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Is This the Source of the Problem?
I really think Jim Geraghty of National Review has an accurate description of what we are up against as Conservatives attempt to deal with the Leftists’ current behavior. We are trying with civilized political means and discussion to deal with what is at its roots a psychological problem.
To quote from Jim’s column:
Published in GeneralThe more time I spend covering politics, the more I’m convinced that a significant chunk of grassroots political activists aren’t really arguing about politics at all. These folks are actually grappling with personal psychological issues and projecting it onto the world of politics. Every problem they had with a parent is projected onto authority figures. Every religious person who ever scolded them or made them feel guilty becomes the embodiment of organized religion and demonstrates its menace. Because they’ve had a bad experience with a member of a minority group, that experience reveals something sinister about every member of that minority group. The cop who wrote them a ticket instead of giving them a warning demonstrates the danger and corruption of law enforcement, the boss who fired them for shoddy work exemplifies the inherent cruelty of the capitalist system, and every frustrating experience they had with an ex-girlfriend demonstrates some defect in all women.
This is why things get so personal with them so quickly. They cannot distinguish their worldview from themselves, and so if you contradict that worldview, they believe that you have attacked them personally. In their minds, expressing doubt about an accusation of sexual assault means you support rape; scoffing at the need for higher taxes means you’re greedy and want them to endure more financial difficulties; and as a Yale freshman puts it in The Atlantic article linked above, “You can’t devalue a woman’s right to choose and respect women.” Only 31 percent of women believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances — meaning, in the mindset of the student, 69 percent of women do not respect women.
I think there’s something to this.
I had a friend who developed an almost manic distaste for conservatives, eventually including me. She had a very strained relationship with her father. Her father is an outspoken conservative, almost to the point of being obnoxious.
All three of her younger siblings followed suit. They make arguments all day long for their love of “progressive, liberal ideas”, but all of their surrounding friends know deep down that this is a family issue, not political.
This seems apropos.
https://fee.org/articles/the-diagnosis-and-treatment-of-ideological-possession/
They become so close to an argument they cannot see the problems with the reasoning. They don’t ever zoom out, everything is a tangent line; instantaneous.
It seems the new trend in divorcing couples is to try to alienate the kids. I’ve heard more than one spouse wished the other would drop dead, so they didn’t have to deal with them in the future (which you do with children). Easy solution to a complex problem is obliterating the perceived problem.
The idea two good people can have very different views is foreign to many.
Brilliant point.
I think Dennis Prager put it best, we think their ideas are bad, they think we’re bad.
Combine that with the 60’s era narcissim of how they saved the world from nuclear power, Vietnam, civil rights, and then have all of that infiltrating institutions like the media and education.
I think it’s Ilya Shapiro’s hypothesis that both left and right think if only we could get rid of the other side, we’d find this utopia. For the Left, everything is 1968.
So what you have is Vietnam era protest cum comic book movie in real time. A vast global threat threatens to destroy the peace and harmony, and *WE* can be the heroes.
We can save Roe, guys. We need to save Roe. This person is bad, so….
Actually, here in Washington State, there is an initiative on the November ballot that seeks to do precisely that: pass laws against legal gun ownership. The new law if passed would prohibit ownership of ANY semi-automatic rifle of any caliber, defining them all as “assault rifles”, even .22 rimfires. The initiative also requires that gun owners agree to waive their HIPPA privacy rights, and authorizes the state to make regular reviews of health records to determine if gun owners are mentally fit to continue owning their firearms.
Defining gun owners as “ugly, scary and stupid” is already an underlying assumption.
There can be no justice without injustice. There can be no injustice without justice.
Why “can’t” they? Because of the 2nd Amendment?
If they can get enough fellow travelers onto the Supreme Court, they could “Decide” that the 2nd Amendment is – to quote from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation – “a recipe for biscuits.”
“They” already have (passed laws against guns) and are still doing it in many parts of the country.
It absolutely blows my mind, how ignorant Democrats are of guns and gun policy and they don’t care in the slightest.
Blinded by their own genius dude.
Of the militant gun control people, Michael Bloomberg actually had the most rational idea about it in an urban setting, but one which is totally useless in suburban or rural areas, where law enforcement departments are small or distances are huge. Bloomberg while mayor of New York fought for a quid pro quo situation with his championing of draconian gun laws, which was if citizens weren’t allowed to possess them, it was then up to the government — in this case New York City — to provide a massive police presence and do things like “Stop & Frisk” to protect the citizens from the bad guys in the city as much as possible.
In contrast, your average liberal, like the current mayor of New York, sees no quid pro quo. People like Bill de Blasio are just as militant about taking away guns but have also worked to abolish “Stop & Frisk” and decriminalize minor violations that previously had been used to catch major violators. Things like that haven’t shot the city’s crime rate back up to the early 90s six-murders-per-day levels overnight, but you can already see the quality of life starting to slip back, as it started to do in the late 1950s, before everything fell apart under John Lindsay in the late 60s.
Bloomberg also has no comprehension about how long it takes law enforcement to respond to crimes in rural or exurban areas, and how little people in suburban areas want to fund massive increases in their police forces simply so he can take away their guns. It’s an idea that only works in a small, specific area that he happens to live in, and even then it doesn’t have a prayer of working long-term unless someone with his mindset runs the city (see Rahm Emanuel and Chicago for an example of it not working right now).
I’ve heard Rudy Giuliani explain the same thing. He’s sort of apologetic for being a gun grabber but he has a long, intricate explanation on how they make it work. New York City is a unique situation.
I have no idea of how to Google it, but I read a great article buy a lawyer that left corporate law to working something social services related in Bloomberg’s administration. She said the place ran like a watch and actually solved problems. Under Bill de Blasio, it’s a disaster and there’s all kinds of graft. She quit.
Yep.
The thing that just blows me away is, over the last two elections in Minnesota, Bloomberg has spent $1.3 million on electioneering and gotten very little for it. He doesn’t spend a penny on media training for the Democrats and the gun grabbers and they all predictably sound like idiots. It’s absolutely amazing. After all of these years there’s no gun grabber white papers anywhere in this state. All they want to do is grab guns with elections and lies.
I think the Sullivan Act was a Tammany Hall law passed at the behest of robbers and harbor thieves who wanted to make their work safer. They were tired of getting shot at by their prospective victims.
Minnesota gun grabbers: not rocket scientists LOL
Maybe the leadership. They then use fear to blind their followers.
They don’t like guns because they’re afraid of guns. Because they don’t like guns, they choose to remain ignorant.
Hence why the NRA used to have wide ranging gun safety courses.
My kids all shot at the local YMCA camp, and none of them has a fear of guns. My wife, who’s never touched a gun, is deathly afraid of them.
The NRA Instructor program is vigorous and growing. I’ve been an NRA instructor for almost a decade.
What we’re seeing less of is training sponsored by local institutions like schools and churches. Interestingly, some of us have found a new way to open that closed door. Working with Operation Blazing Sword and Pink Pistols, two gay-rights organizations formed specifically to train gays in self defense (who just combined forces), we’ve been able to get some civic organizations to give permission to provide NRA classes at their facilities. People who show up not only get trained, they do it with other people they might not commonly associate with; a salubrious effect.
… including a certain young man named Adolf Hitler , whose livelihood depended on orphan benefits until he was cut off from social assistance at the age of 21 (albeit in Austria rather than in Germany).