The Lies They Tell Themselves

Why the True Cons hate Kamala Harris.

Pictured: A radical, liberal, socialist. 🙄 (Chris duMond/Getty Images)

1. The Radical Left?

Over the weekend there was an internet beef about the extent to which Kamala Harris is a radical leftist who represents a danger to America or something.

I’ll spare you the details and sum it up with a tweet that’s representative of the fight:

Who is Steve Gordon? He’s just a random rich-guy True Conservative. The kind of dude who venerates Reagan and hates Trump. There are dozens—maybe even scores—of Steve Gordons out there and one thing they all have in common is an exhibitionist’s compulsion to tell everyone how terrible they believe Democrats are. Which is what this beef was ultimately about: Guys who hate Trump making a show about how they also hate Kamala Harris, too, because she is a radical leftist.

And fair enough: I’m sure Kamala Harris’s policy record encompasses some things True Conservatives dislike.

But there’s something else going on here, too.

You’ll note that the Steve Gordons of the world aren’t saying, Yeah, I like some of Harris’s policies and I dislike others and on balance, I think she’ll be a suboptimal president for reasons X, Y, and Z.

Instead the claim is “Komrade Kamala is a crazy socialist and the end is nigh!” This caricature is so far from reality that I’ve been trying to figure out the psychology behind it.