I never had much use for Carlson early in his career but started to pay half attention when his show started. Why? Liberals would come on his show expecting to steamroll him and found themselves getting eviscerated in the space of seconds by asking them simple (but foundational) questions about what they were spewing.
He led them into a rhetorical box canyon and then, as “Mr. Wonderful” of Shark Tank fame would say, squash them like the cockroach they are. The number of such Leftists willing to come on and exercise their egos started to dwindle rather quickly so that kind of segment no longer happens. It’s a shame that it doesn’t.
They no longer wish to debate. And as Carlson has just pointed out it is WHY the Left doesn’t want Gropey Joe Biden to debate Trump.
And this is not just that Biden can’t seem to put two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter (examples in the clip below). It’s all good, my takeaway away starts at around 3:01:
For the most part, rarely is there a Left-leaning blogger that is willing to debate me or others at GraniteGrok. Ditto most Left-leaning politicians. It’s as if they feel it is beneath them; I’m betting that many of you reading this have had the same experience. Carlson is right on this – that haughty tone and the absolute willingness to NOT engage is a function of their mindset. It is the Closing of the Mind – there is only one opinion that is worth anything and you don’t share it. To debate is to give you and your ideas “legitimacy” and that simply cannot be done.
Narrative, dontcha know. It’s a “stuck-up-ishness” that they can’t see in themselves. Conceit is a better word. Thinking of you as sub-human and not even worthy of acknowledgment comes closer.
We have seen in recent history what that ultimately yields. Right now, it is pushing the Balkanization of America to be a faster and more granular level – E Pluribus Unum no longer exists from a practical standpoint. There is no longer the “I am an American”; the Left is pushing the hyphenated American with all kinds of adjectives to modify that (e.g., I am a black American, I am an immigrant American, I am an oppressed minority something or other American) whereby what is the modifier is more important than the American part. It is part of their Agenda.
Frankly, I enjoy and look for opportunities to debate. I will readily admit that I don’t persuade many on the hardcore other side – there is a “lockdown of the mind” (or so it seems). Sometimes, I flat out lose in these Arenas of Ideas. That’s fine – it sharpens one up for the next time so you shouldn’t be fear losing, either. But many times, just like with many Conservatives, the Left opponent ends up with just name-calling because they DON’T have a cogent grasp on their ideology and how it applies – or doesn’t apply. They don’t know what they believe and therefore can’t debate the merits. And they simply walk away. And you win – you’ve shown them up for being the gasbags they think they aren’t.
Or like with Carlson, they won’t engage anymore. Moral Superiority, you see. Arguments and pre-conditions like what Freidman lays out in putting the thumb on the debate scale. Or like with frequent commenter here, Bruce Currie, refuse to acknowledge your sources and data background and just throws out “Glibertarianism” – like “HALLIBURTON!!!!!” of the first Iraq War in that a single word can encapsulate an entire line of thought (which, as I found out, turned out to be no thought at all).
And we are seeing it now with the Black Lives Mafia movement (H/T: Steve) – there can be NO criticism of ANYTHING related to it. Found that out here in Gilford. Not that it matters to me what kind of rhetorical “shock troops” (i.e., the expendables) are put up as irrelevant shields or targets. It shouldn’t matter to you, either.
Which in typing “Gilford”, that reminds me to go back and bring some of that to the ‘Grok. Interesting for you, I hope, to see how they think.
Which, btw, is a big component of GraniteGrok (e.g., Sun Tzu).
