Are Leftists "Stupid"?

I have been reluctant to describe folks on the political left as “stupid.”  Although many of them use this term to characterize those on my side, it strikes me as an overused epithet.  We live in a world in which there has been so much name-calling that I am hesitant to add to it.

Plainly, liberals are not stupid in a biological sense.  Many of them boast higher than average IQ’s.  Nor are they all ignorant.  They include many of the best-educated people in the nation. A large number are likewise articulate, assertive, and perceptive.

So why are millions of these uber-partisans behaving as if they were stupid? This is, in fact, not a mystery. We humans are not just intellectual creatures; we are also emotional beings.  This means that we get very angry when frustrated.  And isn’t this where many liberals are?  Didn’t the election of Donald Trump thwart their fondest ambitions?

There is another piece of information that goes into explaining the frenzied behavior on the left.  It has to do with the nature of anger.  As I noted I my book I.A.M.(Integrated Anger Management), when our passions become extremely intense they often become primitive.  They cease being well regulated and erupt as an infant’s might.

Intense anger has been compared to a blow on the head.  It drives every rational thought out of our noggins and renders us as if we were dumb.  Another way to portray this phenomenon is to say that we go into a “blind rage.”  We become so obsessed with getting even that we no longer calculate what we are doing.

People in a blind rage rush headlong into machine gun nests.  They also kill their spouses without worrying about getting caught or spending the rest of their days in jail.  The only thing on their minds is inflicting injury of those in their way.

Isn’t this the mindset of contemporary liberals?  Every time they turn around there is that repugnant creature, Donald Trump, standing astride their path.  He got the tax cut passed, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, and is making progress on North Korea.  All of this is showing them up!  How dreadful!

And so they resist.  It doesn’t matter what they oppose as long as Trump is for it.  Nor do they do so quietly.  They throw tantrums.  They spout vile accusations at the top of their lungs.  They also dig deep into their gunnysack of expletives to call him much worse than “stupid.”

Furthermore, in doing so, they forget about the consequences.  They don’t contemplate the reaction to their outbursts, but plunge ahead.  This goes for normally intelligent souls, such as Chuck Schumer, who are more concerned with appeasing their base than helping the nation.

Do you remember the brouhaha about rescuing the DACA kids?  Quite unexpectedly Trump put a reasonable proposal on the table.  Nevertheless it was rejected out of hand.  This required Democrats to oppose ideas they had previously embraced—such as the border wall—yet they were up to the challenge.

Then they placed their money on the hope that the public would blame the president for a government shutdown.  This did not occur because it was obvious Schumer precipitated the standoff. As a result, he and his party lost face.

The same thing seems to be happening with the Brett Cavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court.  The liberals have made so many egregiously absurd accusations that few are believed. Instead of analyzing which might work, they unthinkingly derided him for using credit to buy sports tickets.

Worst of all, however, have been the tantrums in favor of Peter Strzok. When congressional Democrats depicted this patently biased FBI investigator as a hero, they lost credibility. When they similarly mischaracterized the IG report as exonerating him, this was also a bridge too far.

Any impartial person who watched the Strzok hearings had to be impressed with the frenzied way Democrats sought to impede the proceedings.  They interrupted; they raised spurious points of order; they repeatedly asked the same irrelevant questions.

This was dumb.  Furthermore, it was publically dumb.  Like it or not, they have now been recorded in all their obtuse glory for voters to see whenever their political opponents need a negative advertisement. 

One of the Dems cited his grandmother as advising him never to get in the middle of a circus or he would look like a clown.  He ignored her wise council.  Indignantly determined to wound those idiotic Republicans, he joined the chorus of imprudently disgruntled colleagues.

That was not smart!  It only impressed those who are equally enraged.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University