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Posted on 10/03/2026 7:56:01 PM PDT by simpson96
Feelings are valued, they’re celebrated, more than rational thought is. People with deeply emotional political feelings are certain they have winning arguments. Let’s engage them.
You hate Trump so, so much? Well, that settles it.
And you feel that criminals shouldn’t languish behind bars, even after committing two or however many crimes? Oh, your feelings reflect true justice.
In your heart, you believe that about 15 million people (twice the population of New Jersey) living in the U.S. illegally deserve sanctuaries from immigration enforcement, ones defended by street protestors. . . and they should be given benefits not available to American citizens . . . and their criminal history shouldn’t be held against them? Golly, your kind heart has won the day!
A political approach based on feelings tends to be antithetical to one based on thought. Everywhere from New York dinner parties to Minneapolis streets to California faculty lounges, the feelings approach wages a weepy war to redefine American government.
They’re demanding more now: more apologies, more influence, more guaranteed income. They feel the need for nothing less than a new type of government.
You might have heard of one episode in the founding of American government. It occurred in a brief 1787 exchange between Philadelphian Elizabeth Powel, then the country’s most politically influential woman, and Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Powel asked Franklin whether the delegates to the convention were giving the country a monarchy or a republic. Franklin’s cautionary reply became famous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
In today’s terms, Franklin’s “keep it” bequest could be deemed at-risk. The feelings crowd is now pushing for a socialist republic, which of course would soon become all socialist, no republic. Through angry performances on streets and campuses, they’re campaigning for reverting the American republic that has survived for 239 years to a Russian model that collapsed after just 74 years.
“Progressives” call this progress.
Democrats, Democratic Socialists, and closet Marxists love the feelings-vs-thoughts debate because their partner media always declare the feelings are winning it. Those of us on the other side can only use reasoned thought and language to fight the battle. And while doing so, we’re characterized as coldly intellectual or just plain mean.
Here’s a realistic way to understand this battle. Forget party labels; it’s actually about capitalism versus socialism. Though socialism is fatally flawed and a serial historical disaster, it can never be killed. It’s the Freddy Krueger of utopian dreamers.
Have you ever tried to defend capitalism, especially to a Felicia Feelings-type leftist? Capitalism is actually a tough case to make to meager intellects, especially in an era when critical reading is overwhelmed by critical TV viewing.
Leftists have come to see capitalism as a relic of the nineteenth century, a scheme still run by an evil consortium. The well-read few among them attribute capitalism’s creation to ruthless corporate barons like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and some railroad tycoons. The larger number whose reading list leans toward holiday fables think of capitalism as the product of America’s Ebeneezer Scrooges.
And they maintain a rosy view of socialism by ignoring twentieth century history. Pay no attention to those socialist regimes behind the curtain, Dorothy!
The regimes are all failures. The big one, the failed empire, was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Western Hemisphere model is Fidel’s socialist revolution in Cuba, still working on making that revolution airtight and still delaying the free elections he promised in 1960.
Then there was Venezuela. Pity the voters who in 1999 thought Hugo Chavez’ socialist “economic justice” would enrich them. In 2016, they began seeking protein justice by stealing zoo animals. Buen provencho!
The efficient complex of capitalism is today represented in simple images, the establishment favorite being greedy, scowling businessmen. How many TV programs and movies have you seen that portray business characters favorably? Villainous business storylines outnumber pro-business storylines by at least four-to-one. though the margin seems larger than that, especially in big productions.
Greedy corporate executives and sinister investors provide archetypal fiends. They’re popular villains among the audience of arrested-development adults who find heroes in comic book figures. A capitalist monster movie won an Academy Award for Michael Douglas for his portrayal of Wall Street baddie Gordon Gekko.
You’d think that a big-budget movie would be made about globe-conquering currency manipulator George Soros, “the man who broke the Bank of England.” In character and behavior, he resembles a villain in a James Bond movie. He could be Dr. No No-Bail.
But leftist media mostly ignore Soros or cast him as just a kindly billionaire who taps into his fortune to elect Democrat prosecutors and judges with a compassionate style of law enforcement. That prosecution laxity is approved by city voters who’ve never been mugged.
And how have deep-feeling politicians been evaluated by the deep-feelings media? Special care had to be taken with one political lifer.
That doddering fellow was shown poignant appreciation by the newspaper of record. Endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 election, The New York Times cooed “time and loss have softened his edges.” It observed that Biden “speaks the language of suffering and compassion with a raw intimacy, making deep emotional connections across lines of race and class.” Columnist Jamelle Bouie remarked that the Democrats’ convention framed Biden as a leader “who seeks to provide and protect, while also showing empathy.”
After Joe’s election, the Times hailed Biden’s victory with “the people have chosen empathy.”
Can you hear the soundtrack behind the Times’ screenplay there? It’s a thousand surging strings, a Barry Manilow symphony.
As the Biden basement era progressed and America’s population boomed through its southern border, empathy remained a major priority. CNN described Biden as a leader who is “all empathy, wearing his heart on his sleeve.” As the network’s viewership kept declining, the remaining couch dwellers heard the president reassuringly described as the “comforter-in-chief.”
Do you need a hankie? Maybe an airsickness bag? Let’s move on with feeling to his hyper-emotive would-be successor.
Following her democratic anointing, Kamala’s presidential campaign focused significantly on the subject of “joy,” proposing increases in national joyfulness, and being championed by Joy Reid (the most hatred-oriented comedian ever).
And Kamala’s speeches featured one memorable statement of her belief in several joyous variations. Here’s a montage of her most famous statement.
And recall Kamala’s VP running mate Tim Walz — quickly, before he disappears into a think tank that discourages thinking. (He’s still somehow the Governor of Minnesota.) Walz entered 2024 presidential campaign rallies waving his hands like a giddy cheerleader. Equally disturbing, he was apparently managing his state’s 10-figure — possibly 11-figure — fraud by immigrant Somali entrepreneurs the same way: by happily waving his hands.
Walz at a 2024 Vice-Presidential debate: “Donald Trump makes the people I care about afraid.” Now, that is emotion-only politics. The relevant point isn’t just what saps in Minnesota feel; it’s what Governor Walz feels about their feelings.
A triumphantly successful politician can even feel deeply about the hard facts of economics. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had those feelings of empathy for ordinary Americans (folks unable to make $130 million in stock market gains as she and her husband / stock partner had by legislation-driven whiplashes in the stock market).
Pelosi emphasized the breadth of her ordinary-Americans empathy in a 2009 Capitol Hill press conference, tugging heartstrings and challenging census accounts by emoting, “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, five hundred million Americans will lose their jobs.”
The deep feelings of The New York Times, Biden, Harris, Walz, Pelosi and fellow compassion machines continue being exercised in the service of causes once called “liberal” (though censoriously illiberal), now called “democratic socialist” (though the Marxists in that closet can hardly wait to come out), and on the currently hip trajectory (soon to be revealed as the reanimation of Lenin’s corpse).
Capitalism isn’t supported by pseudonyms. It doesn’t have the nitwit optimism of socialist promises. No, capitalism has just waged a quiet, incredibly successful global crusade against poverty for over two centuries. You can try your best to present evidence of this improvement in human society to a campus mob or an elegant garden party, but you should temper your expectations.
Tell them anyway: Capitalism has been the economic system eradicating poverty worldwide. It doesn’t reinforce poverty as socialism/ communism does. Capitalism inherently functions to encourage the virtues of human character, rather than magnifying human weaknesses commune-style. (Just ask a former member of a commune or kibbutz.) Capitalism is the political philosophy of a healthy, productive society, contrasting dramatically to socialism’s lament of losers.
Socialists are unable to understand how humanely capitalism works. They’re too busy explaining how their system has never been tried properly and ignoring that it’s enforced by dimwitted bureaucrats. And ignoring California.
The United States nears this year’s midterm elections with the very real possibility that these closet Marxists calling themselves Democratic Socialists will win a national foothold from which to destroy the republic. The bad news is that their deep-feeling broadcasts might defeat the rare national product of healthy traditional values and education. The good news is that people with those values and education can still fight back, and a poorly educated generation might learn worldly reality.
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*** A political approach based on feelings tends to be antithetical to one based on thought.***
It’s really anti-reality. Those of us who live in Realville accept reality, and try to make things better, not worse.
It is paved with lost opportunities.
The song “Feelings” has had many covers.
Here is one by the great, irreplaceable Johnny Mathis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdBRtGxFX4M&list=RDqdBRtGxFX4M&start_radio=1
Everything has got to be fair. Its just not fair to deport people who sneaked across the border to just get a job. And on and on.
Author should take his 15 million figure for illegals and double it. President Trump may have stopped the influx and stepped up deportations but there’s still a vast multitude to contend with.
Why IS that Mayorkis fellow still walking free?
I saw a sign in a yard the other day saying, “Vote with your heart, not your head. Vote Democrat”. About choked on that one.
That was a fun read. The author is said to have survived Vassar’s “first coed class.” The joke’s on them if he turned out to be a grumpy old man, in the conservative camp.
I will have to read more of his oeuvres.
Thanks for posting this!
bfl
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