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Liberals Are Being Mugged by Reality
Are we witnessing the end of liberal fascism? I had a couple of interesting conversations at the gym that made me think we might. The first was with an older liberal woman who claimed not to be a liberal but still acted like one. We had an animated conversation where I deconstructed the liberal theory of white privilege. I presented hard evidence from a source she trusted, fully expecting her to simply ignore it like liberals always do.
But she did something different. She offered to talk to me again after finishing her swimming laps. She swam around for about an hour and a half–and then we talked again and she acknowledged reality. No ideological panic or denial of reality. She accepted the hard data I presented. I’ve never seen a liberal do that before. Afterward, we had a very lovely conversation about white ethnic and class diversity.
The second liberal–an older greeny who also claimed not to be a liberal while spouting their talking points–and I had a wide-ranging conversation from nuclear power to white privilege, then the topic turned to African Americans. I knew liberal environmentalists looked down on North American Blacks as an ethnic group but I had no idea how deep the contempt went. He felt such contempt for ethnic NA Black culture that he thought liberal Black racial constructions of victimless and powerlessness–which he acknowledged were harmful–were an improvement.
This is the culture that produced the Black church and blues music and underwent ethnogenesis while in slavery on another continent. I pointed out that North American Black ethnic culture has historically not glorified violence or been in thrall to gangs–this is a people who survived slavery, built schools and universities, and saw massive wage growth in the early 20th century. Yes, their communities are currently being preyed on by organized criminal elements whose gangster culture is glorified in the media, but they will defeat it. People experiencing ethnic failure do not grow to 40+ million people.
North American Black people do not need liberal racial constructs and a mythology centered on victimization and powerlessness to have self-respect. They have everything they need in their own ethnic history and identity–they don’t need white people to engineer an artificial “racial identity” for them.
In this case, the guy didn’t acknowledge I was right–yet he seemed to take my words seriously nonetheless. Even if he wasn’t quite ready to embrace reality, he was at least willing to take it seriously. That’s a huge change.
I think we might be witnessing the end of 21st-century liberal fascism. Both of these people denied they were liberals or progressives and both were willing to listen to rational arguments–and at least one changed her mind while the other was clearly tempted. That’s a huge change.
Published in General
I suspect as I always do, that those who seem to have changed will be back to original form within 24 hours. It will be as if this conversation never happened.
I find that this is so overwhelmigmly true that I now simply assume it and accept the penalties for a vanishing few victories.
Still, I do hope that some of the edge-lefties are falling off.
I was talking to a late-middle-aged lady yesterday about the weather, and how the farmers like the rain, and the talk turned to California getting over the drought. I mentioned how they have to dump a lot of water because they lack capacity to store it, how they’ve been removing dams for ecological reasons, and how it was like cutting back on reliable energy sources to rely on wind and solar. She had heard all about that and thought it was a strange set of self-inflicted policies.
(pause)
“I like their governor, though,” she said.
(me: internally screaming)
“Well, he’s probably running for president.”
“I hope he does!”
The mistake is in thinking liberals can be reasoned out of what they weren’t reasoned into.
The problem is most people on the left will never stoop to have one-on-one, fact-based conversations with people like you and me.
Back in early 2005, a blogger (nowadays goes by “thenewneo”) I’ve been following for many years now began a series of posts titled “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change”, which she has continued adding to all along the way, to the present day. She has recently expressed the inclination to turn the series into book form. I really hope she does.
Until then, …
Here’s an excerpt from the introductory post of the series:
“When I first started this blog, one of the things I was sure I’d do an awful lot of writing about is what it means to change one’s mind on a topic as fundamental and emotional as politics: who does it, why they do it, how they do it. I thought I’d explore the ways in which “changers” differ from those who don’t ever change, and the repercussions changers face among friends and family who often consider them to be pariahs. …”
For the rest, if interested, start here (scroll to the bottom):
https://www.thenewneo.com/category/a-mind-is-a-difficult-thing-to-change/page/2/
This reminds me of a discussion I had with my wife’s “Aunt” Maebelle (actually a second cousin or something) who was in her 80s at the time. Maebelle was very politically astute, and a “strong independent woman” — owned her own business for awhile, etc., even back in the ’40s.
This was during the Clinton administration. Maebelle couldn’t stand Clinton. Her comment that I remember most vividly was, “I vote in every election, but I’d gladly give up the right in order to take it away from all the women who voted for Clinton simply because they secretly want to sleep with him. I hate to be hard on my own sex, but that’s how it is.”
I’d love to read a book like the one the blogger is contemplating. Urge her to do so. Let us know when it comes out.
It’s not just women. I know a lawyer — I don’t know what he does, he’s so closed-mouthed about it — but his wife suggests that he’s some big time drug prosecutor. He said he was against Clinton until one day when the presidential limo was parked in front of his eyes and he looked in, and saw Clinton. Clinton smiled big, and waved and said, How you doing? And the lawyer says that he was absolutely pro-Clinton ever since.
I get the impression he knows it’s crazy, but he’s completely taken with the man’s personal charisma.
For those here who support nuke power, don’t fret about it.
The PTB fully know that the centralized solar and wind farms will not work out in the short run.
The equipment will fail within to 6 to 8 years.
By then the CCP supported Revolution will have cornered our society, and those of all Western nations, to the point that the real agenda can come out.
Part of that real agenda will be to re-introduce nuclear power.
Of course, if the current de-pop program continues, the people who know how to build the nuke plants and operate them might not be around any more, so then what?
I don’t know. My guess is that will end up being the very well deserved karma of the top 300 families and their stupid idea to move 350 million people from developing nations in Western societies. (See UN Commission On Migration, if desiring the citation.)
A person has to hand it to Bill that had there been just a bit more time available in his schedule, he could have fulfilled the wet dreams of all the women who had voted for him.
He was such a cad that even Rolling Stone reporters took him to task for his sexism.
Voting Democrat has nothing to do with logic. It is all about feeling good.
This reminded me of the following 1998 article, which begins thusly:
“At the cocktail hour on Friday, Jan. 30, in a private room at Le Bernardin, 10 Manhattan women gathered to drink wine and talk about the only topic anyone talked about all week. To analyze the telltale stains on a White House intern’s dress, to debate the Clinton Doctrine ( does oral sex constitute infidelity?) and to decide which is worse, [redact]ing a humble intern or secretly tape-recording your friend.
The panelists included Erica Jong, whose Fear of Flying introduced the concept of the “zipless [redact]”; Nancy Friday, author of The Power of Beauty ; retired dominatrix and writer Susan Shellogg; fashion designer Nicole Miller; Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After ; Marisa Bowe, editor of Word ; Patricia Marx, former Saturday Night Live writer and author of How to Regain Your Virginity ; restaurateur Maguy LeCoze, owner of Le Bernardin; and Elizabeth Benedict, author of The Joy of Writing Sex .
The consensus, as Ms. Jong expressed it, was that a Presidential “[redact]about” was far better than a “fascist pig” like Kenneth Starr. Maybe it’s that women are too smart about human nature in general and men in particular, too savvy to take all this seriously or be suckered into another hysterical media psychodrama. Among those who could imagine having sex the President, none could imagine not telling someone about it. And as for the female preoccupation with the link between sex and love, “the only person who minds that Bill Clinton’s having sex without being in love,” said Ms. Benedict, “is Ken Starr.” Ms. Shellogg, the ex-dominatrix, wondered if the President wore a condom.
In any case, the 10 of us overcame our individual misgivings about the Clinton Presidency (What about health care? Bosnia? Welfare? Gays in the military?) to talk raucously about Clinton, the guy who loves women too much. …”
https://observer.com/1998/02/new-york-supergals-love-that-naughty-prez/
I’m pretty sure that if Bill had been wearing a condom, there wouldn’t have been a stain on the dress.
Also kinda pointless – and distasteful, in the OTHER sense of the word – for oral anyway.
Spoken like a true urban Minnesotan, unfortunately.
My husband and I got to know a charming security guy out in the Black Hills when we were artists-in-residence at a resort there. The guy was a former Miami cop, and though we didn’t discuss politics very much, it seemed that he was generally conservative in his views. Tom Daschle came by the resort from time to time, and one day he shook our friend’s hand and said his name – and that was enough for him. He voted for Tom Daschle after that solely because Daschle remembered his name.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
So many people are so shallow, and it’s not just – but I think it is still mostly – women.
One need look no further for proof thereof than the fact that not a single one of our Presidents since the passage of the 19th Amendment has sported either a mustache or a beard, let alone any sideburns. Faces as smooth as a baby’s bottom, all.
PS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s92UMJNjPIA
Some people simply have zero defense against supposed “charisma”. It’s a mode of failure.
Neoteny busting out.
Obama had a beard. (Still does. )
Under-rated comment.
I was always bemused by party members I’d meet here at election time. They were invariably men who would be going from door to door canvassing for their man. In the 80’s and 90’s it made a kind of sense as people retained a memory of what the differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were. Nowadays it’s quite pitiful to see the local party faithful, still usually men, completely unrepresented by the leaders of their own party, but still persisting in their door to door supplications. Still clinging on to some memory of what the party used to be.
A variation on that is true in our county. So many of the old guard work faithfully on behalf of a party whose leadership despises the elders.
i don’t know any other word for it. I don’t know what constitutes it. But it’s real and personal. I’m not impressed that people fall for it but rather that it exists in the first place.
I’ve read of Germans who watched Hitler and disliked and disagreed with him but by the end of his speeches they were at least momentarily caught up in and agreeing with his rhetoric. That’s odd, but not the same thing as people instantly and irrationally liking and a guy for life just because he smiled and spoke a few words to them.
It seems more than just suck-upiness and herd mentality. Do you have any thoughts on what this phenomenon is?
I’ll just take a stab at it from an evo-bio perspective: a species which develops a propensity to produce charismatic leaders (think a chimp who for some reason garners respect with his every hoot and grunt) will also tend to produce followers who are impressed with some combinations of hoots and grunts. The combinations will differ. If these bands of chimps do better for having their internal differences quashed, then this propensity would A) increase in proportion to those who don’t have it, and B) refine into ever more specialized preferences for hoots and grunts over time.
None of the chimps would be able to put their finger on quite what it is.
It might not be so bad if those who seem to have a propensity for being followed, had more on the ball in the brain dept. Too often they seem to be stupid but somehow persuasive.
Being a lefty means developing the ability to understand the factual basis and context of issues while still voting entirely on sensibilities, flavors, signalling and rhetorical fluff.
Why do you think they actually have – or need – the ability to understand the factual bases and contexts of issues?