The Sadness and the Danger of Left's Inability to Make an Argument

I frequently post on a comment board on my local newspaper’s online edition. Although I try to post what are primarily information comments. Some of which later show up here. The responses I receive are generally respectful even in disagreement. There are a few however, who can’t or won’t so limit their responses. Such terms as “hack,” “tin-foil hat wearer,” “libertarian worshiper” and worse frequently appear. Such pejoratives are used as blanket condemnations of me on a personal level, without either explanation of why such conclusions are reached or even the most basic attempt to counter or refute the position I took that elicited the reaction. So a couple of days ago I posted the below comments directed towards this group, that I in general refer to the “usual suspects”:

“I worship no one but my lord and savior Jesus Christ. (A practice you so frequently denigrate) I post no Republican "talking points." When they are right they are right, when they are wrong they are wrong. I call them as I see them. The same applies to the Democrats. But then, I do post points of substance, and that is exactly what you can't stand. The thought that others may apply their own critical thinking and reach conclusions different than yours it what you find so frightening. Such fear leads you to try and project you very own deficiencies onto me. The left’s drunken delusions of liberal utopia that they thought that simply electing Obama would bring to fruition have turned to chimera it but a flash of time and it enrages you. So go ahead and attack me all you want, vent your spleen until you are bled white for all I care. I have all the confidence I need that the political turmoil and financial manipulations of which I have complained and results of which I have predicted are about to merge into the breaking point of an exponential curve (there’s that pesky combination of engineering and history stuff again) that will accelerate out of control very quickly. When exactly? I can’t and won’t predict. But I do feel the winds of the flapping wings of a Black Swan, where and when it will land is anybody’s guess.”

This, predictably, brought forth the usual vituperations, accusations of arrogance and projection those of us on the conservative side of things have come to expect.

We must stand fast with the courage of our convictions and understand that there will always be people who are incapable of critical thinking, who are locked into a myopic partisan mindset that can only be defended by mindless regurgitation of what they have been taught. It is this shallow intellectual structure of learning “what to think” as opposed to learning “how to think” that renders them unwilling, if not incapable, of considering new information or different perspective. For them anything that demonstrates that what they have been taught to be true is no longer valid must be viciously condemned and rejected out of hand, as unworthy of even consideration. Remember the very last thing they want is for others to think for themselves, to examine both sides of an argument and reach their own conclusions.

Such resistance structures of pathological rigid thinking can only stand for so long. Although as viewed from the inside its walls may appear to stand strong, especially to those who dwell solely within them, they are blind to the erosion of the foundation from outside currents, events and facts that will inevitably lead to their collapse. Sadly many of the inhabitants inside such structures, will, even after its collapse, insist that the disaster was not because it was built on unstable ground or was eroded by changing events and new revelations, but because so many others refused to dwell within its walls.

And this is when we must be most guardred, because when such foundations of thought are torn away it can lead to an instability that feels justified in resorting to violence.