Why They Don't Listen

Columnist Glen Greenwald recently proffered a frightening line of reasoning at the root of the political and cultural "elite's" (aka the Best-and-Brightest) dismissal of the complaints of the common folk. His conclusion is that they possess an inability to accept blame, and instead, as summarized by this analogy,

They genuinely believe that anybody angry with them or dissatisfied with them must by definition be somebody whose thinking is misguided, who has poor character, and who therefore needs to be controlled, therefore needs to be constrained and limited in what it is they can do.

It's almost though as proof if you don't think that Doctor Fauci is an eminent scientist with great integrity, by definition you're someone who can't be trusted with free speech, you're someone who can't be trusted to vote for who you want because the mere fact that you distrust these people, the highest and most renowned and well-regarded elites, is proof that you are broken, that you are somebody who needs leadership and guidance and control and have your liberty deprived of you.

dismiss and rationalize away criticisms by simply choosing to believe all those who are dissatisfied with them are simply too stupid to understand things as they do.

This is why the people at NYT and CNN and NPR and MSNBC and the rest of the legacy media persist as they have.

It's why our political leaders feel their chief problem is messaging rather than policy. It's why the response to public grousing about how the country is being run is to stifle, censor, and obstruct rather than listen. It's why they're abandoning the nation's core principles of liberty, including free speech and free press, in favor of ever-more-overt authoritarianism.

They've concluded that they're better than us, and that this both justifies and demands they impose their will upon us.

And it's why attempting to engage on a rational and factual basis with that (thankfully small) segment of the populace is so frustrating. They've structured their brainpans to ignore contrary information, different conclusions, or dissenting opinions, and consider the sharers of such as "lesser" minds that simply don't get it. There's no middle ground and any agreed-upon compromise will be retconned as an unacceptable "baseline" that has to be remedied in very short order.

Gun rights advocates have known this for years, which is why they resist any further encroachments, no matter how "reasonable" or minor-sounding. Advocates for other liberties need to adopt this mindset, rather than engaging or seeking common ground or ceding some liberty in the interest of compromise and community. The only acceptable end state for these "elites" is total control and complete victory over the rest of us.

This may sound hyperbolic. I wish it were.