Retreating To One's Priors
Also Known As: Everything I Don't Like is Sexist, Racist, Imperialist, Phobic... Or Something. I Don't Know. I Haven't Decided Yet. Are You White?
I present to you: Senator Karen. She would like to speak to your manager CEO. Unrelated: I actually feel kind of bad for anyone unfortunate enough to actually be named Karen.
Progressives are intellectually lazy.
This is the conclusion I came to after literal decades of interaction. They’re not intellectually lazy as a function of intent. They’re not intellectually lazy as a function of intelligence. They’re definitely not intellectually lazy for lack of an education. It’s not that they’re too sedentary to interact or make good arguments. It’s that they’ve spent a lifetime making the politically expedient arguments from within a very small bubble, have never been properly challenged, and generally aren’t equipped for the rigors of life. Couple that with moral certainty and the predisposition towards thinking your opponents are ignorant, and you have a perfect storm. This is especially sad when you consider that progressives are not always wrong. I mean that… They have some worthy ideas. The problem is that because of this mixture of smug intellectualism and base laziness, they can’t be bothered to actually put the theories into digestible (or sometimes even cogent) arguments and make no effort to actually persuade people that they are right.
This has taken many forms over the years… I think the first time I heard it stated out loud was around the late 00’s in the form of “I’m not going to perform that intellectual labor of explaining this to you”. After that the variations included “Pay me to speak with you”, deplatforming, and the newest iteration of cancel culture. The base idea is that progressives are so sure of their positions, that they are so self-evident, that they don’t see a need to explain them, and in fact challenging those positions, particularly for an audience, might confuse the issue (not for them of course, they are intellectually pure). They see persuasion as a counterproductive hassle and so they create avoidance measures. The thing that all those variations had in common was the expectation that they’d never have to talk to someone that didn’t think like them. “I’m not going to speak to you”, “Pay me to speak to you (I don’t expect this to happen), “don’t speak near me”, and “Don’t speak, period.”
The justification for those avoidance measures cannot, by definition, be personalized. The progressive does not know you. They do not know your views. They do not know your situation. They don’t know what they don’t know. What they do know is that you seem to disagree with them, and possibly (but not necessarily) some basic facts about you. If they’ve seen you or a picture of you, they might know that you are white. They might know that you are male. If you’re wearing iconography, they might know your religion…. And depending on your outward appearance, they could have several avenues with which to dismiss you. But let’s be real: Even when they don’t have those avenues, they’ll assume them. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been called a cis-het white guy or a Russian bot, neither of which happen to be true, but the truth isn’t the material part of that, the dismissal is. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you’re white or black, male or female, gay or straight, cis or trans… If you’re black they’ll call you an Uncle Tom, if you’re female they’ll call you an Aunt Lydia or a self hating woman, if you’re gay they’ll out you, if you’re trans they’ll be vile. It’s all the same tactic: “I want you to stop talking”.
And my point in this is that these labels are reflexive, non-fact based devices to get a certain reaction… In the cases above: Your silence. It might not be effective. In fact, it’s been less and less effective the more they wear the tactic out, but that doesn’t change the intent. And they’re comfortable with it. Joe Manchin is being called a racist right now because he scuttled Build Back Better. Of course they would call him that… What else are they going to do? Engage with his arguments? Do some soul searching? Consider a compromise?
What about Senator Karen?
And this isn’t relegated to personal characteristics. Look at the case of Elizabeth Warren, colorfully known as Lie-a-watha for her years of abusing affirmative action programs for her own betterment. America is experiencing across the board inflation unlike anything it’s seen in over 40 years. My belief is that this is the obvious result of some very clear-cut market forces: Covid lockdowns are putting negative pressures on supply, and the government dumping huge amounts of money into the market is putting positive pressures on demand. It really is that simple. There’s more to it… The supply issue isn’t helped by the supply chain issues: There are containers in the bay of San Francisco packed so densely they might as well start playing ship-Tetris those ships can’t be unloaded in part, because there’s a shortage on crane operator labor. That doesn’t help supply side. On the demand side: It’s Christmas. Also on the demand side: We’re experiencing scarcity of a lot of key components for everything from Vehicles to small appliances because America refuses to mine cobalt in it’s own backyard and relies on China.
All those obvious, predictable… Hell: predicted outcomes of the market attributable to economic conditions damn near lifted from textbook case studies, but what does Elizabeth Warren attribute inflation to? Corporate Greed. Because of course she does. What else is she going to do? Admit that this inflation is driven by government spending? Consider that there might be such a thing as too much government spending? Temper her expectations with reality?
I’ve been in retail finance for 15 years. At various points in my career, I’ve overseen divisions that included fifteen food stores, seven pharmacies, three hardware stores, two agro centers, ten bulk petroleum delivery trucks and a partridge in a pear tree. I’m going to give it to you straight:
Our food division margins haven’t been this tight since the 80’s. I wasn’t around back then, but we’ve kept the records, and the numbers don’t lie. Unlike the 80’s though, where retails were closing because they were losing money, our food divisions are having record profit years. How? Volume. The last two years have been massive high water marks for sales because lockdowns have kicked the shit out of restaurants, and people still need to eat.
So where’s the corporate greed come into play? It’s not in transportation, they’re struggling constantly with fuel pricing. It’s not in processing, they’re having to contend with the prices they’re being charged by the producers, and it’s not the producers: Input pricing is Off. The. Rails. I’ve never seen people charge $200 for a round bale before. I’ve never seen $23/bushel canola before. But I’ve also never seen the price of fertilizer triple in a twelve month period before. It might be in chem companies, I don’t know enough about what goes into fertilizer production to justify those increases, but my impression is that that isn’t just a cash grab. Regardless, having to run down the chain to fertilizer production doesn’t justify smearing Kroger, Albertsons, and Publix as greedy corporations bilking Americans during a crisis. Everything is costing more at every level because there is more money chasing fewer goods. And it isn’t consigned to food.
Warren either knows this and is lying to you, or doesn’t know this and is spouting off anyway. I don’t know which is true, and I’m not sure which is worse.