Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
People Don’t Count
It has been an enduring mystery of Progressivism: How can you support an ideology that in the end is anti-people when you are a person? There are a variety of explanations:
- Progressivism attracts insane people. Insane people are able to firmly hold contradictory beliefs without understanding that they are contradictory.
- Progressives are evil manipulators that think they are destroying the wrong people and conscripting others to serve them as drones to the Queen Bee. They understand well the anti-people nature of their ideology but have a plan to exempt themselves from its consequences.
- Progressivism attracts people who don’t think through anything, and are probably stupid enough to not see the end game and only focus on the high-sounding goodness of the slogans.
- Progressivism is the sinecure of the lazy and mendacious who see supporting progressivism as a means of an easy “score” and a means of comfort with little effort. Their expectations are always short-term and self-indulgent so the end game of progressivism simply is ignored. These people never expected anything so whatever they can get for as long as they can get it is all they ever care about.
You can’t pick just one of these explanations for the enduring push of Progressivism. It is a function of some combination of each.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has a piece on Substack highlighting the anti-people nature of Progressives. He notes that they both push “criminal reform” to go lightly on those who commit violence and property crimes while seeking outsized punishment for their political rivals:
Democrats believe that the only real criminals, or at least the worst ones, are those who reject their political ideology and are their political adversaries. And thus, while they work with one hand to usher in radical reforms to the policing and prison state, they work with the other to concoct theories to justify the long-term imprisonment of their political opponents, even when their alleged crimes involve no violence.
How can you be for people while tearing down the structure that protects people from violence and loss? How can you be for people when you promote economic policies that destroy jobs and makes people dependent on government? You can’t be. People don’t count; ideology does. And we know that it ends in misery; if not for all then certainly for most.
It doesn’t matter which of the four categories of persons support Progressivism. Their support for Progressivism is a clear and present danger to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Published in General
People count- but only real people.
Its a matter of gaining a transmittable majority bigotry.
Popular targets include; the “rich”, the uneducated, the Jews, acceptably unpopular races/ethnicities, and people who are insufficiently accepting.
Sadly these are only tools. They are told they count when they actually don’t count beyond the power that it gives to Progressivism.
What baffles me is that people who support the Left still are clueless about how much they are despised. I would think at some point they would see the conflict between the message and outcomes. But I guess they have also been sucked in by the ideology and are true believers, too. So sad.
I have long thought that the primary motivation of “Progressives” is self image. They see themselves as saviors of “the people,” meaning, by implication, their inferiors. They see themselves as standing at the peak of human development, and those who do not agree with them or who oppose them as either ignorant or evil.
I’m glad to see that accurate quote comes from someone long thought to be a journalist with a Leftist bent. I have liked Greenwald since he came to my attention.
I think you may be missing a critical piece here. “The people” the “Progressives” see are really no different to them than any other species of living beings, trees and other forms of vegetation, and any other element in nature. People deserve no elevated status in their image. They strive to preserve and perfect the status quo. There is a certain quality of amazement in the word they have chosen to describe themselves.
Absolutely. They certainly don’t want to live among “the people” they claim so much to love. The bigotry of “Progressives” is quite stunning. Many of them will say straight out that they prefer dogs or cats or any other little furry critter to people and be quite proud of it.
When one has no agency to affect things, the only path to heroism is to care.
And then they will presume to raise our children.
So does progressivism attract insane people, or does being a progressive cause insanity?
Chicken or egg.
I know when I was a progressive, I saw the issue of “voter rights” from a completely different viewpoint.
This amazes me now, as I was involved in election integrity groups as well as Dem Party groups.
But every year, whenever some proposal regarding voter ID was about to stir things up inside Calif or across the nation, the Dems would have these heart twisting videos of some bone-dry poor and elderly person living in Applalachia. She just did not have 3 bucks for a state ID and therefore could not vote. (Plus being too old and blind to drive, she had no driver’s license.)
I fell for this narrative hook line and sinker. I still find it unbelievable I fell for this.
I think it is somewhat a matter of hypnosis. Another example: In March 2020, I spent more time indoors due to weather, and watched quite a bit of legacy news channels trying to find out about COVID. I was semi-convinced it was a novel infection and quite dangerous to we poor mortals.
A month later, being able to sit in the sun on the porch and use my lap top, I was mostly on alt health news sources. By the third week in April, I knew there was something not right about the narrative.
If an individual is immersed in a narrative, and if it is designed in such a way to tug at your heart, or even more effective a matter, to induce fear and downright panic, that individual becomes a steadfast devotee of the narrative being The Truth.
This process can be done from the other side, showing the destruction inherent in socialism, and the joys of individualism and independence, but apparently the conservatives and the Republicans have no interest in mass deprogramming. It can be done, but no one is trying.
The Babylon Bee’s podcast series reading the Lord of the Rings is trying.
Lots of people are trying, in their own small ways.
But you’re right that it sure isn’t high on the agenda of your average politician.
A start point in the Virginia election says take control of the education of the children. The Left has had this for quite a while.
Right. Homeschool, run for school board, or show up at school board meetings. Every parent in America needs to start doing at least one of those things.
Leftism is religion for the godless. When there’s no external measure for goodness, the natural inclination is to self-deify. “I’m a good person, therefore whatever I believe to be good must be good” (Pope Benedict XVI called this the tyranny of moral relativism). Which is also why they’re so intolerant of anyone with a different opinion (especially those who make religious claims to goodness and truth). A different opinion or truth-claim is a rebuke to their “divine” judgment. And also why they’re unable to admit error or to repent of past failures.
Leftism is a psycho-spiritual disorder.
Which is why I never concede that they are progressive; you can’t progress beyond free speech, for example – free speech is a pinnacle, anything further is regressive.
They are Pro-regressive. Or as I normally write it, Pro(re)gressive.
It is a religion for the people who despise religion. But it’s a religion without grace
Well, not the grace that any of us want, at least. When you “self-deify” as @westernchauvinist described you will grant grace but only on your terms and in the manner you desire. It seems that all the wrong people are receiving this kind of grace.
Excellent.
I know only old liberals and very few. Some are just ignorant and aways have been. They aren’t evil, don’t do evil things and live individual lives, they don’t read much and only watch mainstream tv. Their politics will change if the Democrat party changes. I know a guy engaged in things that matter state wide, environmental stuff, works with people to fix things the way he thinks they should be fixed. Sometimes he’s right. He thinks Democrats in Washington or in N.Y. City or L.A. are like the Democrats he works with and does not understand that politicians in Washington and giant states don’t care about local issues except as they enrich centralized power including environmental issues, the things he works with daily. He watches mainstream news as well and doesn’t read much outside his immediate focus. Sort of old fashion Democrat. He will never be Republican and will go along with Democrats even when wildly inconsistent with what he believes and taking us in directions he hates. Conclusion. We have to change the media for old people and the schools for young people as quickly and as radically as possible.
He is crooked. I have not met or worked with an old school Democrat that is active in the party that is not. Thing is I doubt he seems himself as that. Everybody else does it so it will seem normal to him. In the end most Democrats are Democrats because there is more in it for them than not. Usually it is laws and regulation that break their way or they can turn to help them and hurt others, or maybe it is just sweetheart government deal they get because of their connections in the party, but in the end it is corrupt. I worked with the local Democrats too long to believe any of them or honest. To be fair they are mainly dishonest to themselves so they can be dishonest to others.
Why do you throw up your hands and say nothing can be done?
That is a provocative thought deserving of its own post. The reason it is provocative is because there are 3 variant forms of the statement: clear thinking deception (evil), self-deception in service of deception of others (rationalization), and unrecognized self-deception in service of preferred outcomes (cognitive dissonance).