“…No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls; know it tolls for thee.” –John Donne [English poet, 1572-1631.]
An image often suggested as a model portraying the selfhood of extreme conservatives is that of a billiard ball. Billiard balls are solid, spherical and roll with punches. Pool balls are similar, though differently colored and marked. Pool balls and billiard balls lack initiative and neither communicate nor have anything to communicate. Instead, they transmit forces from cue sticks to other balls and the resilient fenders of table rails, both of which, fenders and balls, transmit forces forward and back, in reaction. Each of these balls is particular, distinct from every other ball. Pool balls may differ slightly from billiard balls in weight and diameter. Otherwise, each kind’s discretely existing specimens cannot be said to have the least individuality. Each is more alike to others of its kind than peas in a pod. Still, balls of each game carry “class distinctions” of color, pattern and ordinal number.
Wthout rails, balls would continually fall to the floor. What are these rails but government taking part in enforcing the game’s rules? Play must happen on a level table, not all over the floor, under furniture and outdoors. Pool tables, of course, have pockets for balls to drop into. This allows for scoring when balls are shot home in the right order, but for losing a game if the cue ball is ‘scratched’, that is, mistakenly shot into a pocket after another ball, or by itself while other balls are still on the table. Right-wingers, reading this far, may feel nauseous or ticked-off at seeing themselves so unfairly reduced, compared to lifeless parts in a game. But, is it really completely unfair? The genuine poets I know (not mere versifiers) see validity in the comparison.
Conservatives see themselves as islands in the ocean, not alone but each connected with other islands only by sea-roads over which boats convey goods and transaction data or messages as in cartoon speech-balloons: “Don’t tell me how to think,” they say, “I get my talking points from the really big cue held by party leaders or their mega-rich motivators. Lacking thoughtful initiative except for making money in my practice or business, I only transmit emotional force, and hoo-boy, I’m mad!”
Real intiative requires intelligent intellect, not just animal smarts. We don’t acquire intellect without fundamental study of the mind and its good uses, a much deeper subject than salesmanship or the writing of effective ad copy. It helps to fully understand the difference between philosophy and sophistry; between valid truth-quest and rhetoric—the tricks of abusing other people’s minds by misframing premises and making cleverly fallacious arguments, especially those that appeal to the very base, as persuasive to an opinion or course of action they already desire but need support by example to maintain, even if it is not legitimate support. Lots of far-righties love to snooker other people. They think it’s smart. Keep out of the hole and let the other guy fall in by himself? There’s your real estate bubble and credit collapse! Suck it up.
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