SCHWEIKART: The Constant State Of Liberal Rage
Larry Schweikart
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As a kid I used to see this phrase on the back of comic books or magazines as part of an ad for a religious group. But it always stuck with me. Particularly today.
Just look at the latest frothing, rabid, utterly unhinged tweet from someone like Rob Reiner or Ted Lieu or Kathy Griffin. Have you asked yourself, just why are these people so off-the-rails crazy with blind hatred?
Contrast this with 2008. I despised Barack Obama, mainly because I knew what a fraud he was, what he really stood for, and how much he hated this country. (I don’t think Hillary Clinton has the same hatred for America. I think she’d be fine in any country where she was queen.) Nevertheless, neither I, nor almost any conservative I knew had this kind of unhinged, lunatic, completely insane rage—“heathen rage”—against Obama.
Why the difference?
I think it comes down to faith. For the most part, conservatives have faith—faith that the American people ultimately are fair and just and courageous, that things will be better in the future than in the past, and that America’s laws and institutions can survive a lot of things, including an Obama. We survived a British invasion that burned down our capital, a sneak attack that took out our Pacific fleet, and a cowardly terrorist act by Islamic whackadoodles that destroyed the Twin Towers. And we’re still here.
We even survived a war against ourselves in which as many as 700,000 died over a principle. (I’ll leave it up to you to debate whether that principle was “states’ rights” or slavery, but either way, it was a fight over an abstraction, not sheer power.)
Conservatives by nature are more religious than liberals, and this plays a part in that faith. Conservatives believe, on the whole, that the earth will be around a long time and that people can’t do much to seriously harm it short of an all-out nuclear war. This element of faith in fact is what infused our early space program—that exploring space was a good thing, because someday we would colonize these places and make them “mini-earths.” Indeed, the 1960s view of space in most movies, television, and magazines was one that involved heroism, adventure, and progress.
Contrast that with modern liberal Hollywood’s view, in which space is overwhelmingly angry, desolate, threatening, limited, and inhabited by planet killing douchenozzles of all sorts. It’s a 180-degree turn from where JFK’s generation was when it set out to land a man on the moon . . . and did. (Oh, and Neil Armstrong planted an American flag there for good measure!)
Instead we are faced with this liberal mindset: monkey bars are not a place of fun, adventure, and play, but a dangerous, evil design in which kids can break arms. High dives in swimming pools are a thing of the past because of lawsuits over the harms they posed. Almost anything that involves danger, achievement, overcoming, or adventure is prohibited or padded/helmeted/buffered in such a way as to remove all the thrill of victory or agony of defeat.
So the answer to “why do the heathen rage” about Donald Trump is really pretty simple: they have no sense of future. Today is all that matters. When we looked at Obama’s election, most of us knew it would be over in eight years, max. Only a handful of conspiracy theorists believed he would institute martial law or refuse to leave. (I recall similar things being said about Bill Clinton). In other words, we had faith the little man would go away at some point, and we’d get our turn at bat.
But liberals really don’t believe that, because at heart, they no longer really believe in the democratic system. Look at their screeching about the electoral college, the senate, and the Supreme Court. How many times in the last two years have we seen liberals argue for eliminating the electoral college, or whining about how unfair it is that a handful of “unpopulated states” decide who sits on the Supreme Court? This is a lack of faith in America and its institutions, and should tell you they really never believed in these institutions at all.
The unbridled rage against Donald Trump? He is not only a threat because he’ll be there at least two more years (and likely six), but because he is carrying out his campaign promises to deconstruct the “New World Order.” Now, faced with a similar situation, a conservative would say, “Well, we’ll just reverse it when we get power again.” But liberals have such short horizons, they can’t see two years from now, let alone six!
Trump represents to liberals permanence–the permanent reversal of everything Obama achieved. In truth, we conservatives know that Trump’s policies, while welcome and absolutely correct in their intent, hang by a thread, and that as of today a different senate and a new president could vote or executive-order them right out of existence. Only the Court is somewhat permanent.
This is why liberals resist the wall so much. Of all Trump’s proposals, the wall would be a near-permanent fixture. Even if unguarded, it would still constitute a barrier to illegal immigration, where as e-verify can be wiped away with a vote.
The heathen rage because they see in Trump the final reversal of liberalism (which, of course, is far from the case). They rage because their hope for the future is dark and dystopian. They rage because they have no faith.
Next time you see a Rob Reiner or Ted Lieu tweet, take just a moment to pity these ogres. They have no more hope for a beautiful future than the orcs storming Helms Deep.
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