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I Wonder What He Thinks of Me?
Everybody needs an identity. Something we can identify with, and be comfortable with. In small towns, it’s often what town you live in, which family you belong to, which church you attend, what sport you play, what you do for a living, or things like that. If you were to hang around the local Walmart or something, a lot of people would look the same to you – they dress similarly, and they don’t seem to feel the need to intentionally separate themselves from others with the way they dress or something. Perhaps because they’re sufficiently comfortable with who they are that they make little effort to change it or hide it from others.
My daughter is a scholarship athlete at Georgetown, so I’m going to DC a lot to watch her play these days. I thought it would be fun, to see the complex mix of cultures and backgrounds that make up the diverse population of such a cosmopolitan city. And in a way, it is interesting, but not the way I expected. You’ve got the rich white men in Priuses, and the rich white men on bicycles wearing silly outfits (Spandex should be illegal for anyone over 25 years old), and the rich white gay men wearing rainbow patches on their backpacks, and the rich white men driving Bentleys, and the rich white men wearing old brown T-shirts and worn-out cargo shorts, and the rich white men with laptop backpacks and electric scooters, and the rich white men with beards and flannel shirts, and the rich white men wearing Hawaiian shirts and pork pie hats, and so on and so forth. The vast majority of these people would look incredibly out of place in nearly any small town in America.
You might think that such a lily-white, insanely wealthy place like Georgetown was disturbed by their lack of diversity, so they tried to invent their own, as best they could. Safe diversity. Without any, you know, actual diversity. But I don’t think that’s it. I think that many Americans have been taught to be ashamed of their true identity. Ashamed of their skin color, their beliefs, and their country. Leftists work hard at accomplishing this. They suffer from it themselves (Barack Obama, Prince Harry, and my liberal nephew all called their grandmothers racist), but they also work at ensuring that everyone suffers from it as well. So in Georgetown, Brett is not a wealthy lobbyist from a suburb of Boston – no, he’s a socially conscious Prius driver who drinks organic coffee. He likes himself better that way…
Those of us sufficiently comfortable with who we are may find such silliness to be, well, silly. I mean, c’mon Brett – if you don’t like being a lobbyist, why don’t you go do something else? You could drop the charade. Geez – this is silly.
But firstly, there’s nothing silly about self-hate. That’s an awful place to be.
And we should also remember that those who are capable of hating themselves are also capable of hating others. It comes naturally to them, as a matter of fact. Once you hate yourself, hating others is easy.
The right focuses on what we have in common as Americans. The left focuses on that which divides us.
The unity which can be gained from what we have in common serves to make America stronger and more stable.
The hatred which results from that which divides us serves to weaken American and strengthen the left. Which is the whole point. And now, the left not only tries to divide various groups from one another, they encourage self-hate in just about everybody. If you were trying to create chaos and violence in society, this is what you would do.
Teaching people to hate themselves and hide their true identity is a terrible idea. It’s not good for anybody. Well, nobody except leftists who want power, and need social chaos and violence to get it.
Plus, if the only identity considered to be virtuous is the identity of a far-leftist, then you can get people to abandon their own hated identity for one that is more socially acceptable. If all you have to do is wear a Che T-shirt and drive a Prius to go from a hated white person to a loved leftist, why would you not do that? Harmless enough, right?
Well, maybe, except that the self-hate needed to abandon one’s identity will tend to make some of these converts hate everyone else with the passion of the newly converted. Such people can be dangerous. It doesn’t take many of them to create chaos and violence.
The people in Georgetown seem harmless enough. The men often start their sentences with ‘So…’ and end their sentences with a non-threatening upward lilt. And I’m sure they mean well. At least, they go to a lot of effort to publicly signal that they mean well.
But as I was watching people walk by in Georgetown, I was a little creeped out. I wanted to grab some random guy as ask him “You manage a $250 million hedge fund. You’re from Greenwich, Connecticut, and now you live in a $5 million townhouse in Georgetown. Why are you dressed like a beach bum? Ditch the Prius. Buy some new flip-flops, for Pete’s sake. What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to impress? Who are you trying to be?”
I’m not sure who exactly he’s trying to be, and he’s probably not sure, either. But it’s certainly not him.
And if he doesn’t like who he is, I wonder what he thinks of me?
Postscript:
Ok, before you all start, yes, there are significant weaknesses to the way I’m trying to illustrate my point. Those who admire centralized power structures, and are willing to give up something of themselves to be part of something bigger than them, tend to be drawn to cities, and to leftism. And a bunch of bored wealthy white people playing dress-up for one another is not necessarily proof of some underlying conspiracy. And yes, I’ve long struggled with leftism’s odd combination of arrogance and self-loathing, which is not necessarily demonstrated by a rich white lady in a multi-million dollar condo wearing a floppy bohemian hippie dress and turquoise jewelry which appears to have been designed by preschoolers.
But still.
I do think that leftists understand that one way to get everyone to identify as a leftist, is to make their own real identity to be loathsome and embarrassing. And I maintain that encouraging self-hatred is vicious and dangerous. And I think that people who have been trained to hate themselves are more likely to hate others. And before you know it, we move from a united society to a tribal one. And tribal societies are inherently unstable.
Which is ok with leftists, as long as leftists are in power. Despite how things look, I really don’t think that leftists are really trying to burn down American society. I just think they’re using techniques to gain power that lead to social instability, and if American society burns down in the process, leftists don’t care. They’re trying to save the world, here. Omelets and broken eggs and all that.
So maybe I’m making too much of a rich white guy in cargo shorts. I probably should redo this essay, and try a different approach. But I’m too lazy. Perhaps I should have followed the advice of Lawst, and thought about what I was typing before I typed it.
Nahhhh…
But I think my basic point is still valid. Despite my difficulties in illustrating it.
Encouraging self-hatred leads to hatred of others, which creates social instability. So when I see a bunch of people pretending to be something other than what they are, it gives me the creeps.
What do you think?
Published in General
Not the whole world…
I tend to think it’s more like, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is KILLED.”
I want to be very specific here, Randy, so as not to upset, and I almost added this detail: he’s wearing an acid-wash denim shirt, or maybe a faux denim shirt with acid wash print. It’s just funny to me because both of those things were trendy in my teen and college years. Seems odd they’re back.
Isn’t a big part of the problem that those people don’t think of themselves as Americans, but rather some kind of “Citizens Of The World?”
Got it in one, Mr. Garabaldi!
It’s time for true confessions.
Doc really is as tall as he seems to be in that one pix. (Link NOT included).
Kate just read this and said, “His legs aren’t bad. It’s just that yours are cuter.”
My male ego has for a long time been predominantly dependent on affirmations of my relative “cuteness”. It’s better than nothing. It was enough to allow me to catch her and drag her back to my cave. So I’m ok with it.
Still, …
You don’t have to worry about upsetting me. I’m beyond that.
I’m okay with the faux denim shirt as long as it doesn’t have snaps.
What about for arthritic types who can’t manage buttons?
Hold, please. Checking, checking….
Nope. No snaps. No faux denim shirt. No denim shirt.
I’m okay, then. Denim trousers (aka, dungarees) yes, but I think they are ok.
I think I have one. I should wear it more, if I can find it. And if it still fits.
I used to wear short-sleeved blue chambray work shirts back when I did summer work for a concrete and masonry outfit. They were cheap (back in the days when the upper limit I would pay for a shirt was $3.00). That was a good thing, as that kind of work was hard on shirts. I wouldn’t mind having a few now, but when I google for them I see prices up to $168. Amazon sells some for $26.20, but I would like some with short sleeves.
I’m sure I have one, but no acid wash.
Luxury beliefs …
https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/
https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/
I am not sure what image that guy in the denim shirt is trying to project, but he is definitely trying way too hard.
That’s me! Except that I wear penny loafers.
Doc, I think you have those Georgetown folks figured all wrong: They are all very insecure, and are trying their darndest to fit with the In Crowd.
I pray to God that all your daughters come home with boys that drive pick’em up trucks and listen to Hank, Jr.
I really got to check this out. Among the super wealthy, buying ugly art is a way to better show off. Semi-wealthy people can only afford to buy good looking art. Poor people and middle-class people can’t afford enough guards to support defunding the police. Rich people are rich enough to support defunding the police.
I don’t think they hate themselves at all. I think the opposite is true. They have constructed a perfect person in their heads, and they think they are it. And everyone who does not fit this profile they have invented is inferior to them and not worth their time or trouble. They are very judgmental.
Velcro.
I know you didn’t ask me Jerry, but I can’t resist saying normal.
Great post. As others have noted, I don’t think they hate themselves, but hate what they have come to believe they represent. Having found enlightenment, though, they do hate those who do not reach the same conclusion, as you noted.
When I lived in DC and worked in the media everyone, and I do mean everyone, was a Democrat, a mainline standard issue liberal, and they were all patriotic. We differed on policy, had arguments about history, but everyone was invested in America, not some gassy Utopian transnationalist concept of socialized bliss, Davos-delegated and sustainably equitable.
I believe we should all have a healthy dose of self hate. We should hate our shortcomings and sins we’ve personally committed against others. We should hate the malevolent person that’s possible in our souls and fight against that. Self hatred about your race or ancestry is ridiculous.
When I hate myself, I just change clothes.
I’m certainly starting to resent what my company is doing, and the people charged with (somewhat enthusiastically) the re-education camps. A good idea around creating empathy and awareness of others than yourself has morphed, easily and with little pushback, into indoctrination, and shaming of others not like you.
What other result could there be but frustration, resentment, and maybe, eventually, hate? Everyone can see pictures of their colleagues in the org chart. Everybody knows who’s getting promoted and who isn’t, so the “why” becomes the question, even if it’s an unfair and meritless question.
Worse, if you’re applying for jobs, and don’t even get interviews, even courtesy interviews, for internal job postings, and you’re qualified – your eyebrows go up. If it happens 10 times, yeah, maybe now you’re pissed.
Note to self: No denim shirts.