Wednesday, February 24, 2010

STRAWBERRY FIELDS

Victor Davis Hanson wonders bemusedly what planet we are on when:
Hillary Clinton, of "suspension of disbelief" fame, now is complaining about the deleterious effect of domestic partisan discord on the conduct of foreign policy? Barack Obama, the once eloquent defender of the filibuster and the need to have constitutional protections against the tyranny of mere majority votes in the Senate, is now whipping his partisan horses onward to pass Obamacare with the barest of majorities? Joe Biden, the erstwhile Senate megaphone who used to preach against the arrogance that sought to steamroll his minority opposition, promising that someday when the tables turned Democrats would not show such hubris, now is eager to ram through health care by hook or by crook?


What planet are we living on? As I have said before, for President Postmodern and his zombie hordes in Congress (i.e., Democrats + the occasional Republican) objective reality doesn't matter much because what is inside their heads at any given moment is all that is important to them.. Their wishes or whims are all the reality they think they need. Thus, they can say one thing one day and with a straight face say the exact opposite the next. On their planet, contradictions and nonsense are on an equal footing with truth.

So it is not at all surprising when, John Derbyshire reports that "All is Illusion":
This is a gem. A chap named Jonathan Springston, senior staff writer at Atlanta Progressive News was let go. Why? He believed in reality. In APN's own words:
At a very fundamental, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news publication with a progressive perspective. He held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News. It just wasn’t the right fit.


All together now, you know the tune:
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about . . .


But, objective reality--you know, that thing that exists outside our heads and which it behooves us to attempt to understand to the best of our ability in order to survive--is not subject to wishes, whims, prayers, or miracles. On the contrary, our consciousness is entirely dependent on reality and not vice versa. If you want to change the world, you must act according to reality.

I see many patients every day who have this completely backwards because they believe that their wishes and whims are primary, and reality must conform to them. The consequences of this fundamental metaphysical error is that their lives are a living hell.

What planet are we living on? We are living on a postmodern planet, where, "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out..."

Except that I think I disagree, because its all wrong and it doesn't. Work out, I mean. Ever.

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