There is a little known, and less understood, mental affliction, which I will call transfixion. It is to the mind what setting is to concrete.  When freshly mixed with water, concrete is malleable.  Once it sets, however, it hardens irreversibly and can no longer be reshaped, or corrected, unless it is cut or broken.  The transfixed mind is like that. 

Before you go leafing through your DSM (psychiatry’s diagnostic manual), don’t bother; transfixion is not there.  It is, however, very real.  One can observe it when attempting to reason with any committed leftist.  The condition is common and has been on display for months in some videotaped Q-and-A sessions with people such as Ben Shapiro at a few college events. 

Essentially, the symptoms of mental transfixion include complete immunity to reason and an absolute refusal to acknowledge facts, no matter how obvious, no matter how clearly explained.  The transfixed mind begins with its desired conclusion, adds a strong dose of violent emotion mixed with loudly chanted slogans, and then works toward that irrational conclusion with the tenacity of a bulldog.

Examples of this disease include the persistence of claims by the left that the American economy is doing great, despite the financial hardships being suffered by low-income working-class households.  It includes the denial that violent crime in cities governed by Democrats far exceeds that of other cities.  Leftists are now even denying that Hamas committed any atrocities on October 7, claiming that the horrific films recorded by the terrorists themselves are forgeries produced by artificial intelligence technology.  Perhaps most foolishly, they deny that Islamists publicly murder homosexuals in Gaza and in Islamic-dominated countries — in none of which can they identify even one openly gay couple.  It is foolish, because some homosexual Americans might venture into the snake pit with their “pride” paraphernalia and never emerge alive.  Their colleagues will still deny what happened to them. 

Should leftists be debated?  Yes, in cases where transfixion has not yet occurred.  In other cases, no.  Discussing any issue with the transfixed leftist is like listening to a used car salesman telling you that the rust heap he is pushing you to buy is a gleaming new luxury car — as its wheels fall off.  He will never, for any reason, be dissuaded from his sales pitch. 

Strangely, there is a segment of the population that listens sympathetically to these self-deluded leftist zombies.  Others do so because they are hopeful that through systematic truth-telling, they can show the transfixed leftist the error of his ways.  In nearly every case, the well-meaning evangelizer comes away frustrated and mystified.

The consequence of transfixion is not limited to the afflicted person; it corrupts institutions.  Leftists now permeate key positions in the body politic, the academy, the entertainment industry, the institutions of science and medicine — even the military forces.  Transfixed leftists have even attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to pervert mathematics to conform to their ideology.  They claim that math is racist! 

Can an entire nation become transfixed into evil?  It happened to some in the 1940s, and the nations to which it happened could not be molded anew through persuasion or civility.  They had to be violently broken, shattered, and would not have survived at all were it not for the postwar mercy of their victorious enemies. 

America has no merciful enemies.  If only a war will save us, we will have to fight it from within.  The aftermath will be unpredictable, but it can hardly be worse than the end toward which we are hurtling. 

We have suffered evils while they were sufferable, but soon, they will become unendurable.  There will be no neutral ground, and those who are lukewarm will be spewed from God’s mouth.

Image: ElisaRiva via Pixabay, Pixabay License.