Yesterday, in near shock that a good and once wise friend posted on Facebook the head-exploding meme by a simple-minded activist named Jenny Carter, above, I challenged Ethics Alarms readers to perform the thorough defenestration of that smug brain-garbage it deserves. I had neither the time nor energy. Responding to my metaphorical Bat Signal, erudite veteran commenter Ryan Harkins came through like a champ, authoring the masterpiece below, a Comment of the Day if there ever was one. Here is his rebuttal, really a guest post in length and quality, in response to the post, “Ethics Jump Ball”:
Dear Jenny,
You can make strawmen of our principles all you want, and argue all day against them, but all that will gain you is a smug feeling and “likes” from your friends, and make absolutely no inroads with the MAGA crowd whatsoever. But I know that your entire intent is to make me waste my time answering you. So, perhaps foolishly, I will oblige.
To begin, a little groundwork. A dilemma is only a dilemma if you really only have the two options. If there is any other alternative, such argumentation falls apart. Second, if you are going to address our principles, maybe you should determine what those principles actually are. For example, being pro-Second Amendment is not about shooting people. It is about the right to bear arms against, especially, an overbearing, tyrannical government. Being pro-life does not mean that you believe that no one should die, ever. Third, in any given situation, there may be more than one principle in play, and to ignore that to score rhetorical points is arguing in bad faith.
So let’s get into it.
Ethics Alarms 
Outstanding essay!!!
The post is brilliant, but I am afraid as meaningful as having a theological conversation about the Eucharist with those who think like the late Ayatollah Khamenei. The minds of the hard left only allow for one truth, namely theirs. The minds of those people cannot be changed by > 30.000 people being executed on the streets of Tehran. Sadly the only thing that changes a hard-left mind is when it is reorganized by a bullet, e.g. Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The post is brilliant, but I am afraid as meaningful as having a theological conversation about the Eucharist with those who think like the late Ayatollah Khamenei.
That is an unfortunate comparison since, among those who are non-believers or agnostics, the notion of Christ becoming embodied in the otherwise neutral bread and literally being transformed into God-stuff is probably (for unbelievers) as ungrounded as sone of the metaphysical beliefs held by Khamenei …
😎
Maybe I did express myself unartfully, my point is that it is impossible to argue with people whose mind has been made up. Here is another example of somebody who proves that he is ethically braindead, Don Lemon:
Oh you were understood, don’t worry about that. I am not perhaps as adept as possible at understanding “where and how we deviated” from sound and guiding metaphysical principles, but what I can talk about is now my own relationship to life changed (is changing) when I understood how to take the ideas seriously.
I am absolutely not convinced that the present war efforts, and America Made Great through crushing and dominating an Enemy will help any of us, at the level of soul, recover metaphysical soundness.
Therefore, you see, we seem to be in an existential trap. Struggling (inappropriately?) to get out of it only makes the mire that much mire difficult to get out of.
“I am absolutely not convinced that the present war efforts, and America Made Great through crushing and dominating an Enemy will help any of us, at the level of soul, recover metaphysical soundness.“
How do you apply that to World War II? The utter defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan created significant moral clarity. Utter defeat of the Islamic regime in Iran will give a similar moral clarity, plus it will bring liberation to the Iranian people. Multiculturalism has created a lack of metaphysical soundness in the West, with protests in favor of Hamas and the Islamic terrorist regime in Iran.
How do you apply that to World War II? The utter defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan created significant moral clarity. Utter defeat of the Islamic regime in Iran will give a similar moral clarity, plus it will bring liberation to the Iranian people. Multiculturalism has created a lack of metaphysical soundness in the West, with protests in favor of Hamas and the Islamic terrorist regime in Iran.
First, I am simply a person viewing things from a distance, and through the ‘lenses’ so to speak of those I access through what I access via computer (YouTube, other such video channels, the NYTs, and some blogs that I subscribe to, and then local periodicals (which do not have much to offer). If I have done anything at all (since I first found this blog about 10 years ago) it is to have tried to understood ‘Traditionalism’ (both Catholic and esoteric, i.e. of India) and it is on these bases that I speak of *metaphysics*.
You may perhaps have read Richard Weaver (Ideas Have Consequences)? In that essay, and in numerous other places, he noticed the beginning of encroaching nihilism during the time of America’s conquest in that war. But to understand why he would have said that you would have to understand his position on the Old South (and the Southern Tradition) as the last non-material civilization in the Western world. Frankly stated, the nation of America began its decline as a result of that conquest (of Europe and when it constructed the postwar economic order). It (winning that world war) did not ‘save’ America from nihilism, it drove the nation of America, and the mind of its people, into nihilism. Perhaps to put it like this it will make sense: America lost its soul when it ‘gained the world’).
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?“
What is the use of even saying this? When on this blog there are people, sincere people, who genuinely wish for ‘things to get better’ (for the nation)? I accept and I understand that everywhere, as a result of a counter-movement to the (I think literal) insanity of the Marxian Left which is frankly without any vertical metaphysics and where everything is horizontal) that sincere people proposed the possibility of ‘turning the ship around’. Jack is certainly one of these. But my view — you can define it as pessimistic if you like — is that when a downward cycle is begin it is very difficult to get out of it, and then there is the whole idea of ‘bottoming out’.
With that said, we have to turn and examine this peculiar world-historical figure known as Donald Trump. I referred to CG Jung’s essay ‘Wotan’ because I believe that Donald Trump can best be understood when examined as a psychological, indeed perhaps an Archetypal manifestation. The problem is (I sense Ryan is aware of this) that he is a man filled up with contaminations and really bizarre psychic traits and defects. So, you do not get ‘purity’ or even clearness and sound direction from such a figure. You get chaos.
There is no doubt at least in my own mind that Iran is ruled by what I understand to be men of darkened character. I listened to the following talk and I found it coherent. And I can honestly say that I really hope things turn out as he (Trump) and his planning committee seem to believe they will. But there are a dozen voices who point out: This is beginning just like every one of the last adventures of over the last 30 years! And there is no guarantee that it will be different.
Christian Zionism, I must state this because I think it true, is a devilish mind disease that is literally counter-metaphysical. It is a disease and it is a sickness of the psyche. And if there is such a thing as ‘God’s will’ it goes against God’s will by its own nature, which is aggressive and self-serving. To the degree that America’s Christian Zionists ally with Israeli Zionists in these Middle East remodel projects, is the degree that things will go off the rails.
That is my ‘theory’ (which seems to me sound if also speculative and pessimistic) but I do not wish for things to go badly. But people I respect and who have much more background than I have (Jeffrey Sachs, Glen Greenwald, John Mearsheimer among quite a number of Israeli intellectuals) point out that there are far too many ways for this to go badly, and thus drive the nation America that much more into existential and nihilistic crisis, and into social sickness, impoverishment, loss of national treasure, social division, and heading toward bankruptcy which is the direction things have been going!) than rather that it will be some kind of manouevre that magically saves the day. It is like there is a fantasy of ‘making great’ based on old patterns. Indeed here on this blog they refer to movies that describe a fantasy picture of America becoming great.
This is not, as far as I can tell, the end of WWll and the beginning of an age of significant wealth and expansion. It is a very different time entirely.
Here is the talk:
Essay’s such as this are for the audience not the original poster. The calm reply stands as a contrast to the hysterical.
This “Jenny Carter” woman, if she’s not really a fat, middle aged, bald, liberal dude, may be a verbal provocateur of the least intellectual and most specious variety, but she knows how to curate her image! T-shirt arm rolled up (sprezzatura style) to expose her upper arm, which was inked to look like she’s been in a horrific accident, with arteries and veins all askew. (Do t-shirt sleeves ever stay rolled up after the photo is taken?) Then there’s the hair, feathered into a look of controlled resolution to frame her facial look of benevolent yet stern accusation. Overall projecting – “I touch up my photos to look sexy to enhance my otherwise vapid messages.” Fake. Want to read something worthwhile? Read the works of Jennie Carter, am American journalist writing in the mid 19thcentury. Given the great writers and thinkers of the world, why waste your time with this performative, lackluster fake?