Written by Congrats to those of you who have better things to do this evening. I’ll be live and recording, and I hope you’ll check us out in your free time.
The thought that currently sticks out in my mind is “Stop knocking love”.
You hear such sentiments echoed from time to time and this is not unique to any particular element of society.
The Left wrecks the concept of love by dressing up all of their malice and nefarious behavior in colorful and unthreatening imagery and language, but with notable exceptions they do not deny its existence.
On the Right, and what might fairly be described as the “Far Right” in particular, undermining the existence or utility of love, seems to me, a decidedly more pronounced phenomenon.
Though examples abound, an archetypal sort is linked at Revolver News today. This is a Tweet thread by @cirnosad, purporting to tell us the 2,000 year history of Valentine’s day. The thrust of the bit is that our notions of “romantic love” were imposed on us as a swindle by lesser beings, who sought to elevate their station in the world by manipulating the emotions of women. As you might guess, the implication is that courtships among individuals pursued for their own happiness, are an inferior way to organize family life, in comparison arranged marriages less interested in the happiness of those so bound.
The merits of the argument are by no means lost on me. Individuals pursuing their emotional highs and running from their emotional lows are certain to make decisions that impose expenses on civilization as a whole.
Boy meets girl. Boy wants to stick himself in girl. Boy loses control of himself and does whatever the appendage to be inserted commands.
Girl meets boy, girl meets another boy, girl meets Planned Parenthood. Girl meets University Professor. Girl meets another boy. Girl meets gender studies degree. Girl meets another boy, and another, and another, and another. Girl meets career. Girl meets another boy, and another, and another, and another. Girl votes Democrat. Girl meets menopause.
Such behavior cannot be sustained nor universalized, and so criticism is doubtlessly warranted.
But I’ll tell ya something boy… I been in love. And in terms of things that you can measure in dollars, seconds, tears, whatever the case may be, love has done wrong by your humble correspondent. Hard to say in measurable terms what I have gained from it. Toss that whole thing out the window, deliver my servant and, happiness be damned, lets make some babies before our enemies are saved the trouble of exterminating us, and we simply fade away voluntarily.
I get it. Tough to argue the point. Realpolitik. Right? Outcomes.
But that does beg the question how we ever found ourselves in such a mess to begin with. Is it your conception of the world, fellow Darwinist, that inferior ways outperform their superiors?
That don’t make a whole lotta sense to me, truth be told, but I been confused more than once trying to figure out this love thing. So, what do I know, after all?
Not much. Clearly. But, I’ll posit a theory. Doubtless an unpopular one. Keeping in mind, that’s all it is, and not a particularly well thought out theory at that.
What if it turns out the be the case, that we are presently enduring a just punishment, for precisely the forms some would see us returned to?
Allow me to elaborate…
It’s impossible not to notice that the people who scream the loudest about the problems with women in society are in large part malcontents who know little satisfaction in other areas of life. This is not to say that reasonable folks do not have reasonable complaints, but it seems a fair assessment that there are those who wouldn’t know happiness of it kneeled before them with an open mouth and half shut eyes.
I cannot think of one married man who views the world in this way. For that matter, no divorcee springs to mind. Whatever he may think of his marriage, or its failure, he does not tend to think that his wife ought to have been delivered to him through contract outside of his or her choosing. Maybe both husband and wife are fortunate enough to think they married up. Maybe one or the other thinks they could have done better if they held out longer. Maybe both know they held out too long, and had to settle for someone less than they’d have had if they had settled for a better partner sooner. Maybe they hate eachother and are staying together for the kids. Maybe they said screw these brats, and got divorced anyway.
But outside of brief flirtations with misanthropy, they don’t say love is a scam and call for a return to compulsory couplings. That is reserved for a very special sort of malcontent. We might all consider ourselves quite fortunate not to be governed by them, whatever the imperfections of the people currently trying to kill us.
Some of you know too much about my romantic history and love life. I’d hate to turn our Valentine’s Day member chat into two hours of me wallowing in my own pity, and I am not going to do that.
But give me the nuclear DeLorean and say that I can go back and undo all of my suffering if only I would also forfeit the joys of being in love, and I would call the Libyans and tell them to come get their plutonium. Sorry, Doc!
Sorry also to the youngsters if you don’t get the Back to the Future reference, great movie. You should definitely watch it a hundred times.
I want to get this email out well in advance of the show time. So, I’ll stop here for now, but I have learned a lot of things the hard way. I will continue preparing my remarks throughout the afternoon and share some reflections with you this evening.
I’ll have much more to say about this when we meet tonight as we do every Wednesday at 9:30pm US Eastern for our SurrealPolitiks Members Only Video Chat.
Recall that we are now hosting the chats on Discord!
You can link your SurrealPolitiks Member account to your Discord account using the links provided either on the Member Chat Page https://surrealpolitiks.com/member-chat/ or on the Your Profile page on SurrealPolitiks.com https://surrealpolitiks.com/membership-account/your-profile/. This integrates a Discord Bot with our membership software to control access to member areas.
If you are having trouble connecting your account, there is a link to the Discord Server on the member chat page and you can join the server without your account being linked. From there someone can try to help you get things sorted out. If you don’t have a Discord account, you can create one on Discord.com. You can get the app for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android fairly easily by searching their respective app stores or getting it directly from Discord.com.
If you’re not a member yet, you can become one at https://SurrealPolitiks.com/join for just $6.70/month if you use promo code agenda33 at checkout.
Once you’re a member, you can join us every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern on our Discord Server, and you can find these instructions on our Member Chat here https://surrealpolitiks.com/member-chat/.
If you miss the live show, you can always catch the replay in the member content section here https://surrealpolitiks.com/category/membersonly/.
Those of you with Odysee content subscriptions can find the Odysee stream here https://odysee.com/@ChrisCantwell:9/spmc20240214:c