Sunday, November 14, 2004
THE PROL, THE PRINCE, AND THE PARASITE
The Prol
Today, one still often hears reference to, “the working class.” This is more so in Europe than America, and certainly more so among pampered intellectual ideologues than those who could actually be considered, “working class.” The phrase, today, actually reflects a rhetorical talking point more than an economic reality.
In the modern capitalist, free-market economy, almost everyone works. I’d seriously question anyone who considered the average factory worker’s effort to be somehow morally superior to the hours put in by the entrepreneurs who energize the economic circumstance of a country.
Ironically, many of those who tend toward Leftist philosophy are typically not “working class” by any definition. They represent, and always have represented, an elite. While a good portion of their type now come from the pampered college-molded middle class, they can hardly be seen as the toiling laborers of past eras, described as “proletarian” in Marxist lingo.
My father, like many in the post WWII era, worked at an automobile factory – for over 30 years. We were hardly “poor” or wanting for basic commodities, but we were probably in a lower tier of the middle class, culturally as well as economically. By the time I reached high school, we had moved to a nicer community but still lived in a simple house and owned a succession of used cars.
The “prols” are supposed to be left wing in their sympathies, or at least, “liberal” Democrats (in their desire to obtain the confiscated wealth of “the rich”). The Left today is still puzzled that such people -- the “working class” -- tend to be conservative or “right-wing” in their outlook. How can this be? The simple, and I think honest, answer is that the Left’s true affinities and sympathies never were for anyone beyond themselves. A conjured class of “oppressed workers” served no greater purpose to them other than being a mere excuse for grasping power. This resentful clique’ of "artists, philosophers, and thinkers,” still demands that society be structured upon their imposed vision. The Left’s entire stance is a coercive and condescending lie fostered upon “the workers” and everyone else. Fortunately, the “prol” knows nonsense when he or she sees it.
In China today, its common for students who are opposed to Communist party rule to refer to the power drunk cadre’s as, “princes,” which is indeed what they are.
The Leftist ideologue, for all their “revolutionary” lip service, desires a return to a type of monarchy – rule by a royal clique' of intellectuals, “artists,” and bureaucrats. The Leftist “thinker” is a prince, believing in his or her deserved role within an Imperial Court.
The Prince
Socialists, and their mouthpieces in mainstream media and education, would have us believe that conservatism is defined in wealthy oppressive businessmen or simpleton fundamentalist Christians. The same socialist Left tends to see itself as bohemian, independent, revolutionary, and a vanguard of the “poor and oppressed.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
My own initial confrontation with Leftist elitism came while still in school. Schools are always well populated with budding elites, archetypes of nascent Leftist thought. These kids were often from well-off families, they got good grades, were popular, proper, and obedient to authority (while playing lip-service to feigned rebellion). They always had a direct or subtle disdain for the less refined and obedient renegades of the school.
After completing school in the government stockades, people like me got jobs. The refined and cooperative princes went to college to become professional superior humans -- born to rule.
I remember, during high school, walking home one day and daring to discuss the negative attributes of communism in China with one of those young princely scholars. I don’t remember his name, but I remember he was robotic in his icy cold intellectual manner, while he logically described the necessity of killing millions to bring about a better political order. His praises to Mao Zedong were accompanied by the obligatory attack on our own system of government, of course. I mention this encounter because I don’t think it was that unique.
Most of us on the “Right” -- classical liberals -- remember the smug, self-righteous and condescending intellectuals in school. In rough fetal form, they were merely “superior.” Over time, they would develop the academic credentials and group ties, used as adults, to justify their inflated sense of self. I wasn’t impressed with them then, and still recognize them now when I hear or read their thoughts in publications, from their pulpits at universities, or from the power centers of political life.
The Prince is still on an ego trip, and he or she (Princess?) still seeks the grand prize through a phony chant of concern for some conjured victims of our free system.
It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. One person’s “victim” is often no more than another’s mere parasite.
The Parasite
I attended college later in life. While doing so, for a time, I lived in a house with four other roommates. I performed the reasonable obligations that are expected of one in a group living situation. I paid my bills in a timely manner, contained the volume of music in the evening, and in general, avoided intrusion into my roommate’s affairs.
It was in this setting that I encountered a sort of microcosm of what one may find in the larger social world. Like myself, most of the roommates exhibited the proper dignities of responsibility and decorum. Individual roommates periodically came and left. Occasionally we would have someone rooming with us who I now see as the Left’s poster child – someone irresponsible, intrusive, manipulative, or downright rude; often they were alcoholics. They showed little or no respect for the other roommates or the common areas of the home. In addition to their crude personal manner and hygiene, they often insisted on spreading their debased aesthetic sense about the common area. Their friends often came to the house late, were loud, and drank heavily. Their overall attitude toward their environment was that everything around them was theirs by default. Any polite request to turn their music down during late hours was met with a childish anger and resentment. Sometimes they were belligerent. Although they were often drunk in such circumstances, I didn’t view their alcohol intake to be the cause of their character flaws. A six-pack of beer merely seemed to magnify an innate temperament that was a combination of the infantile, the spoiled, and the domineering. Gracing this unholy trinity of psychopathology was an exaggerated sense of victim hood. They saw themselves as victims of other’s “mean-spirited” views and “materialistic” (successful) lifestyle. It shouldn’t have been surprising to me that these characters would also regularly help themselves to other’s food as a sort of entitlement. They deserved free access to other’s food merely because they wanted it! Expecting them to “ask to barrow” a refrigerator item would be expecting too much. I was amazed at how often such theft was turned around as a testament to my own “selfishness,” -- for not allowing them to freely steal from me.
In such behavior I saw the essence of the entire Socialist / Leftist worldview. (Robin Hood’s “giving to the poor” doesn’t’ change the fact that he’s a thief). These are the people who we are often asked to support and “understand” in the societal realm. Any lack of sympathy we may show for their chosen path in life is chastised as a lack of “compassion” for “society’s victims.” To be sure, there are fellow citizens whose bad choices or genuine misfortune have placed them in lower social strata, but even when such circumstance is not of his or her own fault, these people are not heroes in my eyes. There’s a big difference between pity and outright respect bordering on worship. While such characters may be worthy of pity, they most certainly are not worthy of worship, yet; these are the hero’s of the left. These are the people we are supposed to be excited about. To not show “compassion” for their circumstance, one risks being labeled, “selfish,” “greedy,” or worst of all, “a Republican.”
Obviously, not everyone who is down on his or her luck is a parasite. Before the advent of the Socialist mega-state, a host of private charities and networks offered productive assistance to those in need. In recent decades, the bureaucracy has sought to replace the true compassion of individuals with confiscated funds directed toward an increasingly dependent public. In essence, the prince has asked the Prol for the power to take wealth from “The Rich” (and other prols) for the Parasite, and for doing so, the Prince gets to become King.
In an open system, sound judgment will carry most honest souls to better times eventually (we’ve all seen good and bad times). Few people in a free society lead consistently tragic lives without some degree of willful collaboration in such a fate.
I don’t think one person’s negative circumstance warrants punishment to the majority of other people who lead relatively stable and comfortable lives.
A leftist resents not only most of our successes, achievements, and progress; they resent the very bourgeois decorum and responsible thought that leads to a successful life. To them it is unfair and unjust that everyone is not equally poor, unsuccessful, or unhappy. They stand bewildered and resentful when others think it as unfair and unjust to have their own lives intruded upon and their wealth confiscated for the poster children of contrived victim hood.
A free and open society will always be stratified, diverse, and dynamic. The world the Left continually promises is uniform, conformist (“equal”), and full of sham “compassion” to restrain progress and “distribute” failure (with abridgment of general liberties as a side effect).
Where the Left’s directed scorn is to wealthy, successful, bourgeois living, my own disgust is toward intrusive and disruptive parasites that think everyone owes them compensation for their own pathetic manner and choices. To be sure, those who genuinely feel concern or “compassion” for the reckless, foolish, or none-too-bright, can help in a number of ways. The Left’s method will always involve some kind of punishment toward success, for their real gripe is not with poverty or problems, but with achievement and success.
We can likely tell a lot about one’s values and genuine motivations by what images appear on their symbolic posters of conviction. An incompetent, dependant, domineering, or resentful “victim” of injustice is hardly a worthy poster child for any crusade.
The Parasite can, of course, be pitied. Stuck in an infantile stage of dependency, it merely wishes it’s “needs met” on demand (and doesn’t want to have to expend too much energy or responsibility having them met). It means no harm; it merely wishes to sustain itself on another’s dime, so to speak. In the Left’s worldview, a person is “selfish” for wanting to keep their money and a person is to be pitied for wanting to take it.
The Prol – or what remains of that concept in today’s world – wants to see his or her own efforts pay off in comfortable existence and degrees of improvement for self and family.
The Prince wants to simply have his or her ideals enforced – they want to be in charge, directly or indirectly. The Prince is still arrogant as ever. Daring to continue the charade that he or she actually “cares” about others never met. The Prince demands recognition, homage, and authority. The standard-bearers of Leftist philosophy still look down their noses from their lofty throne in the clouds. Allied with the stern hand of state, they’d enslave us all to prove their greatness. While belittling the Prol’s simple values and tossing crumbs of stolen goods to the Parasites among us, they claw their arrogant path from prince to grander prizes. What’s a little more tyranny, bloodshed, or economic decay when a spoiled monarch has a point to make?
Today, one still often hears reference to, “the working class.” This is more so in Europe than America, and certainly more so among pampered intellectual ideologues than those who could actually be considered, “working class.” The phrase, today, actually reflects a rhetorical talking point more than an economic reality.
In the modern capitalist, free-market economy, almost everyone works. I’d seriously question anyone who considered the average factory worker’s effort to be somehow morally superior to the hours put in by the entrepreneurs who energize the economic circumstance of a country.
Ironically, many of those who tend toward Leftist philosophy are typically not “working class” by any definition. They represent, and always have represented, an elite. While a good portion of their type now come from the pampered college-molded middle class, they can hardly be seen as the toiling laborers of past eras, described as “proletarian” in Marxist lingo.
My father, like many in the post WWII era, worked at an automobile factory – for over 30 years. We were hardly “poor” or wanting for basic commodities, but we were probably in a lower tier of the middle class, culturally as well as economically. By the time I reached high school, we had moved to a nicer community but still lived in a simple house and owned a succession of used cars.
The “prols” are supposed to be left wing in their sympathies, or at least, “liberal” Democrats (in their desire to obtain the confiscated wealth of “the rich”). The Left today is still puzzled that such people -- the “working class” -- tend to be conservative or “right-wing” in their outlook. How can this be? The simple, and I think honest, answer is that the Left’s true affinities and sympathies never were for anyone beyond themselves. A conjured class of “oppressed workers” served no greater purpose to them other than being a mere excuse for grasping power. This resentful clique’ of "artists, philosophers, and thinkers,” still demands that society be structured upon their imposed vision. The Left’s entire stance is a coercive and condescending lie fostered upon “the workers” and everyone else. Fortunately, the “prol” knows nonsense when he or she sees it.
In China today, its common for students who are opposed to Communist party rule to refer to the power drunk cadre’s as, “princes,” which is indeed what they are.
The Leftist ideologue, for all their “revolutionary” lip service, desires a return to a type of monarchy – rule by a royal clique' of intellectuals, “artists,” and bureaucrats. The Leftist “thinker” is a prince, believing in his or her deserved role within an Imperial Court.
The Prince
Socialists, and their mouthpieces in mainstream media and education, would have us believe that conservatism is defined in wealthy oppressive businessmen or simpleton fundamentalist Christians. The same socialist Left tends to see itself as bohemian, independent, revolutionary, and a vanguard of the “poor and oppressed.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
My own initial confrontation with Leftist elitism came while still in school. Schools are always well populated with budding elites, archetypes of nascent Leftist thought. These kids were often from well-off families, they got good grades, were popular, proper, and obedient to authority (while playing lip-service to feigned rebellion). They always had a direct or subtle disdain for the less refined and obedient renegades of the school.
After completing school in the government stockades, people like me got jobs. The refined and cooperative princes went to college to become professional superior humans -- born to rule.
I remember, during high school, walking home one day and daring to discuss the negative attributes of communism in China with one of those young princely scholars. I don’t remember his name, but I remember he was robotic in his icy cold intellectual manner, while he logically described the necessity of killing millions to bring about a better political order. His praises to Mao Zedong were accompanied by the obligatory attack on our own system of government, of course. I mention this encounter because I don’t think it was that unique.
Most of us on the “Right” -- classical liberals -- remember the smug, self-righteous and condescending intellectuals in school. In rough fetal form, they were merely “superior.” Over time, they would develop the academic credentials and group ties, used as adults, to justify their inflated sense of self. I wasn’t impressed with them then, and still recognize them now when I hear or read their thoughts in publications, from their pulpits at universities, or from the power centers of political life.
The Prince is still on an ego trip, and he or she (Princess?) still seeks the grand prize through a phony chant of concern for some conjured victims of our free system.
It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. One person’s “victim” is often no more than another’s mere parasite.
The Parasite
I attended college later in life. While doing so, for a time, I lived in a house with four other roommates. I performed the reasonable obligations that are expected of one in a group living situation. I paid my bills in a timely manner, contained the volume of music in the evening, and in general, avoided intrusion into my roommate’s affairs.
It was in this setting that I encountered a sort of microcosm of what one may find in the larger social world. Like myself, most of the roommates exhibited the proper dignities of responsibility and decorum. Individual roommates periodically came and left. Occasionally we would have someone rooming with us who I now see as the Left’s poster child – someone irresponsible, intrusive, manipulative, or downright rude; often they were alcoholics. They showed little or no respect for the other roommates or the common areas of the home. In addition to their crude personal manner and hygiene, they often insisted on spreading their debased aesthetic sense about the common area. Their friends often came to the house late, were loud, and drank heavily. Their overall attitude toward their environment was that everything around them was theirs by default. Any polite request to turn their music down during late hours was met with a childish anger and resentment. Sometimes they were belligerent. Although they were often drunk in such circumstances, I didn’t view their alcohol intake to be the cause of their character flaws. A six-pack of beer merely seemed to magnify an innate temperament that was a combination of the infantile, the spoiled, and the domineering. Gracing this unholy trinity of psychopathology was an exaggerated sense of victim hood. They saw themselves as victims of other’s “mean-spirited” views and “materialistic” (successful) lifestyle. It shouldn’t have been surprising to me that these characters would also regularly help themselves to other’s food as a sort of entitlement. They deserved free access to other’s food merely because they wanted it! Expecting them to “ask to barrow” a refrigerator item would be expecting too much. I was amazed at how often such theft was turned around as a testament to my own “selfishness,” -- for not allowing them to freely steal from me.
In such behavior I saw the essence of the entire Socialist / Leftist worldview. (Robin Hood’s “giving to the poor” doesn’t’ change the fact that he’s a thief). These are the people who we are often asked to support and “understand” in the societal realm. Any lack of sympathy we may show for their chosen path in life is chastised as a lack of “compassion” for “society’s victims.” To be sure, there are fellow citizens whose bad choices or genuine misfortune have placed them in lower social strata, but even when such circumstance is not of his or her own fault, these people are not heroes in my eyes. There’s a big difference between pity and outright respect bordering on worship. While such characters may be worthy of pity, they most certainly are not worthy of worship, yet; these are the hero’s of the left. These are the people we are supposed to be excited about. To not show “compassion” for their circumstance, one risks being labeled, “selfish,” “greedy,” or worst of all, “a Republican.”
Obviously, not everyone who is down on his or her luck is a parasite. Before the advent of the Socialist mega-state, a host of private charities and networks offered productive assistance to those in need. In recent decades, the bureaucracy has sought to replace the true compassion of individuals with confiscated funds directed toward an increasingly dependent public. In essence, the prince has asked the Prol for the power to take wealth from “The Rich” (and other prols) for the Parasite, and for doing so, the Prince gets to become King.
In an open system, sound judgment will carry most honest souls to better times eventually (we’ve all seen good and bad times). Few people in a free society lead consistently tragic lives without some degree of willful collaboration in such a fate.
I don’t think one person’s negative circumstance warrants punishment to the majority of other people who lead relatively stable and comfortable lives.
A leftist resents not only most of our successes, achievements, and progress; they resent the very bourgeois decorum and responsible thought that leads to a successful life. To them it is unfair and unjust that everyone is not equally poor, unsuccessful, or unhappy. They stand bewildered and resentful when others think it as unfair and unjust to have their own lives intruded upon and their wealth confiscated for the poster children of contrived victim hood.
A free and open society will always be stratified, diverse, and dynamic. The world the Left continually promises is uniform, conformist (“equal”), and full of sham “compassion” to restrain progress and “distribute” failure (with abridgment of general liberties as a side effect).
Where the Left’s directed scorn is to wealthy, successful, bourgeois living, my own disgust is toward intrusive and disruptive parasites that think everyone owes them compensation for their own pathetic manner and choices. To be sure, those who genuinely feel concern or “compassion” for the reckless, foolish, or none-too-bright, can help in a number of ways. The Left’s method will always involve some kind of punishment toward success, for their real gripe is not with poverty or problems, but with achievement and success.
We can likely tell a lot about one’s values and genuine motivations by what images appear on their symbolic posters of conviction. An incompetent, dependant, domineering, or resentful “victim” of injustice is hardly a worthy poster child for any crusade.
The Parasite can, of course, be pitied. Stuck in an infantile stage of dependency, it merely wishes it’s “needs met” on demand (and doesn’t want to have to expend too much energy or responsibility having them met). It means no harm; it merely wishes to sustain itself on another’s dime, so to speak. In the Left’s worldview, a person is “selfish” for wanting to keep their money and a person is to be pitied for wanting to take it.
The Prol – or what remains of that concept in today’s world – wants to see his or her own efforts pay off in comfortable existence and degrees of improvement for self and family.
The Prince wants to simply have his or her ideals enforced – they want to be in charge, directly or indirectly. The Prince is still arrogant as ever. Daring to continue the charade that he or she actually “cares” about others never met. The Prince demands recognition, homage, and authority. The standard-bearers of Leftist philosophy still look down their noses from their lofty throne in the clouds. Allied with the stern hand of state, they’d enslave us all to prove their greatness. While belittling the Prol’s simple values and tossing crumbs of stolen goods to the Parasites among us, they claw their arrogant path from prince to grander prizes. What’s a little more tyranny, bloodshed, or economic decay when a spoiled monarch has a point to make?
