Comments

I propose a deprogramming challenge for the left — 43 Comments

1. hmmmm I don’t think so. As I’ve said before I’m married to a yellow dog dem. Not so much by choice but if I want to watch the tele I have no choice but be exposed at least to CNN, NPR.

   If it were the other way around I’m afraid I would be buying a new TV often. They don’t work very well having shoes, remotes or whatever is in her hand at the time!

   So I get my deprogamming but she refuses.

   PS … we do just fine as long as we don’t talk politics.

2. Back during my college student days, I read magazines from a wide variety of viewpoints. As a lefty, I naturally read the likes of Ramparts, The Nation, and The New Republic. But, I also read National Review. Need to know what the enemy is saying. 🙂

   A letter to the editor in National Review surprised me- more so because I knew the author of the letter. The letter’s author, then a student at an Ivy League university, was the younger brother of one of my high school classmates. He wrote that even though he was a conservative, he could have respectful, civil conversations with his fellow students. Imagine a conservative having that experience today at an Ivy League institution! My surprise increased because not only was he Jewish, his parents had fled Austria after Hitler annexed it.

   Years later, I finally put 2 and 2 together. While pre-Nazi Germany and Austria were not ideal places for people of the Jewish faith, they weren’t hellholes, either. Hitler came to power, not as a conservative, but as someone who would CHANGE things. And change things he did. That helps explain how a conservative could dislike Hitler- dislike of drastic changes.

   David Atkins can’t be dismissed as an outlier. He is a member of the Democratic National Committee. That makes him a mainstream Democrat, I believe.

   A baby step towards Democrat deprogramming could be to look at Instapundit.

3. jack:

   Anyone who refuses to watch wouldn’t be allowed into the deprogramming study. There would probably be lot of refusniks on the left.

4. I have had the experience of reading the NYT and WaPo when the article is about a subject about which I have some knowledge. Suffice it to say that the “elite” journalists came across as ignorant and easily contradicted. OTOH, I found the Wall Street Journal’s articles on the Macondo blowout in 2010 to give a very good description of how BP didn’t follow accepted O&G drilling procedures, compared to my years in the oilfield.

5. Truth Neo. I am minimizing my footprint on various social media and migrating to the new pro freedom ones. But it occurred to me yesterday, that as I do that I will isolate myself more from the leftist point of view as leftist have done from conservative/libertarian views. They read nothing that is not leftist and so have no understanding for who we are or what we deplorables really think. But as you say, since so much is leftist in our society I’ll still be bombarded with their beliefs-but not so much them with ours.

6. Well, a number of people are already deprogramming themselves from FOX.

7. Those on the left, being generally atheistic/agnostic, fall back on their politics as a substitute for religious faith. Hence, any attempt to show them another way of viewing the universe is taken to be an attack on their core faith values, and the usual reaction of denial, condemnation and ad hominem attack naturally follows. I would recall how the Roman Church reacted to Luther’s efforts to reform some of the Church’s less savory practices, specifically indulgences (in his famous “95 Theses”). The Roman Church hierarchy did not welcome debate to any large degree; it eventually declared him a heretic, and but for the prevailing political climate in Germany at the time, he would have been arrested and executed. To analogize, if a contemporary conservative engages in debate with a leftist, the conservative will soon find himself declared a heretic and his execution (figurative for the time being) will be sought through banning on social media or similar tactics. It seems that leftists always seek to have their critics/opponents silenced, rather than engage in honest debate, as it has always been the case with totalitarians of all stripes, religious and secular.

8. And the author of this inane remark is…

   “Contributor @monthly.Bylines @theprospect & elsewhere. Regional Director, CA Dems / Elected DNC Member. Dad of two. I run a qualitative research firm. He/him.”

   IOW, he’s a salaried Democratic Party apparatchik. How are we supposed to have a competitive political order which turns on free public discussion when this is the opposition?

   Note, he won’t be flagged or banned by Jack Dorsey’s juvenile minions and he won’t be terminated from his job, either.

9. https://prospect.org/topics/david-atkins/

   This is his oeuvre at The American Prospect. Someone more patient than yours truly might wish to look at it.

10. The Roman Church hierarchy did not welcome debate to any large degree;

    For crying out loud, what do you think was done at Medieval universities?

11. I don’t think leftists wish to de-program the belief system of those not on the left.
    IMHO they wish to kill all of us; as in dead, murdered.

    Of course, it would start out with COMPULSORY re-education camps, which would morph into “work” camps , which would morph into death camps (as in gulags).
    This is the MO of the left.
    This is what they do, this is what they DESIRE to do, and this is exactly what they will do if given the chance.

    I am reminded of the comments of the 1960s radical student group, the Weather Underground, which was infiltrated by Larry Grathwohl, an FBI agent. He asked them what happens to all those AMERICAN citizens that refuse to follow the diktats of the Weathermen in the event they or their allies took over the US govt.
    The response was to place those in “re-education” camps.
    When asked what would happen to those who refused to be “re-educated,” the response was that they would be exterminated.
    When asked to estimate how many would need to be exterminated, the response was 25 MILLION American citizens.

    Recall that the Weatherman were born and raised Americans , many (most?) of whom were students of the finest universities in the USA and came from middle class to upper middle class homes.
    None of this mattered.
    If they would have had the opportunity, they would have exterminated millions of Americans.

    Of course, not all liberal progressives would approve of this. But rest assured, they most likely would watch from the sidelines as it occurred. They would not lift one finger of protest; they would not utter one word of protest.
    They would keep their mouths shut because they would know that their head would be on the chopping block if they dared raise any objections.

    Two good pals of Obama, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were members of the Weathermen. Ayers never spent a day in jail. Dohrn did some time in jail, but now is free as a bird , living in the USA; a nation he and she abhor.
    They should both be hanging by the neck.
    see here:
    https://spectator.org/55174_rip-larry-grathwohl-weather-underground-infiltrator/

    If the Bidet administration begins to confiscate guns, get ready for the worst.

12. Anyone else just think its hilarious that they think everyone on the right is “programmed” and don’t recognize the programming/brainwashing on the left?

13. Recall that the Weatherman were born and raised Americans , many (most?) of whom were students of the finest universities in the USA and came from middle class to upper middle class homes.

    Characters like Kathy Boudin and Wm. Ayers are unusual among people from any walk of life, but if you’re going to find them, it’s very seldom going to be among people whose daily life keeps them in touch with practical reality. See Shana Alexander’s portrait of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At its core was a quondam prison inmate. The rest of the crew came from bourgeois homes (one had worked as an auto mechanic and one was the daughter of a Teamsters business agent; that’s as close as the group got to the wage-earning stratum).

14. Anyone else just think its hilarious that they think everyone on the right is “programmed” and don’t recognize the programming/brainwashing on the left?

    Not too funny anymore. The mentality has wrecked higher education and public broadcasting.

15. Very Haidtian (*not* Haitian (the nation), but Haidtian (after Jonathan Haidt)).

    Following is an edited snippet of an e-conversation I had with an ex-neighbor, leftie supreme, who eventually un-“friend”ed me because (figuratively, of course!) I pee’d in the punch bowl at the leftie e-picnic she was always hosting.

    If I posted it before, apologies. But we do have new readers here, and it’s particularly on-topic today.

    —– —– —– —– —–

    I will cite just one other example. Maybe a month ago, your friend stated (on Facebook) flatly and blandly that people oppose(d) Obama only because he’s black (or some idea to that effect; I no longer have that post around).

    So: do I “lump [you] with all those other nameless ‘liberals’ of whom [I] speak so often and with such scorn” [neighbor complaining]? On one hand, I already have stated that “I know you are educated and intelligent, and very significantly, a person of honest heart and good will” [M J R speaking]; on the other hand, I will frankly add that I trust you don’t fancy that those of us on the receiving end of these attitudes are going to react with admiration.

    It has been said by many of us on the receiving end that “conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, but liberals think conservatives are bad *people*” [George Will writing?]. I think there’s a lot of truth in that, despite the broad-brushing of both conservatives and liberals, and despite the bumper-sticker depth of the sentiment. If you can suffer me, I will now offer an idea that’s somewhat less bumper-sticker-ish.

    Jonathan Haidt is an academic social psychologist who, by the way, had worked for “liberal” Democrats but who more recently has trended more left-centrist in his outlook. I briefly quote from an article** by one Todd Zywicki that quotes “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt:

    ** http://volokh.com/2014/01/17/jonathan-haidt-psychology-politics/

    BEGIN PASTE

    So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

    END PASTE

    I’m not at all surprised. I know that for many to most issues, I think I am capable of fairly stating the “liberal” position, seriously, without snark or sarcasm. I know that many of my friends on the right-leaning side of things can do so pretty ably. I also I know that in my experience, not nearly as many left-leaners can do that. In my experience, they will tend more towards “Republicans shut down the government in order to stop 8 million Americans from getting affordable health care” [neighbor or neighbor’s friend], with little evidence that they have any actual idea what actual people of honest hearts and good will on the dark side (sarcasm) actually *do* think — that is, if they will concede that there are, on the dark side, people of honest hearts and good will. That’s my experience, and Haidt’s research bears out my experience. Your mileage may vary.

16. shadow:

    Hilarious in a sad way.

17. These people literally believe that Trump voters have been under a spell akin to The Third Reich, or a false empire like the Confederacy. What world do they actually live in (but then again it’s David Atkins … I remember a couple of his tweets … He also has his pronouns listed)?

18. If bringing us over to their side is the goal then they are doing it wrong. Need to be a lot more subtle and stealthy than this.

    Of course, if their aim and idea of “reprogram” is to exterminate us then, well, give it your best shot, and soon.

19. Gringo….”Hitler came to power, not as a conservative, but as someone who would CHANGE things.” Yes. Most people don’t understand the degree to which Naziism was a *change* movement, also, to a considerable extent, a *youth* movement. Consider, for example, the Nazi song “The Rotten Bones are Trembling.”

    https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_songs

20. John Tyler, it seems that we already have compulsory re-education camps on our university campuses and in many of our corporations.

    Mentioned before, that I have occasion to speak with a number of Vietnamese refugees, or their descendants. The re-education camps that they describe are a bit more severe than what we have seen so far. In the ones that the Communists imposed on every male over the age of 18 with personal, or familial, ties to the South Vietnamese regime, whether military or civilian survival was not assured; maybe not even desired.

    We have not reached that point. That is not to say we won’t get there.

    We have to be careful about what we say, but there are many quiet people around the country who would die before submitting to re-education. There are literally millions of us who offered our lives in defense of the Constitutional Republic, and would not flinch now.

    I believe that people with public megaphones need to step up and define conservative. So far they are negligent. To me, and maybe there is room for debate within the philosophical context, there is one valid definition for an American Conservative. It is a person who believes in government that aligns with the United States Constitution. In my mind it is that simple. Under this definition, Conservatism is the default position for any American.

21. Gringo: “I have had the experience of reading the NYT and WaPo when the article is about a subject about which I have some knowledge. Suffice it to say that the “elite” journalists came across as ignorant and easily contradicted. ”

    Reminds me of the saying, “Everything you read in the newspaper is true except for those things you have personal knowledge of”.

22. See Michael Crichton speech, “Why Speculate” re: Murray Gell-Mann.

    “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

    In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

    That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other
    arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”

23. “How are we supposed to have a competitive political order which turns on free public discussion when this is the opposition?” Art+Deco

    By what calculus have you arrived at the belief that the activist left supports “a competitive political order which turns on free public discussion”?

    “what do you think was done at Medieval universities?”

    Debate within the accepted dogma? Yes. Debate that challenged the Catholic hierarchy’s dogma? Not a chance. The enlightenment’s embrace of reason and logic was many hundreds of years away.

    JohnTyler,

    “Two good pals of Obama, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were members of the Weathermen.”

    Obama’s political career was launched at a party hosted in Bill Ayers living room.
    https://thespeechatimeforchoosing.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/william-ayers-american-flag-poster.jpg?w=584

    I recently ran across this perfectly succinct description of the Left’s Modus Operandi;
    “Gradually… unthinkable becomes tolerable… then acceptable… then legal… then praised… and finally, mandatory” unknown attribution

24. Jonathan Haidt proved in the lab that conservatives understand liberals but not vice versa.

    I once saw a liberal weave an elaborate just-so story the gist of which was that the conservatives lied to Haidt but the liberals saw through them.

25. JohnTyler on November 20, 2020 at 4:44 pm said:

    I don’t think leftists wish to de-program the belief system of those not on the left.
    IMHO they wish to kill all of us; as in dead, murdered.

    Yes, they do; but they’re not going to do either. Modern American leftist are more scrupulous about keeping “spiritually clean” and free of what they term “sin” than the likes of Cotton Mather ever dreamed of being. They will never stoop to getting their hands dirty.

    It also doesn’t help that they have a general lack of balls.

26. “They will never stoop to getting their hands dirty.

    It also doesn’t help that they have a general lack of balls.”

    Snowflakes don’t have balls. The violent leftists have the balls and the power seekers like Harris, Cuomo and Whitmer will happily order their goons to do the dirty work. Mass murderer Andrew Cuomo has already ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy,
    Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf also engaged
    in an intentional manslaughter of the elderly, a practice known as geronticide.

    Ideological fanatics can justify any atrocity. Demonstrated by current consideration in Mass. of a bill that would allow the murder of a baby born after a botched abortion.

27. Neo. I dunno about lefty folks getting religion after being exposed to information from the pantheon of right folks you lay out.
    I think the lefties, as SteveD suggests, have LEFT as part of their self-image as the just and the virtuous. They can’t afford to absorb facts which undermine their pillars.
    In my experience, it’s maybe three back-and-forths regarding irrefutable facts and they change the subject or go to ad hom.
    The on-line technique of demanding a cite or link is a key. If you don’t, you’re a liar. If you do….mox nix. Change the subject or call you a racist or a greedy something or other. The actual fact, the fact they demanded, is provided to no effect. From which I presume they either already knew it and it didn’t matter to them that they’re wrong, which is to say lying, or they simply couldn’t allow it into their thinking for fear of losing their self-righteousness.
    It is like shooting BBs at basketballs to discuss such things.
    And, as somebody may have said already, the sense of moral superiority supplants the conscience. Whatever they do cannot be wrong because they are morally superior to those to whom they are doing it or approving it being done.
    I’m seventy-five which is pretty long as these things go. My life, as most people’s lives, can be seen as a very long–presumably–narrow path. There is only so much one person can do, experience, run into, attend to. Only so many people. Circumstances, choices, interests all tend to have us concentrate to at least a degree on one kind of thing and away from others. Which is to say, for example, as a veteran, I’m interested in military issues current and historical. Even if I were interested, I don’t have the time or energy to get into, say, Renaissance painting.
    All of which is to say that I’m reluctant to make a general case about whether the current left–its citizen proponents–are different from ones I knew half a century ago. I simply have not experienced enough.
    But, damn, this mass abandonment of rational thought in favor of…feelz or whatever the hell it is sure seems new to me. I don’t think, earlier paragraphs notwithstanding, that I missed it thirty and forty years ago. I don’t think it was there to any great extent.
    Why,and where it takes us is….

28. GB, you ever wonder why I was so certain of things since 2007?

    Take a look at 2020. Various things I wished happen in 2007, has happened.

    Certainty is a result of experience and skill, GB, not the usual ego and delusions you see and expect from others.

    God is making the arrogant, humble. Is it painful? Apparently people and humanity thinks so in 2020.

    I love 2020 though. So a difference of view there.

    https://twitter.com/Ymarsakar/status/1324046358811201537?s=20

    This is my tweet on November 4th. Prediction, prophecy, or actually… something else?

    California flipped red on this map. Is that prediction, prophecy, or….

    https://twitter.com/Ymarsakar/status/1330024823381176320?s=20

29. Recall that the Weatherman were born and raised Americans , many (most?) of whom were students of the finest universities in the USA and came from middle class to upper middle class homes.
    None of this mattered.

    They came from universities, which is why it matters. Because they were produced by these indoctrination camps.

    Ayers. Alinsky.

    Why are BLM Antifa many white males and females of college age? Because.

30. This is why liberal relatives are intolerable at family get togethers. They have nobody else to convert, and no better argument than screeching.

    The problem for them in general is that they are stupid and killing is a quick and easy solution, so they’ll probably go to that.

31. Cappy et alia,

    I also find Politics a fairly boring topic most of the time, especially in polite company. When getting together with family why wouldn’t want have sincere conversations about how each other are doing, what is going on their lives, do they need help with anything?, etc… To stand around and rant about Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell seems crass. Upper class people used to always avoid the topic and even in the lower middle class environment I was raised in people would not bring such things up at social events.

    When a film star or singer has tweeted some four letter filled rant about the President or tax law they appear small and petty. Imagine Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant going on the Tonight Show and complaining about politics.

32. @Ymarsakar-Sadly, for years it has started even earlier than college. My son went to a top notch prestigious school. School started mid September; one week later they had a presidential debate on the tv in their dorm. As freshmen, everyone in his dorm was cheering for the democrat and mocking the republican. When he told us, we were all horrified-they went to college fully indoctrinated by their high schools.

33. Here’s a challenge you can issue to any liberal, leftist, whatever. Ask them to imagIne they are at a party with a bunch of their friends and loved ones – people they know well and admire, and whose admiration they value.

    Then give them this challenge – within 20 seconds, name an idea or belief they hold that would utterly shock those friends and loved ones, one that they presumably have never shared among them. The 20 seconds rule is important, because if those ideas aren’t top of mind, they really aren’t that important to them, are they? You are asking them in effect to tell you how they are unique among their close cohort. Spoiler alert: they won’t be able to identify any such idea, because they aren’t unique… they believe all the same stuff everyone they know believes! They believe what they are told.

    From my experience, conservatives won’t have any trouble with this question!

34. Tina is absolutely right that leftist indoctrination happens before college. Though I’d say students pick up more leftist terminology (“institutional racism,” “intersectionality,” etc.) in college from (often required) introductory social science courses. There are quite a few reasons why young people enter college already holding fairly liberal views:

    -High school history classes/textbooks are generally useless
    -Children’s TV channels are not exempt from leftist propaganda, and stars of children’s TV shows promote liberal views
    -Young people watch CNN and read the NYT more than you think. If their parents have some “mainstream” news channel on every night, they’re hearing at least some of it. And certainly they hear their parents discuss current events, too. Young people are also encouraged to study current events and politics for school projects or even just because they’ll be praised by adults for having opinions, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead them to reading the “mainstream” newspapers and magazines and watching the “mainstream” news and absorbing leftist views that way.
    -A superficial understanding of the Democratic Party platform makes Democrats sound “nice” and “fair” to children.
    -Lastly, look at the curricula for some of the best private prep schools. They all have websites that go into extensive detail about what they teach. Most of them are now dedicated to “diversity,” “anti-racism,” and “allyship.” These students then by and large go on to the most elite colleges.

35. My latest gambit for dealing with progressives is to ask them to give me their cell phone. When they refuse, I tell them that they have just proven they aren’t socialists because they believe in private property rights. Ask them how they would feel if they had to share their phone with others. Ask them how they would feel if they had to share their car/truck with others. Ask them how they would feel if they weren’t allowed to own a home because that would not be fair to others. Ask them if they believe their ownership of their home should be protected by laws and courts. Ask them if they would work hard and save to own a home, if their ownership wasn’t protected by law. These questions can steer them to thinking about the foundation of capitalism, which is the ownership of property protected by laws and courts.

    Along a similar line you can ask them if their favorite football team should not play to win their games. If they want their team to play hard to win, ask them why that is. This can lead to discussions about meritocracy, why we believe in it, and why it’s valuable to society.

    There are other questions about values that can be asked in a conversational way that might lead to some insights. It’s worth a try.

36. The progressives just want the government to guarantee everyone their own phone and house.

37. Deprogramming on the Left?
    Won’t happen.
    Can’t happen.
    Why? Because they MUST win at ALL COSTS, e.g.:
    https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1330209912652226560
    https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1330210206144491520
    H/T Robert Barnes twitter feed.

38. Shadow, yep. Socialist = Someone who wants everything you have, except your job.

39. Twitter-dude is lying. He doesn’t want us deprogrammed. He wants us dead. He’s just not ready to say that in public.

40. Richard Aubrey —

    Re: “The on-line technique of demanding a cite or link is a key. If you don’t, you’re a liar. If you do….mox nix. Change the subject or call you a racist or a greedy something or other.”

    My experience is that they will just claim your source is biased, or in the pay of the oil/tobacco/firearms/whatever companies, and therefore all the meticulously gathered evidence is a lie.

    That’s the best outcome. In most cases they just accuse you of sealioning to their friends.

41. Ray Van Dune – thx for 20 sec idea. As a Free Marketeer among Christian conservatives, my first thought was drug legalization, but it might not be so surprising to them.
    (In comments, if you backspace over the + and add a space again, the space will stay).

    The elites need to lose and America needs to avoid the Dictatorship of the Deep State, which seems to be coming.

    Only losing in court will start making them understand more. Both legal courts AND the “court of public opinion”.

    Reps who think they’d be willing to use their guns, later, but are unwilling to peacefully protest, NOW – they’re mostly fooling themselves. “Fighting to the Death” seems heroic and realistic when nobody you know has died in a losing fight where they knew, going into the fight, that they would lose.

    Leftists will only fight seriously when they have some law, and especially law enforcement guns, on their side. Like at Waco.

    The Deep State will make laws, like gun registrations, and most Reps will be politically against them but won’t violently resist if the 20 person SWAT team comes at 5am to “enforce the law”.

    I love Neo’s site, her blog posts, and most all of you comments. But if you’re in America, as I am not, you need to be going to protests. Outside. Against fraud. Against the dishonest gov’t.

    The Left doesn’t need to understand Republicans if they just get power. Please do all you can, physically and in communication and in organization, to get people out to protest. This is not the time for big blog posting & reading… much as I love it.

42. So, we can get with the program or we can be de-programmed?

43. Tom Grey’s post is right on the money. Where do you reside, Tom?

    But getting out to protest is not the answer. Democrats a) will not report it in their massively-controlled media, and b) it will not make a difference because Dems are power-hungry oppressors who will not be influenced by protests.

    The Tree of Liberty needs to be watered in blood once again. The Union cannot survive as a republic.

    Friends of mine are asking what countries to flee to. But the IRS has a 40% exit tax on all monies going abroad with those fleeing.

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