Dennis Prager puts it most succinctly: conservatives think progressives are wrong; progs think conservatives are evil.
And for all the caterwauling about the decreasing civility and yawning tribalism in American society, and the straining to be even-handed about it, I believe it to be a self-obvious fact the problem tracks that fairly closely; Red America looks at Blue America in bemused confusion, like an older, more-responsible brother shaking his head at the tacky neck tattoo his idiot sister brought back from art school; Blue America genuinely hates Red America.
Hate. The H bomb. H A Double Hatepicks.
For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.
For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.
How did the American left—conceived to bring more compassion and justice to the world—become so given to hate? It began in the 1960s, when America finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings. That acceptance changed America forever. It imposed a new moral imperative: America would have to show itself redeemed of these immoralities in order to stand as a legitimate democracy.
The whole thing is worth a read.
Of course, the old biblical parallel says as you sew, you shall reap. As the Democrats discovered (but, I suspect, didn’t learn) in 2016, if your entire “value proposition” is identity politics, eventually your opponents will respond as an identity group.
And if all you’re putting out is hatred…?
I would take Steele’s analysis in a different direction. The Left saw slavery and segregation as a moral failing, then transferred that critique to EVERY imperfection. Failure to pay secretaries the same as sewer workers – pay equity – was a Great Moral Failing. Failure to treat immigrants the same as citizens is a Great Moral Failing. Failure to let cross-dressers use women’s restrooms is a Great Moral Failing.
Correcting a Great Moral Failing is a magnificent End which justifies any Mean. Evil must be stamped out. Wickedness purged. Conservatives driven from their jobs and homes, businesses destroyed, Republicans beaten (Ryan) and shot (Scalise), all perfectly reasonable efforts to drive out sinners so we can achieve Paradise on Earth.
It began in the 1960s, when America finally completed the defeat of the Democrats and their, still cherished, policies of slavery, racism, and Jim Crow. The Democrats have been consumed by hatred ever since, which is what made them such easy pickings for the communists that have so completely assimilated their party.
I keep saying that they are crazy. Batshit crazy. Their powers of reason are slaves to their hatred, they cannot understand that the rule of law is necessary to thwart their ambitions.
In this comment Emery likens McConnell’s entirely above board decision not to give Garland a hearing with the Dems accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault of multiple women: http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/?p=68031#comment-181705. That is insane. That comparison is not produced by a mind using reason.
And that kind of specious reasoning — the hate is a justifiable and necessary response to your politics being thwarted — is the Dems 24/7 these days, and it is coming from politicians and policy drivers on the Left, not anonymous blog commenters.
The article is a fine example documenting where we are now, but to what end? Using an article by Shelby Steele may be a poor vehicle for what follows. I don’t recall ever being disappointed after reading anything by him. He did, however, write in NR; and for those other authors there, this rant from Julie Kelly:
NeverTrump is as culpable as the Left for the current hellscape that is US politics. They side with the Left on every smear against Trump, his family, his administration and his voters. They bolster the corrupt Trump-Russia probe and cheer FBI raids of private property. 1/
NeverTrumpers used Stormy as a cudgel against evangelicals, legitimatized her vile attorney. They stood silent while Scott Pruitt and his family were viciously attacked then joined the Left in calling for his resignation. They ridicule Trump voters with every name in the book. 2/
NeverTrump mocks SCOTUS with their childish “But Gorsuch” taunt. They smear GOP reps like Nunes, DeSantis. They established the “credible accusation” clause during Roy Moore campaign and helped put a D in the Senate. NeverTrump wants Democrats to take control of Congress 3/
Even now, they hedge on the Kavanaugh allegations, ridiculously claiming that “if true it’s disqualifying.” Some have rolled out their tales of woe to show solidarity with the Left. A few have suggested Kavanaugh should lose his CURRENT job if this is at all true. 4/
NeverTrump is worse than the Left. At least we know what to expect from the lunatic Left. NeverTrump are keyboard warriors but capitulate to the bullies on the Left each chance they get. They are as destructive – if nor more so – than 1,000 Dianne Feinsteins or Adam Schiffs.
Note, this is a rant. A fine one. I don’t see any “Germans at Pearl Harbor” excesses, but YMMV. Also, I’ve seen comments by various Never Trumpers (Erick Erickson comes to mind) who are starting to “get it”. I guess we’ll see.
Or, more nicely, from David Limbaugh:
The left is playing for keeps. When will people get this through their heads?
I enjoy reading and listening to Shelby Steele, but one of his big hits, “White Guilt,” never persuaded me. A better title for the book would have been “Elite Guilt,” and subtitled “Why America’s Ivy League Leadership made Common-cause with the Welfare class to attack the Middle class.”
Our National Socialists have become nihilists. They didn’t start out that way. One hundred years ago a socialist could truly have believed that he was “on the right side of history.” The job of an American socialist then was persuading the public that the American Way was faulty and the Socialist Way was “progressive.” To do that, he had to constantly knock down American success stories, like integration, and build up socialist success stories, like Venezuela.
A hundred years later, after piling up a hundred-million corpses, all that’s left of the left is nihilism. “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette” has become “We’ve broken a lot of eggs and still have no omelette.” It can’t be easy being a nihilist, hence the hatred toward America and Americans.
I guess I just don’t understand the trump hatred. I have no emotional reaction reaction to Trump at all. I had no emotional reaction to Obama, either. He’s just a guy. I save my anger for institutions that FAIL. Journalism and journalists who claim to be objective, but are not. Scientists and scientist wannabe’s who want public policy to be science-driven — until the things that they value go under the microscope.
Joe one thing.
Failure to treat immigrants the same as citizens is a Great Moral Failing.
No its ILLEGAL immigrants, if you immigrate legally you have no victim status and are not welcome into the Lefts identity politics. They only care about the illegals because that is potentially a huge voting bloc for them. Ironically the people hur most by this are blacks, and they know it and are pissed. Just watch a walk away video about it.
PoD – I’m becoming concerned that our national immigration and refugee policies are messed up to alter the demographics of the country to benefit democratic socialists rather than entrepreneurs. The result will be rapid economic decay as proles vote for bread and circuses and producers die off or flee. So not just illegal immigration, but all immigration, is a long-term national concern.
MP – Trump wasn’t my first pick but he doesn’t bother me. I recognize the type. He’s a real estate developer. I dealt with them during the boom period that preceded The Crash, I know how they operate. Big talk, lots of bombast, everything’s gonna be yuge, yada yada. That’s all schtick. The good ones take it a step further and make sure the important things quietly get done so the development will succeed eventually. Might look nothing like the original plans but if it works . . . .. Trump’s doing that as President. Don’t look at the initial blustering, look at the results. North Korea. Iran. NAFTA. Regulatory rollbacks. Tax cuts. Supreme Court. Exposing the Deep State for the corrupt lying bastards they are.
Maybe we need to take a look at what the left is doing and conclude that it’s projection; they are evil. What else can you say about people who look the other way of legally adjudicated proof of harassment on the part of Bill Clinton, ignore clear evidence of Planned Parenthood ignoring their duty to report sex crimes against children, and then throw a hissy fit with an uncorroborated accusations against Brett Kavanaugh?
In things like this, they are not just wrong, but evil. Same thing with the refusal to deport illegal immigrant criminals. Are we so short of felons that we need to keep those who have no right to be here?
A great deal of the animus towards the non-Left seems predicated on a profound hatred of American institutions and traditions. I am not a conspiracy theorist, however I postulate that the anti-America virus had its origin during the Vietnam War. There certainly were hard core communists and other assorted lefties in the thick of things, but I don’t think they would’ve gotten the traction they did were it not for (a) a large number of college educated, idealistic young people who believed in the legitimacy of protest movements and yet were disappointed in the perceived lack of progress of those movements to produce a truly color blind society (b) the Vietnam War, born of post colonial chaos, never explained well by our government and in fact, evolving into a conflict that the government (I mean mainly the executive branch under LBJ) stopped trying to win after 1966, if it ever had tried to win it and (c) the technology revolution produced by television, so that current events exploded into our living rooms. The brain trust in charge of interpreting it all held predominantly liberal progressive ideas and never shied away from using that power to influence public opinion. Thus the Vietnam War, although birthed by JFK’s Best and Brightest, transformed into the responsibility and the fault of evil Richard Nixon and his minions. The violent protestors of the 60s, having lost the battle in the streets, went to ground and worked through educational institutions to further their point of view (Bill Ayres and company). With the biases of the next generation assured to absorb Critical Theory from baby boomer professors, the stage was set for the next battle: speech codes, political correctness on campus and in corporate America, the immunity of all victims from criticism or any responsibility for their own plights, the creation of new victim groups that were all the fault of (in today’s terminology) cis-white-patrimonial hegemony, and a 24 hour news cycle populated by diversity-preaching puppets who were spoon-fed their scripts. Do I sound sufficiently pessimistic? I hope so. The Kavanaugh battle seems as near to a make or break moment for sanity in the Republic. I’m probably exaggerating but I fear I’m not.
BB, that is… an incredibly valid point.
Hey, you guys, welcome to the club! 😉
The far left has an large and increasing hold on the Democrat party.
You should read their literature. It is what is taught on college campuses in almost every discipline.
It has its own language. “Capitalism” doesn’t mean what you think it means. It is like the word “devil” or maybe “godlessness” was used in Medieval times. It is the root cause of all the evil in the world, it is a synonym for “evil.” So you read about capitalism being the cause of family separation at the borders. It is also at the root of racism, sexism, colonialism (another word that is sometimes a synonym for evil), the prison system, and national borders. It is capitalism that enforces ‘binary genders,” and of course capitalism created and maintains white supremacy. It is capitalism which alienates man from man, and man from his natural environment.
For the simple minded and the gullible, being anti-capitalist offers purism. By being anti-capitalist, you are against evil.
These are not your dad’s socialists (though maybe they are your granddad’s socialists). Don’t think of them as being like the “socialist” bureaucrats in European governments. They take all the Marxist claptrap seriously. The only world is the material world, man is economic man, ownership of the means of production and distribution of its goods defines society. Nothing else matters, not art, not science, not conscience, not liberty, not happiness, not the life and death of the figments called “individuals.”
“Capitalism” to today’s socialists means capital in private hands, and it very definitely includes the two or three figure sums most people have in their checking accounts. It includes your fucking pocket change.
A policy change that Twitter has been working on for several months is intended to broaden hateful content restrictions at the service to include barring tweets dehumanizing people based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other social grouping.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-ban-dehumanizing-comments-user-help-170930000.html
So Twitter isn’t going to ban tweets dehumanizing people, just dehumanizing certain people. Big tech continues its campaign of licensing hate.
I don’t think that they can get away with it. They do not want to be a common carrier (like the phone company) because that would mean becoming a commodity (bandwidth is bandwidth). Econ 101: you don’t want to be in the business of selling a commodity in an open market.
They want to provide a “curated” experience, and their are perils to doing that. If Twitter or Facebook considers itself responsible for blocking the spread of “hate speech,” how can they defend themselves when they are sued for publishing slander in a divorce case or some other personal dispute? Either you have editorial control (like a newspaper) or you don’t (like a phone company). For business reasons they have to have an opaque editorial process. They can’t show their algorithm because it will be copied and improved upon by competitors and users will exploit its weaknesses.
Prince of Darkness_666 on September 25, 2018 at 11:10 am said:
. . .
No its ILLEGAL immigrants, if you immigrate legally you have no victim status and are not welcome into the Lefts identity politics.
Don’t think so, POD. The Democrats insist that Trump hates ALL immigrants, and of course this message is picked up and transmitted by the MSM, which long ago stopped making a distinction between illegal and legal immigrants.
The Left owns the MSM to such a degree that most people would say that Trump is anti-immigrant, though his mother and grandfather were immigrants, and he has been married to two immigrants (see my note about the krazee, irrational thought processes of today’s Left, above).
Trump is much closer to his immigrant roots than I am.
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MP:
I guess I just don’t understand the trump hatred. I have no emotional reaction reaction to Trump at all.
I think it is 2 things: 1) An exponentially rapidly increasing leftist drift towards narcissism/enetitlementism/fascism/Communism/other “isms”, and 2) because they all thought Hillary was a lock. Trump was the “worst” of the 17 Republican candidates in terms of scandalous items/”skeletons in the closet”, so he should have been the easiest Republican to beat, but he still beat her. Which illustrates just how detestable of a person she is. Had Rubio won instead of Trump, I doubt the hatred from the left would be this intense (all they had on him to impugn his character was that he received $800K for a book advance, and spent $80K of it on a nice fishing boat). But their entitlement was stolen, and stolen by the worst possible person of the opposition.
Had Rubio won instead of Trump, I doubt the hatred from the left would be this intense
He was chased out of a restaurant the other night – or is that because of Trump? I think you forget just how despised Cruz was by the GOPe before Trump came on the scene. I also think you, like so many others on the right, will simply not acknowledge how effing evil the left is.
Sorry, my mistake, you said Rubio. My final comment still stands as I remember how nasty the left was towards Romney.
Regarding the hatred of the left, it’s worth noting that George W. Bush is an eminently decent and polite man, and that didn’t stop the left from maligning him from sunup to sundown. I think we have to come to grips with the fact that the BDS crowd is the TDS crowd, largely, and that a great portion of these people are just wicked. There is no slander too absurd for them to refuse to make it.
And now we have the “Cruz derangement syndrome” and perhaps also “Rubio derangement syndrome.” We need to get in the habit of pointing out that their slanders are, indeed, slanders.
Mammuthus Primigenius @ 9:28 AM above – your comment is dead on: “comparison not produced by a mind using reason” – does anyone suppose that MP’s comment can make a dent in the mind of the person being quoted?? I believe that may be most depressing aspect about current situation …….. how to move forward in a debate/discussion if two sides are so far apart in their starting point??