The Extremist Fringe of the Left

No Evidence, Just Presumptive Prejudice

The leftist world view is a strange beast.  We acknowledge that all human beings have deeply (often inchoately) held beliefs that are to them so self-evident they are beyond debate and discussion.  Philosophers call such deeply held truth commitments presuppositions.  The Left (or anybody else) are not to be criticized for having such fundamental beliefs.

What is queer, however, is that it would appear one of the presuppositions of the Left is that their views are self-evident to every human soul.  Like many fundamental beliefs, the folk on the Left do not take this belief in the self-evident status of leftist ideology out of their mental satchells and take a good, long, hard look at it from time to time.  

Rather, they grandly assume that leftist views and commitments are self-evident to every human being--and that's all there is to it.  This is what critics are alluding to when they charge the Left with operating more and more in a self-constructed echo-chamber.

Understanding this helps explain a number of behavioural characteristics of the Left.
 Firstly, it explains why anyone who opposes Leftist ideology must (to Leftists) be profoundly ignorant, prejudiced, or worse.  By definition such people must be riven with misogyny.  By definition they must be haters of others--and, therefore, racists, homophobes, sexist, and whatever other phobias or "isms" spring to mind. In a word opponents resemble deformed, gangrel, sub-human creatures.

The Left jumps to such extreme judgements not on the basis of evidence, but because of the grand presupposition that the leftist world view is self-evident to every human being.  Anyone who denies what is self-evident is either clinically mad, or a contumacious liar or, worse, sub-human.  The non-Leftist must be either depraved or insane.

When we grasp this particular leftist mindset, it explains some of the bizarre and otherwise mindless behaviour of many in the wake of the recent US presidential election.  It was indeed quite surreal to anyone not afflicted with the Left's version of its own self-evident verities to see the Left insisting on a recount of ballots in some "blue-wall" states.  Why? Well, on the grounds that electoral fraud "most likely" occurred.

There was precisely no evidence, but the sheer fact a majority of the electorate had voted against self-evident truth was itself sufficient evidence of prima facie fraud.  How else can one explain the chorus calling for a recount--a call picked up and fanned by febrile media?

Should recounts have been held in every state on the possibility that electoral fraud had occurred?  No--only states which had previously voted Left.  Why?  Because only the mad or the grossly ignorant would not vote according to leftist ideology.

Now the results of some of the recounts and investigations are coming to light
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Statewide recounts in key 2016 battlegrounds are proceeding in fits and starts -- but doing little to change the math behind Donald Trump's victory.   In Wisconsin, one of three states where Green Party candidate Jill Stein has sought a fresh tabulation, the president-elect has even gained on Hillary Clinton.  . . .

But while Trump narrowly defeated Clinton in all three states, the numbers trickling in look unlikely to call into question the Nov. 8 results.  “In any election, the actual change in the margin of votes is very, very low,” Drew Spencer Penrose, legal director at FairVote, told FoxNews.com. “For people hoping for a change in results, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Jill Stein, Green leader, had argued a probable cause for a recount:  the proposition that voter fraud and the errors of voting machines was possible.  No evidence mind.  Just possible.  But, to raise money and go hard out for a recount on the grounds of "mere possibility" does not cut it.  It was fuelled by an expectation that fraud and mechanical errors would have been present.  Why else would results allegedly show people denying what is manifestly self-evident to reasonable (Left) human beings?

It is this particular wacky world-view, with all its incipient arrogance, which makes the Left (or, more accurately, some leftists) so intolerant and militant.