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Why Are Progressives So Darned Angry?
In terms of seriousness, I realize that this question ranks right up there with “Why is There Air?” (which was a pretty funny comedy album from back in the 60s). There have been hundreds of books and articles which have examined the “roots of progressive rage.” At times I believe that we have seen so much progressive fury that we have almost become inured to it. Like most people, I usually adhere to the philosophy of “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and progressives gotta rant.” However, during the holiday season, I ran across two instances that caused me to re-examine my own thinking about our current social and political environment.
The first instance was brought about by the arrival of my Sports Illustrated which featured its “Sportsperson of the Year”, Megan Rapinoe. Since I don’t follow either men’s or women’s soccer, I took SI’s word at face value that she is a star in her field. However, I thought the cover photo of her was a bit odd; she was immaculately dressed but held in her hands a heavy sledgehammer. I suppose this was meant to hold some sort of symbolism but the somewhat hostile half-smirk on her face did cause me to wonder if, just out of camera range, there was a box of kittens or maybe even a harp seal. One could also imagine that hanging over Ms. Rapinoe’s bed, there was an autographed photo of Aileen Wuornos. I read later that Ms. Rapinoe, at the awards ceremony, showed her appreciation for this prestigious award by lambasting her hosts for not awarding other women in the past.
The second instance was generated as I was channel surfing and fell upon WOSU, the local PBS station. There appeared to be a panel discussion of distinguished academics (the host referred to them as distinguished and I would never contradict her). The conversation had been relatively mundane when one of the participants, a gentleman by the name of Eric Alterman, blurted out something to the effect of “…and by the way, the members of the Greatest Generation were not fighting for this country; they were fighting only for people like them”. (Which I took to be white people.) A brief titter came from those in attendance and Alterman sat back in his chair with a Rapinoesque smirk on his face evidently pleased with his witticism.
These two unrelated events, by two boorish people, are insignificant by themselves. However, they are representative of the kaleidoscope of idiocy that has only worsened during the last three years.
It’s hard to imagine but progressivism in the United States hasn’t always been associated with the lunatic fringe. While it’s true that politicians such as Robert La Follette and William Jennings Bryan and muckrakers such as Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair weren’t exactly loved by bankers and industrialists, they were eloquent and thoughtful advocates for lower and middle-class Americans.
So how did the terms “progressive” and “raging wingnut” become synonymous? Like a lot of other folks, I think the 60s never really left us; they just morphed into something even more hideous. Ask a progressive today what he (or she) thinks of the 1968 Democratic Convention or the 1969 “Days of Rage” instigated by the Weathermen and you’re apt to get a starry-eyed recitation of how magical the 60s were.
I have my own memories of this period; being up to my derriere in mud in Vietnam, having my bus stoned by hoodlums as I left Oakland Army Terminal and gazing at the smoldering ruins of the ROTC Building at Kent State in 1970. There was nothing magical about this period; it was just plain rotten (except for the music, of course).
Spring ahead to the early 2000s and this “progressive rage” began to reappear as a response to “the warmonger Bush”. As I watched the street protests against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (I had been recalled to active military duty in 2002) there was an unmistakable feeling of deja vu as I watched the usual suspects such as Jane Fonda mouthing the same platitudes as they had back in the 60s.
However, what really stood out for me was an evening in which Swift Boat Veteran John O’Neill appeared on CNN with John Kerry apologist Lawrence O’Donnell. I’m not sure if the event was recorded for posterity on YouTube but I would urge everyone to take a look at it because I believe that it was a prime example of how the Left had been taken over by the lunatic fringe. The confrontation was almost comical; the soft-spoken combat veteran (O’Neill) being screamed at by the draft dodger lunatic (O’Donnell). Like many people, I thought that O’Donnell would be given a “time-out” by CNN for this childish display of temper. However, I learned later that O’Donnell had been widely praised for his “passion” in his “debate” with O’Neill. Many Americans, like me, wondered if a first-grader began screaming at a classmate over who was entitled to the last cookie; would he be praised for his “passion”? No matter; although I did not realize it, this encounter was soon to become the template for all progressives thereafter. Facts not on your side? No problem, simply start screaming! Can’t comprehend the issue? Just label your opponent a “sexist”, a “homophobe”, a “racist” or a “fascist” and walk away, declaring the argument won. And this is where we stand today.
It’s not difficult to see how we arrived here. But why? Why did progressives go from helping to hating? Why have they turned their hatred into some sort of macabre religion? And, most importantly, is this hatred and rage growing at a rate that this country cannot survive?
Progressives tell us that their rage comes from Donald Trump’s election but that’s totally laughable. No, the rage existed far before President Trump.
No doubt there has been a confluence of many factors. Certainly, the culture of narcissism (admirably written about by Christopher Lasch and also by Roger Simon) has played a part. In addition, the idea of instant gratification (“I want what I want and I want it now”) certainly figures in. And, an educational system that values feelings over scholarship has to be considered. Finally, the rise of social media has played a part, although I would argue that it has been the vehicle rather than the cause of all this rage.
However, I don’t believe that we could have been brought to our current situation without two things:
a. THE WORST LEADERSHIP THAT THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER EXPERIENCED.
When the oh-so-erudite Barrack Obama told his followers to “get in their faces” when it came to expressing ideas, he may as well have been giving some of those people loaded guns. He knew better and he did it anyway. Each time he had to choose between being the President of all the people or being the devoted disciple of Saul Alinsky, he always chose the latter. He cannot duck his share of responsibility for our current social and political environment.
As for the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”, well, how big a laugh has that become? Any dignity that the U.S. Senate had remaining was forever lost during the Kavanaugh hearings. The subsequent “warning” sent to the Supreme Court by Senator(s) Whitehouse, Blumenthal, Hirono, Durbin, and Gillibrand simply proved that pandering to the lunatic fringe had taken the place of serious legislation.
Still, I reserve my award for the worst politician in the history of this country to one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her “Deplorables” moment ensured that this nation would be forever divided. Her subsequent comments that “civility can start again” only when Democrats take power was some of the most despicable verbiage ever from a person who has made a career out of being despicable. Those comments simply poured gasoline onto the fire that had been blazing since her defeat.
b. MEDIA & “ENTERTAINMENT” THAT RESEMBLES THAT OF THE 1950s SOVIET UNION.
The state of American media seems to worsen on a daily basis. The only question is how low can they go? One of the best things that I have learned in life is when you’re in a hole, stop digging. Left-wing media and entertainment seem to be utterly incapable of this. Case in point: Writing in Salon, Amanda Marcotte asserted that “…conservatives have increasingly embraced the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ to mean basically ‘f*** you’ to anyone that they’ve deemed less than legitimate Americans.” Just to show that this was no fluke, she later added that Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel were “the platonic ideal of fascist propaganda.” Another media website advised that “white women’s obsession with ‘being nice’ was one of the most dangerous tools of white supremacy.”
As I was watching Mr. Alterman the thought suddenly hit me; this “distinguished academic” was really no different from Ms. Marcotte or “entertainers” such as Samantha Bee, Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, or for that matter, most progressive politicians and academics. When a person has no discernible talent, the only way they can become (or remain) relevant is to be outrageous. The funny thing about being outrageous; to stay relevant, the person must become more and more outrageous. Where does it end?
I don’t pretend to have a solution. Someone once said, “Don’t argue with a fool. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.” If this is true, it doesn’t give us much hope for the future. Perhaps it isn’t important as to why progressives are so angry. Maybe it’s more important to figure out how we can survive that anger.
I recently made a comment to Henry Racette’s excellent post (“Everything Trump Touches Dies”) that perhaps some sort of “Thermidorian Reaction” will be needed to stop our American Jacobins. That “Reaction” can’t come fast enough for this country.
Published in General
It is said, we believe they are wrong, they believe we are evil. They are so sure of their rightness that any objection must be due to our malevolence. That is combined with an almost unbelievable arrogance that they have the right to ‘shake us out of our complacency’ . I first heard that phrase in the 60’s being said by spoiled punks who were talking about people who worked their way through the Depression, WWII and Korea and finally found peace and prosperity in Ike’s 50s whose ‘complacency’ had finally been achieved.
I’ve mentioned before , I went to high school in a world that resembled ‘Happy Days’ I joined the Navy in 64 when I got out in 67 I found myself in a different world, drugs , riots , sloppy clothes * and all the rest.
* Note prior to @ 1965 singing groups dressed alike, afterwards, Stones, Beatles all dressed like bums.
I feel like I should add something about getting off my lawn.
That is creepy. But he could tell a great story. The slip and fall that caused his TBI was a very sad event. When I was unsuccessfully trying to track down the Upton Sinclair reference (IIRC he used that idea more than once) I came across E. J. Dionne’s affectionate obituary for him.
Yeah, I never heard of her either. You made me look her up. I can say with confidence that she’s way too butch for bikini photos, which were the only kind of pictures that turned up in image search.
Thanks for your comment. I believe that phrase about the U.S. Senate has been attributed to President James Buchanan. Since Buchanan wasn’t much of a President, I believe his opinion of the Senate can be safely discarded.
Why are liberals angry all the time?
They where born too late. Its not 1961, they cant go to the south and have democrats sic dogs on them or get free and vigorous hygiene from a fire hose. The victim groups are getting smaller and smaller, they see themselves of settling great wrongs for the masses – but end up getting insurance to cover breast implants for men. The great questions have been settled.
Same is true for unionists, they’ve gotten all the great injustices out of the workplace – got the 40 hour work week, paid vacations, paid family leave… (lolz) but now just make superfluous demands that drive companies into bankruptcy and industries overseas.
They’re angry because they’re passed their time.
Thanks for your comments. Of all the items on Alinsky’s list of “Rules for Radicals”, I believe the last one (“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”) is the one we see in most use today. The rise of social media and the leftward stampede of the media have made it easier to accomplish this polarization.
Early in the last century American Liberalism died because its narrative had been replaced by progressives. What we called conservatives were big business and well connected folks. Most Republicans and Democrats had been mostly Neo classical liberals with geographic and labor management differences. but both believed in our liberal historical inheritance. Wilson and TR both changed this, along with post WWI immigration of European intellectuals, moving the whole thing into progressivism. It became clear very quickly however with the political/economic sickness in Europe that the progressive movement was dominated by marxists. Since “liberal” no longer represented classical liberalism, the American left adopted it and the term has dominated progressivism since. When Neo classical liberalism was rediscovered, Reagan/Buckley had to redefine it as conservative. Now it’s worse; progressives and marxists of various sorts are no longer seen as foreign subversives, and indeed they actually have more in common with Italian fascism than Soviet communism, but the difference was always exaggerated, and a range of Neo classical liberals are seen as a dying part of the Democrat party and a growing piece of the Republicans.
Thanks for your comment. What you said about unions did ring a bell with me. When I left the military (the first time) back in 1968 I caught on with a small steel company (three plants) in eastern Ohio. During the contract negotiations the following year the union was in a bit of a quandry; they had literally run out of benefits to ask for (their membership had full medical, dental, optical, life insurance up the whazoo, etc.). Finally, they came up with their “final and non negotiable” demand. They wanted a five-bay carwash installed at each plant because the smoke from the furnaces was getting their cars and trucks dirty. I believe it was in the 70s that the steel industry in this country began to tank due to overseas competition. Be careful of what you ask for…
Thus, my reference to Aileen Wuornos! Thanks for your comment.
Thus, the old saying, “Avoid zealots, they are generally humorless.” I was wondering if anyone would pick up on the Bill Cosby album (I was afraid to mention Cosby’s name in case someone might be offended; I keep forgetting that I’m at a web site where folks have some common sense!) As I recall, Cosby’s answer was to his girlfriend who was a philosophy major. Thanks for your comments.
Absolutely. Especially those working in fields like entertainment, journalism, and education. “If just 532 of us had delivered one extra vote, we could win the next close one,” they fantasized, and set about informing their work product for the quest.
The next close one, of course, starred Donald Trump. 16 years of the left’s best efforts at persuasion had led to the election of the most outspoken, politically belligerent right winger yet. In 16 years the left’s derangement had spiraled down from bad luck to apocalyptic impotence. “Nuts” gone nutless!
Thanks for your comment. There was an interesting book by William Voegeli (written back in 2010) titled “Never Enough” which dealt with the American welfare state. Obviously, the “never enough” mentality has expanded far beyond simple welfare issues.
That was a great quote by Mr. Gabriel. Although I cannot deny that the left has “won the culture war”, I sometimes wonder if it was ceded to them by a populace too disinterested in fighting for their own culture.
Ambrose Bierce on the Senate:
In addition, I seem to remember a New York based writer who penned an article telling how “worried” she was that her 10 year old daughter wanted to put an American flag outside their toney upper east side apartment. This was at a time in 2001 when the wreckage from the Twin Towers was still smoldering. The writer didn’t want her daughter to appear as “jingoistic”. Oh, the horror!
Thanks for your comment.
Christopher Caldwell’s new book talks about the de jure Constitution prior to the Civil Rights Act and the de facto one since. Steve Sailer’s Takimag review includes this pull quote:
And that is totally frightening. Another ingredient in the recipe for civil war.
Strong temptation to beat him into submission.
This brings up the “Blank Slate” paradigm, which was endorsed by the late Stephen Jay Gould in his book, “The Mismeasure of Man.” Steven Pinker has refuted it with his book, “The Blank Slate” but it is beloved by leftists, including my daughter who graduated from UCLA with honors in Anthropology. She and I were on a trip one time and I had just finished Pinker’s book. I suggested she read it but she said she would not do so unless I read Gould’s. I pointed out that I had read it and it was in my library. She still refused to read the Pinker book.
The “New Soviet Man” was a dream of communism in which an individual could be conditioned to accept communism and all its contradictions without a qualm. That is the premise of Gould and the behaviorists, like BF Skinner. The problem for them is that much behavior is genetic. Pinker showed this with twin studies but there is now DNA evidence. Plomen and Reich show DNA evidence for behavior.
https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-How-Makes-afterword-Press/dp/0262537982/
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-How-Got-Here-ebook/dp/B073NP8WT3/
Reich chickens out a bit when it gets to political topics like race but the evidence is clear. Conditioning has little effect on adult behavior. The left is dreaming of things that will never happen. Human nature is hard wired.,
Never to be forgotten are those in registration line for classes where students in line with me had no problem stating emphatically they were in college – where I was, mostly education majors – to avoid the draft. Until you wrote this comment about grad school, I’d never made the connection.
I do remember telling my wife that I’d never let them educate MY kids. Alas, an ignorant comment.
You’d think this would be obvious since it hasn’t changed during all of recorded history.
Progressives are self-righteous — I go so far as to say, “self-deified.” It’s no accident that progressivism and secularism have risen together. Progressives are the arbiters of all that is good and holy. Just ask them.
Bishop Barron has written about the four negative beatitudes — those temptations to wealth, pleasure, honor (status), and power — that the “blessed” have overcome. The Left falls for all of them, but power over others to force conformity (political correctness, cancel culture. . .) is the most corrupting and dangerous of all. The others are just side “benefits” of power.
Gary Saul Morson’s article on Leninthink is hair raising and where I see progressivism headed.
A very relevant piece by Mark Bauerlein:
Academia/education. Media. Tech. Bureaucracies. Clinton x 8 years; Bush being “fair.” Obama x 8 years…
Bauerlein gets it.
Yes, yes, yes. He understands. Another good summary from the part you quoted:
And a lot of this happened back when we used to have debates over the federal budget, and the establishment types told us this was not the hill to die on.
Actually it was the hill we died on. Because we funded more jobs to bolster the administrative state. More office space.
Best comment so far.
If I could go back in time and change one thing to fix today’s trouble with the left, it’d be student loans. Better to offer no money to anyone for college than to fund destructive sinecures for armies of useless people. In retrospect, that was guaranteed to create today’s stupid left.
It scores double points with those who already agree with you. It fails to convince anyone.
Reality is very rough and unfair. I myself am not a particularly big fan of it. However, what else can you do but accept it and try to make it a little bit better?
I can understand some of the leftism of that time. Things were very very difficult for poor Irish immigrants. The leftism of today is completely blind to how not-poor the United States is.
Recreational Marxism?