Breitbart radio has the greatest callers. Yesterday, a caller explained why he concluded he cannot discuss politics or ethics/philosophy with most people who are leftist. “They don’t care about reality,” he said. For years, he tried to explain to left-leaning people facts they were leaving out, and how insufficiently considered facts would lead to a different conclusion. For example, “Capitalist countries flourish while Communist or socialist countries always end up starving.” Or, “Higher taxes punish the productive and foster recession or stagnation.” He came to understand that his discussion partners simply DO NOT CARE about facts or reality. Once facts get in the way, other facts are over-emphasized or even made up in order to keep the desired conclusion (“Socialism is the way to go”, “We must have higher taxes”, etc.) intact.
Psychologically, this theme has relevance regardless of the topic. It reminds me of a bad marriage, or even a faltering friendship. In such cases, you either have one or both people who don’t care about reality. In the worst case, where both sides are indifferent to reality, it descends into a literal or figurative shouting match. It’s hopeless, and nobody wants to be around it. Just ask children from such marriages. In better cases, one person is rational — not right about everything, but rational, in that he/she truly cares about reality and all relevant facts. The other person does not. As a result, the argument can never be resolved. It’s a truly irreconcilable difference. The rational person, even if wrong about some things, is actually in the right overall. Why? Because the other party does not care about reality and facts, and will ignore or distort facts to make his narrative or version of the truth “true”. Typically, such people make themselves into victims when in reality they’re only victims of the fact that they let their own emotions run the show. And rational people will not permit this.
I see today’s growing political and social crisis as, frankly, unresolvable, for the same reason I see certain marriages or friendships as irreconcilable. We have one side that cares about objective facts, logic, reason and — in the case of politics and justice — the rights of the individual. No, not as consistently as I would like, but largely so. And then we have the other side — the leftist side — that has mostly and (in some cases, like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and others) TOTALLY blanked out on reason, reality, common sense, justice, or anything remotely rational. It’s not tenable. It’s not sustainable. I don’t know how it will all play out, but I do know the present differences between leftists and non-leftists cannot be reconciled. Either leftists will have to learn that millions of others don’t accept their feelings; or non-leftists will have to submit to some kind of a dictatorship where (among other things) the First and Second Amendments are repealed or ignored.
It’s not going to work, because I don’t expect either side to give in or back down. For the right and rational side to eventually win, people who DO care about facts and reality must develop and maintain the strongest backbone you have ever seen. Because, like it or not, we are in for the biggest fight since the American Revolution or the Civil War. It has already started.
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