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The smug style in American liberalism (by suspended Vox writer Emmitt Rensin)
Vox ^ | 4/21/16 | Emmitt Rensin

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:
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From the author who advocated violence at Trump rallies.
1 posted on 06/03/2016 12:05:44 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
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To: Faith Presses On

You want smug? Watch Rachel Maddow.


2 posted on 06/03/2016 12:08:51 PM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: Faith Presses On

Bkmrk.


3 posted on 06/03/2016 12:08:56 PM PDT by RushIsMyTeddyBear (<<<<<<< he no longer IS my 'teddy bear'.)
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To: Faith Presses On
The smug is spreading from its former epicenter in lalaland!


4 posted on 06/03/2016 12:10:15 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Faith Presses On

This article was written 43 days ago.


5 posted on 06/03/2016 12:12:48 PM PDT by Steely Tom (Vote GOP: A Slower Handbasket)
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To: Faith Presses On

Another spoiled 20-something brat with an “elite private education”

Notice how they all seem to fit the mold?


6 posted on 06/03/2016 12:12:55 PM PDT by A_Former_Democrat (#BoycottTarget #BoycottRoss Women & children hurt the most)
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Really, I've just been reading his article and it's well worth the time and effort. He might turn into a knee-jerk liberal, but he's young and he isn't one right now:

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.

7 posted on 06/03/2016 12:16:34 PM PDT by Faith Presses On (Above all, politics should serve the Great Commission, "preparing the way for the Lord.")
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To: A_Former_Democrat

I know. But actually read his article. He recognizes, concedes and criticizes so much that few liberals will.


8 posted on 06/03/2016 12:18:09 PM PDT by Faith Presses On (Above all, politics should serve the Great Commission, "preparing the way for the Lord.")
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To: Faith Presses On

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.


9 posted on 06/03/2016 12:19:29 PM PDT by taterjay
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To: A_Former_Democrat

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.”


10 posted on 06/03/2016 12:19:57 PM PDT by Faith Presses On (Above all, politics should serve the Great Commission, "preparing the way for the Lord.")
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To: Faith Presses On
"Conservatives are always at a bit of a disadvantage in the theater of mass democracy," the conservative editorialist Kevin Williamson wrote in National Review last October, "because people en masse aren't very bright or sophisticated, and they're vulnerable to cheap, hysterical emotional appeals."

IOW: The Wizard's First Rule

11 posted on 06/03/2016 12:21:28 PM PDT by Chuckster ("Them Rag Heads just ain't rational" Curly Bartley 1973)
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To: Faith Presses On
What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition? Why did they abandon us?

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.

12 posted on 06/03/2016 12:21:44 PM PDT by econjack (I'm not bossy...I just know what you should be doing.)
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To: Faith Presses On

Progressives will not be smug at all when the real people tipping point is reached.

This summer may mark that point.


13 posted on 06/03/2016 12:21:51 PM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: Steely Tom

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.


14 posted on 06/03/2016 12:24:29 PM PDT by Faith Presses On (Above all, politics should serve the Great Commission, "preparing the way for the Lord.")
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To: Faith Presses On

**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


15 posted on 06/03/2016 12:28:05 PM PDT by SteveinSATX (Anti-liberalism 24/7)
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To: Faith Presses On
We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be.”

It's outrage not stupidity.

We are determined to bring Washington to heel.

There will be a reckoning.

We've had enough.

16 posted on 06/03/2016 12:42:59 PM PDT by oldbrowser (The republican party is the voters, not the politicians.)
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To: Faith Presses On

I had to look up “amygdalae”. Better not to have known.


17 posted on 06/03/2016 12:43:12 PM PDT by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam. Buy ammo.")
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To: Faith Presses On

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.


18 posted on 06/03/2016 12:47:41 PM PDT by Excellence (Marine mom since April 11, 2014)
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To: Faith Presses On

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.


19 posted on 06/03/2016 12:55:34 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: SteveinSATX

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.


20 posted on 06/03/2016 1:00:53 PM PDT by Faith Presses On (Above all, politics should serve the Great Commission, "preparing the way for the Lord.")
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