Tony Downing’s Opinion and Commentary

wednesday 2 december 09

(1) Before you start talking trash, you better think about what the back of your head looks like, then you’ll know what people think of your fuzzy mane.

(2) If you can’t see that the dissing of Sarah Palin is an ad hominem attack for the purpose of discrediting her policy positions, then you can’t see much. Gullible.

friday 27 november 09

The morality of most of us amounts to taking sides with the party we’re the most afraid of.

thursday 9 June 09

Resentment is what keeps things from happening. Falling in love can only happen to those who have freed themselves.

thursday 19 march 09

The antonym of self-reliance is a grievance-centered identity. This thinking doesn’t preclude the possibility of recognizing a real victim status, but only precludes ceasing to live because of it. When one gives oneself over to that grievance-identity, one simply ceases to live. 

wednesday 11 march 09

Geniuses are those who must compensate for their idiocy by a stroke of insight.

monday 9 march 09

Liberals might be characterized in some cases as those who cannot find a way out of the iron, ineluctable “logic” of Marxism. I’m thinking here of the fashionable cultural Marxist who believes it’s a given that Marxism is infallible. The problem here, of course, is that Marxism is purposely trying to present itself as infallible, in order to enslave the mind. Those who do not exert themselves to free themselves from the snares of this doctrine end up as the dupes, tragically, of the injustice Marxism perpetrates.

 

wednesday 4 march 09

The reason why we look at people is to avoid what we would feel if we didn’t look.

thursday 19 february 09

(1) A lot of times anger is felt in dissappointed expectation of reparations that should be, but are not forthcoming. The more it becomes evident that there will be no tribunal, no recompense, the more the anger grows.

(2) Victim culture is a bad thing, since it encourages people to expect reparations, and thereby their time is wasted, and they become unaccustomed to self-sufficiency.

saturday 14 february 09

Time is the experience of the density of the gravitational field in which you are present.

thursday 12 february 09

(1) The idea at the basis of the welfare state is that life is only a hardship to be endured. This idea does not hold that we have a life-span available to us, but rather that we have a life-span inflicted upon us.

(2) Keep your focus on transcendence, not revenge. That way you’ll always be closer to the relevant issue.

friday 6 february 09

AGAINST LIBERAL POLITICS

Liberals believe the past is fundamentally evil, and that the farther we leave it behind, the better. The more nearly opposite to the past we become, the better things will be. They see nothing at all good in history, except for those in the past who were the harbingers of themselves. They see themselves as the sole source of rectitude and justice and sympathy. But what they don’t see is that what is good today actually depends wholly upon what was good in the past: that is, solid, middle-of-the-road tradition is the vehicle that carries goodness forward. Liberals don’t see, furthermore, that the complete break with the past they propose is amazingly uncomprehending, and will only lead to a race-to-the-bottom-morality, a Lord of the Flies world. They insist on living in a world of fiction, in a world of theoretical substitutes for reality, in order to distance themselves from the paradigms of life. They see themselves as the end of a long, inevitable process of moral and intellectual development that finds its culmination today in them, the end of history, as it were, when the long reign of injustice is overturned by the ineluctable force of truth. But the real truth is that they have voluntarily separated themselves from the actuality of the world as it can only be, while claiming that that tragic dissociation is a higher spiritual state. They have made their irrelevance the center of the universe. Moreover, they defend their weak theses by means of emotional postures that usually rise to nothing more than the contrived, and they avoid, in their determination to live a life of estrangement from the actual, any true committment to evidence or rational sobriety. They attempt to transform their flight from reality into objective nature.

thursday 5 february 09

(1) When people say: “war is not the answer,” I think what they might really mean is: “sacrifice and gratitude are not the answer.”

(2) It is easy to support the war in Iraq: the al Qaeda of September 11, 2001 is gone forever, devastated by this war. It had to be done sometime, why not right away?

(3) It’s ironic that Michael Moore liberals chastise Bush for those seven minutes when he did nothing about the 9/11 attacks. They wouldn’t ever have done anything.

sunday 25 january 09

We avoid intimacy with others because rejection would be all the more devastating in that case. I say this not to feel sorry about what life is, but to see the way out of holding back.

wednesday, 21 january 09

The most noble thing to do with one’s emotional life is to reject the idea of oneself as victim. This is not to deny that there are victims. But if one is indeed a victim, thinking about it should only take the form of making sure that one doesn’t unconsciously give in to the resentments that will steer one’s ship onto the craggy rocks.

friday, 9 january 09

I read in The Nation magazine the other day that the war on terror is “disastrous.” But that implies that no part of life is the experience of being threatened. If there is no such thing as being threatened, then yes, the war on terror is a mistake. But that’s not a conclusion one can extract from the 9/11 attacks, now is it? The Nation thinks the war on terror is a mistake only because that war inhibits the agenda The Nation wishes to advance. Their opposition over there at the magazine is only a case of the all-too-contingent pretending to be the august and timeless non-contingent.

wednesday, 7 january 09

Life is mostly a case of being misperceived by the incompetence and selfishness of others, and then being threatened by them as they act on that misperception.

sunday, 4 january 09

Downing’s Law: The more annoying something is, the more likely it is to happen.

Downing’s Correlate: The more pleasing something is, the less likely it is to happen.

tuesday, 30 december 08

The Greek thinker Zeno (of Citium, in Cyprus, born in the fourth century b.c.) believed that human life was in a situation like that of a dog tied to the back of a moving cart. Each of us is going to have to move, since the cart is moving, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. But a question remains as to how one will move: voluntarily or by being dragged by the neck. That was the essential moral question for Zeno. I think it has great merit, even thousands of years later. The best way to be altruistic, then, is to be one of those who walks behind the cart voluntarily.

saturday, 20 december 08

I think withdrawal from Iraq is wrong — then it really would be another Vietnam. The credibility of America is at stake, and it’s vitally important that the US maintain that credibility — it’s not just ego. If America withdraws, under Obama, it will provide the radicalized Arabs with jubilation and they will be emboldened beyond measure. The world will become an even more violent place. The oppressed of the world will lose. It would be a disgrace for America to shed its responsibility in such a way, and the momentum would then be with the lawless of the world.

Many of those against the war on fashionable grounds are disingenuous. The reason why Vietnam didn’t go our way is the timidity we evinced in fighting it, and then the inevitable withdrawal. With that timidity, we were just announcing to the world our future, inevitable capitulation, that we had almost planned on it. We can’t do that again — we are the world’s hope, and the war is just, the enemy is a scoundrel, and so many people of the world are counting on us to be as good as our word. The oppressed of the world look to us. A momentous decision is in the hands of Obama — whether to repeat the mistake of capitulating, as we capitulated in Vietnam, or to fight against the totalitarian tendencies of the Middle East and of those here at home who harbor those same sentiments: Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, The Nation magazine, etc.

friday, 19 december 08

Liberals are fond of the concept of the “living Constitution,” but are then suddenly strict constructionists when it’s a matter of international law. They say the war in Iraq is illegal on that basis, thereby putting themselves in the position of lobbying for a clear fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, and criticising bitterly the law-abiding nation of the United States. International law should not be a suicide pact.

wednesday, 17 december 08

Psychologically dysfunctional people demand an impossible perfection from the world so as to receive compensation for their own imperfect capacity to deal with the world. I’m thinking here of people who think life is in the wrong and that theory is in the right.

Sunday, 14 december 08

1) Our emotions don’t always give us an accurate picture of objective reality. The problem is to remember this, and not get taken in completely by the overwhelming persuasiveness of emotion.

2) The problem with petty people is not that they’re petty, but that they conceive of their pettiness as a higher moral level. Anyone can have a bad moment, myself included; just don’t go worshipping that bad moment.

3) Envy is experienced when we encounter our alter ego in the form of another who is perceived to possess all we wish for, but feel is forever out of reach.

saturday, 6 december 08

Tennis tip to self: fearlessness makes the shot go in, caution makes the shot go out.

friday, 5 december 2008

(1) Photos help us elicit memories, but they also help confirm that we’re not crazy: they show that things really were that way once, and that we’re not just making it up.

(2) As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, a lot of the time when we’re angry with someone, it’s just because that person showed no fear of us. That we can’t forgive. But why not just let it go — so what?! Somebody showed no fear of me! We’re going to have to let it go anyway, since we have to concentrate on other things, so why not just concede to the inevitable?

Saturday, 29 November 2008

The problem with liberal politics is that too much of it is based on phony altruism. Even renowned constitutional scholars want to show their moral bona fides by taking sides in favor of the supposed right side. But this supposed right side isn’t the right side at all if it undermines self-reliance and self-sufficiency, and if it has a tendency, in its victory, to encourage “it’s about time” resentment, and, in its defeat, to encourage artificial umbrage. Altruism mostly is a cover for indecency.

Friday, 28 November 2008

The problem with altruism is that it’s a misnomer. The word means, of course, “other-ism,” but that’s not what happens. In actuality, the self-styled altruism amounts to just a way of drawing attention to oneself, and that is hardly a way of living for others.

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

I read a good joke the other day in The Weekly Standard:

A man is standing at night in the light of a streetlamp, looking for something on the sidewalk. Another, second man comes by:

“Did you lose something, sir?”

“Yes, I lost my keys,” the first man replies.

“Oh…..where do you think you might have lost them?” says the second man.

“Well, back over there,” says the first man.

“Well then, forgive me, but why don’t you look over there?” the second man asks.

“Well, the light is better over here…..”

Saturday, 22 November 2008

(1) The real definition of altruism should be self-reliance. There’s no better way to help people in their life than by avoiding being a drain on them in one’s own.

(2) Americans and Europeans who are against the Iraq war on principle refuse to see the reality of the global political situation and wish to indulge themselves in anti-Americanism. But that puts them in a curious position of having to say that they are indeed glad that Saddam and the Baathists are gone, but that they are still against the war because it’s still an example of “American imperialism.”

But how else was Saddam to be gotten rid of? Only American power has the strength to do that. We rely on American power now more than ever in this era of the lone hyperpower. Europe is unwilling to spend on defense. Why cannot we then have a more consistent and rational view of American power? Why can’t we acknowledge that that power is on the side of good in a dangerous world of jihad and its global aspirations? To say that jihad has limited means, and that therefore we don’t face a grave situation such as we did with the Soviet Union, doesn’t work.

The ultimate intentions of jihad make it a permanent threat, even though its resources are supposedly scanty. With nanotechnology and ideology and a few bucks, they can bring down quite a bit. Fighting jidad has to remain a central concern of U.S. foreign policy: it is not just a matter for the law enforcement community.

It’s misguided for American foreign policy to be either isolationist or internationalist (multilateralism and diplomacy). Multilateralism will water down the quality of the fighting force (the allies just aren’t as capable as American trained soldiers, so substituting them in and Americans out is a mistake), and endless negotiations, designed to bog down the enemy in process, can be a good idea, but they can also backfire on us if it gives that enemy more time to pursue weapons programs.

For example, as Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out, multilateralism in the Gulf War gave Saddam five months to further devastate Kuwait. Coalitions take a lot of time to forge, and they have a tendency to water down the loyalty of the multinational fighting force to the cause, and they also water down the quality of the force, as room is made for the less elite forces.

Sunday, 8 November 2008

(1) The reason why we fail to see the psychological type of the totalitarian regime is that we project our own psychological type onto them.  We have no other reference point. We project, that is, our own utilitarian motives, our own motives rooted in normal self-interest and in normal cause-and-effect order. But totalitarian regimes are not rooted in normal, utilitarian motives and order. That would destroy their movement. They are rooted in a fictional idea of the world and of history, and they must therefore pursue a world beyond the world, with motives appropriate to that undertaking.

(2) When we witness a dispute, we take the side of the party we’re the most afraid of. We present our so doing as if it were an impartial ascertaining of truth.

Thursday, 30 October 2008

Anger is a wall we erect to prevent the truth from leaking in, and the falsehoods from leaking out. 

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Possible new definition of altruism, in sync with our times: Altruism is capitulation to the resentment of others.

Thursday, 2 October 2008

What’s the difference between a depraved person and a non-depraved person? Well, for the depraved person, the best thing that can happen to him is successful revenge, whereas the non-depraved person doesn’t even notice when he has an opportunity for some revenge.

Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Ahmadinejad’s words at the UN are so predictable you don’t even have to have the text to the speech. He claimed yesterday that the US military caused the financial crisis. That’s a self-interested statement, isn’t it? He wants fifth column elements in the US to get on board that statement so that they will call for an end to a strong US foreign policy. He wants to claim he is a man of fairness, supported by 98% of Iranians. But all totalitarian leaders profess benevolence towards the outside world when it suits their purposes. 

He claims that Iran’s nuclear program is only for civilian purposes– why do they need nuclear power for that, with all that oil and natural gas? Also, Russia and China protect Iran in the Perm Five of the UN Security Council. But he has been dressed down by El Baradei, of the IAEA, for not allowing inspections, and for not being forthcoming. He is buying time by accusing others, by pretending his program is peaceful, and by lying about Israel.

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

(1) The “morality” of some people is just simply a method for manipulating others into being the junior partner. They do this while pretending to be more noble than others.

(2) Hannah Arendt mentions Hobbes in Origins, but not Rousseau. Why? It could be that she wanted to save face for Marxism. If Hobbes is the culpable one (one of the two must be culpable, it would seem), then Rousseau, perforce, is not the culpable one. That means then (following this logic) that it is civilization that produced the evil of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and it is not then the fault of natural man or of natural man theories, which of course was the raison d’etre of Rousseau.

(3) Ideological governments, such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and The Islamic Republic of Iran, can only have a tendency towards totalitarian rule. That is, the consent of the masses to the ideology must be there in order to govern effectively, but of course it’s not going to be there, since people would rather be free than imprisoned in the thoughts of others, and so then the consent of the masses to the ideology must be enforced with violence. Any ideology, moreover, that claims to explain all of history is also going to have a tendency towards seeking global domination. They believe themselves to have the answer to all of history and to ultimate justice, so they are then going to be drawn towards global dreams. Beware, then, of any who claim to possess the key to history: they want the world.

 

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

Georgia on Russia’s Mind

The fraud of what Russia is doing in Georgia is as follows:

Russia encourages the Ossetian and the Abkhazian defectors to believe that their freedom depends on a government that shares their own ethnic group. “We are not Georgians,” the defectors say. But this idea that your pursuit of happiness depends on the ethnic group of your government was created in large part by the treaties of WW I, that tried to create nation-states based upon ethnicity. It’s fictitious. All you need for emancipation and the pursuit of happiness is a government based on the rule of law, which is what Georgia already is. Those defectors would be better off in Georgia. Charles Krauthammer states that, unfortunately, the regions have been absorbed into Russia permanently.

Another fraud perpetrated by Moscow is the claim that the defectors have the right to live in an unconditioned state, that is, without any limitations or responsibilities. This is a misinterpretion of 18th century theories claiming a divine spark in man, that man in a state of nature is good, and that civilization makes him bad. That is, Russia can claim that Georgia is a colonizer, suffocating the natural, divine spark of the human spirit in Ossetia and Abkhazia, and that the claims of historical law and order have been superceded. As Hannah Arendt described these theories:…”it was tacitly assumed that nature was less alien than history to the essence of man.” Apparently, you can do what you want against the claims of civilization, in the name of the nature of man.

Russia is showing itself to be hugely irresponsible to the international system. This misinterpretation of the inalienable natural rights of the defectors is a farce. The Soviet Union was one of the great tragedies of human history– this adventurism in Georgia on the part of Russia is likewise a sad farce. Russia is undermining the parliamentary system, and continues to be a rogue state. It doesn’t deserve to be in the G-8. It should be kicked out. Georgia and the other frontline states (former republics Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, etc.) should be put on the fast track to NATO membership. That way intervention in Russia’a adventurism has the way already paved.

 

Friday, 15 August 2008

Russia has a chance in Georgia to reverse the sense of powerlessness it has been experiencing since 1989. (Even Gorbachev is in favor of moving in on Georgia.) First the satellite countries break away, then the Republics want out of the Soviet Union, even Ukraine, the truest of the true wanted out, then the Marxist government falls in Moscow. After all that, Russia’s historic ally, Serbia, gets bombed by NATO,  and then Kosovo flat-out breaks away from Serbia, and manages to get recognized by both Europe and America: all this Russia is going through in recent history, all the while with significant internal disruption of several kinds within Russia itself. That’s a very long bad day.

 Putin and his point man Medvedev can now play the part of liberators as they teach Georgia a lesson about being a former Soviet Republic that wants to join European military and civilian institutions: you will get nailed, you will not escape from my gravitational pull. It’s the underlying, ulterior motives here that are sinister– the surface plausibility is only a Trojan Horse. And the Euro-American political left only musters a little criticisim of Russia on this so as to appear consistent when they criticize America about Iraq.

 

Thursday, 14 August 2008 

The Nation magazine, in its current issue, refers to the Bush years in the White House as “the long night of greed and military adventurism, which will continue if McCain is elected.” Also, I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, “I hated Bush way before it was cool.” And there was a T-shirt the other day that displayed: “Proud to be an American,” but with “American” crossed-out with a line, and the word “skateboarder” put in underneath, replacing “American.” And, of course, a while ago, MoveOn.org posed its infamous question, “General Petraeus or Betray us?”

 Even a hawk such as Jeane Kirkpatrick was against the war in Iraq before she passed away (even though, on behalf of the Bush administration, she proved its legality before the UN in Geneva), but she didn’t show contempt for those fighting the war. She correctly assumed their decency and intelligence. She was against the war on strategic grounds only. America has got to be unprecedented in human history for the extent to which its own citizens take sides against its foreign policy. The Soviet Union started working on us in the 1930’s, and, it appears, still does work on us from beyond the grave. Too few of us know where anti-Americanism comes from, and from how far away chronologically.