Just Who Are These People?

This is the first in a cluster of posts in which I will wrestle with the incredible departure from reason displayed by half of America and most of the human race, but mostly just vent. How in this world did they get that way? Who the %&##! are these people? A fundamental answer will have to wait a few days but be assured I have one.

Actually, I have several fundamental answers, which is something of a problem. There's been a steady beat of posts here on R> trying to make some sense of the madness of the left. None of their explanations were convincing, and mine won't be either.

Today all I have is a snapshot of the madness in progress. It might not offer great insight, but it does illustrate the sheer perverse weirdness of an individual leftist. Matt Yglesias offers up a paean to goofball Cory Booker's recent fauxlibuster stunt. Of course he values the event for its spectacle of resissstanssse,

It was the symbolic resistance we’d been waiting for

but that's nothing new. I guess it does illustrate how the degenerate mind values representation over substance, feeling over reason, and oxytocin over dopamine, but it isn't a surprise. I'll have more to say about two of those choices later, if I don't run out of energy.

Are we all familiar with the rhetorical strategy of motte-and-bailey? Towns in the Middle Ages featured an open and lightly protected expanse, the motte, where the town conducted the business of life. When danger came, the people retreated to the fortified bailey, which they could more easily defend. The New York Times can insinuate the idea that the nation was founded and built on black bodies into every aspect of their considerable reach. When challenged, they claim that it is "nothing more than a historical look at racism in America," as this article in American Thinker put it.

This probably dates me, but John Stewart is one of the foremost practitioners of the technique. Bill O'Reilly aptly called Stewart's variant "clown nose on - clown nose off."

So, the motte is where they push to end fossil fuels, pay endless reparations, open all the borders, trans all the kids... I didn't know the motte had grown so large. When they're called on it and lose an election, they retreat to safety where it's all "protect Social Security for the children" until the storm passes. Right?

No, not right. Here's Matt Yglesias' vision of the motte and bailey (you can click it to read his post if you want):

Ohh kay. In his eyes, the loose and indefensible but good-to-have things in the motte are the issues that I once thought would matter most to the normal, sheeplike left. But this premier leftist considers them expendable. I mean, I thought entitlement programs and fair taxation were must-defend core ideas of the left. Don't they belong in the bailey?

No. For this leftist, the bailey is where they keep and defend the precious: ending fossil fuels, killing the Boer, and preening each others' moral superiority.

The first explanation that occurs to me is that Yglesias has a different vision of the forces he faces than I had supposed. For his application of the metaphor to make sense, I have to assume he's not concerned about fending off criticism from the center but rather he fears attacks from the even-more-over-medicated far-left. He would have his fellow propagandists limit their open talk to easily defended vague soft-left platitudes. When they're attacked by their more virulent compatriots, they switch to the more important extreme positions.

I'm unsure what this moral inversion implies.

Next time out I'll blather and try to not misrepresent what Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Sowell had to say about the question. Just who the heck are these people?

1. Petit verdot, Colterris, Grand Valley, CO 2020