Obsessions

I was told once, by a clever person, with regard to a woman I kept criticizing, “Methinks thou doth protest too much”.  He was implying I had a crush on her.  He may have been right.  I never did decide, but there was SOMETHING there.

And yesterday, I was reading a column arguing that a lot of evangelical ministers who can’t stop talking about homosexuality must have latent homosexual urges themselves.  This sounds plausible to me.  I remember reading about a hard core KKK member getting caught in public having sex with a black man.

So, obsessively, I first went to the obsession the Left has with Trump.  Here is the thing: to become a Leftist you have to renounce everything you knew, all semblance of home.  You have to kill all your natural impulses to love: to love our flag, to love “your race”, to love people like you, to love your community (if it is not politically compliant), and to love any and all traditions which somebody somewhere decides to take from you by taking offense at them.  You have to renounce everything in principle, never knowing concretely what “they” are going to take from you today.  You have to become a simulacrum of an authentic human being.  You have to become Other directed.

What does Trump symbolize?  The opposite of all of that.  He is Inner Directed.  He is an unapologetic patriot.  While not being racist, he feels no need to apologize for the white race, for our history.  Thus, he embodies everything the Left has suppressed and left for dead within itself.  This is why the strong emotion.

Then, trying to be honest, I had to ask about my own obsession with the Left. I am well aware of the continual, almost manic focus on these people.  I bore myself sometimes.  I’m thinking sometimes, “shit, here I go again.  I’ve probably said this ten times or more.”

Here is the thing with me: I would LOVE to be a Leftist.  It would make my life so much easier.  Almost all the women who interest me are Leftists.  I am a non-conformist by nature, and obviously a cultural critic.  I have never seen myself having a 9 to 5 for forty years, then retiring sensibly.  I have always felt wanderlust, and felt some kinship with the people who just can’t fit themselves in boxes, who can’t bring themselves to fully internalize–dare I say it?–bourgeois values.

In some respects my rational mind and my romantic mind are in conflict.  The rational mind has to win, logically, but that does not stop me from feeling what I feel.  So it puts me in an odd place.

And a big part of this odd place is wondering daily how so many otherwise interesting and intelligent people can be so fucking stupid.  I don’t get it.  I write obsessively about it, but at root I still don’t get it. 

So I remain a tribe of one.