Condescension: My Two Cents on Liberal Angst

Spare Change | 10 February 2010 | D J Aland

[SpareChange]

Condescension: My Two Cents On Liberal Angst

By David J. Aland 10 February 2010

The Washington Post, of all papers, ran an interesting piece last weekend: “Why are Liberals so Condescending?” While the essay focused largely on how the changing fortunes of the Democratic Party hardly warranted the level of smugness demonstrated by Reid, Pelosi, Gibbs, and Obama, it raised a valid question: What is it about Democrats that breeds arrogance and condescension?

Arrogance is not an excessive way of characterizing the mood of liberals lately. The President’s State of the Union address confirmed this, when he said, in effect: There’s nothing wrong with my policies that can’t be fixed if the rest of you would listen better. In a way, it was like the painful experience of watching an American tourist try to explain a grilled cheese sandwich to an Italian waiter by speaking more loudly. Someone should tell the President that using smaller words doesn’t make bad policy better understood or appreciated.

On a recent episode of the liberal bell-jar television program, The View, Elizabeth Hasselbeck (token conservative) asked what it was about Sarah Palin that “so threatened the President” that his Press Secretary would take the time to mock her (riffing on the infamous “crib notes” on Palin’s hand at the Tea Party Convention). Joy Behar, ever the touchstone of political sagacity, promptly intoned: “Because we’re onto her t(w)icks!” (Why, that wascally wepublican woman!).

While Behar’s comment may have sounded like more of the patent arrogance and condescension of the liberal left, there was something else clearly apparent: desperation.

When Nancy Pelosi’s aides confirm that the Speaker is considering using “tricks” to get the massively unpopular Health Care bills through Congress, the tone is certainly arrogant and condescending, but it is also desperate. When the Attorney General’s Inspector General refuses to answer Congressional inquiries about why voter intimidation cases are dismissed, the tone is clearly arrogant and condescending, but it is also desperate. When the White House man in charge of counter-terrorism, John Brennan, says that criticism of the Administration’s handling of terrorism is “supporting Al-Q’aeda”, the tone is definitely arrogant and condescending, but it is also desperate.

The President’s approval ratings continue to sink, reaching 44% this week – which, considering that Washington has been paralyzed by a historic series of blizzards, is remarkable in itself – and the smug tone of down-the-nose dismissal of dissent is growing old not only to the Capital crowd, but to Americans across the spectrum. The American people are less concerned with the fictional tricks of Sarah Palin than they are with the demonstrated tricks of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barrack Obama.

Some blame the appearance of arrogance on the idea that liberals have become, contrary to the historical definition of “liberal”, elitists who no longer believe that ordinary citizens have anything worthwhile to say. Others say that the appearance of arrogance can be attributed to the honest bewilderment of earnest people who cannot believe that their earnest ideas have not been embraced by all. Whether elitism or cluelessness, Democrats seem lately unable to get their message across without sounding like intolerable snots.

Strangely, Americans don’t dig snobbery all that well. Critics may sneeringly call it “populism,” but the fact is that relating to the voters is a critical part of American politics. Blowing off the voters generally doesn’t pay off. And lately, the theme amongst liberals is that the voters are too stupid to get it.

The President needs to understand that listening to the voters is more important than lecturing them. The Speaker needs to understand that parliamentary tricks are not the give-and-take of politics, but a denial of the inherent American sense of fairness. The Senate Majority Leader needs to understand that back-room deals are not the work of good legislation, but a betrayal of the voters. Bobby Gibbs needs to understand that he is a spokesman for the President and not a stand-up comedian doing “One Night Stand.”

The tone of arrogance and condescension from the Left these days really is a tone of desperation – desperation that they are not understood, and desperation that they cannot figure out what the medium should be to get the message across.

Maybe it isn’t the medium. Maybe it’s just the message.

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David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.

[Michael.SF.]

It boils down to this: They truly believe they are both smarter and more ‘evolved’ then those who disagree with them.

[fr_freak]

...it raised a valid question: What is it about Democrats that breeds arrogance and condescension?

The author has it backwards - people who have the character to be arrogant or condescending without justification tend to gravitate toward leftism. It's kind of like the teenagers that think they know it all and talk about how stupid everybody else is. Some people never really grow out of that mentality, and leftism gives them the means to feed their delusion.

For example, leftists think that anyone who is a fellow leftist is a genius, so as soon as you sell your soul and join the leftists, you get treated like a genius even if you're a straight-up retard. Among conservatives, your alignment with the cause will be appreciated, but you won't be treated like a genius until you prove yourself. Therefore, any braindead hippie who needs to feel like a genius almost has to join up with the Left. Once there, the constant echo-chamber of leftist pap and reinforcement of their genius delusion makes them perpetually arrogant and condescending to everyone else.

[Anima Mundi]

Maybe in the beginning, a long, long time ago, they used derision and ridicule to make us ashamed to admit we like someone or listen to someone and it worked. They managed to create the sense that you were stupid if you listened to Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. We all thought we were the only ones and we wondered what was WRONG with us that this stuff made so much sense to us when the “mainstream” media and movies and various institutes and professors told us differently. They got into the habit of calling people who disagree “stupid” and along the way came to believe it and to believe themselves “brilliant”. But everything changed when we started talking to one another and realized that THEY are the outliers and we are not stupid.

[soycd]

I’ll also add that these arrogant, leftist pricks also have not been taken to the woodshed
enough either.

[parisa]

I believe just the opposite. I think deep down liberals have a lot of doubts, a lot of insecurities. Liberals psyche is a bundle of emotion. That’s what liberalism is, emotionalism, but deep down they are afraid all their “emotionalisms” — about race and social justice and the rest of the politically correct blah blah blah — is a sham. Deep down a liberal is afraid that he is a phony. And yet all his life he has been told he is so smart and talented — he has done well in school you see. He graduated on top of his class and gone to top universities, packed to the hilt with his carbon copy elitist professors, where his needy ego has been constantly fed and pampered. Put all this together and the bundle of liberal emotionalism grows arrogant and elitist because he hates anyone that holds a mirror to his face and shows him for what he himself is so fearful that he is... a phony.

[I still care]

Because their whole creed is based on “People shouldn’t be allowed to do that”.

They are control freaks, why? Perhaps problems with their past, insecurity, I don’t know.

But talk to any lib. They get all hyper when they disapprove of what other people are doing, they “shouldn’t be allowed to do that!” smoking on their porch, using plastic bags, etc. And because they know better, and practice better, they become elitist snobs.

[Michael.SF.]

using plastic bags,

I live in the ultra Lib SF Bay area, I have three cloth grocery bags that I use as often as I can. They are all from: HALIBURTON (I got then at a trade show)

I get comments from about 1 out of 10 times that I use them..

[Michael.SF.]

I believe just the opposite.

Perhaps we are both right? Maybe it just depends on the libs we have dealt with.

[Texas Jack]

...elitists who no longer believe that ordinary citizens have anything worthwhile to say...

I think this is a partial definition of a so called "progressive."

The rest of the definition is a group of highly educated intellectuals band together to administer and govern the citizens without regard to the Constitution. That would be the elitists.

Something like that.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Ceauceseau of Romania and his wife were arrogant elitists too.

That all finished up quite nicely on a snowy Christmas day.

Quite an attitude adjustment.