Who Will Learn From His Mistakes?

     There are quite a few citations on the Web of liberal pundits and editorial boards having “meltdowns” over the victory of Donald Trump and his favored legislative candidates. Those persons have made a lot of intemperate comments. I shan’t reproduce them here; they’re easy enough to find. And all schadenfreude aside, they tell a tale that embeds one of the oldest of all practical maxims:

     While the one-dimensional Left / Right political spectrum is an oversimplification, nevertheless it serves adequately on occasions like this one. The Right has had to do a lot of self-examination over its defeats. It hasn’t always drawn the right lessons, but on balance it’s doing better than 50%. The Left is in stark contrast. Rather often, when it’s tried a tactic that’s proved harmful to its own prospects, it’s doubled down. It’s “turned it up to eleven.” It learns very reluctantly… when it learns.

     Those left-liberal “meltdowns” are a dead giveaway.

     Why does a candidate – or a party – come off the loser in an election? The answer is simple enough: not enough people voted for him / it. That’s where a lot of “analysts” start using one of my favorite words. It’s an important word: its improper use can actually harm the user by destroying his opportunity to learn what he needs to learn.

     The word, of course, is should.

     “We should have won!” rises the cry. Oh really? But you didn’t. Why not? Can you enumerate and explain the factors that led to your defeat?

     Let’s pause here for a citation from Robert A. Heinlein, the man from whom I learned about the mental and emotional toxicity of the word “should:”

     After an event, “possible” and “true” are equivalent ideas, whereas “probable” becomes a measure of one’s ignorance. To call a conclusion “improbable” after the event is self-confusing amphigory. [From Heinlein’s novelette “Gulf”]

     That’s a illumination of importance if ever there was one. However much it might pain him, an honest man will look for the reasons for his failure in his own decisions and actions. He’ll attempt to isolate specific ones and understand what they really did to his chances, especially those strokes in which he had the greatest confidence. He may not draw the correct conclusions, but as long as he’s looking at his own moves, he’ll be on the right track.

     A dishonest man? Oh, he follows quite a different star. He won’t consider himself to be the architect of his demise. He’ll be looking for “enemies,” including “bad luck.”

     Heinlein also had something to say about “bad luck:”

     “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
     This is known as “bad luck.”

     [From Time Enough For Love]

     So the dishonest man will be looking everywhere but at his own decisions and actions – in other words, exclusively at things beyond his control. But like as not, all those things will remain beyond his control. Therefore, even if he’s correct that “enemies” and “bad luck” brought about his defeat, he will learn nothing useful from his efforts.

     The Left and its allies in the media are engaged that sort of pointlessness as we speak. They want to blame someone or something other than themselves. As for the candidates they chose, the policies they espoused, and the methods by which they campaigned, those will remain beyond serious analysis.

     The unwillingness to accept responsibility for defeat is its own punishment.

     Media commentators are largely ego-driven. They believe they possess superior insight. That’s practically a tautology, as without that conviction they’d keep their opinions to themselves rather than promulgating them in the papers and on the airwaves. Defeat shakes that conviction: the more serious the defeat, the greater the disturbance to their self-regard. Election 2024 wasn’t a minor setback but an earthquake that threatens their entire intellectual edifice.

     When one’s opinion about a subject is intimately connected to his self-esteem, it endangers him emotionally. Persons on the Left – and this is especially true of mainstream media pundits – regard themselves as morally superior because of their political positions. Thus, this morning they are all badly shaken, even if they’re unwilling to look critically at themselves and the ideas they espouse.

     I predict they’ll keep looking for someone else to blame. Perhaps Russia. All the same, we in the Right mustn’t gloat. Our turn in the dumpster will come – politics is like that – and with it will come our turn for a painful self-examination. We won’t like it any better than they do.