Me: “Hey, X is kinda like Y.”
The World: [Blank stare]
Me: “No, really, if you stop and think about it, X has a lot of similarities to Y. And the differences between X and Y are interesting and informative, too.”
Lone Representative of the World: “Oh, come on … If X really were like Y, wouldn’t somebody else have noticed?”
***
Indeed.
Now seems like the perfect time to bring this up:
The day of the Norway massacre, I visited a number of sites and blogs, including some of the paleo-conservative variety.
The posters and their multitude of commenters were in the pits of dismay:
“This moron just set any conversation about the future of the West back fifty years. We will never recover. We will all be painted with the same brush. This is it, guys. It’s over.”
It was singularly, well, un-manly.
My response was the exact opposite, as you may recall.
If I may be so bold, it was a lot like Sailer’s, above.
Yes, it is corny, but consider the old chestnut about the man whose response to every tragedy is “Wait and see…”
That story is a touchstone for me and although I don’t always take my own advice, when I keep it in mind, it does wonders.
It also helps that, like Sailer (although obviously to a far lesser extent) I’ve been reading books since I was 3 years old and have unusually large frames of reference compared to the average person.
Every year I re-read this bio of Phyllis Schlafly.
Because when she decided to more or less single handedly prevent the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, the ERA was already a whisker away from being ratified.
Against all odds and all the “wise” advice she received, she and her colleagues eventually succeeded — in an era without personal computers or printers (that means no Word, no Exel, no PowerPoint and no label printing, too, not just no internet).
Without fax machines, smart phones and cheap, non-monopolized phone service and texting and disposable cameras and low-cost video cameras and cheap flights to deliver hundreds of speeches in every state.
Without a fundraising mailing list except the one they built from scratch on old recipe cards, sitting around her dining room table, licking envelopes.
In other words, she had much the same resources you have at your disposal today — if you were trying to do what she did, but in a blackout.
There are too many “conservatives” out there who brag about how stupid they are, who’ve never seen a black & white movie or read a book that’s more than 10 years old or isn’t for sale at the airport.
You aren’t helping.
And when you’re one of those paleo-cons — you know, the arch super intellectuals who are genuinely cultured and traveled and allegedly take a long view of history — when you of all people lose your shit, you’re not helping either.
Between the two of you, it’s like ****ing Ren & Stimpy.
Yeah, conservatives are supposed to be pessimists.
They also aren’t supposed to jump on every fart and bleep that comes across in the never ending stream of daily news and scream “Run for the hills.”
Next time?
I know I’m just a stupid female, but why not do what I did and shut up for one day until ALL the evidence is in?
Cuz your bring-down is what’s really going to be the end of us.
