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Yeah, it's a tactic I can't really describe charitably, but it has been becoming more and more common since 2016. One way to think of it is like a reverse application of hanlon's razor - it is better to appear ignorant than malicious.
Everyone has blind spots it's true. But how can you tell if they are legit blinded or just behaving that way? One of the other benefits of trying to appear ignorant is that it is really easy, because even if you do a bad job of it you still look stupid.
Also what would be the benefit of pointing out the contradiction if you were partisan and thoroughly on board with the narrative? All you would be doing is giving the opposition ammunition. You might even put one in the white house. You would be better off keeping up appearances at all times. Eventually you won't even have to think about it, it will become muscle memory. Do you think those people would have been silent about the contradiction if the sides were switched and a right wing workshop told them the problem with democracy was left wing opinions? Because in my experience they would not. In my experience people these days who would, usually end up on obscure internet forums for wordy misanthropes.
We were taught about the Hollywood blacklists in school in the 90s, not long after the Berlin Wall fell, when the full extent of Soviet deprivation and historical oppression was becoming clear, and I thought it was so noble of everyone in these more enlightened times to be willing to stand up for the political and economic freedoms of even such dangerously foolish people. The architects of the Holodomor and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been slipping spies up the ranks, trying to subvert Western governments and culture, and acquiring nuclear weapons secrets, but if we couldn't ferret out the evil people without doing evil things ourselves, hurting innocent and merely-mistaken people in the process, that was too high a price to pay.
It's been so dismaying, in the decades since, to discover what fraction of the modern population loves blacklists after all. Of course you're supposed to boycott anyone who would hire someone with bad politics!
Were we actually enlightened before but we fell so far in a single generation? Was so much of the "opposition to blacklists" never truly more than a love of communism, reexpressed in a way that wouldn't spook idealists like me who bought the cover story?
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“Open democracy is only working properly if it consistently generates the outcomes we deem acceptable.”
I'd definitely agree that this level of self-deception is pretty par for the course. There's a massive streak of illiberalism buried in the progressive mindset, but it is usually buried in a layer or two of obfuscation and framed as "making people free" (or something along these lines). This allows them to put enough distance between their openly endorsed values and their actual positions for them to live with the cognitive dissonance.
I have far more respect for totalitarian hardliners. At least they're honest and open about what they want.
Yea, if the "liberals" said, in old time aristocratic style:
"The people are ignorant and vicious mob. We are in charge, because we are the best and the brightest."
it would be more "honest", but open to easy reply that, judged by fruits of their work, they are not the "best and brightest" at all.
Now they have the best of both worlds.
Things are good? We did it!
Things are bad? Not our fault, we are just humble servants of the people. The racist and bigoted people voted for it, and got what they wanted!
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