THE TRIBE IN THE MIRROR: Sarandon and the new Salon speak!

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2016

Part 3—We too can tilt toward dumb: By any rational standard, the thrilling piece at the new Salon was just plain flat-out dumb.

Right at the start, it urged you to loathe a candidate for the things she thought and did in 1963-64. It failed to mention a sad, sorry fact:

In the summer of 63, the candidate was 15.

At least since 1992, we've been struck by the dumbness and heartlessness it takes to judge adult candidates on the basis of things they said and did when they were 15 years old—or, in the case of one major profile of Candidate Gore, when they were already very annoying at the age of 6.

That said, we humans long to loathe The Other. We the liberals often function this way, just like the people we love to loathe Over There in The Other Tribe.

At the new Salon, we were taught to loathe one hopeful for something she thought at age 15. We weren't told "the rest of the story." We weren't told that she was also being taught to admire Dr. King as this same point in her life.

Regarding the other candidate in this year's race, the same essay told us that we should admire his greatness because he engaged in civil rights work at that some point in time. We weren't encourage to think about his subsequent heroic behavior, in which he packed up stakes and decided to move to the nation's most lily white state.

We don't offer these points to praise or to criticize either candidate. Next November, we'll be standing there, first in line, to vote for whichever one gets nominated.

We offer these points in the hope of helping us see how dumb even we liberals can be, especially when we start loathing The Other, who we manage to find under every bed.

(Last night, this same human trait was on display in videotape of one of these candidates. When he said, "I say [Name Withheld] is unqualified for the White House," he was interrupted by applause from the True Believers who were all around him. They had learned to loathe so well that they didn't even let him finish his inaccurate statement before they began applauding.)

(This episode starts at the Washington Post, where Eilperin and Gearan managed to create this exciting report yesterday afternoon. Note the lack of direct quotes from Candidate Clinton, replaced by the exciting paraphrase which appears in the headline. This is how these baboons have created our "facts" for the past many years. Al Gore said he invented the Internet? It started as a creative paraphrase. Within a matter of days, the inventive paraphrase had found its way within the baboons' quotations marks. People are dead all over the world because these "journalists" invent our "facts" this way, and because people Kevin Drum prefer not to tell you this. Darlings, it simply isn't done! How else can such bloggers get paid?)

(We single out Drum because he's the smartest, clearest thinking person who has agreed not to tell.)

That piece at the new Salon was amazingly heartless and dumb. That said, its talking point about that hopeful in 63 has been widely voiced by us the self-impressed progressives in the past several months.

We love to recite that dumb talking point. It helps us loathe the one we hate; it lets us enjoy the pleasure of loathing. That said, it's an ancient human pleasure. It doesn't just exist Over There. It's found all through our tribe too.

Our liberal tribe loves to denounce The Other Tribe on the basis of their being dumb. That aid, how dumb do we sometimes get Over Here?

Consider what Sarandon said.

Susan Sarandon isn't a headstrong young kid. She's fully grown. Indeed, she's almost as old as the candidate she favors, one year older than the candidate she rejects.

There's nothing wrong with favoring the candidate Sarandon favors. Millions of other people do. Unless you simply hate those people who don't vote the way you do, it's a perfectly sensible judgment. We'll be first in line to vote for that candidate in November, conceivably before.

That said, the things she said to Chris Hayes that night may have tilted, in a phrase, ever so slightly toward dumb. The extremely wealthy movie star suggested she might choose to let Trump win this fall because it would bring on the revolution!

Such thinking may perhaps tilt toward dumb—in part because it tilts so hard toward the movie star's massive privilege.

Say you want a revolution? The Beatles tries to explain the possible dumbness of this sort of thing all the way back in 68, when the star was 22. Being human, we the humans still may not quite understand.

(For more sound advice, just click here.)

In the end, all these judgments about what is dumb end up being subjective. In the end, you can even construct an argument by which a hopeful's beliefs or behavior at age 15 (or even at 6) provide powerful warning signs.

In the end, these judgments are all subjective. But within our own self-impressed liberal tribe, there's one key fact we've always known:

We the liberals are very sharp. In the other tribe, Over There, Those People are very stupid.

They're also bigoted, racist, xenophobically nativist. We have come to know these truths as well as we know the basic truth about our own unparalleled brilliance and greatness.

Are they all racist bigots? The spectacular dumbness is always worst over at the new Salon, so let us give you a link. It will take you to these fiery headlines, which of course feature self-praise:

Tuesday, Mar 29, 2016 05:58 AM EDT
Hideous, disgusting racists: Let’s call Donald Trump and his supporters exactly what they are
Media wants to call them "economically anxious working-class whites." There's a clearer, more honest name to use

In our tribal fever dreams, we're always "more honest" than everyone else! Within the tribes with which we've made war, we humans have always reasoned this way, back to the dawn of creation.

Over at the new Salon, we're encouraged to see that Trump's supporters are "hideous, disgusting racists." A simple R-bomb wouldn't suffice—and that's "exactly" what They are. There are no known exceptions!

To reach such judgments, a person has to be very dumb. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the types of dumbness which create such sweeping assessments.

You have to be extremely dumb to accept such sweeping assessments. At the new Salon, we're given this assessment straight—but all over the press corps, better-mannered performers say the same thing in ways which are more genteel.

We'll open with one such essay tomorrow, although such examples are legion. For today, understand this basic point:

As we pleasure ourselves with these tribal beliefs, we're doing the work of Ron Paul.

As far as we know, Ron Paul is honest and sincere in his beliefs. As far as we know, the beliefs in question can't be rejected as "wrong."

Ron Paul is sincere in his beliefs. We liberals are very, very, very dumb in doing his ultimate bidding.

That said, dear God! You must understand! Our tribal loathing just feels so good! And it helps us admire ourselves!

Tomorrow: 37 republics