Quote of the Day

It is said Donald Trump has a near-magical ability to make Democrats do insanely self-destructive things. They’re doing it to themselves. Trump doesn’t have to apply clumsy reverse psychology, their self-imposed Trump Derangement Syndrome and their raging hatred of America and Normal Americans makes them reflexively, loudly and irrationally, oppose anything he says or does and anything they imagine he might be thinking of saying or doing.

In only eight months, we’ve watched Democrats maniacally defend:

*Illegal immigration
*Hamas
*Islamic terrorists in general
*Violent domestic criminals
*Antisemitism
*Pedophiles
*Democrat legislators fleeing votes to “defend democracy”
*Mentally ill men in women’s sports, locker rooms and bathrooms
*Ignoring and damaging the Constitution
*Rampant violent crime in Washington, DC, including “gun violence”

And the list goes on and on.

Mike McDaniel
August 22, 2025
Brady United chooses DC criminals, politicians – American Thinker

I think the problem is that they are emotionally driven. They have bought into all the terrible things they have been told about President Trump and reflexively oppose anything he supposedly is in favor of.

I suspect this is rather common in people. I remember growing up and people would respond in the same sort of manner to anything related to Hitler. Yes, Hitler had primary responsibility the deaths of millions of innocent people. Yes, he deserves to be considered one of the all-time evil people of history. But he gave political support to the Volkswagen Beetle and the Autobahn. It doesn’t reduce the severity of his crimes, but I don’t see the problem with saying those were praiseworthy projects.

The same sort of thing happened to me early 1990s. I was living in Sandpoint Idaho at the time. There was a big deal about something the Aryan Nation wanted to do or was doing locally or in the nearby Hayden Lake area. There was a big meeting of the Sandpoint locals to oppose whatever it was they wanted to do. I went to the meeting.

Various people talked about how terrible the Aryan Nation people were and what they stood for. There were a handful of people from the Aryan Nation group there and wanted to talk. After bit of discussion one of the Aryan Nation people was given a few minutes to say some things. He said they were advocating for equal treatment of white people. For example, there was a case where a black person severely injured (or killed? I don’t remember for certain) a white person and because of the numerous racial epithets used at the time of the attack it was clear it was a racially motivated. But the prosecutors would not go for it and the perp got of far easier than had a white person committed the same crime against a black person.

It was clear to me that by accepting and rectifying the valid points, including letting them talk without a debate about it, they could take a lot of “wind out of their sails.” Without stories to tell of all the discrimination against white people they would have a much more difficult time recruiting new members and probably keeping existing members. That was not the consensus of the general population. “White Supremist bad. Everything they want must be opposed.”, seemed to be the attitude.

It is a something more general than just the three examples of Trump, Hitler, and the Aryan Nations. I see it done by Republican/Conservatives too.

If those examples are not enough to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the phenomena, think about loyalty to sports teams. People get in fights and even riots in opposition to the “other” teams.

The emotional content of belonging to a tribe and opposing competing tribes probably was a huge evolutionary advantage. But that doesn’t mean it is universally good behavior. Sometimes adopting some ideas, customs, technology, or team plays of your most hated enemy is to your advantage.

I believe this failure to accept the opposition has some good ideas is how the Democrats came to this: Democrats facing crisis as more than 2M voters leave party in four years.

By taking a vocal stand on fairly central issues Trump, in effect, “forced” the Democrats into crazy territory. The Democrats did not have to go there. They could have agreed on the issues that made sense, and perhaps even legislatively killed that issue before the election. This would have taken “the wind out of Trump’s sail.” But they are too emotionally driven and had to double down on the crazy view of those issues. The end result was they were left in crazy town while the Republicans went to Washington D.C. Now, the Republicans get to implement their reasonable ideas as well as their crazy ones in questionable ways.

Another example of Democrat craziness in this regard is vehement opposition to “cultural appropriation.” White people singing rap songs is bad? But people of color using technology created by white people, say the iPhone (Steve Jobs), electricity (Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Telsa), airplanes (the Wright Brothers), and mass-produced cars (Henry Ford) is okay? People are finally starting to realize they are talking crazy talk.

A similar thing happens in engineering with, “Not invented here syndrome.” People have a reasonably good idea and don’t look around to see if they can get an off the shelf implementation of something at least “good enough” if not better. Or don’t want to use code that someone else wrote.

Here is my approach to faster social, political, and technological evolution. Stop, think, and when appropriate adopt the ideas of others. Give credit where credit is due and advance the ball down the field with your adaptation of a good idea. Everyone wins.