Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light

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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
17:37 - Job security	(top)
In Mickey's Christmas Carol, Scrooge McDuck justifies not giving donations to the two alms-collectors who show up at his door as follows: "Well, if I gave to the poor, then the poor wouldn't be poor anymore! And then you two would be out of a job! I wouldn't want to put you out of a job, not on Christmas Eve...!" It's silly and farcical. But I wonder how many people actually do think like that these days? I'm speaking, of course, of those people who form groups intended to Do Some Good. The ACLU. The NAACP. PETA. Greenpeace. International ANSWER. MoveOn.org. Specifically: why are they really doing it? Is it because they actually think they can change the world? Or is it because what they enjoy is the process, the feeling that what they're doing is changing the world? I ask this because it seems the only way to explain how the same people (comedians, human rights groups, actors, leftists of all kinds) who spent the entire 90s agitating about how great a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the world�always quoting figures about weapons of mass destruction and his abuse and mass murder of Iraqi citizens�spun on their heels immediately after 9/11 and dedicated themselves to the cause of our not taking him out. As though the fact that we actually seemed willing to respond to their decade-long calls for action against Saddam made them suddenly think, Whoah, whoah, whoah, we didn't mean for you to take us seriously!* We didn't mean for you to actually do something about Saddam! We were just playin' around! C'moooon!* The same people who applauded Clinton's barrages of cruise missiles (unilaterally, no less!) into Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan (regardless of how many hospitals and orphanages he actually ended up destroying), after 9/11, call any kind of action at all�including Afghanistan�an unjustified act of aggression and imperialism. Whether our stated goals are to topple dictatorships, banish theocracy, defeat terrorism, uplift women in a culture where they're treated like cattle, or spread democracy, we're doing exactly what all the do-gooder groups ought to love us to do. But they're almost without exception dead-set opposed to our doing any of that. Now their tune is "The Arab world is incompatible with democracy!" and "Women in Islam are actually treated well!" or "What right do we have to force our way of life on anyone else?" or "Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction after all! We had no right to take him to account for anything he's done in the ancient past!" or "Terrorism is only our just desserts�we have no right to try to eradicate it directly, only by capitulating to terrorists' demands!" or even "Terrorism doesn't exist at all, and official attempts to prepare us for another 9/11-like attack are to be ridiculed!" (as funny as that link is). Which leads me to think: What would happen if all the do-gooder groups I mentioned earlier actually got their way? What if, for example, Congress introduced a bill for legislation that in accordance with PETA's demands, the sale or consumption of meat or any animal products in the US should be banned? Something tells me PETA would lose about 90% of its membership instantly. They'd take to the streets waving signs in support of meat-eating. "We were just kidding!" "Meat is Neat!" "Vegans are from Vega!" "No Bull�Only Cow!" "I've Got a Beef with PETA!" KFC would cater entire marches. The nation's meat processors and ranchers would enjoy a huge stock surge (the Wall Street kind, not the stampede kind). Because I think what people enjoy about joining these groups is the process... the feeling of belonging to some group, and a group that's guaranteed to confer some righteousness upon you the next time you mention it on a college application. Far more than the actual purpose of the group, though, its fecklessness is actually critically important�it wouldn't do for the group to actually have an effect on anything. No way. Because if it did, there wouldn't be anything to complain about anymore... and worse, it might mean actually having to confront the consequences of the changes you're advocating. It's really damned easy to sway back and forth in a sea of like-minded protestors holding a PEACE sign, just bobbing along in your buoyant commitment to people not killing each other. But let the newspapers ring with the headline WE SURRENDER, and all but the most intractably rotten core of the throng will feel a stab through the heart: What have we done? Just like the "human shields" felt when they actually got to Iraq and found out what they were signing up to protect. I believe it takes a certain mentality to be susceptible to joining an activist group. At heart it's a mentality of goodness and benevolence, of wishing to see other people happier than they are, and of wishing to leave the world a better place than it was when you inherited it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's admirable. But there's a temptation to join a group just because it tells a good story, or does a good job of outlining an injustice that must be put right. Once you're in it, though, the mob mentality takes over�the self-perpetuation of the group becomes paramount, and it becomes easier and easier to chant whatever slogans the guy next to you is chanting. If he's not worried about the danger to our economy if we abandon coal-fired power plants, or if she's not concerned with the fate of the meat-packing industry or the culinary tradition of the entire meat-eating world, or if they're not afraid of what a communist America would actually look like, or if nobody here gives a crap about whether it might actually be good to eliminate terrorist threats, especially long-term avowed enemies of America, then I guess I won't be worried either! DOWN WITH EVERYTHING! So all I'm saying is, perhaps the people who cry out the most derisively against "sheep mentality" ought to think a little harder about the likely real, concrete outcome if the group you're thinking about joining gets its way, before joining it for the comfortable reassurance of expressing your individuality by chanting slogans from a printed sheet, in unison with ten thousand like-minded people. And only take up the chant if you really, truly are willing to live with the consequences of getting your way. In other words, put up or shut up. UPDATE: This, via CapLion, is an interesting case in point.