There’s an old Groucho Marx joke that runs something like “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?” But what if it’s not a joke? What if many people are, indeed, prone to believe what they are told rather than what they see? In Orwell’s 1984 in the super-nation of Oceania, there is a Ministry of Love that tortures and murders people, and the government creates slogans like “Freedom is Slavery” and “Two and Two Make Five.” In one scene, an inner party member (one of the ruling elite) is haranguing a crowd concerning the ongoing war with another super-nation, Eurasia, assuring them that Eurasia has always been the enemy. In mid-speech he learns that alliances have shifted and Eurasia is now Oceania’s ally against Eastasia. Without missing a beat, he tells the crowd that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia — and they buy it. In yet another scene the main character, Winston, has been horribly tortured by the secret police, and O'Brien, the inner party man supervising the torture, holds up four fingers and tells Winston he’s holding up five — and Winston actually sees five fingers.

In America today, official figures assure us that unemployment and inflation are low, and that we are “recovering” from a temporary “recession.” Yet, all around us, companies are going out of business, people are losing their jobs, and, over everything, is the specter of exploding debt. And many, many people accept the government’s lies as truth.

We are assured by “liberal” politicians that they simply adore poor people (perhaps so, since they continually create more of them) and wish to redistribute income. Everyone seems oblivious of the fact that most liberal politicians, entertainers, and media types are multi-millionaires. People like Michael Moore, Al Gore, and Diane Feinstein own several huge mansions each, and they and Hussein Obama live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Their followers never ask why these compassionate liberals never redistribute their own wealth. And, rich as they are, their main supporters are richer still, billionaires like former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who supports such leftist causes as disarming the peasants. Billionaire George Soros supports gun confiscation, abortion, and every far-left cause imaginable, and has created a “Democracy Alliance” of billionaire leftists donors. It is to democracy what his “Open Society” is to transparency in government. Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg have joined 57 other leftist billionaires in a “Giving Pledge” to leave their money to “progressive” causes. All of this is right out in the open, reported even by the lying mainstream media, yet rank and file liberals believe the opposite of what they see.

But the leftists truly have been redistributing income — from the working middle class (or what little remains of it) to the super-rich. TARP and all the other “bailouts” to insurance companies, banks, and other corporations deemed “too big to fail” began under George (Bush) II and have continued under “liberal” Hussein Obama. Both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve (a consortium of private banks joined in unholy matrimony with the government) have given loans and outright grants totaling over $16 trillion to huge companies owned by billionaires. Insurance giant AIG, J.P. Morgan Chase, and various “green” companies have received billions. The money given to quasi-governmental entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has increased to $200 billion each. All of this directly or indirectly protects the billionaires from the disaster resulting from their own risky investments. All of this has been reported even by the media, but Democrat voters continue to believe, not what is right before their eyes, but what they are told.

The Muslim genocide against the Christian Armenians in Turkey is no secret, nor are the Muslim wars of conquest during the Middle Ages. For decades, even the controlled media have reported acts of Islamic terrorism — hijackings, bombings, torture, and beheadings. That Muslims oppress their women is no secret; even the “honor” killings have been reported. Yet most leftists continue to believe that Islam is the “religion of peace,” and that it is “racist” to resent their crimes against one another and against the rest of us. They believe this because they are told to believe this.

It is fair to ask why, aside from the fact that most leftists are egotistical and highly emotional, essentially children who never grew up. What follows is anecdotal, but true nonetheless. Most leftists tend to be symbol-oriented people, especially word oriented. And to them, outward appearances are everything and they never try to look beneath the surface — if Hillary wears expensive clothes, says what they want to hear, and tries to mimic a human smile (she always overdoes it, and she can’t keep her eyes from bulging) they believe her to be a wonderful person, no matter what crimes she has committed.

Women are generally more verbal than men, more word oriented — and women, in general, tend to be more liberal. Actors read words (usually fiction) for a living, and they tend to be leftists. Media talking heads deal in words, not deeds, as do most writers. University liberal arts teachers, especially English teachers, are also word oriented, as are lawyers. Theoretical physicists and mathematicians deal in mathematical symbols and abstract ideas. All these groups (of course there are exceptions) tend to be left of center.

By contrast, engineers, small businessmen (especially farmers and ranchers), and skilled craftsmen and manual laborers deal in solid, concrete things, not in words or abstractions, and these groups tend to be more conservative, although workers are sometimes swayed by the unions.

You’ve got to hand it to the left; they are masters of rhetoric. They say pretty things, and those who deal in words tend to believe them, even if the truth is the opposite and is right in front of them. They see what they are told to see, and think what they are told to think — and consider themselves to be intellectual freethinkers.