Hyper-Stupidity through Ideology. — It is almost incredible that we have got to the stage at which a man can believe that he is more closely related to a stranger than to his own daughter: 

“There are no races. All men are more closely related to each other than they are to their mothers, sisters and daughters. I am more closely related to Obama than to my daughter and Obama is more closely related to me than he is to his daughters.” ¹ 

What is interesting about this is not the ignorance and low intelligence of the author. (He is, after all, just another buffoon on the internet.) What is interesting is that ignorance and low intelligence, albeit at a level at which one can still function as a human being, cannot on their own lead a man this far. It takes ideology to drive a man into such depths of garbled, reality-defying stupidity. If the author had relied on his native wit, little though it is, and not given himself over to some ideologically-inspired falsehood which he does not even half-understand² yet by which he reckons himself rational and intelligent, he would have thought more rationally and intelligently. That is what is interesting — and unsettling because of its commonness. 

. . .

1. DocMartyn, in the comments to Sarah AB, “The Far-Right in Europe: a Roundup”, Harry’s Place (weblog), 15th December 2012; re-paragraphed.

2. He unwittingly manages to compose a crude parody of already so crude a thing as Lewontin’s Fallacy.

The Part-Triumph of a Figment. — The mass-man is the closest approximation in reality to the individualist’s mental abstraction of the individual.

Self-Assured Slump. — Feeling is the pathway to the spirit, says the man sinking into the mire of the body.

Out of Self-Control and into Outer Control. — Self-control is the control and rightful-ordering of desires and passions by the rational self. Liberation, as promoted by liberals, socialists, and other libertarians, is the setting-free of desires and passions from the command of the rational self, the thraldom of the latter to the former, and the manipulation and control of the desires and passions by outer forces over the vanquished self. This is the “free man” which the libertarians promote: the man without self-control, not a master of his passions, but their thrall in “free expression” — and a thrall also to those who know how to manipulate and control the passions of others.

The Marcher-Lords of Mediocrity. — Mediocrity bestows the title of excellence upon those who secure its far-flung borders.

A Deadly Curse. — O, let our enemies grow strong in the habits of safety!