimistic and we are in grave danger of a imminent and eternal takeover by our opponents. The only solution is to begin work on an organization dedicated to preventing this which happens to give me access to material resources and attractive females.
Ciphergoth proves to be the lone voice of reason by encouraging us to recall what we all learned on 9/11:
However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct.
http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html
This is largely true of course. We inherit our institutions from the past - some of them from professional thinkers, like scientists, or from Enlightenment philosophers by way to the generation of the 1770s and the writers of the U.S. Constitution, who they also read Seneca, Cicero, Cato the Younger, etc., and were influenced by the English thinkers who were stirred up by the struggles of the the 1600s.
I'm just detecting very little urgency. I recently attended a Meetup where the saying they viewed it as important to get Level 5 thinkers to Level 6, and saw little point (or possibility?) in trying to facilitate moving from Level 2 to Level 3.
There is at least one very broad and deep movement working to change the beliefs of the electorate in certain preconceived directions, and they have a lot to show for it. E.g.:
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution.
When the USSR began to democratize, I think there was a missed window of opportunity and they went back to a new form of authoritarianism, from which I believe Berlusconi of Italy was able to take some lessons (i.e. from Putinism). This looked for a while like a turning back from Democracy in a nation (Italy) that had it for several decades.. During Russia's window of opportunity I think it arguable that the prevailing attitude was "Get the right ideas in the minds of the intelligentsia and that will do the job."
I expect LWers would agree that "propagandising the masses" (with ideology that we can't even agree on) is a non-starter, but I'm looking to participate with somebody in trying to broaden the idea or practice, or at least acceptance of the fruits of, a critical search for reality. One problem seems to be a breakdown common sense about who it trying to tell the truth and who is propagandising, and I fear sometimes and in too many places / situations / social circles, the U.S. is looking more like a third world country in this respect.
The posting at
is at least thought provoking along the lines that I want to be thinking in (it's not clear who wrote it), and I wonder if there is more like it somewhere (in LW or elsewhere).