Progressives have always been oddball, idealistic creatures who put more stock in their fantasy than in reality. They imagine a world peopled with people just like them (well, the idealized version of themselves), only fewer of them . . . because climate change.
They imagine a world in which they’ve eradicated perfectly normal and perfectly human thoughts, feelings, and actions. They imagine a world that is devoid of humor, free will, and individualism. They imagine a world replete with earthy-crunchy, socially-aware robo-clones shuffling along in their own self-satisfied image of perfected humanity. Not surprisingly, they are often disappointed.
Despite every regressive effort, Americans still value self-determination, family, God, country, and liberty (though not necessarily in that order). As disheartening as this simple fact is for the regressive elites who are chomping at the bit to rule our every thought, lifestyle choice, and utterance, at some point, they are going to have to “get” that Americans can agree with more of their policy positions than not and still vote for Republicans.
The reason is simple: Republicans gave up trying to impose their will on the minutiae of every American’s life, while the regressive left has grasped that mantle with both hands and is now using it to strangle voters who might otherwise support them.
In 2015, Thomas Sowell wrote an insightful piece entitled “The Busybody Left.” Sowell posited that the political left’s mission to control every single aspect of every American’s life was a key factor in their party’s failure (an electoral failure already historic in 2015.).
The political left has been trying to run other people’s lives for centuries. So we should not be surprised to see the Obama administration now trying to force neighborhoods across America to have the mix of people the government wants them to have.There are not enough poor people living in middle class neighborhoods to suit the political left. Not enough blacks in white neighborhoods. Not enough Hispanics here, not enough Asians there.Nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the federal government the power to dictate such things. But places that do not mix and match people the way Washington wants them to can lose all sorts of federal money they currently receive under numerous programs.Handing out vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money is the way the federal government has expanded its power far beyond the powers granted by the Constitution — thereby limiting the freedom of indiv. . . . Nevertheless the busybody left has launched a political crusade to make communities across America present a tableau that matches the preconceptions of their betters.Nor are the true believers deterred by the failures and counterproductive consequences of their previous social crusades, such as busing children to distant schools to mix and match them with children from different racial, economic or social backgrounds.. . . . Undaunted by reality, the left moved on to try something similar in the housing markets, by placing low-income housing projects in middle class neighborhoods and by giving housing subsidies to individual low-income families to go live in neighborhoods where they could not afford to live otherwise.The counterproductive consequences of these efforts in the housing markets have only spurred on the busybodies of the left to try harder to force people to live their lives according to the preconceptions of the left, rather than according to their own direct personal experiences and preferences.
What has become abundantly clear since 2015 is that the “busybody left” is not content with its purely political and policy-driven mission and agenda. The political left has increasingly forced its way into every area of every American’s life and is using shame, ridicule, and a dozen other socio-cultural weapons in their attempt to cajole, nudge, and whip all Americans into toeing their favored line.
It’s not working. What one pundit at Business Insider calls the left’s “hamburger problem” will continue to alienate voters who might otherwise agree with Democrats on a host of issues.
Suppose you’re a middle-income man with a full-time job, a wife who also works outside the home, and some children. Suppose it’s a Sunday in the early fall, and your plan for today is to relax, have a burger, and watch a football game.Conservatives will say, “Go ahead, that sounds like a nice Sunday.” (In the Trump era, they’re not going to bother you about not going to church.) But you may find that liberals have a few points of concern they want to raise about what you mistakenly thought was your fundamentally nonpolitical plan for the day.Liberals want you to know that you should eat less meat so as to contribute less to global warming. They’re concerned that your diet is too high in sodium and saturated fat. They’re upset that the beef in your hamburger was factory-farmed.They think the name of your favorite football team is racist. Or even if you hate the Washington Redskins, they have a long list of other reasons that football is problematic.
The “hamburger problem” picks up on Sowell’s “busybody left,” referring to the regressive left’s insistence on imposing its values and mores on Americans who, surprise!, already have their own values and mores.
The “hamburger problem” illustrates quite well why Democrats have suffered such historic losses; they are so focused on socio-cultural issues such as what Americans do in their leisure time (grass-fed, free-range, tofu-based hamburger-like patty, anyone?) that they seem to have lost sight of any meaningful political agenda.
Americans care more about jobs, the economy, and national security than we care about who won’t make what wedding cake. This infuriates the left who think that wedding cake is THE pivotal and socio-cultural defining moment of their movement . . . until some guy hangs a Confederate flag on his own property or that other guy says he likes Chick-fil-A.
Part of their political agenda has always been social (“social justice” anyone?) , but it may be time for Democrats to start rethinking their bullying and shaming of anyone who doesn’t leap on the regressive bandwagon (and that everyone includes Joe Average who dared admit he voted for Trump and has a gun permit . . . but voted for Obama. Twice.) .
The regressives’ relentless moralizing and imposition into every aspect of our lives doesn’t begin or end with hamburgers, of course. They want everyone to be just like them, no divergent thought allowed.
Business Insider continues:
Beyond what you’re doing this weekend, this movement has a long list of moral judgments about your ongoing personal behavior.The SUV you bought because it was easier to install car seats in doesn’t get good enough gas mileage. Why don’t you have an electric car?The gender-reveal party you held for your most recent child inaccurately conflated gender with biological sex. (“Cutting into a pink or blue cake seems innocent enough — but honestly, it’s not,” Marie Claire warned earlier this month.)You don’t ride the subway because you have that gas-guzzling car, but if you did, the way you would sit on it would be sexist.No item in your life is too big or too small for this variety of liberal busybodying. On the one hand, the viral video you found amusing was actually a manifestation of the patriarchy. On the other hand, you actually have an irresponsibly large number of carbon-emitting children.All this scolding — this messaging that you should feel guilty about aspects of your life that you didn’t think were anyone else’s business — leads to a weird outcome when you go to vote in November.
While this explanation is a bit pat in that to regressives everything really is political, including how you spend your Sunday afternoon, it’s illustrative of a key failing that Democrats won’t be able to fix any time soon. They simply don’t understand how Americans can weigh the regressive left’s totalitarian octopus reach into every single one of our personal choices against their “free” everything for everyone policy agenda . . . and then vote Republican.
Hint: Democrats want to monitor everything I say, think, eat, drink, and do. Heck, they want to control my thoughts about things I’ve never even thought about (and frankly, could care less about). Republicans do not. Middle America’s vote is a no-brainer that starts with “get the heck out of my refrigerator, church, car, home, school lunches, and on and on. . . . . ”
Hillary Clinton smugly declared that “half” of Trump supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables,” and the left cheered. Of course, they bobble-head nodded, those people are all deplorable. They eat meat, they exhale, they drive gas-guzzling trucks, they drink sugary sodas, they think grown men shouldn’t be allowed in bathrooms with little girls, they probably even pass gas whenever the mood strikes them! Neanderthals! And they do it all without shame! What can be worse than that?
As Democrats become more and more judgmental, strident, intolerant, divisive, and downright rude about forcing their beliefs on issues Americans take to be a given area of their individual liberty, regressives lose support, they lose votes, they lose seats from the county to the federal level. And if they keep it up, they will soon start losing the cultural war they’ve long dominated.
Americans are simply fed up; it’s exhausting to remember all the regressive “rules” and to memorize the correct thoughts to be called up and regurgitated on cue. Most people don’t bother; okay, I don’t bother, but anecdotally, I would contend that a strong majority of Trump voters don’t bother anymore, either. Race card? Expired. Gender card? Boring. Ism or -phobic accusation? Shrug. Yawn. Or really, either a shrug or a yawn, no need to waste even minor physical movement on something so incredibly insignificant as the ten billionth pearl-clutching shriek of some newly-imagined -ism.
Typically, conservatives and other “deplorables” don’t like to make a fuss; we hear you, we absorb what you’re saying, and then we will reject it, accept it, or give it more thought. We don’t feel the need to announce our every thought to the world. The regressive left—who truly believe their every random thought is worth sharing with the world—thinks this isn’t enough.
In fact, nothing less than adopting—wholesale and enthusiastically—their entire worldview is acceptable. Being tolerant of gay people isn’t enough, you have to march in the gay pride parade waving a rainbow flag. Being tolerant of Roe v. Wade as the current law of the land isn’t enough, you have to fund the abortion mill and baby parts factory Planned Parenthood with your taxpayer dollars. And you have to do these things with joy in your heart because the regressive left will be showing up at your door with a joy-in-your-heart meter any day now.
Until Democrats get off their high horse and stop trying to bully and shame people into being and thinking like their radical base, they won’t see any change in terms of their political power.
The left, then, has not only lost significant political power (measurable in over a thousand lost federal and state seats), but it is fast losing its most potent weapon in the culture war to date: the sway of its insistence that we all think, act, and do as the regressive elites do . . . or be tossed aside and left behind as demonized outcasts.
The “demonized outcasts” outnumber the smug elites and are starting to push back, causing a socio-cultural shift that cannot be ignored. Because Democrats have worked so hard to ensure that everything is political, this does not bode well for their political fortunes.
Democrat overreach on cultural and social issues to the detriment of things that actually matter to people who have to work for a living and who live paycheck-to-paycheck has garnered Democrats their historic losses, and there is no sign that they get this at all.
If the left insists on marching along its busybodying social justice trail, they have no hope, none, of ever winning back even that coveted dog-catcher seat in District 2, Deplorables County, USA.
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