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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| How to Survive In the Age of Rage |
| 2017-03-07 |
| h/t Instapundit [AceOfSpades] Just in case people don't get this: I'm not being rhetorical when I say that a large fraction of the country, on both the left and the nevertrumper/GOPe side of things, has gone insane. The world feels like a Twilight Zone episode to them -- the world they went to sleep in on November 8, 2016 was not the same world they woke up to the next day of November 9, 2016. Parts of it looked the same, but nothing looked quite the same. The feeling they have is the horrific, creepy feeling of the uncanny -- a feeling that things look normal and familiar from most angles, but you can't shake the sense that there's something off or alien about them. A classic trope of the uncanny is the automaton or doll which appears human, or, even worse, the human who appears to be a doll. (Content warning on that -- very creepy.) ...They were wholly unprepared for the reality of Trump -- they never even prepared themselves psychologically for such an outcome, because it was inconceivable and absurd, and only Dumb People thought stuff like "Trump could win," and as they're fond of telling you, they are definitely not the Dumb People. ...They lost their feeling of control and power over America. And believe me, after 8 years of Obama, and with the social and cultural winds at their back, able to gin up social media hate-mobs against anyone who even said something they didn't like, and able to sic the IRS on conservative groups and get away with it scot-free -- they felt like they were in total control. And they were right to feel that way: They were in total control. And now that's gone. November 9, 2016 -- the day they realized it was not a nightmare, but a reality akin to a nightmare -- was the progressives' 9/11. Just as real Americans felt the loss of security and control over their own fates that day, so did progressives feel that on 11/9. What you're seeing from progressives now, and the media, is the same sort of urgent fury you saw from real Americans after 9/11 -- an anger that a great evil had been done, and honor demanded furious retribution. Many people might have gone a little round the bend after 9/11. I think I did. In fact I know I did. I'm not proud of that, but neither am I too ashamed to admit it. At least there was justifiable cause. And now a great evil has finally shaken the progressives in the same way-- they lost all three branches of government. And they've gone crazy. In my experience, there is nothing quite so dangerous as an inflated but brittle ego. An inflated ego which is resilient is annoying and dangerous, but, being resilient, it does not really react bigly to threats. It shakes threats off, so it doesn't need to lash out or go on little Nervous Breakdown Picnics out in Ego Protection Park. But large brittle egos do. Large egos lash out, and brittle ones -- ones that are easily punctured by pins -- must lash out aggressively, constantly, almost randomly. 11/9 stole from them the two things most sacred: their sense of superiority and infallibility, and their precious political power over the people they hate. And they're reacting rather poorly to that. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |