'The Angry Left: Angry At What, and Why?'
By John Longenecker (06/01/07)
I love Professor Thomas Sowell, and I have his books. I concur, and I'd very much like to add in support of his most valid and objective observation on his piece, The Anger Of The Left appearing at Townhall.com, May 15, 2007.
Paramedics can now take your blood sugar in the back of the Squad, or under an overturned coffee table, for that matter. If your patient happens to be unconscious and shows a blood sugar of 700, chances are the patient is diabetic. Is it an insult to say so and to proceed accordingly? Objectivity can be life-saving. Can objectivity save the nation?
It is not an insult to understand that the Left in America is angry - an anger that is about 700 on a scale of 100 - but angry at what and why?
For decades I have believed that liberals are reacting to icons in American society which trigger in them anxieties of old wounds, and that liberals, acting in a pain-avoidance motive, often misdirect their anxiety and act to eliminate those symbols politically instead of dealing with their older traumas more personally.
These are defense mechanisms in action, and average folks have begun to notice them in several ways. In objectivity, where old-wound anger and anxiety are what make a liberal, Leftism is utter rage.
Talk show hosts observe that liberals project – projection being a common defense mechanism to soothe impending anxiety by throwing off the painful onto another. Others simply comment that liberals must be out of touch with reality. Some folks unabashedly advise liberals to get over it. As with most psychology, they are seeing clues and indicators to something operating beneath the surface. Some of us call it Excess Baggage.
Each is most insightful. The entire purpose of a defense mechanism is to distort reality just enough to protect the ego by fooling it, lying to it. There are several defense mechanisms, each working in combination to protect the self from some unbearable remembrance or truth. It's buried, and the person has positively no idea it's operating, as long as the mechanism is operating correctly. A lot of Americans see through it.
As kids, we always suffer some adversity, we all pretty much suffer the same thing — the pressure of a deadline, losing a ball game, being accused unjustly, being forced to the dance, being forgotten sometime — and these are so common they are unavoidable facts of life. We all employ defense mechanisms as we may need them, but the imbalance of who cannot deal with old wounds is more relevant as it makes more and more persons shift Left in the quest for personal balm and justice, and operate on the product of defense mechanisms.
Some of us get over these old wounds and grow up to work without a net, while others don't process it well, come to see injustice everywhere and take action with a ferocity which seems inordinate for the issue...or for the methods. The result is anger. Psychologists have known for a very long time that being unloved leads to anger. So do other old wounds.
The anxiety a defense mechanism works to bury breaks through a little, just enough to sense what Anna Freud called ‘objective danger', but not enough for the defense mechanism to reveal its position. This sense of impending anxiety is triggered by a great many icons in a free and symbol-rich society such as ours – things many of us cherish and view as good and certainly as harmless – hence the bitter political interference with family, private property, opportunity, education content, sovereignty, independence and values.
Anxieties and the defense mechanisms which comprise their world view are usually recognized by their unreasonable, baffling logic and non-sequiturs, their double standard, contentious hair-splitting detail, disregard for outcome, use and abuse of official force, and unrelenting energy. Freud pointed out that subjects find more satisfaction in quarreling than in actually working at solving the common problem. And why not? It feels good. People choose.
And where some social standards are to the impaired a Crime, they do not see themselves among the named accused, exempting themselves in the spiteful double standard. The drive to sidestep anxiety smugly trumps any sense of right and wrong, including patriotism. After all, for the ego, it’s a matter of survival.
Three generations of broken homes have produced traumatized, broken-hearted kids, who then enter adulthood as angry activists striking out, seeking, of course... justice. Balm. If you think not having a father is responsible for violent crime and most self-destructive acts, your instincts are correct. Another clue.
With such reality-distortion dynamics in play, leftist officials are operating on misinformation input as this anxiety-avoidance motivation profoundly influences their perception of issues and values as friend or foe. Liberal policies fail because they were conceived in seeking personal soothing against a foe in anxiety-provoking symbolism and not justice or oath of office. It's hard to know the right thing when you hurt. And it hurts.
Is it insulting to view liberals as impaired so? No, and I don't believe patriots need to accommodate liberals any longer in tolerance or compassion merely because they are impaired and wounded. Three generations of broken homes makes a lot of walking wounded, and the nation cannot endure this for much longer.
Is social change the place to overcome that personal anxiety? No, freedom will take care of itself, thank you, and cooperating with the angry in good faith would be to surrender the country all for nothing.
John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth, available worldwide. htpp://www.TransferOfWealth.net/
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