Previous art with more work

More art

Writer. Intellectual. Bipolar. Views of Jeffrey Riley. : Playing around with Microsoft Paint

Writer. Intellectual. Bipolar. Views of Jeffrey Riley. : Playing around with Microsoft Paint

More Microsoft Paint

Playing around with Microsoft Paint

A critique of American liberal thought

Growing up a Republican before realizing I'm much more of a Centrist, I've long pondered conservative American thought.  Based on the personal beliefs I was taught and experiences with Republican friends and family, it's been relatively easy to understand how personal bias colors how right wing people see the world.  Most of that comes from limited contact with anyone outside the tribe.  In American conservatives, that typically means being diversity free and, thus, not understanding of the experiences and motivations of people that are different; namely, other races (black, Hispanic, Asian, etc), sexualities (LGBT) and anything else not experienced by the exclusive American conservative (namely, very white) grouping.

The election of Donald Trump and the radicalization of the American Right has proven a disgusting, despicable revelation for me as I loathe everything at its root, namely the ferocious racism of its stupid, overwhelmingly white adherents and the subhuman talk radio shock jocks that give it life and sustenance.   This is how I never saw conservatives growing up.  I saw Ronald Reagan and the conservative ideological pursuit against things evil (whether you think the Soviet Union was evil or not is your opinion) and Reagan's endlessly inspiring, compassionate oratorical skills as being the epitome of all that was good with the world.  Conversely, Trump's childish, insulting, dimwitted, "insert a million more scathing realities" rhetoric, playing to the worst traits in the lowest common denominator has forced me as an educated man, like many other educated men like George Will, to disgustedly and, to a certain extent, forcibly detach from all things Trumpian.  In short, "American conservative thought" has become an oxymoron.  The intellectual ideology is gone in favor of the dipshitted ilk of grade school dropouts like Limbaugh and Hannity.   American conservative voters found their inherent stupidity while conservative spineless politicians keep allowing it to fester because a non-Democrat is in the White House.  

So I'm disgusted!  The party that I thought were the good guys are decidedly not. The people that I thought were about justice and principles are not.  So what is an American thinker to do?  For me, that means considering the other side.  I break from many on the new American Right because I very much believe in social justice.  That means justice FOR ALL.  As I will illustrate in a moment, liberals only believe in social justice for liberals but I'll get to that.  I want life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for everyone.  I admit that comes with caveats.  If I feel certain people are jerks, I'm not interested in them prospering.  It's not that I want these people to die but I don't want them to be successful, either, until they become better people.  I also have the animal instincts all human beings have.  In this case, I feel the tribal energies and pulls like everyone else but I choose not to succumb to them.  I want to be a better, broader human in a better, broader, more egalitarian world.  "Whiteness" used to provide me with great comfort and joy because it's what I knew and I didn't have to think about the uncomfortable realities of "different" people.  Truthfully, I could easily go back to being a very white, narrow minded right wing person but, as stated, I don't want that.  I'll also state that right wing people are not the inherently monstrous people non-understanding liberals make them out to be.  Right wing people very much love and care about their families.  However, as conservatives, that tends to be the only groups they care about.  I'll further comment on any other right wing views as I go along but I'd like to get to my critique of how I see American liberalism in 2018.  I have to preface this by saying this comes mostly from my observations of liberal culture and contacts with liberals on Twitter, YouTube or other forms of social media.  I have had many contacts and conversations of this kind so I feel I've gleaned a few things.

1.  Liberals are just as tribal as conservatives, though not in the same way.

Due to the indoctrination of various groups, American liberalism is a looser tribal confederation than the more homogeneous conservatives.  Liberals, in their attempts at beating the more racially centralized conservatives, learned some time ago that organizing and indoctrinating different ethnic, sexual and racial groups was their best option.  The organizing overwhelmingly comes from white educated liberals, those with education enough to have abstract views of right and wrong in America.  The marginalized groups (blacks, gays, etc) are primarily used to being marginalized.  That's their American experience.  They vote Democrat out of a feeling of necessity because of the perception (and frequent reality) that it's all they can do against people who hate them.  This makes for a conglomeration of diversity that isn't exactly unified yet isn't distinct (at least politically.)  The more educated, typically white liberals very much want a strong, inclusive group dynamic.  They're the ones who preach American ideals like "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."  They're the main tribal organizers because, as typically self-indulgent, self-righteous Americans, they KNOW in their hearts it's the correct way to go.

The problem is that modern American liberal thought is stuck in the past.  Listening to liberals today is like listening to a speaker from 1850.  To them, slavery and segregation essentially still exist and they're the ones how have to combat it.  This outdated thought is very dangerous to America because it ignored progress and teaches a form of learned hopelessness.  Thing are bad, always have been bad and always will be bad is the rhetoric.  America has made progress in racial matters.  Trump being elected doesn't change that.  However, the PERCEPTION that has accompanied the election of Trump, fueled by the "mainstream" media, had created the idea that we're just as racist a nation as we were 200 years ago and that is false.  Not only is it false, it's dangerously false because it stirs up potentially violent action in the name of falseness.  I'm not sure if Democrats at the top are using such rhetoric to keep themselves as unified as they can be or not.  I do think they all honestly believe we're as racist now as we were in 1819 and that is without question not the case.

2.  Liberal Americans are flaming hypocrites.

American liberals are in that sick, dark place where rhetoric and practice are near complete opposites.  Their preaching is in the typically American style of perfect self-indulgent self-righteousness that affects both sides.  "I'm right and you're wrong because I'm going to say all these wonderful things that you do and we don't."  For liberals, it was the idea of "When they go low, we go high."  After Trump's election, many Democrats went public with their disdain for this idea.  They lost an election to a HATED opponent and lost their marbles and principles at the same time.  American liberals tend to be driven more by their emotions than their logic.  When they get in a downward spiral, this can prove deadly because they don't reason their way out of it.  They don't catch their breath and think, "Okay.  Calm down.  I've got this."  They become easy proponents of what's happening now in the arena of rage and hate.  That's where American liberals are right now with Donald Trump and the US Presidency.  They're full of rage and hate on a daily basis.  Whether you consider it righteous or not, it's still very toxic and frightening.  The fake "counter balance" is their rhetoric of peace, love and understanding.  The reality is that they're movement is peace, love and understanding FOR SOME, which means whoever is in their group.  I've read and experienced several comments from LGBT people, for instance, that talk about how they're all about love in one breath then they spew as much hate as you could ever possibly read towards right wing people the next.  Apparently, "love" only means their group.  Have LGBT people faced hate and discrimination in American history?  Definitely.  However, claiming they're all about social love when they also spew social hate is hypocritical.  I don't mean to pick on the LGBT community.  I'm just giving an example as they're in the liberal tribe.  Liberals will also throw people under the bus (like mentally ill people) if it fits their agendas on issues like gun control.  Hey, I thought you guys were inclusive!  Just not towards crazies and white men, apparently (pardon the personal rant.)

3.  Liberals are not self-aware.

"Know thyself" and be humble in what you find are ideas lost on the American liberals of 2019.  Amazingly, they typically don't see their rather startling level of hypocrisy in attacking people not in their tribe.

More to come later.

Types of Pride, from Physical to Social

Physical:  The most animal, the least objective, and most understandable form.  In a society where beauty and performance are usually considered to be absolute (we all know what a "perfect" body looks like and what a sports victory is), this from of pride is expressed simply by sight and activity.  The individual feeling the pride typically uses it, whether for their own self-worth or for things like athletic success and successful physical relationships with a sexual partner.  This pride is both most hated and admired.  

Intellectual:  Comes from different angles but, like all pride, is fully evinced by self-awareness.  The physically proud knows he or she is good looking and/or dominant.  Intellectual pride is expressed in different ways.  Basic knowledge is the most understandable.  If you know more things about more things than anyone you know, it will often manifest as pride (though it can also come as shame if you feel you know too many trivial things!)  Pride can also come via intelligent insight.  This can be a form of street smart instead of book smart.  You have the ability to read people and situations on your feet and on the fly.  This kind of insight is usually not seen as intellectual but I believe it definitely is as it frequently comes from the great mental ability to assess and analyze on your feet.  A form of overall self-awareness and self-knowledge also qualifies.  "Knowing thyself" can often be the hardest thing humans can aspire to.  Those that greatly achieve this can be intuitively brilliant without being book or street smart.  

Existential:  This is pride for the sake of pride.  It's expression is simply the individual feeling proud for no real reason.  "I feel proud!"  However, unlike happiness and sadness, existential pride seems silly.  Whereas it's understandable we can feel things like happiness or sadness just for the sake of it, pride seems ridiculous if we're not actually proud of something.  "What are you proud of?"  "Uh...nothing in particular! I just am!"  This attitude may be encouraging and empowering to the individual but it makes you look like an idiot to everyone else.  

Positive, healthy pride:  This pride comes from being proud of all the right things.  If you're a good parent, a good role model for your children, if you work hard to support yourself and your family, if you do charity work, if you want the best for people, etc, etc, etc.  This is really the only kind of pride that's vital to the individual (though there are combinations like a proud pro athlete who uses his skills to support his family.)  This is the responsible pride that is much more about self-worth and self-esteem.  It's the "good person" pride that makes mankind positively evolve as a species.  

Religious and Social pride :  Now we're getting into the infinitely more abstract and potentially dangerous forms of pride.  Though many religions preach against feeling proud, as a human emotion, it will seep into everything we do that we feel is right.  Most religions preach good things.  However, the interpretations of these "good things" and the perception of implementation has been responsible for many, many atrocities in human history across the globe.   At an equal level is social pride, though that level often comes in the form of the potential more than the actual.  People on the right of the political spectrum tend to feel more pride in religion as a social factor.  People on the left side feel the social pride that comes from a feeling of self-righteousness in the form of ideas and beliefs on issues like social justice.  Religious fanaticism is much less a problem in the Western world today than it is in the Middle East, where ideas of religious righteousness go back thousands of years and can result in acts of terror against perceived opponents like 9/11.  Social pride is the major issue in the Western world today.  A more integrated society, invariably seen as the moral, righteous path by those in the mainstream, often degenerates into the worst aspects of human pettiness, such as tribal behavior based on racial or sexual identity. We're supposed to get along but, as a GroupThink species, we often don't nor do we even care to.  Now we have group pride, which is the most dangerous form of social pride as it usually comes at the cost of individual decision making or sensible reason. It becomes a social contagion fueled by aimless emotion and passion where people profess to believe the same things, no matter what or how competent they are, as the orthodox standard of right vs. wrong.  If you stray from that, you are suddenly considered "the enemy" and a terrible person, even if what you believe is correct.  Individuals are usually held accountable for what they do as individuals, whether socially or legally.  Group pride often takes the form of mob justice grounded in peer pressure based on perceived evils, ideas of racial or sexual extermination of those different, and racial pride in believing your race is superior simply because it exists and you're in it.  This is the lowest, dumbest, most disgusting form of pride because it takes no intelligence or insight to achieve.  It's humanity as a group of apes in the jungle. At least physical pride is an expression of individuality mixed with awareness.  Social pride is pure act and react and, in a civilized society, is very dangerous.    

Thank you for reading!