The smug style in American liberalism

An utterly remarkable piece from the liberal vox.com website of all places. The author hits it out of the park with regard to smug liberalism. The whole piece is quite long but PLEASE: click on the link and read the whole thing!:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

The smug style in American liberalism
by Emmett Rensin on April 21, 2016
There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.

Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, the working class, once the core of the coalition, began abandoning the Democratic Party. In 1948, in the immediate wake of Franklin Roosevelt, 66 percent of manual laborers voted for Democrats, along with 60 percent of farmers. In 1964, it was 55 percent of working-class voters. By 1980, it was 35 percent.

The white working class in particular saw even sharper declines. Despite historic advantages with both poor and middle-class white voters, by 2012 Democrats possessed only a 2-point advantage among poor white voters. Among white voters making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, the GOP has taken a 17-point lead.

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt
The consequence was a shift in liberalism's intellectual center of gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.

It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.

The origins of this shift are overdetermined. Richard Nixon bears a large part of the blame, but so does Bill Clinton. The Southern Strategy, yes, but the destruction of labor unions, too. I have my own sympathies, but I do not propose to adjudicate that question here.

Suffice it to say, by the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word liberal. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition?

Why did they abandon us?

What's the matter with Kansas?

The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.

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How politics makes us stupid

The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.

As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance. You lose somebody. You blame them. Soon, the blame is reason enough to keep them at a distance, the excuse to drive them even further away.

 

Liberalism's core has always been heavily dominated by intellectuals. Most of the working class was never all that liberal, they just enjoyed the things they gained from liberal efforts. You see politics has a lot to do with marketing. The major ideological divide among the socio/intellectual elite is between the liberals and right wingers both of who are in the minority. Nonetheless these are the people who run things. Progressives, conservatives, evangelicals, minorities.... They are just those who have been convinced, mostly through markering efforts, to support one side or the other.

 

"Recent polls show that around 20% of the population of the US have no religion. When one looks into the demographics of people incarcerated in federal and state prisions one finds less than 1% have no religion.

Clearly the claim of moral superiority that religious folk make is not supported by the evidence."
I like your sig oliver...wonder what the homosexual percentage of the incarcerated is compared to the rest of the population...

 

Liberals want to plan our lives.

Conservatives don't want to be told what to do.

This results in political tension and gridlock.

 

Democrats can't see the forest for the trees and republicans can't see the trees for the forest. Both suck equally in opposing ways.

 

I have never seen so so many rules and regulations as in a conservative gated community - any conservative gated community.

 

The New BS GOP brainwashes with lies to get votes, and have been a thieving catastrophe. Libs and the rest of the world can't believe this mess.....

 

rich liberals want to take some of our liberty for 'our' own good, rich conservatives want to take some of our liberty for their own good.

everyone else wants to pursue happiness despite what the rich want.

 

Liberalism is a religion.

 

Balogna. Libs want to help the unfortunate and have a just society. The New BS GOP wants to lie, steal and cut taxes for the rich. A disgrace.

 

The world doesn't rotate around the democrats. They are every bit as much brainwashed. The success of America has largely been that we are a melting pot, but suddenly if someone wants to embrace a different culture they are guilty of the high crime of "Cultural Misappropriation" by the Stepford Democrats.

 

The GOP alone has a giant bs propaganda machine, paid for by greedy idiot billionaires with HS grad DJs as leaders lol. And you can't be brainwashed with truth.

Cultural WHAT? WTH are you talking about lol?

 

Here's the Wikipedia article on 'cultural appropriation':

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

 

Speaking of DJ's and high school diplomas...

 

Look at the number of laws proposed by liberals compared to conservatives.

Conservatives rarely push for new laws, but liberals want to micromanage our selection of light bulbs and the size of the Coke we buy. Liberals have a never ending list of new laws they want to pass.

 

I have a much darker vision of what the OP article calls "liberalism." I don't think they care one whit what is good for anyone, but just how quickly they can divert the honest productivity of the ever-shrinking, voluntary private sector into the illicit graft of the incompetent, involuntary gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee MSM Complex and its dependent hordes.

The tick doesn't give a rat's ass about "what's good for the dog," but only about how much blood it can suck and how fast.

 

The working classes are not composed of the mindless cattle you believe they are. That is why many are now supporting Trump.

 

yup pretty much...

[video=youtube;ZTpgqqLyAs8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTpgqqLyAs8[/video]

 

People have the right to purchase the quality of life they prefer. It's sort of like joining the EU--you get all or nothing if you want to share the costs with others on the same survival raft.

 

I know that among lesbians, especially the butch types, the incidence of violence is rather high.

Here in Portland it is not at all uncommon to see a couple of gay guys (or three) walking down the street holding hands. Not long ago after seeing another incidence of this with all three seemingly drunk I had this thought.

Often when a bunch of guys get together and get drunk and male hormones get a flowing fights are rather common. I wonder if when a bunch of gay guys get togethet and get drunk and male hormones get a flowing if instead of fighting they just bang each other.

 

Not sure where you get your information from. Conservatives are the ones always trying to control others. Opposition to things like abortion, marijuana use, and immigration are restriction on other people. Insisting on one's religious ideas have power over laws is telling others how to think. These are conservative platforms.

 

Whatever floats your boat.

 

Sometimes I think that conservatives are so short sided, the ignorant arrogance aside. Power companies pushed for the newer light bulbs so that they wouldn't have to build more power plants that would have raised your electric bill. Also by switching to the new bulbs less bulbs end up in the landfills, less pollution is released into the atmosphere, and consumers spend much less money. Time to quit trying to cling to the past.

 

Do know why Republicans are such losers? They tend to describe their opponents in unrealistic terms. It is kind of hard to defeat an opponent if you keep thinking that they are different than they are. It just leads to frustration and results in wasting energy with wild swings.

 

How is them supporting Donald Trump not contributing to my opinion of them as mindless cattle?