Why Do Democrats Adopt Such Bad Policies?

    I’ve seen every right-of-Mao commentator, and most nominally sane people, ask the same question over and over in recent years.  Democrats consistently enact policies that have obvious and demonstrable negative outcomes for those they govern.  Policies, that have seen what was arguably regarded as the most beautiful city in the country (San Francisco), turn into one that is littered with human feces, discarded needles, and tent villages of homeless.  So, why do they do it?  Most of us are quick to write it off as good intentions blinding them to the negative consequences, greed, a lust for power and damn the consequences, or just plain ineptitude.  But I believe the answer is more complicated, and far more worrying.

    Normally, when someone takes an action with a desired outcome, but achieves a result that is undesirable, if not completely contrary to said outcome, they will course-correct.  If you’re driving on a road along the top of a cliff, and you start veering closer to the edge, either you fix your trajectory, or enjoy the long fall and sudden stop.  But the Democrats don’t course-correct.  In fact, more often than not, they double down, put the peddle to the metal and sail their Prius right off that mother.

    Worse than that, other Democrats in other areas of the country see this happen in real time, see the wreckage smoldering at the base of the cliff, and decide “yeah, let’s do that”.  One after another, Democrat-run cities and states are following the example set before them and achieving the same predictable results.  This all seems nonsensical, confusing, and just plain foolish to the rest of us.  It isn’t the actions taken or results attained by these bureaucrats alone that’s so confusing… it’s in the intent behind them.  We took their stated intent at face value, and we assumed the result was unintended.

    Before explaining further, a little history is in order.  In 1970, a KGB propagandist named Yuri Bezmenov, defected from the Soviet Union and gained asylum in Canada.  In the ‘80s, Yuri began giving lectures about Soviet propaganda, and how it would be used against the United States and other nations.  He talked about the process of “demoralization”, a process meant to subvert nations and their peoples, ultimately replacing their government with a socialist one.  Essentially, it was psychological warfare.

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“As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore.  A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.  The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures… he will refuse to believe it… That’s the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”  – Yuri Bezmenov

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    In the United States, the process of demoralization was most fully realized (if it didn’t indeed begin there) in academia.  Generations of students have gone to college to get educated, only to get fed propaganda by pro-socialist professors.  They had these narratives drilled into them, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly.  Then these propagandized students would go on to graduate, and take those ideas with them, intent on spreading them, kicking off (as coined by the Marxist activist Rudi Dutschke) the long march through the institutions.  

    These processes have been quite successful.  We’ve seen it trickle down into all levels of public education, into nearly every corporate HR department where it gradually climbed the ranks, and into local, state, and now federal government.  It’s been successful enough that they’re barely trying to hide it anymore.

    With that out of the way… I think most of us have met such “demoralized” people by now.  Whether a family member who takes the family Christmas get-together as an opportunity to preach The Communist Manifesto, the liberal-arts graduate taking the time to rail against that greatest of evils, capitalism, instead of just getting your coffee, or just some jerk on the internet.  You can show them the facts, you can explain every theory, you can show them video and pictures as proof, but you’ll never convince them they’re wrong.  Instead, they generally double down.

    Now imagine this:  these Democrat stronghold states, the ones that are the deepest blue, like California and New York.  They have controlled the public schools, universities, and held sway over the policies of nearly every institution in those states, for decades.  Is it any surprise when people live their whole lives in such an environment of subversive propaganda, that they’re the ones you’ll hear spouting phrases like “vote blue, no matter who”, without a second (or first for that matter) thought.  And that’s exactly what they do.  They will always vote Democrat.  Because after all, the other side are all a bunch of rednecks, racists, and fascists aren’t they?  These people ensure that those cities and states will remain in Democrat control for the foreseeable future.

    That’s all well and good, but the original question hasn’t ben answered yet.  Why would you screw over those ideologically loyal voters who guarantee your position of power, with such horrible policies?  Now we get to the base instinct at play… to get more power.  The end goal is uncontested power.  But we’re a republic.  Just because some states are colored blue with permanent marker, that still leaves all the others to contend with.  You can’t always get your way with such checks and balances.  So what is an ideologically possessed and power hungry group of sociopathic legislators to do about those pesky red and purple states?  Simple.  Turn them blue. 

    The strategy, while a little convoluted, is simple enough in practice.  You build a die-hard voter base, who, even if things go poorly will still vote for the party, because they see the other side as literally evil.  They have no alternative.  They are sufficiently “demoralized”.  Then, you adopt policies that intentionally sabotage the state, specifically, to lower the standard of living.  Everyone has a breaking point, you just need to help them get there.  For example, you could perhaps open the streets to the homeless, and turn a blind eye to the resulting filth and crime.  Declare yourself a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants, even refusing to deport those who have already been convicted of violent crimes.  Decriminalize petty theft.  Allow riots to run roughshod over your city/state, even making your law enforcement departments stand down as the cities burn.  Maybe, in a time of severe unrest and uncertainty, you could use the opportunity to institute arbitrary and excessive restrictions that will leave the majority of your citizens without gainful employment, and forced to spend all their time indoors with little human interaction… and back it up with threats of fines or imprisonment.  While that’s going on, you could even halt trash pickup, just to rub it in… but I digress.

    When a person is sufficiently miserable, and is left with no alternative in the face of such a combination Orwellian-Kafkaesque nightmare, they will resort to packing up and moving out.  It starts with the cities.  In years past, if you had looked at a map of election results by district, you’d see the big cities represented as blue islands in a sea of purple and red, generally speaking.  The suburbs typically lean more conservative, and the rural areas even more so, on average.  At first, those with the greatest means to move, will do so.  But they’ll make the move out of the city, to the suburbs, and commute.  They’ll still vote blue.  Then the suburbs deteriorate as the dedicated Democrats trickle out of the city, and vote for the same bad policies that made the city intolerable to them.  When they get pushed out to the extent that commuting is no longer viable, they move to a different state, usually the nearest red one.  They get enticed by the dramatically lower tax rates, cleaner cities, lower crime rates, and lower cost of living.  But still, they’ll vote blue.  Meanwhile, the tech giants (and other large left-leaning companies), who have a culture of enforced ideological alignment, set up new headquarters in the big cities of red states.  Those new arrivals turn the city blue, and the process starts all over again, spreading, like a virus.

    You may be thinking, “if they drive out their voters, how will they maintain their stranglehold on their remaining populace?”  Well, that problem is patched up if not solved by going back where we started.  They imported a replacement voter base.  The homeless, illegal immigrants, and the poor who are dependent on welfare and can’t afford to flee, will all be more likely to vote in favor of the Democrats than otherwise.  Maybe toss in a little voter fraud (like every other year), and it won’t be an issue.

    We have already seen this play out multiple times.  In Texas, the largest cities have already gone blue.  We could be at significant risk of Texas being flipped.  Right now, people are fleeing California in droves.  New York is losing hundreds of thousands of residents.  Where are they fleeing to?  While some may manage to overcome the demoralization and not invite the tyranny they fled to follow them, many, if not most, won’t.  Keep in mind how unbelievably slim the margins were in some states last election…  It wouldn’t take much to flip a red, much less a purple state blue.

    The pattern seems clear.  Democrat legislators are essentially exporting Democrat voters to red states. 

    Is there a solution to this problem?  Honestly, I don’t know.  For now, I think the best we can do is engage our Democrat-expat neighbors in hopes of reminding them not to vote in favor of precisely that which they fled.