Nate Silver Graphs the Far-Right Mind

Nate Silver, that geeky obsessive compulsive who runs FiveThirtyEight.com, has put his finger on something I've been grappling with for years now.

There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

This is from his followup to the interview with John Zeigler that he posted yesterday. I have run into this attitude frequently during my recreational forays into right-wing world, but for a better illustration look at President Bush's press conferences. How often have you seen him asked to explain something he's just said, and the explaination is the exact same words, only slower and louder with more emphatic hand gestures? It's not that the reporters aren't buying it, it's that the reporter (or the American people) was too dumb to get it the first time.

It must have been really frustrating on that Privative Social Security Tour. Why wouldn't they understand? Those people are idiots!

It's this refusal to swerve from (I'll rosily refer to it) moral clarity that drives conservatives into their crazier corners. This morning I read the opinion that Democrats (presumably the far-left liberal media, because they're all Democrats) caused McCain to prevail over Romney in the primaries. Obviously all the Republicans MEANT to vote for Romney, but Democrats confused them. Or something. I'm waiting to hear further remarks on that one.

Silver thinks this refusal to believe that people might disagree is rooted in Talk Radio. Seems like kind of a stretch to me, but he could be right. Maybe the whole problem is if you listen to that stuff long enough, you forget that the callers are screened.