Happy Tuesday FRians! Today’s post is by Stephen Hall. Thanks as always, Stephen!!!!
About a week ago I was glancing at the leftist “cause d’jour” and began to wonder, not why, but how leftist can so readily embrace new beliefs and causes, go forth and champion the new cause as if it was the oppression of the century, then turn on a dime and do the same with the next, and the next, in a seemingly endless parade of histrionics.
We are all aware that this often leads to frequent contradictions by leftists of those very beliefs they previously espoused in some other cause or crusade, and one has to admire that level of intestinal fortitude to withstand the enormous strain of such cognitive dissonance and yet remain true to their ever changing, I mean evolving, leftist ideology.
However, it is not this acceptance of contradiction which concerns me, at the moment, but rather the adoption of the new beliefs and causes. It is like having a conspiracy theorist wake up one day and decide that it is not the lizard people running the world through the illuminati, but the space aliens running the world through the girl scouts. (And we all know that the girl scouts are the original source of all evil plots.)
How does one suddenly wake up one morning, hear their comrades discussing how denial of trans-identity is driving teen suicides, then march in protest and make signs (or carry spiffy pre-made signs provided by Soros), and want to suddenly punch everyone who does not think that this is the most immediate, dire threat to the existence of our nation, our civilization, and our way of life?
Or the following week that an oil pipeline across a barren wilderness will destroy that barren wilderness that just a week before neither you nor your comrades have ever heard about, can’t locate on a map, but you have absolute certainty that it is that evil Rockefeller/Standard Oil/Exxon which seeks to destroy the environment, simply because that nice Mr. Buffett, who just so happens to own those oil tank bearing railroads competing with that pipeline, told you about the evil pipeline.
Or two weeks ago that gasoline powered automobiles and eating hamburgers are going to destroy the environment by creating through the destructive power of capitalism the very global climate system through the mechanism of either heating the planet and turning Earth into the planet Dune, without all that lovely Spice and Sean Young, or into a frozen wasteland of Hoth, again without the cool Tauntauns or Carrie Fisher, mostly depending on whether it is currently summer or winter.
How does one go from predicting the planet to become a raging inferno to a frozen wasteland? It is always the same reasoning, because the “experts” said so. They have charts, data, and/or personal testimony, sometimes even computer simulation models.
(I have computer simulation models which say that I am a magically imbued sorcerer to prove that I really am . . . or that may just be a computer game . . . I’m not going to test it.)
The fact that the data supporting the cause d’jour is cherry picked, such as a climate trend which just so happens to begin at an unseasonably cold period to show that the world is getting warmer, or data showing unusually high rates of suicide in pre-op trans-sexual teenagers, ignoring the high rates of suicide in post-op, but no matter.
We all know the ready dismissal of factual information contrary to the ideological position of the current cause celebrities, and the temptation reasonable people always face of trying to actually argue those pertinent points of fact only to have their sources dismissed, the facts dismissed, or their motives questioned.
You are all literally Hitler for opposing them, regardless of whatever it is that you happen to be opposing them on this day.
This aftermath we have all witnessed, but what is it that causes such people to subscribe to new populist beliefs? It is not reason, for we know that every former leftist was snapped out of their revery by having to face up to the reality of facts which stubbornly refused to conform to their ideology.
But, all of their friends readily conform to that ideology, so why won’t the facts? After all, the “experts” assured them that this was the truth, didn’t they?
The conformist conforms. That is to say that most people being conformists, tend to accept the assertions and conclusions of those whom they trust, whether such trust is established through friendship, expertise, idolatry, media, or politician.
Further, a convergence of sources which reinforce one another creates a powerful harmonic resonance. When every “reputable” media outlet is quoting political figures citing certified experts on an issue and your friends display their agreement with both those authorities and those experts, and those opinions are validated by the celebrities you idolize, then it seems that the whole world, or all of that world you know, is in agreement.
There is an apparent consensus of the cause d’jour, and that consensus curtails the individuals’ curiosity and inquiry. One person tells you something which sounds to you a bit odd, and that person having no special authority, you might inquire to examine to see if what they told you is true or false.
However, if everyone is telling you something, from various positions of authority, then why would you bother to question the obvious consensus of people you believe have already thoroughly examined the veracity of the proposition?
Humans create mental shortcuts. This is both a strength and a weakness of the species. It allows for them to accept facts and absorb knowledge simply by being told that it is so by those who are deemed by that human to be worthy of trust; contrarily, it makes them susceptible and vulnerable to deception, fraud, and false ideology by those whom they trust who are not worthy of that trust.
Misplaced trust is the real phenomena behind the idea of “group-think”, or cults, or ideological movements. One could argue that this is the real value of children learning about Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or many other childhood tales throughout the ages. It teaches them that authority figures can lie, that the consensus of their friends can be wrong. It teaches them a healthy scepticism of what they are told.
This is also where and why our educational system is so failing these young people. We have an educational system which rewards and encourages “feminine” qualities of cooperation, discussion, group oriented problem solving, of accepting and regurgitating what they are told without question.
That is not to say that an entirely “masculine” system would fare better in teaching our children, because of that advantage of being able to trust authority in general rather than the mantra of “question everything” or a certain actor in a movie being asked what he was rebelling against, to which he replied, “What have ya’ got.”
Upon seeing the relationship between the feminized educational system and the SJW mental handicap of blind acceptance of any well promoted idea, no matter how ridiculous it is, I find myself wondering just how much the broken homes and bastardization of America plays into this mentality.
(By bastardization I do mean literally the creation of a nation of effectively fatherless children growing up in single parent homes without a father.)
How do you subscribe to a new political cause every week? By being mentally and emotionally weak.
I know many of the readers of this post are mentally and emotionally strong, and that, single or married, have strove to, and succeeded at, rearing strong, independent children. Or, are themselves those same strong, independent children.
Give a thought to those who are not. Understand just what it takes mentally to blindly accept what everyone around you says. You then understand why it becomes necessary to exclude those who would disagree with the consensus, to be angry at those who would challenge you. This is the core of the leftist mentality, a rejection of any disturbance of “The Force”, the leftist religion of societal consensus.
How dare you be different!
