Forgetting what doesn’t fit your preferred narrative
There are two major events of the last two years which stood out as exemplars of just how solipsistic many liberals are and how tightly constructed some of their echo chambers truly are:
1. The Hamas Massacre on October 7, 2023
2. The Biden/Trump debate on June 27, 2024
Regarding both events, I was, and remain, genuinely stunned (and depressed) by the complete and willful ignorance of some of my friends/acquaintances. These are well educated, intelligent professionals who are firmly left of center, but not firebrands.
Regarding Biden, they were sincerely shocked at has cognitive decline at that debate. But how? How? They had truly convinced themselves of the Democrat/MSM spin, no matter how preposterous.
Far more disturbing is the Gaza War. Not surprisingly, virtually all of these folks are hostile to Isreal, to varying degrees. They’ll regurgitate standard pro-Palestinian talking points repeatedly. Fine. But there’s a much more disturbing element: they truly do not remember the mass murder and hostage taking of Israeli civilians. It’s not simply minimizing or rationalizing what happened (that’s very common). They state they have no memory of it (and I believe them). I have been left speechless a couple times now, when I’ve brought up the massacre to a blank stare in response.
This is what we are up against. A growing number of people, entirely mainstream intelligent people, who can (and have) created an echo chamber were major news events can be entirely forgotten if they contradict the approved narrative.
They are their own ‘Big Brother’
But do not underestimate how much the MSM has ignored inconvenient facts, and failed to report on them. Unless a person on the left is a news junkie seeking out sources on the right – which is very rare, in my experience – much of the news that might reflect poorly on the left and/or Democrats (redundancy?) either fails to reach that person or reaches him or her in an attenuated fashion with an anti-right spin. It’s seen differently in the first place, given different (or no emphasis), and then remembered differently or not at all.
Biden’s decline wasn’t seen by most, because the clips either were never shown or were labeled disinformation from the right. October 7 was almost immediately given the “oh, the poor Palestinians will now be attacked by the nasty Israelis” pivot.
It’s often been said that left and right are watching different movies, and that’s a good description.
NOTE: Also, please see my two plus two equals five post.
Best to your friend, Neo.
Yes, like the lefty minions i follow decrying how kids were being terrified by the ICE raid at the cannabis farm without themselves, or the media, asking why such young kids were working at the farm.
I have to say the response from the right to the Bondi/Epstein debacle is so different from what the response would be from the left for similar incidents.
I can see denying the Oct. 7 massacre (based on unreliable news sources), but simply not knowing anything about it is hard to accept.
It’s so frightening. I used to wonder how on earth the “good Germans” allowed Hitler to happen. I’m afraid that now I see, as it’s happening around me among many people who sincerely think of themselves as good and yet are blindly, enthusiastically cooperating with evil.
I’ve been reading Douglas Murray’s extraordinary new book, “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.” It’s painful to read, but illuminating as to how so many meaning-to-be-good people — including too many of my friends and relatives — have let their prior certainties lead them into this abyss of hatred and upside-down thinking. I’m losing sleep over it.
Kate,
I agree. I don’t doubt Ackler’s account of his friends, but it is hard for me to imagine how someone who is cognizant of Israel’s actions after the October 7 attack would not know of the October 7 attack.
But do not underestimate how much the MSM has ignored inconvenient facts, and failed to report on them.
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You have evening news programs offered by NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, and NPR. Those viewing or listening sum to about 20 million on a typical day. The population over the age of 18 is currently about 260 million.
“A growing number of people, entirely mainstream intelligent people, who can (and have) created an echo chamber were major news events can be entirely forgotten if they contradict the approved narrative.”
This phenomenon, otherwise known as willful blindness is essentially a denial of reality, A particularly pernicious type of stupidity, one that ‘intellectuals’ are especially prone in which to engage. History has amply demonstrated that when realities become grim, stupidities clung too can eventually reap a decidedly unpleasant fate. Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I are perhaps history’s foremost example. For “those the Gods would destroy, they first make mad”… and a denial of reality is also a form of madness.
It’s often been said that left and right are watching different movies, and that’s a good description.”
So true. It seems to me that people’s brains are wired differently. What I see is not what a lefty sees when we’re both looking at the same situation. And that’s not necessarily the result of nurture. My two brothers and I had the same parents, same schools, same teachers, and even the same friends. Yet, we saw the world quite differently. I tend to believe Steven Pinker’s theory that we’re all born with certain personality traits that don’t change much.
One of those traits – open/closed mindedness can explain why people can see differing things in the same situation. Very open-minded people, such as Neo, will look for more facts and always be open to changing their minds. Close minded people will willfully ignore new facts to avoid changing their minds from their preferred narrative.
I think most leftists are people who are very sensitive to the concept of fairness. Deep within their psyche is a desire that the world be fairer, more equitable. The idea of a “Big Brother” government that takes care of people and makes things more equitable attracts them much more than a concept that asks people to be responsible for themselves and let chips fall where they may. Their preferred narrative is one that is attracted to the socialist /communist view of the world.
It’s probably wrong, but that’s my take, which is based on years of trying to figure out why I saw things so differently than my two brothers did.
Art Deco:
There are newspapers as well. And there are vast numbers of people who follow news only sporadically if at all, or who get it from friends or podcasts or social media echo chambers.
There’s an interesting book “In the Garden of Beasts” by Eric Larson about William E. Dodd, America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938. Dodd noticed that despite the nature of the regime people mostly ignored what was going on. Their attitude was similar to what you are seeing with libs, but on steroids. Some of that was based on fear but there were plenty of believers too who had no problem with the Nazis and rationalized the repression away.
I think most leftists are people who are very sensitive to the concept of fairness. Deep within their psyche is a desire that the world be fairer, more equitable.
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More precisely, that people like themselves be the allocators of income and recognition.
JJ has really hit on the trait that I see constantly in the leftists I follow. They desperately want the world to be fair. Emphasis on “desperately “!
The fact that it isn’t drives them crazy to try and make it so (to borrow a phrase from Picard) despite all evidence from human nature, and nature itself, that it’s an impossible goal. And the fact that Trump seems, to them, working against the ideal of fairness, drives them to irrationality.
Let’s also not forget that no matter the scope of the blogosphere, many many people live & breathe only through the MSM mask. If their favourite reporter or channel doesn’t say “it,” “it” didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. Or, more likely, if their fave blames “it” on POTUS Trump or the Rs…well…there you have it.
And Ackler’s list could easily be extended…the Las Vegas shooter…the Secret Service malfeasance in Butler (in fact the whole Trump campaign)…Audrey Hale, the Maui & LA fires…Hands up don’t shoot…fine people…Epstein (yes I think what’s been done there stinks to high heaven)… If the MSM doesn’t cover “it” for those folks “it” goes away. Or as Hughes Mearns wrote…maybe?
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I made the transformation to center-right (as I see it) it took many years (I wonder how long Neo took before the scales fell off.) and it basically was because I was tired of defending the Democrats policies, beliefs, etc. I realized that if I didn’t agree with almost all of these things, then what the Hell am I doing voting for these people. My hope is that, with all the what-is-called 80/20 or 70/30 issues being so hard to swallow (and still be a Democrat in good standing), maybe some people on the left will do what I did and turn away in disgust. Because I am human and we humans don’t like to admit we were wrong it took some soul searching. I don’t know how many people will change because of these lop-sided issues but my hope is that it will at least start them down that path. If not now, soon.
chazzand:
It took me two or three years of research and soul-searching, but I was open to taking in new information from newer sources. My observation is that most people I know are not open to information coming from the right, however well-documented. They won’t go near it.
@ Mrs. Whatsit: It’s so frightening. I used to wonder how on earth the “good Germans” allowed Hitler to happen. I’m afraid that now I see, as it’s happening around me among many people who sincerely think of themselves as good and yet are blindly, enthusiastically cooperating with evil.
My thoughts exactly, going back not just to October 7 but also to the “Biden” administration and the 2020 election. Thank you for helping me feel less crazy. Because it really is crazy-making to watch one’s oldest friends turn into the very authoritarians/fascists they have always claimed (and still do claim) to oppose.
We’re seeing a narrative collapse and re-resolve on the Right currently, people forgetting what they knew and where they learned it, and assuming that they always knew other things but can’t say where they learned them.
It’s that there are “files” or “flight logs” or “a little black book” that will tell us who Epstein’s “clients” were; that he was murdered to protect those “clients” (or preserve them for future blackmail, depending); that Maxwell was intimidated into keeping silent about them; and that the FBI /Deep State is sitting on them and Trump or Patel or Bongino can find and “release” that information.
I’m not saying we know that Epstein didn’t have clients or didn’t blackmail anyone or wasn’t murdered. I’m saying that our belief in it was developed through tabloid media narratives and online gossip. Those things can still be true, but we don’t believe them because we know them to be true. We believe them because they are compatible with a bigger narrative that we believe about who’s been in charge of the government and what kinds of things they are willing to stoop too. Which may be perfectly true.
What I’m seeing is this narrative resolving into two new narratives: 1) there was never really anything there, just tabloids and gossip, 2) that Trump is in on the cover-up or the Deep State is too strong to defy on this topic. And the Right is sorting itself into one of these two camps–either of which could, of course, be true, I don’t know them to be false.
What I missed, because I never followed it closely and just made assumptions based on the noise I was hearing, was that in 2020 a Mother Jones journalist actually called every person in Epstein’s “little black book”.
Most of them seem to have met Epstein through Maxwell, and about a quarter of them only knew Maxwell and not Epstein.
There’s a pulp novel from 1954, Year of Consent, which posits a future America which is nominally still a democracy, but is in actuality controlled by the Social Engineers via their control of communications media. I reviewed it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/69852.html
Taibbi piece kinda in this lane, and bonus, out from behind the paywall: https://www.racket.news/p/brennan-msnbc-cant-stop-lying-about
I appreciate Neo highlighting my comment. Just to elaborate, in response to Kate and Rufus, there are two friends in particular I was thinking of with my comment. I’ve known both for many years, but to my knowledge they only know each other in passing. Both referred to Israel’s ‘unprovoked’ war. I responded by mentioning Hamas’s attacks on October 7, in particular on the music festival. The response was befuddlement, really on my part as much as theirs. They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about and I was dumbfounded by their ignorance.
I suppose there’s a chance I misunderstood. Maybe they were making a rhetorical point that the massacre was not ‘provocation’; akin to the argument one hears that it was a ‘defensive’ move. That’s an absurd and ghoulish argument but at least it acknowledges what happened. In any case, knowing these two people fairly well, I strongly doubt that was their intent.
@Ackler:They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about and I was dumbfounded by their ignorance.
I had this happen with my Trump-hating mother. In response to something she’d said about California I mentioned the high-speed train that has cost bezillions which could have spent to fix whatever thing she was complaining about, and she’d never heard of it. She thought it was some scheme of Elon Musk’s.
Niketas:
Agree about the so-called “Epstein client list.” I’m planning to write about it tomorrow.
In 2020, most Democrats I know never even heard anything about the Hunter laptop until well after the election, including the fact that there even was a Hunter laptop.
Mrs. Whatsit: “It’s so frightening. I used to wonder how on earth the “good Germans” allowed Hitler to happen. I’m afraid that now I see, as it’s happening around me among many people who sincerely think of themselves as good and yet are blindly, enthusiastically cooperating with evil.”
Thank you for that comment – I have thought the same thing for many years. Often saying to myself “so, this is what 1930s Germany must have been like.” or something along those lines.
It really is depressing and VERY frightening to watch it happen.
@neo:Agree about the so-called “Epstein client list.”
I didn’t start to rethink it until you prodded me, so thanks.
@ Mrs Whatsit and Charles > “I have thought the same thing for many years. Often saying to myself “so, this is what 1930s Germany must have been like.” or something along those lines.
It really is depressing and VERY frightening to watch it happen.”
Same here.
Although I wasn’t consciously aware of the analog until Obama’s tenure, hindsight says the decline probably began with the Clinton years. It was very disquieting when I actually realized I was seeing a visible growth in the willingness of the Democrats to break political and social norms, even laws, in pursuit of their goals, including violence on many levels quite reminiscent of the WWII era, and even the Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The 1960s had violent factions, but they didn’t have wide public support the way they seem to have now.
It’s not even the violence per se, but its combination with propaganda and what can only be called brain-washing that resulted in the support for the German and Russian regimes by “normal,” otherwise rational, and even “moral,” people, like the friends you mention.
What seems to be new is the increasingly blatant acceptance, even embrace, of sexual deviance. The Roaring Twenties had plenty (watch “Caberet” again), but not on the wide scale and openness of recent years. I can’t think of anything close to the current LGBTQ and sex-change madness going on in past epochs.
Except possibly the last phase of the Roman Empire and some parallels in the Old Testament, even beyond the obvious one of Sodom and Gomorrah (which I have come to suspect involve child abuse as well as the documented aberrations).
None of those ended well.
As I noted not long ago on another thread here, conservatives and conservatism perpetually labor under a problem that is inherent to the position: our message is often unpleasant. It invariably takes on a tone of ‘eat your vegetables’, because life is often unpleasant. A lot of hopes and dreams die when you look at reality squarely.
That’s one of the reasons that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is often painful.
An example of how our message is unpleasant: Donna is an American who wants there to peace. If America is the source of the problem, then she can at least potentially influence the government to change, by voting and protest. If the source of the problem is a country or government or group other than America, then she’s powerless. Helpless. There’s nothing she can do.
Same reason so many leftists long for the U.N.O. and the I.C.C. and the rest of the international apparat to be powerful enforcers of peace and good will. If they’re ineffectual and irrelevant, or worse, corrupt and hostile, then the problem has no solution and no way to be addressed. Helplessness.
Nobody likes feeling helpless, but dealing with real life requires coming to terms with the fact that one very often will be helpless to change or fix a bad situation. But that message is never going to be pleasant or welcome.
Anyone wishing to understand how Naziism happened in Germany would do well to read the memoirs of Sebastian Haffner, who came of age in that country between the wars. Reviewed and excerpted here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42473.html
Last week I attended a cycling event that brought together many people I hadn’t seen since the covid panic of 2020. I mentioned in a conversation that I had caught the bug right after the state of California had outlawed the sale of ivermectin, and I had to borrow from some friends who were well-stocked. He had never heard of ivermectin, but after thinking about it he said that someone he knew had heard of some stuff they give to bulls, or something like that…
JWM
HC68…”As I noted not long ago on another thread here, conservatives and conservatism perpetually labor under a problem that is inherent to the position: our message is often unpleasant”
But as unpleasant as what the advocates of extreme Climate Change measures are selling?
Good point: and in that case the response we get is not that we’re the bearers of welcome good news, but that we’re pernicious deniers of difficulty truths, probably because we’re taking money from the bad guys.
I think I’m as sensitive to the concept of fairness as any leftist I know, and I have this quality in common with a lot of conservatives I know. We just approach it differently from liberals. I’ve got little faith in state institutions that purport to redistribute wealth, status, and power in the name of fairness. I have a great deal of faith in the power of people to address fairness in their own lives by keeping their eyes open to suffering and stepping in with their own time and money. As an X meme suggested this morning, if it bothers you that illegal immigrants are losing subsidies and benefits, how about sponsoring one yourself?
My particular preoccupation is dog rescue, so I respond frequently to pleas for help with vet bills, transport costs, etc., and those are the pleas I promote on my social media pages. It gives me a huge thrill when my acquaintances respond to this call, a sense of belonging to a great and shared purpose and of life’s being full of meaning. But whether my friends respond or not, I still have to. I understand that they have different priorities, they may not share my confidence in charity, and if they do share it they may not share my convictions about which charities are the most important or genuinely helpful.
I don’t claim that this habit of charity is about being a good or virtuous person. It came to me rather late in life, and I had to have my nose rubbed in some suffering to the point that it created pain in myself that could be addressed only by my engaging in charity. If it didn’t make me sick to abandon a particular dog who had engaged my attention (which is in great measure an index of my own anxieties about abandonment), I’d prefer not to have to think about it or sacrifice any money or convenience to help. I know I can’t help all the dogs, or force my society to help them all, so I try to strike a balance by attending to the ones I consider God to have placed directly in my path.
I help people less often, but I’ll do it if I can be pretty sure the money will be spent in a way to help more than it hurts. Disaster relief feels pretty safe, even for strangers, and giving direct and personal help to people in dire straights gives me a chance to see the actual effect, not just the intended one, so I can learn.
Voting to make other people fund faceless impersonal bureaucratic charities strikes me as profoundly useless.
I don’t know yet what to think about the Epstein list. It seemed plausible that he was using a list for blackmail, or allowing someone else to do so, in either case to buy himself peace and immunity. If he was blackmailing, it’s easy to believe that his victims were so wealthy and powerful that an unimaginably huge leverage was brought to bear on keeping the secrets. It’s also possible all Epstein cared about was a dissolute lifestyle and a ton of money and influence. I’m open to persuasion either way.
It gives me pause that Alan Dershowitz claims to have seen the list, with his own name on it (unfairly, from his perspective). On the other hand, I could only with great reluctance believe that Dan Bongino and Kash Patel are in on any dishonorable lying or concealment, or Trump either. I’m disinclined to believe it of Pam Bondi, but I know less about her. It’s possible, I suppose, that the list once existed but was destroyed before Trump took office. I’m going to wait and see. I do hope Patel will not resign.
Neo,
I had the same experience with liberal friends/acquaintances regarding Hunter’s laptop right before the 2020 election. This included the two aforementioned friends who who ignorant of the October 7 Massacre.
The difference is: the laptop story was largely ignored by the MSM at the time, and then dismissed as Russian ‘disinformation’. Whereas, October 7 was certainly widely covered by the MSM; although it was quickly overshadowed by the war in Gaza. And of course, it was minimized and rationalized by plenty of lefties.
What’s so disturbing about the two friends I’ve mentioned is that they weren’t minimizing or rationalizing the massacre. They had either not heard of it or completely forgotten it. As I said, they (and many other left leaning folk) are their own “Big Brother”. No one is forcing them to believe 2+2=5; it’s self imposed.
Personally I think Dershowitz is lying about seeing the list. His story is implausible, and he’s an attention whore.
An example of political change over time can be observed by reading some of the posts by Michelle Tandler over the last year or two:
https://x.com/michelletandler
They sell that unpleasantness as a heroic struggle against evil. If you give people the feeling of purpose and righteousness they will often do a lot and then there is the fact that the evil people are keeping us from the magical clean energy. So there isn’t really any unpleasantness coming.
In the end you must tend to yourself.
In the end you must tend to yourself
Does your narrative lose its meaning on the bedpost over night?
If somebody doesn’t know what you’re talking about, he doesn’t have to talk about it. If you try to explain it, you’ll find he “knows” a good deal that isn’t so. This experience, repeated sufficiently, makes it fool proof. There’s just no sense in trying to discuss the issue.
Also, is there a process by which an inconvenient fact, once known, can be erased from one’s memory?
@ Richard > “Also, is there a process by which an inconvenient fact, once known, can be erased from one’s memory?”
Our own neophile, OBloodyHell, explained the process some years ago (c. 2013), in a comment at another blog.
(One of the few bookmarked pages I am still able to find!)
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2012/12/an-analogy-i-have-made-many-times.html?doing_wp_cron=1617725564.1084289550781250000000#comment-66464
Judging from the evolution of comments here and elsewhere, the “button” now kicks in before any conversation even begins.
Note that OBH wrote this a few years BT (Before Trump).