The Left Can’t Discern

from Twitter

Been mulling over “the Left can’t discern.” You’re absolutely right. It is not an actionable observation, and not really a great retort to anything. If it is anything, it is an in-group signifier for people not of the Left.

I remain committed to saying “can’t” as opposed to the narrower “is not allowed” because it captures a broader meaning. “Can’t” can mean “not able,” “not allowed” and anything between, and they all apply to the Left with regards to discernment at various turns.

If “the Left can’t discern” is in any way actionable, it tells anyone who knows it to simply disregard any attempts by the left to demonstrate discernment. If they call you a Nazi, the appropriate response is, “LOL, you think I’m a Nazi.”

So maybe instead we explore just what exactly it is that the Left can’t discern. Yes, it’s a general thing, but it all comes down to a root distinction that Leftists are incapable of making: the difference between what works and what doesn’t.

I don’t mean this in an engineering sense—though in extreme cases, it goes that far—I mean it in a social/cultural/economic sense. What works is following the three rules to avoid poverty/join the middle class. What doesn’t work is not following them.

Quick refresher. The rules are: 1. Graduate high school. 2. Get married before you have children. 3. Work any kind of job. Some add avoid criminal behavior.

The left views these rules as arbitrarily arrived at.

One idea I like to seed without pressing is that the concepts of Whiteness and Blackness have almost nothing to do with skin color. The Smithsonian got into hot water for actually spelling out what Whiteness really means. (From it, we can infer what Blackness means, too.)

I don’t want to get too far from the idea that Whiteness is arbitrary. The Left imagines somehow that a society much like ours but better could have emerged from a wholly different set of rules, if only everyone had agreed to that other set.

And here’s where we can tie a lack of discernment into collectivism. The Left understands consensus in a way that is wholly inverted to the way the Right understands consensus.

From the Right’s vantage, consensus forms around reliable phenomena. First, someone notices something reliable. He shows others. As more and more see it, a consensus emerges that, yes, this phenomenon can be relied upon. In simpler terms: Science.

But from the Left’s perspective, reliable phenomena emerge from consensus. There is some mysterious tipping point at which, if enough people believe in something, then it works! Thus, unbelievers are an obstacle to their utopia.

Now, for the most part, you won't get Leftists saying that they think they can believe things like gravity into existence. And yet, they reject biology as it's been understood for centuries in favor of a new "understanding."

Same with climate science. Or the DSM-5. Hell, I've even seen earnest arguments about whether 2 + 2  really = 4 if we all just think about it differently.

And so you get this idea that rules which seem so fundamental to the Right, such as work before play, respect authority, show up on time, don’t pick fights, are seen as essential random selections to the Left with no reason why they can’t be different or even opposite.

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One last thought: the Left is so bad at discernment, they can’t discern what’s worth discerning. That’s how they get diversity so wrong. On some level, the Left knows consensus must come from diversity to have any meaning. But because disagreement stands in the way of utopia…

…the Left necessarily gravitates toward superficial diversity. This may also explain why they obsess over infinite genders. It provides another superficial avenue for diversity to follow.