House of Eratosthenes

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left’s reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: “Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?”

The “you” would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times “something like this” could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief.
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The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the “intensity” that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: “Can’t we all just get along?” Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter’s piece for Harper’s may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter’s essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn’t just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

Viewed from a simpler perspective, the events of last week were all about Expectation Bias, in which a subject expects a certain event or situation and then systematically discards any evidence that would pose a problem for the narrative, perhaps placing inordinate emphasis on the evidence that fits it better.

The recollection of The Paranoid Style in American Politics puts an interesting light on all this. This is an epistle that was written up by a communist who felt all bullied and persecuted by the McCarthy hearings, and used the classic communist tactic of “accuse the accuser” right before the election between Goldwater and LBJ. Yeah, good ol’ LBJ…how’d that work out.

The effort to keep the “paranoid style” out of our politics by means of calling it to our attention, since 1964, has been a colossal failure by any reckoning. As we see this past week, The Left has been as paranoid as anybody else. But Hofstadter’s essay is recalled as “one of the most important and most influential articles published in the 155 year history of [Harper’s].” How can that be? From following the link, one can see the answer easily: Certain people are awash in Expectation Bias, convinced nobody can ever be paranoid about anything unless they’re conservatives.

But there is another reason that deals with a fundamental misunderstanding of the tract’s purpose. Hofstadter’s essay was not supposed to excise paranoia from American politics.

A few days ago, I pointed out how effective it can be to audibly accuse someone of doing something, in the very moment in which you yourself are doing that exact same thing. People will forget all about who’s doing what, rather instantaneously. If their senses pick it up they’ll immediately block it off. This is what the Hofstadter essay was really all about: It’s a communist jotting down a big dissertation about “they’re all out to get me,” while simultaneously saying it’s those other guys who are running around all paranoid and worried about people who are out to get them.

And so The Left has its narrative. They are the “reality based community,” and they must be perfectly sane because look how often they make fun of people. See all the jokes they tell without any real humor or good will, that’s a mark of sanity if ever there was one. And everyone else is just nuts.

And so, when a member of Congress who happens to have a “D” after her name is stalked and then gravely wounded by a deranged gunman, of course he must be one of those paranoid, schizophrenic conservative tea party people. It fits the narrative. And so it feels “right.”

A grown-up will change his beliefs over time to fit the evidence. An intellectual child who resists growing up, will tailor the evidence to fit the beliefs.

Like Ann Coulter says in “Slander”, they have a technique of “advancing as if under threat of attack, complaining of “conservative bias.”
- DirtCrashr | 01/13/2011 @ 11:24
I’m not even all that concerned about the irresponsible, overheated rhetoric coming from the Left in the wake of that shooting incident. I know none of it is true – Tea Partiers don’t stand around plotting revolution and assassination of public officials. That’s nothing but classic projection from these Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers hard-left neocommunist types.

What does bother me is that Congress is preparing to introduce more gun control laws at the federal level, ostensibly to “prevent another such tragedy.” (I’m sick of the word ‘tragedy,’ too…it’s always misused. It’s not a proper word to describe deliberate, evil acts carried out by human beings.) A couple of left wing Representatives and a Senator are getting ready to crack down on the sizes of “magazines” carried by semi-automatic pistols…as if that would have prevented a damn thing…or otherwise tightening the controls on the sale of handguns. Our hippy-dippy leftwing Senator from California, Dianne GunGrabber, er, Feinstine…publicly fantasizes about resurrecting her brainchild (the “assault weapons” ban which expired in 2004). As usual, none of it would have prevented this or done a lick of good. The only thing that would have prevented this is someone in the crowd (or the marshall charged with protecting that federal judge) putting a bullet in that guy’s head as soon as the shooting began.

The upshot is that I’m sick of having to contend with more restrictions on guns and ammo just because some people choose to use them to hurt innocent people. As a law abiding citizen, I’m tired of having to pay the price for other people’s bad behavior.

I don’t give a rip about all the lies told by the Left this week. That’s what they do, the bastards. What does bother me is them using this as an excuse to chip away some more at my 2nd Amendment rights.
- cylarz | 01/14/2011 @ 02:02
Well, at least they’re consistent. I’ll give ’em that.

The left has this creepy, totemic belief in the power of words: if we just say something long enough and loud enough, it will be true!

Here on earth we say: “What good does banning guns do? Murder is already illegal. If he fully intends to break one of those big, go-to-prison-for-life laws, what makes you think he’ll stop at a piddly 2-year bit for possession of an unregistered firearm?”

The left doesn’t see it that way. They see a “ban” on guns, and — presto changeo — there are no more guns. Yep. For them it’s just. that. easy. That’s why they’re so baffled when all their other hare-brained, half-assed schemes don’t work out. “Whaddaya mean there’s still poor people in America? We declared War on Poverty!” “What? There are still more men in engineering than women?! But…but… but… the Equal Opportunity Employment Act!!!” &c.

I swear, it’s like they’re babies who never learned that when Mommy plays peek-a-boo with you, Mommy doesn’t actually disappear.
- Severian | 01/14/2011 @ 05:56

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Why the Left Went NutsThursday, January 13th, 2011

Why the Left Went Nuts
Thursday, January 13th, 2011