I am currently coming to you from my favourite seat in my favorite White Spot, typing into a window 20 pixels tall because that is all that is left after the virtual keyboard and Chrome take tbeir cut.

As usual, it is this or have a teeny tiny virtual keyboard. Whether I am using this smartphone (currently a lot more smart than phone) in landscape or portrait mode, something is gonna suck.

Oh well. My 2 page dialog exercise went over okay, in that the prof Aaron only suggested minor changes.

That is as close to fulsome praise as anyone is ever gonna get from that guy.

Tomorrow, I will be presenting the pitches I did yesterday. I am confident that I will do well in a one-on-one pitching situation. I will know exactly where to focus all my charm and charisma and warmth and wit and that obvious intelligence thing. Plus I have confidence in what I am pitching.

What more do I need?

Home now. Time for thoughts on conservatism.

First, a clarification : I am not talking about classical conservatism or any other form of conservatism, only conservatism as it manifests itself in the world today.

That modern form of conservatism, the Know-Nothing kind, is basically politics for people who are too stupid for civilization.

Modern civilization is just too hard for them. It’s too complicated for their tiny minds. Too many moving parts, too many subtleties, too much ambiguity, and above all, too many people insisting that you should actually think about things instead of just going with your gut.

And where’s the fun in that? Next you’ll be asking them to read when they are not even in school!

Modern conservatism insists that everything is exactly as it feels to them. No thought needed, and that’s exactly how they like it. They have made the choice to build a castle in the sky out of big, colorful building blocks handed to them by Fox News and the rest of their alternate-reality media, and then moved into it and slammed the gates, and their minds, firmly shut.

And in their magical fairy land, everything is simple enough for their minuscule minds. All issues are simple, and all decisions are easy, and the best part is, they don’t ever ever EVER have to think about ANYTHING. All they have to do is pick a person to trust (which is easy, because they all say things that make the conservatives feel good) and do (and believe) whatever those people say, and they can live in their magic rainbow castle forever!

So the real problem is stupidity. Not in a strictly linear intellectual sense – after all, not every liberal is a mental giant either. It’s more of a choice made, or a fear indulged. They are in constant flight from the complex world outside and complex thought inside. And in general, when human beings want to drown out unpleasant thoughts (like that the world might be more complex than they can comprehend without having to enter the dread land of Doubt), they do it by turning up the volume on their emotions until they can’t hear those nasty thinky thoughts ANY MORE.

And anything that fits into their primitive mindset and helps with this use of emotion to beat reason senseless is welcome. That is why they are so deeply and fatally attracted to things that elicit a powerful response from the primitive parts of their brain. Our brains are designed with the capacity for primitive, reptile-brain thoughts to club the ego over the head and let the id take over because certain things, like feeding, drinking, and reproduction just have to get done.

That’s why asceticism does not work. Reason is always on a short leash, and can exist only when the more basic needs are met. By trying to ignore those needs, the ascetic instead makes sure they take up more and more of their minds.

The Greeks had it right. They knew that you had to take care of body needs before you could think clearly.

But I, to put it mildly, digress.

Conservatism takes advantage of this capacity to take reason and restraint out of the picture to keep it stuck in a locker and buried behind the bleachers nearly constantly.

But reason is scrappy. It always makes its way back to the surface of the mind if given a chance. We human beings are essentially thinking creatures and our deep drive to understand the world is not so easily thwarted… so they have to get their fix of reason-suppressing rage and fear quite frequently lest their brains start to work again.

I think one of the things that we liberals often get wrong about conservatives is that these are people for whom an understanding of actual reality is not a high priority. To them, it’s all about emotion management. They want to avoid doubt and uncertainty by reassuring themselves that the world actually is simple enough for them to comprehend, and that’s their top priority. Whether or not the world is really as they believe it to be is beside the point, and is, in face, the exact kind of question they hate because it’s trying to make them think.

This fills them with rage, and that’s exactly the emotion they need to suppress their thinking parts as long as they vent it against the thing that tried to make them think.

That’s why they hate nuance so much. That’s why they are so willing to swallow any line of bullshit that supports their non-thinking agenda. That’s why they flock to people like Donald Trump. Trump gives them the doses of powerful primitive emotion they need, and appeals to their need to follow a “strong” leader who makes them feel safe.

And that has nothing to do with what Trump stands for or says. As Brexit taught the world, modern conservatives do not think their actions through at all and are perfectly willing to go through with their insane policies and then be really surprised when they end in disaster.

All to avoid having to think for themselves.

No wonder they hate liberals. We think all the time!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.