Why are so many college girls identifying as anything but women? Why was everyone embarrassed by Donald Trump’s mean tweets? Why did the actors in the Harry Potter movies all shun author JK Rowling when she came out against men in the women’s bathroom?

It’s because we humans are all social animals and we go with the herd. Or at least we pretend we do. I did the same at a luncheon with relatives and acquaintances back in the day. Everyone said they were for Nikki Haley. I wasn’t, but I didn’t say anything.

About those women at the University of Michigan: half of them identified as LGBTQ.

Of the respondents who identify as women, 26.3 percent identify as bisexual, 6.4 percent identify as lesbian, 4.7 percent identify as queer, 2.8 percent identify as asexual, 2.4 percent identify as pansexual, and 1.5 percent identify as “other.”

Of course they do. And they have to be carefully taught. How many years of classes does it take to learn the difference between bisexual, lesbian, queer, asexual, and pansexual without making someone feel “unsafe?”

But whatabout the Science on this? Why do people go with the herd so much?

Here’s how Amazon puts it on the page for “Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification” by Timur Kuran.

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures.

If you are a student at a woke university, what’s a girl to do? You go along until the fashions change. There’s even a name for the moment of change: “preference cascade.”

Jeffrey A. Tucker writes about it in respect of Donald J. Trump. He was a Mean Tweeter, a liar, a convicted felon. Until he wasn’t. And now the great and the good are traveling the Road to Canossa at Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of the new pope.

Still, it’s shocking to see pretty blonde girls on TikTok disporting themselves in red MAGA hats and red MAGA T-shirts all of a sudden. I don’t recall there ever being a preference cascade for Ronald Reagan. He was always an “amiable dunce” to the great and the good.

Of course, we know why things have changed. Ronald Reagan lived in the Age of Mass Media when there was Only One True Narrative. Today we live in the Age of Independent Media, and that gives other voices a chance to trend on X/Twitter and flip the One True Narrative.

But let’s be honest. Plenty of people prefer the comfort of approved beliefs. There’s a liberal church up the street from me that advertises “an inclusive, socially active, religious community of faith” on its portal. And you’ll be relieved to know that there is a “Safe Place” sticker alongside the BLM poster in the window. Today, just in time for Christmas, it has a big poster urging us to

REJOICE IN THE BIRTH OF
A BROWN-SKINNED
MIDDLE EASTERN
UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT

I wouldn’t want to call this “virtue-signaling” but you can order your sign at Amazon. But it is certainly echoing the ruling-class Narrative on the helplessness and oppression experienced by migrants. Google AI says that the inventor of the sign is probably an activist but is “not widely known.”

Now we all know that our liberal friends are besides themselves right now, buried in the middle of what Mark Halperin told Tucker Carlson would be “the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.” But it is a misdiagnosis to say that our liberal friends are suffering a mental health crisis. What they are experiencing is much worse than that. It is the opposite of “the thrill of victory.” It is “the agony of defeat.”

Now, it is my belief that men and women are different. When Conan wins a war he chortles about driving his enemies before him and hearing the lamentation of their women. And if he loses, he’ll suck it in and live to fight another day.

But what are those liberal ladies at their “inclusive, socially active, religious community of faith” to do? I mean, we just elected a one-time McDonald’s fry cook that promised to send all those brown-skinned Middle Eastern undocumented immigrants right back where they came from.

The answer is to go with the Science. The Science suggests that there must be a lot of liberal women that don’t really believe the faith, that are just going along because that’s the thing to do. They are living a preference falsification, “misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures,” as the experts tell us.

It is up to us, miserable MAGA extremists armed with assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to help our liberal women friends to brave the terrors of the “preference cascade” and reject the false consciousness of liberal babble.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: AI