The institutional left's flaw

Thinking about how disconnected the left seems to be from reality seems to offer insight into their arrogance

The whole flimsy veneer of politics in the U.S. falls apart when you realize one thing - regular people don't care about anything that the media is telling them to care about beyond a passing bit of indignation or elation at the mainstream narrative they're forcefed daily. Turns out, people care more about being able to pay their bills and eat. The left doesn't get this. They're gambling it all on mind control at this point.

I will give the left credit on one thing - they do know how to morph the narrative to fit their whims at the drop of a hat. But what does that really do? Sure, the most impressionable people will buy into it because they're looking for someone to do their thinking for them, but the segment of society that sees through the flimsy veneer is larger than the left believes it is.

It's a lot of work just keeping up with the news, and then to go the extra mile and separate the wheat from the chaff? That's a massive ask for a large portion of the voting base. And that comes in handy in politics, because low information voters, for better or worse, are a rather large voting block.

It's a sad reality that leads us to the mess we're in now, with ineffective leaders serving their own interests first and leaving us to swing in the wind, waiting for tangible solutions to keep our country from spiraling out of control.

It's hard for me not to be nihilistic, though I don't quite share the sentiment of some that the U.S. is "a third world country in a Gucci belt" but it doesn't feel that far out of the realm of possibility in the next 20 years.

Part of my own arrogance may lie in my solution to the problem of low information voters influencing elections: IQ testing should be phase 1 of vote registration, and phase 2 should be a test to determine whether you're intimately aware of the intricacies of all your preferred candidates' policy positions and those of their opponent. This forces people out of their echo chamber, ensures they're cognizant of what they're actually voting for, and weeds out those of substandard intellect who would rather worry about who Kim Kardashian is hooking up with this week over paying attention to the damn world around them.

Some would probably say that sounds borderline eugenicist of me, and maybe you're right, but I don't see any other way to ensure that the most sound decision is made when it comes to the selection of our leaders.

Right now, our elections feel like having to take an eye test while someone is spraying your eyes with mace. There's no way in hell to succeed with something inhibiting you so effectively. But, I do see hope on the horizon, as bleak as it may seem.

The hope is this - regular people need to vote in droves. Not the fringe weirdos, regular people with lives and families. There's some signs this will happen, based on the demonization of parents who don't want teachers exerting undue influence over the values of their children. This has caused every parent with a young child in the country to coalesce into their own unique voting block. What side do you suppose these parents might vote for?

Hint: it's not the side that wants to tell you how to feel about everything they're trying to forcefeed you and your children.

Social media is a misleading metric that leads politicians down the garden path. Kamala Harris still believes in introducing herself by stating her preferred pronouns. Congratulations, you appealed to 1% of the population and made everyone else roll their eyes.

Twitter is not real life. It doesn't represent anything real at all. Instead it obfuscates what real human discourse is like. You take the person out of the equation by removing anything of them but a screenname and maybe a small profile picture, and that leaves just enough of someone to hate, but not enough that you might actually get to know them and realize you're not as different from them as you thought.

In society, most people defer to politeness. If a conversation happens to spawn from this, then usually things are kept cordial, and even friendly. If greater political debate does happen to occur, there might be a small chance that things could devolve into an uncivil argument, but for the most part, reasonable people will be polite and civil, and agree to disagree if they can't find common ground.

We spend too much time thinking Twitter's 2 minutes hate interludes during our idle scrolling time on the toilet represents common political discourse. Sure, there is tension amongst those on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, but conflating the hate week rallies that break out on college campuses whenever a conservative pundit shows up to speak with real political discourse is a foolhardy mistake.

Ben Shapiro is just the real life representation of Emmanuel Goldstein to these people. Another 1984 reference, I know. It's getting tiresome, I'm sure. It's tiresome to see it everywhere.

I don't buy this current paradigm one bit, showing people respect results in them giving you respect in return, 99 times out of 100. That’s very true in real life, no matter what race, color, or creed any of us are. We’re in this together, and most realize that.

Real people don't want every second of their lives to be hate-filled drama. Sometimes we just want to politely carry out our days, coexisting peacefully as normal people in polite society.

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