David Brooks: "The Rotting Of The Republican Mind"

The left spirals down into its own delusional whirlpool of crazy.

   Jane's law claims that the devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant, while those of the party out of power are insane. Currently, the left/Dems are all of those things--smug, arrogant and insane. The right is so far out of power culturally speaking that it'd be hard for them to be smug or arrogant. Both parties seem inclined to insanity to me, though--less the religious part--the right less so. Of the two parties, there really can't be any reasonable doubt that the left is currently crazier. It's basically lost its goddamned mind. It's not that the Pubs are any great shakes. But at least their religious faction is somewhat isolated and out of power. The left has its own crackpot religious tendencies--e.g. the subordination of facts to political correctness. But, sadly, those tendencies are not out-of-power and isolated to a subordinate political sect. Rather: they are running the show...on the left, hence in the country. And any violation of their dogma results in shrieking denunciation by their hoards of flying monkeys. Once you get to the point of saying that people can change their sex--or, basically, do almost anything else--just by saying so, you've fallen off the edge of the world, rationally speaking. Saying so makes it so is, except in a few trick cases, the epitome of unreason. This isn't an ad hoc principle. It's practically an axiom of reason. 

   I remain hopeful because Trump is such a shithead in so many ways. He could make the goddamn Pope cuss. One of his superpowers is driving people to the other side...odious as that side may be. I know lots of reasonable people who'd never even consider voting for him. The horribleness of the other side hasn't made itself as manifest to them. And, being reasonable, they chose what seemed to be the lesser evil. I'd say that Trump's shittiness is all up front, whereas the other side's shittiness is much worse...in part because it's so much sneaker. But, then, that's the kind of thing people sometimes say when their preferred side is the shitter. As always, I realize I could be wrong. But my view is the Trump's shittiness is largely manifest and superficial, whereas the other side's shittiness is deep and dangerous. Of course, that's the sort of thing people always say when their side seems shittier. So merely saying it settles nothing. Seems really clear to me that the left--formerly the less-crazy-and-dangerous side of our politics--has become the crazier and more dangerous by far. But, then, people are wrong about such stuff all the time. Maybe the left has merely developed its own religion, with its own dogmas and magical claims and sins and naughty words and whatnot. There's still the problem that Christianity is held largely at bay by the First Amendment, whereas, currently, there seems to be little constraining Woketarianism...which masquerades as a non-religious cult. Or maybe it is non-religious. It's a vague category. Hard to say, really.

   At any rate, it doesn't seem to me that the Republican mind is rotting--though it has its problems, and has rotted at points in the past. It's the leftist mind that's currently rotting before our very nostrils. Conservatives are currently the comparative heroes of the story, as they provide a kind of counterbalance. To mix metaphors. (I'm not sure how you counterbalance rottenness...) It's the left that has slipped into the belief that facts are malleable by fiat, some truths are unspeakable, and honest and open discussion is dangerous and worthy of punishment. It's not that the right doesn't veer in that direction from time to time...but the left has lurched hard to crazy...and it shows no sign of stopping. They believe--in some sense of 'believe'--outright, demonstrable falsehoods, insist that thinking so can make things so, brutally silence dissent, routinely employ political violence, and exercise iron control over most of our important institutions. They're bad enough that Donald Trump is far preferable...if you care about truth and reason...or so I say. 

   Where was I going with this? Does anybody remember? Oh well.

[Gosh...remember when the GOP was the crazy party? I do. [sigh] Those were kinda the days, in retrospect... OTOH, the Dems haven't yet lied us into a major war...OTOOH, they went along with it when the Pubs did it, so... ]