Tuesday, January 18, 2011 :::
Tu quoque, yet again.
A Mind that Suits has had a busy Monday, because Monday was Tuesday this week, or to put it more clearly, Tuesday was Monday, if you catch his meaning.
Anyway, things kind of piled up.
He will return within a day or two with a reflection on the sufferings of a friend of his with schizophrenia, in light of recent events, but that requires more care.
He will, for the nonce, just offer one thought on the continuing self-immolation of the left over Tucson. In general, he has concluded the Left looks so bad that he should just enjoy it as they so determinedly toss away congressional seat after congressional seat. But he has noticed this:
His Leftwing friends have not asked him about it.
This is, in and of itself, kind of odd, but it is also not. Indeed, on reflection, it is typical of how Leftists react to any conservative they come across who does not conform to their stereotype. It never seems to cross their minds that their stereotype is wrong, and so their approach to conversations over controversial questions always follows a predictable pattern.
Let us use recent events as a hypothetical. The conversation would predictably run like this:
Leftist: Ummmmmm…what do you think about the shooting?
A Mind That Suits: It’s horrible.
Leftist: Ummmmm…what do you think about how rhetoric contributed to it?
A Mind That Suits: It didn’t. He was a paranoid schizophrenic that everyone was afraid of and he obsessed on the poor congresswoman from 2007 on.
Leftist: Well, didn’t you see how Palin did put that gun sight over the congressperson’s district.
A Mind That Suits: Didn’t you see how two Democratic campaign committees put targets over faces of congressmen?
Leftist: A) Where did you see that? I hadn’t heard that, or
B) I’d like to see who paid for that research? (a pretentious version of Option A), or
C) Where’d you hear that, Fox? (a confrontational version), or
D) It’s not the same thing at all (a complete non-sequitur).
The assumption, always just below the surface, is that the only reason a person so educated and so generally amiable as A Mind That Suits could only be conservative is if, indeed, he is uneducated. For some reason, they always look like they hate to tell you, but feel compelled to. When he renewed his subscription to the in every way estimable The Weekly Standard, a pleasant housemate, in that same tentative voice, pointed out that he had a subscription to The Week, as if it were conservatives who need to learn to read things they disagree with.
Some years ago, a not so pleasant Leftist with whom he once shared digs sat transfixed while, for the 1000th time that decade, the horrifying scenes from Hiroshima was broadcast. He kept exclaiming in wonder, loudly, and encouraged others to come look. The implication, if implication applies to something so blatantly stated, was that he had a really important discovery to share with us, and that they would have a moment of blinding revelation about the evils of America.
It was all that A Mind That Suits could do to refrain from barging into the living room and saying that, yes, he had seen those pictures, 1000 times or more that decade alone, but he was wondering if said leftist had ever seen the pictures from the Rape of Nanjing and had he ever considered how Hiroshima was necessitated by the mentality of the perpetrators of said Rape?
Leftists always seem to assume that one is going to explode in Tea Bagger rage, too. However, A Mind That Suits is able to discuss things quite calmly, but goes ballistic when he gets sarcasm. (The only other thing that sets him off is violent rage used to get whatever someone wants. He says “no” with equal vehemence.) Why Leftists are proud of their ignorance, he doesn’t know, but as power has slipped away from them, at least over the flow of information, they have only gotten more sarcastic. And sarcasm drives him nuts. The answer, of course, is for them to not be sarcastic, but he is not holding his breath, so he tries to avoid that kind of discussion.
Except when he doesn’t.
At his second job, A Mind That Suits did, deliberately, venture a discussion with the less political immigrants about the inaction of authorities when they had been alerted to the danger that Jared Loughner posed. The American leftists were willing to discuss that, until A Mind That Suits—deliberately, and with some impishness—quoted Charles Krauthammer, who was a nationally recognized expert in severe mental illness before he gave up on psychiatry and went into writing on politics (via a tour at the Carter White House.)
The Leftists reacted with predictable Leftist rudeness. They listened politely but with notable surliness to one reference. At another, they walked away rudely. When A Mind That Suits persisted, one glowered, “Don’t quote Charles Krauthammer to me,” thus painting himself as an anti-intellectual twit, although he is a boon companion otherwise.
A Mind That Suits has had occasion to comment on a mental reflex confined almost exclusively to the Left, to wit, “You do it too-ism.” ("Tu quoque" is "you, too" in Latin.) When a failing typical of their behavior is pointed out, they respond, again sarcastically, “conservatives do it, too,” when most of us don’t.
So when they imply that you must never have heard of something really obvious, it is probably because they themselves haven’t heard all that they should on a given topic.
And so it would go…
::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 6:31 PM
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