During the war with Iraq, I was horrified that there were “children’s prisons.” To punish the parents, their children would be imprisoned without food water or sanitation. The heat would bake the screaming, crying children (many were placed in these hell-holes together) and the parents could listen through the grate as their cries got quieter and then stopped. Just a big earthen room with a grate on it - no ventilation, food, water, sanitation. Just throw kids inthere and forget about them - to punish the parents.
So, ahem, I didn’t have a problem with US presence in Iraq. I wound up having lunch with peers at a company. We ordered and everyone was chatting about how only decent people are leftists, and someone pointed to me and outed me as conservative. All heads turned my way and one woman said my name in a pained, faltering tone. I said if I told them about children’s prisons, none of us would want the meal the waiter was about to bring us. I was “allowed to remain” at the table because there was an assumption that I allowed my “soft heart” soften my head as well. (I never said children’s prisons were the only reason)
They were so sure that “Republican=Evil” that the fact they had known me for decades and respected me could not come close to making them wonder if their virtue “rules’ were perhaps too rigid or faulty. Their need to emote virtue is weird and it almost seems driven by guilt; if you know you are virtuous, wouldn’t your virtue entail humility and you’d just keep your head down and live?
They have a psychological need to believe that we don’t have morals or rules (that lets them assume they are automatically superior and that they should be in charge of us) so they never pause to think that we don’t want to be around them, rent from them, put up with them.
We’re just more tolerant than they are; we don’t admire them; (often) we don’t respect them. We are more tolerant so you don’t hear us demand their political views before we deign to interact with them and they insert that little piece of observation into their vanity - since we don’t work to screen them out socially they assume they we acknowledge they are just....”better”. Narcissism works that way. Narcissists spend all day criticizing others and since others are not as critical as they are, they assume they are without fault. WRONG of course, but they reason if they had a flaw everyone would point it out (is as critical as they are). I don’t want to become them and act like they do. But, it’s just weird to see the bubble around them become so complete; they don’t know and they can’t know because they don’t want to know.
"Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions."
Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals....#5.