We all can agree that every apple is a fruit. Everyone can also agree that not every fruit is an apple. It’s basic logic after all.
Everybody could probably also agree that people who have opposite political views to them disagree with them. It makes sense – if somebody’s positions on major issues are opposed to yours, by definition, they are someone with whom you can expect to have many disagreements. However, today’s left erroneously takes the converse of this statement to be true – that anyone who disagrees with them must also have opposite political views. In other words, that anyone, who at any time, and in any way, expresses any heterodox views or information that even remotely frustrates the Democratic agenda or its narratives, are automatically assumed to be “the other,” “the far right,” “MAGA,” etc. Much of this self entitlement is a result of decade long compounding affirmation from
Things have gotten so out of control to where many on the left, particularly in its hysterical, elite flank, will accuse people whose only offense is mere disagreement with Democratic messaging of somehow being “pro Putin” – an accusation in essence of treason, made so often in liberal media today, that this grave charge hardly means anything anymore.
If someone so much as observes how unaffordable things have become in America in the last few years, they may be labeled “pro-Trump” simply for having not been complicit in the gaslighting that has been the White House’s messaging on the economy. The hivemind of much of the left today has been so badly damaged from the insult to aristocratic America that was Trump’s presidency, which above all else to these people, symbolized a dirty populist mob throwing itself over the walls of Versailles—displacing them and their sense of rightful entitlement—that the entire lens through which they see the world around them has been warped by bad logic – a defense mechanism to avoid reckoning with their own unpopularity.
Put differently, these people believe that the only individuals who could possibly disagree with them, instead of just falling in line with the corporate Democratic agenda on command, are those who they imagine to be the most extreme versions of their political adversaries. There is no room for disagreement, reflection, learning, calibrating, etc.
These people have also have come to believe that their foreign enemies are somehow in league with their domestic enemies. For example, if a working class American, even one sympathetic to the cause of the Ukrainian people, takes notice of crumbling infrastructure around them, that they can’t afford to buy a home, can’t buy reasonably priced goods that are built to last, struggles to figure out how their kids will afford college, and sees their government somehow finding and transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to fund foreign wars in which the public does not understand there to be any vital American security interest at stake, it is no surprise people might start to question how their money is being spent.
This does not mean that this same person is in fact some slack-jawed agent of the Kremlin, who sits around watching Putin speeches and propaganda on RT all day. It is merely the logical conclusion one might come to. However, for the elite left, such a person can only be understood as the victim of “misinformation” – someone who spent too much time watching Joe Rogan, and not enough time watching Morning Joe. As these people see it, only those who consume the wrong information or who have the wrong beliefs could possibly disagree with them and complicate the obnoxious, narcissistic certitude with which they’ve imbued themselves.
If you are creating any cognitive dissonance in the minds of members of the elite left, for instance, questioning corporate power instead of applauding “content moderation,” pointing to the hypocrisy of the unimaginable privilege and nepotism many of these people enjoy while crusading against the “privilege” of others, even asking why former Pres. Trump, for the oceans of ink that have been spilled over the last eight years calling him every horrible thing seemingly ever put to print in the history of human language, is somehow still ahead of Pres. Biden in the polls, you yourself will be excommunicated from the left. You can expect to have “What happened to you?” written about you.
In these people’s minds, anyone with anything heterodox to say can only be perceived as a mortal enemy.
The tentacles of this absurd litmus testing seem to know no end.
In this framing, you are either part of the Good People™ and are in lockstep with whatever the Democratic establishment, Big Tech, and corporate media say (these days it can be hard to tell where one of these entities ends and the other one begins) or there must be something wrong with you. The only explanation for which of course is to apply the Bad People™ label of “far right” to you, assume you are some disaffected, racist, backwoods, uneducated, prole who hates everything good and decent, and cast you aside.
Why does this happen? Why does the left believe anyone who doesn’t march to the same tune on every last refrain, even those among their own ranks who simply want to improve their party, must necessarily be hateful or ignorant or dumb or afflicted by whichever -ism is hot that month? It’s because today’s Democratic party is no longer the party of the left or of liberals or of the working class—it’s the party of elites. As with all elite circles, you are either in or you are out. In these people’s politics, you are either serving establishment power or you are not.
If you are not, you are the other, which in an age of extremes can only be the worst and most hostile framing these people can cook up.
