The biggest problem for the Left

They're all liars.

Let me explain, because I don't intend to be insulting here; rather, I'm being diagnostic.  They say things that they don't believe to be true because they believe that this will help them convince an ignorant, sheep-like populace to vote for their policy preferences.

Case in point, gun control:

• They know that three 10 round magazines have the same capacity as one 30 round magazine.
• They know that a bayonet lug doesn't make a rifle more dangerous.
• They know that you can't realistically shoot down an airplane with a rifle, even a .50 BMG
• They know that real, honest-to-goodness fully automatic weapons are very heavily regulated and are used in crimes so infrequently as to be statistically meaningless.

Case in point, Government Controlled Health Care:



Case in point, "Good Government" and "Transparency":

One year into its promise of greater government transparency, the Obama administration is more often citing exceptions to the nation's open records law to withhold federal records even as the number of requests for information declines, according to a review by The Associated Press of agency audits about the Freedom of Information Act.

That's the Huffington Post, well known Wingnut Hater site.

Case in point, Climate Change:

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of "trick" has been misinterpreted

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

The problem, of course, if that in each of these cases (and many more), the Internet was the medium for the information on the lying liars to sweep 'round the world.  Much to the Dinosaur Media's annoyance.

And here is where we see how the bias of the MSM hurts the Progressive cause.  By continually sweeping the Left's idiocies under the rug, they encourage more idiocy.  The Idiocy of the Left does not self-correct, and so the Idiocy increases.  Indeed, as a signaling mechanism to other Progressives, the idiocy is useful to the speaker, in establishing his anti-Wingnut bona fides.  Because nobody exposes his idiocy ("Vote for it so we can see what's in it?"  Srlsy?)  the speaker is encouraged to go further to gain the approbation of his Tribe.

Normal people observe the workings of, say, Democratic Underground with horror.  And so, how to convince Normal People to vote Democratic?

The lie is the tool of choice, lately.  It's more effective (see Clinton, William Jefferson) if you avert your eyes from the actual, you know - truth.  This way you can channel a righteous indignation when accused of, you know - lying.



But none dare call it a lie.



Of course, it is, and everyone knows it.  Clinton did huge damage to the Democratic Party in particular, and the Progressive Institutions in general.  The National Organization for Women, the Media, all covered for him because, while he was an SOB, he was their SOB.

And the Internet was there, and they'd never heard (or had forgotten) that (a) information wants to be free, and (b) the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.  Add in John Kerry (the New York Times writing about Kerry's response to the Swift Boat Vets while never having written about the Swift Boat Vets even when this was the story of the election season for a month), John Edwards (the NYT scooped by the National Enquirer on the Baby-Daddy-while-his-wife-is-dieing story), and basically everything about Barack Obama's background.

And so, we find ourselves in a time when the People trust the media less than they trust Used Car Salesmen (apologies to car salesmen for traducing them with a comparison to shady reporters), and where people simply assume that Democrats are lying when they say any of the following:



I'm not going to take your guns:

News flash: Presidential candidate Barack Obama says I'm not going to take your guns away in front of a hand-picked crowd of Democratic supporters in Duryea, Pennsylvania — and they don’t believe him.

And lately - and most disastrously for Obama's 2012 election homes:



The joke that's going around is that the real definition of "Shovel Ready" is Obama's election chances.  Unexpectedly, they're not so great, actually.

Because the Truth will out, eventually.  The Progressive Movement has so encapsulated itself in a bubble of fellow travelers that they've lost their ability to absorb feedback and self correct.  And so we see a wildly disproportionate response to (accurate) descriptions of reality: you must want to destroy public education, you must want elderly people to live on cat food, you must be a racist.

It's all said will full emotional commitment, which I guess is needed to keep from seeing it all in its full Clintonesque Glory.  But refusing to look at the actual truth doesn't change a lie into the truth.  It doesn't really make you a better liar these days.

Or you can take James Delingpole's view that it's terminal stupidity:

And guess what these liberals believe the problem with Climate Change is? Go on: think of the most stupid, reality-denying, fact-ignoring, evidence-torturing tosh anyone involved in the media could possibly have to say on the subject. (H/T  Climate Depot)


Yes, that’s right.

They think that the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid so that poor, underprivileged and disabled people and endangered creatures suffer – and that the reason we don’t know about it is because the media is run by evil Conservatives who want to keep this truth a secret.

Riiiiiiight.

And so, diagnostically we can say that until the Progressive movement stops lying (or lying to themselves to justify their stupidity, which is essentially the same thing), they will keep losing, and losing big.  Mussolini could beat Obama next year, which may mean that we'll have to suffer through a Romney Administration.  Likely he won't do as well as Mussolini would, but there's no doubt that he'll be a damn sight better than what we have today.

We need an honest, intellectually vigorous Left.  We sure don't have one.