War rages in Ukraine after the largest invasion in Europe since WWII, and some American politicians suggest establishing a no-fly zone that would have us shooting at nuclear-armed Russia’s planes. But, never fear, Kamala Harris was on the case, conducting “diplomacy with our allies.”
If this doesn’t exactly comfort you, you’re not alone. Fox News host Tucker Carlson registered shock Thursday night, stating that Harris’ involvement “appeared to be proof this could not really be a big deal.” But he was wrong, the host confessed, before stating that what’s really shocking is that the notoriously inept vice president is anywhere near the Ukraine situation.
This is the woman, after all, who said at a recent press event, “I appreciate and admire [Ukrainian] President Zelensky’s desire to join NATO,” despite the fact that it’s NATO’s expansion that perhaps more than anything else inspired the Russian invasion.
Thus did Carlson say, perhaps somewhat sarcastically, we “assumed that if things were dire, serious people would be involved in fixing them, but we looked up and we saw Kamala Harris involved, and that reassured us.” He continued:
Harris had just come back from Europe, where she’d been conducting “diplomacy with our allies,” and that appeared to be proof this could not really be a big deal…. If the future of Europe and the world hung in the balance as now so obviously it does, of course, the Biden administration would not have sent Kamala Harris to fix it because that’s not her job. Kamala Harris’s job is to trot down to the Blue Room periodically to greet delegations of TikTok influencers or to cut occasional PSAs for the Children’s Dental Health Awareness Month, which is in February. So, we assumed she’d be working on that right now.
But averting war with Russia? Saving the civilized world? C’mon. That is absolutely not Kamala Harris’s job. That was our assumption, but as noted, we were wrong. Why were we wrong? Well, we spend a lot of time watching Kamala Harris.
Carlson then played footage illustrating Harris’ intellectual stature, such as a clip of a January NBC interview in which the politician was asked if it was time for a change in COVID strategy. Her initial response was the “Zen koan-like” statement, “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day” (video below).
As commentator Thomas Lifson put it in January, the above “closes the case,” confirming “that the woman who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, whose incumbent is elderly and afflicted by dementia, is a dummy.”
Of course, Harris’ elevation to prominence is more an indictment of our system than of the woman herself. Yet the immediate concern is that this unserious person is also “not surrounded by serious people, and yet we are in an extremely serious moment that demands seriousness,” as Carlson put it. We won’t get it, though. We should further realize that our Dunning-Kruger-effect pseudo-elites absolutely believe they are serious people. They’re out of touch with reality — and thus are dangerous. It’s instructive, however, to understand how they got this way.
Two stories serve here to introduce the point well. The first concerns what an American defector learned about Marxism while spending decades in North Korea. “In North Korea, when you lie they think you are telling the truth, and when you tell the truth they think you are lying,” said ex-Army Sergeant Charles Jenkins. “You learn real quick to say no when you mean yes, and yes when you mean no.”
It’s no different with leftists in America — they fatally misread others.
This brings us to the second story: Engaging in demagoguery during a 1990s budget battle, the Democrats claimed the elderly would have to eat dog food to afford medicine if the GOP prevailed. Late radio host Rush Limbaugh then spoofed this in a GOPAC speech, claiming he’d bought his mother a new can opener so “she can get the dog food easier when she has to eat it.”
Taking this seriously, liberal ex-congresswoman Patsy Schroeder (D-Colo.) appeared on the House floor the next day and emotionally exclaimed that “this is what it’s come to!… Rush Limbaugh actually said he’s going to buy his mother a can opener so she can have dog food. Wow!”
Yes, wow — talk about a malfunctioning humor meter. Yet how do people get this way?
First, it does appear that, as with all abilities, some individuals have a greater innate capacity for discernment than others. But it’s not all nature.
Within the confines of human limitations, we tend to know as much Truth as we want to. That is, we descend into delusion to whatever extent we rationalize Truth away.
Now, leftists live in a world of rationalization because they have strong emotional attachments to ideas contrary to Truth. Against all reason and evidence they convince themselves that boys can become girls just by willing it, that “green” energy can immediately supplant fossil fuels, that people “unvaccinated” with a drug that doesn’t prevent a pathogen’s spread are uniquely dangerous vectors of that pathogen, and that there’s “white supremacy” in a land where Asians outperform whites.
That these are just a few examples is the issue. Rationalization is when you lie to yourself, bend reality for yourself. And when you rationalize repeatedly, over and over, for years on end, you’re ever bending reality and falling out of touch with it. You then can reach a point where you can’t “find” reality even when you want to. Some call this being crazy.
And therein lies the profound danger we face: Russian president Vladimir Putin “may” at this point actually be a sociopath who just wants to see the world burn. He may be crazy — and negotiating with him are people crazy in their own way. God help us.
