The left relies on the public’s ignorance and lack of curiosity
Here’s an interesting Twitter thread (hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin”):
I am highly educated and reasonably perceptive, and it was only today that I learned the Kyle Rittenhouse victims were white.
My progressive bubble made this seem like a very different case than it is.
— Sarah Beth Burwick (@sarahbeth345) November 11, 2021
On the one hand, it’s good that Sarah Beth Burwick has finally seen at least some of the truth about this case, and is beginning to doubt that her previous sources are reliable.
But did she have no previous curiosity? It certainly wouldn’t have taken but a moment to find out that the men Rittenhouse shot were white, a fact that would have given the lie to all the mendacious “white supremacist” talk about Rittenhouse. It was almost impossible not to know something about these three if a person read even a small amount about the case. I saw their photos early on, and also knew the basic facts of the case, and they weren’t the least bit hard to find. For example, I wrote this post the day after the news broke, in which I mention that all three men who were shot were white.
On that same day, August 27, 2020, I wrote a post entitled “The game plan of the MSM in not showing the evidence that would tend to support a self-defense argument for Rittenhouse.” Here’s an excerpt:
Here’s the game plan: keep from the public those parts of the videos that might tend to exonerate Rittenhouse, controlling the narrative and setting a widespread public perception that he’s a murderer. That might cause even more riots, which the left seems to want, as well as discouraging bona fide self-defense on the part of the rioters’ targets.
Then, once the whole “narrative” is set in stone in the minds of most of the public, the following reactions often occur: DAs (even ones that are not Soros-funded) feel they must throw the book at the culprit in order to calm things down, jury pools have become biased and/or may be frightened about the possible repercussions of any “not guilty” verdict, and if said not guilty verdict is nevertheless rendered the resulting riots are even more extreme because much of the public feels that justice has not been done. That also adds to the general disgust for the court system, and the left believes that can only aid them as well.
There you have it. Sarah Beth Burwick and the people on her thread who have had similar experiences, in which watching some of the trial made clear certain very basic facts of which they’d been previously unaware, are the dupes of this cycle. They may be awakening to it now, but will it remain an isolated incident for them or will they take more general lessons from it? And how many of them are there, compared to the vast numbers who continue to be duped – and who seemingly willingly play along and don’t do their very basic homework?
A little further down on that thread, Burwick adds:
Let me add a few points-
1. All my friends/family are progressively and I recently woke up to their hyocrisy and msm BS
2. I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the case
3. If you hear someone called a white supremacist enough times, you believe it unless…..…you realize you need to question everything you’ve been told, which is what is keeping me very, very busy of late.
Well, good for her. But I repeat: how many people are doing this? It’s a rhetorical question for which I don’t have an answer. I hope very very many, but I’ve hoped that before and the hopes were not fulfilled.
[NOTE: And by the way, legally it wouldn’t have mattered if the men Rittenhouse shot were white or black. But in the public eye it matters to a great many people, and the assumption that they were black would have further hurt Rittenhouse. Well, at the very least, the jury now knows that they were white.
I also think (although I’m not sure) that their races might have mattered had they been black and Rittenhouse was acquitted, and the federal government was contemplating filing federal charges against him, as some sort of racially-motivated perp, for violating their civil rights.]
All of the racism and anti-semitism in America THAT MATTERS is in on the left. The Democrats are the party of hate. They even celebrate their hate.
I know men that never listen to news of any sort other than sports. In a car it’s either music or sports talk radio. They only listen to talk radio for a weather forecast or traffic info. One of them told me that politics is boring and it’s too hard to figure what is true. He is blissfully ignorant.
What younger folks do on their phones is mostly seek things that are amusing. Oh, and have entire text conversations. I know about this from my son and daughter.
I have friends and relatives that are in the progressive bubble. If it’s not on NPR then it’s not true. And the other side of that coin: if you heard on NPR then it is true.
People… persons of white, a color bloc, a diversity class. That changes everything. One step forward, two steps backward.
I’m increasingly convinced that keeping us ignorant and without curiosity is a major goal of the left. It makes everything else they want to accomplish easier.
Their is more awareness happening. Here is another example unrelated to Rittenhouse;
https://youtu.be/v8v7ueICWuU
“…keeping us ignorant and without curiosity is a major goal…”
Got that straight.
Here’s a short excerpt of Sharyl Attkisson explaining how the Internet has gone from being a tremendous source of information to channeling it, reducing it—IOW, you hear/see only what THEY want you to find out about; what they DON’T want you to find out about they simply “airbrush” out.
The result? You aren’t aware of this misinformation/disinformation/manipulation…so you ‘don’t even know what you don’t know” (as the expression goes….).
The misinformation/disinformation/manipulation is massive unless you’re alert/aware/conscious enough to peruse alternate sources.
And who has the time/knowledge/motivation to do that? (Especially if you don’t know which other sources are out there? Or if those alternate sources themselves are being squelched?…)
Oops… Here’s that link:
https://twitter.com/RonColeman/status/1392192471342452740
Newest issue of Hillsdale’s Imprimis has a Roger Kimball article on Jan6.
No one here will learn any new facts but any Leftie would …
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/january-6-insurrection-hoax/
I’d add overwhelm to neo’s list. Perhaps it goes with or explains the public’s lack of curiosity.
I like to think I’m reasonably curious and reasonably non-ignorant, but there are stories I don’t follow — Durham’s RussiaGate for one — that I don’t follow because I find the details overwhelming.
Not impossible. I’ve got the gear to follow if I must, but I know it will take effort and I only have so much time and energy.
Can’t simply be her bubble. At one time or another, she had to, metaphorically, shut her eyes and block her ears when the inevitable (see probability theory) actual fact came floating by.
Not sure about the spelling but “Grosskreutz” and “Rosenbaum” are a couple of names you’re not going to find on an NBA roster. After reviewing those, it strikes me I may have left out some letters or perhaps a syllable. Which makes the case even stronger.
The left is not interested in any bit of fact that doesn’t push their “narrative”.
The 1619 Project is close to pure fiction but since it ‘confirms’ what the left believes it is taken as … well …
The Gospel Truth.
Based upon the second highlighted comment by Ms Burwick, I suspect she has chosen the “red pill” and begun to see how deep the rabbit hole goes…
The depth of their willful blindness, reveals how deep their refusal to face the truth… about just how ignorant and foolishly gullible they’ve been.
Not the Bee has a screen shot of Merriam-Webster’s mockery of Kyle Rittenhouse’s sobbing on the witness stand yesterday as “crocodile tears”: “The implication is obvious: Merriam-Webster believes that Kyle Rittenhouse was putting on some sort of performative display of emotion in order to sway the jury during the trial—that his tears were an effort at insincere emotional manipulation and that he deserves everyone’s contempt for it.” The article goes on to note that Merriam-Webster’s tweet received “gleeful and ecstatic cheers from countless followers. . . . This is not normal and it is not healthy. It is not a sign that our culture is degrading; it is a sign that our culture has already degraded, perhaps irrevocably, and that it will only continue to get worse.”
Screen shot and sample “cheers” at the link:
https://notthebee.com/article/a-major-corporation-just-openly-mocked-kyle-rittenhouse-for-breaking-down-while-reliving-the-worst-trauma-of-his-life-this-is-the-society-we-live-in-now
I’m not hopeful that any of these Merriam-Webster “followers” will follow Burwick’s example.
PA+Cat:
Yet Lt. Michael Byrd openly wept and expressed fear for his life, when he shot Ashli Babbit in the back of the neck without warning, though he was never chased nor threatened, and he was taken seriously by the Good Democrats and Media.
Either Byrd is unfit for the rigors of law enforcement or those tears were blatantly crocodilian.
A bit O/T but I believe that an analogy can be made to the Covid debacle, where dissent from the Narrative is widely—and officially—suppressed such that those doctors and researchers asking questions, expressing skepticism of the Narrative and making their own science-based claims have been “canceled”, frozen out, ignored or even dismissed from their positions.
I don’t know if the following astonishingly candid Covid interview with a Canadian virologist has been out for a while or whether it’s relatively new, but it’s extraordinary:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/7XXmStI8VINb/?list=notifications&randomize=false
Not everything this virologist says will be new to readers of this blog, but there are some very valuable tidbits within.
The above comment (7:34 pm) was mine. Not sure what happened there…
Topo Gigio said,
“I’m increasingly convinced that keeping us ignorant and without curiosity is a major goal of the left. ”
An interesting comment because it implies that individuals are incapable of expressing curiosity or asking questions (even to themselves).
That people are like the Eloi of HG Wells’ “The Time Machine.”
Yet the folks who read and comment on Neo’s blog appear to be thinking, questioning individuals. So some folks are not like the Eloi.
Why do many people refuse to turn on their brains?
What is it about the personality of some individuals that prevent them from asking questions or even seeking a little bit more information about contentious issues?
The left can get away with keeping people ignorant and curious free because too many people ALLOW it to happen.
This is the real problem.
An uninformed or mal-informed public is not a good recipe for maintaining a Constitutional Republic.
I’m glad you added the note, neo. Race was never an interest to me in this case. I knew Rosenbaum was white, but it didn’t matter to me. It also didn’t matter his mental health or criminal past, at least in whether there was justification to shoot him. Rittenhouse would not know any of Rosenbaum’s past when he pulled the trigger. Rittenhouse may assume the race, but justification for self defense does not care.
The interesting thing is how much these things mean to the left, yet they call the right racist.
@Leland:
Ah… But some of us are… Some of us are 🙂
“The interesting thing is how much these things mean to the left”
It’s interesting for about five minutes after one first picks up on it. But the Woke also taught me all about ‘Othering’… Hammered home the sermon loud and long and repeatedly. So problem solved. My mind is calm.
I have a dream that one day in our country we will judge shootings on the facts and not the color of the shooter and what the shot. Naw, forget it. That will never happen
@Sheldon:
Did you have that dream while doing all of this?
https://www.davidgarrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DJGStandpoint2019.pdf
If not, I’d ask for a refund.
Ms. Burwick appears to be well along the way towards a major evolution in her political worldview, and I commend her for that.
Many of the regulars on Neo’s blog are political changers, as is Neo and as am I. For those who are not, I cannot overstate how frequently and effortlessly many liberals/progressives/leftists live inside of a very well sealed bubble. I certainly did. If one comes from a solidly Democrat family (as I did) and grows up in a very liberal city (as I did), goes to public schools (as I did) and a state university where one majors in a humanities field (as I did) and then pursues a professional degree at another very liberal school (again, like me), followed by entry into a profession dominated by progressives (you guessed it…just like me), one can easily block out any opinions, and any facts, which contradict the approved narrative.
I certainly did. And this was from the late 70’s until 2007-08. Even then, it still was so natural as to happen almost unconsciously. Does anyone doubt it is fiftyfold easier to do today,, in our social media dominated culture?
They were antifa, so of course they were white.
@ JHCorcoran > “Their is more awareness happening. Here is another example unrelated to Rittenhouse;”
Thanks for posting that video. Very much worth watching if you are a fan of Lobster Man, or if you aren’t but are willing to have preconceptions challenged.
A Change of Heart Towards Jordan | Africa Brooke | Mikhaila Peterson Podcast | #120 2021-10-14
I don’t think it’s entirely unrelated – what was done to persecute Peterson is all part of the same movement (and probably by many of the same people) who are persecuting Kyle.
BTW, that probably includes this person.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/11/11/cnns-don-lemon-rittenhouse-trial-judge-demeanor-grounds-for-mistrial/
}}} but will it remain an isolated incident for them or will they take more general lessons from it?
I would say the former for sure… she, from the later excerpts, may be an exception, but, as I have noted here before, even recently, if there is any “feature” which denotes liberals of today, it is a singular inability to learn from experience. IQ is a measure of intellect, which is often described as the capacity to learn from books. Wisdom is a measure of the capacity to learn from experience, which I assert is totally absent from most liberals… if there were a “WQ” test to match the IQ test, I predict that liberals would consistently fall into the lower third of the resulting bell curve.
Once you grasp this, all manner of liberal behaviors — from devotion to Marxism to a relentless faith in repeatedly failed policy objectives (of which Marxist ideas are but one, in fact) become far more understandable. Even when it gets shoved in their faces, by direct and painful personal experience, they rarely learn from it. They usually find some rationalization for it and move on (as in Churchill’s “Men occasionally stumble upon the truth… most of the times, they get up, dust themselves off, and continue on…”)
Sarah Beth may be an exception — perhaps, even, she was, like you, Neo, not really a “natural liberal”, but someone who simply had no actual experience of the alternative due to personal mileau. She just needed the experience to learn from, and may have begun doing so now that her bubble has been shattered…
========
P.S., another concern would be, can she stand up to the onslaught of friends and family who berate her for “listening to the liars on the other side”? Even if she is open to learning, she may find herself having to choose between finding a new place to Be or self-stifling to “fit in”.
}}} Yet the folks who read and comment on Neo’s blog appear to be thinking, questioning individuals. So some folks are not like the Eloi.
WE, pretty much, aren’t liberals, John.
Most liberals ARE pre-Eloi.
}}} The left can get away with keeping people ignorant and curious free because too many people ALLOW it to happen.
And how have you been absent in the great debate on censorship on Twitter and Facebook? Even if all of us who have been censored “go somewhere else”, what do you think happens with regards to those who are happy we got censored, who remain?
Communication is a two way street. You can’t really communicate much with a 3yo sticking their fingers in their ears singing, La La La La, I CAN’T HEAR you!!!… and that is the emotional capacity of most liberals to handle dispute.
}}} They were antifa, so of course they were white.
BWAAAAAhahahahhaaaa… SOOOOO True.
In my experience change happened pretty fast.
Once I questioned one issue and changed my mind, it became much easier to see all the inconsistencies and contradictions on the left. Then it became impossible to unsee all that.
When I brought these issues up to my friends on the left, in the spirit of open liberal discussion, they turned on me hard and that became something else I couldn’t unsee.
That was 20 years ago, when the rabid partisan nature of the left was less clear. Burwick is coming in later and may protect herself better.
But it will still be hard and painful to be at odds with the world you once took for granted and the people you thought were friends.
“WE, pretty much, aren’t liberals….”
Sometimes I think that the Constitution-respecting, “Don’t-Tread- on-Me” Republicans are actually the “Last of the Red Hot” Liberals….
(Though this would be also true of Constitution-respecting “Don’t-Tread-on-Me” Liberals—assuming such an animal exists).
It boils down to a question of “do-unto-others” respect and concern for ones family, neighbor and community. And the Law.
The question has come around from time to time: Is a person with at least a modicum of cognitive ability morally required to think rationally on matters of public interest? In other words, to eschew the feelz method of coming to a conclusion.
And in order to maintain the feelz, it is necessary to be ignorant–which requires being incurious–and that means deepsixing actual facts which accidentally show themselves.
It’s the latter which gives the impression of shooting BBs at a bowling ball when discussing reality with a liberal.
Barry Meislin…”Here’s a short excerpt of Sharyl Attkisson explaining how the Internet has gone from being a tremendous source of information to channeling it, reducing it—IOW, you hear/see only what THEY want you to find out about; what they DON’T want you to find out about they simply “airbrush” out.”
Important to note that The Internet is not identical with Social Media platforms…the latter are only one of the applications of the Internet, which also enables sites like this blog, Instapundit, and many more. Absent the Internet, we would be *totally* at the mercy of the media gatekeepers, both print and tv media and any online closed systems that they might have developed.
I was red pilled when i finally found out george zimmerman was hispanic after 1 year of being told he was a white supremacist. if you have friends or relatives who are liberals show them the pictures of people Kyle shot, show them colored pics instead of the black and white ones liberal channels have been using to somewhat tone down their whiteness to fool their audience, also show them the images of rosenbaum without the beanie to highlight his possible skinhead origin that the media has been concealing, not saying he was a skinhead at all but he did look way more like one than someone who cared so deeply about racial inequality and the media did obviously thought that mattered so they usually only shown the pic with a black beanie on covering his shaved head.
Oh Bloody Hell said @ 3:43 AM;
“IQ is a measure of intellect, which is often described as the capacity to learn from books. Wisdom is a measure of the capacity to learn from experience, which I assert is totally absent from most liberals.”
I think there is more to it than lack of wisdom.
I think there is a great measure of arrogance tossed into this salad.
Highly educated liberals, especially, are adept at explaining away real world facts that contradict their world view. They can readily present arguments that appear to be logical, that make them appear to be very smart.
This ability places them above the fray, as an “intellect,” as someone who can see around corners, that place them above the Walmart crowd hoi-polloi.
There are many people who revel in being something – real or imagined – that allows them to reside above the fray. And if the “intellectual” class reside at a certain address, then by golly, best to belong to the smarty-pants class.
True, there are liberals who are simply clueless about everything and anything, who base their worldview on how they feel about this, that, he, her, whatever. They make no connection, NOR DESIRE TO make any connection between their real world travails and those in positions of authority who create the policies that complicate their lives.
I have liberal friends in both camps; the “pseudo-intellectual,” NY Times type liberals and the totally, non-thinking, clueless liberals.
All of them live within a “cone of silence,” but unlike the bumbling, inept members of the “CONTROL” spy agency (the good guys, from the TV show “Get Smart”), who would eventually have to raise the cone to communicate, the true-believer literally lives inside their cone and never leaves its confines.
By the way, the bumbling, inept spies of CONTROL, typically through an unbelievable series of accidents and coincidences, were always able to thwart the the bad guys of KAOS, and save the USA.
JohnTyler…”There are many people who revel in being something – real or imagined – that allows them to reside above the fray.” This is very, very, *overwhelmingly* important to quite a few people. An example…
A post at another blog linked a letter from a woman who had been dating a man who was fun to be with, successful (an electrical engineers), a motorcycle rider, Republican, Christian….and who she found sexually very attractive. But she defines herself as “a New York intellectual who dates more or less the same”…”My boyfriends tend to be writers and film makers interested in lefty politics and sustainable urban development. Lots of skinny jeans, the occasional fedora and dates that involve plenty of polite negotiating and triangulating a mutually convenient meeting point.”
Her self-image apparently requires that for the long term, she choose (if she chooses anybody) someone who fits the above model and can be considered an ‘intellectual’. Yet I will bet that the Harley guy, being an electrical engineer, has a higher IQ than most of her ‘intellectual’ friends.
Having only heard from conservative websites about the trial buy can imagine how someone only hearing Democrats Propaganda Ministry version would assume the prosecution had a slam dunk case. If Kyle is found innocent that perception will change to it was a fixed verdict and a white supremacist privilege.
bloody
WRT your WQ. Generally, liberals do not experience the results of their folly. One reason is that everybody is conservative about that which he knows best and so a liberal isn’t going to screw up his own, immediate circumstances.
It’s always somebody else or…themselves at a future to be determined and currently not visible on the horizon.
Or,, as with energy prices. It’s Trump’s fault and/or it’s a good thing to reduce energy use. As a general rule, while they may experience higher energy prices, they’re in a position to be only inconvenienced. It’s those other people who have to pay. “A price we have to pay,”…”we” meaning somebody she never heard of and certainly not her.
Some time back, one commenter described a woman he knew who worked hard to diversify her neighborhood. The result was her kids were frequently beaten up and their bicycles stolen. So she had moved and was working on diversifying her new location. She did not make the connection, and likely could not because that would be racist.
So, for one reason or another, liberals do not have experience from which to learn.
Great wisdom is learning from other people’s mistakes.
Eagles
First, you have to berlieve it’s a mistake. What’s wrong with making it too expensive for the Lower Orders to travel?
The two main rules of propaganda regarding guilt or innocence:
1. People’s perception of someone’s guilt or innocence is almost always proportional to their view of the heinousness of the crime, not the likelihood of actual guilt.
2. People who believe, where there’s smoke, there’s fire are easy prey for those who blow smoke.
2:15
I never realized that the 3rd Reich meant Germany!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upcazMabOKI