This notion that leftists do not react viscerally to images of death and ugliness still piques my curiosity. I wonder if the violence that attends all leftist agitation–one sees hate even in something as mundane as the national campaign against the police, or against alleged racists, or against the “1%” (if there was ever a manufactured propaganda meme, that clearly qualifies; I can almost smell the espresso and the weed)–in fact secretly satisfies some unmet need in them.
I remember reading about a hurricane in Cuba, and the BBC or maybe NPR, or some other propaganda outlet was gushing about how the “Cubans do what they are told. They don’t have any problems with people ignoring orders down there, unlike here”., and I could just feel this fascination with authoritarianism, this flush in the face of some 20-something girl with a degree in Political Science or English, thinking about people getting boots shoved up their asses.
In my view, we are wired, when wired properly, to react viscerally to the grotesque. Being unable to do so implies a disconnection with the gut, with instinct, with primal, animal, REAL emotions.
And that disconnection creates a feeling of disconnection with life. I posted some nice Peter Levine quotes a month or two ago. (or three or four or five: I live in an altered state of time).
I can almost see how this would work: you react viscerally to reacting viscerally, and learn to suppress it, and live only in your head. But something is missing. And violence–the right sort of violence, ostensibly justifiable violence, even the right sort of sexual violence–satisfies that urge.
Hence Che: not, to be clear, Che himself, who was a sociopath. I mean outwardly normal people fetishizing him, despite his cruelty, incompetence, and very dull but very real evil.
I think this is very close to the truth.