Hysteria

Dr. Sanity has a great post about the hysteria gripping the left, which meshes nicely with my observation of motives vs. effects.

It's all about feelings:

Welcome to the wonderful world of feelings, nothing more than feelings (cue the music), where there really is nothing more than feelings. It is a world where there is no objective reality or truth; a world where if you believe something is true, then it is. In other words, it is a world where something can be considered "fake but accurate" or where captured enemy combatants in the middle of a war are considered in a "gulag"; or where a "religion of peace" beheads people; acts terrified of women's sexuality; promulgates blowing yourself up as a devout religious act.

A variety of altered states of consciousness may result from the dissociative process. In one dissociated or hysterical state, sleep-walking (sonambulism), the person appears to be out of contact with his environment, is seemingly unresponsive to external stimuli, and in many cases appears to be living out a vivid, hallucinated drama. That state essentially describes the Left in this country and around much of the world.

Mass hysteria is the phenomenon when large groups of people engage in such dissociation. Political mass hysteria occurs when the emotional excitability and excess serve a political function.

In this case, since I am applying this concept to the Left, one has to ask: 1) what is the nature of the drama? and 2) Why is the Left sleepwalking?

The "drama" is the same old Marxist play of Oppressor vs. Oppressed that has been going on since the beginning of the 20th century. In Act I of this sad little drama, the world was about to be saved from the horrible evils of American Capitalist Oppression of the masses by the brave Soviet Socialist Republic. Unfortunately, reality intervened. By the time Act II was ready to be unveiled, the deaths of millions in the Socialist Republic from the brutal Procrustean torment of Communism had resulted in the Left losing most of its audience. The incredible economic successes of capitalism and the freedom that fires it, compared to the pathetic lives of most under the yoke of communism, made most people realize that Marxism was a dead end--a one act play.

So they rewrote the play. The play's the thing after all--not the reality. Now, cleverly removing key facts from their mind, the Left continues the play; again with the forces of evil being played by American Capitalist Oppression; and now the oppressed are the poor helpless people of the Middle East engaging in peaceful jihad. Oh, the victimhood. Oh, the humanity!
...
Indeed, there is much more. These people are living in their own little world of feelings. They just know, deep down inside their empathic little hearts that America is on the wrong side of history; that capitalism is evil; and that their beautiful Marxist ideology is the salvation of all.

There's more.

This also nicely illustrates an exchange of comments I had here, in which the commenter first claims that Bush lied in making the case for war with Iraq, then admits there was no evidence that they lied at all. I suppose he just "feels" it's true.

That kind of rhetorical style -- argumentation by assertion -- is a majestic thing to behold, in its utter imperviousness to rationality, logic, and facts.