The Psychology of Progressive Hostility

Quillette ^ | March 10th, 2018 | Matthew Blackwell

[ProgressingAmerica]

Recently, I arrived at a moment of introspection about a curious aspect of my own behavior. When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they listen, they respond, I talk some more, and at the end of it we get along just as we always have. But I’ve discovered that when a progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I’m hesitant to point it out. This hesitancy is a consequence of the different treatment one tends to receive from those on the Right and Left when expressing a difference of opinion. I am not, as it turns out, the only one who has noticed this.

[ProgressingAmerica]

This is a fantastic article, I hope everybody will read it.

One thing I think that the article missed is a complete answer to this:

So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with?"

I think I can shed some light on that. It is rooted in their own history.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Ping

[EdnaMode]

Just look at the difference in the way conservatives and leftists deal with losing elections. Conservatives move on with their lives and leftists have nonstop tantrums.

[ASOC]

“progressive” might equal a number of things. In my life experience this means:

ass hat

condescending

arrogant.

I would suggest the OP look to get some new ‘friends’.

[laplata]

No matter what, never turn your back on a Progressive. You’ll get knifed.

[the OlLine Rebel]

He hasn’t met me.

[Secret Agent Man]

One word sums this up.

Crybullies.

[Intolerant in NJ]

...progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I’m hesitant to point it out...easy - progressives are so unctuous, so smug, so self-righteous that any disagreement with them is taken as a sign that you are intellectually and morally inferior to them and in fact that they have been personally insulted that you would even presume to question them - and beyond this is the threat to their own psychic well-being with facing the possibility that they just might be wrong - who wants to deal with all that?.....

[Robert357]

Thank you. I think this explains not only the whole resist Trump movement, but the craziness that is sweeping the media into a FAKE NEWS group-think society.

[DoughtyOne]

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[ProgressingAmerica]

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views

William F. Buckley, Jr.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Bill had their number decades ago.....

[TigersEye]

I think I can shed some light on that. It is rooted in their own history.

True. I also believe that it's due to the fact that nothing they believe can stand up to scrutiny. Facts, logic and reason are to their positions like a cross to a vampire. Their only defense is to put up a barrier to inquiry with intimidation and violence.

[DesertRhino]

Exactly right.

[TigersEye]

It’s like correcting a very young bratty child.

But stompie feet gets dangerous in adult bodies.

It gets incredibly dangerous when stompie feet adults get ahold of the reins of power.

[Bryanw92]

>>So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with?”

>>I think I can shed some light on that. It is rooted in their own history.

Which history? Personal history or collective history?

It’s not really history so much as motive and method meeting infinite resistance. Progressivism was created as a way of peacefully converting the USA into a communist nation. At the time when Republican Senator Robert LaFolette was creating this monster, the European communists were only talking about bomb-throwing and violent revolutions. The proto-socialists of the French Revolution were their model and the generation that fought the Civil War was still alive and relevant. No one in the USA wanted a bloody revolution to create some European-style utopia.

So, Progressivism is born, which will convert the nation through a long series of social engineering, regulations, and re-education. The Progs of the Boomer Generation expected to see it in their lifetime and those lifetimes are drawing to a close now. They are desperate and are driving the Prog bus, so they have abandoned LaFolette’s dream of gradual social change and have moved towards the Bolshevik solution. They whip their followers up into a revolutionary frenzy, but they are all chickenshit and lazy so they want someone else to actually make the revolution happen. But, they are willing scream at their acquaintances—as long as they can hide behind the law when the person on the end of their anger decides that its time for a well-deserved butt-whipping.

[marktwain]

Crybullies works very well. It is what they are.

[d_snow]

The “reason” is very easy to understand to anyone who’s studied communists and their tactics.

See “The Naked Communist” for a more in-depth analysis.

[Karliner]

Nice article. Saving this one.

[GOP Poet]

Great post and yes to elaborating on how and why ESPECIALLY their history and I submit 'philosophical' premise to begin with (although many have no idea of the origins of their 'belief system.' (I call out belief as my experience with many is their 'belief' is a knee jerk conformity rather than an fully conscious chose that includes any thought whatsoever. Studying undergrad work at one of the most toxic, waste dumps of this liberal school thuggery (The Evergreen State College), I watched it unfold on a multitude of spectrums. I could write a book with all that I saw there way back when. And I was no conservative when I was at school there. In fact that experience is what made me see the insanity of it all and the brain washing.

Many of my peers did not get real jobs EVER after graduating and mocked those that did. They were the second generation of the SJW before it was taken over completely by the ignorant and easy to con general population. Often they went on to do research for the Democratic party and their multitude of 'non profits' that do research to support their causes. (Say hello to employment to the likes of Soros and his machines.