Progressive mainstream news outlets- I apologize for the
redundancy- are now largely (and openly) insulting Trump voters, calling them
names, and urging Democrats to write them off as a permanent loss.
Frank
Rich, the spectacularly unhinged former New York Times columnist who now
scribbles for New York Magazine, illustrates this point when he derides what he
terms “Hillbilly Chic.” Rich believes “pandering” to Trump voters is “another
counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political
correctness,” and asks, “Might the time have at last come for Democrats to
weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it?”
“Counterproductive
detours into guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness” are the defining characteristics of (modern-day)
liberalism. “Might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their
anger instead of swallowing it?” That’s rich, Frank. Democrats have been
weaponizing their anger for decades now, while expecting their constituents to
swallow anything they say, no matter how outrageous. It has been Republicans
who’ve historically played nice and swallowed their anger. This changed when
Trump came around, and is a large part of the reason the left hates his guts.
“I mean, the nerve! He talked back to
us!”
Referring
to Democrats, Rich says that “the party is a wreck.” He also believes Trump
voters are now synonymous with the GOP, but states: “That makes it all the more
a fool’s errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to
the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump
voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day. If we are
free to loathe Trump, we are free to loathe his most loyal voters, who have put
the rest of us at risk.” Free to hate? Hmm.
Salon’s
Conor Lynch says that when Democrats examine the election results they see
“Large numbers of American people voting against their apparent interests
because of their ignorance and cultural backwardness.” But, wait, there’s more!
“After decades of watching millions of Americans vote for right-wing charlatans
who advocated economic policies that serve the wealthy and screw everyone else,
some liberals have basically given up on appealing to these perceived yokels,
who seem to care more about criminalizing abortion and hoarding guns than
obtaining health care and decent wages. They are dumb, credulous and often
intolerant; so why should we—progressive, rational, forward-thinking
liberals—sympathize or try to reason with them? Let them lose their health
care; maybe they’ll learn something this time around (though we all know they
won’t).”
That is
one of the most telling- and frightening- statements I’ve ever read,
preposterous even for today’s inflexible, and astoundingly monolithic
mainstream media. The Democrats see “large numbers of American people voting
against their apparent interests because of their ignorance and cultural backwardness?” Talk about intolerance and
hate speech! Where’s the nearest safe-room?! I demand that Conor Lynch and Salon
be silenced immediately! Just maybe, Mr. Lynch, these “yokels” believe they are voting in their own self- interest,
and you are too biased and close-minded to see it. More likely yet, they may
believe that they are voting in the best interest of the country as a whole, irrespective of their own self-interest.
That’s what has to happen if a
democracy is to long survive. The Founders cautioned that a democratic republic
is only fit for a moral people, and is “entirely unsuited to any other,” and
this is exactly what they meant. People who vote not simply for their own
benefit, but for what is best for the polity.
Quaint
beliefs like that are anathema to today’s Democratic Party, a party that
thrives only on class warfare, divisiveness, resentment and entitlement.
A party
that is entirely unsuitable to a democratic republic.
And any semblance of morality.
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