Turns Out You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

The political version of “which came first, the chicken or the egg” is:

Does being a lunatic lead to embracing leftism or does leftism transform the people that embrace it into lunatics?

It is something I have been pondering.

For those old enough to remember, it wasn’t always this way. As you probably know if you have been reading here for long, I grew up in the outskirts of Toledo, Ohio. Toledo in those days, the 70s and 80s, was a quintessential blue collar, rust belt, union town. Driving a Honda or Toyota, aka “rice burner”, was sure to create suspicion and was a great way to get your car keyed. Toledo voted Democrat as a rule and the voters who pulled the lever for Democrats?

White, working class, Catholic voters.

If you saw a guy in the late 1970s who looked like I look right now, you probably would have no idea how that guy was voting. The grassroots of the Democrats were mostly ethnic Whites (Poles, Irish, Italians, etc) who were blue collar and at least superficially religious. The same people that elected Trump twice and have become the essential core of the Republican voting base.

Even in college as a political science major, the people sitting with me in class were likely 75% liberals and yet they looked just like everyone else. Unless someone spoke up in class you wouldn’t know where they stood, and most didn’t speak up. A sitting Congressman in Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, graduated from the same college as me, also majoring in political science, the same year as me and for the life of me I can’t remember him even though we would have almost certainly had classes together.

In short, Democrats and Republicans looked pretty much the same and unless you talked politics with them or they had a political sign in their yard you wouldn’t know which “side” they were on. Even an NRA sticker in the window didn’t mean much as a lot of Democrats were solid on the 2A, at least as solid as most Republicans.

(As a quick aside, another difference that I often highlight is that when I was in college the liberals were still painfully wrong but they at least would try to argue the merits of their positions. Try finding someone on the political left that will engage you in an argument focused on facts and positions instead of calling you names. Good luck)

We were all just Americans who disagreed on political specifics, at least where I grew up in the Midwest anyway. “Conservative” pro-life or pro-2nd Amendment Democrats were pretty common.

Today? I can guess the political affiliation of someone just by looking at them and I would say I would be correct in 90-95% of cases.

A man like me, a later middle-aged White guy wearing jeans and a t-shirt (not a gun company shirt) is likely a “conservative”. If he is married, if he has kids, the odds go way up.

It is even easier on the other side. They basically shout their leftist affiliation:

• Septum ring
• Tattoos
• Hair dyed some unnatural color (blue/purple being most prevalent)
• Slovenly personal appearance, both in weight and attire.

They might as well be wearing a flashing neon sign proclaiming their political allegiance and hatred of the Orange Man and of course of you. Even the dudes scream pussy leftist beta male. They look soft, effeminate, weak in body and mind and spirit, groveling to women in the hopes of a pity hump.

People on the political left go out of their way to a ridiculous extreme to make sure you know that they are different from you and I. They don’t disagree with us on policy, they see our very existence as an affront and as we have seen since the assassination of Charlie Kirk not only embrace political violence but think it is hilarious. If something were to happen to some leftist influencer of course their tone would change because we all know that if it weren’t for double standards the left would have no standards at all.

This goes way back Barrack Hussein Obama with his “bitter clingers” statement in 2008:

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

and then later in 2016 and Hillary Clinton with her “basket of deplorables” statement….

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

You aren’t just wrong about political positions, you are a bad person. You can’t be convinced to change your mind about Position X, Y or Z because you are “irredeemable”. From “Irredeemable” it is a pretty short walk to “expendable” and that is where we find ourselves almost exactly 10 years on from Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” speech and in that 10 years her once inflammatory remark seems awfully tame.

In 10 years we have seen an incredible shift among leftist voters who now are increasingly openly embracing the “S-word”, socialism, and who have turned their political affiliation into an outward expression of ugliness that matches their personality. In fact their entire personality is their political affiliation, waking up each day planning on leaving angry comments on social media and dressing in a wretched manner to make sure no one confuses them with a MAGAt!

I guess it is good in a way, at least you can readily identify crazy people on the street and avoid interacting with them, likewise on social media when you see something about Covid vaccines or a Ukrainian flag or #bLM or a rainbow flag. On the other hand it speaks to a much darker issue when people have turned politics into their entire identity to the point that they are a walking, endlessly talking billboard for their opinions and how much they hate everyone else.

We can’t share a country with people like that.