If you don’t use a muscle for a while it will atrophy to the point of uselessness. The same goes for the brain, which is why it’s important to engage in mentally challenging activities every now and then – anything from reading or a game of Trivial Pursuit to watching Jeopardy or engaging in a vigorous debate. That last one, by the way, is the easiest and most fun, because talking to people is fun. Liberals, however, gave up on the concept of debate a while ago, and now are incapable of it (and not just because their ideas are horrible failures).
Flip on MSNBC and you not only won’t see a debate, you won’t see a serious discussion. Rachel Maddow, on the rare days she works for her $30 million (tell me again about the evils of capitalism), does not speak to anyone who disagrees with her. In fact, MSNBC does not employ anyone who disagrees with the progressive orthodoxy, no matter how absurd it is. Michael Steele, the former RNC Chairman, and every other “conservative” they keep on staff to trot out to pretend to have Republicans on their network sit silently on issues like pretending boys are girls and sterilizing them. No sane person, let alone conservative, can sit silently on this absurd concept, yet silent they sit and hammer their checks.
NBC has a gay news platform called “NBC Out,” because news apparently has a sexuality. It appears to only hire gay reporters who, quite coincidentally (I’m sure), find homo or trans-phobia under every rock. That might have something to do with the silence of their “Republicans,” who want to keep those checks rolling in.
To be fair, they also have news platforms based on race – NBC Asian-American, NBCBLK (black people news), NBC Latino, etc. – because not only did Democrats create segregation, they love it dearly to this day. The left never changes their objectives, only their tactics. Today’s racism is couched as “tolerance” and “celebrating” things that don’t matter.
One tactic the left has ignored for a long while is “debating.” And now they can’t do it anymore.
Democrat politicians, progressive pundits, and left-wing activists with press passes only ever speak to each other. There is no debate or serious discussion on MSNBC, it’s only an endless stream of one-upmanship. On a weekly basis, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace (two of the “top” hosts on the network) make clowns of themselves with wildly ignorant or embarrassingly wrong statements. They still have jobs because the people behind the scenes are equally ignorant. When history begins anew every time you wake up, you can’t be wrong.
Sadly, the bulk of media has become choir-preachers. There was a time when politicians tried to convince people to follow their lead or support their position. Not anymore. It’s not about winning people to your side, it’s about getting more of the people who already agree with you to show up and vote so you can force your will on everyone else.
It’s no coincidence that leftists usually scream “This is what democracy looks like” while shouting down someone they want to prevent from speaking or some other threat of violence; deploying that line in a way that is decidedly NOT what democracy looks like.
Then again, the left has never been interested in democracy, only power. Losing the ability to debate only matters if you’re trying to win people over, they are not. The left now focuses on turning out their base as much as possible by trying to scare them into obedience. Has there been a Republican candidate in your lifetime that someone on the left didn’t compare to Hitler? They simply declare it to be without explanation, even though it’s a lie, as Hitler was firmly a man of the progressive left. As was Stalin, as was Mao.
When you aren’t ever anywhere someone will challenge you, you can make asinine statements like that and they’ll be received like you’re talking to a bunch of bobblehead dolls on a dashboard of a car driving down a bumpy road. That’s what MSNBC is.
It’s why Dr. Peter Hotez ran to MSNBC to talk about why he wouldn’t debate Robert Kennedy Jr. about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine on Joe Rogan’s podcast – he knew he wouldn’t be challenged in one setting and must not be comfortable or capable of his knowledge on the subject when it is challenged in any way. Democrats can’t debate, they simply declare and are agreed with by other Democrats. Anyone who disagrees with them is some sort of “ist” or “phobe;” otherized in absentia in friendly confines to an amen choir of vapid ideologists who aren’t at all interested in the truth, only in winning.
Conservatives should still try to engage in debates with these people, if only to expose how they can’t. If only to expose how the entirety of the left has become that college junior who worked all week to “nail” that conservative speaker coming to campus on whatever issue they care about that week, only to find their rehearsed question has some fatal flaws: it was based on the lies they’d been told and accepted without challenging, and it was wildly stupid leading to their public humiliation online for all time.
Harsh, maybe, but it is true. And the truth is often the harshest of realities, isn’t it?
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.