Rage, rage against the dying of the Left
By: Hugo Gurdon
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It is easy to understand why the electoral message, "Hey you, racist, Nazi scum, vote for me!" was met with crushing defeat.
Vice President Kamala Harris didn't put it quite that way herself until the joy ran out two weeks before Election Day. But from much earlier, it was the message of her pundit supporters and surrogates who tried to shame voters into voting against Donald Trump. They wanted to damage the Republican nominee, but their friendly fire ended up killing the Democrat's chances.
Today's news and entertainment media, the opinion-forming class, are so mistrusted that their support has become a badge of dishonor.
While it is simple to see why such a strategy lost badly, it is harder to discern what induced Democrats and the Left to adopt it in the first place. The explanation was touched on glancingly by statistician Nate Silver, who tested voter opinion and came to this crucial distinction between right and left: "Republicans are generally happy when you agree with them partway or half the time [but] Democrats … often get angry when you only halfway agree with them."
This important moral difference is reflected in what conservatives and progressives say about how they feel in the aftermath of defeat. When their side has lost, Republicans are likely to describe themselves as "disappointed," "sad," perhaps "depressed." But left-liberals or Democrats often say they are "angry." A common response of the Left to the result of the Nov. 5 election has been rage.
What is behind this? The explanation is implicit everywhere, for example in a post on X from Michelle Tandler, a New York podcaster who announced on Nov. 12 that she had switched her party registration to Republican. She posted, "Well, I just had a disturbing realization. My friends on the left don't just see people on the right as 'brainwashed' or 'misinformed.' Some of them see people on the right as their enemies."
Social science data find that conservatives understand left-wing ideas and can articulate them reasonably and plausibly. They just don't agree with them. But progressives cannot articulate conservative ideas without characterizing them as selfish, greedy, inhumane, etc. They don't think right-wing people and their conservative ideas are simply mistaken; they think they are depraved and inexcusable.
Large numbers of people on the Left, led to their conclusions by public intellectuals in the opinion-forming classes, regard conservative views not simply as wrong but as evil. The late Sir Roger Scruton said as much to me when we talked back in 2018 about the very distinctions that underlie what Silver discovered.
Sir Roger said, "It has always been the case … that in the intellectual world, conservatism is not viewed as a possible position which is opposed to the various liberal left positions available. It's not actually a possible position because it is not wrong, it's evil. And that sense of the evil of the other side is something that the Left has inherited from their own religious psyche."
When I was in my 20s, I'd engage in political debates that sometimes became quarrels with parents and siblings. I recall being told that family members were "upset" by my views. This struck me as strange and presumptuous. I didn't mind that they held views with which I disagreed. I simply had a different opinion. Why should it be upsetting that someone has a different opinion than oneself?
A difference of opinion is upsetting if you believe that it is somehow morally repugnant. To think that, you must see yourself and your own views as benchmarks against which other people and their politics are to be judged. Most conservatives will have experienced that odd phenomenon of being at a gathering with perhaps eight or 10 people and someone on the Left in that group will talk as though it can be assumed that everyone there agrees. Disagreement is reflexively inconceivable.
Underlying it all is the Left's intellectual and moral arrogance. During high-stakes political campaigns, that arrogance produces denunciations. Political opponents are labeled fascists, racists, and other disobliging things.
If you have forgotten that it is possible for people of good faith to disagree with you, there is no limit to the names you can call your political opponents. It may produce a temporary measure of emotional relief, but in the medium and long term, it is a recipe for bitterness and defeat.
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see that everyday.
Writing, meet the wall..............
I can't think of any conservative ideas at all... much less any that aren't selfish, greedy, or inhumane.
Give me an example of a conservative idea. That isn't "erase such and such liberal idea". It's something constructive - something to be done. For example, for a decade now various self-styled conservatives have said they want to replace Obamacare with something better - maybe you know of a plan... or an outline... or maybe at least a single sentence. After a decade???
Or any other conservative idea...
Perfect.
I submit exhibit A.