The Patterned Irrationality of the Left

In the unconscious mind, where symmetrical logic rules the night, the stronger the emotion one is feeling, the more "symmetrical deductions" are likely to occur.

For example, as Bomford writes, on a deep unconscious level, "one who hates has to believe that his or her hatred is returned." Note that this is a logical operation, only based upon a different sort of logic. This logic is no doubt the source of the psychotic fear of Israel in the Islamic world. Their unconscious hatred is so profound that it simultaneously reverses the relation, so that they can't help perceiving that Israel hates them. But Israelis just want to shop, raise their families, or read the Torah. They couldn't care less about Muslims, except to the extent that bloodthirsty Muslim barbarians harbor murderous rage toward them.

It's fine to hate evil, but in the Islamic world, what is hated is transformed into evil. Something is not hated because it is evil, but evil because it is hated. One could say the same of the left, which habitually fears what it eternally hates. The left cannot be comprehended unless one appreciates the extent of their unbound hatred. Once this is grasped, what seems illogical is suddenly seen to obey the dictates of symmetrical logic. For example, the unconscious feeling that I hate America and want us to lose in Iraq is transformed to General Petraeus is a traitor, or I am a racist becomes America is racist, or I am unbearably envious becomes the wealthy are engaged in class warfare against me!

Another characteristic of the unconscious is that it is timeless, in the sense that it can reverse temporal relations. For example, in the unconscious mind, if A is the cause of B, B can also be the cause of A. Thus, "before" and "after" become meaningless. Therefore, although we were inexcusably attacked by Islamists on 9-11, within minutes, leftists were saying that the real reason for the attack was that we had done something to offend Muslims.

Likewise, throughout the Cold War, leftist scholars wrote "revisionist" histories, in which the United States was the cause of the Cold War, or at least equally responsible for it. You will notice that there are no conservative revisionists who write, for example, that blacks were the cause of their own lynching, or that Japanese Americans were the cause of their own internment. You can only think in this manner if you are pathologically under the sway of unconscious symmetrical logic.

Also in the unconscious mind, there is no distinction between the memory of something that actually occurred vs. the memory of a fantasy. Here we can understand how and why the left is so prone to mythologizing the past, as their fantasies are mingled with reality.

Thus, no amount of reality and asymmetrical logic will ever convince them that FDR made the Great Depression worse, not better, or that the black family only began to disintegrate after the imposition of all the "Great Society" programs of the mid to late '60s. No amount of logic could convince a leftist that his policies harm the "little guy," since his ruling myth, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is that he is here to rescue the hapless little guy (for whom the leftist always feels rich contempt in the unconscious mind, contempt which only seeps out everywhere).

One thing you will notice about the left is that they are passionate. Because the left is guided by feelings and intentions, they are blind to the results of their actions. If their feelings are infinitely good, then in the unconscious mind, the results must also be infinitely good.

As I have written before, this is a religious passion in the absence of religion, so it has no traditional means to structure and channel it. Just as religion partakes of symmetrical logic in an adaptive way (i.e., the meek shall inherit the earth, the Golden Rule, humans are made in the image of the Creator, etc.), leftists do so in a terribly unhealthy way. That is, because of the intensity of their feelings, these feelings reach way down into the symmetrical realm, with no way to structure or make sense of them. This is why you always see so much highly charged, "unfiltered" unconscious material coming out of the left. To borrow a metaphor from someone, reading dailykos or huffington post is like taking a ride through a sewer in a glass bottom boat.

As Bomford writes, the dictates of symmetrical logic mean that deductions "do not follow the path of fact, but of feeling or emotion." And although this inevitably leads to "crazy" deductions based upon a chain of feelings, in a sense, it is much more "free" than asymmetrical, Aristotelian logic. For example, the latter "has a deterministic feel. That is to say, it never delivers a new truth, though it may deliver truths that had not been clear before. Everything is already 'there' in the premises."

Not so symmetrical logic, which has considerably more freedom to "deduce." It can easily arrive at patent falsehoods while still obeying its own logic. For example, the knuckleheads at Columbia University believe that having a genocidal sociopath speak on their campus is an instance of defending "freedom of speech." I would agree, but only in a psychotically cluelessidal way, rooted in symmetrical logic. By the standards of normal logic, it makes no sense whatsoever. It's crazy.

One of the most fascinating aspects of unconscious logic is the way it can shift attributes from agent to agent. For example, as mentioned above, it is the work of a moment for a leftist to turn a perpetrator into a victim and a victim into a perpetrator, based upon the emotional needs of the day. For example, the standard leftist logic would be Larry Craig --> Homosexual --> Ultimate Victim. But place an "R" after the name, and the overriding logic becomes Republican --> Homophobic Victimizer --> Burn him!

Likewise, the normal train of leftist logic would be ROTC --> Don't ask, Don't tell policy --> Homophobia --> Get off our campus, fascists! But Ahmadinejad -- whose government's policy toward homosexuals is "don't tell, because we'll bury you alive" -- is given a pass because he shares the left's passionate hatred of America and of President Bush. Their interests converge in the deep, symmetrical unconscious. Ironically, it is obvious that Ahmadinejad is much more conscious of this than the left to which his manipulative talking points are tailored. You might say that he is consciously speaking to the left's unconscious, pushing every one of their happy buttons he can think of.

Don't believe me?

Daily Kos: 45% Want Ahmadinejad As US President

or

I Am a Jewish Lesbian, and I Have a Crush on Ahmadinejad:

"... the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon... Okay, I admit it. Part of it is that he just looks cuddly. Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight. I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog. Sort of. With smaller eyes.... I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding...."



Homosexuality? In Iran? We don't allow it. Makes the goats jealous.