Right, Left, Truth, and Observable Reality

Quite a while back when I was posting on the now-defunct Themestream.com I fisked an essay written by another Themestreamer. (I did a lot of that.) His piece was entitled "The Aims and Abilities of Liberals and Conservatives" and while I don't have a copy of the entire essay, I quoted from it extensively in my response, Liberal v. Conservative: Both are Necessary - which I also posted to this blog back in June of last year. I called the author "John Doe" in the posting here, but for clarity I'd like to make it known that the author I was fisking was Marriah Star, self-described philosopher and utopist. Feel free to peruse his site, because I believe that Mr. Star is the prototypical example of the modern big "L" Liberal.

What inspired this essay was one of the points of Mr. Star's piece as I parsed it in Liberal v. Conservative:

Mr. (Star) writes that "Liberals are nomads" who are open-minded and have widely varying viewpoints due to their "various travels", and who have a hard time getting together because they "live in separate truths, with no single reality dominating their lives". This is, he says, in opposition to conservatives who "exist in cliques" because they "largely possess one mind." ("We are Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.") Conservatives, he writes, "have the ability to mobilize very quickly by repeating the same thought until they convince themselves of it." (I cannot help, however, in reflecting just how fast the Liberals mobilized themselves and repeated "we must count all the votes" until they convinced themselves that it had not happened.) ("No Blood for Ooooiiiiilllllll!!!!" comes to mind presently. And "BUSH LIED!" And others, but I digress.)
"Conservatives", he says, "may not communicate the truth, but they have the ability to change reality so that it reflects their truth."

Now, let me quote David Brooks from the New York Times yesterday:

Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

Now let me illustrate how the LEFT has "mobilize(d) very quickly by repeating the same thought until they convince themselves of it."

Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune


Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Nick Anderson, Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal


M.E. Cohen, freelance


Matt Davies, New York Journal-News


John Branch, San Antonio Express-News


Chris Britt, Illinois State Journal-Register


Ann Telnaes, Tribune Media Services.

Add also: The Boston Globe's Scott Greenburger, The San Jose Mercury News, and on and on and on.

In response to Mr. Star's assertion that conservatives "have the ability to mobilize very quickly by repeating the same thought until they convince themselves of it," I wrote:

Excuse me? If Liberals "live in separate truths" then what makes the Conservative version of "truth" any less valid than the myriad Liberal versions? Because more than one person believes it at any one time? This strikes me as psychobabble. Is there "truth" at all? How does one judge? It seems to me that the objective criteria is: is your version of "truth" consistent with observable reality? If not, it doesn't matter if you're Liberal or Conservative, you're wrong.

It seems apparent now that liberals do not, in fact, "live in separate truths." They are instead largely a Borg-like collective just waiting for their marching orders from their ideological masters, telling them what to think about what just happened to them. As "Sad American" attempted to explain to the Ideological Left in her open letter to the Democrats, How You Could Have Had My Vote, a lot of people in the ideological middle are more than capable of ignoring the endlessly repeated memes of either the Left or the Right and make up their own minds. In contrast to novelist Jane Smiley's assertion that "Red Staters" are "unteachably ignorant", "Sad American" illustrates that they're infinitely able to learn - and reject the teachings of their supercilious, condescending, and outright insulting would-be masters.

It would appear that the "radical middle" still has at least a tenuous grasp on observable reality, and can discern when the Left's version of "truth" has strayed outside it.

And it would seem to me that Mr. Star's assertion that it is conservatives who repeat the same thought until they convince themselves of it, and are able to change reality so that it reflects their truth is a bit of psychological projection of the most obvious sort.

UPDATE, 11/8: Eugene Volokh points to this Daily Kos post by Tom Schaller (associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written for the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Salon) that includes the following:

Marching order #1, therefore, is this: No matter whom you talk to outside our circles, begin to perpetuate the (false, exaggerated) notion that George Bush's victory was built not merely on values issues, but gay marriage specifically. If you feel a need to broaden it slightly, try depicting the GOP as a majority party synonymous with gay-haters, warmongers and country-clubbers. Because I, for one, am tired of hearing whiny complaints from conservatives that, not only do I not have values, but that I fail to properly respect the values of people who are all too happy to buy into, no less perpetuate, inaccurate caricatures of the 54+ million Americans who voted Tuesday for John Kerry.

Criticizing the GOP ain't gonna build us a new national majority. But the process is brick by brick, or perhaps, brickbat by brickbat. We didn't decide the rules of engagement, but that's what they are and so we may as well start firing away. Oh, and Ralph: Thanks for the help.

It would appear that "Marching Order #1" has very quickly made the rounds. RTWT. ESPECIALLY the comments. And all of Prof. Volokh's take on it, too.