The Left’s Problem

Senator Clinton said this yesterday about the assassination of a distinguished NYC Councilman: “a tragic, terrible irony.”

Notice the cognitive dissonance. She can’t call it an actual tragedy — something shared. The situation here is something she observes as an outsider looking in, like reading a book — the situation is ironic or tragically ironic. Literature can be ironic, but an assassination? And even if in some abstract sense her analysis is correct, aren’t her words shameful? Her words don’t comfort the grieving — they just rub in the waste as useless. The proper words at such a moment would be: “A good man was wrongly struck down, we share in his family’s and friends’ grief. It is a tragedy of the first order.” Her commenting about the situation’s irony shows a real disconnect from the common fate of her constituents.

The Left’s problem is not that they see the world differently or in a socially constructed way at odds with facts. But rather that they think they are observers to a reality that mere plebeians (like you and me and the person next door) are content to live in. We are mice in a maze and they are the social scientist running some experiment. But when the mice don’t cooperate, they are exasperated because we don’t notice that they are our social betters.

And they wonder why they lose elections.