The Midwife of Stupidity

Amazon Prime has produced a relatively vapid action-adventure series, Jack Ryan, based on the Tom Clancy character of the same name. It's innocent enough escapist entertainment, this year set in strife-torn Venezuela which is shown suffering from all of the ills that the actual Venezuela has endured ever since socialist dictators Hugo Chavez and then Nicholas Maduro took over—economic collapse, food and medicine shortages, corruption, human right abuses, lack of medical care, mass out-migration, and of course, an elite leftist ruling class that experiences none of that.

The interesting thing about the Jack Ryan treatment is that the Hollywood writers never discuss what got Venezuela into this mess. That is, they NEVER mention socialism as a cause. Sure they create an evil, murderous dictator along Maduro lines, but never once mention his political ideology. Not surprising, but typical of the manner in which the left manages the narrative to their advantage. Oh, BTW, the dictator's political opponent is a woman, described as a "social justice" proponent who is backed by smiling and enthusiastic "leftist" (the script writer's terminology) young people. Um ... wasn't it the "leftists" who allowed Chavez and Maduro to destroy their country in the first place? Never mind.

Anyhow, the Jack Ryan treatment on Amazon Prime is indicative of the new Left in the United States. In essence, the Left and its trained hamsters in the media want to censor information that conflicts with their narrative. That censorship takes many forms including 'fake news' achieved via outright lies by their media allies or conscious omission of key information (as in the case of Jack Ryan).

Brendan O'Neill provides an important comment on this:

Censorship is the midwife of stupidity, and more importantly of dogmatism. When religious or political or moral ideologies are insulated from critique, they become dogmas. They become belief systems that are cleaved to, not because they have been tested and discussed in the public sphere, but because their adherents just know that they are right. These are the perfect conditions in which arrogance and intellectual hollowness can flourish, and in which defensiveness and fury become the default responses to any challenge from outside.

Reread that simple paragraph. It contains much to consider.

The Left doesn't want its ideas to be "tested or discussed" because those ideas are deeply flawed. That's not an opinion but rather a conclusion based on factual evidence drawn from places like Venezuela where those ideas have been implemented as part of governance. Catastrophic results ensued.

In a recent post I noted that Leftists really do believe they're the smartest kids in the room, but often exhibit "defensiveness and fury" when their ideas and policies are questioned vigorously. These smartest kids exhibit an "arrogance and intellectual hollowness" that is evident in their writing, in their world view, in their predictable ad hominem attacks against anyone who disagrees, and in their ideas and actions.

They MUST be challenged from the outside.

Maybe that should be Jack Ryan's next mission.