The Basic Qualities of the Left/Liberal Sensibility

Ever since I have spent some “quality” time on the Politics & Current Events Board, my understanding of the left/liberal sensibility has increased dramatically.

In fact, it’s been quite an eye-opener.

Before I frequented these boards, I had always thought that the left/liberal strain was by and large extremely good hearted, even if misguided, and that they really wanted only love and peace, a fair and just society, and basically good will towards men.

You know, the mushy stuff.

Man, I couldn’t have been more wrong – astonishingly wrong.

So, I thought I’d take a moment to categorize and summarize what I think are the basic tenets/categories of the liberal/left sensibility as it expresses itself at this moment in history. And just like the news anchors who warn that upcoming images may be graphic….let me also say that the following categorizations may be a bit too squeamish for our younger and more sensitive readers.

Here we go. Here are the qualities that define the liberal/left mind today. By the way, each of these is part of a disturbing mental truss work – each part in the end holds up the other, and the structure as a whole.

1. Extreme Pessimism – This really came to surface just before the war against Iraq began – the we would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, and that there would be endless streams of refugees, that we would obliterate infrastructure and devastate the country, and that the Arab world would be torn asunder by our military action. And when the war seemed to be going “badly," many on the left of hopped on THAT bandwagon and seemed positively gleeful. Now, of course, with that avenue of pessimism shown to be fruitless, many have moved onto the potential disaster scenarios of a post-war Iraq – that it’s inevitable the country will descend into nasty violent factionalisms, etc. etc. etc. Could they even CONSIDER the possibility that things might, just might, work out??
   
   Nah.
   
   But take any issue and overlay the liberal/left view, and you get the same “chicken little” reaction – corporate power is out of hand, the US economy has descended into oblivion, the globe is warming up to oven temperatures, our civil rights are being dismantled brick by brick by the hands of John Ashcroft. Really, take any issue and it is ABSOLUTELY predictable the pessimistic negative tack that the liberal left will take.
   
2. Extreme Cynicism – This one was the real shocker. I had always thought the liberal/left believed in the fundamental goodness of mankind, but….NOOOOO. Sometimes it takes truly ghoulish forms – as when one poster suggested, apparently in seriousness, that George Bush might allow UN sanctions to continue and if the Iraqi people starved as a consequence…well, just the price of achieving political ends[!!].
   
   But mostly it takes the form of the left/liberal assuming, hoping, arguing, asserting that the conservative right is engaging in all forms of lying, deception, dissembling, rapacious self-interest, and complete venality. That it’s all about shadowy whispers and sneaky conspiracies. That it’s “all about the oil” or “all about Halliburton contracts” or “tax cuts for the rich” or “plundering the pristine wilderness for economic gain” or whatever suits the cynical turn of mind at the moment, for this issue or for that issue, as the prevailing news winds blow.
   
3. Extreme Demonization – Of course, this deep-rooted cynical turn of mind leads inevitably to the view that the right wing is really evil and devil-like. I was shocked when some posters on here labeled George Bush as “Evil” – and they REALLY meant it. No, it wasn’t that they thought he was a poor misguided alcohol-addled boob. That may have been unfair, but at least it wouldn’t have consigned him to the last circle of Hades. No, many on the left really believe he is a demon who needs to be vanquished…and we’re not talking about the camp WB series either.
   
4. It’s ALL the USA’s Fault – To the liberal/left, every predicament we’re in, and every crisis we face, is all our fault. We’re the source of the world’s ills. We’re culturally, if not politically and militarily, hegemonistic. We consume too many resources, burn too much oil, emit too much carbon dioxide, drive too many cars (and ones that are too big at that), have too many people who are too rich. Our foreign policy is a laundry list of mistake after mistake after mistake, borne of the venality and crassness that, according the left, is at the root of our nation’s character.
   
5. Extremely Patronizing – Because things are so bad, so awful, the left/liberal sensibility is one of is enervation and ennui. To fulfill the fantasies that things are horrid, they wind up dismissing the capacity of humans to make things better, and to GET better. The Arab world isn’t conducive to democracy, the rest of the world will always hate us because we act unilaterally, American culture is decadent because it produces a Brittany Spears, the public is stupid because it believes Saddam caused 9/11…yada, yada, yada. In other words, it’s the assumption that other folks simply don’t know what’s good for them.
   
6. Extreme Outward and Inward Loathing – So, when your turn of mind is cynical, when you see demons everywhere, and when you are a citizen of a nation whose actions have been a succession of disasters, both real and imagined, and when you patronize those around you….well, how are you supposed to FEEL after all that??
   
   Well, not surprisingly, you don’t feel so hot…in fact, you feel downright awful. And so you descend, inevitably, into a spiral of loathing – loathing of those who seem to have one up on you ( those who are richer, more powerful, more successful because, after all, they couldn’t have possibly achieved that if there weren’t the devils and the liars we know they are) and, inevitably, loathing of yourself because, hey, you’re here in this country and things are really really bad and, gosh, you HAVE to be a least partly at fault for that, right??

What’s truly astonishing, though, is that this laundry list is just the beginning—it barely scratches the surface of the – dare I say it??—pathology of the left/liberal mind in the early 21st century.

I shudder when I think about it.

 

If you say so.

 

Re: Re: The Basic Qualities of the Left/Liberal Sensibility

So, care to make a real rebuttal? Prove that that that these qualities don't capture the liberal/left sensibility? Or that there are other, opposite charactersitcs, that do?

Because if you want to poke holes in the balloon, your pins had better be a lot sharper.