I have written several articles on postings related to politics. A list of links have been provided at bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address different aspects on these political events.

AMERICA TODAY faces a terrifying danger: political correctness. It is an existential threat not just to the United States, but all of human civilization.

By this, obviously, I mean right-wing political correctness.

Maybe you’re surprised to hear this. In the U.S. media, there’s no shortage of lamentations about political correctness and how it chills debate — but they’re almost always about the threat of left-wing PC.

In reality, political correctness, or cancel culture, or whatever it’s called, is not a phenomenon of the left, right, or center. It’s a phenomenon of human nature. All humanity’s infinite tribes are prone to groupthink and punishing heretics. That’s why the principle of free thought has to be defended: It is, unfortunately, a weird and unnatural fit for humans.

There absolutely are examples of ugly political correctness from the U.S. “left,” whatever that means in a country that, by historical standards, doesn’t have a left. But the vast, vast majority of political correctness in America is conservative. Conservative PC is so powerful in the U.S. that much of it is adopted by both political parties and all of the corporate media. Indeed, right-wing political correctness is so dominant that it’s politically incorrect to refer to it as political correctness. Instead, we call it things like “patriotism,” or simply don’t notice its existence.

A full examination of America’s conservative PC culture would take the rest of your life to read. So let’s limit this to four areas where the right’s PC causes some of the most harm: religion, foreign policy, the Republican Party, and police.

Religion

It probably doesn’t surprise you that exactly zero U.S. presidents have been open atheists. But since Congress first convened in 1789, it’s only had one openly atheist member: Pete Stark of California. Stark retired in 2013, so there are currently none.

According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 23 percent of Americans identify as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.” This means, Pew says, that “by far the largest difference between the U.S. public and Congress is in the share who are unaffiliated with a religious group.”

So there are likely many members of Congress right now who are “in the closet” when it comes to not believing in God. The only explanation? They’re all too cowed by PC to come out.

This isn’t surprising, since the U.S. still demonstrates informal and formal discrimination against atheists. A recent poll found that 96 percent of Americans said they’d vote for a Black candidate for president; 95 percent for a Catholic; and 66 percent for a Muslim. Only 60 percent said they’d vote for an atheist. While it’s unenforceable, the constitutions of eight states actually prohibit atheists from holding office. This includes Maryland, one of the most liberal states, whose constitution also declares that “it is the duty of every man to worship God.” (Maryland women are seemingly free to putter around ignoring the Almighty.)

Pro-religion PC is practiced on both sides of the aisle. In one of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks in 2016, the DNC chief financial officer suggested forcing Bernie Sanders to go on the record about whether he believes in God. “He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage,” the CFO argued. “My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

Even if, someday, a few national politicians screw up enough courage to admit that they’re atheists, it’s impossible to imagine any announcing that they’re actively anti-theistic. No member of the House is going to go on the CBS morning show and say, “I think all religion is pernicious, it’s a gross form of brainwashing children, and every religious leader is a con artist, including the Pope.”

No one on this plane of existence can say whether or not atheism is correct. What we can be sure of is right-wing PC has sharply limited free political speech in this area, and that’s made us less skeptical and more prone to authoritarianism.

Foreign Policy

America’s ironclad political correctness on religion plays into another aspect of our PC: The ferocious conservative restrictions on discussions of U.S. foreign policy. Since 9/11, many powerful Americans have demonstrated openness, perhaps even eagerness, for war between Christianity and Islam. Before the invasion of Iraq, then-President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac that he saw “Gog and Magog at work” in the Middle East. President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon has spoken about “the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam.” When the Christian Broadcasting Network asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo whether God sent Trump “just like Queen Esther to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace,” Pompeo responded, “I certainly believe that’s possible.” The right’s yearning to mix religion and violence is incredibly dangerous, yet is a staple of our daily political diet. Few politicians or powerful figures notice, much less attack this.

But our conservative PC on foreign policy goes much further. Everyone in the foreign policy establishment is aware that 9/11 and almost all Islamist terrorism is direct blowback from U.S. actions overseas. As a Defense Department report explained, “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom’” — i.e., what Bush claimed in front of Congress on September 20, 2001 — “but rather, they hate our policies.” The problem from the establishment’s perspective is that they like those policies, and don’t want to change them just because they get Americans killed. Top members of the military apparently say in private that our deaths are “a small price to pay for being a superpower.”

Yet perhaps the only national-level politician who’s spoken clearly and openly about this is former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. In 2004, a senior Bush administration official was willing to say that without U.S. actions in the Middle East, “bin Laden might still be redecorating mosques and boring friends with stories of his mujahideen days in the Khyber Pass” — but without his or her name attached. The 9/11 Commission’s report makes glancing reference to reality, but as one member later wrote, “The commissioners believed that American foreign policy was too controversial to be discussed except in recommendations written in the future tense. Here we compromised our commitment to set forth the full story.”

As with the conservative PC about God, Democrats also obey the conservative political correctness about foreign policy. For instance, in then-President Barack Obama’s famous 2009 speech in Cairo, he was too PC to tell the truth. Instead, he mumbled that “tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims,” whatever that means exactly. In 2010, when Obama’s then-counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was asked why Al Qaeda was so determined to attack the U.S., he responded, “I think this is a, uh, long issue.” He did not elaborate.

The PC line on foreign policy extends far beyond terrorism. Israel is one of the most powerful examples. Every American politician who cares to know is aware that of Israel’s dozen or so wars, it was clearly the aggressor in all but two — the 1948 War of Independence and the 1973 Yom Kippur War — and even those are arguable. They also understand that Israel has rejected numerous offers to create a just, two-state solution with the Palestinians. In private, U.S. officials say that Israel has constructed “apartheid” in the West Bank. While a minor glasnost on this subject is currently in progress, this clear reality remains inexpressible by U.S. politicians.

And what about the media, that hotbed of freethinking radicalism? Even rich, famous TV hosts who deviate from the right’s PC line must issue groveling apologies or get canceled, literally. Sometimes they issue groveling apologies and get canceled. After Bush called the 9/11 hijackers “cowards,” Bill Maher took issue on his old ABC show “Politically Incorrect.” “We have been the cowards,” Maher said, “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” Maher immediately said he was sorry, but it was too late: His show lost big advertisers and was taken off the air the next year. In other words, the moment “Politically Incorrect” was genuinely politically incorrect, Maher was yanked off-stage.

Next, in February 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq, Phil Donohue’s MSNBC show got the ax. It had the highest ratings on the network, but as executives fretted in an internal memo, it could become “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” In other words, since all of the rest of American TV was ultra-PC, and they had to be too. The same channel soon signed Jesse Ventura to a three-year contract for a new show but then found out he was anti-war and so paid him to do nothing.

Other TV figures made sure not to suffer similar fates. “I remember,” Katie Couric later said, “this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this? And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? … Anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.” At the time, when it actually mattered, Couric chirped on “The Today Show” that “Navy SEALs rock!”

Then there’s Chris Hayes, another MSNBC host. In a broadcast just before Memorial Day 2012, Hayes expressed exactly the kind of sentiment you’d expect to hear in an honest debate on war: “It is, I think, very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor. … I feel uncomfortable about the word ‘hero’ because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. And I obviously don’t want to desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that’s fallen. … But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic.” The freakout from the right was so intense that Hayes immediately said he was “deeply sorry” because “it’s very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots.”

Even opinions on events from a lifetime ago must be politically correct. After Jon Stewart said on “The Daily Show” that he believed Harry Truman was a “war criminal” for using atomic weapons on Japan, he came under immediate attack, and quickly came crawling for forgiveness. “I walk that back because it was in my estimation a stupid thing to say,” Stewart pleaded in a tone recognizable from any of history’s struggle sessions. “You ever do that, where you’re saying something, and as it’s coming out you’re like, ‘What the fuck?’ And it just sat in there for a couple of days, just sitting going, ‘No, no, [Truman] wasn’t, and you should really say that out loud on the show.’”

With no critiques about specifics permissible, a broad discussion about U.S. foreign policy is light years away. There won’t be any politicians or TV hosts anytime soon who’ll consistently emphasize Martin Luther King Jr.’s position that America is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

No one knows what foreign policy Americans would choose after an open debate. But it’s manifestly true that the current one, shaped overwhelmingly by right-wing PC, has caused gigantic damage to the U.S. and the world.

A Gallup poll shows that while 74% of Republicans are “extremely proud” to be Americans, only 32% of Democrats and 23% of self-described liberals feel the same.

Why does the left hate America?

Let’s stipulate that America is not perfect. I don’t need to list the imperfections, because the left and their news puppets remind us of them daily.

But notwithstanding her many flaws, America stands tall against other countries. Here are some metrics:

One is racism. That’s an abomination for which the left delightfully condemns America, even as they demand that we discriminate on the basis of race.

But in fact, America is now one of the least racist countries in the world, far behind Egypt (ranked No. 1), Russia (No. 4), Japan (No. 9), India and an imaginary country that the survey called “Palestine” (which apparently will be a very racist country if it ever becomes one).

In wealth, America is in the top few if you leave out the fortuitous wealth of small oil countries like Qatar and Kuwait. Wealth does not make a country good, but poverty can certainly make it bad.

In economic freedom, America ranks fourth out of 162 countries. Socialist paradise Venezuela ranks dead last. Huh, go figure.

Americans have won the most Nobel Prizes. In fact, we’ve won nearly triple the number of the second-highest country, and about the same number as countries second through sixth combined.

In Nobel Prizes, we’re a dynasty.

It’s not just in science. Americans have won the most Nobels in five of the six categories: chemistry, economics, physics, medicine and, notably, peace. (The sixth category is literature, where the French lead.)

Note that these American winners are chosen by committees of Swedes and Norwegians, not Americans.

Finally, most would say that America is blessed with visual beauty. Even Woody Guthrie — not exactly a MAGA hat wearer — sang of beauty from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters in a land “made for you and me.”

But the left still hates that land.

I think their hatred is not despite the fact that there is so much to love about America, but because of it. The American dream gets in the way of the left’s plot to swap it for an atheistic and socialistic nightmare — ruled by them, of course.

In other words, the left hates America because it stands in the way of their power. They’d rather rule over hell than live in heaven.

There’s another, less obvious reason that the left hates America. The clue to this second reason is the left’s obsessive compulsion to display their virtue and morality.

This behavior has become so prevalent that it’s been named. It’s “virtue signaling” or, as I call it, “moral preening.”

Moral preening is a coping mechanism for an inferiority complex. The hateful, hapless and humorless soothe their feelings of inferiority with conspicuous displays of superiority.

For example, for many years the left has talked pretty about their compassion toward the downtrodden. But the truly compassionate people are conservatives, who at all income levels quietly make more charitable donations than noisy liberals.

Here’s another example. Have you noticed that electric vehicles look funny? That’s because they’re designed to. They’re an eye-catching stage from which to shout, “I’m a wonderful person.”

Here’s another. The left here in Aspen now makes a show of their “grief therapy” for the angst they feel or pretend to feel about global warming. This melodrama must be performed in groups, of course, to maximize the preening opportunities.

Afterward, oblivious to the irony, they amuse themselves in being transported uphill by motorized lifts powered by electricity generated from burning coal or natural gas (just like the motors in those look-at-me electric vehicles) so that they can slide back down. Over and over.

One more example of the left’s moral preening. After mostly losing their war on Christmas, they now lecture us on the evils of that prototypical American holiday, Thanksgiving.

In short, the American left’s goal is not to actually do good, but to feel good — to assuage their feelings of inferiority. They accomplish that by dragging down the rest of America.

Of course, America itself has nothing to do with this illness. These leftists also would hate France, Canada, Japan or New Zealand if they moved there (as they often threaten to, but never do).

Heck, if they and their children were starving in the socialist utopia of Venezuela, they’d hate even that. Wherever a leftist finds himself, that is where he hates. Because it feels good.

This is why the left is wildly triggered by President Trump. It’s not his policies, which are often less conservative than George Bush’s. It’s because Trump calls them out for their boring, hypocritical, self-indulgent, counterproductive feel-goodery.

So when leftists make a show of hating on America, don’t persuade them with facts and logic. It will only make them hate America — and you — all the more.

Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left—counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)

For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

How did the American left—conceived to bring more compassion and justice to the world—become so given to hate? It began in the 1960s, when America finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings. That acceptance changed America forever. It imposed a new moral imperative: America would have to show itself redeemed of these immoralities in order to stand as a legitimate democracy.

The genius of the left in the ’60s was simply to perceive the new moral imperative, and then to identify itself with it. Thus the labor of redeeming the nation from its immoral past would fall on the left. This is how the left put itself in charge of America’s moral legitimacy. The left, not the right—not conservatism—would set the terms of this legitimacy and deliver America from shame to decency.

This bestowed enormous political and cultural power on the American left, and led to the greatest array of government-sponsored social programs in history—at an expense, by some estimates, of more than $22 trillion. But for the left to wield this power, there had to be a great menace to fight against—a tenacious menace that kept America uncertain of its legitimacy, afraid for its good name.

This amounted to a formula for power: The greater the menace to the nation’s moral legitimacy, the more power redounded to the left. And the ’60s handed the left a laundry list of menaces to be defeated. If racism was necessarily at the top of the list, it was quickly followed by a litany of bigotries ending in “ism” and “phobia.”

The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as America’s most intolerable disgrace. But the left’s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the ’60s. The Achilles’ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like “systemic racism” and “structural inequality.” But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

It is undeniable that America has achieved since the ’60s one of the greatest moral evolutions ever. That is a profound problem for the left, whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression. The left’s unspoken terror is that racism is no longer menacing enough to support its own power. The great crisis for the left today—the source of its angst and hatefulness—is its own encroaching obsolescence. Today the left looks to be slowly dying from lack of racial menace.

A single white-on-black shooting in Ferguson, Mo., four years ago resulted in a prolonged media blitz and the involvement of the president of the United States. In that same four-year period, thousands of black-on-black shootings took place in Chicago, hometown of the then-president, yet they inspired very little media coverage and no serious presidential commentary.

White-on-black shootings evoke America’s history of racism and so carry an iconic payload of menace. Black-on-black shootings carry no such payload, although they are truly menacing to the black community. They evoke only despair. And the left gets power from fighting white evil, not black despair.

Today’s left lacks worthy menaces to fight. It is driven to find a replacement for racism, some sweeping historical wrongdoing that morally empowers those who oppose it. (Climate change?) Failing this, only hatred is left.

Hatred is a transformative power. It can make the innocuous into the menacing. So it has become a weapon of choice. The left has used hate to transform President Trump into a symbol of the new racism, not a flawed president but a systemic evil. And he must be opposed as one opposes racism, with a scorched-earth absolutism.

For Martin Luther King Jr., hatred was not necessary as a means to power. The actual details of oppression were enough. Power came to him because he rejected hate as a method of resisting menace. He called on blacks not to be defined by what menaced them. Today, because menace provides moral empowerment, blacks and their ostensible allies indulge in it. The menace of black victimization becomes the unarguable truth of the black identity. And here we are again, forever victims.

Yet the left is still stalked by obsolescence. There is simply not enough menace to service its demands for power. The voices that speak for the left have never been less convincing. It is hard for people to see the menace that drives millionaire football players to kneel before the flag. And then there is the failure of virtually every program the left has ever espoused—welfare, public housing, school busing, affirmative action, diversity programs, and so on.

For the American left today, the indulgence in hate is a death rattle.

Our perception that politics in America have grown more polarized in recent decades, unfortunately, is fairly accurate. The anger and vitriol seems to be at toxic levels. In recent weeks, rage over decades (centuries?) of racism and discrimination has resulted into protests across America and worldwide.

The most recent catalyst for the outbreak of protests is George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. Black Lives Matter might be the largest movement in U.S. history. All of this occurring under the gloom of a global pandemic.

Much of this anger, as of late, has been from the left. Some of this righteous anger, in the form of “wokism” and the “cancel culture,” might be inadvertently contributing to a backlash from the right. In response to some of the anger and protests from the left, some conservatives, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have gone as far as saying that today’s Democratic leaders “despise this country” and, consequently, are unfit to be in leadership roles. While I’m sure that there are some extremists in America who do indeed hate our country, let’s keep this discussion focused on the more typical American Democrat (or person who is more liberal or on the “left”). Is it true that they really hate America?

Does Anger Mean Hate?

First, let’s not conflate “anger” with “hate.” One can be angry without hating, and our own experience tells us this is true. Think of the times that you’ve been really angry with your partner, parent, close friend, or child. Did your anger mean that you hated them? Of course not! Just as you can love someone and be angry at them, one can love one’s country and be angry at aspects of it too.

Similarly, we can even dislike aspects of a person we love (e.g., the way he smacks his food when he eats). Granted, there is so much anger in many liberals right now that it might appear that many of them do indeed hate America. But just as those we love can hurt us most, consider that the level of anger that many liberals feel is a reflection of the pain and hurt underneath it. 

How Conservatives and Liberals Are Alike

People on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum get angry and protest. Each side thinks they are right and the other side is wrong. Both sides vilify the other and engage in a type of fear-mongering. “Don’t let the other side win, or they will destroy America!” In an odd way, this makes conservatives and liberals the same, not different. The difference is what elicits fear and anger in each side.  

Viewing Our Differences Through the Lens of Moral Foundations Theory

While we all like to think of ourselves as objective, we all are subject to many biases that shape our views and opinions. This comes into particular play in our moral values and judgments. According to social psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt and colleagues’ Moral Foundations Theory, conservatives and liberals’ evaluations of good/bad and right/wrong are influenced by how these different foundations are weighted.

Liberals tend to evaluate morality based more on the foundations of care/harm, fairness/cheating, and liberty/oppression whereas conservatives also include the foundations of loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Most of this is subconscious, but it can result in liberals and conservatives almost speaking different languages when it comes to their moral reasoning. Each side looks at the other and thinks, “Why do you not see this? What is wrong with you that you don’t get this?” (You can read more about this in Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion). 

The killing of George Floyd by police officers activated all three of liberals’ primary moral foundations of care/harm, fairness/cheating, and liberty/oppression quite strongly. From the left’s perspective, their righteous anger in the forms of protests and demands for change are warranted to correct wrongs in society and our politics. Many on the left were already quite angry about the Trump presidency for denigrating the values that many liberals hold dear (e.g., treatment of refugees, immigrants, and the poor, minority/LBGTQ rights, the environment).

Similarly, conservatives become quite upset when liberals act in ways that subvert the three other moral foundations: disloyalty to America, disrespecting authority, and dishonoring the sanctity of America. In many countries, and historically, one would be imprisoned or executed for merely criticizing the government. As a recent example, protesters in Hong Kong experienced China’s crackdown firsthand. What a great country we have that we can (peacefully) protest our own government!

Numerous conservatives look at people on the left and think, “What is their major malfunction? What a bunch of ungrateful complainers! How dare they be so critical of our great nation!” Agree with them or not, many conservatives find it almost heretical for liberals to be so critical of America, especially when it comes to the removal of statues, monuments, and renaming roads and buildings (there’s that “sanctity” moral foundation coming into play).  

The image of maskless Trump supporters standing behind the president at rallies has become an unfairly maligned symbol of an unfairly maligned segment of the U.S. population.

So much so that the campaign has even made an effort to mask them up with Trump masks, only succeeding to a limited degree with those standing directly behind the president facing the cameras. “Trump supporters are COVIDidiots who are toying with death,” says the left as they toss about dismissive phrases like “science deniers” and “Darwin awards.” To them, those of us who eschew masks are backwoods rubes, if not would-be mass-murderers who have made saving grandma all about politics.

Fair enough. To us, mask-proponents are herd-driven, frightened sheeple who care more about signalling their endless virtue (lol) than following data, facts, and real science. But whatever. To be sure, mask-wearing has become political, although I would argue that it is the proponents of forced-masking who have made it so, not the other way around. They are the ones demanding of us a potentially harmful positive action – both to one’s health and to society as a whole – based on dubious science and even more dubious real-world results.

Even so, since they brought it up, let’s talk about those politics for a bit. Do you ever wonder why the left primarily seems to be in love with their face diapers and quite obviously wants to wear them forever, while the right tends to either grudgingly use them or avoid them like the, er, plague? Is there something innate to the right-or-left thinking mind that precludes us to take a certain position on this issue, or is it all just caused by Bad Orange Man? If it were only grandfatherly Uncle Joe screaming “C’MON MAN, PUT ON A DAMN MASK!” from his basement while wearing four of them at the same time, would he have gotten more compliance from conservatives?

Now to be fair, overall compliance IS pretty high, sadly. A recent Gallup poll found that 80% of Americans are “highly likely” to wear a mask in public indoor spaces (and yet, astonishingly, the virus continues to spread). Breaking down the politics, however, finds Democrats at 87% and Republicans at 74%. Not huge, but significant, and although there are certainly plenty of Republicans who have tragically fallen for the hoax, it’s pretty fair to say the vast majority of those you see trying to tell the unvarnished truth about the futility of forced masking to stop a highly contagious respiratory virus tend to be conservatives.

Why is this? I’ve got some workable theories, and all have to do with a few key differences in worldview:

Leftists love ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches

From climate change to healthcare to education to lockdowns, those on the left continually advocate for one-size-fits-all approaches that ultimately render their proposals not only super-expensive, but unworkable in a country as large, diverse, and spread out as ours. So it’s really no surprise to see them advocating for masks outdoors in non-crowded spaces with the same vigor they would on a crowded bus or airplane. Now, I’ve got rational, scientific reasons to be against masks almost anywhere, but even I can understand why they might at least be advocated for in a big, crowded city like New York City or Chicago. But there’s no sense of balance to the mask-worshipping hand-wringers, who’ve lost all credibility by insisting mask-mandates be implemented and enforced virtually everywhere and in almost every situation. Because when simple minds have a hammer, everything around them looks like a nail.

Leftist love to control other people, especially those they disagree with ideologically

If this were a super-deadly pandemic that was killing great numbers of people not already on death’s door AND face masks were scientifically proven to stop it, then maybe there would be some justification for mandating them for a short period of time. And governments have always had and should always have the right to quarantine the sick (*sick* being the operative word) if a deadly disease is spreading in an area. But when masks are mandated even in places where the virus isn’t spreading and have been for months on end, with zero end in sight, it’s hard to argue that the basic human desire for control of others (present to an even more dangerous degree among leftists) isn’t playing a role here. If you can watch the mind-blowing shenanigans of ghouls like Gretchen Whitmer, Eric Garcetti, and Bill de Blasio and honestly think these people don’t get off on using their power to lord it over others, you’re deceiving yourself.

Leftists love big government mandates

The maskers don’t want to ‘convince’ you to put on a face burqa. They can’t really do that anyway. Once you go beyond the surface argument of supposedly stopping ‘muh droplets,’ the idea is patently absurd not just on its face, but when analyzed by any sort of honest science. Thus, they need the force of law, or executive edict/mandate, to enforce their irrational fears on those of us who think beyond their propaganda.

Leftists love to suppress free speech they disagree with, especially if it comes from medical professionals and scientists on the opposite side of their views

There was a time when liberals would defend one’s right to speak, even if they disagreed with what was being said. That time, sadly, is long gone. Sure, if there wasn’t a First Amendment they’d probably have us all in gulags, but nowadays who needs government speech suppression when you can use intimidation, public shaming, gaslighting, and your Big Tech ideological allies to shut down dissenting opinions as well as Joseph Stalin ever could have.

Leftists despise personal freedom

Other than the ‘freedom’ to have an abortion or ‘switch’ the gender of a confused five-year-old, leftists tend to hate personal freedom, especially the kind that leads to robust, successful, liberty-loving societies. Individuality has always been hated by a left that tends to prefer the State and the collective. When we gave them the power to force humans to cover one of the most important aspects of our individuality (thus turning us visually into faceless clones), is anyone surprised to see them run with it as far as they can go? Did you ever in your wildest dreams think you’d lose the freedom to breathe free air while walking in public? Well, it’s gone, and we’re going to have to fight like hell to get it back.

Leftists hate seeing other people happy when they aren’t

Jealousy is part of human nature, to be sure, but it also seems to be a bigger problem among those on the left. That’s ultimately why they tend to favor socialism over a free market system. Seeing other people succeed wildly doesn’t drive these ghouls to work hard and seek their own success, but instead makes them want to steal it in some way, preferably legally using government force. To wit, I believe that mask and other sorts of COVID shaming come less from any real concern the left has for health and more from the fact that they just can’t stand to see people happy and living a life that deviates from the dystopian, fear-filled existence they’ve chosen for themselves.

There are doubtless plenty more, but here’s the bottom line: Leftists are generally miserable people who get twisted pleasure from trying to make the lives of others as sad as their own. As such, their zealous, quasi-religious love of universal forced masking should take none of us by surprise.

Can We Find Some Common Ground?

People don’t fit into discreet categories and, if we stop vilifying one another long enough, perhaps we can each see a little bit from one another’s perspective. We get so polarized that we often don’t listen to one another, which might be considered a form of switchtracking. We are too busy telling the other side how and why they are wrong instead of listening a bit to one another to try to find some common ground.

Conservatives are correct in that, taking a broad perspective, there are many wonderful things about America. We have done a lot “right.” We are founded on lofty principles that all people have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are a world leader in so many areas—the arts, sciences, medicine, and technology. American ingenuity, allowed to flourish in our fertile economic and political conditions, is responsible for inventions such as the electric light, the airplane, cellphones, and personal computers. We helped win World Wars I and II. We put the first human beings on the moon. In many respects, we should all be thankful that we live here and not in some more oppressive country like North Korea or, even more broadly, medieval Europe, Stalin’s Russia, or Hitler’s Germany. Using both historical and global standards, America is a pretty awesome country.

Yet, liberals are also correct that America has many ills. We frequently don’t live up to our lofty aspirations. Many inequalities still exist. We have some embarrassingly bad policies and laws in our history, such as slavery and Jim Crow. Most Native Americans would not, understandably, praise America as the land of opportunity given that we took the land from them. It’s amazing to think that, even though America was founded on July 4, 1776, women were not even given the right to vote at the national level until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. To this day, many women and minorities still don’t often experience the same level of opportunities and benefits as the advantaged white majority. Much progress has been made in the areas of social justice, yet there is more work to be done. 

Both liberals and conservatives have valid points of view. But the groups become more polarized when we don’t acknowledge this. Liberals could do a better job at appreciating the many great qualities about America while still calling for change and reform. Conservatives could do a better job at acknowledging that, even though America is a great country in so many respects, we have made many egregious mistakes in our past and still have work to do in order to “form a more perfect union.” 

The Takeaway?

No, Democrats don’t hate America, although many are angry. But saying Democrats hate America provides a rationale for Republicans to hate Democrats. This kind of polarizing rhetoric maybe the heart of the problem.

Once we become blinded by the view that people who hold different perspectives than we do are idiots, ignorant, or morally inferior to ourselves, it allows us to treat them with contempt and disdain. “My group is better than your group!” Strangely enough, Democrats and Republicans each point their collective fingers at one another making the same claim—that they have it right and the other group is wrong (or ignorant, stupid, uneducated, etc.). The reality is that most people are doing the best they can and trying to get it “right,” whatever that means. Simply put, if we thought our views were idiotic, we would change them! 

Although Democrats don’t truly hate America, making this claim elicits the outrage that garners higher TV ratings, more social media shares and likes, and makes more money for networks. Media on both the right and the left foment this anger because their existence often depends upon it. We are all, to some degree, responsible, as well, as we collectively segregate ourselves into our tribes and convince ourselves that we are morally superior to those “others.” Until both liberals and conservatives realize that our real enemy isn’t each other, but our vilification of one another, we will continue down this path toward greater tribal animosity that is the real threat to our democracy. I believe constructive criticism can improve any coalition. And such criticism is on offer from leftists, liberals, conservatives, and others who believe that a healthy left has something vital to offer America.

I believe that there are good people in all walks of life, and that goes for politics as well. I believe that the left is trying to lead us down the wrong path. However, I don’t blame them. It is not their fault. They have been brainwashed by a liberal /socialist educational system. The media and social media are totally biased and therefore they are only getting biased messages. You see this in other countries as well. In many middle eastern countries, hate for anything non Muslim is common. This is why radical Islam is so prevalent. We are born as sponges, we absorb everything. We rely on our elders to guide our paths until we can think for ourselves. Unfortunately this has not been working for our young population. Instead of love of our country, fair play and hard work being reinforced, the exact opposite is being taught. Hate, and violence, lack of tolerance is being taught. Those in power on the left, the ones pulling all the strings, think that Americans are gullible idiots. Frankly I think in many cases they are right. We have to reverse that trend. People have to learn to think for themselves. We need to learn tolerance for our fellow man. We need to learn how to listen and how to work towards a common goal, which is the betterment of our society. We can right current wrongs in our society. However, destroying our past is not the answer. By destroying the past, we guarantee that we repeat previous mistakes. We also can’t be ashamed of our history. Expecting our current population to pay reparations that occurred hundreds of years ago is insane. All it does is further drive wedges between our citizens. We also have to maintain our borders. No country can survive with totally open borders. They become a territory. We have made great strides, and the world is a better place because of our presence. How many countries can say the same thing? Socialism and communism are failed political systems, they only serve to enrich and empower the elite. People’s rights suffer under these governments.

Resources:

townhall.com, “Top 10 Things Liberals Will Try To Ban Within The Next Decade,” By Kurt Schlichter; townhall.com, “Six Reasons Why Leftists Love Masks (Hint: ‘Health’ Isn’t On The List),” By ScottMorefield; whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu, “The Left and the Right in Thinking, Personality, and Politics,” by G. William Domhoff; theatlantic.com, “Why Can’t the Left Win?” By Conor Friedersdorf; WSJ.com, “Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate,” By Shelby Steele; psychologytoday.com, “Do Democrats Hate America? Anger from the left has been boiling over. But do Democrats really hate America?” By Mike Brooks Ph.D.; theintercept.com,”Political Correctness Is Destroying America! (Just Not How You Think.), By Jon Schwartz; apentimes.com, “Two reasons why the left hates America,” By Glenn K. Beaton; nytimes.com, “‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S. “By Hannah Beech;

Addendum:

Worldwide feelings towards America:

Even though we are the richest country in the world, people around the world feel sorry for us. I wanted to wrap up this posting by including some of the things that people from other countries are saying about us. I posted it in the addendum section, because it really did not fit in the main portion of this article. Basically we need to get our head out of our ass and start working together. I have said this before. Divided You Fall, United You Stand.

BANGKOK — Myanmar is a poor country struggling with open ethnic warfare and a coronavirus outbreak that could overload its broken hospitals. That hasn’t stopped its politicians from commiserating with a country they think has lost its way.

“I feel sorry for Americans,” said U Myint Oo, a member of parliament in Myanmar. “But we can’t help the U.S. because we are a very small country.”

The same sentiment prevails in Canada, one of the most developed countries. Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border.

“Personally, it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, an industrial city on the border with Michigan, where locals used to venture for lunch. Amid the pandemic and in the run-up to the presidential election, much of the world is watching the United States with a mix of shock, chagrin and, most of all, bafflement.

How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And after nearly four years during which President Trump has praised authoritarian leaders and obscenely dismissed some other countries as insignificant and crime-ridden, is the United States in danger of exhibiting some of the same traits he has disparaged?

“The U.S.A. is a first-world country but it is acting like a third-world country,” said U Aung Thu Nyein, a political analyst in Myanmar.

Adding to the sense of bewilderment, Mr. Trump has refused to embrace an indispensable principle of democracy, dodging questions about whether he will commit to a peaceful transition of power after the November election should he lose. His demurral, combined with his frequent attacks on the balloting process, earned a rebuke from Republicans, including Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power,” Mr. Romney wrote on Twitter. “Without that, there is Belarus.”

In Belarus, where tens of thousands of people have faced down the police after the widely disputed re-election last month of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Mr. Trump’s remarks sounded familiar.

“It reminds me of Belarus, when a person cannot admit defeat and looks for any means to prove that he couldn’t lose,” said Kiryl Kalbasnikau, a 29-year-old opposition activist and actor. “This would be a warning sign for any democracy.”

Some others in Europe are confident that American institutions are strong enough to withstand assault.

“I have no doubt in the ability of the constitutional structures of the United States with their system of checks and balances to function,” said Johann Wadephul of Germany, a senior lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

Still, that the president of the United States, the very country that shepherded the birth of Germany’s own peaceful democracy after the defeat of the Third Reich, was wavering on the sanctity of the electoral process has been met with disbelief and dismay.

The diminution of the United States’ global image began before the pandemic, as Trump administration officials snubbed international accords and embraced an America First policy. Now, though, its reputation seems to be in free-fall.

A Pew Research Center poll of 13 countries found that over the past year, nations including Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany have been viewing the United States in its most negative light in years. In every country surveyed, the vast majority of respondents thought the United States was doing a bad job with the pandemic.

Such global disapproval historically has applied to countries with less open political systems and strongmen in charge. But people from just the kind of developing countries that Mr. Trump has mocked say the signs coming from the United States are ominous: a disease unchecked, mass protests over racial and social inequality, and a president who seems unwilling to pledge support for the tenets of electoral democracy.

Mexico, perhaps more than any other country, has been the target of Mr. Trump’s ire, with the president using it as a campaign punching bag and vowing to make Mexicans pay for a border wall. Now they are feeling a new emotion that has overtaken their anger and bewilderment at Trumpian insults: sympathy.

“We used to look to the U.S. for democratic governance inspiration,” said Eduardo Bohórquez, the director of Transparency International Mexico. “Sadly, this is not the case anymore.”

“‘Being great’ is simply not enough,” he added.

In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority democracy, there is a sense that the United States has left the world adrift, even if its application overseas of democratic ideals was imperfect. For decades, Washington supported some of Asia’s most ruthless dictators because they were considered vital to halting communism in the region.

“The world sees the dismantling of social cohesion within American society and the mess in managing Covid,” said Yenny Wahid, an Indonesian politician and activist. “There is a vacuum of leadership that needs to be filled, but America is not fulfilling that leadership role.”

Ms. Wahid, whose father was president of Indonesia after the country emerged from decades of strongman rule, said she worried that Mr. Trump’s dismissive attitude toward democratic principles could legitimize authoritarians.

“Trump inspired many dictators, many leaders who are interested in dictatorship, to copy his style, and he emboldened them,” she said.

In places like the Philippines, Mexico and others, elected leaders have been compared to Mr. Trump when they have turned to divisive rhetoric, disregard of institutions, intolerance of dissent and antipathy toward the media.

But there is also a sense that Americans are now getting a glimpse of the troubles people living in fragile democracies must endure.

“They now know what it’s like in other countries: violating norms, international trade and its own institutions,” said Eunice Rendon, an expert on migration and security and the director of Migrant Agenda, a nonprofit organization in Mexico. “The most powerful country in the world all of a sudden looks vulnerable.”

Already, an American passport, which once allowed easy access to almost every country in the world, is no longer a valuable travel pass. Because of the coronavirus, American tourists are banned from most of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America.

Albania, Brazil and Belarus are among a small group of countries welcoming Americans with no restrictions, however.

The State Department has tried to play up its role in battling the coronavirus overseas, even as the United States struggled to supply its own doctors and nurses with adequate equipment early in the pandemic. In March, the United States provided 10,000 gloves and 5,000 surgical masks, among other medical supplies, to Thailand, which today has recorded fewer than 3,520 coronavirus cases and 59 deaths. Despite the low caseload, most Thais continue to wear face masks in public and the country never suffered a mask shortage.

“Through the American people’s generosity and the U.S. government’s action, the United States continues to demonstrate global leadership in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” a State Department statement said.

In Cambodia, which reports being largely spared by the virus so far, there is a measure of schadenfreude toward the United States. Prime Minister Hun Sen has survived as Asia’s longest serving leader by cracking down on dissent and cozying up to China. He has turned his back on American aid because it often came with conditions to improve human rights. Now, he and his administration are ridiculing the United States and its handling of the pandemic.

“He has many nuclear weapons,” Sok Eysan, a spokesman for Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, said of Mr. Trump. “But he is careless with a disease that can’t be seen.”

Political Posts Both National and International
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/20/reparations-can-go-both-ways/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/15/what-are-the-panama-papers/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/11/what-amendments-will-be-in-jeopardy-under-a-democratic-government/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/04/nominating-and-vetting-supreme-court-justices/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/28/roe-vs-wade-redux/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/20/ruth-bader-ginsburg-what-her-passing-means-for-our-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/14/chinas-100-year-plan-for-world-domination/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/13/when-the-soviet-union-collapsed-what-type-of-government-did-it-take-and-does-it-still-exist/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/11/israel-and-the-united-arab-emirate-brokered-deal-how-big-is-this/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/11/the-plot-to-destroy-america-when-and-how-did-it-start/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/26/what-ruined-this-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/25/how-to-make-our-country-great-again/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/18/socialism-explained/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/17/communism-explained/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/05/can-american-win-the-war-for-the-world-market/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/05/trumps-china-trade-deal-killed-by-corona/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/31/detroit-put-its-citizens-first/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/30/do-you-remember-the-movie-independence-day/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/22/why-does-the-left-hate-this-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/16/essential-and-non-essential-businesses-blast-from-the-past-or-not/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/13/cancel-culture-needs-to-end-its-unamerican/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/10/gun-control/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/09/financial-disclosure-for-politicians/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/06/why-is-the-left-in-love-with-impeachment-is-william-barr-next/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/26/why-democratic-leaders-are-okay-with-the-destruction-of-our-statues/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/25/how-would-the-left-respond-to-the-right-if-they-reciprocated-with-violence/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/25/what-drives-the-agenda-of-the-democratic-party-fear-or-far-left-ideology/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/23/violence-and-fear-as-a-tool-of-the-left/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/23/why-are-state-and-local-leaders-allowing-looting-and-rioting-to-occur/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/21/did-christopher-columbus-deserve-a-statue/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/20/give-an-inch-take-a-mile-the-age-of-aquiescence/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/19/daca-right-or-wrong/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/18/should-tax-payer-dollars-be-used-to-rebuild-decimated-cities/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/18/the-national-debt-dangerously-high/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/17/open-our-country-now/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/16/green-new-deal-what-the-hell/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/14/public-figures-speaking-out-good-or-bad/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/12/rejuvenating-our-infrastructure/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/12/our-history-deserves-to-be-protected-not-destroyed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/10/should-we-be-afraid-of-china-our-asian-competitor/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/09/why-the-left-socialist-and-communist-hate-religion/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/08/insurrection-act/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/06/what-makes-a-leader-great/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/05/government-reform-proposal-february-17-1999/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/25/history-of-the-democratic-party/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/31/what-does-the-socialist-democratic-party-think-of-the-american-people/