Excluding Middles

[4est_4est_Gump]

Aristotle’s third law of thought, the law of the excluded middle, has enjoyed a long and to some degree controversial history. Briefly, it posits that a statement must be either true or false, excluding any middle ground, which on the face of it makes perfectly good sense. Extrapolating from the domain of logic to the social world, however, the excluded middle takes on a different and indeed opposite connotation, for its absence spells not propositional rigor but cultural disaster.

...

Evasion became the order of the day, so much so that, as historian Robert Adams wrote in Decadent Societies, “by the fifth century, men were ready to abandon civilization itself in order to escape the fearful load of taxes....”

In these ways, the middle class is squeezed out of the political equation, with predictable results for the rest of the social order: economic hardship, lack of employment, declining birth rates, cultural anomie, and the importation of migratory peoples regarded, in the words of Greek-Egyptian poet Constantine Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” as “a kind of solution....”

[Trump, the Barbarian at the gate.]

But as things now stand in a progressively dumbed down culture festering on entitlements, crippled by political correctness, and preoccupied with identity politics, institutional resentments, the canards of “diversity” and affirmative action, and the spurious campaign for “social justice,” the educational establishment has devolved into a recursive image of the greater culture by a kind of Droste effect while at the same time contributing to the cultural distortions it reflects....

... Competition will become fierce for even superfluous jobs and appointments. Part time and menial labor will be their only resource, failing which the social justice warriors will become welfare recipients—like their betters extruded from the middle class—until society can no longer afford to subsidize them. We will have entered, to quote Russian poet Sergey Stratanovsky (and he should know), “into the communal muddle,” which he piquantly calls “the Leningrad stairwell....”

One thing remains painfully clear—or should. When middles are excluded, whether in the halls of academia or the arena of productivity, a miniscule tier at the top may yet find means to benefit or survive while the bottom will form a spreading magma of misery and destitution. The buffer of in-betweeness will have been eliminated. And a once-vigorous culture will subside into a condition of economic and intellectual inertia.

David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/blog/excluded-middles/?singlepage=true

 

[Disgustipated]

Good morning, AJ. What is your take on the lengthy C&P and link to a RWCJ site that you have just posted? I'm sure you would like to tell the class your well-reasoned, well thought-out position on this dire matter.

​

 

[RobDownSouth]

Good morning, AJ. What is your take on the lengthy C&P and link to a RWCJ site that you have just posted? I'm sure you would like to tell the class your well-reasoned, well thought-out position on this dire matter.

​

I, too, would like to hear AJ thoughts on this matter, one of the critical issues of our age.

 

[Darbhinder]

Prairie nigger copy and paste...nice.

 

[RobDownSouth]

As predictable as the tides, Queerbait unleashes an alt to rile up his "off board bro" AJ. Next up, Que explains that Darbhinder is actually RobDownSouth! Because REASONS!

#HeTriesSooooHard
#RepressedQueerbait

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

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[4est_4est_Gump]

“Envy is now widely confused with covetousness. But to covet another’s good is to want to possess it yourself; to envy it is to seek the darker satisfaction of destroying his happiness in it.”
Joseph Sobran

In other words: Kill Igor's Goat.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

“Despite protests to the contrary, deep in their soiled hearts, American leftists hate a winner and desperately want to see him toppled. … You sometimes get a glimpse of their green-skinned malice in their political rhetoric and actions.”
Thomas Landess



And boy don't we on a daily basis...

 

[Adre]

Aren't we lucky to have right wingers balance things out with their blessed perfection. Praise the lord.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Ridiculing Christians...



Way to keep it classy! This Libertarian would never do that.

 

[Comshaw]

Ridiculing Christians...



Way to keep it classy! This Libertarian would never do that.

So as a Libertarian I take it you're voting for Gary Johnson? Care to expound on the party platform and his political stance?

Comshaw

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yes I am.



What is interesting about what has occurred in this thread is that the Left is always screaming about the shrinking middle, but what they object to is exploring any cause other than the one they advocate...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Ridiculing Christians...

Way to keep it classy! This Libertarian would never do that.

Atheist AJ stands tall for teh Christian Faith*.
*But only when he sees it as an opportunity to use Christians as a wedge issue to denigrate libruls, Muslims, and/or Negro Presidents...

Yes I am.



What is interesting about what has occurred in this thread is that the Left is always screaming about the shrinking middle, but what they object to is exploring any cause other than the one they advocate...

Actually the only one "always" screaming is you. Both sides recognize the shrinking middle, having said that most libruls reject your one-size-fits-all bumper sticker solution that the middle can somehow grow with a combination of tax cuts for the rich and stern lectures to the poor.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This is all the Left can do by way of logic, reason and tolerance...





Turn everything into a Trump protest replete with Mexican flags.