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.
The Whole World Makes Them Mad
I drove from Orlando to Savannah this weekend and stopped for gas somewhere along I-95 in rural Georgia. I pulled into the pump right behind a Subaru station wagon with Virginia plates (which I presume are from Alexandria, not Roanoke), with the back covered in all sorts of left-wing bumper stickers: Coexist in religious symbols, Eat Local, all sorts of peace vs. war stickers, Love Our Mother (with a picture of the Earth), Hillary 2016, and so on and so forth.
I suspect these are standard equipment, or at least an inexpensive option, on a Subaru. There were two women in the car, I’d guess in their late 20s, who I believe were partners. One had shoulder-length blondish hair, the other had a crew cut. Both wore baggy jeans and sweatshirts, both were a bit overweight (I cast no stones here…), and both had nose rings. Crew cut girl had a wallet in the back pocket of her jeans, with a long silver chain attaching it to her belt. They looked like they were doing a parody of lesbians – working hard to meet every stereotype. If they were in a Saturday Night Live skit, they would get complaints from the LGBTQ community.
When I went into the gas station to use the restroom, I noticed that someone was walking behind me, and I reflexively held the door open and stood aside, allowing that person to enter first. It was one of the ladies from the Subaru, and she brushed past me without looking at me and mumbled “thanks” in a sarcastic tone, like I had just handed her a used Kleenex. She was pissed. And she exuded unpleasantness. I thought to myself, “There goes a very unhappy person.”
I have two lesbian couples in my medical practice. All four of those ladies are over 60, in stable long-term relationships, are conservative politically, and are just the nicest ladies you’d ever want to meet. I always look forward to seeing them. They’re happy, comfortable in their own skin, and they care about other people.
I have no idea if young lesbians tend to be progressive and if older lesbians tend to be conservative. That is not what this post is about, and I hope the comments below don’t pursue such speculation.
My point is that it was obviously not her sexual preference that made the Subaru lady unpleasant at the gas station. It was her progressive politics. It seems that her progressivism makes her unhappy. And it’s easy to see why.
She hates the evil oil companies who seek to destroy the earth, but she just gave $50 to Exxon.
She hates big banks and giant international corporations, but she paid that $50 with her Visa card, who makes a profit on her support of Exxon.
She hates capitalism, but she just bought a tall can of organic iced tea in a gas station in rural Georgia. That is possible only in a capitalist system, and she knows it. Saint Bernie says capitalism gives us too many choices of shampoo etc, but nobody in rural Georgia drinks organic iced tea. Only urban progressives traveling through. So they have it.
She worships planet earth like a god and hates humans for having any impact on the natural world at all. But she travels by interstate because it’s so convenient.
She hates the condescension of the patriarchy, but when some chubby guy in sweats opens the door for her, what is she to do but walk through? A snarky “thanks” does little to conceal her understandable irritation.
I would be irritable too, if I had just done five things I hate in the past two minutes.
The whole world must make her mad. No wonder she’s irritable. I just can’t imagine. I don’t have the energy to maintain that much frustration. Especially if my life has been made obviously and immeasurably better by the oil companies, banks, international corporations, capitalism, highways, and western culture. Could some of those things stand some improvement from time to time? Sure. But so could I, frankly. And presumably, so could she. But self-improvement is difficult and unpleasant. It’s easier to demand improvement from others, I suppose.
But is it? Because if the only way for you to be happy is for other people to do what you want, then you’ll never be happy. Never. Happiness becomes absolutely impossible at that point. So anger becomes your only option.
The anger of progressives is scary. And getting scarier. Political violence has always been a characteristic of the left, and I can see why. The whole world makes them mad.
And the better our lives become, the angrier they are going to get. So how do you make people like that happy? I hate to even contemplate that.
What an unhappy existence. I feel bad for progressives. I really do.
I also fear them. Our public discourse has gotten nasty and vicious. I suspect that increased political violence is very likely soon, perhaps even in this next political election.
This is going to get nasty.
It’s understandable, I suppose, if you try to look at it from the perspective of progressive true believers. The whole world makes them mad, and they reach the point where they feel the need to lash out.
I feel bad for them. But I feel worse for the rest of us. This is going to get nasty.
Published in General
The term has a heritage of over a hundred years. The more that I see the new progressives as the natural heirs of the old progressives, the more I’ve been using progressive as well as leftist. And what they advocate really is progress. It’s progress towards a bad end. Progressive does not carry much of a connotation of “goodness” in my mind, not after having read and lived the history of the last 100+ years of progress.
You are correct – it is not. This post is not about homosexuality.
I don’t really know how that plays into it all. That might be an interesting post, but as I said in my post, I don’t think her sexuality was relevant – only her politics.
I was simply using the Subaru lady as an example of an unhappy progressive. Scratch that – an unhappy leftist. You’re right that’s a better term.
I only used her as an example because it just happened a couple days ago, and I had time afterwards in the car to put a post together in my head while driving – nothing else to do.
I think you have a very good point here…
Another good point. I’ve wondered if this was a factor as well. In fact, I’ve had a post bouncing around inside my head about this for a week or two…
Being alienated from society would lead to radical politics. With increasing acceptance of homosexuality you’d think that would decrease, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. They follow the fringe as it moves away from the center.
When we moved to the San Antonio area the fluoride war was still raging. These were the two biggest anti-fluoride leaders until the initiative finally passed in 2000.
It seems like just yesterday that it was the right-wing wackos who were against fluoridated water supplies. Maybe some of them still are. I still wish I could find the cartoon about it that appeared in newspapers shortly after the fall of the USSR.
We have non-fluoridated water at our house (i.e. our own well) so we take care to use fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash.
I do try to remind people that those who claim the term “progressive ” are claiming a heritage that includes eugenics and racial stratification, and an explicit rejection of the concept that all people are equal.
In far northern New York state, where our son had a Subaru while attending college, Subarus are practical transportation and do not carry political significance. But they do carry some political weight in the urban area in which we his parents lived. So our son believed it important to put his National Rifle Association sticker on his Subaru so he wasn’t mistaken for one of the crunchy lefties who drove most of the Subarus in our area.
In San Antonio’s case, that was right, and apparently the John Birch society thought it was a commie plot. And of course some of the most extreme people on the right and left seem to meet up in some bizarre crash around the back side of sanity. Reminds me of general Jack D. Ripper.
The answer is either: 1) You don’t, or 2) You do what they want.
And that’s what we’re fighting over.
But . . .
Outrage is effective at generating support and encouraging fundraising. Groups and people on the right use it to some extent. There are right-wing and even Christian podcasts I have stopped listening to because the host spends too much time on the outrage of the day.
I agree w/ @JerryGiordano on this one. ‘Progress’ is considered good/positive (especially presently) and you cannot get people to understand that progress is not always and everywhere good. I’m adopting ‘far leftist’ and ‘wokeist’ myself.
Perhaps you paid extra for the “No Stickers” package?
I can only imagine your view of the utility of a Subaru in snow and ice is somewhat the same as these big city dwellers view of everyone in rural areas having trucks. There are actually very real utilitarian values. I just got rid of my Subaru when I migrated from Utah to Arizona.
double post deleted
It’s not easy being queen . . .
Yeah, there I went, ignoring your OP, in which you wrote:
In fairness, I didn’t attribute it to age. I guess my point was to dispute part of what you wrote, which was:
It is not clear to me that the sexual preference of the particular Subaru-lebian-gal that you mentioned was unrelated to her unpleasantness, or her politics. I do agree that radical political views, and general unpleasantness, are not characteristics of every homosexual person.
Douglas Murray’s suggestion is that the two — meaning homosexuality and radical Leftism — seem to be tied together for some people. My impression is that he is correct, though I base this on anecdote and not empirical evidence. There are certainly exceptions.
What an insightful post; thank you. I don’t know who said this, but it rings truer to me with every day that passes: “Conservatives are primarily motivated by gratitude, while progressives are motivated by outrage.”
Lots of wisdom here.
Most of my introspection over the past couple of years has revolved around the relationship between the various virtues and the beliefs and behaviors that arise from them. It’s been slow going (I’m not well read), but my tentative conclusion is that true humility is necessary for the other virtues to arise. I say tentative, because I think gratitude is a close second and may even be primary. Gratitude and humility seem so closely interlaced that at times I wonder if they are essentially the same thing.
In any case, I’m not sure whether outrage is the primary motivator for progressives; I’ll have to think on that. But I do agree that humility/gratitude are at the core of conservatism.
It brings to mind the Frankfurt School Socialists who fled Nazi Germany to come here and hated it because the people were essentially happy and content and therefore had no reason to join the socialist revolution.
I seem to be substantially motivated by aggravation, caused by outrageous “progressive” ingratitude. :)
I’m pretty sure I took “progress” in a literal, neutral sense even before I read C.S. Lewis’s scathing indictment of the term in the Chronicles of Narnia. But I am going to continue to use the term progressive against the left. Nobody is going to convince me to give up my practice of using leftist cliches and shibboleths against the left, as it’s one of the few joys in life.
The C.S. Lewis passage is in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, presumably written against the Progressives of his day:
But even if you and Jerry don’t agree on this usage, we can at least agree not to call them “liberals.”
In general, the left goes to great lengths to be moralistic without being moralistic. That’s why they try to impute a moral value to the neutral term “progress,” or use a word like “inappropriate” when they mean “wrong.” And so on. If they’re going to twist themselves into pretzels with their use of language, I’m willing to help twist them harder.
I don’t think that they understand that you are mocking them.
That’s OK. It’s best when they can’t quite tell for sure.
When I first started watching Russian movies back in 2006, I got the distinct impression that the censors (and the party they represented) sometimes couldn’t quite tell when they were being mocked, either.
Miserabilism, the lyrics:
Neil Tennant wrote that song in the late 90s, I think. As usual for the Pet Shop Boys, it’s arch, cutting, amused, and resigned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPBmzTvKsmw
Great observation.
Imagine living in dedicated left-world. You can never be woke enough; someone is always waiting to denounce you like a good apparatchik. If you can’t count yourself as a member of enough oppressed groups you will always be suspect to those who wear the proper credentials. The constant strain makes you crazy. And I don’t see the pendulum swinging back any time soon.