Posted on 06/03/2016 12:05:44 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.
In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.
It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.
The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
You want smug? Watch Rachel Maddow.
Bkmrk.
This article was written 43 days ago.
Another spoiled 20-something brat with an “elite private education”
Notice how they all seem to fit the mold?
Elites, real elites, might recognize one another by their superior knowledge. The smug recognize one another by their mutual knowing.
Knowing, for example, that the Founding Fathers were all secular deists. Knowing that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder. Knowing that those fools out in Kansas are voting against their own self-interest and that the trouble is Kansas doesn't know any better. Knowing all the jokes that signal this knowledge.
The studies, about Daily Show viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are knowing. It is the smug style's first premise: a politics defined by a command of the Correct Facts and signaled by an allegiance to the Correct Culture. A politics that is just the politics of smart people in command of Good Facts. A politics that insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from "imposing their morals" like the bad guys do.
I know. But actually read his article. He recognizes, concedes and criticizes so much that few liberals will.
I think I read about this smugness last night. Some lib saying, “ Do These people really want to follow literally what the Constitution says?” I say yeah, let’s try it for awhile.
From his article:
“The smug style has always existed in American liberalism, but it wasn’t always so totalizing. Lionel Trilling claimed, as far back as 1950, that liberalism “is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition,” that “the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse ... do not express themselves in ideas, but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
IOW: The Wizard's First Rule
Probably because they found out that liberal socialism, despite centuries of attempts, simply doesn't work. Rewarding people simply because they suck oxygen from the atmosphere isn't a system that works. A system that rewards productive work does yield a better life for those who choose to be part of that system. Simply stated, people are getting wiser and are awakening to the fact that viable Socialism is a myth.
Progressives will not be smug at all when the real people tipping point is reached.
This summer may mark that point.
I know. And this is part of what he wrote on Trump:
“But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party’s nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be.”
Curious.
**It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life**
lost me right there. how can I take it seriously when the author can’t even be honest with him/herself
It's outrage not stupidity.
We are determined to bring Washington to heel.
There will be a reckoning.
We've had enough.
I had to look up “amygdalae”. Better not to have known.
Early in the marriage equality fight, activists advanced the theory that when people discovered a friend or relative was gay, they became far more likely to support gay rights. They were correct.
So that “study” was proven totally faked. It’s got a certain “truthiness,” so it’s okay.
The writer actually thinks. That makes him a very dangerous opponent.
He sees clearly what the “liberal” movement is today, and the danger that it is in.
What is bizarre is that he is sees himself as a marxist.
I know. But the author is 26 and was educated at the University of Chicago. He is writing this article ultimately to warn the left to change its way or it will end up with a President Trump, but he still says many things that very few people on the left are even willing to notice.
From his article:
The studies, about Daily Show viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are knowing. It is the smug style’s first premise: a politics defined by a command of the Correct Facts and signaled by an allegiance to the Correct Culture. A politics that is just the politics of smart people in command of Good Facts. A politics that insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from “imposing their morals” like the bad guys do.
* * *
The smug style has always existed in American liberalism, but it wasn’t always so totalizing. Lionel Trilling claimed, as far back as 1950, that liberalism “is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition,” that “the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse ... do not express themselves in ideas, but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
(snip)
Sixty years ago, the ugliest tendencies were still private, too. The smug style belonged to real elites, knowing in their cocktail parties, far from the ears of rubes. But today we have television, and the internet, and a liberalism worked out in universities and think tanks. Today, the better part of liberalism is Trillings — or those who’d like to be, at any rate — and everyone can hear them.
* * *
But a more fundamental element of smug disdain for Kim Davis went unchallenged: the contention, at bottom, that Davis was not merely wrong in her convictions, but that her convictions were, in themselves, an error and a fraud.
That is: Kim Davis was not only on the wrong side of the law. She was not even a subscriber to a religious ideology that had found itself at moral odds with American culture. Rather, she was a subscriber to nothing, a hateful bigot who did not even understand her own religion.
* * *
But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party’s nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be.
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