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Perhaps this is why leftists are angry and violent
Source: Shutterstock/David Garcia
Conservatives tend to support freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to buy whatever light bulbs make you happy, and so on. Leftism tends to be based more on centralized control systems, and is more comfortable with censorship and government involvement in things like light bulbs and gas stoves. Political violence is a feature of the left, presumably because you sometimes need violence to get someone to do something that they normally wouldn’t do. Conservatives don’t need violence to get people to do whatever they want. Which is why it’s so hard to imagine JD Vance looking like Elizabeth Warren in this picture.
But it occurs to me that there may be another reason for the anger and violence on the left. Leftists believe that they are the smart ones, and the virtuous ones. And then they look at places that apply leftism, which are typically horrifying. The 20th century was a nightmare for them, as leftist leaders like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, et al. caused so much suffering and destruction. American cities have been governed by Democrat governors for decades, and are nearly without exception spiraling into dystopian hell-holes. People are leaving Democrat states and moving to Republican states en masse. If leftism is so smart and so virtuous, why does it consistently lead to such suffering and destruction? Why do people run away from it? If leftism is so smart and so virtuous, shouldn’t it work? At least sometimes?
This would have to be painful for leftists. The cognitive dissonance would become increasingly difficult to ignore. In the dark of night, when they’re alone with their thoughts, perhaps they might start thinking some uncomfortable thoughts, such as: “Is it really possible that personal freedom is preferable to centralized control by well-meaning, educated intellectuals? Could my stupid, uneducated, sarcastic brother-in-law actually have a point? Oh my God – was I wrong the whole time? Was I complicit in the suffering and murder of millions of innocents? Is that really possible?”
From Grossinger, via Shutterstock. Asset ID: 1439792705
Such thoughts would be very unpleasant. The natural response to such thoughts is, “Of course not. My brother-in-law is a jerk. Government is simply the name we give to things we do together. Cooperation is nice. America is a racist, sexist, colonial power that is a danger to the world. We just need to get others to understand this. With whatever means necessary.”
I understand that impulse. Considering the idea that you were wrong about so many very important things would be very painful. Emotional self-defense is an understandable response. Not admirable. But understandable.
As conservatives are becoming more distressed about the direction of the Western world, and as conservatives appear to be gaining a better understanding of the situation they find themselves in, this will tend to lead to more conspiracy theories on the left. Fact-checking only became necessary once the facts started getting out. The left has a problem. With reality. And with facts. And they know it.
From Volodymyr Tverdokhlib, via Shutterstock
That has to hurt.
So they lash out, like a wounded dog.
They will not go quietly into the night. They just can’t. They’re stuck.
This is ugly. And it’s going to get uglier.
Published in General
Leftism is about egos. Just try telling one when discussing one of Their pet projects, “It’s none of Yer damn business.”
There are 2 ways to elevate Yerself: self improvement or standing on others.
Leftist elevate Their egos by “fighting for the less fortunate” and They turn violent, because Their reasons are not convincing.
When a certain crazy elder relative and his “conspiracy theories” keep turning out to be true …
What you are saying is nominally true, but it would be wise for us to apply this lesson to ourselves rather than just feeling smug toward the Left.
Conservatives spent the 1990s with our thumbs up our bums while the Bush faction took over the GOP, all while disingenuously wearing the skin-suit or Reagan’s legacy. By 2001 we were shocked (although we shouldn’t have been) to discover that a GOP controlled White House, Senate and House were governing to the left of where we were under Clinton.
Our blindness here was due to our own cognitive dissonance. We so badly wanted to believe that the GOP was still the party of Reagan and that if we elected George W it would be Reagan 2.0, that we ignored a host of warning signs.
The only reason Clinton moved to the right in his second term was because of the Gingrich congress. I could be wrong but I believe Bush 2001 would have been much more conservative and focused domestically except for the circumstances of 9/11. That shifted things tremendously.
With Leftism, the ends always justify the means. The ends is an unobtainable communist utopia.
If not for 9/11, the intelligence communities would have made one. They were playing destructive games in NATO countries to raise tensions and assure a fat budget after the Soviet collapse. Remember how HW scrambled for a week or more to try and save the Soviets as the Berlin wall came down and Gorbachev failed the dismount on the tiger ride event? The CIA had overestimated Soviet GDP by a factor of four (an honest mistake, the Politbureau had similar numbers), and pegged their budget to that and NATO funding was pegged to that. They had to work triple time to avoid realizing a peace dividend and returning to fiscal sanity. Then cable news met 9/11 and our psyop forces realized that they could craft any tyranny they wanted if they framed it as a scary crisis that locked millions of eyes on propaganda readers.
My throat feels funny, time to update my will.
It turns out that there are a lot more programmable people than we originally thought. Switching over from “EVs are the future” to “burn all Teslas” demonstrates that. But just as there are plenty of programmables out there, apparently there are a lot who can’t be programmed at this point.
Years ago at NPR, of all unlikely sources, I heard a segment where the claim was that conservatives can understand progressives and think they are wrong. The secondary and most important claim was that progressives/liberals can’t understand conservatives. The reporters didn’t have an explanation for the difference.
I have one to offer. Progressives/liberals believe in “situation ethics”. It’s a term from fifty or so years ago but is appropriate even today. Conservatives believe in transcendent values even if we are not entirely sure we are on the right track. If one doesn’t believe or accept that idea, the belief in absolute moral values, then the actions of those who do are incomprehensible. That is why progressives/liberals think that conservatives are off-the-chain crazy. They can’t grasp our motivations.
I see no evidence that leftists actually look at places that apply leftism.
Consider the possibility that the violence is strategically promoted by the party itself, because violence involves enthusiasm, energy, anger, and commitment, all of which are valuable political strengths and assets.
[added:]
This would be a simple economic analysis.
This is really interesting. Not my bag, but I think a lot of smart people think just like this. Now we have to worry about China because we started trading with them so they have something real to deal with.
i.e. my PhD brother-in-law, who has a PhD in a practical subject. He goes crazy when we talk about public policy. He finally literally gave up on it.
Just for the record, I very strongly feel that theFederal Reserve, and all of the centralized government interferes with this. Inflation is evil and we are too stupid and corrupt to manage it. Non-public goods produced by the government are evil and theft.
They want to central plan and it doesn’t work. We do too much already.
Men in girls sports is insane.
This is totally like my brother-in-law, even though he’s obviously smarter than this.
This is totally like my brother-in-law, even though he’s obviously smarter than this.
Just photoshop more mascara onto Warren to make her look more Goth and you will see the resemblance.
Elizabeth Warren is a terrible person. If you get a law degree from Rutgers, you have no chance of teaching at Harvard etc, unless you lie about being a native American.
I think the fundamental reason that leftists are angry and violent is that their philosophy is ultimately against nature. If your philosophy is in accord with nature, you need only allow nature to take its course and your efforts should be primarily directed to making sure you respect and follow nature. If your philosophy is against nature, then violence is necessary to fight nature and force it into the direction you wish. And the violence is never-ending, because nature will always be pulling the other way.
I’m thinking especially of the sexual realm. The feminist left celebrated the pill because it liberated women from the burdens of childbirth – they could now have consequence free sex. Of course, contraception doesn’t always work, and isn’t always applied, so you need abortion (violence) as a backup to maintain freedom against nature. The conservative views childbirth not as something against which to rebel, but to embrace as nature and nature’s God’s purpose for women, and for men as leaders, providers and protectors of the family. No violence required.
Homosexuality is fundamentally against nature and so can’t ultimately fulfill the human spirit. Because it can’t, but the movement can’t acknowledge that, it has to create bogeymen to blame for the fact that homosexuals keep winning the culture war but are never satisfied. So, they shoot the wounded in a legal sense by seeking out cake bakers they can persecute as scapegoats.
The most depraved and horrifying violence is the mutilation that goes on in sex change surgery, as though a boy can turn into a girl by cutting them up and rearranging things. It’s rage against nature with children as the victims.
I agree. Recently lefties have been promoting government owned and operated grocery stores as a solution for “food deserts” and high prices. It takes an astonishing level of ignorance to not know how that would work out. (And don’t forger that progressive intellectual leader Bernie Sander said that bread lines are a good thing).
I can’t claim to know where the rapid resort to violence comes from other than a complete lack of moral standards at the most fundamental level.
Inflation is unnatural. It’s going to end the hard way.
Men in girl’s dresses is insane too.
I don’t think homosexual men have any power over it, but this is all true. Camille Paglia, I think would agree with all of this as well even though she’s been out of the closet since the early 60s.
Gender dysphoria became a Democrat contagion about 10 years ago. Some people really suffer with it. I don’t see why anybody should get pills or surgery before their brain is fully developed.
I don’t get the drag queen stuff and it should be relegated to weird bars. Why on earth would you shove this down children’s throats?
cEntRal pLAnNing MakEs oUr liVEs beTTEr
Their understanding of conservatives is that we are evil. Once they believe that, they are absolved of any need to understand us further.
They have to wear dresses. If they wore girl’s pants, they would be in a painful pickle because the crotch is sewn for girl parts, not boy parts. That is as charitable as I intend to be.
Maybe you’re right but I don’t think real life is always a Vince Flynn novel just about to happen.
Until normal folks (left and right) have finally had enough. Then they’ll rise up, summon their inner Howard Beale, and shout, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
I seriously doubt the radical left has any idea what kind of violence normal people are capable of inflicting when pushed over the edge . . .
Speak for yourself. I wasn’t fooled by GW, and I was far from the only one. “Compassionate Conservatism” was obviously code for “centrist-scented statism”, and it wasn’t exactly a hidden idea.