Of Irony, Ideology, Idiocy, and Idiosyncrasy

I am noticing some interesting trends emerging in recent days and weeks on social media.

First of all, it seems that a great many Liberals and Conservatives define the other as anything that is not in lockstep agreement with their own narrow worldview. This black and white binary thinking is intellectually unsophisticated and cognitively simplistic.

Secondly, it seems that a great many Liberals and Conservatives don't seem to understand what those two terms define both of the label they identify themselves as being as well as the label they claim to oppose.

Bernie is a Liberal, NOT Clinton or Obama both of whom are Corporatists as genuine Liberals like to point out. However, good luck trying to point that out to Liberals who only want to win in November at any cost and thus reveal themselves to be less ideological than they are tribal.

Cruz is a Conservative, NOT Trump who is an anti-free trade, pro-single-payer Populist not-so-long-ago Democrat and Hillary Clinton fan. However, good luck trying to point that out to Conservatives who only want to win in November at any cost and thus reveal themselves to be less ideological than they are tribal.

Thirdly, a notable number of my Conservative friends, indeed some of the more nasty ones, now attack my objective Centrist observations as not only Liberal which is not so new but what is new is that they toss in the fact I just graduated from college and somehow that must have magically transformed me virtually overnight into a fire-breathing Liberal. And of course I must be a Liberal because I do not adhere to their narrow worldview. In reality, my Centrist perspective on these things is not only unchanged from when I first entered college, but it has been validated and reinforced. It is a shame to see this abhorrent behavior as I am a former Conservative and at times am tempted to go back and then I see these people act ugly in a way that is integral to their political culture and chronically fail to live up to their own creed and thus expose the foundational flaws in Conservatism (the people) and I then regain perspective.

It is a widely known fact that people ideologically to the right of center are perennially less educated than those ideologically to the left of them. Given this fact and how Liberals like to flaunt it as if it makes them any better or more correct than Conservatives (which it doesn't), this sort of anti-educational/anti-intellectualism further seems to support the view that Conservatives aren't as bright and as well educated as Liberals. This is ironic both ways as another stereotype is that Liberals have chronically bleeding hearts and are overly-emotional sentimentalists while Conservatives are more unemotionally, ruthlessly calculating in a socially darwinistic Ayn Rand sort of way. Both of these stereotypes run counter to the fact the Left is better educated and the Right is very sentimental and emotionally-driven.