The leftist mind puzzles and frustrates me because in so many ways it's a good mind. Nuanced, imaginative, hungry for data. When I try to diagnose what's wrong with it, the image that comes to mind is that of a broken scale. The left has lost-- if it ever had-- the ability to distinguish between orders of magnitude in moral and economic wrongs. The distinction between that which is "on balance" good, in spite of occasional evils, and that which is evil in its bulk, seems to escape them. A leftist evaluates the virtue of each individual and institution by a perverse calculus: multiply its bad deeds by the coefficient of its power in the world, then divide by the coefficient of the power of its chief detractors. Discussion of net impact strikes the leftist as crude. Thus, a moral contest between Yassir Arafat (a small power with big detractors) and Ronald Reagan (giant power with lesser detractors) for example, is no contest at all. American Corporations vs. Third World Dictators? You do the math.
There is a kind of autistic cynicism at play here-- an endless capacity to store and list facts with no permission of proportion or perspective or foundation. Notwithstanding the obvious percentage of these facts that are flat-out wrong, there is still, in these arguments, an impressive volley of info to be contended with. It is exhausting to those wiith a more moderate approach to fact-gathering. Which is why so often the right-thinking opponent will take refuge in generally accepted practicality or principle. "But Arafat is a terrorist gangster whose people are worse off than ever after 35 years of his leadership, and Ronald Reagan presided over one of the most prosperous periods in American history and hastened the end of the Cold War with no major confrontation." But the leftist will not be sidestepped in this way.He will allow no assumption except that all mainstream information sources are by their very nature corrupt. In this way, he is rather like the Ottoman emperor who, convinced that his food was being poisoned, ate nothing but hard boiled eggs in their shell. A diet of boiled eggs alone is bound to create imbalance.
American Corporations vs. Third World Dictators? You do the math.
There is a kind of autistic cynicism at play here-- an endless capacity to store and list facts with no permission of proportion or perspective or foundation. Notwithstanding the obvious percentage of these facts that are flat-out wrong, there is still, in these arguments, an impressive volley of info to be contended with. It is exhausting to those wiith a more moderate approach to fact-gathering. Which is why so often the right-thinking opponent will take refuge in generally accepted practicality or principle. "But Arafat is a terrorist gangster whose people are worse off than ever after 35 years of his leadership, and Ronald Reagan presided over one of the most prosperous periods in American history and hastened the end of the Cold War with no major confrontation." But the leftist will not be sidestepped in this way.He will allow no assumption except that all mainstream information sources are by their very nature corrupt. In this way, he is rather like the Ottoman emperor who, convinced that his food was being poisoned, ate nothing but hard boiled eggs in their shell. A diet of boiled eggs alone is bound to create imbalance.