The Soft Left's Surge of Hysteria Is Destroying Facebook

As always, the ELFs—Educated Liberal Females—Are Shouting the Loudest

Until a month or so ago, Facebook was my refuge from the rough and tumble of X. I would learn about babies being born and baptized, children’s friends getting married, older friends shuffling off this mortal coil, and, yes, alas, friends’ meals about to be eaten.

I would get my daily dose of Far Side cartoons and keep connected to my past on the “Friends of Newark” page. Of course, too, I would post my Wordle scores as would others in an amiable, unspoken competition.

As to politics, I would post the occasional article of my own, but none from other authors, and never a meme. For years, Facebook shadow-banned me so most of my friends on Facebook never even saw what I was posting.

All was relatively peaceful until President Donald Trump was inaugurated and then Facebook Blew Up! Immediately. So hostile was the territory I had to steel myself to venture in.

On February 6, I felt compelled to post a simple message against a color background: “I don’t unfriend real friends for their contrary politics, but please, ease up on the hysteria.”

This post got 355 “likes,” which is about as many as I’ve ever gotten. I was not the only one who noticed. “Holy cow,” said one MAGA woman, “it’s unbelievable.” Said another, “It’s cray, cray!” Said a third, “I had a woman who I have known for 45 years unfriend me because I voted for our president. I just have to save this and share love and let live. Everyone just needs to calm the heck down.”

One fellow on the soft left asked the not unreasonable question, “Please describe what you've observed that you believe qualifies as hysteria”

So I spent one hour on Friday morning, February 21, scrolling through my Facebook feed, and here is what I concluded. Educated liberal females (ELFs) do most of the posting. There are fewer than ten of them on my feed, all of whom I know personally and most of whom I like.

Until last month, I never thought of them as political, but then, wow, something happened. Some among them now post hourly or more. They clutter up the feed with exactly the kind of falsehoods, half-truths, and exaggerations that give social media a bad name.

And a little bit of hate as well. “On Valentine's Day,,” one ELF posted, “when most human beings show their love and affection for one another, this heartless Welfare Queen lets his inhumanity shine for the world to see. What a detestable heap of filth he is.”

“A detestable heap of filth?” Ouch! Yes, I think that qualifies as hysteria.

This is followed by a meme allegedly posted by the heartless welfare queen in question, Elon Musk. It reads, "Here's the hard truth: this country's billionaires are tired of subsidizing everyone else's schools, parks, health care, even food and entertainment. You want nature? Buy some land. Health care? Befriend a doctor. Entertainment? Roll around in the mud with your fellow pigs.”

I posted in return, “When it sounds too good to be true, it usually is: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-billionaires-tired/ Musk said no such thing.” I cited Snopes here because liberals actually believe it to be a genuine authentication service, not a part of the left’s fraudulent fact-checking machinery. But this meme was too embarrassing for even Snopes to let pass.

ELFs who go public in these debates, especially those new to the game, risk embarrassment. “Unexpectedly, we found that women are less informed than men, and we don’t have a good explanation why. And these were very robust results,” said MIT Sloan economics professor Charles Angelucci of a recent political knowledge survey. The survey also concluded, “Older, wealthier white males are more likely to be aware of news stories than any other demographic.” This only makes sense. The result is that in every such survey I have seen men outscore women, conservatives outscore liberals (PEW), and moderates score worst of all.

This knowledge gap leads to posts like the following from a very lovely woman: “I read this in a book the other day, and wrote it down, ‘The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most essential command.’” The book is kind of famous, George Orwell’s 1984. I used this same quote a few days back when writing about the railroading of Greg and Travis McMichael.

In the way of explanation, this woman added, “Today it was his treatment of Zelensky that made me post it, but there’s something every day… biggest inauguration ever. Period. Jan 6 was a quiet protest. Every. Day. Something to make you say that’s not what I saw.” Quiet protest? Who said that?

Adding non-sequitur to non-sequitur, the woman’s ELF friend confirmed my friend’s Orwellian suspicions: “This is true. Unfortunately, I think the majority of the people who are in favor of vouchers are the same people that think tariffs will somehow work in their favor. They are plagued with an awful combination of ignorance and magical thinking.” We know vouchers work. We know that tariffs can work, and the threat of tariffs has had proven success. Magical thinking? Where is the Orwell here?

My friend’s phrase “not what I saw” is telling. The major media shield ELFs from seeing many inconvenient realities, none more inconvenient than the frightening cognitive decline in Joe Biden. We all saw it, couldn’t miss it.

For four years Democrats had to pretend not to see. They suppressed all opposition and nominated Biden for president. Even after he imploded on stage in the June debate Democrats tried to pretend his problem was “age.” Then, in the name of “saving democracy,” Democrat leaders dethroned Biden in a soft coup. Had they not done so, America’s ELFs would have voted for him in November and shamed those friends who chose to see the obvious.

I could go on forever, but the outrage du jour this particular day stemmed from a comic bit of hyperbole Trump posted on Truth Social. Trolling New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, he wrote, “Congestion Pricing is Dead. Manhattan, all of New York, is Saved. Long live the king.”

Boy, did that light the ELFs up! “Trump literally referred to himself today as “the king.” Literally,” said one. “Crap. Is America going to have to overthrow the monarchy all over again?”

Said another, “The chaos, the flurry of insanity, the unhinged ‘leadership’—when will accountability for their actions come into play? And for you who support the current state of affairs, nothing you can say to me will convince that these actions are for the good of our country. He is not King.” As to the “nothing you can say,” true dat! Conversation is useless with people who don’t want to see or hear.

A third ELF posted a multi-level bit of delusion on the same theme. It began with a video from a town hall meeting allegedly in a red Georgia district. A woman at the meeting stands and says, “So you can imagine my shock and pure horror when I woke up to discover that our president had given himself unprecedented executive powers and then within a few days named himself king.”

When asked what her question was, the ELF answered, “What are you going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House?” Several of the women in the audience applauded.

“[I] like the video,” asked a friend of the ELF, “but I wonder how many of them voted for him.”

My ELF friend answered cluelessly, “I’m sure most of them.”

Knowing MAGA women, I suspect the correct answer is zero. Those applauding were surely ELFS imported for the occasion. I have seen the power of organized ELFery up close. In August 2023, a coven of ELFs in the very red upstate NY county where I spend my summer conspired to have the local library “disinvite” me from a speaking engagement. The subject was to be my book, Untenable.

When I asked one of the organizers why they chose to ban me from speaking about a memoir they had admittedly not read, she told me she and her fellow ELFs objected to a previous article I had written. The article’s title—”Why 'Educated' Liberal Women Are the Real Threat to Our Republic.” In soccer, they call her admission an “own goal.”

The scary thing is that Trump has been president for just one extraordinarily productive month, but for the ELFs it was not too early to sound the alarm. As one reminds us, “Adolph H. dismantled a democracy in 53 days.”

Yes, of course, the final essential command in ELF logic 101, reductio ad Hitlerium.