Control, manipulation, and the illusion of democracy

In National Review, Kyle Smith writes here about Google, Facebook, and "The Creepy Line."

Control

At PJ Media Andrew Klavan reminds us we are what we do.

A quick way to come to wisdom about yourself is to understand this: you are what you do. You're not your good intentions. You're not your noble feelings. Your deeds are what make you who you are. A man who beats his wife then cries in remorse is a wife-beater. That's all he is. When he stops punching her — stops for good — then he has a chance to become something else. Then he can cry all he wants. Until then, his tears mean jack-diddly crap. He's a wife beater. That's all.

Our friends on the left should learn this truth. The "labor activists" who surrounded Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and her boyfriend in a movie theater, spit on her, taunted him, chased them away; the restaurant workers who refused service to White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and then followed her family to another location to harass them; the protesters who surrounded Mitch McConnell outside a Kentucky restaurant, telling the 76-year-old Senate majority leader, "We know where you live..." -- these people are punks; thugs. Their high purposes, their righteous philosophies, their political certainties — all these are worth exactly as much as a wife-beater's tears: nothing. They are the bulliers of women and the menacers of old men.

Same goes for Anti-Fa, the gangsters who don masks to assault those who disagree with them. They can call themselves anti-fascists all they want. Doesn't mean a damn thing. They are what they do: criminals, oppressors, fascists themselves.

Yes, yes. There are bad guys on the right; there are bad guys everywhere. But Barack Obama was the most corrupt and incompetent president of my lifetime. I despised him because of his disdain for American freedoms and the systems that preserve them. But in eight years of his Chicago-style machine administration, assaults on his staff and supporters never became a commonplace, whereas such thuggishness — and increasingly mainstream calls to violence and cruelty — is beginning to become the Democrat Party brand, its norm.

What turns people into wicked punks while they no doubt continue to believe themselves to be decent and good? Bad ideas, that's what, ideas that give people license to answer words and policies with terror. What's the bad idea on the left? Control. The notion that the left's cause is so righteous it needs to pay no mind to liberty but simply deserves to win by any means necessary. Let five judges on the Supreme Court make law and damn the "outdated" Constitution. Give unelected bureaucracies like the EPA the power to regulate people's lives without appeal or oversight. Give ignoble gnomes like Peter Strzok the wherewithal to criminalize the political opposition. And of course, bring on the socialism: a philosophy that declares a person's work, his time, his life, his property belong not to him but to the state. Control.

The belief that you are so superior to others that you should be allowed to control them — it's that that inevitably moves people to violence and cruelty. In movies about American slavery, filmmakers always try to impress you with the brutality of the institution by showing rapes and whippings. But that gives a mistaken impression. Slavery isn't wrong because masters rape and whip their slaves. Masters rape and whip their slaves because slavery is wrong; because when you think yourself so superior to others that you no longer need their consent to govern them, you have created in your own mind the right to harass and hurt and bully them. You have turned yourself into a monster.

Or into a leftist.

We’re never in control, not of anything but the monologue in our head and the actions we choose to take.

Seth Godin writes today about the illusion of control.

It’s modern and very widespread. It motivates us, frightens us and drives our consumer mania: The idea that we are in control. That our work is so leveraged and important that through force of will, we can ensure that things will turn out as we choose.

We extend this to our sports and hobbies and adventures, as well. The compelling belief that we’re almost in control, that we’re right at the edge, that this ski run or this play or this experience will be the one we earned through our extensive planning and investment and skill.

Financial advisors and travel businesses and everyone in between peddles us the story that if we just team up with them, we’ll get exactly what we expect, that it will all be as we dreamed it to be.

You can see where the disappointment lies. We’re never in control, not of anything but the monologue in our head and the actions we choose to take. Everything else, if we’re lucky, is a matter of influence. If we do our work and invest our energy, perhaps we can influence events, perhaps we can contribute to things turning out in a way we’re pleased with.

That’s a tough sell if you’re in the service business. “Pay us extra and we’ll work to influence events…” And yet, back against the wall, the powerless customer service person shrugs her shoulders and says, “it’s out of our control.”

And the boss has to say to her board, “we missed the numbers, but we did our best to influence them.” (Interesting to note that oil company executives get huge bonuses in years their companies do well because of high prices, but when oil prices go down, it's obviously not their fault).

And the team says to its fans, “next year.”

When the illusion of control collides with the reality of influence, it highlights the fable the entire illusion is based on.

You’re responsible for what you do, but you don’t have authority and control over the outcome. We can hide from that, or we can embrace it.

Statism

Thanks to Christopher Buckley

Choice versus Control

Andy Peth is quite persuasive:

Remember, it’s not enough to undo something; we have to convince the country the thing should be undone. So frame each step, carefully exposing Obama’s love of Control while touting our love of Choice. Give the nation time to absorb our message.

Why help the Democrats? Why rush? Revel in the buffet! Go piece by delectable piece, slowly removing each thing people hate. Every couple weeks, force Democrats into another suicidal vote, as Obama vetoes his way to a villainous legacy. Each time, unveil something controlling about Obamacare, and something of ours that expands choice.

Does this mean I’m nice? On the contrary, I’m mean. I’m the meanest Conservative around, for I want Democrats to feel every ounce of the pain they’ve inflicted on America. No short cuts. No racing ahead of the American People. Oh no, I want 2015 to be one long, grueling Enhanced Interrogation of the Left. Let’s put them under the bright light of Choice versus Control, then watch them perspire. After all they’ve done these past six years, they deserve no less.

Read more here.

Thanks to Kris Cook