Observations of a Social Scientist
Six months after Kamala Harris’s electoral rout, many Democrats seem thoroughly unaware that the majority of Americans dislike them, some intensely.
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I earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate University’s School of Economics & Politics. My work, spanning political and economic history, current controversies, and the bridge connecting past and present, has appeared in both academic and popular platforms.
These credentials aren’t just for show—they underscore my experience in dissecting social and political phenomena. My understanding of human nature is rooted in the study of history, moral & political philosophy, and my own humble attempt to honor the famous inscription at the Temple of Delphi.
Observations of a Social Scientist
Six months after Kamala Harris’s electoral rout, many Democrats seem thoroughly unaware that the majority of Americans dislike them, some intensely. For the few Democrats who sense a problem with their own lack of popularity, they don’t understand why they’re not more popular.
They look at themselves and their own political party and say: We are so smart. We are models of moral virtue—especially our brand of postmodern, postmoral virtue. We are inclusive of everyone who agrees with us. And we promise endless free stuff that we’ll make others pay for. How can anyone not like us?
For a party aiming to win elections, this blind spot is a serious liability.
I follow numerous progressive Democrats—really, the only kind of Democrats that remain. With rare exceptions, they show little interest in drawing people to their cause, or to them. Instead of offering reasons to be liked, admired, or trusted, they scold and shame others. They vent seething hatred at President Trump as they pound into the ground another “Hate Has No Home Here” yard sign for everyone to see.
And that’s a big part of the Democratic problem: They value appearances and virtue-signaling far more than reality. One of the most important lessons I learned after studying Nietzsche for three decades is that no human being can actually be a non-judgmental nihilist; yet Democrats brag about being non-judgmental, pretending when it’s convenient that there is no right or wrong.
Seeming Vs. Being
Sometimes the chasm between what Democrats seem to be versus what they actually are presents spectacles of ridiculousness: While delivering schoolmarmish moralizing lectures about the importance of diversity, inclusiveness, and non-judgmentalism, progressive Democrats will actually pause for a daily Orwellian Two Minutes of Trump Hate prescribed by CNN and MSNBC.
And they see no contradiction. They just blink.
To be clear, Trump invites legitimate criticism both as a person and President. He can be crude, even churlish. I don’t agree with all of his policies. There’s also a flood of baseless, conjured attacks that remain persistent among his critics. (Kids in cages; white supremacists are good people; etc.)
Whatever one can say about Trump—however bad a person might think Trump is—wrap your brain around this gigantic unavoidable fact: Democrats lost to him. Twice.
In 2024, their defeat was stark, with surprising defections across nearly every voter demographic, including groups they’ve long counted on for support. For the sake of argument, let’s grant the premise of Democrats. Let’s assume Trump is the worst person imaginable—terrible and dreadful by every metric.
The truth is that ordinary, productive Americans prefer Trump over the postmodern progressive Democratic Party. What does that say about the postmodern progressive Democratic Party?
You’d think such a broad rejection would spark concern, maybe even inspire fresh efforts to charm and persuade and attract fellow citizens. But Democrats appear uninterested in winning converts. They seem content to lecture, shame, and mock the millions who rejected them in 2016 and 2024, and who might do so again in 2028.
2020 stands out not because of wide embrace of the Democratic Party, but because of Covid-policies that made the 2020 Presidential election an outlier.
This stubbornness—what some might call recalcitrance—stems partly from a lack of self-awareness. Democrats struggle to imagine good people disliking them, assuming their cause is synonymous with justice.
Why else the sanctimonious tone? Why else assume dissenters are inherently bad? Why change when you’re convinced you’re right?
Costs of Progressivism
Yet, for many Americans who haven’t embraced the moral emptiness of postmodernism or the fascist goals of progressivism, the Democratic agenda seems incoherent, at best misguided, at worst cruel.
Step back from the 24-hour news cycle, and the contradictions become glaring. Progressives insist a man with a penis should have no say about abortion precisely because he doesn’t have a uterus—utterly ignoring a father’s towering interest in the life of his own child—while declaring that a man who has no uterus and “tucks” his penis into women’s clothing is actually a woman.
Huh?
The Democratic focus on sex and sexuality now permeates public schools, backed by unions that fund the party with dues. Having effectively given up on trying to teach children how to read, the push within many public schools is for bureaucrats, not parents, to guide children in their journeys of sexual exploration and discovery, pointing children whenever possible in the direction of transsexualism, the current cultural fad among progressives.
Is it pure coincidence that the rates at which young Americans claim to be “transgender” have spiked within the past decade? Or is it something else?
The stories of young people regretting trendy “transitions” are heart-wrenching, yet Democrats press on. Here in Colorado, Democrats in the state legislature are working to criminalize parents who “misname” their own children—making it a form of abuse and grounds for Child Protective Services to intervene if a parent says “he” rather than “she,” or vice versa.
This might be most sweeping and invasive restriction of free speech in American history. It is certainly an attempt to prioritize the ideological interests of progressives in government over the interests of families. Yet, Democrats continue to assume they stand on high moral ground. And they blink.
Progressives champion equality but undermine equal protection under the law at every turn. Their policies foster a kind of legal tribalism, dividing citizens by skin color, sex, sexuality, religion, and income, granting unequal protection based on group membership. Systemic racism exists today because it’s embedded within the policies progressives push, not the relics of history they decry.
Democrats claim to care about the poor, yet understand little about poverty. As any honest economist will tell you, the cause of poverty isn’t a mystery—it’s the starting point of the human story. Most people in the ancient world lived lives that were just as Thomas Hobbes described them: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The real question is: What solves the problem of poverty? The creation of wealth.
And, what conditions are most conducive to large numbers of people improving their lives by creating wealth? Conditions of freedom—limited government power, an effective national defense against foreign enemies, equal protection of the laws for the equal rights of individual citizens, private property, and morally legitimate criminal and civil justice systems.
Progressive Democrats, however, want to adopt elements of socialism, communism, and fascism that expand government power, restrict individual liberty, and snuff out the possibility of wealth creation. Progressive goals contradict and negate the very conditions that alleviate poverty.
Democrats continue to blink. And promote more of the same. And tell others they “care.”
Constitution: Irrelevant or Important?
This blindness points to a deep flaw. For over a century, progressives have dismissed the U.S. Constitution as outdated, irrelevant, racist, and immoral, aiming to discredit the Constitution and its limits on government power. At their core, progressive Democrats place deep religious faith in government as the tool to conquer human nature, engineer society, and perfect humanity.
This is what they mean by “progress”—a few in power commanding the many. Did you see how they gushed with progressive pride at the very moment Anthony Fauci took over domestic public policy in the United States? That’s the progressive model in action.
This is the moral logic of progressivism: Government is the source of all good. Limits on government power, therefore, are obstacles to the good government can do.
So progressives seek to expand government’s reach and power and control, unshackling it from constitutional restraints. Ironically, they’re now shocked to see a President wielding the very powers they’ve spent decades expanding, powers that stretch far beyond what the limits of the Constitution.
Then, in a twist, Democrats pivot, clutching the Constitution they’ve long dismissed, urging us to agree, suddenly, that the Constitution now matters.
It’s an embarrassing contradiction.
Know Thyself
For these reasons, many tens of millions of Americans won’t take Democrats seriously.
They don’t like Democrats. They won’t vote for them. They’ll back almost anyone who stands boldly, loudly, unwaveringly against Democrats.
Democrats remain clueless about this, largely because they insist being postmodern and progressive are the most obvious signs of intelligence. Their political opponents, they assume, must be unintelligent and therefore unworthy of attention from progressive Democrats.
If you doubt this, just ask a progressive Democrat how stupid their political opponents are. They’ll happily tell you. And they will do so without an ounce of self-understanding.
To know thyself, as the Delphic inscription urges, is to face hard truths. Until Democrats grapple with their own unpopularity—until they confront the disastrous results (including entire categories of growing social pathologies) that have come from progressive policies and postmodern ideas, and why ordinary Americans reject them—the path to future victories looks grim.
Dr. K., you've delivered a blistering and necessary critique of a Democratic Party that has traded reason and self-awareness for ideological dogma and performative virtue.
As you so aptly point out, the growing public rejection of progressivism isn’t ignorance—it’s clarity.
Ordinary Americans are catching on to the contradictions—from gender absurdities to authoritarian policies—and they’re rapidly heading for the exits.
I fully agree that until Democrats confront the consequences of their ideas, they’ll keep losing—and keep blinking in confusion.
There are so many good observations/insights in this article, Tom! I have my own term for what has been happening. I call it a "Flight From Reason."
What is termed “The Enlightenment,” was triggered by Aquinas’s awakening of Europe to the Reason of Aristotle. This “stirring” in the philosophical pot of the value of Reason then led to staggering improvements in human well-being, brought about through the unleashing of the scientific and industrial revolutions. This period of history has become characterized by use of the phrase, “the age of Reason.”
I would argue that one could just as easily, upon properly defining one’s terms, call it “the age of humanity.” As an example, in addition to the citing of “rights” in the Magna Carta, followed by political recognition that they should apply to all individuals, the near-abolishment of slavery occurred - in spite of it being a characteristic of the human species throughout the entirety of human history! It is but one sign in the rise of humanities “humanity,” as its “flight of Reason” gained altitude and velocity.
I choose to further metaphorically characterize this period of history, which represents an unprecedented acceleration of mankind’s on-going journey from the mud to the stars, as a soaring flight aboard "Reason Airlines." As this flight continued to gain momentum, the founding of America represented an unprecedented milestone. Most Americans, who had become politically free to board it, have enjoyed a flight (life!) of well-being and humanity, unprecedented in history – past or present!
Of course, one could choose to ignore the “inhumanity” that has continued to unfold as well, though it might be argued that such inhumanity is the result of unequal application of the Enlightenment’s ideals – i.e., the Reason and reasoned moral/political values revealed during reason’s accelerating flight. As most are aware, not all Americans remained free to board this flight. However, in terms of overall human well-being, the results of humanity’s breathtaking journey aboard Reason Airlines speak (scream!) loudly for themselves! To argue to the contrary is laughably/ominously absurd.
Tragically, we have now begun to board, what I term, “a flight from reason.” Self-evident logical contradictions are routinely proffered, seriously considered, and ceremoniously instituted! One contemporary example of these growing logical contradictions can easily be demonstrated by the political prescriptions to deal with lingering racial discrimination.
Begun during the sixties, passengers traveling aboard Reason Airlines, began to receive a new “in-flight service.” It went by the acronyms of EO/AA (Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action). This “service” offered (required!) the practice of the virtue of discrimination, in order to end the evil of discrimination! The legally enforced sanctions were based on a belief that one’s intentions take precedence over the inescapable facts that those intentions logically embody.
Of course, logical affronts to Reason had previously been occurring with regularity, but largely confined to what are called the “soft” sciences. In economics, for example, the idea that consumption drives production had begun to permeate their “science.” Even more telling, in the study of psychology, free will was giving way to the idea of “determinism.” Determinists ignoring the fact that if their theory was correct, their conclusions about it were not arrived at through “free will,” but were determined! This inescapable self-refuting illogic, being either ignored or vociferously proclaimed, demonstrate yet more evidence of what is afoot!
Of political importance, however, is the fact that illogic has increasingly emerged in the cannons of law. Affronts to reason that threaten routine societal “rationality,” are now manifesting politically. Left unchallenged and gaining momentum in economics for example, has led to the widespread belief that one can consume their way to prosperity, having previously justified the creation of banking/financial institutions to, among other things, “stimulate” consumption! Of more-recent demonstrations, consider where “DEI/ESG” will logically take us when it comes to the concepts of “merit” and “value” as well as freedom itself!
This leads me to the latest affront to Reason, and serves as the impetus for my penning this article. It goes by the popular euphemism of “self-identification.” It represents what is perhaps the most blatant passing milepost aboard this flight from Reason. Why? Reason itself offers the reasoning and explanation as to why this is the case.
As a child begins to experience budding emotions, depending on his/her environment and interpretation of it, he/she may begin to experience apprehension and fears over aspects of it. If this fear is not understood and properly dealt with, he/she will begin to consciously alter their behavior to avoid such fear(s).
Unresolved, should this fear reach a level where the individual begins to consciously take steps to alter their actual values, increasingly going to more and more tragic lengths to avoid such fear(s), the age of reason had previously taught that this represents the behavior of a neurotic.
Should this neurosis continue to fester whereby the individual reaches the point that they begin to fashion an alternative “reality” – one with which they profess to “identify,” and with which they begin to act in accordance, the age of reason had taught that they have become psychotic. This condition of psychosis, defined by reason, being a potentially destructive mental illness.
As our current flight from reason continues to gather speed and altitude, this latest example indicates our flight has now reached momentum where the psychotic feels it is appropriate to make demands of those not supportive of their affliction. They demand that others join with them in altering their reality as well, to one comporting with the psychotic’s fantasies/delusions.
This concept of “self-identification,” taking precedence over reality, is simply a denial of reality. It produces the sad spectacle that any such denial of reality produces. A human being suffering potentially unimaginable psychological torment and misery, wherein they have reached a point whereby they must demand that the rest of us affirm/confirm their denial! Demands “proudly” proclaimed because of what has become an accepted fracture in the philosophical “wing” of our previously-soaring aircraft of Reason. A fracture now augmenting not only their psychological damage – and instances of purposeful self-mutilation, but now having reached the point of potential socially-destructive political damage imposed on the rest of us!
Make no mistake, this is not a political issue! It is an epistemological one. It is nothing less than a disregard for Aristotle’s discovery of Reason and his subsequent laws of logic – specifically his law of identity. The axiom that a thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time or in the same respect. What Aquinas was to remind and reacquaint the world, and what Ayn Rand succinctly stated as “A is A!”
Though politics has begun to impose on all of us the illogical, if one truly wishes to understand and help these individuals, and not simply ignore their sad pathology, then do so without condemnation. Just don’t join them in their fantasies. It only adds to their affliction, while you wait in line to purchase your ticket to board this doomed “return” flight. A return flight that inevitably leads to the inhumanity so characterized by most of recorded history!
A return flight that I fervently hope will soon become grounded! Grounded by a renewal of the soaring flight of Reason.
Dave