The Arrogance And The Ignorance

Separately, arrogance and ignorance are some of humanity’s worst traits. Together, when coupled with power, they achieve “weapon-grade stupid” status. This is the marinade of the “gang of four,” the “progressive” Congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar – who I’d accuse of having exponentially more social media followers than accomplishments, but it’s impossible to multiply by zero. This week we witnessed why those two traits together are such a problem for Democrats, and it was hilarious.

Individually, the Gang of Four have strung together an uninterrupted string of gaffes, stupid statements, and racist comments that would humiliate your average teenager. But what they possess individually is nothing compared what happens when they come together, they manage the mathematical impossibility of a collective IQ drop.

When they were spending their time attacking Republicans, Democrats weren’t bothered. What’s an embarrassing anti-Semitic comment or quoting a Nazi sympathizer (of having your chief of staff wearing a shirt glorifying a Nazi collaborator, as AOC’s did) when their vitriol is directed toward Republicans? Sycophantic journalists, who use their preferred nickname “The Squad,” either ignored or defended these “misunderstandings.” It’s all fun and games when your enemies are taking all the fire.

As if to prove karma is real, the Gang is now firing down the Democratic Party’s trench. After years of Democratic establishment sitting in the castle, laughing as their social justice warriors burned the town below, they’re now in the castle setting fire to everything.

Nancy Pelosi tried to keep things calm, but you can’t control the liberal mob, even when you created it. Years of indoctrinating people to believe they’re victims, that racism is everywhere and systemic, has consequences.

After imploring Democrats to keep their disagreements private, to handle them like adults, the Gang of Four accused her of racism. They don’t believe it, but it’s their default response to anyone challenging them.

“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” AOC said. “But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”

AOC tried to deny she’s called her party’s leader a racist, but it’s clear her compulsion caused her to do just that. The other Gang members followed suit. But when you go after the queen, you’d better not miss. And they missed.

People don’t realize it, but the House of Representatives is anything but representative. There are 435 Members, but only a handful matter to any degree, and none matter more than the Speaker. The number of TV hits, glowing profiles, and Twitter followers someone has does not change that simple fact, no matter what people see in a movie or TV show.

The Gang of Four seems to think they run the show, or at least should. They are the worst stereotypes of millennials.

Friday night it blew up. The official Twitter account of the House Democratic Caucus accused AOC’s chief of staff of racism against another Democrat. A member of AOC’s team responded by slamming other Democrats of the crime of not being “woke” enough. A high-ranking New York Democrat implied that “primaries go two ways,” a veiled threat not only against AOC but the whole Gang.

The Gang of Four and their small army of “Justice Democrats” are the perfect combination of arrogance and ignorance.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s that so much they know isn’t so.” He was half right. So much of what they know is not so, but they are also gleefully ignorant. They aren’t interested in knowing what they don’t know, and are absolutely closeminded to the idea that anything they know could be wrong.

An arrogant person can be humbled, an ignorant person can learn. Someone afflicted with a healthy dose of both can’t be told anything.

This new breed of Democrats are the first elected after a lifetime of being inundated with liberal grievance propaganda. What was created to destroy the Republican Party is now metastasizing within the body that birthed it. They aren’t armed with facts, they aren’t armed with debate skills or even an interest in the concept. They demand their way and anything short of absolute acquiescence is seen as an impurity that must be destroyed.

Democrats don’t like it when they’re treated like they treat Republicans, especially by fellow Democrats. Yet that’s what they’re getting now. The personification of the energy they hope to ride to victory in 2020 took them too seriously and turning on their creators like a rabid dog. There’s no reasoning with them because the virtue of reason wasn’t part of the creation process. They were never meant to demand purity from their creators, they were supposed to be the foot soldiers attacking the other side. There is no “safe word” to turn them off, you can only placate them to turn them down.

How the party deals with the destructive Gang of Four will determine a lot about the 2020 election. If the liberal establishment dismisses them out of hand, strips them of the limited power they’ve granted them or supports primary challenges, there’s a chance they’ll lose the supporters who’ve elevated them to media-star status. But if they don’t do anything, if they let them continue to fire down their own trench unchallenged, there’s a likelihood of turning off more moderate voters who aren’t on board with their radical agenda.

The choice is to appease a small group of people who will vote for your party at the expense of a much larger group who might be convinced to, or the exact opposite. We’ll have to wait until next November to find out for sure which way the party will go, but it sure is fun watching them struggle with that question now.

“But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”

The idea that a privileged white Hispanic girl is a “person of color” is laughable. Having a Spanish surname or adhering to the Islamic religion (as is the case with some other newly elected members of Congress) does not impart a skin color. They are all Caucasians by race. And stupid Caucasians, at that.

This new breed of Democrats are the first elected after a lifetime of being inundated with liberal grievance propaganda. ... They demand their way and anything short of absolute acquiescence is seen as an impurity that must be destroyed.

They are emotional and mental children who may not have the emotional intelligence to ever mature. They are the useful idiots cultivated by years of Soviet-inspired indoctrination. I sincerely hope that this is as far as the pendulum will ever swing in this country, because the results if it continues in this direction will be ugly.

"...So much of what they know is not so, but they are also gleefully ignorant. They aren’t interested in knowing what they don’t know, and are absolutely closeminded to the idea that anything they know could be wrong..."

I have long believed that one of the biggest problems with Leftists is their lack of introspection.

But I just finished reading Thomas Sowell's superb book "Conflicts of Visions" and have just started his "Visions of The Anointed", and I believe now that the problem is far worse than a "lack of introspection" as this author alluded to in the statement above from his article.

The "lack of introspection" is manifested in something worse, in my opinion: a deliberate and tactical "lack of introspection", which is far more damaging, and worse than a simple character flaw or close-mindedness.

As I have read this article (thank you again, Kaslin, for posting it) and thought about it, it made me realize a fundamental characteristic of the Left that is vital in all ways to their ideology in every issue they both support and attack: their "belief system" (if it can even be called that) demands that they not critically examine any given stance on an issue.

Leftism must be, and is, more close-minded and exclusionary than even the most stolid of fundamental religious dogmas.

But to give credit to the Left that it is even a close-minded religious dogma is giving it too much credit, because I have come to believe it is a mistake that many of us in opposition to Leftism make: we assume that Leftists are well intentioned, and just ignorant of the facts.

While I believe that much is true of many of what I now refer to as "Liberals" (not "Leftists" whom I categorize much differently) Leftists are malignant in their intentions, and are ultimately and fundamentally more interested in control and power than in "helping people" or "doing the right thing".

Leftists like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros fully understand that their ideology and its dogmas are hokum for the foot soldiers who are their "cannon fodder".

Their "Liberal" supporters often do believe the incantations and declarations of the Leftists, but people like those I mentioned, have nothing but contempt for their supporters who honestly believe their pap.

The thing that Leftism generates and makes it even worse to the uninitiated and un-clued in subscriber to those Leftist views than even the blindest of the most foreign and malign religious fundamentalists we can imagine, is that it can create enormous cognitive dissonance in those people. It is why introspection, especially critical introspection, is discouraged and even forbidden.

Those un-initiated who drink too deeply of the Leftist vision (the "Vision of the Anointed" as Thomas Sowell refers to it) and then critically examine those visions may be put in a place that most people have a great deal of difficulty coming to grips with-that they are not only wrong, but that they have been lied to and used by others for their own purposes. Just as bad, that the things they have been encouraged and led to believe are the only way to help people are, in the end, harmful to people. And worst of all, they are harmful to people and that the people who led them down the path understand that fully.

In reading Sowell's book "Conflicts of Visions" he mentions how Sir Edmund Burke (1729–1797, who is widely viewed as one of the first to explicitly spell out tenets of modern conservative thought and was widely read by many of the Founders) could not bring himself to believe his Leftist counterparts of the day were anything less than well-intentioned.

They, however, did not extend that same forbearance and courtesy to him, and vilified him (and people who subscribed to his views) as being nearly subhuman ignoramuses. Well, if there is one thing you can say about Leftists their views and tactics are certainly consistent over time.

The thing about AOC and the other leftists like her is that I think she may not be a full-blown Leftist...yet. At this point, she and her ilk may be fledgelings who are more like "ignorant liberals" who have not fully made the transition to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros.

In that light, Ocaiso-Cortez and her comrades have served a function to the full Leftists that was beneficial to them, but now that they have turned on their "elders", it could be tough sledding for them going forward.

Personally, the longer this internecine warfare goes on, the better it is for their political opponents, and the country in general, so I fervently wish that to be the case, with them being so hideously annoying to my ear.

But it is well for us to remember that history is replete with people like her who have gained immense power and control by harnessing the anger of ignorant people to her wagon. That is always a danger, and not to be underestimated, no matter how stupid her views and her expression of them are.

I believe that fully as well, Qiviut.

I have decided that once I am finished with “Anointed)I am going to create a thread on Thomas Sowell’s two books “The Vision of the Anointed” (Published 1995) and “A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles” (Published 1987)

These are two books that I have the audiobook, will buy the hardcover, and will also buy the Ebook (so I can mark it up for easy reference) Other books I have like this are “The Road to Serfdom”, “Blacklisted by History”, etc.

I have read many of Sowell’s books, but never these two. I have found that there is much in both of them I have noodled out in exactly the same way on my own, it is encouraging to see that I have come to many of the same conclusions on my own as someone I have held as a hero to me for many years (see my Freep Page) who is exponential levels above me in erudition and understanding.

So far, both are brilliant works.

I haven’t read a lot of books I would characterize as “political science” books, though some like “The Road to Serfdom” counts as one among a few.

But, I am looking for answers. I am sadly puzzled as to how a people (Americans) with a history that should make us all proud and that should give us so much in common, have seemingly become split into two parts that appear to be irreconcilable.

These two books address that exact subject. I can thank Dan Bongino for pointing me to them, because even though I have read many of Sowell’s works on economics and race (which all have elements that shine light on these political divisions) none have focused MORE on this aspect of the ideological differences I see manifested.

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