The smug style of American liberalism | Hacker News Reader

The smug style of American liberalism

vox.com

18 pointspjlegato8 comments

I'm not sure who is more smug: Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow. But, I know which of them consistently punches up, and which one punches down, and that is far more important to me. As for the current state of political discourse I think you can draw a pretty convincing line from the dawn of right-wing talk radio, though Fox News et al, all the way to pretty much what we have now. But that doesn't matter too much anymore and what's done is done. The political climate is polarized and that is the arena in which liberals have to compete to have their voices heard and their ideas implemented.

So, that said, liberal Democrats probably should not worry too much about hurting the feelings of white racist reactionaries as they go about building a coalition that can win more national elections. In fact, I'm not sure any wing of the Democratic party should do that. White nationalists already have a party that is happy to accommodate them, and trying to beat that is probably just going to alienate everyone else.

I would recommend watching episode 1 of Louis CKs new show, Horace and Pete, for a discussion about how parties talk about each other, and how they should.

Found it: "How would you define a liberal? Like, to you, what is a liberal? - Just P.C., f..cking fake, animal rights, and gay agenda, always pushing the liberal agenda. They hate Christians and they hate white men. You know why? 'Cause they don't think it through. And they think they're better than everyone else and that they should tell everyone else how to think. They're just f..cking assholes.

Okay. How would you define a conservative?

Uh, just Jesus everything and they hate gay people and racist but pretending they're not, and they're selfish and they only care about money and they think everyone has to do their conservative Christian sh1t.

See, the fact that you start out by seeing each other like that, I mean, how could you possibly ever respect each other or agree on anything?

Yeah, well, they do that, I don't. (scoffs)

You just said you do. You just described us with a string of insults.

Just like you did.

Yeah--

Okay, okay, okay. This is getting interesting. Now, you, define conservative.

Conservative means values. Having values and sticking to 'em and defending what's right and not just saying what somebody said is right that year, you know what I mean? There's-- there's things in this world that are right and wrong and always have been. And you have to respect where this country came from, and you have to hold on to that. And the fact that country and God and life, those are all sacred things. And people should respect each other, and government is there to facilitate, all right? It's not there to control people. And the way you get the best out of people is to make room for their strengths, not by overcompensating for their weaknesses.

Well, that sounds reasonable. That sounds like something most people can respect, right?

Yeah.

Now, define liberal.

Just being open to things outside yourself, having your eyes open and thinking about others, and being aware that our planet is precious and we're responsible for that. And people need to listen to each other. And be decent and tolerant and that a diverse community is a strong community. And sometimes the little guy needs a hand. And we're a strong enough country to do that, and so we should.

Okay, how's that sound?

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, okay.

Yeah? So, if you start by taking his definition of himself and he starts with your definition of you, don't you stand a better chance, have a better shot at getting to some sort of consensus?"

Okay so we had eight years of a conservative President who pretty much ran on the charitable self-definition of conservative you have there, i.e. so-called "compassionate conservative". Especially in the 2000 election that was the message and it was largely successful and that was how he was able to present himself nationally.

And that President was a disaster.

On the other hand for the past eight years we've had a President who has, more-or-less, defined himself as a centrist, but who has been successfully painted as the less-charitable definition of liberal from your post, in national media and especially in social media

For all his faults, he has not been a disaster on anywhere near that scale.

Now it might be that you're right and that everyone should take a deep breath and a step back and tone down the rhetoric. But when this article brings up the Daily Show and Rachel Maddow and John Oliver and so on, it forgets what all that stuff is in response to, which is a largely conservative national media and a successful framing of pretty much every single national issue of import, by the right from 1990 or so right up to the present day.

And, furthermore, if I look at my Facebook feed, or on Reddit, and try to figure out where the most obnoxious posts are coming from, e.g. pictures of Obama being flushed down a toilet, or "proof" in the form of gruesome pictures that Hillary Clinton and Obama just lounged around and laughed their asses off while folks who worked for them died in Benghazi, for literally no other conceivable logical reason than they are just evil, evil shits, etc etc...

...I mean, maybe some of the stuff you hear about the Koch brothers or whatever, or the Kansas state government, isn't fair either, but it doesn't seem to be anything like on that level.

So on balance, an article that specifically calls out liberals, for poisoning the well and arguing in bad faith, being condescending, etc. - while maybe not technically wrong in each and every aspect, seems misplaced, you know? Like, seems like the concern for it is a little off-balance compared to what it should be if you really wanted to address the broader issue.

And so, this article is trash.

e: I guess TL;DR what I'm saying is: where is the article suggesting that conservatives maybe should stop accusing liberals and the people they vote into office of literally wanting to destroy America because they just hate it so much? Where is this article, and are any conservatives reading it?

I think you kind of missed the point of the article. The point is not that liberals look at conservatives that way. The point is that liberals look at the lower class that way.

Liberals have become more of an "in crowd" that thinks the right things and feels better than others because they think the right things. But the people that they claim to be trying to help don't think those things, so the liberals look down on them - look at the people they claim to be trying to help in a very condescending way. That makes it hard to really help them, because there's no genuine empathy.

Conservatives, on the other hand, claim that those people are big enough to help themselves if the system would just get out of their way. That may not be empathy, and it may not work in the real world, but it's looking at people as competent grown-ups rather than ignorant or stupid people who need "the knowing ones" to tell them what to think and do.

Conservatives certainly have many faults. They are not at all relevant, though, to the question of the faults of liberalism -- this is the "tu quoque fallacy".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

TL;DNR smug liberal smug smug smug smug liberal smug smug smug.

This comment is a demonstration of precisely the attitude criticized by the article.

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