Sunday, September 18, 2011

Life Lessons From Star Trek

Or How to Deal With Liberal Lies
by Hugh Farnham

In The Menagerie Captain Pike is drawn to the planet of Talos 4 by a fake emergency beacon. Little does he know the planet is inhabited by deceitful and psychic Talosians who could foist any imagination upon the starship crew they desire. And they do – all to get Pike trapped in a breeding relationship with Vina, an apparently hot female of an uncertain age.

After drawing him into their lair with the blond honey pot, they deceive him believing he is imprisoned by impenetrable walls and the Talosians have full control over him.

Only until he recognizes their mind-bending deceit does he break free of their lies and back to freedom.

While watching The Menagerie recently, I noticed the Talosians were buttheads, like some liberals I’ve dealt with in the past. Then I had the epiphany these aliens use the same lies as liberals – in this case, against Captain Pike.


Liberals Lies and How to See Through Them

During the episode, Pike constantly uses logic and deduction to slice through the imprisoning alien lies. He then calls them on it. He breaks them down with logic and a little violence. Here’s some of the lies liberals have tried to imprison us with:

- Higher taxation leads to an improved economy!
- Greater regulation of manufacturing leads to job growth
- If TSA doesn’t fondle your wife and grandmother then America is at risk
- Just give up some of your freedoms for security. No? You Tea Party Terrorist!
- Food stamps stimulate the economy – keep paying up, taxpayer!
- There’s no liberal bias in the main stream media, so keep slurping up our new lies
- Conservatives just want to throw people out in the street to starve – change your evil ways! (and keep supporting the welfare state)

Here are the usual tactics used by liberals:


1) Question The Motivations: When liberals are losing an argument, they love to shift the discussion not to the facts at hand, but to the motivation of the person on the other side.

2) Ridicule, The Anonymous Smear and his brother, the Ad Hominem Attack: When facts don’t support a character attack, make them up! Use ridicule and personal abuse. Saul Alinsky would approve.

3) The Teary-Eyed Victim: As Ann Coulter has written, “Talk Loudly and Carry a Small Victim.” Who couldn’t believe a victim – what? You want them to suffer more? You cold conservative. Racist.
4) Rewrite History and the Meaning of Words: When history won’t back you up, rewrite it. When challenged, use an appeal to authority to shut down the argument. It’s not freeloading, it’s an entitlement. It's not counterfeiting, it's Quantitative Easing.

5) The Ransom Note Method: Take a brief sound clip and use it completely out of context. Who has the time to research the context of clip?

6) My favorite to expose, The Straw Man: Take the conservative’s point of view to a ridiculous extreme and then paint them with it. Watch them struggle to escape as from an Iron Maiden.

7) Change the Subject: When in doubt, divert. Your job is to hold their feet the fire and don’t let the liberal squirm away.

8) It’s Bush’s Fault: While the Bush Presidency had some questionable actions, the current administration has had plenty of time to fix things - and haven’t.

9) The Fake Emergency: The ozone hole. Global warming. Energy crisis. Starving school kids in America. Mega bank bailout. Something has to be done, AND NOW! These “emergencies” are fraudulent at the core. Kind of like the Talosian’s fake emergency beacon that draws you in closer...

Don’t Fall for their Lies. Hold your Ground. Don’t Give In

As the Obama nanny state tries to extend its grip into every area of our lives, have a firm backbone not to give in. Boldly resist Statist lies when you come across them, and don’t participate in the welfare state. Educate your kids in a private school or home school them. Spread the word to your neighbors and friends. Create a critical mass that can’t be overcome by lies.

Arrange your life so you don’t have to rely on the "Federal Family". You can’t fight Big Brother while suckling at his teats, as Claire Wolfe once said.

- Hugh Farnham

Link to The Menagerie

27 comments:

Always On Watch said...

I am a fan of the original Star Trek and have seen this particular episode several times. It's one of my favorites.

In the end, illusory utopia brought Captain Pike and Vina happiness because Captain Pike, at a later date, is totally handicapped and living in some kind of machine wheelchair; he voluntarily decides to return to Talos 4. Reality will not bite in that particular and isolated utopia.

Arrange your life so you don’t have to rely on the "Federal Family".

I thought that this household had done so. But one catastrophic medical event and one debilitating event (my car accident of 2005) changed the preparation that Mr. AOW and I had so diligently constructed.

Barack Obama isn't right about much. But he IS correct that every family in American is one catastrophic illness away from bankruptcy. ObamaCare does nothing to prevent that bankruptcy from happening, of course; furthermore, the availability of Medicaid pushes many families into the state of bankruptcy because that's the only way to get help after a certain point.

With aging Baby Boomers about to overwhelm the system, America is in for a rude, rude awakening. The only solution that I can see is to make children and grandchildren legally and financially responsible for the care of their elders; in fact, that was the way it was back in the 1950s, when my husband and his brother ended up footing their mother's nursing-home bill (She could no longer be cared for at home due to severe and dangerous-to-others dementia). The cost of her nursing-home care was reasonable. But it if hadn't been, somebody would have had to quit working and stay home to keep my grandmother confined (Straight jacket?); dropping out of the work force, of course, would have deprived the government of income-tax revenue. The loss of tax revenue would be a major factor if children and grandchildren had to provide caregiving for their elders.

Reality will bite with regard to elder care within the next 10 years! No Talos 4 actually exists.

Z said...

That Claire Wolfe quote is amazing.....and almost scary.
It's one thing to try to avoid living on the nanny state, it's another thing when Obama Care and other situations force the teat on us!
by the way, so many of that list of tactics are used by the lib trolls at our sites I actually started laughing...
great piece..
have a good Sunday, SF

Always On Watch said...

Z said: Obama Care and other situations force the teat on us!

I want to avoid it, but can't find a way.

Indeed, the teat has been creeping up on us, particularly since the LBJ administration.

Ducky's here said...

If TSA doesn’t fondle your wife and grandmother then America is at risk

----------------

I love this one. Somehow this is a liberal issue.
In fact anything out there that Silverfiddle doesn't like is the responsibility of liberals because somehow if we were all playing in the Libertarian sandbox everything would be to his approval.

It's like the way the Libertarians and religious extremists whine about "activist judges". For those who don't know, an activist judge is one you don't agree with.

But they would be so adrift if they had to man up and confess, as did Ayn Greenspan, that the market IS NOT self correcting.


I love it that these clowns just discovered Saul Alitsky, their new word for the day. They never read him and have no idea what he means but just throw the name out when they preach to the choir.
Depth isn't their strength.

Ducky's here said...

... of course Libertarians have an internal method to prove they aren't living on Talos 4.

Silverfiddle said...

Ducky: TSA is a statist issue, not a liberal one.

The market is not self-correcting because it is not free. Indeed the Fed mandate of price stability, masks the principle signal markets need to stay healthy.

Self-correcting? Of course our semi-kinda-halfway-free market is not self-correcting! Government has so encumbered it with absurdities, illogic, guardrails and stoppers, there's no way it could self correct.

Add in cushy safety nets for the banksters, and we have a crony crapitalist monstrosity that resembles free market capitalism not at all.

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

Great parallel with Star Trek Silver. Keep it up as there are many, many more with the show(s) if one decides to pay attention.

Anonymous said...

>>Ducky's here said...
If TSA doesn’t fondle your wife and grandmother then America is at risk

* Tactic #8, Blame Bush

Do some research on the Patriot Act and you will find Joe Biden as the dark lord of the sith on this one. He drafted the first iteration called the "Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995" - months before the Oklahoma City bombing.

Yes, neocons foisted the seeds with passing the Patriot Act. This liberal administration has aggressively expanded TSA thuggery to levels unimaginable in America. Imaginable in the old Soviet Union, perhaps. Or China. Or WWII Germany.

I believe TSA is like the Great Depression Civilian Conservation Corps - instead of shovels in dirt, they use metal detecting wands in pants and panties.

A workfare program - doubt me? Take a hard look at the kind of people they hire next time you are at the airport!

- Hugh

Ducky's here said...

Here’s some of the lies liberals have tried to imprison us with:
------------

Am I quoting accurately from the article, Silverfiddle?

Joe Conservative said...

"Charity" is not a virtue practiced by most liberals. Let's face it, it isn't a virtue practiced by many others, either.

Marvin J. Ashton, "The Tongue Can Be a Sharp Sword"

"Real charity is not something you give away; it is something that you acquire and make a part of yourself....

---

"Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don't judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other".


I suspect it's the reason behind certain House/Senate rules that prohibit a member from impugning the motives of another member, or the President, on the House/Senate floor. Unfortunately, it's NOT something that can be "legislated", but it IS something that can be practiced.

Z said...

"A workfare program - doubt me? Take a hard look at the kind of people they hire next time you are at the airport!"

Boy, is Hugh right about THAT. And today we're hearing that bombs are NOT being searched for...we're taking our shoes off but they're not checking suitcases in some cases.

AOW: Nobody can avoid it! And, if anybody deserves help, it's you and Mr. AOW...i know that, xxx

Silverfiddle said...

Ducky et al: Hugh Farnham wrote this, not me, although I heartily agree with it.

Anonymous said...

Speaking only for myself and in no way am I judging others, but I do not believe in entitlements. I know what my inalienable rights are and they do not include health care that I can not afford. Assuming that I am not run over by the proverbial beer truck or become one of the 16,000 victims of murder each year in this country, I know the day will come when my doctor will tell me I need a bypass operation or a transplant. I will do everything in my power to keep my wife from learning of this need because I know she would sell everything we have to buy a few more months or years of life. She would be condemning herself to living out the rest of her life in extreme poverty. I am prepared for death as well as anyone can be. I do not fear death. I do, of course fear dying. Dying often comes with much pain and suffering. I will bear it in silence. I have no regrets in my life, indeed my life has been blessed, and no one owes me anything.

98ZJUSMC said...

COW: Very well stated and I agree. I am quite some ways away from any decision like that, but I have firmly told those that matter that I wish to die as quickly as ethics allow. I refuse to impoverish anyone, for my medical benefit.

98ZJUSMC said...

Sorry.....@COF

Bd said...

OMG, the right are the biggest liars by far. The corporate right actually gets average Americans to hate each other and vote against their own interests.

Robert Reich Debunks 6 Big GOP Lies About the Economy:
(Reich actually explains why his talking points are the truth. He is assuming that the listener is intelligent enough to grasp it. This is what we liberals do. What conservatives do is tell the same old lies and assail the same old scapegoats over and over again, and hope that the listener is either too stupid or too lazy to find out for himself if it's true.)

1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us. (No it doesn't and it never has.)

2) If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)

3) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)

4) Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)

5) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Rick Perry is "lying through his teeth" says Reich. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)

6) We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any tax reform needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8uf-ZXLABE

Anonymous said...

Hugh Farnham replies:

1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us. (No it doesn't and it never has.)

BD: That's BS. I've never been hired by a poor man or a bankrupt corporation. The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates of the developed world.

2) If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)

You help balance the budget, get rid of interfering soviet bureaucrats, and unfetter small business. Jobs are the end result.

3) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)

And Eisenhower was relentless in trying to balance the budget and cutting programs. The 1950's US economy grew since we were the only major nation with a high-tech infrastructure left. The dollar was defacto world currency.

4) Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)

Stop your Kensian BS. No one can sell me on Medicare being a sleek, efficient animal. More like Jaba the Hut on steroids and crack.

5) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Rick Perry is "lying through his teeth" says Reich. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)

Solid? They began borrowing this year! OK - Try running a corporate retirement plan like Social Security and see how long it takes before the Federales put you in handcuffs and a perp walk.

6) We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any tax reform needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)

Actually, I would be for a Jizyah dhimmi tax for liberals. If you are a liberal you have to pay a higher rate due to your negative effects on society. Just kidding. Or perhaps not.

- Hugh

Silverfiddle said...

Hugh:
Thank you for dismantling the comic book thinking of BD.

Robert Reich's philosophy is what got us into this mess.

Anonymous said...

>Somehow this is a liberal issue.

Sexual perversion + statism = American liberalism

Anonymous said...

Joe Conservative:

Extra points for quoting Marvin J. Ashton.

Joe Conservative said...

Hey, if the Catholics no longer want to believe in their virtues, you've got to quote somebody. And who better than a "heretic"?

Always On Watch said...

Z,
Yeah, the situation in this household is surreal.

Today I hear that Obama wants cuts to Medicare. Oh, joy! Mr. AOW qualifies for Medicare in March 2012. Medigap insurance costs $800 a month if one is under age 65. Mr. AOW will be 62 when he qualifies for Medicare.

Damn.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

He HAS to destroy Medicare, AoW. If there's an alternative to Obamacare and /or a "single payer system", people can still "choose" NOT to become government's dependents.

Bd said...

Hugh, you're FOS. But...Reagan taxed the wealthy 11 times ans grew the economy.

MathewK said...

Liberals are their own worst enemies, fortunately for us.

One tactic that should be on your list is responsibility, liberals never ever take any responsibility for any screw up of theirs. It's always someone or something else that thwarted their grand efforts to deliver utopia.

Silverfiddle said...

Bd: I'll take your word on "11 times," but still the net effect was to drastically lower tax rates, resulting in working people keeping more of their own money. It also resulted in a doubling of the economy and an increase in revenues.

Obama should learn a lesson from that.

If you go and look behind the kooks and criers talking points, you'll see that free market capitalism drives economic success, not soviet style wealth confiscation.

Trekkie4Ever said...

As a Trekkie, you grabbed my attention with the photos.

I would have never thought about the correlation between liberals and the vile Talosians. But it fits like a glove.

Liberals manipulate and deceive to control their constituents and until they begin to logic and the power of deduction they will remain under their control.

Long live Star Trek!