The Unwelcome Surprise

On the self-defeating bubbles the left creates for itself, and where we go from here.

Both the 2016 and 2024 elections were shocking to many Democrats. While 2024 was less surprising than Hillary’s upset, it was clear that many people on the left couldn’t grasp how Trump could get elected again.

The hard truth that the left desperately needs to accept is that they’ve entered a collective mass psychosis and most people just don’t feel like dealing with it.

The left within highly “educated” circles is already much more likely to report that “all their friends have similar views.” Indeed, they are the most isolated segment of the population, far more isolated than even the cohort of less educated Republican hillbillies they love to mock:

Here’s a quote from noted leftist, Brianna Wu that demonstrates this well:

Bottom line: leftists are unknowingly isolating themselves as normal people increasingly just don’t bother engaging with their psychosis. When MSNBC (and your liberal cousin on Facebook) are crying hysterically that Trump is Hitler, climate change will kill U.S. all, that there are 73 genders, and that America is just a racist and sexist hellhole, the best thing to do is just to shake your head and move on. There’s no use arguing with that level of nuttiness.

Here’s a concrete example: I was recently at a networking event and discussing the challenges of keeping kids off screens. It was all going well, but then one of the guys I was speaking with then put on a serious and foreboding voice and told the story of how his ~12-year-old son asked him who Joe Rogan was. This guy, his dad reacted as if the kid had just stabbed someone at school, and apparently started lecturing his son about the dangers of the internet, or something.

Now, I could have engaged in that, told him I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of Rogan, asked him to specify why Joe Rogan was so dangerous, asked him if he hated Rogan when he was a Bernie supporter in 2016 or 2020, or give him a hint that his lecture to his son was almost certainly counter-productive and made his kid want to listen to Joe Rogan more.

But instead, I just quickly extracted myself from the conversation. Given his tone, it was clear that the man was so far gone that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything to help him. I’m sure the same dude was double masking during Covid (the interluding mass psychosis) and probably complaining about his neighbors standing too close together on the street.

And of course, I had just met the guy, so my chances of influencing him were basically zero. His tone again made it clear that he had said this type of thing or similar to other people in his life with an expectation of unquestioning agreement.

I share this particular anecdote as an example of the manufactured consensus that the left has created for itself. He likely left that conversation with the idea that two other people viewed the world the same way. He has no idea, unless he’s reading this, that I think he’s an unwitting part of a mass psychosis.

And I’m sure this isn’t just me. I’d be willing to bet that some of his colleagues, friends, and even family have made the same calculation. I’m almost certain his son is going to find ways to listen to the “dangerous” Joe Rogan. And after listening for a while realize that there isn’t anything dangerous there, causing him to call into question his dad’s entire worldview, but probably not bothering to bring it up with him.

And so this guy will live on, likely believing that “all his friends have similar views” on politics and continuing to be surprised when elections don’t go his way. It is a sadly self-reinforcing cycle: the more he believes his echo chamber, the more certain he is of his virtue and the more he pronounces it, pushing more and more people away and leaving only those who see the world the exact same way.

I’ve seen this dynamic play out as well with friends and family. Without fully writing those people off, they do just pass off into the distance. There’s only so much time we have to invest. And an I going to invest any more time than is required in someone who thinks I’m “filled with hate” due to voting for Trump, and says so on social media? Lol, no.

Now a question that is always worth asking on the right, or for you in particular, is whether you or I are falling into this same trap.

And while possible, the answer generally is “no.” There are far fewer sacred cows on the right. For all the claims that the right is a cult of personality around Trump, there’s plenty of criticism of him within his voter base. These are drowned out by “nut picking” biases social media and legacy media toward extremes, but at real dinner tables there are plenty of discussions of his flaws and disagreements on politics and policy. Broadly, the right can’t help but hear and engage in the left’s worldview because it is everywhere and (thus far) dominant in culture. So we know it well and can play devil’s advocate far better than those on the left.

Meanwhile on the left, any heterodox opinions are simply too risky to bring up in most settings. Even saying “there are two genders” will get you censured from BlueSky, the left’s newest echo chamber, and merely suggesting that the US isn’t racist is enough to cause scandal and struggle sessions in their homogenized circles. It again brings it back to this guys tone with his story about Rogan, everything about it suggested that’s you ought to agree. That it was virtuous to agree. That it was undeniably the “right side of history” to condemn Joe Rogan for, talking to people I guess?

Indeed, beyond Rogan: Donald Trump himself, Elon, Vivek, RFK Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard all called themselves Democrats at some point within the past 20 years. One would think that might invite some soul searching.

It’s unfortunate that we are here, as a country. But like everything, there’s both good and bad news to come from this.

The good news is that culture is unpredictable, and changes can happen relatively quickly that no one sees coming.

The bad news is that this cycle is self-reinforcing: exiling dissidents and demanding conformant views will only make true believers more certain, even as their numbers shrink.

This is so far what we’ve seen: the left has taken all the wrong lessons from their loss. Very few (at least publicly) are actually reflecting on whether the reality they’ve created for themselves is, well, real.

But to close on some good news: outside of that twisted reality, the rest of the country is basking in an optimism not felt for more than 20 years. We dominate AI, space, and despite all our flaws present the most robust economic engine on the planet. At risk of sounding too hopeful, most Americans have woken up, at least intuitively, to this phenomena and won’t let self-hating leftists ascend to power again anytime soon.