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After my post of yesterday, about liberals and their wallowing in their politics, I came across this from a discussion at the ShrinkWrapped blog, from about a year ago. It is interesting how these things have a way of turning up just at the time when I have been writing about them. The discussion was about an Emmett Tyrrell piece on liberals and aggression, and a commenter says:
Tyrrell has a point about liberal discomfort with aggression [...] but it doesn't quite ring true for me. Living in deepest darkest Blue America as I do, I find that liberals are very comfortable indeed with their aggression. "Political outrage" is a sanctified undertaking here. What creates the anxiety is the nature of the target.
Hatred, loathing, contempt, imagined acts of violence, wishes for destruction, etc. are freely expressed here as long as the target is approved. I don't have to tell you who that is. But if the target of aggression is an Approved Victim Group, then the pacifist voice arises (often violently!).
I have yet to find a template that explains liberal attitudes, thinking and behavior as well as the idea that it is a fundamentally and overwhelmingly moralistic undertaking whose primary anxiety is to avoid identification with oppressors (aka, traditionally successful groups)and to be seen to identify with traditionally loser or inferior groups (aka, victims).
For my own speculative purposes, it is a given that in any human interaction one of the primary oppositions that must be engaged is rank/affiliation (in Jungian terms, the masculine/feminine). Liberals seek to attain the highest moral ranking by making affiliation an absolute value (eg, egalitarianism, moral relativism, hypersensitivity to offense). The kind of affiliation they specialize in is maternal affiliation with the wounded child. So if you can achieve victim status, they can be your cooing mother. Ironically, liberals are always looking to play the Pieta. What they loathe is the Father, who creates affiliation precisely by means of ranking. Lakoff, etc. Enuff for now!
Posted by: EssEm | September 16, 2006 at 01:20 PM
I thought the above comment made some valid points about liberals or progressives.
And as I was making my blog rounds, I find that Flanders Fields had excerpted from a blog by a Dutch blogger, who wrote about the changes to her country, thanks to the combined forces of Islam and leftism, or progressivism as she refers to it. The whole blog entry is well worth a read, painting a touching picture of the Netherlands before it was changed, in contrast to the Netherlands of today. I will quote just the parts which seem most relevant to the subject of leftism or 'progressivism' and its pernicious worldview, which I blogged about yesterday.
There is a force active in the Netherlands, that lives on this fear; a force that savours tearing apart the textures of traditional society. It is the force of the progressives: it hates contentment, it hates the citizen that dares to be statisfied with his life, it hates the soap bubble of safety that the common man wishes for himself, it hates the tranquility that the status quo gives to the citizenry. This force has always bothered the citizen with so-called progressiveness. Women's Lib, gay marriage, long hairs, legal weed, etc., etc. Of course I have nothing against feminism or gay marriages, but I distrust the motives of the progressivos that all of a sudden feel the urgent need to defend gays or women. These people are not *really* interested in the elevation of humanity, they are only interested in Schadenfreude. Time and again they have laughed at the stupid, frightened bourgois asshole who was forced to tear down yet another one of his sacrosanct views and make sense of something he did not know, did not understand. The desparate fear of the average citizen is the food and drink of the progressive. Self-satisfied he can conclude that he is capable of embracing a world view that is frightening to the average citizen.
Look, you bourgois asshole! See our world, and look at your small, petty bourgois asshole existence. Our world is greater and deeper then yours; our world knows suffering, our world knows hunger and death and violence. Our world knows grand ideals. Our world understands criminals and pedophiles, our world understands terrorists, our world understands everything. That is why we are superior to you and to prove it, we will force our world upon you and we will feed on your fear, and we will laugh as you go down screaming. Because how do you *dare* think you can be content with yourself? Everytime you think you have neared us, we will widen the chasm further. Everything we can find, we will smear in your face; all your certainties we will undermine, everything that makes you feel safe, we will contaminate. Your arch enemies we will welcome cheeringly and house them under your noses. Everything we will take away and we will make sure there is nowhere left for you to turn. If you protest, we will insult and belittle you. If you resist, we will sentence you. We will manipulate you and lie to you untill you have no thought other then the fiery wish to be absolved of your guilt and affectionately seal your own definitive downfall. We will transform your world into a hell; that serves a higher purpose, although we don't have a clue what that purpose actually is.''
[Emphasis mine]
The Dutch blogger, Lagonda, seems to be describing what the ShrinkWrapped commenter describes in terms of liberal aggression, though she describes it in much starker and more emotional terms, effectively portraying the malice that seems inherent in much of the coerced agenda of the left.
Implicit in all of the liberal/leftist/progressive obsessions which I remarked on yesterday is the animus towards normality and contentment and innocence. The progressive always seems drawn to the dark side, the seamy side, the abnormal and transgressive, the grotesque, the ugly. But perversely, all of this is celebrated as good, as desirable, and as superior to the 'bourgeois' normality they disdain.
There is malice in much of the left's agenda, and it is very poorly concealed if it is concealed at all. And yet they masquerade as being 'peaceful' and tolerant and loving people. That is the effrontery of it.
Reading Lagonda's blog, I found her contrasting descriptions of life as she knew it in more innocent days in her country, and life as it is now, to be sad and poignant. And I can empathize; although our situation in America is not exactly like their experience with virtually unchecked leftism and aggressive Islam, we have our own equally implacable enemies here in America, and all of us in America, except the youngest among us, have a memory of an America that bore little resemblance to the changeling America that has been substituted for it while we weren't paying attention.
As I say repeatedly here, all of us in the West are in the same boat. We each face our own demographic war: the Europeans with their Islamic populations and other Third-Worlders, and we here in America with our second Mexican war and mass immigration in general.
Does it serve any useful purpose to analyze the left and their motivations and what makes them tick? At times I wonder if it is just speculation that serves no purpose; trying to understand them seems doomed to failure, because their behavior and their inner lives seem to defy logic and common sense. But it does seem useful to recognize the malice and the destructive impulse that is behind their agenda, and we must recognize that the malice is directed towards all of us who represent the old order of things: the traditional beliefs and ways on which they have declared war. Just as many of us refuse to recognize that the Moslems or the Mexicans have declared war on us, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are prone to deny the reality of the left's warfare on the traditional West.
Tyrrell has a point about liberal discomfort with aggression [...] but it doesn't quite ring true for me. Living in deepest darkest Blue America as I do, I find that liberals are very comfortable indeed with their aggression. "Political outrage" is a sanctified undertaking here. What creates the anxiety is the nature of the target.
Hatred, loathing, contempt, imagined acts of violence, wishes for destruction, etc. are freely expressed here as long as the target is approved. I don't have to tell you who that is. But if the target of aggression is an Approved Victim Group, then the pacifist voice arises (often violently!).
I have yet to find a template that explains liberal attitudes, thinking and behavior as well as the idea that it is a fundamentally and overwhelmingly moralistic undertaking whose primary anxiety is to avoid identification with oppressors (aka, traditionally successful groups)and to be seen to identify with traditionally loser or inferior groups (aka, victims).
For my own speculative purposes, it is a given that in any human interaction one of the primary oppositions that must be engaged is rank/affiliation (in Jungian terms, the masculine/feminine). Liberals seek to attain the highest moral ranking by making affiliation an absolute value (eg, egalitarianism, moral relativism, hypersensitivity to offense). The kind of affiliation they specialize in is maternal affiliation with the wounded child. So if you can achieve victim status, they can be your cooing mother. Ironically, liberals are always looking to play the Pieta. What they loathe is the Father, who creates affiliation precisely by means of ranking. Lakoff, etc. Enuff for now!
Posted by: EssEm | September 16, 2006 at 01:20 PM
I thought the above comment made some valid points about liberals or progressives.
And as I was making my blog rounds, I find that Flanders Fields had excerpted from a blog by a Dutch blogger, who wrote about the changes to her country, thanks to the combined forces of Islam and leftism, or progressivism as she refers to it. The whole blog entry is well worth a read, painting a touching picture of the Netherlands before it was changed, in contrast to the Netherlands of today. I will quote just the parts which seem most relevant to the subject of leftism or 'progressivism' and its pernicious worldview, which I blogged about yesterday.
There is a force active in the Netherlands, that lives on this fear; a force that savours tearing apart the textures of traditional society. It is the force of the progressives: it hates contentment, it hates the citizen that dares to be statisfied with his life, it hates the soap bubble of safety that the common man wishes for himself, it hates the tranquility that the status quo gives to the citizenry. This force has always bothered the citizen with so-called progressiveness. Women's Lib, gay marriage, long hairs, legal weed, etc., etc. Of course I have nothing against feminism or gay marriages, but I distrust the motives of the progressivos that all of a sudden feel the urgent need to defend gays or women. These people are not *really* interested in the elevation of humanity, they are only interested in Schadenfreude. Time and again they have laughed at the stupid, frightened bourgois asshole who was forced to tear down yet another one of his sacrosanct views and make sense of something he did not know, did not understand. The desparate fear of the average citizen is the food and drink of the progressive. Self-satisfied he can conclude that he is capable of embracing a world view that is frightening to the average citizen.
Look, you bourgois asshole! See our world, and look at your small, petty bourgois asshole existence. Our world is greater and deeper then yours; our world knows suffering, our world knows hunger and death and violence. Our world knows grand ideals. Our world understands criminals and pedophiles, our world understands terrorists, our world understands everything. That is why we are superior to you and to prove it, we will force our world upon you and we will feed on your fear, and we will laugh as you go down screaming. Because how do you *dare* think you can be content with yourself? Everytime you think you have neared us, we will widen the chasm further. Everything we can find, we will smear in your face; all your certainties we will undermine, everything that makes you feel safe, we will contaminate. Your arch enemies we will welcome cheeringly and house them under your noses. Everything we will take away and we will make sure there is nowhere left for you to turn. If you protest, we will insult and belittle you. If you resist, we will sentence you. We will manipulate you and lie to you untill you have no thought other then the fiery wish to be absolved of your guilt and affectionately seal your own definitive downfall. We will transform your world into a hell; that serves a higher purpose, although we don't have a clue what that purpose actually is.''
[Emphasis mine]
The Dutch blogger, Lagonda, seems to be describing what the ShrinkWrapped commenter describes in terms of liberal aggression, though she describes it in much starker and more emotional terms, effectively portraying the malice that seems inherent in much of the coerced agenda of the left.
Implicit in all of the liberal/leftist/progressive obsessions which I remarked on yesterday is the animus towards normality and contentment and innocence. The progressive always seems drawn to the dark side, the seamy side, the abnormal and transgressive, the grotesque, the ugly. But perversely, all of this is celebrated as good, as desirable, and as superior to the 'bourgeois' normality they disdain.
There is malice in much of the left's agenda, and it is very poorly concealed if it is concealed at all. And yet they masquerade as being 'peaceful' and tolerant and loving people. That is the effrontery of it.
Reading Lagonda's blog, I found her contrasting descriptions of life as she knew it in more innocent days in her country, and life as it is now, to be sad and poignant. And I can empathize; although our situation in America is not exactly like their experience with virtually unchecked leftism and aggressive Islam, we have our own equally implacable enemies here in America, and all of us in America, except the youngest among us, have a memory of an America that bore little resemblance to the changeling America that has been substituted for it while we weren't paying attention.
As I say repeatedly here, all of us in the West are in the same boat. We each face our own demographic war: the Europeans with their Islamic populations and other Third-Worlders, and we here in America with our second Mexican war and mass immigration in general.
Does it serve any useful purpose to analyze the left and their motivations and what makes them tick? At times I wonder if it is just speculation that serves no purpose; trying to understand them seems doomed to failure, because their behavior and their inner lives seem to defy logic and common sense. But it does seem useful to recognize the malice and the destructive impulse that is behind their agenda, and we must recognize that the malice is directed towards all of us who represent the old order of things: the traditional beliefs and ways on which they have declared war. Just as many of us refuse to recognize that the Moslems or the Mexicans have declared war on us, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are prone to deny the reality of the left's warfare on the traditional West.
Labels: Leftism, Liberalism, Mass Immigration, Progressivism, Western Civilization, Western Culture