Jump to content

The smug style in American liberalism


Pong Messiah
 Share

Recommended Posts

I couldn't disagree more, Spam, and really dislike the idea that there is some sort of mirror-image equivalence between left and right when it comes to the smug style.

 

There are arrogant ***holes and totalitarian douchefaces all over the political spectrum. Definitely more concentrated on the far left and far right, but still plenty of choice picks available regardless of political affiliation, gender, nationality, etc...

 

And IMO, when people who are that single-minded and inflexible -- be it due to ideology, ego, political necessity/payback -- manage to affect policy, the end result is always the same: stagnation if not misery.

 

I can go as far as that when it comes to the whole equivalence/mirror image idea -- and admittedly, it's appealing, as the end game is the same. But when we talk about the "smug style," it is referring to a very specific breed of condescension, lack of empathy, and set of tactics.

 

When Republican Dad pats his daughter on the head and says "That's nice, dear." after she tells him how she's gonna help turn the world into Star Trek Utopia, it is condescending, maybe even smug of dad to respond that way -- but he's not employing the specific smug style or tactics. Unless he's a monster, dad still loves daughter, considers her a good (if naive) person, and will not work to undermine, silence, shame, or smear her in the eyes of others. Maybe a sighed "There she goes again..." comment here or there, but we're not talking wholesale relegation of his daughter into the "Undesirable, if not irredeemable Other" pile.

 

Now, somebody undoubtedly will counter this with "Oh yeah? Well my aunt smugly disowned her son just for being gay!" which is certainly a horrible and heartless way for auntie to be. But even if there are enough similarities to draw parallels in individual cases, I still don't buy it as a thing.* I.e. I just don't think the "smug style" has ever been so prevalent in any group so much as modern (especially post-social media) American liberalism, and I reject efforts to draw equivalencies between a style that is now very prevalent in the far left with whatever **** the far right is smearing on the wall right now.

 

 

 

 

 

*human relationships are and have always been a lot more complex and colorful than those halcyon days of the 1950s when the media agreed to pretend teenagers weren't having sex and the affliction of homosexuality only existed in a few depraved corners of criminality and addiction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Excellent post Pong.

 

Basically what I was trying to say to Chalup on the last page, though he never really seemed to grasp the point.

No I got your point. You're just wrong is all, and your responses were boring, predictably contrarian, and trollish. And frankly, it's not worth my time to go round and round in circles on this point with you. Especially when you start quoting yourself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

LOL! Even if something were wrong, you'd be the last person on Earth I'd ask anything of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dudes. I can pull up some Tsquare posts. If only to prove my point about this.

Spam, Tsquare is one poster. One poster, even if he or she is a perfect fit, does not a characteristic style of a movement make. And while Tsquare employed victimhood ("It's me against Nightly and the MSM..."), used unfair broad-brush attacks, etc... he didn't really try to shame/unperson those he disagreed with as far as I know (never saw him say anything like "Just unfriended all those liberal assclowns friends from FB and have never felt better!").

 

Of course there are conservative people who behave similarly. Part of the reason I began posting at Nightly more than my other forum home was actually due to this horrible, condescending uber-conservative woman who made the environment too toxic and time consuming for my health, in fact. I couldn't not rebut her bull****, and found myself less furious at her than myself for wasting so much time on her. But acting like the smuggers on the right are at all equivalent in numbers or intensity as the smuggerof the left just takes some Herculean mental contortions. You have to really want to believe it. I mean, it's like pointing out a Democrat pro-life activist in an effort to convince me that "Nuh uh! Democrats are also against a woman's right to choose!" Just ridiculous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Alright bro. Well, if you wanna get back on topic, pong basically elaborates on some of the points I was making. If you actually wanna discuss it further (as opposed to just throwing out insults), I'll be waiting. It's cool either way though man.

CM pretending to take the high ground. Awesome.

 

Tell you what, it's a deal. When I want to discuss this topic further, I'll get back to you. In a decade or two.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

btw, and I hate that I have to say this, I am generally "left leaning;" for me it is a matter of style vs. substance. So, for the sake of clarity and not having BooRadley return from the dead to chide me for being a "soft-headed rightwhinger" here is a quick distinction:

 

I have little patience for the unhelpful style (already covered in this thread ad nauseam) that has become prevalent in progressive circles.

 

I have little patience for the unhelpful substance (health savings accounts, ****ing bathroom legislation, etc.) that comes from the right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno Pong. Could be. Presently, the progressives of the 21st century display an arrogance absolutely without parallel anywhere else on the religious, political and social spectrum.

 

But I think it's more of a variation on a theme going all the way back to the days when the land was first colonized by Calvinist Puritans who were so assured of their own predestined salvation that they believed themselves above the ten commandments (and of the comparable "total depravity" of everyone else), than it is something wholly unique in American history. They and their descendants built and founded the Ivy League colleges wherein today's critical theories were devised and taught. So should it really surprise us that their graduates today would likewise think themselves above moral law or civic responsibility due to their "intersecting marginalized identities" and that they are will within their rights to be complete pricks to those not so graced as themselves? As I've suggested before, belief in a literal God has fallen out of favor, but the underlying puritan impulses remain. The moderators of Everyday Feminism are at least the spiritual, if not the literal, descendants of the antinomian five point Calvinists who first settled the place.

 

Fact is, some group or another - the right familial lineage, the right racial or national background, the right religion, has thought itself worthy of an exalted place in the Republic for much of its history. Certainly a unique mix of historical factors have created a unique kind of hubris among today's progressives: the smugness of academia (which persists regardless of politics), the very real sense of righteousness that comes with fighting for the underdog, the very real rank stupidity of their racist and religious opponents, the anonymity of the internet allowing for higher levels of douchy behavior than they would be able to get away with previously, a culture that thrives on and rewards status and virtue signalling, the ideological influence of the Frankfurt school and the French philosophers, psychological projection of their less desirable characteristics onto their fundamentalist mirror-images with whom they share a common moral and spiritual lineage, among others.

 

But there's much here that isn't that exceptional, given the regional, national and historical context: the paranoid and Manichean style that sees itself beset from without and within by impure elements: witches, heresy, the Illuminati, immigrants, communists both foreign and domestic, black rage, Satanism, the New World Order, white male privilege, etc. A cultural and racial divide that never really recovered from the civil war expressing itself politically, and I think a very real guilt about very real power and privilege that has always been projected onto some scapegoat or another. Not so long ago it was blacks, now it's the conservative white male working class.

 

So I suppose the smug style in American liberalism does have some unique attributes, but they are attributes of style and circumstance rather than of substance. Unpack the knapsack of white male privilege, and what you'll really find are centuries of paranoia, repression, psychological projection and an obsessive compulsive preoccupation with ideological and lifestyle purity, beneath a high tech veneer of secular liberal thinking.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Alright bro. Well, if you wanna get back on topic, pong basically elaborates on some of the points I was making. If you actually wanna discuss it further (as opposed to just throwing out insults), I'll be waiting. It's cool either way though man.

CM pretending to take the high ground. Awesome.

 

Tell you what, it's a deal. When I want to discuss this topic further, I'll get back to you. In a decade or two.

 

Not pretending. Honestly wondering why your tone on the board is different these days. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno Pong. Could be. Presently, the progressives of the 21st century display an arrogance absolutely without parallel anywhere else on the religious, political and social spectrum.

I think it's just social media and a perception of invincibility through numbers/physical distance. I've read plenty of correspondence from 50-150 years ago between Catholic intellectuals, colonial progressives, etc. with just damnably smug, paternalistic views toward "the other;" if they had Twitter, numbers, and the current weird fashionable view on freedom of speech ("It is your privilege to hear my views on all things and my privilege to silence you because you are too privileged."), I could imagine a similar movement.

 

So the next batch of smuggers could absolutely be conservative, libertarians (Ayn Rand with the Innarwebs... my god!), what have you. I don't disagree at all. I'm just speaking about the here and now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, and many of the people in the original Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were just comedic in their blind hypocrisy... but again, cultural norms, no electronic projection of those voices and the lack of physical proximity (and perhaps dueling) no doubt left them a lot more muted than they coulda been.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah. Presently, nobody else even comes close.

 

Atheists and libertarians - the next closest things these days - will be more than happy to explain themselves to you in the hopes of gaining another convert. More than happy. Ditto for the Alex Jones types, people who figure Obama is the Anti Christ and so on. To all these people, the slumbering masses just need to be awakened, then watch the revolution happen. Just take the red pill, man.

 

Not so the progressives. The feminists especially. That you would so much as dare ask them to explain their beliefs demonstrates in impure heart - a racist rube that still clings to his privilege. And they could really be bothered to waste their time telling you that. The clever, smug slogans that they'll copy and paste in response to some "dudebro" or "neckbeard" are much more about signalling orthodoxy to one another than it is actualy stating their world view or engaging people who have different views. The slimbering masses can rot in hell as far as they're concerned.

 

And they're SO steeped in ego that when people don't like them as a result of these attitudes, it's muh-sogyny! The religious right did, at times, approach this level of ideologically derived hubris, but in this day and age, the identitarian progressives definately take it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Dudes. I can pull up some Tsquare posts. If only to prove my point about this.

Spam, Tsquare is one poster. One poster, even if he or she is a perfect fit, does not a characteristic style of a movement make. And while Tsquare employed victimhood ("It's me against Nightly and the MSM..."), used unfair broad-brush attacks, etc... he didn't really try to shame/unperson those he disagreed with as far as I know (never saw him say anything like "Just unfriended all those liberal assclowns friends from FB and have never felt better!").

 

Of course there are conservative people who behave similarly. Part of the reason I began posting at Nightly more than my other forum home was actually due to this horrible, condescending uber-conservative woman who made the environment too toxic and time consuming for my health, in fact. I couldn't not rebut her bull****, and found myself less furious at her than myself for wasting so much time on her. But acting like the smuggers on the right are at all equivalent in numbers or intensity as the smuggerof the left just takes some Herculean mental contortions. You have to really want to believe it. I mean, it's like pointing out a Democrat pro-life activist in an effort to convince me that "Nuh uh! Democrats are also against a woman's right to choose!" Just ridiculous.

 

I guess living in Texas - although I am lucky enough to be in a predominately democrat area - I get more conservative double speak so I don't feel this thing quite as much as you. So I struggle a bit more to see what is going on concerning a liberal smugness. The most uber progressive guy in my feed is a lawyer and he's head of the Kendall County Democrat party. Mostly he goes on about how happy he is with his Obamacare and is thrilled gays can marry. Coming from Portland you're swimming in a sea of people who bleed crazy progressive. They use all natural reusable tampons and wash less often or something and now that gays can marry they feel it is time to flaunt their brand. Squeaky wheels, man, squeaky wheels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess living in Texas - although I am lucky enough to be in a predominately democrat area - I get more conservative double speak so I don't feel this thing quite as much as you. So I struggle a bit more to see what is going on concerning a liberal smugness. The most uber progressive guy in my feed is a lawyer and he's head of the Kendall County Democrat party. Mostly he goes on about how happy he is with his Obamacare and is thrilled gays can marry. Coming from Portland you're swimming in a sea of people who bleed crazy progressive. They use all natural reusable tampons and wash less often or something and now that gays can marry they feel it is time to flaunt their brand. Squeaky wheels, man, squeaky wheels.

Oh yeah, I have hated every second I've spent in Texas. And as a teacher with the political BS you have to deal with, you have my utmost sympathy. I'd give Austin a chance, but am only half-kidding when I tell you it's the worst place on the planet.

 

Absolutely no doubt that there are a lot of backward asshats concentrated there. But it is a very different flavor of asshat than what you'd get in, say, my local farmer's market or your average SJW tumblr or virtually any political discussion taking place online or in academia -- and that "flavor" is the whole point here. :)

 

On a side note, with the recent uptick in the number of tumblrs dedicated to mocking "microaggression culture," as well as a few, fleeting moments of lucid self-examination, I strongly suspect that "the smug style" has begun the process of marginalization.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will admit that I think the thing that bothers me most about certain conservatives is how much they hide their hate behind "GOD!" in the Cruz camp. As a Christian I feel very uncomfortable with Cruz's rhetoric concerning anything he states about bringing Jesus to government. GTFO is what I want to tell him.

 

Maybe this is a age-ism issue. People have been used to one thing for so long. Now change is happening where gays can get hitched and people are finding out their hetero-marriages aren't disintegrating because some dudes are hitched. Their ordered worlds are not so ordered and now god forbid some lady-man use the bathroom or they be confronted with proof evolution happened or maybe humans do impact areas that cause frightening catastrophic events via "climate change".

 

Or it could be that they seem less nutty compared to people who take over a bird sanctuary to dispute government land management and leave a huge mess or okay water + lead pipes in Michigan as a cost cutting effort and now kids have illnesses. They're feeling more right and are now more in your face because hey "Look at the **** you got us into uber conservative wacko!" There's a comfort level that's causing them to be more out there before Obama leaves office.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

 

 

Alright bro. Well, if you wanna get back on topic, pong basically elaborates on some of the points I was making. If you actually wanna discuss it further (as opposed to just throwing out insults), I'll be waiting. It's cool either way though man.

CM pretending to take the high ground. Awesome.

 

Tell you what, it's a deal. When I want to discuss this topic further, I'll get back to you. In a decade or two.

 

Not pretending. Honestly wondering why your tone on the board is different these days. :)

 

If that is sincere, the sentiment is much appreciated. Life happens with us all, but I am fine.

 

Anyway, back on topic. I am buzzed off of some tasty stone brew, so excuse the TL:dr to come. I don't deny that liberal leaning types, particularly those in academia, can be condescendingly smug. I will tell you this, I have worked at a university since 2003. As you can guess, there are multiple colleges within universities, often each college having its own unique culture and mindset. Being a support staff person, I have run across liberal arts types, as well as all kinds of other professions, including health care professionals, teaching professionals, and most recently global business\management types. Putting my own biases and preferences aside, I can say that liberal arts types, those who study nothing but theory (feminism, Marxism, and pretty much all the other isms), are what can be classified as those who study theory, but rarely put it into practice. Oftentimes,they study life, but don't really live it. Invariably, the vast majority are not just left leaning, but are pretty far left (even self described Marxists, and IMHO Utopianists), and I have sat in a classroom or two of theirs. They are at times arrogant and self-assured of their "righteousness." They do accuse right leaning people of not just being wrong, but being too stupid to be right. They often classify people by stereotypes, oftentimes calling those they accuse of stereotyping others. SO I do get what you and Pong, and Kurgan say.

 

I myself am left leaning, but center left. Those extreme leftists make me sick, maybe even more so than you. For me, they are real life imitating Portlandia. And not in a good way. And there are those blowhards that have access to scholarly influence that propagate such trains of idealistic, yet naive thought, that also take themselves far too seriously. I get all that.

 

But seriously, the extreme right has the exact same problem. Maybe the right doesn't have the access to academia the left has, but they do have access to media, like talk radio, cable news, and especially the pulpit. Where the left has maybe activism, and rallies to preach to like-minded people, the right has the bible belt. And when you combine God with politics, it is hard to refute for the true believer, as well as convince them they are incorrect. Hell, when you have a little leather bound book that preaches values that "come from" the almighty himself, that pretty much shoots down all argument. Also, once is convinced they are on the side of God, in most cases, one gains a certain amount of arrogance, indeed hubris, about their arguments. I would argue those who are armed with the pulpit, AM radio, and cable news on their side, can reach fare more than the leftists in any liberal arts college. And, in turn, can be far more damaging to rational thought.

 

So, you see, I find it hard to believe that the left is the only, and/or the worst, when it comes to smugness of their political opinions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A key ingredient in the concept of smugness is surety of victory or vindication and complacency. And I think this is the big difference today. The center left, at least on social issues, is winning and for all their talk of privilege, they damn well know it.

 

They pretty much have academia, and that's all they really need so long as the conservatives don't put up much struggle for it. They didn't, so far so good. Because academia trains and credentializes people for other kinds of managerial and administrative positions, its value cannot be understated, even if it doesn't have the immediate reach that talk radio does. Talk radio does not prepare people to hold jobs that allow for the influence of public opinion or policy. Academia does, and the neo-cons just let the fringe left have it, lock, stock and barrel. The anti-intellectualism of the right wing was its critical mistake, and it wiĺl cost them the culture war.

 

The right has no shortage of moral certitude. People who believe themselves to be God's chosen people, to have the one true religion or to belong to a superior race or nation are difficult to describe as humble or emparhic. I think that what differentiates the right these days is that they are losing, at least on social issues. They lost on racial integration. They lost on divorce and women's lib. They lost on gay rights, and are losing on transgender rights. The traditional family is a thing of the past, indeed heterosexual partnerships are becoming anachronistic. The birth rate is taking a nose dive, and mass immigration with all its attendent diversity and multiculturalism is fast replacing it. Churches close their doors for want of parishoners. Despite their best efforts, abortion remains legal. They have not reduced the size of the federal government, and the trend even among Republican presidents - who have grown harder to elect since the late 80s- is towards more rather than fewer entitlement programs.

 

Thus, while smugness seems the defining characteristic of the progressives, its conservative counterpart today would seem to be paranoia. While lefties carry on about the menace of the patriarchy and colonial capitalism, they aren't stockpiling their weapons for armageddon the way the believers in a new world order, the coming of the antichrist or Islamization are. The progressive hatred of Bush was the sneering derision of the newly arrived towards the anachronistic - sure he was harmful, but time wasn't on his side and I think that was widely known.

 

The reactionary hatred of Obama, on the other hand, is the genuine frantic terror of a weakening enclave facing a genuine existential threat. He, or others like him, are the way of the future and there's not much that can be done to even slow it down, let alone stop it.

 

So I'd say right and left are evenly matched in terms of moral certitude. But smugness, with its confirmed sense of superiority and complacent self confidence is a luxury the right cannot afford. Likewise, the sense of impending doom that has always been an aspect of rightism, is something the leftists have far less experience with. Sure there have been periods of right wing prevalence and even persecution of leftists: the red scare, McCarthyism, the Reagan era (to an extent) and the triumph of neoliberalism in economics that drove Bill Clinton to embrace balanced budgets and free trade. But the overall trend has been steadily, however slowly, leftward pretty much since confederation. And I think that accounts for such differences in tone as there are present day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Kurgan, if you mean the left is winning on social issues like say racial, gay, or gender equality to name a few, I suppose you are correct that the smugness from the left is that it seems like they are winning, much like you point out when the USSR collapsed and conservatives pointed to it as an example that communism failed, and that they have a moral high ground. But really, on certain issues, the left does. It might be hard to see now, since the events are so current, but what if someone tried to argue the moral superiority of a pro slavery 1850s democrat today? Or even more recently, someone who cheered when MLK was shot, because he was such a "trouble-maker." It would be laughed at as ridiculous, or considered offensive. Who is to say in a generation's time that someone who thought same sex couples couldn't get married, would be seen as ridiculous as well.

 

The point I am trying to make, and maybe it just happens to be where I live (in contrast to Pong who seems to live in a place where it is the exact opposite), is I am surrounded by people on Team Trump, everywhere. I see bumper stickers that proudly proclaim "NoBama" or things like "Wanna annoy a liberal? Do {blank}," or have NRA stickers plastered all over their back windows. I even see people driving around with confederate flags waving from their trucks like a monster truck jam, at least a couple times a week. Many of these people either move to areas where they are of similar political/religious mindset and bully their school districts to teach a certain way (meaning the correct "conservative way," similar to some parts in Texas but on a lesser scale), or they take their kids to conservative charter and private schools. I live in a town with a lot of Christians who love to judge non-believers (even other Christians who aren't in their church), and even where the law has been sued by the feds for racially profiling groups of people, simply because they looked like they came from Latin America. I can make the case that not only does the Right have an equal or greater amount of moral certainty, but their levels of smugness are every bit as bad as any tree-hugging, non leg-shaving Marxist lesbian single mom from San Francisco with a Berkeley graduate degree in women's studies, who did their dissertation on how all men are obsolete.

 

So, I can see both sides of the argument : from a liberal perspective, their political opponents are on the wrong side of history and this gives license to be extra venomous, whereas the right (from their point of view) either feels they have license to respond in kind (or more) because "God" is on their side. But with that said, I can't buy the argument that it is an absolute that the left is more smug than the right. I suspect in urban areas they are, but in rural area, or any red city or red state, the smugness and moral certainty on the Right is just as bad, even if they feel they are losing on social issues. Indeed, it might even be BECAUSE they are losing on social issues that they double down on their smugness and arrogance.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pong, I think your way of describing the left (as often using an unhelpful style), in contrast to the right (often having unhelpful substance), is a very succinct and apt way of putting it. Excellent post.

 

And Chalup, I think that's really the big point here that I was trying to make. The issues you have with the Right seem to be more rooted in a substance you find culturally unappealing; but the style just isn't the same in my opinion. What's lacking is that witch hunt mob justice style that is very unique to the left. The particular brand of conservatism that exists where you happen to be living might annoy the ever-loving sh-t out of you, but even those people don't tend to try and root out people with the "incorrect views," to have them publicly humiliated and burned at the stake for their transgressions. Like I said, stuff like the removal of the Mozilla CEO, the whole incident with Kim Davis, the gamergate fiasco, and so on- these types of bullying tactics and need to publicly degrade are not typically used by the Right. The worst you ever see from the Right are half-hearted attempts at boycotts that last about 2 days. Limbaugh might drive you nuts but he's not out there trying to get liberal CEOs fired.

 

I suspect that maybe your perspective is a little skewed because you appear to be bombarded daily with a culture that you don't identify with. Serious Q (not trying to be cheeky with this), have you ever thought about moving?

 

It's easier now than it's ever been in the past. I can tell you that in my own life, cultural compatibility certainly weighs in on where I choose to live. For example, I would never live in Portland. Never. My blood pressure starts going up just by reading the occasional SJW post on my FB wall. Having to actually live and interact with those people? Daily? I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I would go insane. I'd rather live in the freaking Bible Belt, and I'm an atheist. Of course, that doesn't mean I couldn't find places on the West Coast to live. I think, for example, Newport Beach would be a pretty good fit for me.

 

I think really, if you're looking for a negative behavioral trait that's found in the right- Kurgan nailed it. Paranoia. (excellent work in this thread so far, by the way, Kurgan). I think that while the Left has that unique bullying, witch hunt style with a holier-than-thou smugness; the Right tends to have a peculiar type of paranoia that isn't as common on the Left. That's not to say you don't see some of it on the Left as well (it got especially bad during the beginning of the Iraq War), but the Right tends to have a more Chicken Little type attitude with almost every political issue. The Right also seems to be much more susceptible to conspiracy theories. Again- sometimes you see a brush of it in the Left, and again, it was probably at its peak when Iraq started. But it's heavily outweighed by the conspiratorial thinking on the Right. And it's pervasive- you see it in how the GOP discusses almost any policy proposal of the Left. Sometimes there's a kernel of truth to it- for example, I have no doubt that a significant number of liberals would outright ban guns tomorrow if they could get away with it. But more often than not, it goes off in the deep end into pure crazy person land.

 

The Left really only has a few small factions that tend to do that- in the beginning of the Iraq War, there were plenty of conspiracy theories to go around. But these days, it's more or less limited to a small group of new age hippies, the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO folks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wish I had seen this sooner, because it echoes my sentiment on the matter.

 

Cyclical theory, plain and simple. You cannot move the pendulum too far in one direction without it swinging to that exact position on the opposite side or even further. Everyone creates the thing they dread. Trump is no different. He is Frankenstein's monster.

 

I long for the day that I see somebody/anybody on the left admit this...but I suppose they'll be too busy scrambling to hide in their safe place from the thing their extremism created in the first place.

 

As I type this, I'm demonstrating a horrible act of cultural appropriation against Italian culture by consuming pasta here in the United States. I suppose I should be preparing a lengthy apology in which I tell you all how terrible I feel for eating pasta.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.