{"id":285829,"date":"2018-09-25T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=285829"},"modified":"2018-09-26T16:37:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T20:37:26","slug":"two-pieces-foundational-to-understanding-the-american-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/09\/25\/two-pieces-foundational-to-understanding-the-american-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Pieces That Are Foundational to Understanding the American Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: First, Jim Geraghty. Folks, this is so right on the money.<\/a> “The more time I spend covering politics,” Mr. Geraghty writes, “the more I\u2019m convinced that a significant chunk of grassroots political activists aren\u2019t really arguing about politics at all. These folks are actually grappling with personal psychological issues and projecting it onto the world of politics. Every problem they had with a parent is projected onto authority figures.<\/p>\n

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“Every religious person who ever scolded them or made them feel guilty becomes the embodiment of organized religion and demonstrates its menace. Because they\u2019ve had a bad experience with a member of a minority group, that experience reveals something sinister about every member of that minority group. The cop who wrote them a ticket instead of giving them a warning demonstrates the danger and corruption of law enforcement,” and can lead to Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n

“[T]he boss who fired them for shoddy work exemplifies the inherent cruelty of the capitalist system, and every frustrating experience they had with an ex-girlfriend demonstrates some defect in all women.” And that could be the opposite. Every frustrating experience they had with an ex-boyfriend demonstrates some defect in all men. (summarized) “I think a lot of the issues they are grappling with stem from the fact that most of these people have never done anything big with their lives.<\/p>\n

“So everything has to be imbued with drama of an approaching Armageddon in order for them to feel as though their meaningless lives have meaning.” Now, I have said this over and over again a different way. Everybody wants their life to have meaning. Everybody wants to matter. And a lot of people feel overwhelmed, powerless, and like they don\u2019t matter — and one of the faster ways to make yourself feel like you matter is to become a victim, member of an organized victim group.<\/p>\n

And when you do that, a number of sea changes occur to you. When you become a member of a victim group, you are admitting that you are a failure. But you are admitting it isn\u2019t your fault! It\u2019s society\u2019s at large or the cops or capitalism or religion or something. When you become a victim, you are then signaling that you are owed. People need to give you something for all of the mistreatment that you have suffered. I think this is so right on the money, and I could give you some classic examples. Like transgenderism.<\/p>\n

I know that there are many transgenders in this audience, so I have to be careful here. I just want to tell you that there is a former — I guess he\u2019s retired — director of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical Center and university who wrote many years ago that sexual identity is a psychological issue and it needs to be treated as such, not with gender-change surgery and this kind of thing.<\/p>\n

He said that it\u2019s a sad thing, it\u2019s very unfortunate, but it needs to be dealt with therapeutically and so forth. Of course, he has been ignored or destroyed depending on when his name comes up. But that\u2019s not the only example of this. I think this is so right on the money, and there\u2019s so many elements of this that ring true. The feeling of powerlessness, the comforting thought that it\u2019s not your fault, that you\u2019re a victim of some powerful entity or person or system. And then you become a member of the victim group, and you have instant rage and anger that is justified and encouraged.<\/p>\n

And then you enter the political system under the aegis of your psychological problems being legitimate political issues. These people all naturally will gravitate to the left because that\u2019s where psychological disorders primarily reside. The Democrat Party has made it well known that they will use whatever they can in order to win power. So they have built a coalition of very disparate groups, minorities, including women and union workers over the years, African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, you name it. But in each instance, they\u2019re not…<\/p>\n

In terms of the rank-and-file, they\u2019re not successful. As Geraghty writes, they\u2019ve really not had something big happen in their lives. They\u2019ve not had something reinforcing that they\u2019re worth liking themselves, worth loving themselves. Have you noticed the leftists are constantly angry? They\u2019re always agitated. They\u2019re never happy! Even when they get what they want, even when they get more than they want, they\u2019re never happy. What kind of disorder…?<\/p>\n

Like last night Ted Cruz and his wife were hounded of how a restaurant in Washington<\/a>. Ari Fleischer is writing about it. He says (paraphrased), “You know, I\u2019ve been in Washington a long time. This is a sick town. This is a sick town! Simply because you disagree with somebody, you go into a restaurant and you start hounding them to the point that they have to leave?” That isn\u2019t normal. But the Democrat Party normalizes it and promotes it. Validates it. Empowers it.<\/p>\n