Here’s where it’s infuriating working with progressives (not all of them). I am very careful at work to whom I mention Chris’s sad news about Wilson’s death in Afghanistan. Most folks, liberal or conservative, express proper sorrow or sympathy. All conservatives and more than 75% of the liberals get this. But I have already had a few people immediately inject their political view into it. Why don’t we just spend all this money on the war on health care? It’s a terrible war, we never should’ve gone there (that one was lying, BTW. She specifically mentioned how she had supported going into Afghanistan when she was telling me how pointless Iraq was about four years ago). They are not trying to lecture, they don’t think. They say this with appropriate sorrowful affect, as if they are expressing some sort of reasonable sympathy. However, one did get angry and haranguing at me, glaring meaningfully about Republicans – he spit the word out – who were always getting us into wars where people die uselessly. And this is out of the population of progressives I thought it might be safe to mention this news to.
I have often maintained that liberals do not so much disagree with others as absolutely not understand them. This is a great example. If you don’t just intuitively get why these are not actual expressions of sympathy – if you don’t feel deeply in your bones how inappropriate this is, then I submit that there is a basic level of human interaction that either never developed in you, or has died under the weight of some more artificial morality. It is your lack. It is your inadequacy. And you should STFU and ponder that.
5 comments:
"a basic level of human interaction that either never developed in you, or has died under the weight of some more artificial morality"
See my post an incident at the movies, espcially the C S Lewis comment.
I have often maintained that liberals do not so much disagree with others as absolutely not understand them.
And, if your experiences are similar to mine, I'll bet some of these people (that you know personally) are amazingly intelligent on other things, but have a very definite blind spot here.
Trying to get through to them is akin to banging your head against a wall, and eventually you wind up responding to them with "whatever". :-)
(Not sure if that smiley is appropriate; sometimes it really gets frustrating and sad.)
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"died under the weight of some more artificial morality" is a good phrase to ruminate on. The difference between a 'nice liberal' and a hard-core leftist seems sometimes like differing resistance to a degenerative disease. In either case, though, the disease tends to progress...
It's very difficult to watch a friend, and even more a family member, degenerate under the weight of that artificial morality; to the point where they abandon the old-fashioned manners and morals they were raised with in favor of the pleasures of hate.
"For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco..."
I followed David's link - with the promise of a CS Lewis reference how could I resist? - and it is worth reading.
There's probably some significance to the fact disproportionate number of the people talked about here and in David's excellent post end up working for the government. (I work for the Feds and see them all the time.)
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