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Odd Belief Systems of My Leftist Friends (Part 53 of 179)
I spent the weekend with a group of very liberal friends. I was struck by how often in conversation they remarked upon their admiration for rural people all over the world. Primitive African tribes have customs that may seem odd to our western sensibilities, but they’re actually beautiful agrarian societies that we just don’t fully appreciate due to racism and ethnocentrism. 
European farmers are artists of the land, and they make the absolute best *whatever* you can find anywhere. Native Americans had a beautiful, peaceful culture, at one with Mother Nature, until the Europeans showed up. You want to see real agriculture? The Russians know how to do it – we could learn a thing or two from them. And so on and so forth.
Part of this sounded like the left’s ongoing worship of Rousseau’s noble savage and Thoreau’s adolescent yearning for a simple life, but I couldn’t help but notice that these wealthy, highly educated, leftist suburbanites seemed to nearly worship all rural people. Well, all rural people except American rural people, of course. They view rural Americans with utter contempt. This may not be a fair characterization, because leftists view much of America with contempt, not just pickup driving, gun-owning, Bible thumping farmers. But still, I might have expected their apparent appreciation for those who live off the land to one degree or another to perhaps soften their criticisms of rural Americans. But no.
We spent the weekend at a cabin on a lake, and we had a wonderful time. I was the only conservative in a group of leftists, and they all know it. They also know that I don’t argue politics or religion, despite their continued efforts to goad me into responding. But we’re friends, and we had a wonderful weekend together. I can disagree with people on various topics and continue to value their friendship, but many of them cannot. So I said nothing.
And it’s a minor point, anyway. Not worth arguing about.
But I wonder if they ever wonder why a South American tribal rain dance ceremony is a beautiful cultural event of profound significance for beautifully profound people, but a Friday night football game in Chillicothe is an outdated, simplistic ritual for outdated, simplistic people.
Eh, no matter.
I had a wonderful weekend. I really did.
I love my friends. I just don’t understand them.
And that’s ok.
Published in General
You are a better man than me. I have sadly pretty much ended my relationships with my leftest friends. It is not because the constantly, and intentionally, tried to irritate me with their leftest comments (they did). It is not they refused to listen to anything I said (they did this too). It is not because they think of me as a racists because I am in favor of controlling our borders and for fiscally responsible government (they do). It is simply because I realized we don’t share core values.
How do you remain friends with someone who you feel is ruining the country you love? I do you remain friends with someone who doesn’t believe in liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility? How do you remain friends with someone who is in favor of punishing people for being productive, and rewarding people for being nonproductive. How do you remain friends with someone who believes it is a good idea to teach minority kids they have no chance in life because of their race, and they need help to get ahead? How do you remain friends with someone who mocks your religion, and blames religion for the problems of the world?
I could go on, but you get my thought process. When you disagree on everything important, what is the basis of your friendship?
One factor notable factor that drives them to hate their rural countrymen is envy. You see, there are three strategies by which an individual may support himself. One can produce something and barter it (most rural folk), one can persuade someone to support him (most folk of the left), or one can manipulate the system (most lawyers and politicians).
People of persuasive and manipulative orientation recognize they are inferior to the productives; that leads to envy, which is dealt with by denial in the form of denigration.
But no matter the mechanism, there is one principle that one may always apply to people of the left – they will betray. In the case you’ve observed, like all others, they have selected the closest neighbor population they could identify and acted to separate it from the larger group. They expect to benefit by the new distinction. “See? We’re so much better than them! Therefore we’re great!”
Whatever causes it, you can always predict what they’ll do by this maxim: they will betray anyone they can as badly as they can, subject to the constraint that they can do so safely.
They would find rural Americans appealing as well if they were as easily manipulated and defeated as the other you mentioned.
I don’t think that’s true. If their rural countrymen were passive and supine then they’d just dump on them harder. Everyone knows what happens when you give in to a bully. What have you observed that’d make you believe such a counterfactual?
They betray their rural countrymen precisely because they are their fellows – fellow citizens in this case. They find nothing to be gained by denigrating a Congolese or Peruvian villager. But they can benefit from the contrast between a hayseed and a metrosexual because, in their eyes, the two are competitors for the same slices of social/economic/political/cultural pie.
Added a minute later: Just apply the principle I stated – they maximize their betrayal. It’s hardly a betrayal to put down someone on another continent, but to turn on a fellow citizen who speaks the same language and is of the same culture is betrayal gold.
I think yours is the one where sliced bread originated. Just going from memory.
Invented in Iowa, but first commercially used by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.
Just so y’all can collect ’em all:
I’ll add one thing you might have meant to put in there but omitted – the inconsistencies. Watching liberals pretzel their logic inside out to heap ridicule and scorn on Trump when Trump did something they historically have promoted – his lack of willingness to pulverize Russian troops chasing after ISIS in Syria soon after he gained office, for instance, would be funny if not so tragic.
It’s the name of a Shawnee subdivison and village. The village in present-day Ohio moved a couple of times as Shawnee circumstances changed, so why can’t the name stick to more than one place? One group of Shawnee moved to Missouri while others were still trying, under the leadership of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, to resist the Euro-American takeover. So a Chillicothe in Missouri is not surprising. I don’t know what would account for the others.
Possibly the other Chillicothes are places where Liz Warren held a real estate interest?
I think she claimed to be Cherokee, not Shawnee. 90 percent of the Wanabi nation claims Cherokee ancestry.
Why? There are times I liked factory work. It is good pay.
But Precious Junior might get his mittens dirty. We can’t have that!
Personally, I worked in an oil refinery for awhile. It was fun. Lots of maintenance projects like fixing dike walls.
How do you pronounce it?
Common pronunciation is Chill‘-a-coth’-ee with the last two syllables sounding a lot like coffee, except th instead of f.
Unless you spell it Chalahgawtha.
One thing I’ve noticed is how focused liberals are on “hate,” presumably by conservatives. On facebook, one or two I am exposed to often post the little pre-manufactured “truism” blocks (in colorful lettering they copy from somewhere) as implied lectures against various kinds of “hate.”
I’m curious where they are actually witnessing all this hate. I think what explains it is that THEY hate (non-progressives) and so think that is a natural state of affairs for people. Hence, conservatives must logically have a reverse syndrome of “caring” people, and need to be “corrected,” even if it’s not showing anywhere. Curious. And as far as reacting, it sure doesn’t make me want to be around any of them.
Me too. It appears they seem to believe there is only one solution to every problem. Richard Epstein commented that he did not witness Obama as a great thinker, that Obama had a mind like concrete. I find that true for many people.
I’d rather said liberal move into the tribal rain dancer’s village so said liberal can more fully embrace the tribal culture said liberal claims to admire. That of course will include no electricity, no running water, finding his own food, no freedom to be different, probably no dissent from the decrees of the tribal chief, and probably true tribalism that calls for war with and death to rival tribes.
These people who claim such admiration for primitive tribes must ignore a lot of historical facts to keep such admiration alive.
In particular the claim that Native Americans were peaceful and lived in harmony with “Nature.” That requires ignoring the vast cultural differences among various tribes that inhabited North America. It requires ignoring that some of those tribes constantly warred against each other and against others. It requires ignoring that some of the tribes used hunting and agricultural techniques that made the land uninhabitable after a while (which worked only because the human population density of North America was sufficiently low that the tribe could move to find new land to abuse).
This is like recognizing that there are differences between men and women and that out of wedlock births are bad for children. All the evidence points that way but it doesn’t fit the evidence so it is ignored.
When it came to North American tribes, the tribal chiefs didn’t have that kind of power. They could persuade, but not command. That was always a sore point with European-American governments, who wanted to deal with just one person who could speak for everyone. And while relationships with rival tribes could be very violent–continually violent–they stopped far short of genocide. The introduction of guns increased the fatality rates considerably, but still they stopped short of genocide.
I don’t know how that compared with South American tribal societies.
The Aztecs were in North America.
Well, so they were.
And even here in the Great Lakes region, among the Algonquian-speaking groups, the further south you went, the greater power the chiefs had. Still, the dispersed nature of their power was not to the liking of their would-be conquerers.
True. Or just would-be neighbors.
Not so sure where you’d find the would-be neighbors. The Native peoples were urged to give up their communal land ownership, to give up their inefficient agricultural ways and to settle down to be American-style farmers. So here in Michigan, there were a few who did that. You can look in the Department of Interior’s online database of land patents, and see some Anishinabi names on land patents along the south edge of Kent County, and you can read in the local county histories that there were some who settled down to farm with plows, next door to their white neighbors. But at the same time there were those neighbors who didn’t like it, and who agitated to get the Land Office to refuse to sell land to Indians.
I don’t know the full story. About ten years ago I mentioned to a historian of the Early Republic (she was born and raised around here) that I was finding these places as the subject for some bicycle rides. She urged me to keep in touch about my findings, but although I’ve done some of the bicycle rides, I haven’t researched it more deeply.
I see your problem. You know how to use a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. The aborigines of North America were not even close to a monoculture. There were hunter gatherers and agriculturalists. The Five Civilized Tribes were already settled down on their own lands and practicing agriculture. But they still had the problem of no real central authority (controlling legal authority, perhaps?), and each town or the young men might decide to conduct a raid against their neighbors of European (or mixed) descent.
Most of those in Michigan were both. They didn’t fall strictly into either category. But those further south in Michigan did more agriculture than those further north.
Environmental determinism can be abused,e.g. when comparing southern European cultures to those further north, but in this case it seems to explain a lot.
“But we’re friends, and we had a wonderful weekend together. I can disagree with people on various topics and continue to value their friendship, but many of them cannot. So I said nothing.
Not minor. So argue with us at Ricochet. We are your friends and worth arguing with. I don’t know man. If these people can’t value your friendship because of your views, what’s the value of such a friendship?
Must be something you share that is so precious that it is greater than their contempt for your country. And if they hold the country you love in contempt, do they feel the same about you?
If they were family would you hold your tongue? I bet you’d kick some ass. I would. Look, I know it’s a tough, even painful place to be. That’s why you’re commenting. I’ve been through it. My advice, unsolicited, is to argue with your feet. Walk the hell away. They are beneath your contempt. But that’s just me.
Good luck country boy.