It's all about the context..

‎Michael Smith‎ to 

1/8/2016

Many things progressives say about any given thing tends to be true when taken a specific point in time in a very narrow perspective. They tend to argue about a specific point on a continuum, dismissing the entire picture.

Their leaders are truly visionary, their followers - not so much. Their followers seem to only be able to focus on on thing in isolation of all others and deny any other facts or historical context to "win" their arguments. That's why the can say with a straight face that progressive anti-gun advocates have no intention of confiscating guns - even as the progression of historical facts say otherwise. Any statement stripped of context and historical evidence can be "true" - in their collective, pea-pickin' little hivemind they actually construe that as "truth".

For example, if I shoot and kill someone, to say that I killed that person is an absolute truth - but context matters. Killing someone may be a crime or it may not. If I killed that person without provocation, I am guilty of murder and thefore have committed a crime. If I killed that person because they were trying to kill me, that is self-defense and therefore innocent of a crime.

In 2015, I wrote that progressivism is a creeping disease and unlike Revolutionary Marxism, it will never start a direct, one on one fight. It is too smart for that kind of bourgeois violence. Progressivism is about behavior modification over an extended period of time – something I have referred to as “the long game”. Progressivism is about controlling the words you can and cannot say and who is allowed to say them. It is about controlling the thoughts you can and cannot think and who is allowed to think those as well.

As I have written in the past, historical context is critical to the understanding of the actions of and by progressivism. It is inarguable that by any objective measure, just during the lifetime of people my age, 1) there are things you have done or could do that are now prohibited, 2) there are things you did that you can still do but they are subject to government permission, a fee or a tax and 3) due to #1 and #2, there are things that some are allowed to do and others not due to arbitrary and capricious application of regulations and restrictions by a government entity. When you stretch back beyond those of us born in the 50's or 60's, the list continues to grow of things that are now verboten - everything from food and firearms to religious practice and personal choice.

The greatest frustration I have created in debates with progressives - and this shallow thinking is endemic in progressives but certainly is not limited to them - is when I introduce context or refuse to argue a point without it.

When context is applied to the President's argument about "gun control" completely invalidates it.