So Much of Liberalism Really is Them Pretending Not to Understand Things
So, this has been floating around on X, and it has gotten a lot of traction because it’s so true:
Talking to liberals about political issues is nearly impossible, not just because they think disagreeing with them makes you de facto evil, but because they’re constantly feigning stupidity about so many things. Don’t get me wrong; liberals often truly believe completely ridiculous things, but they also frequently pretend not to understand the most basic concepts.
The latest example of it was during the government shutdown.
Despite the fact that Republicans voted in favor of opening the government 14 times and had no conditions on reopening it, Democrats endlessly insisted that it was Republicans shutting down the government. They universally repeated it over and over again, non-stop, for the whole length of the shutdown. That is, until some Democrats finally voted with Republicans to reopen the government, and then they IMMEDIATELY shifted to being angry that the government was being reopened.
There are numerous examples of how this worked, but let’s just point to these BACK-TO-BACK tweets from Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Minority leader:
As you’ll notice in the first tweet, he blames Donald Trump for the longest shutdown in government history, and in the second tweet, he noted that he wasn’t supporting the bill that reopened the government when it passed. How do you have dialogue with people who have no compunction about lying for weeks and then switching stories on a dime with no explanation?
The classic example of all of this was Obamacare. Pretty much everything Republicans said about the bill was true, and everything the Democrats said about the bill was a lie. The lying was so egregious that even the liberals at PolitiFact pointed to just one part of it as their lie of the year:
Did they ever apologize for lying? No. Did they ever admit the Republicans were right about the bill? No. Did they ever say, “Well, I guess if we had to tell lies to pass it, maybe it should have failed in the first place, and we should repeal it.” No.
It has been even worse on the trans issue…
* They pretend you can just change your sex at will.
* They pretend not to comprehend that they’re encouraging kids to do this in schools.
* They pretend that there’s no difference between letting a man or a woman share a female locker room, bathroom, a women’s shelter, or a prison.
* They pretend there’s no physical difference between men and women, so it’s fine for men to compete in women’s athletics.
Everything about it is them pretending not to recognize things every child grasps about men and women.
What else is the debate about guns other than liberals pretending not to be aware of the obvious? We see the same thing repeated over and over again:
Even setting aside the Constitution, liberals pretend like they can’t discern why law-abiding people wouldn’t want to hand over their guns, even as liberals publicly celebrate the murder of conservatives, allow criminals and left-wing rioters to run wild, and are outraged that Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself with a gun against liberals trying to kill him instead of just dying.
When you point out to liberals that defunding the police and allowing criminals to break the law endlessly without putting them in jail leads to a lot more crime, they pretend not to understand what you’re talking about. They don’t even say, “Why surely the guy who has been arrested 40 times is about to turn it around and become an upstanding citizen,” you just get a shoulder shrug, as if it’s something out of their control, like whether it rains or gets dark at night.
* They are unable to perceive why white people don’t want to be discriminated against with DEI programs.
* They can’t get why decent people wouldn’t want pervy drag queens reading to their kids.
* They don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to block traffic, tear down statues, or deface art just because they feel like it.
If you listen to liberals, they pretend not to understand anything, except how to micromanage the whole country, even if they’re mentally ill, miserable, and spend all day on Reddit. Oh wait -- they may not be able to decipher the incredibly obvious reason you’re asking something, but they do always claim to understand your REAL MOTIVATION for bringing up a subject they’re pretending not to get:
How bad is it? Well, Matt Walsh rather famously made AN ENTIRE MOVIE about the inability of liberals to define a woman, something pretty much everyone from cavemen on has been able to handle without a lot of trouble:
Try explaining your problem with the idea of manmade global warming, socialism, or the dangers of refusing to secure the border, and they just don’t get it. Somehow, they claim that they can’t understand what you mean.
How do you have a dialogue with people who behave like this? You don’t, which is exactly how they like it.
You see, these people have tied their whole identities to ideas they can’t intellectually defend. What happens if they have a real and honest debate? They’ll have to admit that the other side isn’t just evil; they’re actually right about a lot of things and have good points. Guess what happens if you’re a liberal and you admit that? Well, the left is closer to a religion than an ideology these days, and if you stray from their doctrine, your friends and allies start treating you like a heretic. Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and JK Rowling could tell you all about it.
The problem with all of this is that it makes it impossible to simply talk our issues out. They don’t care about logic or who wins a debate; they just know what they know, and they find a way to not understand anything that contradicts what they know. They’ve become the embodiment of that famous Talleyrand quote:
Good luck talking with them, working with them, or getting through to them. The only thing people who love their country can do at this point is try to beat them.
This is a topic that I have been deep into for decades.
When asked why I spend any time posting on a left leaning Substack or left news source comment board, I say "Not to change any leftist mind because their minds are corrupted beyond repair. I am writing to provide the missing facts and contrasting views for the few that are reading not having been completely indoctrinated."
I think it was Reagan that said, "It is not that our liberal friends are ignorant; it is that they know so much that just isn't so."
I have lived in a liberal college town for over 45 years. Early on I tried like hell to engage. I am always seeking to fill my own blind-spots and eliminate my biases that might be in error because of missing information and perspectives. I had been worried that my view that these highly academic-credentialled people had lobsters crawling out of their ears when they expressed their views was MY PROBLEM for not understanding enough. I worked at this for years. It included participating in city commissions, meeting leading citizens for coffee, lunch and a beer after work. I got to be close with a lot of people that are hard core liberals.
What I determined in the end is that my liberal friends are a different species of human animal with respect to cognitive wiring. What I concluded is that critical thinking is a circle where information is collected, analyzed and processed... including all the criteria including consequences, and a rational and pragmatic cost-benefit choice derives. Liberals short-circuit that process into a half circle where they stop and decide based on how they feel about the choice. Their feelings overwhelm the pragmatic considerations and the logical consequences. Frankly, it is childish behavior "I WANT THAT CANDY NOW!".
Haidt covered this. His testing from all over the world concluded that liberals are a different cognitive species. They operate almost exclusively on the moral filter of care/harm. And when we accept that egoism is the ubiquitous motivation of all human animals, the typical liberal is prioritizing choice over THEIR harm and care. I can see it... most of the liberals I know are not happy people. They are unsatisfied with something about their life. Their career. Their family. Their looks. Their (fill in the blanks). They are resentful and have these gaps in their emotional and psychological health. This is proved with the much higher diagnosis of mental and emotional health issues with liberals. This makes them resentful of others they see as being happier. They are mean, nasty, cynical, resentful and seek retribution as causing their misery... when their misery is generally from their own choices and behaviors.
The way I look at them... they are like adult-aged children seeking control over others. They never fully developed to well-functioning adult state. But they stayed in school longer and got credentials and certifications and went out and took over our institutions. So, we have these incapable and incompetent "smart people" running the world. It is beyond dangerous.
We will never move their needle with logical arguments. However, there is a secret to winning as their emotions can be so easily tweaked. The method is to jack them to high emotional turmoil and then periodically show how much you care for them and want to reduce the harm being caused them. By jacking them like Trump does they show their crazy. That is good to help prevent their absurd ideas from being mainstreamed as the electorate sees the crazy. Then by giving them care attention, it knocks them off guard. They live off the energy of rage and resentment and when you say the soothing words the crave it stops their engine for a while... and during that bit of time might cause them some self-reflection.