Egalitarianism turns poverty into something like a chronic medical condition that requires a treatment or a cure. This denies the poor the self-respect that might otherwise be accorded to them were society allowed to recognize their true position in life relative to others. Further, by treating poverty like a disease, superior people lose their sense of obligation to provide personal leadership and guidance to the impoverished members of society.
Dampier is onto something I've been turning over in my mind. Progressivism is a form of moral cowardice cloaked in moral superiority. The progressive does nothing to help suffering individuals, yet he considers himself a good--better--person because he votes for his government to perform charity in his name. Holiness with no heavy lifting.
The progressive refuses to give a hungry man a place at his table then turns around and rages at the injustice of a society that allows a man to starve.
What he really rages at is a society that allows a starving man to exist. However we get to an absence of starving people, whether by breaking the lock on the supermarket's doors, or packing them away in workhouses, or putting them out of their misery--any of that can be rationalized, as long as he doesn't have to look into a pleading face. Even the progressive understands that he might find himself saying, "No." How can he live with that?
There is another element in the egalitarian's perspective on poverty--vanity. If all are equal and if the progressive has emptied everyone else's pockets to promote equal opportunity, then his exalted position can only be explained by his wonderful self. He could have done it, too. It's just that I'm more...And that's especially delicious when it comes with no responsibility towards others.
The poor will always be with us, so it’s our duty to provide them with dignified, stable, respectable roles of service within civilization.
Quite right. If we accept that there is inequality among people, then we are given the question, What are we to do about it? It's a question that can only be approached morally because any other way gets very ugly, very fast.
This is as much as what Tumblrites call a "signal boost" as it is a commentary. I'm really enjoying Henry Dampier's Quick Reactions blog. He's approaching neoreactionary thought in a similar manner as myself, with an eye towards the moral and the non-rational.
If magic is a way of perceiving the world, then it may be more ‘real’ than the enlightenment-rationalist method of pretending as if the many things that we don’t understand accord to natural laws that we only pretend to be familiar with.
I didn't realize it at the time but Chesterton's Orthodoxy had a profound effect on me. On the first reading, I recognized the feeling of searching the world for a philosophy that made sense to me and then arriving upon the Christianity I was raised with. The rest made sense only on the surface.
The second reading jimmied some cracks in my mind. Chesterton presents the point that faith allows us to see the world as being as magical as it is. It took some time for it to sink in.
I was already down that path. I realized that the best way to approach the world is to picture oneself smaller and smaller within it--that is, that the world was getting increasingly bigger around me.
It started as a response to the artistic-types with whom I had surrounded myself. Most of them came from comfortable backgrounds and the rest had recklessly charged into the world, unconcerned with consequences--they had experiences that I envied. But as I heard them talk, I realized that their experiences were badges that they wore, not events that shaped and changed them.
I can explain it this way: I imagine myself and the individuals I envied sitting in a Roman piazza, sipping espresso. My eyes would be wide, trying to take everything in, trying to imagine it hundreds of years before, trying to incorporate all the historical figures who'd been there, trying to understand the architecture, the people, the atmosphere and my reaction to it. I'd be a tiny child on an enormous playground. The people I met--who had been able to make these kinds of trips--sat there thinking, basically, "Hey, check me out. It's me, in Rome."
(Lest you think that I'm just guessing at my reaction, I was lucky enough to travel to India for a couple of months at the end of the last century. This is an accurate description of how I felt, with the addition that everything was a mystery to me, having no grounding in Indian history.)
But the entire world is this way, even the path from your door to your car. I wrote a bit in this direction in my piece about polyamory. Traditional marriage is one of those magical phenomena in the world. Even the concept--it's a human discovery rather than a human invention. It seems to exist in our collective psyches without anyone making it up; after all, nearly every culture has some variation on the union.
Our world is filled with these. The novel, for example--was it invented? Or is it an outgrowth of our natures, a knotting of language, imagination, our need for narrative and our ability to manage complexity? Wasn't it inevitable, not the creation of one individual but a diamond that only needed to be unearthed?
When one looks at the world with an understanding that it is more strange and wonderful and complicated than you can know, that it all exists outside of you, when one understands that there are dynamics at play of which one only sees shadows--well, it's a lot happier place to be.
That's why the post-Enlightenment, pseudo-rationalist progressive worldview is repugnant. It's not a matter of maintaining ignorance, like one burning astronomy books because one wants to believe that stars are the candles of angels, but a matter of knowing that our struggle to understand is like emptying the ocean with a teacup. The progressive tells us that the ocean is only an inch deep and a mammoth teacup will be here any day.
Take, again, Diana Adams' relationship philosophy. Her perspective was that humans have some finite number of needs/desires that need to be checked off to become happy or satisfied. Her particular set of needs could not be satisfied in a relationship with one partner, so she expanded.
Adams and her Yale-educated brain were bigger than the human phenomenon of relationships--she could map and diagram all the gears and controls and engineer a relationship(s) that fulfilled her needs.
That's not what relationships are and that's not how the world works. So much is unknowable--and if we do learn something, you can bet that there's another mystery right behind it.
Western Civilization has struggled with male-female relationships its entire existence--Adams and her comrades believe that the problem is that there weren't clear rules. Not only that, they believe that clear rules are possible and that they will cover every eventuality. I say that's madness.
Tradition, not speculative logic, is the method of handling the mysteries of the world. We can map the path through the forest, but only once we've gotten through it.
Nothing happens in the wrestling world without controversy. Wrestling fans are some of the most obnoxious know-it-alls in the world of geeks but their abrasiveness is tempered by their loyalty. They complain because they care. Mostly, I think they're like heroin junkies chasing their first high; smarks are always looking to recreate the thrill they got when they first saw the storyline that got them hooked.
The WWE Network is the newest controversy, finally shutting up the fans that were disappointed that mediocre-but-well-known wrestler Batista returned and took the main event at Wrestlemania.
The network is, I think, an exciting development, not just in the world of wrestling but for television in general. The WWE is attempting a large-scale internet outlet, offering archived material, new programming and, most importantly, their pay-per-views, for ten dollars a month. The network will offer a 24-a-day broadcast-style channel and an on-demand library.
In typical smark fashion, the complaints run from appallingly stupid to actually pretty smart. Some are concerned with the little alterations that come from problems with music licensing or swear-bleeping. Others are rightfully concerned about the WWE's tendency to change history--famous little mistakes being erased.
A more practical--and unavoidable--problem is that the network is unable to present new episodes of its cable shows until a month after they air. This is due to their deals with the USA and Spike networks and it puts a real crimp in the network's effectiveness in engaging viewers with what's going on right now.
My personal concern--above my general antipathy towards the WWE--is that the archived material isn't as extensive as it could be. Back when the promotion was taking over the world, Vince McMahon showed a lot of prescience. Instead of letting rival promotions collapse into obscurity, he bought them, which meant he owned their video material. The WWE basically owns the history of wrestling.
So far, they've done a good job repackaging that material. The WWE documentary series is generally excellent, if you get over the aforementioned alteration of history (but that's what smarks are for, anyway). But it appears that the documentaries and the original, raw programs (the weekly shows that other promotions ran) aren't on the network in the large numbers that they could be. I'm more interested in watching old stuff.
This article in Vice brings up another question that's been nagging at me: What does the network mean for the storyline structure?
Back when wrestling was a spectator entertainment rather than a televised entertainment, the idea was that the promotion did small shows all around the circuit, building up storylines. The storyline would set up a big show in a major city, where scores would be settled and heels would get their comeuppance. The smaller shows were promotions for big arena shows.
Early wrestling television followed the same policy. In between matches, the wrestlers would get on the microphone and tell the audience about the next big event.
Vince McMahon had a bigger idea. He took that model and married with a now-forgotten technology--closed-circuit programming. I don't know the mechanics, but major boxing events and one-time specials like Evel Knievel's Snake Canyon jump, were piped into theaters and other places that charged admission to watch the live broadcast. Using that format, McMahon created Wrestlemania.
Wrestlemania is the one wrestling event that nearly everyone has heard of. It's the wrestling Super Bowl; in truth, it's just the biggest big-show of the wrestling business model. The period after the real Super Bowl is Wrestlemania season and, for three months, the promotion builds up the excitement, driving fans into a frenzy wondering what is going to happen there.
The first two Wrestlemanias were offered via closed-circuit and were successful enough that they didn't break the company as they could have (it was a huge gamble for McMahon) but Wrestlemania III was the watershed.
III was the first offered via pay-per-view through cable systems and thus was the first blow-off event (bringing feuds to a climax) available in fans' homes. It was an enormous moneymaker and the WWE found its business model.
Again, this was taking the old format, small shows promoting one big show, and adjusting it to fit a national audience.
The WWE eventually built up its pay-per-view schedule so that there are twelve a year, roughly one a month, and has that format down to a science. The stakes of the pay-per-views from January to April all revolve around Wrestlemania matches--who will face off in the main event? Who will get to challenge for the various titles? The weekly cable shows all build up to the monthly pay-per-views.
Here's where the WWE Network comes in. The regular pay-per-views cost cable subscribers around $40-50; Wrestlemania is $60 or more. The new network offers those specials included in its $10-a-month subscription.
Some of the smarks are hollering their mantra, "They're leaving money on the table!" They're assuming that all the people that bought the PPVs on cable are going to switch to the network and then the promotion will lose all that money. This is pretty shallow thinking.
For one, do they think that a company with a 2.7 billion market cap is just going to change its strategy on whim, without thinking? The WWE is taking a gamble, sure, but they've probably thought long and hard about it.
I think they're probably trying to atomize their market. Because of the cost of PPV, most fans don't buy them to watch by themselves. At $10 a month, they can. By lowering the cost, they're opening the market to individual buyers who can watch on their phones, computers or televisions.
They've also taken a lesson from other online media. While some people will always pirate their entertainment, most consumers who pirate do so when there is no other online outlet. iTunes and Netflix showed this to be the case. And WWE PPVs are heavily pirated--the network is a way to harness those viewers.
(In addition, the WWE's business is not reliant on PPV revenues. It has so many other streams that this one can stand some destablilizing.)
But what the Vice article brings up and what has been on my mind is this: Won't this have an impact on wrestling's fundamental model? The structure for 60+ years has been storylines promoting the big blow-off show.
Theoretically, no. There will still be cable shows promoting the PPVs. But the company's motivation to make every PPV successful is drained--network subscribers are paying whether the storylines are hot or not.
This can be a good or bad thing. For one, taking the pressure off can remove the edge of hysteria that tinges the lesser PPVs. It could also correct one of the biggest faults of the medium's format, rushing storylines. Not being driven to make the end of the month count in a big way every time could allow more complex and dynamic stories to emerge.
If the positives are going to happen, it will probably be after an extended period of limpness. The WWE has had a writing problem for a long time. The staff is too small, for one, and divided between work-for-hire television writers, who don't usually have a wrestling background, and long-time wrestling insiders. The writing is centrally controlled by Vince (though less so these days) and his daughter Stephanie and her husband, wrestler Triple H. (I think they'd be better off following the Law & Order model, by which the different brands are managed by individual executive producers who have the next best thing to final authority.)
I imagine that, if the network takes off, we'll see the urgency of the stories decline for some time before someone with pull on the inside catches on to the possibilities of a post-blow-off era.
When I first moved back to my home town, I took a comfortable little apartment downtown. It satisfied what I loved about city living--I could walk to work, the grocery store and the bank--and added a little extra: I finally had a balcony.
A balcony, more or less. In actuality, it was the roof where the first floor extended beyond the second. It allowed me to tickle the child inside by entering and exiting by way of my bedroom window and gave me a private place to smoke.
It had a perfect view into the courtyard of my town's most downscale bar. Charming, in its way. Always dark inside, it rented rooms to itinerants and was closed only when state law mandated it.
From my vantage point, above and unseen, I saw just what you'd expect to see. Drug deals, public sex, breakdowns and plenty of people sleeping it off.
One late morning I stepped outside for my breakfast smoke. The door to the courtyard flew open and a group of three came out. They were led by a middle-aged woman in a sweatshirt and what I know as sleep pants but are standard apparel here.
They were talking loudly but I couldn't make out what they were saying. The woman turned away from the door and dropped the back of her pants to just below her ass.
From her position and the way the two others gathered behind her, my first thought that she was getting some sort of shot. Diabetes or something. Out of instinct, I turned away, thinking that they had gone out back for privacy.
I heard a hissing, popping sound. I turned back, just in time to see a bottle rocket shoot out of the woman's ass crack.
They whooped it up and returned inside. Well, that's something, I thought.
A week or so later, I told the story to a young man that I knew, who found it plenty amusing. In time, the conversation turned to his upcoming entry to college. He was over twenty-one and this was his first go at higher education.
I gave him my standard advice. "Don't go until you know exactly what you want to accomplish there. You want to make sure that you get through as fast as you can and come out with a job."
I added my usual spiel about how college was overvalued. That got him to lay down the standard liberal line, "I think everyone should go to college."
"What about that woman who shot the bottle rocket out of her ass? What would she have gotten out of college?"
So, you can imagine my surprise when EducationRealist highlighted the first paragraph of Caitlin Flanagan's fraternity smear in The Atlantic:
One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him—under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself—to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his a** and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole.
ER's students had the appropriate response:
“Why would she write about an idiot?” asked Dino, ever the challenger.
“How did someone so stupid get to college?” Bruce wanted to know.
Well, Bruce, that's what college is all about. At least, these days.
I don't have anything to add to her piece, but this caught my eye. A quote from her source article:
All of these things are part of being young, make mistakes now so when you’re too old for these mistakes to be acceptable, they’ll be out of your system. It may seem far off, but everything will fall into place someday. Being twenty-something is awesome, and you’re never getting these years back so stop planning your life and start living it.
Long before I started walking the Catholic and Dark Enlightenment paths, I knew this attitude was garbage.
One makes mistakes in one's twenties--that's a fact of life. Those mistakes are made because one enters adulthood with a head full of untested theories about the way the world works. We forgive these mistakes because they are understandable--young people think that they are making good decisions but they are incorrect. In those situations, we pick them up, dust them off and make sure they've learned their lesson.
But by no means are you supposed to make mistakes. You shouldn't make decisions that you know are wrong just because you know that they'll be forgiven.
I have a feeling that when all these young feminists, social justice warriors and evangelical atheists realize that they aren't living in a world made of Nerf, we're going to see a real backlash and, I hope, a return to wisdom.
Another come-and-go story from last week: FCC in Newsrooms. (Link is for reference to the story, not a special perspective)
The gist of the controversy was that the FCC was going to send investigators into newsrooms in order to make sure that media outlets are serving the public's "critical information needs."
The press, as one would expect, howled at the idea and the program was dropped like it was on fire.
In our polarized climate and with an administration that believes its most important work is in "messaging," I find the idea disgusting. For one, it's not like the MSM aren't craven boot-lickers when it comes to the progressive agenda--what more could they ask for? For another, the leftist take-over of institutions is always so sideways and sneaky--officious, urgent and disingenuous--that I have the same response that one has towards cowardice. At least come out and seize what you want and put your cards on the table.
But the FCC, at least when it comes to broadcasters, is well within its rights. The understanding is that the FCC retains the rights to broadcast frequencies and licenses them as long as the programmers are fulfilling the public's need for information.
But, as was mentioned here, those kinds of regulations were built upon WASP culture. The men running America considered themselves disinterested, able to separate their own views from the rule of law and the Bill-of-Rights principles that guided the nation. To do otherwise would be unseemly.
That's not to say that media manipulation didn't happen. But today's attitude is not that it's dishonorable to manipulate the public's understanding--it's necessary. Take a look at what the FCC considered "critical information:"
The study identified eight "critical needs": information about emergencies and risks; health and welfare; education; transportation; economic opportunities; the environment; civic information; and political information.
It's not difficult to see those topics quickly becoming vehicles for political intimidation. In fact, it's difficult to imagine that they wouldn't. For example, might the FCC standards that journalists must meet on the environment look something like the Obama administration's environmental agenda? Might standards on economic opportunity resemble the president's inequality agenda? The same could hold true for the categories of health and welfare and "civic information" -- and pretty much everything else.
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"The purpose of these interviews is to ascertain the process by which stories are selected," the Social Solutions report said, adding that news organizations would be evaluated for "station priorities (for content, production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CINs, and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."
There's always an "on the other hand"--here's mine: Opposition to these kinds of incursions into an already corrupt and subservient industry only serves to make their later attempts more slippery. The FCC can't dictate when walking in the front door, so they'll try the back. It might be better to work some jujutsu and let them roll right over the news media.
Their bread and butter is manipulating our perception of reality and, given their druthers, they'd concoct a fantasy-land so unfamiliar that it would have the effect of a hundred million televisions being unplugged at once.
Twenty-five years ago, the WWE did the unthinkable: They admitted that wrestling was fake. Well, they didn't use that word--the proper term is pre-determined.
One could make the argument that the characters of the 80s had finally broken credulity, with Elvis impersonators and Ugandan giants and warriors in made-up face paint. How much longer could they pretend that these were real people who were out in the world when not settling scores in the squared circle?
But the real reason was more practical: The WWE was tired of paying athletic commission fees. The status quo involved a lot of cutting red tape and cutting checks, all to maintain an illusion that no one over thirteen believed.
It's called the end of the kayfabe era. Kayfabe is carny-talk for "fake." Before the WWE made its announcement, fans were led to believe that the wrestlers were their characters and their feuds were real. When a performer was injured in a storyline, he wore a cast in his daily life, too.
The consolidation of the news media made it harder and harder to maintain the facade. In the 70s, a plane carrying future superstar Ric Flair crashed, carrying a mix of heels (bad guys) and babyfaces (good guys). In the interest of keeping kayfabe, the heels were listed under their real names rather than their wrestling handles. Closer to the reveal, the Iron Sheik and Jim Duggan, who were engaged in a feud at the time, were arrested together on marijuana charges--this peek behind the curtain was better publicized.
It was only a matter of time before kayfabe was shattered on its own, so the WWE decided to get ahead of the curve, leaving rival promotions gasping in horror and surprise. For a time, the rivals tried to pretend that, yeah, WWE wrestling was fake, but we're the real deal.
It didn't last because their gimmicks were just as ridiculous as the WWE's. More interesting is how they tried to handle the expanded palette they were given, like this pathetic mini-movie setting up a feud:
But it was only a matter of time before the dynamics came together. The following are three stories from the worked-shoot era, in which real events (shoots) are turned into in-ring gimmicks (works).
Brian Pillman
As always, the story behind Pillman's double-cross/brilliant maneuver is full of speculation and rumor. But the general story is this: Pillman, knowing his injuries were coming faster and more debilitating, knew that his days in wrestling were coming to an end, before he'd gotten a big payday. He concocted a scheme developed somewhat in conjunction with booker (head writer, of a sort) Kevin Sullivan at WCW.
Pillman started behaving erratically, both on-screen and in the locker room. He developed a reputation as a "loose cannon," making both fans and his own co-workers unsure of his motivations. In the most famous incident, he and Sullivan were engaged in a storyline feud that was to be settled in a strap match. The two wrestlers were to be attached to the same strap, so that they were always close, and battle until one gave up by professing "I respect you."
Before the match could even begin, Pillman flew into the ring and began beating Sullivan. When others intervened and Pillman could finally take hold of the strap, he grabbed the microphone and said, "I respect you, bookerman," and walked out of the building.
Everyone was confused. Had Pillman just bombed the storyline and ruined the match? The fans--more importantly, the other wrestlers--didn't know what was going on. Had Pillman gone off the deep end?
Sullivan was excited by the prospect of fooling even wrestling insiders, as we'll see, so he encouraged Pillman's act. But Pillman had a plan. He convinced WCW that, if they wanted the work to look real, they should release him from his contract, citing his erratic behavior.
They agreed and Pillman promptly took his high profile to WWE, where he signed a fat contract and entered wrestling history.
Kevin Sullivan's Love Triangle
This one would have been funny if it didn't eventually end in tragedy.
Kevin Sullivan, it's said, was amazed at the success Brian Pillman had pulling a work over the locker room. He wanted to do it himself, so he booked an angle in which young wrestler Chris Benoit was having an affair with Sullivan's wife Nancy, known as Woman.
Sullivan wanted the locker room to believe in the affair so much that he began scheduling Nancy and Benoit to travel and room together on the road. After a while, the inevitable happened: the staged affair became real. Nancy and Sullivan split up and the locker room joked that Sullivan had "booked his own divorce."
As you might have figured out, though, it was Nancy who Benoit murdered, along with their son, nearly a decade ago.
Mr. McMahon
The "Montreal Screwjob" is a subject for another day (and covered in the film Wrestling With Shadows) but here it is in a nutshell: Long-time top WWE wrestler Bret "The Hitman" Hart was leaving for WCW. However, he was holding the championship belt as his contract expired. Vince McMahon wanted Hart to drop the belt at a pay-per-view event in Montreal. The problem was, Hart was a Canadian hero--he refused to lose the match in his home country. He offered to give up the championship the next night on television but that didn't fit in with McMahon's plans.
What happened next is wrestling's version of the Kennedy assassination but the facts are that Hart and contender Shawn Michaels went through their routine. At one point Michaels had Hart in a submission hold. McMahon ran out to the ring and demanded that the bell ending the match be rung, effectively saying that Hart had submitted and lost the match. There's no denying that all the players, referee Earl Hebner included, looked confused and upset. It appeared that Hart had the belt stolen from him.
There was an uproar among the wrestlers and the fans so the next night, McMahon appeared on the Monday night show to address their concerns. Hart had gotten so upset backstage that he punched McMahon and a black eye was visible as the promoter announced that he hadn't double-crossed Bret, "Bret screwed Bret."
McMahon's previous appearances on-screen were as an announcer, not the owner. Having earned the animosity of the fans, McMahon now had heel heat--fans were willing to pay good money to see his face rubbed in the dirt.
McMahon was now a character, Mr. McMahon, an evil billionaire who loved to toy with his wrestlers, torturing them, making them kiss his ass (literally) and yelling, "You're fi-ired!" He became a big enough heel to launch one of wrestling's greatest stars, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. It was the beginning of the WWE's most successful epoch, the "Attitude Era."
