More on The Truth According To The Pollittburo

“Like a lot of lawyers in the party, my father combined uncritical devotion to the imaginary Soviet Union in his head with a passion for rights and the Constitution straight out of the ACLU charter. If you want to be cynical about it, you could say their commitment to civil liberties was just a self-serving tactic, but I think it was more that their minds ran on parallel tracks and they believed what they believed while they were believing it. They were like Christians who put their faith in both miracles and surgery.” 
― Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories

I have a feeling that what Pollitt doesn't know about the history of the doctors who developed the art and science of surgery would pretty much comprise a history of surgery.   I think she probably knows about as much concerning Christians.    As someone who recently has had to point out to folks of her ideological camp that a good part of the history of hospitals in The United States and other places where they've been has been the fact that in the period when it was not profitable to do so, it was Christian Churches that set up large numbers of hospitals, primarily for treating poor people who couldn't afford treatment and, yes, Katha, SURGERY. And not only Christians but our older siblings, Jews.   I would guess, though I don't know, that lots of hospitals are set up as charities by Muslims where they flourish.  You know, those monotheistic religions you love to hate on.

On the other hand, I requested a list of hospitals set up under the moral umbrella of atheism or materialism.  I have yet to get one from anyone I've made that request to.

I'm not surprised when I find communists, especially members of Communist parties in The United States, Britain or any other quasi-democratic country talking bilge and practicing it.  There's no requirement in atheism to not lie and deceive and to practice a single instead of a double standard they rig in their favor.  That has pretty much been the history of both communism and ideological atheism, which I have studied and can come up with examples, as I have been recently.   While her father was a Stalinist ACLU guy (as, indeed the godless father of organized atheism in the USA, Corliss Lamont was, look it up) as his guys were championing the right of the most brutal and misogynistic porn to be freely distributed, it was illegal to own a typewriter or to have too much paper in their atheist paradise.   If you got convicted of distributing porn here you might get a jail sentence and a fine here, in their atheist paradise, if you wrote in favor of freedom to speak your mind and tell the truth there you could easily get sent to the gulags or shot.

Of course, their own sweet asses were never on the line for the rights of people under Stalin and Khrushchev.   They were living the good life as professionals in New York or some other place in that hellishly "Christian-inflected" culture. Speaking of which, as little Katha was growing up in the "Christian-inflected" hell-hole here, her father's hero was mounting his last pogrom against Jewish doctors.  Who were being shot.  As I recall reading, his doctor, who was probably not Jewish at that point, wasn't able to be brought to his deathbed because he was under torture for having said he was unwell.

I am done lying for you guys, I've read you and I've looked into your phony factoids.  You have no integrity and you've lied about just about everything, even as you're responsible for dragging down the real left.  As far as I've concluded you never did much of anything else except make the world safe for pornographers and pimps.

I reject it all because I am an absolute equality, distribute the wealth, single-payer healthcare, women own their bodies, no means no, education up to the highest level of your abilities is a right and a social good,  rational infrastructure in good working order, public library for all supporting leftist.  I'm all of those BECAUSE I BELIEVE JESUS TOLD THE TRUTH, not because I think people are just some evolved molecules controlled by physics and that's all.

Oh, and where I found that quote, I also found this, in regard to last night's post.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for monogamy,” G. had said to me early on. “Maybe I should just live in a room by myself and have girlfriends.” Another woman might have said, “Now, where did I put my coat?” Being a madly infatuated rationalist who had read her Simone de Beauvoir, I took a deep breath and carefully and calmly explained that of course he had to make up his own mind about how he wanted to live, and that I understood fidelity wasn’t for everyone, that some people could be perfectly happy without it, but I wanted to give my whole self in love and I couldn’t do that if I was being compared to other women on a daily basis (which I was) or if our relationship was only tentative and provisional (which it was). “Sweetie!” he said when I finished. “I love it that you can say how you feel without getting angry at me.” That other woman would have slammed the door behind her before he’d finished speaking. They say philanderers are attractive to women because of the thrill of the chase—you want to be the one to capture and tame that wild quarry. But what if a deeper truth is that women fall for such men because they want to be those men? Autonomous, in charge, making their own rules. Imagine that room G. spoke of, in which the women would come and go—is there not something attractive about it? Rain tapping softly on the tin ceiling, a desk, a lamp, a bed. A woman dashes up the narrow stairs, her raincoat flaring, her wet face lifted up like a flower. And then, the next day—maybe even the same day—different footsteps, another expectant face. I had to admit, it was an exciting scenario. You wouldn’t want to be one of the women trooping up and down the staircase, but you might want to be the man who lived in the room.”
― Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories

Just out of curiosity, Katha, what did you think of the rationality of "Must We Burn de Sade?"   You know, the atheist "feminist" champion of BDSM porn and door mat of Sartre's glorious call for the liberty of those who want to advocate the abduction, sadistic torture, rape, maiming and, as I recall, murder of women.   You know, the guy who wrote Les 120 journées de Sodome or l'école du libertinage, which was rescued and championed by Iwan Bloch,  the guy who wrote so much about how religion is pathological even as he campioned all kinds of kinky sex that wasn't exactly an expression of equality and dignity.  You're probably parroting his echoing factoids on religion regularly without even knowing their origin.  I wrote about that once, and, yes, I said the world would probably be a bit better if Les 120 journées de Sodome had not survived the storming of the Bastille. Simone de Beauvoir figures into it, too.  I wasn't very impressed with their rationality.

Do you ever listen to yourself?   I mean, talk about your doormats of men.