Eric Hoffer: An Authentic Life For a Change

Eric Hoffer was an intelligent man who worked with his hands as a California migratory farm worker, as a Forest Service worker, as a longshoreman. Temporarily blinded as an infant, he recovered his sight at age 15, learned to read, and was a voracious devourer of human knowledge from that point on. He began his adult life with $300 from his late father's craftsman's guild. After retiring from a life of hard labour, Hoffer was appointed an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, as probably one of the few authentic and personally competent social science professors on the faculty.

At age 53, publication of "The True Believer" thrust Hoffer into the public eye. Over the years, several other books followed. But most of Hoffer's works remain in unpublished notebooks in the Hoover Archives.

"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep." _Hoffer

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954 _QuotationPage

Authenticity is the difference between a person who is true to himself and others, and a person whose chameleon-like changeability allows him to be all things to all people--temporarily. There are actually persons in the world where "what you see is what you get." Hoffer was a good example of such a person. He was a stark contrast to the "Mr. Changeables" who populate American politics, media, and popular culture. Hoffer was all grit and no flash. Certainly he was not a person today's child-journalists could relate to.

In a 1941 letter to Anderson, Hoffer had written: “My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.” In 1949, he wrote to Anderson that, “by working [as a longshoreman] only Saturday and Sunday (18 hours at pay and a half) I earn 40–50 dollars a week. This to me is rolling in dough. I have no expensive tastes in food, clothing or pleasure. Above all, I have no taste for property.”....

When not on the waterfront, Hoffer would take a regular three-mile walk in Golden Gate Park toward the Pacific Ocean, working out ideas in his head and writing down the completed thoughts in his notebooks. For perhaps 30 years, Hoffer took the same walk, returning to the center of the city by bus. “The words, the ideas, come to me in the park,” he said in a 1967 interview. “I shape them in my head there, and I write them in my notebook. Blind people [his sight had returned in adolescence] write full sentences in their head. Sentences they can see. I still do.” But 10 years later, when he was approaching 80, he wrote: “In the past I could carry a train of thought in my head for days, formulating and revising, without writing down a word until the thinking was done. At present I cannot write without pen in hand. . . . The old must break with the past and learn anew.”

About Eric Hoffer there is an element of mystery that the material in the Hoover Archives never dispels. He appears, with his talent fully developed, in his first work. Nothing is really explained. The roots from which his genius grew remain concealed. Some scraps of information seem more mythical than real (“My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck”) and suggest a budding Jack Kerouac more than an Eric Hoffer—two writers who could not have been more different. Perhaps in his index cards more than anywhere else we see traces of the struggle, labor, and self-discipline that went into his writing.

Hoffer was always identified with the honorific “philosopher,” and he was one; but he more resembles the philosophers and prophets of old, especially in the high valuation that he always placed on his own independence. He saw himself as one who was free to tell the truth without fear of patron, publisher, department head, or tenure committee. _Hoover

Hoffer spent most of his adult life in San Francisco. But he was far too authentic and sincere to be accepted by the San Francisco elite and intelligentsia. The city on the peninsula remained oddly ashamed of its longshoreman-philosopher until his death. Were Hoffer alive and writing today, fashionable San Franciscans would probably stone the man--with the first stones cast by Pelosi and Gavin Newsom.

The news media of today would never fall for someone as authentic as Hoffer, naturally. Instead, today's media feels "leg tingles" from political tap dancers with radical pasts and mob ties. For such a changeable modern day political Bojangles, the media would do almost anything. You would think that at least a few investigative reporters would want to pore through BO's background, sift through the dust of his past?

Certainly if B.O. were an authentic and hard-working governor of a backwoods state, seeking to challenge the dominance of an inauthentic elite and media to control the destiny of America, the investigative reporters would be on the case. But since B.O. is perceived as one of the gang--just as inauthentic as the rest--he is protected from any and all meaningful inquiries.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Yes, and very dangerous. A narcissist such as BO, is full of fear. Fear of discovery. Whether such a person can ever become integrated is a moot question, since all motivation presses relentlessly in the opposite direction. As long as the narcissist is adored, pampered, protected, his experience is pleasant enough. It is those who fall under the narcissist's spell who suffer. And those who fall under his policies.

Obamanation Prepares for Apologies to World

There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionable as ever), but for public apologies by politicians for the crimes and misdemeanours of their ancestors, or at least of their predecessors. I think it is reasonable to call this pattern of political breast-beating the False Apology Syndrome.

You owe me an apology. Of course you do. But I will be magnanimous and apologise to your first! Yes, and I will even apologise for things I did not even do! You owe me an apology. But I am better than you are, and my apologies to the entire world will prove just how good I am!

Mr. Blair, the then British prime minister, apologized to the Irish for the famine; one of the first public acts of Mr. Rudd, the Australian prime minister, was to apologize to the Aborigines for the dispossession of their continent; Pope John Paul II apologized to the Muslims for the Crusades. There are many other examples, and there are also demands for apologies by aggrieved, or supposedly aggrieved, groups.

What is this all about, and what does it signify? Does it mean that at long last the powerful are making a genuine effort to see things from the point of view of the weak, or is it, on the contrary, a form of moral exhibitionism that subverts genuine moral thought and conduct?

....official apologies for distant events, however important or pregnant with consequences those events may have been, are another matter entirely. They have bad effects on both those who give them and those who receive them.

The effect on the givers is the creation of a state of spiritual pride. Insofar as the person offering the apology is doing what no one has done before him, he is likely to consider himself the moral superior of his predecessors. He alone has had the moral insight and courage to apologize.

On the other hand, he knows full well that he has absolutely no personal moral responsibility for whatever it is that he is apologizing for. In other words, his apology brings him all kudos and no pain. _Incharacter

What kind of person would indulge in such sanctimonious and pompous faux humility? A person with a very strong ego, perhaps even a narcissistic personality. If America chooses Obamanation, will Obama's deeply ingrained narcissism bring him to the Altar of Apologies? You can bet on it.

Narcissism is a defense mechanism whose role is to deflect hurt and trauma from the victim's "True Self" into a "False Self" which is omnipotent, invulnerable, and omniscient. This False Self is then used by the narcissist to garner narcissistic supply from his human environment. Narcissistic supply is any form of attention, both positive and negative and it is instrumental in the regulation of the narcissist's labile sense of self-worth.

Perhaps the most immediately evident trait of patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is their vulnerability to criticism and disagreement. Subject to negative input, real or imagined, even to a mild rebuke, a constructive suggestion, or an offer to help, they feel injured, humiliated and empty and they react with disdain (devaluation), rage, and defiance. _Source

And since the "False Self" is invulnerable, it can afford to apologise for things it knows full well it shares no responsibility for bringing about. In fact, false apologies are another form of defense mechanism--a pre-emptive defense.

But we all know that in the current atmosphere of national and international politics, law, and economy, an apology is never just an apology. Sometimes, an apology is a blank check. If Obamanation writes blank check apologies to be drawn on the Federal Treasury, the current outcry about a porky $700 billion + bailout crafted by Pelosi and Pals will be quickly forgotten in the sinking sickness of a growing malaise that will be based upon reality for a change.

And it looks as if that is precisely the type of apology that Obamanation is preparing to issue to the oppressed of the nation and the world. Apologies that lay the groundwork for massive and ongoing compensation to any and all who can place their claim before Obamanation with sufficient force and emotion. Prepare yourselves, Americans. This is a time to be sorry. Very, very, sorry.

From Whiners to Achievers? What Will It Take?

Many of the dullards in the US media establishment expressed shock and dismay upon learning that most Americans see blacks as complainers -- whiners. Media pundits immediately declared this widespread perception to be a sign of racism. But in reality, it is a simple expression of everyday reality.

African derived blacks frequently have difficulties keeping up as a group, in many multicultural societies the world over. Yet, African Americans persist in blaming all of their subcultures problems upon "the man"--the white man. Would electing a half-African politician who earned his chops on the corrupt streets of Chicago do anything at all to turn a national culture of whiners into a culture of achievers?

With a 50 percent high school dropout rate and a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, with African-Americans committing half the nation’s murders though only 13 percent of the population, black America—especially the poorer part of it—is in trouble. “We cannot blame white people,” Cosby asserted in his incendiary speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision. “It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.” As Jesse Jackson used to say, Cosby recalls, “No one can save us from us but us.”

"...for all the talk of systemic racism and governmental screw-ups, we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility.” Even with lingering discrimination, “there are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America,” and “these doors are tall enough and wide enough” for just about all black people “to walk through with their heads held high.” So while “there are forces that make the effort to escape poverty difficult,” African-Americans are by no means merely the playthings of vast forces and helpless victims of racism. “When people tell you, ‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’ ” Cosby warns, “that’s when you know it is the devil you’re hearing.”

...Certainly their fathers aren’t raising them. That 70 percent illegitimacy rate, troubling in itself, isn’t evenly distributed but is concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where it soars above 85 percent and can approach 100 percent. “A house without a father is a challenge,” Cosby and Poussaint write. “A neighborhood without fathers is a catastrophe.” That’s because mothers “have difficulty showing a son how to be a man,” a truly toxic problem when there are no father figures around to show boys how to channel their natural aggressiveness in constructive ways.

...In addition to physical abuse, Cosby and Poussaint observe, we’ve all cringed at hearing inner-city mothers abusing kids verbally as well, making them feel worthless and unwanted. “Words like ‘You’re stupid,’ ‘You’re an idiot,’ ‘I’m sorry you were born,’ or ‘You’ll never amount to anything’ can stick a dagger in a child’s heart.” Single mothers angry with men, whether their current boyfriends or their children’s fathers, regularly transfer their rage to their sons, since they’re afraid to take it out on the adult males. “If they hear their mom say, ‘Black men ain’t worth s—-,’ the boys wonder whether that includes them. When their moms yell, ‘You’re no good, just like your father!’ all the doubt goes away.” When such racially tinged verbal abuse takes the form of “ ‘Nigger, I’ll kick your f——— black a—,’ ” the child ends up ashamed of being black, as well—a danger anyway in a society where rumors of black inferiority still echo, if more faintly.

...Of course today’s African-Americans have full civil rights and ample opportunity. Look at how immigrants from far-flung Ethiopia and Nigeria—no less black—succeed in their new land of opportunity. Moreover, notes Williams, Cosby’s views mirror those of the civil rights greats of old. Booker T. Washington similarly urged education and self-reliance and cautioned that “we should not permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” W. E. B. Du Bois, despite differences with Washington, shared his “goal of black self-reliance.” Martin Luther King “said he wanted above all else to get black people to shed the idea that they did not control their destiny.”

...Williams’s view of most of today’s black leaders recalls Eric Hoffer’s dictum that great causes often start out as movements but degenerate into rackets. Today’s leaders have made lucrative careers out of preaching a crippling ideology that ensures that they will never run out of poor blacks to agitate for. As Cosby quipped in one of his town meetings, “There are people who want you to remain in a hole, and they rejoice in your hopelessness because they have jobs mismanaging you.”

Williams presents a rogues’ gallery of African-American leaders who harm the people they claim to serve by blinding them to the opportunity all around them and stoking resentments that serve as excuses for wrongdoing. Jesse Jackson, “the unofficial president of black America,” takes pride of place, with Al Sharpton as runner-up. _CityJournal

And now we have Barak Obama--god-child of Jeremiah Wright--another in a long line of victimist leftist oriented conductors of the great African American Whine Chorus. So here is your answer to the question of whether Obama will inspire American blacks to achieve or whether he will pander to their sense of victimhood. All indications point to the latter.

In his campaign for the Illinois senate, Obama was endorsed by the New Party (NP), a coalition of socialists, Communists, and other leftists. According to the newsletter of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, whose members were said to constitute 15 percent of the Chicago New Party, “Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP [which] mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.” Apparently, Obama signed such a pledge. After winning the primary (unopposed because his lawyers had succeeded in knocking all three opponents off the ballot), he appeared at a New Party membership meeting to voice his thanks.

Entering the national political scene eight years later, Obama did not, to be sure, appear as a radical, but he still bore the earmarks of the world in which he had been immersed for twenty years. He called himself “progressive,” a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists. Early this year his wife Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time. The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a “downright mean” place, “guided by fear,” where the “life . . . that most people are living has gotten progressively worse.”

This year, Obama appeared before Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (whose official slogan is “no justice, no peace”) to seek its support. The candidate praised Sharpton as “a voice for the voiceless and . . . dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.” _Commentary

This is painful to say, and painful to hear, but it must be said and heard. Obama is yet another con-man, in a long line of con-men to take advantage of the race racket in the US. No matter how much a voter may hate George Bush or the Republican Party--and want to punish them for perceived misdeeds--in the end it is himself that he is punishing by voting emotionally without reading the fine print. Wishful thinking almost always leads to more hardship, when not accompanied by a hard-headed examination of realities, and hard work.

It is possible for more citizens of all races to go from whiners to achievers, if society ever chooses to admit where the real problems lie. Abominable child-raising methods, lamentably poor education, low societal expectations, and a corrupt government-media complex that obscures the reality by crying "racism" under all circumstances--regardless of the presence or absence of significant or meaningful bias.

Palin Express Picking Up Steam Across Heartland

As a frontier woman who fought corruption and won, she's the embodiment of independent womanhood. As the hunting and fishing beauty queen who got her man and went on to have five children, she's a potent symbol of the apple-pie American mother-figure. Her story is both epic and small time, heroic and ordinary, astonishing and familiar. _DailyMail

From rally to rally across the American heartland, Sarah Palin is drawing record crowds, and helping to fill the campaign coffers of running mate John McCain. Palin charms and intrigues most Americans on multiple levels--particularly American women.

[McCain's] pick of Idaho native Sarah Palin for vice president means McCain has a good chance to win Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and maybe even Colorado, which were all leaning toward Barack Obama. _SLCTrib

Palin is winning over men and women from both political parties--even libertarians. Her "frontier woman" story of hunting, fishing, surviving in harsh surroundings, and taking on large corrupt government and corporate interests, sounds like something straight out of a John Wayne movie, and for good reason.

When Sarah Palin appeared on the national stage, she was stepping into an archetype that already existed. In personality, looks, and behavior she resembled nothing less than our cultural image of the frontier woman. She was something out of history -- something that we already knew, were quite familiar with, and strongly approve of. But at the same time it's true that few people living (and those very aged) have ever met a frontier woman of the original breed.

...The importance of the frontier woman cannot be overrated, because it was the women, in the end, who broke the frontier. Mountain men and related types had been traversing the wilderness for decades before the Westward Migration got rolling, without leaving behind as much as a scratch on the landscape. It was the women -- and their families -- who made the land bend, who brought with them a sense of permanency, who civilized the frontier. Where men went, they created forts and outposts. When women followed, they established settlements and towns. _AmericanThinker

Frontier women civilised the frontier, after they helped tame it alongside the men. While Washington DC may not seem like a frontier to be tamed, in reality that is exactly what it has become--the frontier of corruption. That sad fact has been recently highlighted by the mega-billion dollar bailout for a problem that Congress itself created back in the Jimmy Carter administration, and amplified during the Bill Clinton administration. Expect a huge part of this $700 billion bailout to go to corrupt payoffs of friends of Barney Frank.

Big government is the problem. Obama wants to double the size of government. Where can Americans look for someone with a more objective viewpoint, and the toughness to do what has to be done? Somewhere far away from Washington DC. Somewhere where boys and girls are allowed to grow up to become men and women--strong men and women. Somewhere like Alaska, the last wild American frontier.

Palin draws rock-concert sized crowd of 60,000 in Florida

Why the news and entertainment media feels it absolutely must destroy Sarah Palin