Here is an essay which seeks depth without even a rudimentary attempt at empathy: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
It seeks to find the consoling harmony of pattern in something which the author is plainly at a loss to understand. I get the sense that this started as a letter to the beloved uncle in the Screwtape Letters, trying to fathom just why the days propaganda was somehow found unacceptable, as if lies were somehow objectionable, as if embracing national decline were somehow something to be rejected.
And it occurred to me that it very much feels like we are at war, because we are. A well organized army of cultural subversives works each and every day to indoctrinate our students, to pollute our media, to confuse our political leaders. Their goal is to undermine every shred of historical connection to our past identity, to past mores, to common sense ways of doing things, to fondness for what our ancestors did, to the capacity for the exercise of principle based reason.
The emotional basis of so-called Progressivism–what I tend to call Regressivism, as it is the more accurate term–is that we must change daily whatever was. We do not need to do it intelligently, or collectively–and in fact it is better if the government forces it on us. The daily goal is something other than what is, and what was. The daily goal is to cease being who you were, and to mutate into something else on command. Your very essence is to become mutable. You must be whatever the Party or Cause, or Moment needs you to be.
Such a creed, such a practice, eliminates the possibility of a stable sense of self.
And the more I think about it, the most important virtue which Cultural Sadeism undermines is loyalty. When I say loyalty, do not the words “old fashioned” come to mind,. as in “old fashioned virtues”? You stick to you and yours, come thick or thin. You adhere to your tribe, to your people.
And why is this virtue old fashioned? Because it is NOT mutable. Because it cannot be made to change on a dime, the way pseudo-virtues like compassion and tolerance–both very trendy–can.
But here is the thing: loyalty is absolutely essential for us as social beings. We need to know somebody has our back, come what may, no matter what. If we don’t, we languish. We feel alienated, alone, uncertain, abandoned. So what Leftist propaganda does is eliminate personal relationships–more correctly, it makes them contingent on circumstance and whim–and ask people to place their faith in a system of belief and practice which cannot feel anything for them because it is monolithic, regimented, and bureaucratic.
People love Bernie Sanders because for the first time in a long time, they feel like he cares about them. But their nominee will be Hillary, because that is what the mass of unaccountable people we call the System wants. Their loyalty is to a system that doesn’t give a shit if they live or die. This is what systems do, of course, which is why personal loyalty is so important.
We have literally reached a point–in fact, we reached it some time ago–where Americans in large masses are simultaneously ignorant of their own history and that of the world, and have been conditioned to view with contempt all the very real, historically unique innovations of our forefathers. They loathe themselves, and loathe all the rest of us who refuse to join them.
Persons of common sense, common decency, and possessed of a sense of responsibility are bewildered where all this self contempt comes from. They read history, and understand that we are historically unique, that much of the world has ALWAYS looked up at us, and that even if like all other nations we have committed crimes, that our crimes pale in comparison to those committed everywhere else in the world and in history, and that virtually all criticisms of our nation stem directly from Soviet propaganda, which is to say from intentional misrepresentations, distortions, lies, and malice.
This is where Donald Trump comes in. In a war you need a wartime leader, and in a war, the tendency to aggregate power is strong. After all, there is existential risk. It is never certain the nation will endure, and if it does, it is because of a collective effort. This is hard-wired in all of us.
Thus, to make a long story long, the Left has itself to blame for Donald Trump. If they want to wage a long term war against humanity, sooner or later the remaining humans are going to declare war back, and it will not be pretty. People like me enjoy it when he speaks obvious truths in the face of congenital and habitual liars. We enjoy the prospect of someone taking seriously not just the invasion of the United States by Mexicans–who are fleeing the wreckage of the nation they destroyed–but the concept of the nation state itself. Someone who says: we are Americans, and that is something to be proud of. America is worth defending. Obama has been saying the opposite for 8 long years now; he has been waging war on our past, and us by proxy, for both terms. Sooner or later, somebody has to tell the sons of bitches to stop, and that is why Donald Trump will be our next President.
He is no saint, but I don’t think he is the pick of the elite, and he has always seemed to me to have working class sensibilities, regardless of his actual past. We need people who want to build. We have had far too much of those who want to tear down, and call the rubble progress.