I have a particularly stubborn Labrador mix who is resistant to the usual forms of canine training. While he is intelligent and fully capable of understanding commands and incentives, he is hyper and flighty, features that work against his training. I’ve been told this is a common trait with Lab puppies, and that it will probably take two or three years for him to fully calm down.

Nonetheless, the incentives for training a dog remain the same. It is a carrot-and-stick approach, wherein desired behavior is rewarded, and undesired behavior is punished. Repetition, of course, is key. Words and gestures are associated with the proper situations, like the ringing bell of Pavlov’s experiment. This is what is called Classical Conditioning, and it has been applied to animals since the dawn of domestication.

What is less commonly understood is how it is applied to fully-grown, adult humans. In essence, most of the Left, and many on the Right, are effectively domesticated humans, with all the horror that thought should entail.

This post by Col. Bunny at Bastion of Liberty contains a hint of the problem:

“I am 68. My Mother is 92. My Father lived til 93. I am very thankful that they were able to live out their lives without fear of poverty. I will not be able to. Though I have been working since seventh grade, I missed out on the pensions. Laid off for the last time at 62, I now look at the end of my life with great fear. The globalization of the economy sent my work to India. I don’t begrudge them a growing middle class but I am no longer in one here. Their gains are my loss and I am very afraid. I am not a Trump supporter but I know the depths of anxiety he is appealing to.“

In short, she doesn’t begrudge them her own job.

This woman is struggling to be reasonable and to appreciate the needs of the foreigners who have replaced her. Of all the presidential candidates out there, Trump is the only one who has articulated a desire to protect people like her from foreign competition. Yet, she cannot bring herself to support him.

The magnitude of this cannot be overstated. When you lose your job due to circumstances beyond your control, the usual response is anger, even a sense of injustice. The generations before you got their pensions and retirements. You got nothing. You were replaced with foreigners. You have slipped from the middle class and into poverty. By any stretch of reason, this should inspire outright rage.

Instead, our intrepid old lady resigns herself to despair. She passively accepts the loss of her livelihood. Why would she do that?

Classical conditioning. Turn on the news, or go to any major news outlet, and you will see racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and a thousand other discriminatory ills lobbed around like hot potatoes. Go on Facebook, right now, and see how many people are posting links about supposed sexism, or racism, or some other such thing. It’s everywhere, like one giant rolled-up newspaper, looking for some poor sap to smack.

Moral outrage is a stick employed by society to condition people into doing exactly what this old lady has done: give up.