Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc
It discusses the conclusion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer–who was a hero by just about any standard, not least because he had escaped to America and chose to return–that the main problem at least in modern life is not wickedness or intentional malice, but STUPIDITY.
And this really is the case. I was going to post on this the other day. I have had many nice in person conversations with people I knew were hard core Leftists. They are often nice people, friendly, and I can chit chat with them easily. But if I told them I was a huge Trump supporter, I can readily imagine this dark cloud coming over them, and the conversation ending abruptly, and some sort of accusation being thrown at me. And me denying the accusation–usually racist, but they have a palette to choose from–only reinforces its validity in their minds.
Many of us have tended to say that they are reacting to feelings, not thoughts. That feelings are not arguments. And this is true enough, but the underlying reality when we have to make that excuse for otherwise civilized people reacting like primitive savages is that they are being STUPID. That is the word. They are not thinking, and not thinking is stupidity.
And you can counter bad logic with good logic–as Plato in the voice of Socrates ably demonstrated long ago–but you cannot counter stupidity with intelligence. It goes unheard.
And I have run into this countless times. It does not matter how good your argument is if someone has DECIDED–in reality, if not in their own minds–to be stupid.
The motion of all this is towards violence, because differences that cannot be addressed through dialogue are sooner or later addressed through violence.
I have counseled non-violent resistance, because the aim of that sort of thing is to wake people up and cause them to realize the shared humanity they have with the people they are trying to oppress. But that sort of thing would not have worked in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, or Maoist China, or Castro’s Cuba, or Maduro’s Venezuela. The stupidity is too strong.
And I honestly think Communists are worse than the Nazis were. Bonhoeffer was allowed to write letters. The Communists, who in most cases denied the EXISTENCE of their labor camps, would not have allowed even that. I truly believe that, as horrific as they were, the Nazis were still more humanitarian than the Communists. The Nazis only wanted your body: the Communists wanted your SOUL.
The one thing working on the side of sanity is that the people who have lost their minds remain a minority. As I have said, the sympathetic are about a third of the country, and the outright lunatics about 10%. These are roughly the numbers for Islamic terrorism, which is opposed, I read, by about two thirds of Muslims.
There remains hope, I think, but the sooner the mass of Americans wake up, the better. We need to whittle away at that one third with reason, understanding, and wherever they permit it, rational dialogue. The 10% are hopeless, in my view. They can only be contained, and their damage limited as much as possible.