Continued Confirmation of Collectivist Constituents’ Cognition

George Rebane

One of the major RR tenets over the years has been that the voters, those who resonate with the promises and programs promoted by the Left, are more than somewhat stunted in their abilities to comprehend and reason about the issues of the day.  Admittedly these issues have become more complex as our world has become more entwined.  But the gulf between the understanding of reality and our liberal electorate has grown to yawning proportions.  And this does not bode well for our republic.

Recently we saw textbook evidence of this as elitist progressive central planners again characterized their constituencies as being dimwitted, and therefore susceptible to bumbled legislation presented within a bamboozling context.  Now the beat continues with two more examples that I believe deserve to be highlighted in order to illuminate this asymmetry.

Hillary’s emails.  It is hard to imagine the contempt with which progressive Democrats hold the people who will vote for her.  She clearly violated federal regulations in setting up and operating her own email server at her private residence for doing highly confidential State Department business.  It now turns out that her claims of self-selecting, archiving, and turning over what she considered to be relevant to her federal business may also be part of a larger criminal enterprise – a felony to be exact depending on which affidavits she signed as SecState.  But what completely confuses her supporters is the claim that she “turned over 55,000 pages of emails” that by its arbitrary quantity is supposed to somehow be a sufficient and satisfactory response to the congressional demand for all her government related emails.

These poor folks cannot even bring themselves to the thought that her vetting which emails to turn over is a preposterous and totally inadequate response.  It is the federal government that has to determine what emails and other records from the comprehensive archive of her private server fall under the aegis of government business.  And that function has now been abrogated by the former SecState and denied the government – it is very likely that no one will ever know what constituted ALL of the information and data stored on her server.  To these gruberized voters, ’55,000 pages’ and ‘all’ are pretty much synonymous, and they don’t understand why Republicans, and even some Democrats, are making a fuss over this. 

Turning to the DoJ’s hit job on Ferguson.  In his report AG Holder accuses Ferguson police of conducting a “systematically racist” relationship with the city’s large black majority.  The argument is based on the statistic, quoted hourly on the media, that Ferguson’s finest accosted, arrested, and assaulted more black vs non-black citizens than a simple pro-rata calculation would justify.  And that argument is swallowed hook, line, and sinker by not only Ferguson’s black citizens, but also by nationally prominent activists, liberal politicians, and college professors whose work deals in such fields as social justice and race relations.  Holder is congratulated for digging deeply into the local police records and discovering such an egregious mismatch that demands immediate remediation.  The political fallout is so intense as to have already caused the resignations of the city manager, police chief, and a local judge who dared temper his judgment.

But what no one asks or even suggests we look at is Ferguson’s record of criminality.  What fraction of the town’s population was involved in acts illegal and/or violent?  Wouldn’t it be more informative to see if the fraction of police encounters with blacks matches in some sense with the fraction of crimes that the blacks actually commit?  That obvious question in today’s politically insane environment is considered prima facie racist and not material to such enquiries.  We have every expectation that the Democrat rank and file constituencies would never think of such factors, but what amazes me is that none of the lamestream, along with the “fair, balanced, and unafraid” media have the wherewithal to raise this question.

The answer to this important question, no matter where it falls, would be tremendously revealing.  If police encounters would tally below the pro-rata crimes committed by blacks, then the DoJ case becomes specious, and blacks should re-examine their own behaviors (culture?).  However, if the converse is true, then that would give cause for suspecting racism on the part of Ferguson police.  And the strong case such a finding makes would give justification for similar examinations in other majority black jurisdictions policed by overwhelmingly non-black police cadres.  But Holder does not have to worry about such details, his contempt for Democrat constituencies is well-placed, and his own racist pulpit remains secure.

Comments

[Joe Koyote]

Carp, Walt, Todd -- cognitive dissonance is a bitch isn't it?

[Todd Juvinall]

Not me JoeK. Here is the Wiki definition of "cognitive dissonance". It seems to fit you libs and not we conservatives.

"In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values."

Libs are the confused humanoids, we on the right are confident and know what we want.

[fish]

Posted by: Joe Koyote | 18 March 2015 at 10:00 AM

JoKe....and please accept this as a compliment....whenever I have questions regarding cognitive dissonance I think of you first.

[joe smith]

Clinton had her own server but her ISP was Earthlink. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Earthlink required to maintain copies of communication for many (I think 7) years? Regardless, who here thinks for a second that the NSA doesn't have copies of every whisper uttered by the SS? The records are available, and my guess is that they will be unveiled closer to the election and after Hillary has plagiarized herself by promising in front of Congress that she only deleted personal email. We can hope.

[Gregory]

"Oh please dear Gregory. Do you think your small and tiny footprint still resides in anyone's noggin of import? Hardly. But do go on." -mandsersonation, 10:13PM

Of import? No, Mikey, you aren't of import. But I have seen the threats you've made, and I've been told you even managed to successfully blackmail RL Crabb who didn't want to bet your angry lawyer wasn't a figment of your fervent imagination.

[Walt]

Well "O" sure isn't happy with the Israeli election. Bibi has won the day, and "O"'s Muslim buds are out pounding sand.

[RL Crabb]

Gregory 12:26PM - That's not true. Don't drag me into your bullshit fantasy land.

[Gregory]

RL, blackmail includes threats of legal action, bogus or not.

[George Rebane]

Just as a reference point. The Democrats have controlled all fed govt bureaucracies - IRS, EPA, FDA, ... - for some decades now, regardless who sits in the WH or who controls which house of Congress. This is confirmed through numerous polls of which party affiliation fed employees support. They know how their careers are protected, and it isn't by those attempting to reduce the scope of government.

[Gregory]

George, there is interesting new testimony to Congress yesterday from Lawrence Tribe about EPA overreach over CO2 rules... “Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy policy”
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF03/20150317/103073/HHRG-114-IF03-Wstate-TribeL-20150317-U1.pdf

[Account Deleted]

Oh dear - and Obama just promised and promised he'd be the most open and transparent pres that ever was!
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ab029d7c625149348143a51ff61175c6/us-sets-new-record-denying-censoring-government-files
And he still has time left to do even more damage.

[Account Deleted]

It just gets better and better:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-18/obama-says-mandatory-voting-would-completely-change-u-s-political-map
Best pull quote: “And they’re the folks who are scratching and climbing to get into the middle class and they’re working hard. There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls.”
There isn't one single reporter that would question him on this or demand he name who the 'some folks' are.
And how would we check to see if everyone has voted? ID's?
This country is further down the drain than I thought. The left doesn't even try to keep their story straight and most of the rest of this country is too stupid or lazy to see it or care.

[Walt]

Yes Scott. The LIBS would LOVE everyone to vote. Including illegals. ( and in some places those as young as 16) The excuse is that " the laws we vote on affects them. So they should have a say. I say "F" U!! That's why LIBS got their motorvoter crap passed. Now that illegals can get a drivers licence, you can bet a voter reg. is put in their hand at the same time. ( With the DEM box already checked)

[Account Deleted]

Come on, lefties - how does this mandatory voting work? All of 'the people' that were previously prevented from voting by stupid rules concerning times and dates would be 'escorted' to the voting places and 'enabled' to vote 'correctly'. Of course, venues would be set up in certain foreign countries for the 'future' voters to cast their votes. Why prevent the future voters from exercising their Constitutional rights?

[Gregory]

Another bit of progressive news... Janet Napolitano stating "we don't have to listen to this crap" when UC students (her customers) were protesting her 5% per year increases in fees for 5 years.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/03/18/napolitano-says-we-dont-have-to-listen-to-this-crap-as-students-protest-potential-uc-tuition-hikes/

All microphones are live in the same way all guns are loaded.

[Walt]

It's pretty much the same comment she said to Conservatives when we griped about her handling of illegals. Does she consider this LIB on LIB crime?