They are highly emotional and irrational. Their conclusions are not based on logical assessments of a situation, but on their personal identification with one party and the projection of their own emotional damage into incommensurable issues.
One can easily observe this phenomenon repeated over and over. It is evident in the histrionic behavior of Code Pink activist Sandra Ruch and the rest of her crew during their failed effort to sail The Sea Hitler to Gaza to try to break an embargo against the terrorist group Hamas. It's evident in the unbalanced behaviour of OCAP activists who disrupted a Toronto City Council meeting a few months ago. It's evident among radical university professors who are mired in marginal areas of study, such as "Critical Race Theory" "Gender Studies" and others permeated with self-absorbed nonsense that bears little relevance to the rest of the world.
While people not directly involved with radical, anti-capitalist politics recognize the absurdities of that movement, it is interesting to note that some rare self-insight has been exhibited by the Godmother of Canadian radicalism, Judy Rebick.
In an article at rabble.ca, the radical leftist website she founded, Rebick wrote:
In addition to the sadness about the state of society and of nature, almost all of us whatever oppression we might have experienced for social or economic reasons suffer from some kind of deep personal wounds. And if we don't face that sadness, that pain, we will inflict it on ourselves and others in a way that is hurtful. Much of the dysfunction on the Left comes not from political differences which can be creative and productive but from people acting out this pain. We become part of the problem instead of the part of the solution.
I was in therapy at the time when I was most busy and most recognized as an activist. I went through a lot of change both from the activism and from the therapy but I kept the therapy private. Only a few close friends knew what I was going through. We have privatized our emotional problems.
When psychiatrists assess people with mental illness, one of the considerations in the diagnosis that is a predictor of an individual's capability to respond to treatment is their insight into their condition. Rebick frequently makes statements that suggest that she is detached from reality, but she is not unintelligent. Most of her cohorts in the radical left lack her intellect, such as it is, but have an even lesser degree of understanding of their own issues, to say nothing of the political postures they uncomprehendingly assume.
Whether or not the radical anti-capitalist movement can recognize that a great deal of what they do is an unfortunate outgrowth of their tainted psyches, Rebick's admission contributes the basis for understanding what really drives the Far Left.
So we need to adopt a different tone when confronting leftists, one with less scorn and more sympathy for what is clearly a mental illness.
ReplyDeleteThis meshes nicely with Ann Coulter's ne book 'Demonic', in which she describes the mentality of a leftist mob.
We ca change all of our counter-protest signs to say "Get Some Therapy" and "Tell Me About Your Mother".
I'm inclined to agree, Don. Most people in the radical left actually, I think, MEAN well, (excluding the great many who are motivated by jealously and self-hatred spurred by their abyssmal failure at life) but their inability to rationalize or contextualize basic facts suggest psychological issues that have nothing to do with whatever it is that gets them in their daily rage.
ReplyDeleteI don't have all that much patience or sympathy for our tormentors on the Left. Every last one of them could use a stiff dose of the R. Lee Ermey approach to therapy.
ReplyDeleteAnother take on this topic, from a spiritual standpoint:
http://1389blog.com/2010/11/17/why-modern-liberals-are-100-wrong-about-everything/
Y'ALL are crazy! How you can brand about 50% of your fellow earthlings as insane reveals your OWN insanity! The left are not aliens, they are your uncles, cousins, brothers, mothers. They see things differently. How crazy is the RIGHT? You who believe in disembodied entities called god, Jesus, Allah, whatever, that told someone in a drug-induced dream 2000 years ago some gibberish that got codified as revelations and you're STILL following that! YOU ARE DELUSIONAL! And operating under that delusion, you persecute the other 50% of the population! It's like the right hand trying to choke the life out of the left hand! For God's sake, children, get along!
ReplyDeleteI don't think you quite understand, anonymous. This isn't the reasonable, Bob Rae, Ken Dryden left in Canada or people on the left like Bill & Hillary Clinton or Harry Reid in the US that are being referred to.
ReplyDeleteThis is about the crazy neo-Marxist left that has learned nothing from decades of suffering imposed by communist dictatorships, including ones that still exist in Cuba and North Korea. They are hardly 50% of the population, and the idea of persecuting them is abhorrent. I have no idea where you get that from, unless you're on some drug-induced dream of your own.
Exposing, ridiculing and discrediting their terrible ideas and their unbalanced rationale, causes and motives will do just fine.
OK, I stand corrected. Maybe. I see you are trying to be reasonable and I agree that 'the Left' has committed unbelievable atrocities in pursuit of their policies. But, so has 'the RIGHT'! And for the record, I too am religious. But whereas I don't believe I have the 'right' to force my personal delusions down everyone else's throat, religious intolerance is pretty much a guarantee of left AND right extremists. Anyway, perhaps we need better categories as I perhaps over-reacted by what I saw as a lumping together of a broad spectrum of political ideology into one bucket labeled 'irrational' at best and other ungodly epithets at worst. There's bound to be some delusion at the edges, at the fringe. But humanity never got anywhere by just standing on the shore forever. Some members are always pushing at the boundaries, metaphorically speaking, or sailing into unchartered waters. Fortunately, the 'right' stands ever ready to judge the actions, ethics, methods etc. of the fringe-seekers. Let's hope you can judge wisely and without prejudice.
ReplyDeleteThe radical left is the primary, but not only proponent fof something that the "right" was more guilty of in the past - trying to interfere with and control the rights, freedoms, and even right of expression that should be a basic human right for every individual.
ReplyDeleteBoth sides have their bad histories, with elements of the 'right' who stil want to determine whether gays can marry. But the radical left wants to ban free speech under the guise of human rights, they support terrorism and fanatical Islam in the name of 'human rights' and lend their efforts to support an ideology that oppresses religious minorities and Gays, and wants to impose totalitarian notions of what people can say.
Radical socialists and neo-Marxists, who comprise what is generally referred to as the radical left, along with proponents of Shaira Law, are not the only such threats to individual liberty today, but they are most assuredly the greatest.