Posted on 03/15/2018 5:45:16 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
There's an article recently written on a website Quillette titled The Psychology of Progressive Hostility which is very well written, I highly recommend it. One part of the article asks the following question: "So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with?"
It is questions like that that this blog are built around. Due to the progressives' complete dominance of academia(history) and media(journalism), I think it is safe to say that progressivism is the least understood ideology of modern history.
For what the article is and how it is set out to examine what it examines, I could not have written it this well. That simple, I could not even have come close. That's not to say it isn't without fault, for example, when I see someone quote Mill I immediately roll my eyes. However, my main goal is to highlight the origin of progressive history, which is conspicuously absent from the article.
In short, the origin of progressive history can be summed up into one single word: rejection. That is the origin of progressive hostility.
That's it. Rejection. Before being rejected, progressives loved and I mean LOVED America - at least, loved its government and what they could do with it. Read speeches from Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt, there is no bitterness whatsoever to be found. Progressive ideology was at its height, they were open about being progressive, and nobody could stop them, and their tone reflects this.
That came to an end in the election of 1920. There is so, so much to learn from the election of 1920. The progressives were beaten so badly, that the only way progressives could become viable again is to put on a mask and usurp the word "Liberalism" as their new home. This happened by 1932.
Think about that. Who is your worst arch-nemesis? What if Rand Paul had to wear a mask of that guy - his next door neighbor who put him in the hospital, or if Steve Scalise had to wear a mask of James Hodgkinson? What if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to wear a Benjamin Netanyahu mask? What if Donald Trump had to wear a Hillary mask?
You get the idea. Your rejection is so complete that you had to look like the exact opposite, otherwise face extinction. Yeah, that would piss you off too. That's what the progressives have had to deal with since the 1930s. That is the origin of progressive hostility.
And to top it all off? The progressives first time in 90 something years that the they start to take their "liberal" masks off and start calling themselves progressive again, as represented by the Hillary campaign. And they lost again. To Donald Trump of all people! (Who in the progressives' minds, is the lowest of the low)
Yeah. You'd be hostile too. This must mean that you need to wear a mask again for yet another 90 years. Who WOULDN'T be pissed and hostile about that? This is why their pitch gets so much worse after 2016. It's 1920 all over again! I challenge anybody, ANYBODY, go read Wilson's or TR's speeches, read their books. You will not find any bitterness. Contrast that with the progressives of today, and the comparison could not be more stark.
There's a strong link between rejection, bitterness, and ultimately hostility. And this is their history. The progressives own it.
Ping
“progressive” is a relative term, depending on what the goal is. To the modern day progressive, it’s socialism. The trading of individual liberty for economic security, enforced by an all-powerful yet benign government. The last is the tricky part, since it’s a general rule that power corrupts. Insanity always emerges when socialism and communism are put into practice, because it simply cannot work in the real world, even after killing the millions of people who dissent.
The progressives' history is quite useful when used against them, the progressives.
If you read Barzun’s Dawn to Decadence, you will see that this filth has tried to erupt time and again over the last 500 years.
I don’t believe it as ever before grown to this extent, though.
Specifically, progressives care that government must be big, all powerful, and controlling. It drives their every move and you can see it in their every action. It's the only thing that is consistent. Progressives have fought for bigger government ever since before they first gained the presidency in 1901.
Woodrow Wilson expressed a good bit of bitterness against blacks.
"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself." - Dostoevsky"If there is no God, everything is possible." - Dostoevsky Fyodor Dostoevsky
They are not progressives, they are leftists.
Use the correct terms
Inside the head of every libtard resides a fascist trying to get out.
Very good. They can’t stand it when it is done.
Does anyone have a decent list of the nations that Leftism destroyed in the 20th Century, using roughly the same slogans, timelines, methods, and end results?
Progressives are ALWAYS hostile. And if they seize power, they are quite murderous.
And having seized power they begin to eat their own....whether Robespierre types, Kronstadt sailors, or the Red Guard.
Definitely a satanic lot.
Thanks for posting.
Putrid socialists, progressives, punks, PsOS, deceivers, thugs, inchoates, internationalists, malcontents, marxists, scumbags, criminals, collectivists, conmen totalitarians, tyrants etc., etc., hate America. They are more emboldened than ever. They have one thing in common. They are sick in the head.
Occam’s Razor says that the simplest theory that fits the facts is probably best. I’ll go with satanic hatred over this psychological stuff.
Your quote from Dostoevsky is spot on. The problem for the progressives is not 1920. It is now. It is cognitive dissonance, the belief in things which conflict with observed reality. It is rejection, that is true, but not rejection by others. It is inner rejection. They turn their anger toward others in the hope that if they can make everyone disappear who disagrees with them, that their belief system will work. They cling to a failed belief system, and they are so completely vested in it that they would rather see the world destroyed than to reconsider their premises.
“They are not progressives, they are leftists.”
Yes, I say that to people all the time. They are not progressives, or liberals, or socialists, or social democrats. They are leftists which means Marxism which is totalitarian. Americans need to start understand what “the Left” means. It is Marxism heading into totalitarianism. “Progressive” implies something good- Marxism/totalitarianism is not good.
Unable to Recognize Truth.
Well said.
The truth to Progressives is whatever they want it to be.
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