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The Dangerous Beliefs of Non-Believers
One of progressivism’s many problems is that it doesn’t work. But I think a more serious problem is its tendency to dissociate its followers from reality. The abandonment of rational thought and deductive reasoning would appear to be a requirement for admission into the progressive club. Those untethered from rational thought tend to be guided largely by their emotions, and thus become more passionate about their beliefs, even if they don’t make a great deal of sense. Congressperson Ocasio-Cortez was asked recently how America could pay for “Medicare for All” (which somehow sounds less scary than “Socialized Medicine”). She answered incredulously, “We’d just pay for it.” She couldn’t believe someone could ask such a stupid question. Soon thereafter, she told an interviewer that she couldn’t afford an apartment in D.C. until she started getting her paychecks as a Congressperson. Some might find that odd:
This may simply be an example of the intoxicating effect of opium – my pet name for OPM (Other People’s Money). To paraphrase Milton Friedman, it is nearly impossible to be rational when spending other people’s money on other people. Perhaps she views her own money as limited, but Other People’s Money as limitless. One can be forgiven for finding the billions and trillions of dollars in the national budget to be difficult to comprehend. But it’s still finite.
I will acknowledge that part of this disconnect in her mind is probably related to the left’s strained relationship with the concept of scarcity, but that’s a subject for another post.
But I think that this really is just another of many examples of the disassociation from reality that the left demands of its followers. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez can apparently balance her own checkbook, but when someone asks how we should manage our country’s finances, she doesn’t even seem to understand the question.
What I’m trying to say is that since the left has no real underlying ideology, and it requires its followers to distance themselves from reality and rational thought, it can be hard to keep up with the left’s delusion of the day. Even leftists have trouble keeping up with what they’re supposed to be angry about at any given time. The gentleman in the picture below is representative of the difficulties of the left keeping up with its own evolving interpretations of reality:
The obvious advantage of this loose relationship with reality is that it gives the left more flexibility in debating those on the right, since the right is more constrained by concepts of right and wrong, ideology, and rational thinking. There are problems with the philosophical flexibility of leftism, however.
It can be hard to keep their base angry about, um, whatever it is they’re supposed to be angry about today. Which is different than what they were supposed to be angry about yesterday. When someone gets angry about something, eventually they tend to get over it. So it’s important that the left shifts the focus of its anger regularly, to keep the base fired up. If your political movement is based on anger and jealousy, then you need to keep people angry and jealous. And you can’t maintain that, for decades, without constantly coming up with new villains, like SUV’s or Brett Kavanaugh. That makes sense, I guess, but it can be hard to follow.
The flip side of this is that conservatism can be boring. “You’re still prattling on about federalism? Geez, Move On!”
So I understand the desire of those on the left to keep it fresh, but I think this makes the left vulnerable to charges of being more against traditional American culture than they are in favor of anything in particular. Without the compliance of the media establishment, the education establishment, and the entertainment establishment, these vulnerabilities would be much more serious.
But the most significant problem with the left’s lack of rational, ethical, or ideological coherence is that it makes leftists unpredictable, unreasonable, and at times violent.
It can be funny, watching the left trying to get their unionized factory workers upset about plastic bags, and then next week trying to get their unionized factory workers upset about trans-sexual marriage rights. Or whatever. But it’s an important facet of the modern left.
I view modern leftism as more of a religion than a political movement, and I view Islam as more of a political movement than a religion. The ideology-free ideology of the left makes no sense politically, but the movement is easier to understand if you view it as a religion.
Think about a religion based on anger and jealousy that can convince its followers to believe in, well, absolutely anything (like the gentleman above who just arrived at the political rally – he knows that he believes, but he’s not sure what exactly he believes in yet) – then add to that religion zero tolerance for dissent and no ethical underpinnings – well, at that point you have a very dangerous religion.
Passionate beliefs can be dangerous when they are held by people who don’t believe in anything.
Published in General
So well said. Where does one start when you don’t believe in anything? You ought to be able to specify even one basic principle that is immutable. That doesn’t “depend.”
I’ve often thought of this as a reasonable sounding response but then I point out to myself that it has not been shown that it doesn’t work, unlike socialism where the extreme new progressives want to go.
On the other hand why do our leaders pay any attention to any of them? The theme, issue, meme will be different next week. They’re dangerous but only because some people with influence pay attention to them.
One minor quibble. Progressivism, the belief that government should be grown to address all issues, works very well. Based on the growth of size and scope of the Federal government, it is hard to argue otherwise.
The problem with Progressivism (Leftism) is that they propose solutions that suffer from static thinking. That is, they ignore the consequences of their government actions in picking a solution. This is childish. Conservativism, on the other hand, values dynamic thinking in the form of emergent, time-tested solutions to problems.
Some examples.
(1) In Russia a century ago, successful farmers (the largest industry is farming) were the richest people. To make things “fair” the successful farmers were killed and their lands were distributed to poor people. The poor people not being good farmers failed to produce enough food and 20 million people died from starvation. Leftists are dumb and people suffered.
(2) Stable families make orderly societies, but a half century ago the Great Society programs wanted to be “fair” and started sending checks to families that did not have working fathers. The result that the proportion of fatherless households skyrocketed and unstable families produced disorderly children and the result was a disorderly society. Leftists are dumb and people suffered.
It is really, really hard to design a system that is stable when dynamic feedbacks exist. The easiest thing to do is to duplicate successful systems of the past. Progressives hate the past and assume they are smarter.
The term “abandonment” here understates the true insidiously evil nature of the actions behind the results we now must witness:
The pipeline is now filled with multiple generations whose majorities are programmed precisely to this mutilated cognition knows as Progressivism. To borrow [and slightly modify] a quote from a recent popular email that hit my inbox a dozen times or more:
The future’s so bright…
I saw Ocasio-Cortez on a video of a Skype with some organization that’s supported her. She told so many lies that I lost track. The one stuck in my brain is something like, “We know Progressivism works.” Good grief.
Reality is the source of inequality.
Reality is where resources are not unlimited.
Reality is where the guy who has a marketable skill is materially better off than the guy with a PhD in grievance studies.
Reality is where babies have a biological, not an ideological origin.
Reality does not care what ideology wants and cannot be shamed, guilted or threatened.
Reality, the rational perception of reality and reality’s mirror in logic are always the ultimate enemy of the left.
Reality, in the form of typhus, is rearing its head in Southern California. It seems that ignoring “oppressive” social norms such as sanitation has consequences. Who knew?
One can be forgiven for believing money is no object for government. Fiscal hawks have cried that the sky is falling for decades. Some argue we can outgrow our public debts. And our budgeting system is practically careless of income.
The common assumption on both sides of the aisle is that government should always be growing with new laws, new programs, and new agencies. Funding is assumed as a non-pressing matter of tax adjustments and additional fees.
Ocasio-Cortez is so ignorant she will be a pawn, a tool and a totally reliable vote for whomever she gets herself attached to…and thus she will be in office many years.
I don’t find it odd at all. I find it an indicator of a politically-progessive woman who doesn’t have the concept of maintaining an emergency fund in case of things such as job loss or changing jobs occurs. I’d love to send her a copy of Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace, but it has too much common sense about personal economics in it. Besides, he’s a Christian! Shhhhhhh . . .
It’s so sad I have more knowledge about economics as a physics and nuclear engineering major than this pitiful excuse for an X chromosome-enhanced human being who got an economics degree from a so-called university of higher learning . . .
All Ocasio-Cortez has to do is get a loan for three or four months of her salary and figure it out. She’s going to sleep in her office anyway.
There is so much emphasis today on financial wizardry that the underlying need for productivity is ignored. The people pushing Obamacare depended on the deliberate confusion of providing medical insurance with providing medical care.
This, a million zillion times. I don’t think conservatism or libertarianism can ever work or sell that well until the GOP starts dealing with this. Almost everything is like that, and it starts with the Fed.
Are you wearing shades?
I don’t this is quite true. When I was building restaurants, I had a marketable skill, but the people with anger studies degrees were making more that me; if they had a job, that is.
Let me defend AOC. The US spends a lot on healthcare (>3T/year). A little more than half is paid for by the govt. The smaller half is paid for privately (companies, out-of-pocket,..). He proposal is to get the govt. to pay 100% by using the other half of the money. In the real world, using someone else’s money is taking, so she would have to take about$1.5T/year from companies and peoples pockets. Total spending would not change, just who writes the final check.
Now anybody on the Right knows the problem with healthcare is not lack of govt. control, but low productivity and restricted supply. The fix is to unleash the free market and figure out how to provide more healthcare for less money.
No. Everyone on the right knows that government is inherently inefficient. We won’t get Medicare for all, we’ll get the VA for all.
Like @dong , I think I understand Ocasio-Cortez’s point that we use the money private entities pay to pay for government medical care. I don’t believe it, but I understand the theory. Nonetheless, that Ocasio-Cortez can’t even explain it cements my opinion that she is not very bright. It is possible she does not herself understand what she is trying to say.
I think that’s probably true. Take the same amount of money we already spend on health care, funnel it through the government, and spend it on government healthcare. Of course, it’s less coming out the other end after government takes it cut.
She’ll probably be President in 2024, 2028 at the latest.
I tend to think that Ocazio-Cortez’s biggest fans are doing her as great a disservice as her harshest critics. A ceaseless media spotlight is the best way to guarantee that she will continue to play her present character. Ignore her and she might actually learn something from serving in office. Keeping in mind that from where she’s starting “something” would be a 100% improvement..
All told though, if the Democratic Party is going to have a prominent left wing I’d rather have it lead by an economically illiterate naif than a septuagenarian pinko, who looked the real life Soviet Union in the eye with all its bloody horror only to lean in for a kiss.
Every time I hear something coming out of this genius, I think back to how the left portrayed Sarah Palin and roared at her. Now we need some conservative comedian to step up to the task of doing the needed portrayal, as there’s little chance that Democrats will “grasp” the parallel without a mirror to see her in….and she looks like she’s set to provide plenty of material. Of course, there is Maxine Waters. But maybe the new arrival doesn’t qualify for the protection of minority status?
I wonder if the Democrat party is going force those young brain-dead socialists to get some media training. A reporter asked Illahn Omar why she won. Omar responded that “it was a racist question, and I’m not going to answer it.” She is going to be a train wreck. My congressman. What a Kook.
No what we will end up with is Medicaid for all. Ask anyone from a consumer to a provider how well that works….
Not quite all. I’m sure that certain elected Federal officials and the upper levels of the nomenklatura will be the more equal animals. Probably something like on the public set of books they get Medicaid like everyone else, but private bills with mutual backscratching sweeten the deal for their doctors and give them access to the VIP floors of the hospitals.
I am so angry about Republican leadership on health care I can’t think straight. They should’ve waited a year and gotten their act together.
BOHICA
No kidding. This could get really bad.
If she becomes too much of a PITA to the crony capitalist-style Democrats, they can in 2020 redistrict her out of a safe seat, since her current district already has some unusual quirks as it crosses the western edge of Long Island Sound between the Bronx and Queens (Albany tried to do that in the 1970s to hyper-progressive Bella Abzug — Ocasio-Cortez’s far less-well packaged predacessor. They gerrymandered Abzug into another district where she was pitted against less controversial liberal Democrat Bill Ryan. But she lucked out because Ryan died two months before the primary election, and Bella got to showboat the following year on the Senate Watergate Committee, before calling for the impeachment of Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon).