Imagine a fairly busy four-way intersection in a suburb of Anytown, USA. 

At one corner of that intersection sits a man in a chair, plucked from a remote island in the South Pacific by some unknown force and placed there.  This man has never seen a car or a streetlight before, nor does he know anything about laws and customs that drivers have become accustomed to obey intuitively.  Imagine, however, that he is instructed, in his own language, to simply sit there and observe how these strange foreigners and conveyances move about.

Within an hour or two, I'd lay a strong wager that the man could explain in a fundamental way how this system works, despite the fact that it's entirely foreign to him.  He could likely describe, in his own language and with relative accuracy, which light means go, which means slow down or stop, how the turn lanes figure into the design, what turn signals signify, perhaps the purpose of honking and certain hand gestures, etc. 

There is a reason that he can very likely accomplish this feat with relative ease: because recognizing patterns is the most fundamental skill of humankind. 

This is no accident.  It is our most fundamental skill because it has been honed by evolutionary necessity.  Anticipating weather changes, observing agricultural trends, studying the migration of animal herds, discerning predators' activities so that we do not become prey, and so on.  Recognition of these patterns has been critical to our species.

Of course, merely recognizing a particular pattern is of no usefulness if expectations and behavior are not amended as a result of its recognition.  Civil societies have been cultivated primarily due to sensible action in response to such observations.  Herein lies the foundation of the agricultural, commercial, and industrial practices that provide for the world, the basis for religion and philosophy that nurtures men's souls, the genesis of the laws of science, and the reason for the refinement of all of the above. 

In short, it is our ability to recognize patterns and amend our behavior and expectations that fosters progress today, just as it was a hundred, a thousand, and many thousands of years ago. 

Is it not, therefore, the most damning of facts that the "progressive" left appears to find no usefulness in logically appraising and acting upon the patterns we routinely observe?  Rather, they buck every natural compulsion by not only ignoring patterns, but by acting in direct defiance of logic and survival instincts that we humans have inherited. 

How else can one describe a group who could read a report that shows that 450 out of 452 (or 99.6% of) suicide terror attacks in 2015 were perpetrated by Muslims and carried out in the name of Allah, only to insist that Muslims are not uniquely linked to global terrorism? 

Or consider this.  With the exception of the shooting of Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. in 2011, "every public shooting since at least since 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns."  And still, the zealots on the left continue to offer the same, tired bromides – that we must create more, not fewer, gun-free zones to stop mass shootings.

Every adult human being from the Neolithic to now should have the perceptive faculties to innately recognize the meaning of these observations, and extrapolate the patterns these facts suggest.  Every sensible human being should then easily be able to discern useful responses to these patterns.  And suffice it to say, "Muslims shouldn't be subject to added scrutiny as potential terror threats" and "we need more gun-free zones in America" are the farthest thing from those useful responses.  Yet both of those statements embody bulwark positions for the American left.

Sensible Americans can see that the national debt has nearly doubled in past seven years, reaching an unfathomable $18.8 trillion (and it's still rising at ludicrous speed).  And they observe, quite reasonably, that it took Obama seven years to accumulate nearly the amount of debt that the previous 43 presidents had accrued over a 220-year period.  This administration has taken the federal government's debt to 600% of its total revenue, meaning that its balance sheet is unhealthy at best and hopelessly insolvent at worst.

Should I even go on beyond these points?  Wouldn't any sane person immediately recognize the pattern of irresponsible leadership suggested by these facts alone?

Well, the pattern becomes even clearer when we consider what we've gotten for all of this "investment" and "leadership."

We discovered that we couldn't keep our health care plans or our doctors if we liked them, despite our president's promises.  We also found that we're paying more for health care now than ever before, and still others are finding that the subsidized assistance through the health care exchanges isn't all it was cracked up to be in the Democrats' sales pitches for Obamacare. 

We've noticed all the violence and racial animus created by the grievance peddlers in the Obama administration who stoked the fires of Ferguson and Baltimore, all the while making villains of our nation's law enforcement officers.   

We've seen an administration that provided deadly weapons to Mexican drug cartels while seeking to circumvent the Bill of Rights by denying such weapons to law-abiding Americans interested only in protecting their homes, their families, and their God-given right to defend their liberty.

We've watched our president ignore federal law by allowing criminal lawbreakers to enter our country, effectively depressing wages for American laborers while the invaders reap benefits (like health care, education, welfare, etc.) that drown taxpayers in liability.

Food stamp rolls have swollen, the labor participation rate has dropped to the lowest level since the Carter years, middle-class wages have seen no signs of improvement...

Look, this litany of failures could go on and on – Cash for Clunkers, the IRS targeting scandal, the Benghazi lies, NSA snooping, the VA scandal, etc. 

But in the end, we Americans have, in spite of the incredible debt we've taken on these past seven years, watched as this nation became a place where less than 30% of its citizens believe that the country is even on the right path.  And Americans are certainly not any happier.

And we recognize, beyond all shadows of doubt, that none of this is George W. Bush's fault.  

So if you happen to be a Democrat who is flummoxed at how Americans are increasingly rejecting Hillary and why the Democrat status quo was so firmly rebuked in 2014, you shouldn't be.  And there is absolutely no reason that it should have to be spelled out for you.

All you have to do is pull up a chair, open your eyes, and choose not to ignore what you see. 

William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.