Ideologues are often willfully stupid, on both the right and the left. It serves them. Their selective blindness allows them to avoid thinking seriously about the world, and especially the state of their own souls.

Most of their lives are spent in the expedient serving and comfort of themselves. The good they do, the good things they may think, the public service that they may provide for others is generally inner directed. It is designed to make themselves feel good about themselves, and superior and apart from the masses, whom in their condescension they secretly despise.

Even their negative and disapproving emotions about others are self-serving, designed to elevate their views of themselves and their imagined aloofness and superiority. They are incapable of genuine repentance, because they blind themselves to their sins, and wash them away in their disgust with others whom they imagine are so much worse.