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A Liberal Doesn’t Quite Get It
Ben Domenech shared an interesting column in yesterday’s Transom from a liberal who had a paradigm-challenging encounter with a redneck who fixed her car as she returned home from the Women’s March in Washington. It proves to be an experience that prevents her from going back to business as usual (apparently she hosts a podcast?) because she realizes that she has become a person she doesn’t want to be:
As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me. By the end of the drive, I felt heartbroken.
But this year, I realize, I retreated from my porch. Trump’s cruelty and mendacity demand outrage and the most vigorous resistance a nation can muster. Yet the experience with the man at the side of the road felt humbling. It reminded me that we are all just people trying to get home safe. It felt like a sign, that maybe if we treat one another with the kindness and gratitude that is so absent from our president and his policies, putting our most loving selves forward, this moment can transform into something more bearable? I want to come away from the march with that simple lesson, but it begs this question: How do we hold onto the fire fueling our resistance to the cruelty Trump unleashes, but also embrace the world with love? I wish I knew.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a liberal in the grips of delusion. As I read the article I was expecting an introspective denouement to this interesting encounter. I thought it was going to be a reckoning with herself in which she resolves to change and see the humanity in the people who don’t share her political views.
Nope. She blames Trump!
He’s the one that is making her outraged, angry, and unkind. Not her. Him!
It’s going to be a long eight years.
Published in General, Politics
Who is Trump being cruel to and how? How is she repressed as a woman? The last president pitted so many “groups” of people against each other, men against women, blacks against whites, law enforcement against the public, gays against straight, coddled our enemies and ignored out allies, and created an atmosphere of tension where safe spaces were created, college kids had to color, cry and scream down any opposing opinion. How is that not cruel?
And the most ironic part of this behavior, is that it clearly tells the other half the country that it doesn’t matter who they elect, because that person will always be simultaneously a goose-stepper, yet not enough of one to use government “intelligently,” so any objection they might have is irrelevant.
Exactly. This woman’s tirade has nothing to do with Trump; she’d be just as mindlessly hateful towards President Cruz, President Walker, or President Rubio.
Wonder if she ever considered it from the other side. Of all those folk that like Trump are even just do not hate him with the same white hatred the libs feel but are afraid to mention their point of view since they know the Left is so oppressed with Trump that they would be fired or marginalized for even suggesting that Trump may not actually be the incarnation of the anti-Christ / Hitler / Stalin in one. It is sad to be like this woman and live in hate but it is also sad that so many have to live in fear of her type.
Pastor Hans Fiene wrote about outrage addiction in the Fedralist last year. The need to be mad.
So she is mad at Trump and is taking it out on others she didn’t understand could exist until the other day, someone like her, just trying to get through life, who was helpful and friendly.
As noted, her anger isn’t Trump’s fault.
I wish her epiphany is life altering; that when people are left alone, they can solve their problems in a congenial way without political interference. She needs to learn politics is overrated as a means to an end. Surpised she wasn’t mad at the car company for not making a perfect car that lasts as long as she desires.
Don’t forget Scott Adams’ observations on the Cathy Newman – Jordan Peterson interview: Peterson repeatedly induced cognitive dissonance in Newman; her response was repeated hallucinations. That is, she was not perversely misinterpreting him, she was, in her own head, hearing him say things that he did not in fact say… because that diminished the distress of the cognitive dissonance. I think the same thing was going on for Mayer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igqRWx0asTA
A) I wish people would stop using “begs the question.” They almost always do it wrong, and it is so much easier to just say something like “it makes me wonder …”
B) Yes, always be kind. You don’t have to tie it in with your particular flavor of politics.
C) Even if you think Trump is awful (and I certainly don’t like him), being outraged by him 24-7 accomplishes nothing and makes you miserable—as it would if you spent all your time being outraged by any other person or situation, warranted or not. Constant anger is poison to your soul. It has the potential to cause you to mischaracterize everyone you meet. Let it go.
Logic is racist and sexist.
I saw a bizarre tweet the other day—someone saying essentially, “Of course I’m angry. History shows anger is a great motivator for change and a force for good.”
Yeah, anger motivates people to do a lot of things—but most of them are not good.
Thank you.
Mayer wrote that she could no longer enjoy sitting out on her porch because she has neighbors who hold political views which make her feel so threatened that rage is an appropriate response. I mean really, doesn’t she have a right to enjoy her own property? And aren’t those people keeping her from doing so?
What to do, what to do….
When similar level of perceived existential threat became an organized political force, it led to this:
Mayer wrote that she lived in a “little two-block craftsman-home development.” If it has a HOA and she takes her activism to it, that place will probably become a little two-block craftsman-home outcropping of Hell.
It’s like the bumper sticker, “Well behaved women rarely make history.”
Well, yes, it’s true that Rosa Parks broke the rules, but so did Lizzie Borden.
Just leaving this here:
I can’t change, nor can I control President Trump’s behavior. The only person’s behavior I can control and/or change is my own. I choose to try to do my best (not always succeeding) to treat others with respect, dignity and compassion. I also choose not to be “enraged” by the behavior and actions of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. It’s a shame that this woman does not seem to understand her own power to choose how she responds to actions of those around her.
Exactly my question
Or the one reading “If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention.”
Both have been observed on the same vehicle as: the multicult “Coexist.”
It’s not Trump’s actions that are cruel, it’s his existence. Any actions they don’t like just prove it.
Adams posits that reality is subjective (because the only instrument we have to perceive reality is our very subjective brains) and that to save time we use an array of “filters.”
Here’s a start.
And a useful piece on cognitive dissonance.
Trump just needs to fix more flat tires. Dispatch Trump look alikes with a bat flood light and bat mobiles.
Hate to tell her, but the hate predates Trump; it’s a product of the density of directed hate themes and osmosis. I’ve seen in growing for many decades.
Generally that last one should be appended “the way I tell you to.”
My mother used to say that when she saw the ones reading “Question Authority” she was tempted to take a marker and write “Why?” on it.
Love your post!
But really . . . don’t you think your title is somewhat trite?
I tried that on a co-worker once. He started answering the question …
I always preferred, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
The explanation for this woman’s anger was succinctly explained by Krauthammer:
It’s a moral issue, to the point of often being a substitute religion.
Christians are generally instructed to hate the sin but love the sinner. This is often difficult to do, but that’s the ideal.
Leftists have no such instruction in their moral framework.
It’s pure click-bait.
Throughout history, moderate annoyance seems to be a lot better of a motivator.
Annoyed people make new inventions so they won’t have to deal with the thing that annoys them.
Annoyed people work to change society in reasonable ways, because it’s less annoying than tearing it all down and starting over.
Annoyed people get things done, quickly, because they’re so over it.
Angry people? Angry people break things, and they don’t care, because they’re ANGRY, dammit!
Anger is a choice.
Choose to be understanding and your life will get better.
Since when have these protests done anything anyway… I was in DC those days…one day pro-life, the next the women’s march. While I agree with the Pro-life marchers, I just don’t see the point of a march.
Also those days there were many pockets of DACA marches… I think they are learning the wrong things about being American.
I hope as they get older they realise the people who are supporting them now do it to stay in power. But the Republicans who will eventually solve this issue will do it, even though it will likely hurt us.
I hope they will see that Democrats are selfish and corrupt and like most Americans refuse to support them.
This can be the only response from people who place, inexplicably, all their hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and humanity, in a person who sits in an office who will never, ever know who they are.
So: Obama as president? All is right with the world. Trump? World on fire.
It’s neither of those things, nor should it be. Her failure is her thinking that the president should take up so much space in her head, whether she supports a president or not.
This is the last thing the founders were looking for. It’s hero worship, for a politician. Has she not seen what these idiots do all day? Does 20 trillion in debt and 100 trillion in unfunded liabilities sound like good job performance?
So has anyones internet rates gone up? Any sign of broadband throttling?