On my radio show, for perhaps the past ten years or so, I've been referring often to this article, zippily entitled "20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You" by Shahida Arabi.
It smacks a little of pop psychology, but it was actually written before it became trendy to dub everyone one disagrees with "narcissistic" (which became a fad along about 2017, for some reason), and it's got some good advice.
Especially for describing how the left has been behaving since the early 2010s.
Go ahead. Read through those 20 factors. Some of them will seem ripped from today's headlines.
But several among them should ring a bell to cultural observers:
- "Gaslighting" - another term that's become a cultural cliche, but was much on display during the 2024 presidential tilt.
- "Projection" - so suffocating a facet of "progressive" communications that it spawned perhaps the most popular single bromide I've ever written.
- "Control" - as the article puts it, "Most importantly, toxic abusers love to maintain control in whatever way they can. They isolate you, maintain control over your finances and social networks, and micromanage every facet of your life. Yet the most powerful mechanism they have for control"
Let's put a pin in all of that for a moment.
One of Big Left's most constant narratives since the early days of the Obama regime was the inevitability of the left's ascendancy. It's not like there was absolutely no factual case to be made - and it was. And part of that vision remains a living goal on the left.
And yet there are signs that, just maybe, the cultural tide has turned; that rumors of inevitability are greatly overstated.
Chris Queen at PJ Media has assembled a digest of data points that suggest the tide may be turning, if we on the right are smart enough to see it.
One of the constant drumbeats of the left is that its policies and cultural movements are inevitable. Progress always marches in the leftists’ direction, they tell us. They’re “on the right side of history,” after all, and they like to remind us of that every chance they get.
But is that true? Recent years have shown a backlash against the “inevitability” of the left.
And the data points are interesting.
The media has gotten less obsessed with "the new atheism":
Man, this graph of the New Atheism's rise and fall from Christian Smith's new book says it all. pic.twitter.com/7qU3eL6XnL
— Shane Morris (@GShaneMorris) March 12, 2025
And that arguably may be because there appears to be less of it:
The latest [Religious Landscape Study], fielded over seven months in 2023-24, finds that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians. That is a decline of 9 percentage points since 2014 and a 16-point drop since 2007.
But for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. The 62% figure in the new Religious Landscape Study is smack in the middle of that recent range.
And among the best news from this past election is that young voters appear to be rejecting the Democrat message of materialism and managed decline. Here's hoping the GOP can deliver on the opposite of all of that.
And while Texas's last Democrat governor is receding into history (I had to look her up), the long-term Democrat dream of "turning Texas blue" - hailed as inevitable even during the Obama administration, and still the focus of a lot of leftist effort - seems to be receding.
Now, can conservatives keep the momentum going?
