Dealing With Lefty

Guest Post by The Zman

Most of us have a Progressive or two in our lives that we have to deal with on a regular basis. No matter how hard you try to avoid talking politics or current events with them, it always happens and you come away frustrated by the experience. The reason for this is Lefty is nothing but political, so even discussing the weather can lead to them veering the conversation into something like global warming. Progressives have politicized every nook and cranny of life, so dealing with a liberal means wrangling over Progressivism.

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What makes it doubly frustrating is that normal people tend to treat people as if they are normal, rather than members of a bizarre religious cult. You forget yourself and make a reference to current events and all of a sudden you’re wrangling with Lefty over some topic in a way you find deeply frustrating. Usually they take something you have said and twist it around so that you find yourself trying to defend something you never thought much about or you never intended to discuss. It’s as if they exist to be a social irritant.

That’s the first rule when dealing with Lefty. As soon as you realize you are dealing with one of these people, accept that everything they say is somehow the opposite of reality. The Progressive mind is a lot like the mind of a criminal, in that it assumes its own guilt and acts accordingly. The criminal says things to lead prying eyes away from their own culpability. The Progressive will accuse others of things he or his cult is mostly like doing at the moment. When they accuse X of something, it means Lefty is probably doing it.

The Russian hacking stuff is turning out to be a great example of this. Exactly no one in America thought about the the possibility of Boris and Natasha scheming to upset the last election, until out of the blue, Progressives started saying it. A year later we have learned that it was not Trump working with the Russians, but members of the cult inside government that were scheming with the Russians. None of this would have come to light, but the guilty minds of the Left compelled them to accuse others of their criminality.

Similarly, the Progressive, on an individual basis, will seek to shift the focus from the topic at hand to something related, but far enough away from the topic to send the conversation off on a tangent. The most common method is “What about X?” Mention some failing of Progressives and Lefty will blurt out “what about X among your right-wingers?” Normal decent people respond to questions and Lefty uses that decency to avoid addressing the failings of his cult. Lefty naturally shifts the focus off himself.

Another trick Lefty will use is to start talking about exceptions. This is another way of distracting from some obvious truth, like the fact blacks commit a lot of crime, to a debate about exceptions and outliers. The alt-right boys call this tactic NAXALT, as in Not All X Are Like That. As with the above tactic, this is all about shifting the focus from an unpleasant topic for Lefty. Put the two together and in a few questions, Lefty can shift the conversation so far from the original topic, you no longer remember what you were saying.

This is why you always avoid answering a question from Lefty. The surest way to send him into a panic, is to respond to the “What about X” trick with “Let’s not lose focus” and then return to the original point. An alternative is “We can talk about that, but first let’s focus on” and then get back to the issue. This almost always causes them to spasm as they are being forced to address an unpleasant topic and what they thought was an easy escape is now turning into a trap. Often, they just walk away or explode in anger.

That’s the thing to keep in mind when dealing with Lefty. You can no more convince them to question their faith than you can talk a schizophrenic out of being crazy.  All they can be for you is a prop, or, if you get good at tormenting them, a toy to kill some time when the you have time to kill. This is the hardest thing for normal people to accept. Normal people think they can cure Lefty by presenting facts and evidence. There is no cure. These people are forever lost to a form of mental illness. Just accept that and act accordingly.

Most important, when dealing with Lefty, always make him the focus. A good tactic is what that British dunce Cathy Newman tried to do to Jordan Peterson. “So what your position is…” is a good way to focus on Lefty in a very personal way. They hate this. They want to believe they are simply accepting transcendent truths, rather than their own individual opinion. That’s the thing with people in cults. They hate themselves. That’s why they are in a cult so they no longer have to face themselves or have their own identity.

By personalizing the topic, re-framing it as their opinion or their belief, it has the effect of separating them from the herd. Often they will become quite passive and even submissive. That’s because Lefty has no opinions of his own. He truly is the Borg and the Borg is him. He sees no separation between himself and the faith, so isolating him rhetorically makes him feel detached from his true identity. It’s why liberals always set their chat shows up as a gang attack on some helpless non-liberal.

Finally, always insist on clear, plain language. A central tactic of the Left is to disrupt the opposition by sabotaging the language. The habit of expanding the definition of words to include fringe or dubious examples, then contracting the definition to exclude the original stuff. The use of modifiers to turn definitions on their head or neologism that conjure banal or even pleasant images for negative things. The game is to force you to accept their language, which is a back door way of forcing their moral framework on you.