The last five years have exposed a shift in American politics. Gone are the days when we have an election, one side wins and the other loses, and we go back to our daily lives with minor grumbling about politics during the evening news. We are now in an endless 24 hour a day news cycle designed to whip up resentment, anger and hatred and the 24 hour news cycle has found fertile ground for their agitation in the average American, most of whom are still incredibly ignorant in spite (because?) of having access to all of mankind’s accumulated knowledge and information at their fingertips. Perhaps there is something to be said about the difference between information and knowledge for a different day…..
In the rise of anger and hatred, often risibly attributed exclusively to the right, something new has begun to fester in America. It is something I have noticed before but was reminded of again this weekend and that is just how ugly the Left in America has become.
Not simply physically unattractive, although that is true as you can see from any of Andy Ngo’s tweets of Portland antifa mugshots.
Pretty handsome group of folk all around.
Rather I am talking an ugliness of character and personality.
In 2016 and beyond, the ugliness of the left was exhibited in bitterness and resentment after Hillary lost the election and they collectively refused to accept her loss with any grace and instead dreamed up one crazy conspiracy after another, each one dredged up from their fever swamp imagination more crazy than the last. Ukraine, Trump’s taxes and of course Russia, Russia, Russia! They were furious and their fury was reinvigorated daily by the media. Having little in the way of an outlet other than screeching their fury at the uncaring heavens, many on the left turned their impotent fury toward their friends and family members who voted for Trump. People were summarily unfriended and drummed out of the lives of loved ones because they voted for Literally Hitler. Liberals posted their deeds on social media, gathering acclaim from fellow lefties for the Stunning And Brave Act Of Resistance of clicking a button on social media.
People who voted for Trump that apparently misunderstood our political system and guarantee of free speech and political discourse were blindsided. This happened to us, more with my wife than me because I don’t really give a shit. Liberals and generic Democrat voters were so enraged by a vicious, murderous harpy losing an election that they lashed out the only way they knew how, by crapping all over family members.
Four years later and things are if anything even worse.
With the apparently successful massive election fraud leading to a Biden inauguration in just a few weeks, despite the increasingly unhinged calls to “trust the plan”, you might think that liberals would be content with their “win” and calm down a little. You would be incorrect. If anything, now that Orange Man Bad is vanquished, liberals seem even uglier. Calls for “truth and reconciliation” commissions are common-place as are the increasingly strident calls for violent retribution.
My wife and I got a visceral and personal reminder of this over the weekend. Trump was utterly useless as a President apart from some decent judicial nominations but one thing he did manage to do, quite unintentionally, was to reveal how ugly so many people on the political left are and have always been. Politics on the left, at least for my lifetime, has been driven by the basest of human failings: greed, envy, sloth, lust and resentment. The Democrat Party platform seems modeled on the Seven Deadly Sins: murdering babies, sexual degeneracy of the most grotesque kind, stealing from others you resent for their success.
Obviously there are some awful people on the Right, although far fewer than you might be led to believe from the media and entertainment world. People on the right politically, using that term in the broadest sense, are mostly driven by wanting to be left alone. Conversely people on the left seem obsessed with what everyone else is doing. They are busybodies, the nosy neighbor who is always trying to catch the people across the street doing something wrong. Anyone making a nickel more than they make is clearly cheating the system somehow.
The contemporary left is a haven and a magnet for the ugliest people in our society. The most engaged on the left are the worst. These aren’t people with political differences, they are the living embodiment of the depths of human depravity. There is no room for compromise or unity or reconciliation with them. They have made it clear that is impossible. They will accept only complete submission and perhaps not even that will placate them.
We didn’t want this, we never asked for this but if people will crap all over their own family because of political disagreements it is clear what we are left with. We can no longer co-exist and it is time we stop pretending we can and trying to be the adults in the room.
They have closed off every path but one and they are going to find out that where that path leads is not what they expected.
While I don't disagree with anything you've said here, my perception of the "right" was equally vile once upon a time. Reagan and his Moral Majority cronies are what drove me to register as a democrat when I turned 18. I'm a little older than you, but I vividly remember bombings of clinics and Doctors being assassinated during the pro-life "wars"…oh, the irony. CA was practically a police state under Gov. Pete Wilson in the 1990s. The PMRC was another intrusion into everyone's lives, tho it was bi-partisan intrusion. I have grown thankfully over the years and no longer identify (or vote) as a Dem, but Im no R either. Both sides are corrupt and just gross any way you look at it.
I agree, things are lining up for the shit-storm of the century and it is going to get ugly. I just think there is plenty of blood on everyone's hands by this point, both R and D.
To be fair, the really radical anti-abortion people were a tiny number and were mostly condemned by the rest of the pro-life movement, while the most vulgar and extreme on the Left are treated as comrades in arms by the mainstream Left. Of course it is also the case that the GOP doesn't really represent the Right in any sense anyway and hasn't at any point in my life.
That is true, re: the radicals. Imagine how the optics might have been if we were in the 24/7 "news" cycle back then along with the internet. Those were very different times. Not too many "mass shootings" back then either. Had the populace been force-fed propaganda like they are now, I beleive it would have been a much uglier time. But yes, the media bias these days is right out in broad daylight for anyone to see, should they bother to look. I also agree with your statement on the GOP. My father is a lifelong, straight ticket R, and I could never understand why until these last five-ten years. He's not repped by the GOP, but he couldn't allow himself to be associated with "the others" either. Now that I'm much older and at least a little wiser I fully understand. For myself, I choose neither and registered Indie. I let my conscience be my guide, not MSM talking points or political mailers.
jl – you're going to have to wear the consequences of your actions. Imagine voting to allow unborn children to be killed?
And FFS stop pussyfooting around. It's all over bar being rounded up and loaded into cattle cars. I'm not seeing *any* freakin' push back. How many fines would be issued if every time a city inspector tried to issue a citation to a business for being open they were lynched by the customers? I mean, literally.
The US constitution is wasted on you guys. It really fucking is.
"They have closed off every path but one and they are going to find out that where that path leads is not what they expected".
Secession. Or a bloody civil war conflict and then secession. The left need to be driven to abandon the right to our horrid, sexist, racist cesspits of despair while they flee to their utopian dreamlands.
The rallying cry must be: "Secession now"!
I prefer to frame it as dissolving the union so that it is clear that it is mutually agreed upon divorce, but as I have said before I don't think the Left will let us go without first causing them enough pain to consider it seriously.
The pathology of the Left is self-hate. They feel pain every day of their existence, and want to burn it all down.
Leftism is rule by the mentally unwell.
Yep. It attract unhappy people bent on making everyone else as miserable as they are, just like feminism is how homely women get more attractive women to be as bitter and lonely as they are.
The parallels between the two groups are unmistakable. And their intersection? Whoa. Talk about ugly…