Leftthink 101

I. Profiles

In the February 17 post ("Billary"), Billary's characteristic way of talking out of both sides of their mouths was discussed, as exemplified by Hillary's desire to discount the numerical, democratic outcome of the primaries by pursuing an unconventional (though not unprecedented) superdelegate strategy while simultaneously calling for the disqualified but pro-Hillary delegates of Michigan and Florida to be seated at the convention because "Every vote counts":

“I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of The People.”

The opportunity was taken there to point out the typical lefty rhetorical tactic of tacking on hyperbolic adverbs to turn the volume up, as posted:

She not only 'believes' in that, but believes 'strongly.' That is a dead giveaway that she believes nothing of the sort, as her pending failsafe plan to subvert the plebiscite via Superdelegate decree will prove...

To elaborate, in order for the irrational, emotionally-driven-and-exploitive lefty to compete head-to-head with the rationality of conservative thought in the political arena, the former has resorted--first as a matter of survival, and then advancement--to lies.

It is not so much a calculating premeditation when debating extemporaneously and put on the spot, but a reflexive way of arguing, as these lies are most often ejected by knee-jerk psychological defense mechanisms, but they make their way into prepared speeches and statements, as well.

Projection is the defense mechanism that first springs forth from the lefty mind and it results in inversions of reality of the type that Milton's Lucifer relished:

"I'll make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell."

To the mass of the classically-illiterate and easily-led population (as animalized by Orwell), it works, and what was indulged in childhood and adolescence but preserved well into adulthood by the emotionally-retarded and--above all-- egocentric leftist demagogue is then used as a sophomorically-sophisticated offensive weapon and has even been formalized as argument in ways that would make the ancient Greek sophists like Protagoras proud.

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four "Newspeak" fictionally diagrams such non-fictional formalizations well (e.g. "blackwhite doublethink").

Again, much of those wordgames were originally bred by psychological defense mechanisms, and the lefty uses them in lieu of a sound argument built on logic.

The most common defense mechanism to manifest itself is projection and the resulting inversion, and those serve to quickly exchange qualities and level the playing field, if not actually invert the positions 90 degrees, to wit:

"The American soldiers are 'terrorists' and the Iraqi insurgents are 'Freedom Fighters.'"

Or, put simply:

"Good is bad and bad is good."

Such a switcharoo of fundamental premises is subtle, as it takes place beneath the categorical layers of an intricate worldview (e.g. the Left Hegelian's, who inverted Hegel and influenced Marx), and that inconspicuousness is the only way the lefty can argue "I'm right and you're wrong" without being put in stocks in the public square and being ridiculed by the passing townsfolk.

Another defense mechanism that rears its head is overcompensation (and that is what's behind the hyperbolic adverbs and hysterical exaggeration of--often projected--bad qualities):

"I am PROFOUNDLY sorry."

(Bill Clinton about "misleading" everybody after the DNA on the blue dress told the truth)

"Sorry" won't do (despite "sorry" meaning sorry), it seems. He is "Profoundly" sorry-- which leads one to believe that when he says he's just sorry, he really isn't, or not sufficiently, which leaves the entire sentiment suspect even after attaching superlatives to it (especially when examining just how "sorry" he was since, by his tenacious holding on to power and willingness to launch counterattacks to preserve it--hardly the actions of a penitent--it is hard to determine just what he was sorry for, aside from the obvious failing of getting caught).

What they're doing there is frantically pumping up a hot air balloon to make a small--and often untrue--point get really, REALLY BIG, often to distract from something else, e.g. the untruth of that made VERY true by the adverb, or, when accusatory, their own guilt in embodying that projected quality, making their guilt insignificant by comparison to the hyperbolic projection onto the adversary.

Both--projection/inversion plus overcompensation--were on excellent display during the Clinton and Bush 43 eras, as the most hardcore of Clinton-loving leftists had their voices heard loud and clear and what they said (or didn't say) about one (lefty and liked) president can be compared to what was and still is said about another (conservative and hated) one when involving the same issues (e.g. character, war, the economy, etc.).

cf.: Former President Bill Clinton's compulsive mendacity is well-documented throughout his life. He was finally impeached on charges of self-evident perjury but escaped conviction and removal of office because of his and his supporter's political strategem of demonizing the prosecution (a la the O.J. Simpson defense strategy).

Nevertheless, after he left office and was out of the spotlight, a judge in Arkansas saw fit to strip him of his licence to practice law, punishing him (beneath the public radar) for lying under oath (i.e. commiting perjury).

He was nevertheless welcomed back to the helm of the Democratic Party establishment and was made its "elder statesman."

President Bush's "Sixteen Words" from a State of the Union Address that referred to a British intelligence report about Saddam Hussein's outreach to uranium-rich Niger were sixteen words out of many thousands in one speech and were but one rationale for taking action against a genocidal dictator out of many indisputable ones, yet the childish, Clinton-Loving Bush-Haters--silent when Clinton attacked Iraq on the exact same rationales of clandestine WMD development--snapped (after Joseph Wilson IV lied by saying Bush lied):

"Bush LIED!"

It didn't end there, however. For years afterward (and still flaring up like a rash here and there), it was pounded:

"BUSH LIED AND IS A LIAR!"..."HE'S A LIAR-LIAR-PANTS-ON-FIRE!"..."BUSH IS A LYING LIAR WHO TELLS LIES!" (Al Franken)..."HE IS THE MISLEADER-IN-CHIEF!" (after it was Clinton, not Bush, who infamously confessed "I misled"--but of course, not "lied.")

That's not only obvious--and annoyingly childish-- projection from a shameless crowd that defended--and still defends--the perpetually prevaricating Clinton tooth & nail (and self-evident that the aggressive "Bush is a Liar" propaganda campaign was engineered by vindictive Clintonites in the attempt to drown out the immediately-preceding record of Clinton's serial and Impeached lies), but is overcompensating overkill, as well.

Incidentally, the report by British intelligence still stands.

The overcompensation is necessary to add volume to Bush's pan on the scale in the judgment of history and bring it down while the opposing Clinton pan rises up in the estimate of the good (God bless 'em all) American people (and their legendary short-term memory, if not their bountiful capacity to forgive), who seem to confuse volume with gravity if yelled loud and long enough (while inversely subtracting gravity from silence, which can be the most grave of all if listened to).

And voila: Billary reappears as one who presided over a time of Peace, Prosperity, Government Ethics & Integrity to "clean up the mess" left by a president who has abused the military, presided over a ballooned economy, and is a liar.

A perfect, inverted projection.

Now the two-headed Billary is careful to keep some distance from the typical lefty (who actually has more integrity) and will change colors--and their words-- rightward when politically opportune, but that is because they are in the political sphere of influence.

What they really think, however, can be gleaned from the writings of leftist kindred spirits who are unshackled by the political necessities of Leftspeak and are able to write what they really believe with some consistency (however much consistency the inherent contradictions of Leftist thought allows) in some ivory tower of lefty academia that's not subject to review from millions across the heartland (but now you know why lefty politicians like to keep their college treatises under lock & key).

Nevertheless, however much they try to triangulate and dress and try to speak the part of the wholesome, straight-shooting American, the mind of Billary is a perfected specimen of un-American Leftthink, as just about any one of their prepared--as well as ex tempore-- statements can be analyzed with the tools provided by the analysis above and be shown to be chock-full of multiple projections, overcompensations, and the entire gamut of defense mechanisms that serve as red herrings to distract from the simple truth.

i.e. They lie.

II. Case Study

Just the other morning, in Dallas, Hillary asserted:

You know I made it very clear that this election is about all of you. It's about your futures, your families, your jobs.

What is clear is that, much more often than not, simple and even innocuous sounding statements like that one are rife with the qualities discussed, and look here what that one 23 word statement is loaded with:

(1) "You know I made it very clear":

First off, the gratuitousness of that flags deviousness off the bat.

We expect our leaders to be adults of good character, who tell it like is and not concern themselves with skeptics or enemies parsing what they say and reading into their statements words that just aren't there (they will always do that and never be satisfied).

Like President Bush. His enemies constantly subject his statements to clairvoyant, fill-in-the-blank interpretations when there's not even a blank there to be filled. This is partly because they try to read in their own (projected) malfeasance, i.e. what they themselves would do if they were in the president's shoes in the same context.

In the campaign of 2000, Candidate Bush warned of a looming recession. The Democratic Party (the home of the Leftist) screamed "BUSH IS TALKING DOWN THE GREAT CLINTON ECONOMY FOR POLITICAL GAIN!" while admitting in the process the role of consumer confidence in the economic equation and the influence politicians wield towards that.

Candidate Bush was stating a fact. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had earlier warned about the "irrational exuberance" behind the trumpeted excesses of "The Clinton Economy" and began fiddling with interest rates in anticipation of the crunch.

Bush was right. And for the entire climb out of the hole left by an imploded Dot.Com balloon, megacorporate scandals (that were birthed and grew during the "Great Clinton Economy"), and 9/11 (preventable if Clinton took serously both of bin Laden's declarations of war against the U.S. and its citizens and took up the foreign offer for his handover, legal niceties be damned) the opposition saw fit to...

...talk down the economy.

And they're still doing it.

They themselves demonstrated with the 2000 charge that accused Bush of "talking down the economy" that they were projecting, because that is precisely what they themselves have been doing.

As to Hillary's assertion, one could easily imagine Bush--or any president--saying: "This election is about all of you."

In that hypothetical, however, Bush would feel no self-conscious compulsion to add qualifying assurances like "You know I made it very clear that this election is about all of you."

Have you ever heard Bush say such drivel? Can you even imagine him saying that? It would be uncharacteristic.

However, Hillary felt she had to include such a compounded assertion because she knows that people question her motives. That is indeed an issue which may necessitate addressing to allay such suspicions (not that Bush would care to dignify such suspicions if he knows--and he would know better than anyone else--it's not true), but if she truly is misunderstood and cares for "The People" she is attempting to lord over and felt she had to address a hypothetically untrue perception, she would come out and say something like: "Despite what is being said about me, believe it or not, I know this election is about more."

She came nowhere near saying something of such simplicity that keeps the authority of mind-reading where it belongs: on herself. Instead, she clairvoyantly accused: "You know I made it very clear."

"You know" is most often used by adolescents who are at a loss for words and appeal to the compassion and/or some clairvoyant empathy of their listener to understand what they mean (most commonly rendered as "I mean gosh, ya know?").

An adult in the know may use it an accusatory fashion to a dissembling juvenile, as in "You know you're lying. Now tell the truth."

An adult using it on another adult, however, can be condescending ("I know you're lying so you must know it, too," or "Don't be in denial") and/or an attempt to control by the power of suggestion.

That works effectively on weak-willed individuals susceptible to suggestion and who let others plant "what they know" in their heads (followers one and all, and well-exemplified by the captive audience of animals in Orwell's Animal Farm).

And you know how "clear" it is because it isn't just an opaque kind of clear (though clear means clear), but VERY clear, so you must know that her campaign is for you. It's not only an asserted "fact," but an "obvious" one.

Again, like the hyperbolic adverbs, superlative adjectives are dead giveaways that the fact of the matter is nowhere near the magnitude that is artificially magnified, and is often just a distraction from the fact that the matter's true nature is often the opposite of the way it's characterized.

"Very" clear? Au contraire, it's not clear at all, despite the magnified assertion.

The Left's insistent assertions of "the facts" are often at such a sheer--and obvious-- disconnect from reality that either they themselves consider their audience to be mindless, malleable sheep (who need others to tell them what they "know") or, if they believe what they spew, they do indeed see things backwards.

It must be a mixture of both with varying amounts of respective parts from lefty to lefty.

A prominent example of the lefty assertions of "fact" disconnected from actual reality was the lefty pile-on in 1988 when Bush 41 was gearing up for his presidential run after eight years of Reagan.

Reagan was despised by the left (very much like Bush 43 is today) and they didn't want another 4-8 years of a Republican in the White House, so Bush 41's character was attacked relentlessly before and throughout the primary season.

The charge: He was a "wimp." (i.e. a VERY timid man)

Newsweek headlined the epithet "THE WIMP FACTOR" on it's cover. Popular political Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau depicted him in his syndicated strips as a disembodied feather.

They pounded that into the culture: Vice President George H. Bush is a wimp.

The facts:

George H. Bush came from a privileged, blue-blooded family that could have assured his safety in WWII.

Instead, he became the youngest pilot in the Navy, was shot down over the Pacific, was rescued by a surfacing submarine, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He was CIA chief when the American government was making moves and taking gambits against the Soviet Union in the high-stakes chess game of the Cold War that had tripwires of mutually assurred destruction laced across the board.

By the time he became president, his and his colleague's steady work paid off and the Soviet Union was check-mated and the Berlin Wall came down, winning the Cold War without firing a shot.

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and answered Bush 41's demand to leave with a promise to fight the "Mother Of All Battles."

Bush 41 kicked him out anyway.

Bush 41 celebrated his 80th birthday by skydiving.

Say what you will about the man, but Bush 41 is-- self-evidently and quite simply-- not a "wimp."

And yet...there it was, saturating the culture:

BUSH 41 IS A WIMP.

So the caricatures sketched from false premises, the hyperbolic adverbs, and exaggerated "very-very" superlatives are in almost all usage in lefty diatribes either an attempt to artificially magnify the actual diminutive nature of the charge, or that the charge itself is not only false but nearly--if not precisely--the polar opposite of the real nature of that thus characterized.

e.g.:

"George W. Bush has bankrupted America and is presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression!"

c.f.:

Cyclical, economic downturn aside, the United States of America in 2008--and for years-- has and is enjoying an unemployment rate better than the average enjoyed during "The Great Clinton Presidency" ("Great" only because of the economic expansion brought on by the likes of Bill Gates) from 1992 to 2000 (the tech-driven recovery actually began before Bush "Worst-Economy-Since-The-Great-Depression" 41 left office).

Most economists would agree that we have been at full employment for quite some time now.

The United States today is the wealthiest country in the world and the wealthiest ever in world history.

Say what you will about sub-prime loans, outsourcing, deficit spending, and even recession, you can not honestly liken the new skylines of American cities to Hoovervilles.

e.g: "President Bush is the worst president in American history!"

Now see here: George Bush is "worse" than a President who accomplished zero (like W. Harrison)? Bush is worse than an American president who became a Confederate senator (Tyler)? George Bush appeased and dawdled while the likelihood of mass state secession mounted year after year (like Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan did)? The Union collapsed and a cascade of states simultaneously seceded upon inauguration (talk about Red State/Blue State tensions), and internecine slaughter of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers was allowed to put it back together (like Lincoln)? Bush was Impeached (like Johnson & Clinton)? Bush's pals embroiled him in serious scandal (like Grant's, Harding's & Clinton's)? An economic depression occurred on Bush's watch (like Hoover)? Bush enacted a socialist, government program that arguably destroyed entire generations of minorities, and escalated a foreign war that cost the lives of tens of thousands of American servicemen, and then got squeamish and defeatist about it (like LBJ)? Bush resigned in disgrace (like Nixon)?

Bush is "worse" than Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton?

Now consider this widely-circulated, insistent assertion of "fact" again:

"Bush is the worst president in American history."

He's "the worst" because the Bush-Haters hate him even more than they hated Bush 41, Reagan, Ford, and Nixon and they discount any B.C. (i.e. Before "Camelot") presidency because lefties are temporally egocentric and for them American history began in 1960.

So what leftists assert as "fact"--particularly if it is gratuitously or hysterically hyperbolic and qualified with superlatives (like "very worst")-- is more often than not nothing of the sort, and often the inverse.

So what do we "know" that Hillary has made "very clear?"

"...that this election is about all of you."

She's asserting the opposite of reality. She herself knows that most of the American people now know that this election--as far as Billary is concerned--is primarily about and for themselves. She knows that cat is out of the bag, so she's trying to put it back in by asserting the opposite: "You know that's not true. I'm very clearly doing this for you."

There's more:

(2) "It's about your futures, your families, your job."

What she was doing there was this:

The "you know" and "your futures" and "your families" and "your job" are simply part of a new talking points strategy in reaction not too long ago to Bill's "ME-ME-ME & I & MYSELF and MY Library and MY Harlem office and MY Arkansas governorship, etc. speech in Missouri (granted, it's the "Show Me" state, but...).

That was but another Bill episode that hurt the campaign and sent him into hiding for a spell (Until the next newscycle, whereupon he reemerges pretending that--mutatis mutandis-- the previous buffoonery never happened), but it amplified the growing realization--by most everyone, this time-- that Bill is an egocentric, conceited, self-serving man in love with himself (which was obvious 16 years ago if anybody cared to watch and listen carefully), and Hillary is attached to that.

And so, aware of the growing discernment, Hillary now throws a lot of "yous" around to deflect attention away from the self-centered "ME" that is driving her ambition.

It's true. The increased frequency of Billary's "you" in her speeches began to spike after Bill's Me-speech in Missouri.

Of course, there was something else in operation there. Projection:

"It's about your futures, your families, your job," she championed.

Moreso than Billary's own future, family, and job?

She was projecting. As per the new "It's-All-About-You" strategy, she simply replaced the inherent "Me, My, and Mine" with "You." And not just "you," mind you, but "ALL of YOU."

Yes, "Everyone." It's all about everyone but her. That's the inversion.

So listen well. 23 words can speak volumes and tell you all you need to know:

You know I made it very clear that this election is about all of you. It's about your futures, your families, your jobs.