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It’s Better Without Us
I had a fascinating visit with a patient this morning. He is a retired college professor, and (surprise!) is an extremely vocal Democrat. He brings up politics in all his conversations, regardless of the topic. He reads the New York Times every day, watches CNN all the time, and he complains that many voters are so uninformed. “These people don’t know the truth! They’re not even interested in the truth! But still, they go vote! And of course, they vote Republican. If they opened their minds and put just a little effort into learning the truth, they wouldn’t vote Republican. I can’t believe people like that are even allowed to vote!”
Part of his physical exam today was a screening test for Alzheimer’s. As I sat down to give him the results from his test, he sarcastically said, “Did I beat Trump? Ha!” I smiled and said that I wasn’t sure, but I was certain that he scored better than Joe Biden. He looked genuinely surprised and asked if I thought Mr. Biden might be having mental problems. I do not discuss politics at work, and I didn’t want to talk about this. I wanted to talk about his Alzheimer’s test (he got a perfect score). So I changed the subject as fast as I could. But it was obvious that he honestly didn’t know that there was some question of Mr. Biden’s mental functioning. Remember, he reads the New York Times every day and watches CNN all the time. He is dedicated to staying informed about things and commits a lot of time to reading about current events. And he had no idea.
He says that many people are so uninformed that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. But he is completely uninformed. And he votes.
I may be biased because I like the guy, but I really don’t think this is completely his fault. He does put significant time and effort into staying informed. He uses mainstream sources with long-standing reputations as reputable sources – he’s not getting wild conspiracy theories from the far-left fever swamps of the internet. He’s reading The New York Times. He’s watching CNN.
So he considers himself to be well-informed. Understandably.
Very few Russians who read Pravda consider themselves to be well informed. They know it’s biased, so they take that into consideration when they read it.
This guy thinks his sources are neutral. Pretty much, at least. And many people share this view.
And of course, Facebook and Twitter are simply file sharing sites, where people can share ideas with one another. How could they be biased? And Google is just a search engine. How could that be biased?
Imagine if our media treated both political parties with equal skepticism. Just imagine. I suspect that Republicans would win the presidency easily, nearly every time.
I also suspect that the Democrat party would not be this far left. Because they just couldn’t be. Once the media reports how far-out leftist they are, no one will vote for them.
But they know that their extremism will go un-reported. So their party slides further and further to left. There are no brakes.
Without a functioning media, who holds our leaders accountable?
Nobody. That’s who.
So my patient continues to work at staying informed, while he is actually uninformed. Or, more precisely, misinformed. And he continues to criticize those who don’t share his interest in the truth. Understandably.
I wish he would open his mind a bit, but his comfortable illusion is so easy for him to maintain. He doesn’t even have to try. Everywhere he looks, he sees the same thing. No disturbing contradictions. Everything is comfortably consistent. I’m sure that’s very nice.
Getting these people out of their shells will be uncomfortable for them. Change is always uncomfortable, and admitting that one is not as smart as one thinks is extremely uncomfortable.
I don’t really see a solution here. He’s been immersed in this world of ubiquitous leftism for years. And the more young people graduate from these schools who have been similarly immersed in this world of ubiquitous leftism for years, the greater the percentage of simply automatic Democrat voters we have. We can’t convince them to get informed, because they think they already are. Understandably.
No wonder they think the rest of us are stupid. Or insane. Or evil. Our behavior makes no sense in their world. It just doesn’t fit.
We make their comfortably consistent world less comfortable for them. No wonder they prefer that we don’t participate in their comfortably consistent world.
They think it’s better without us.
Understandably.
Published in General
It’s not just that they control the media, the also dominate schools and universities, pop culture, corporate HR departments, and main-line churches. So, the message is reinforced across all sectors of society. It’s harder to convince one of bias when what they are being told by the NYT aligns with accepted norms everywhere else
When the moment comes that the Democrats and the media decide it’s time for Joe to go,
JillJoe doesn’t want to go, and all the negative stories about Biden start pouring out from the big media outlets as a way to convince him it’s time to go, people on the conservative side will sound to any of their bubbled liberal friends like Bill Murray did to Andie MacDowell in “Groundhog Day”, as they’re able to do the same thing Phil did, when he had lived through enough February 2nds at the restaurant he could tell Rita everything that was going to happen before it happened.Conservatives will be able to roll out the litany of Biden transgressions over the past 47 years, including some that the media hasn’t gotten to yet, that liberals who only read The New York Times or watch CNN will have no idea happened.
People who aren’t political junkies (you know, normal people) don’t go online to research every story they hear. If all they do is catch the evening news then they are going to assume it is true . . . and then go vote.
The distinction between the biased Conservative media and the biased Lefty/(D) MSM is that in order to gain access to Conservative media one has to essentially choose to escape the heavily Left leaning culturally dominant MSM and popular culture and seek out Conservative news and opinion outlets
Which is to say, in the culture today the Lefty(D) worldview is ubiquitous, I was not duped into mindlessly following Conservative news outlets by some unknowing accident or secret propaganda scheme, I vehemently disagree with the dominant Leftist worldview as presented by the MSM and actively seek Conservative news and opinion because it gives me some peace of mind to find a worldview I largely agree with.
FIFY
Wow, all this focus on losing in the comments.
Thanks for the OP, an interesting and excellent read. The publishing industry in Chicago was mostly made up of individuals like your patient. Some of them couldn’t resist razzing me with the latest “gotcha” moments they took from CNN headlines or the like. It was great motivation to be on top of the information game. A matter-of-fact explanation of what really happened and why it wasn’t controversial usually was enough to change the grins to frowns.
I wish I could say my motivation was to fight back, but I think it was more along the lines of feeling secure, which is precisely how they wanted to feel in the presence of someone with “dangerous” beliefs. This #walkaway woman has some particular insight on the topic:
My sense is (from reading right-wing sources) that the youngsters of today feel that personal austerity is a small price to pay for righting social wrongs. And to be fair, today’s youth haven’t had the economy that their parents had, and that is one reason so many more of them are still living at home, But when the Biden/Harris Administration further collapses the economy, then they will reevaluate this trade-off and resent that their new life has become worse and with far fewer privileges, opportunities, and stuff than they had before.
Why would Joe go anywhere after he won? He can hole up in the White House and be a shining example for the American people on how to act during the CONVID virus. As long as he can sign and move around his political machine can handle the rest.
Her experience sounds like mine, if you replace education with military policy, and replace the media lying about Trump with lying about Reagan.
What I object to is their willingness to impose impersonal austerity on everyone else.
That’s an even smaller price to pay.
But their idea of “austerity” includes iPhones and stuff.
Zing! That was perfect.
Upgraded biannually with unlimited data. It is their birthright.
Ha. It might be somebody I know. Could be any of a number of professors in a number of departments.
Ha. It might be somebody I know. Could be any of a number of professors in a number of departments in two different colleges, his being one of the two.
I should add that most of them were interesting people and good to work with, and also that their continual comments on political things did a lot to keep me on the conservative side where I voted Republican despite the fact that I can’t stand most Republican politicians. I enjoyed working with the professor types when they were doing science.
Republican politicians are easier for me to tolerate. I just assume that they are stupid. Democrat politicians on the other hand are insufferable. They assume I am stupid.