August 4, 2024

ROGER KIMBALL: Kamala Harris and the Masque of Magical Thinking.

How did the magical thinking arise in the first place? One source is the habit of credulity that is a by-product of all utopian thought. The Democrats have mutated into the party of nowhere, so it is not surprising that they prefer pleasing fantasy to sobering reality.

The other chief source is the attack on objective truth that, in various ways, has been the gospel proclaimed by fancy professors for the past several decades. Students everywhere are taught to be suspicious of truth, to proclaim the relativity of values. This is a brain-addling teaching, but one that you would have to look far and wide to find a place it hasn’t reached.

As I noted in that earlier column on magical thinking, epistemic nihilism is the order of the day in all the best colleges and universities. But the result is not so much a failure as a promiscuity of belief. Hence the hyperventilating media shamans with their intoxicating potions. Some conservative pundits are fretting that Kamala Harris represents a credible challenge to the Trump juggernaut. Absent an assassin’s bullet, the successful rekindling of  Democratic lawfare, or some other praeternatural intervention,  I think the Democrats are setting themselves up not only for major disappointment but for staggering disillusionment. That’s the trouble with magical thinking. Sooner or later, reality intrudes and destroys the web of fantasy that the spurious magic has spun. Donald Trump is an avenging angel of reality. The Dems, as well as certain besotted anti-Trump conservatives, are dancing now.  They won’t be gyrating when the music stops and the hall empties.

Like CNN before him yesterday, why is George Stephanopoulos obsessed with telling a black man why his opinions are wrong, and that being an Indian-American is a “slur?”

More on the latter, here: Now, This is How You Do It! Byron Donalds Decimates George Stephanopoulos Over Kamala’s Heritage (Watch).

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll