It has been explained to me that when people consistently fail to understand something, they may not be trying to understand it; in fact, they may be putting in a good amount of effort to avoid understanding it. Intelligence or lack thereof may not be the limiting factor. There must be a third problem concealed from view, somewhere, for my failure to understand liberals has been like an itch under a cast that my coat hanger can’t reach. People tell me not to pay attention, but as a California resident, I look around and I see the strangeness of liberals impacts every little thing around me, everything I do. Could intelligence be the limiting factor? I am a bear of very little brain, I know.

But looking at it from high to low and with all available humility, evaluating it scientifically, I know there is some intelligence somewhere I can bring to the fight. I know this because fresh, new and unfamiliar problems, emerging on those very few occasions, confound and perplex me. After I’ve solved them, I’m not proud of the use I’ve put to my time — but, now, whatever the problem is, it’s no longer unfamiliar. It goes into the inventory of familiar problems. Which I can solve easily and nimbly. That’s intelligence. It may not be something I can bring to a contest with some other intelligent person selected at random. But that’s not the question. I’ve got at least some! But after decades and decades of having my face ground into the problem of liberals, sometimes in concert with my wishes, sometimes against ’em, like a puppy having his face mashed into his own feces; I’m just as confused today as I was as a child, hearing for the very first time of “Watergate.”

I’m under the impression that the thing I really want to know about, is concealed with several layers of obscurity and duplicity, with fragmented bits of evidence that are evidence only because they’re somewhat connected, but only weakly, left out in the daylight for my studying and evaluation. Like figuring out the nuances of a giant’s asshole by studying his toenails. My impression is that I’m struggling to figure something out about the liberals that the liberals, themselves, don’t completely comprehend.

Lately they have busied themselves with their efforts to re-weave the social fabric that binds us all. These efforts are out in full view of everyone. They fancy themselves to be in charge of the dashboard full of levers, buttons, switches and dials, in autocratic control of the rewards and punishments that fall on the rest of us as we participate in society. They’re not completely wrong about this. My observation, though, is that this has become the Trump-hater’s go-to tool: “How could you vote for a man who…” followed by some kind of fluff. We’ve really done it now. Our apologies are going to fall on deaf ears as history vilifies us! Our apologies? I don’t know of any Trump supporter offering any. Bear in mind that today, nearing the end of the calendar year, we’ve got some half of a year or more since we’ve seen any discussion of policy from the liberals or other Trump-phobes. We used to argue about tariffs; they were going to do this and do that and upset the balance of nature and result in higher prices across the board and another Great Depression. It seems, when that didn’t happen, that’s when someone in some central command-control kiosk decreed the new talking point is going to be this history-will-condemn-you stuff.

There is a problem here and it’s rather obvious. Social conditioning will work with pronounced effect, and most efficiently, on some of us but not on all of us. In fact, just about everyone who’s open to its effects, has been converted already. There’s little point to getting some “wave” going of “I hate Trump because everyone else seems to hate him,” because those people already abandoned any support of Trump quite some time ago, assuming they ever had any.

And so we’ve all embarked on this cycle that’s become embarrassing to watch. Liberals and other Trump haters will thunder away about how it’s too late for us to apologize for supporting you-know-who, history will mark us dirty, we’re going to be struggling to hide any evidence that we ever voted for him or said anything flattering or supportive about him, etc…and then someone will emerge to intone: “No use talking to these people.” But they’ll make sure we can see them saying this. Bees don’t waste their time telling flies that honey’s better than shit! — buzzed the bee, loudly, making sure all the flies can hear him explaining this to the other bees. All the flies. Again, for the ones in the back…

And then I guess someone somewhere is taking stock of how many of us have been converted this way. And the answer that emerges from that, must be falling short of something because, like a child who’s just made a grand final exist from the room in tears, slamming the door shut but then thinking of one more thing to add, they thunder back in with “And another thing!” And the cycle renews. History will blah blah blah…now bear in mind what I said, it’s been months since discussion of any policy issue.

I don’t get it. I understand midterms are coming up and we’re about to hear all about “a woman’s right to choose.” It will be up to those hearing it, be they sympathetic to the cause or not, to bolt on to the end of that hackneyed catchphrase — “to murder unborn babies” since those repeating it, so consistently lop it off for obvious reasons. And I guess they can’t argue issues because Trump’s been fixing them.

Pundits, leaning in all sorts of different directions, are prognosticating a “blue wave” next year. Could very well be. I don’t know. I see for the past several years, there hasn’t been one. Does Obama even count? That looked more like “Look at me, no way I can be racist I’m voting for a black guy” than any widespread or passionate approval of left-wing policies.

It could be my rose colored glasses fooling me; I’ve been wrong before. But I’m looking around and I’m seeing an awareness of what’s been bothering me for years now, that I didn’t see before — just a few years back, it was me singing my lonely little song, off in the tall grass, in quiet frustration that nobody else was noticing this. Liberals run our big cities. All of them. And misery abounds. We don’t need to wonder about the effects their policies have. We know. For sure.

The liberals, themselves, look on these pronounced, unique effects, and they don’t try to cloud the issue with “Actually that city did have a Republican mayor, just ninety years ago.” No. They accept the responsibility, and spin the results. Their favorite tactic is to claim credit for the “high per capita income” in this or that big city. Yes…big cities have high average incomes. When it costs five grand to rent a tiny studio apartment and you’re taxed up the butt on everything, you have to make money. Or, be a homeless person. That’s a liberal big-city for you. You have to do a little bit of thinking about whether you want that for the country as a whole, and it seems to me the country, at large, has done the thinking. But again. That’s just my perspective. Rose colored glasses.

At the end of it, if I were a Trump-loathing liberal who was concerned about the midterms next year, I wouldn’t be swaggering into this poker match confident of my high hand. “Trump’s an oaf” and “Trump is boorish” could have been effective maneuvers, but those who might have been swayed by such personality-based arguments, were already swayed a long time ago. I would be looking at policy differences. That’s what elections are supposed to be about, is it not? For them to abandon that and persist in this business of “We are the weavers of the social fabric and we’ll make sure you can’t sit at our lunch table” comes off looking like a tacit admission that Trump has already won on policy, and all-around.

It also looks like a tacit admission that this is the “one tool in the bag” for liberals, and has been for so long that they don’t know any other way to win an election: Forget policy. We’re the Mean Girls. We’ll threaten you with social ostracism…because we’re from middle school, and we don’t know any other way to do it.