The stupidity of the majority

In a post from last March, I wrote about the left's general attitude that they are more intelligent and wise than those on the right. By extension, this means that people who voted for Kerry are smarter than those who voted for Bush. Now that Bush has won the election, the left is going crazy and this once again is a central theme.

We start with this wonderful cover for the November 4 issue of the Daily Mirror, a UK "newspaper" (read: tabloid rag) that very clearly embodies this attitude. The first link is to Kim du Toit's post on the subject and he responds in his own ever-irascible style. I first saw this cover over at Little Green Footballs.

Of course, that's a tabloid and they're expected to be over the top. However, our next stop is an article that is presented in a much more "respectable" publication, MSN's Slate online magazine. Here's a snippet:

The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

I love the parenthetical comment. Republicans are wrong to feel superior because they clearly aren't. Liberals are entitled to feel superior because they clearly are. The author goes on:

The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are—they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind.

Yep, we're all just thugs and the liberals only mistake is to underestimate just how thuggish we all are. This despite all the reports of leftist thuggery leading up to and during the election.

The author continues by telling us that a core reason for our ignorance is religion, specifically Christianity. Uh-huh. Tell to that to Kim. Tell that to my coworker who voted for Bush and is not a Christian. Tell that to the 4% of Protestant Christians who voted for Bush in 2000 but didn't in 2004.

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper liberal rant without those two staples, class and race:

The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey—workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now—Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm.

This stuff practically parodies itself. Yet this is what a large portion of the left really believes. Dale Franks responds to this bit thusly:

There. See? I knew we’d get around to the Marxism. It’s all the big capitalists, exploiting the proletariat, who are numbed to their capitalist exploitation by the opiate of religion.

Workers of the world, untie¹! You have nothing to lose but your...well...your jobs for one. Oh, and any hope of economic advancement. But, at least you’ll get to live in large, drafty cement stack-a-prole apartment complexes, like, oh, Cabrini Green. But without the violence, because the Secret Police will quickly nacht-und-nebel anyone who even looks suspicious.

Or happy.

Oh, naturally, it’ll be very sad that the Secret Police are even needed, but, you know, with violent troglodytes running around free, there’ll always be problems. Really, a stint in a "reeducation camp" will probably be the best thing for them. Fresh air. Honest labor.
...
¹No, it's not a typo.

To close, the author has this to say:

Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage—red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time.

Yeah, and Democrats and liberals never cheat. All I have to do is say one word: Chicago. Where the dead vote early and vote often. And don't forget all the other incidents of intimidation, fraud, and sabotage, many of which are documented at Election Hell. Yes, Republicans have done their share, and it's inexcusable. Democrats, however, have done far more.

What we have here is a classic case of cognitive dissonance. Liberals believe that they are right. They believe it with almost religious fervor. It is inconceivable to them that any rational person could disagree with them. When presented with the undeniable fact that 51% of the American voting public has done just that, they are now faced with the problem of how to reconcile their beliefs with reality. They can do one of two things. They can either modify their beliefs to fit what really happened, or they can look for some other cause for the discrepancy. Changing fundamental beliefs is hard. It is much easier to advocate another cause and, in this case, their attitude that they are more intelligent then conservatives is easily extended to the theory that as many as 59 million people are idiots.

See also Dale Franks' take on it over at QandO which I quoted above. As usual, he does a much better job of it than I. Mike over at Cold Fury weighs in with a simple but elegant response.