{"id":61486,"date":"2020-11-05T20:48:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T02:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=61486"},"modified":"2020-11-05T20:48:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T02:48:18","slug":"61486","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=61486","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The left is again showing that it can\u2019t stand anyone who disagrees<\/a><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s presidential election hasn\u2019t provided the catharsis that many on the left were awaiting. Instead of the hoped-for \u201cBlue Wave,\u201d\u00a0we have a still-too-close-to-call presidential election<\/a>, while Republicans picked up House seats and appear to have held on to the Senate.<\/p>\n

One response might be self-criticism: to wonder how, after four years of single-mindedly trying to get rid of Trump and marginalize his followers, things didn\u2019t go better. Instead, Democrats\u2019 thinkers seem to be asking themselves variations on \u201cHow can I live in a country where half the people supported Donald Trump?\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Campus Reform Web site, professors around America were expressing anger and claiming to feel \u201cgenuinely unsafe, given the sheer number of people willing to vote for Trump.\u201d Some canceled classes for the rest of the week, apparently because of the emotional strain.<\/p>\n

An article in The New Republic by Andrew Cohen asks: \u201cWhat do we do with all these Trump supporters?<\/a>\u201d (Spoiler: \u201cLearn to live with them and respect your differences\u201d isn\u2019t on the agenda.)<\/p>\n

Instead, Cohen writes about \u201cone of the most grievous if underappreciated wounds of the Trump era: the sad discovery for so many of us over the past four years that so many of our friends, neighbors, business partners and heroes are not who we thought they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohen worries, \u201cNo one really has a good solution about how to strongly and honorably respond to the Trump supporter in our lives. Do we forgive and forget? Turn the other cheek after it\u2019s been slapped?\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Don Lemon offered one possible answer: He said on air that he \u201chad to get rid\u201d of friends who support Trump,\u00a0because \u201cthey\u2019re too far gone.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In The Atlantic, meanwhile,\u00a0Tom Nichols worries<\/a>\u00a0that \u201ca large portion of the electorate chose the sociopath.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was \u2018just like them\u2019 turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong. . . . It\u2019s clear now that far too many of Trump\u2019s voters don\u2019t care about policy, decency or saving our democracy. They care about power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, to be fair, elections are about power. That\u2019s certainly something that Democrats have traditionally understood. But then Nichols turns to racism, arguing that \u201calthough Trump appears to have received a small uptick in\u00a0votes from black men and Latinos<\/a>, the overwhelming share of his supporters are white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, to be fair, America is a majority-white country, so pretty much any mass movement \u2014 certainly including the progressive movement \u2014 is likely to be majority white. (Have you seen a Bernie Sanders rally?) But Nichols\u2019 pivot to racism and talk of \u201cthe obsessions of white anxiety\u201d provides a clue to what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

Moral superiority is an addictive drug, and perhaps the most unfortunate legacy of the Civil Rights era is that it got people on the left dependent on moral superiority for their self-esteem. It was easy to feel superior to the likes of Orval Faubus and Lester Maddox, and it felt good.<\/p>\n

But once you become dependent on moral superiority, you need moral inferiors. Thus, every issue must become one of great moral urgency, in which the people who disagree with you are not simply wrong, but actually evil.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even better if you can think of them as being stupid as well, since that lets you think of yourself as smart.<\/p>\n

This was nicely encapsulated by photographer (and class-war expert) Chris Arnade. Asked \u201cWhy did anyone vote for Trump? Anyone?\u201d Arnade replied: \u201cCheap answer is, some people are frustrated that a professor of philosophy makes three times what they do for cleaning their house, or making sure they are supplied with electricity, or keeping them safe from muggers, or cooking them Pad Thai, only to then be talked down to\u201d and \u201cscolded.\u201d<\/p>\n

People can tolerate differences in wealth and power. Sanctimonious scolding is less tolerable. And treating half the nation as moral lepers is itself a moral failing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And, as Arnade suggests, bad politics as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The left is again showing that it can\u2019t stand anyone who disagrees This year\u2019s presidential election hasn\u2019t provided the catharsis that many on the left were awaiting. Instead of the hoped-for \u201cBlue Wave,\u201d\u00a0we have a still-too-close-to-call presidential election, while Republicans picked up House seats and appear to have held on to the Senate. One response … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61487,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61486\/revisions\/61487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}