"Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind." -- Eric Hoffer
It was an...interesting...holiday weekend...
We are all familiar with the peculiar charges routinely made by the Left when confronted by a disagreement or opposition:
You're evil.
Why are you so angry?
You suffer from a mental disorder.
You have no compassion.
You are a shill for _____.
You lack humanity.
The leftist repeats these mantras as a defense against reality. They must believe these things to be true of their opponents because if they aren't, then it is the lefty who is morally incorrect, and if she (it's usually a "she") is morally incorrect then the cause she espouses must be also. This buttresses the leftist (psychological) need to be seen as a superior person (the realistic need to be a superior person is merely a bothersome and unnecessary detail).
The Leftist begins all of her crap with the belief that she already has possession of all the instruments needed to make her position unassailable -- facts, logic, statistics, but above all, a moral authority -- that makes even the resulting murders of 100 million something that can easily be dismissed. It should be obvious that the Moral Cause required those deaths, the persecutions the preceded them, the utter ruin of millions of lives.
You can't, after all, make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
But don't you dare to ask "Well, where's the omelette?", because that's ______ -ist.
The cause is just, even if the methods used aren't, and even if the lefty isn't. The fact that the opposition -- often principled, with it's own facts, statistics, and moral authority that makes the lefty's look puny by comparison -- might be right, is to be ignored.
This is about feelz, not facts.
Nothing can be allowed to break the bubble of True Belief.
Occasionally, you get the sort of Leftist who will, even after repeatedly calling you a Nazi/Sexist/Bigot/Homophobe/1-percenter who should die a horrible death, will still persist in this illusion of moral superiority by feigning pity for you.
It's all Virtue Signalling, of course. It's all a defense mechanism; having discovered the opposition is smarter or better, and the argument can no longer be carried forward, the lefty is now going to take her football and go home. But she doesn't want to be seen as surrendering and retreating, because then the other lefties will laugh at her and perhaps not let her take her place in the bread lines when the Proletariat Revolution finally occurs. She needs to retreat behind a smoke screen, and thus, vomits forth a load of fake compassion for The Other, while continuing to hold him in contempt.
Disagree with a Christian, however, and you get the following:
You're evil.
You are a hollow person with no feelings.
You are angry and confused and lacking in guidance.
You're "lost".
You have no soul.
You lack compassion.
There is a spiritual hole in your life.
Which is to say, you get very much the same bullshit, just in different packaging.
I guess all that "love thy neighbor" was bullshit, too?
And again, it is at this point that the defeated Christian puts up his own obfuscating, virtue-signally smoke screen -- at some point (after he's lost the argument/been made a fool of) he "forgives" you, and vows to "pray" for you to the Invisible Jew, the Idiot who got nailed to two pieces of wood, and The Force (the Holy Spirit, I think they call it), so that he can run off and lick his wounds in private, still convinced of the morally-superior nature of his position or opinion.
So that in many ways, the Godless Communist and the Pious Douchebag are very much the same person, psychologically.
And the similarities don't end there, either.
The reliance on A Book is central to both. The Lefty relies on things like "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto", while the Christian looks to a collection of "Testaments" and "Gospels", which all have the same fictional quality to them.
What's really funny is how closely they resemble one another, the "proletariat owning the means of production" sounds very much like Christ's "Sermon on the Mount". The nonsense about camels not passing through the eyes of needles and how it is virtuous to sell all you own and distribute the proceeds to the poor sounds very much like the principles of redistribution expounded by Marx, Lenin and their heirs in the democrat (small 'd' intentional) party.
Why, it's almost as if Jesus was prophesying the arrival of Marx, every bit as much as Elijah prophesied the arrival of Christ.
But wait! There's more!
The cult-like atmosphere. The demand and expectation of ever-stricter adherence to orthodoxy that follows every defeat (the lack of orthodoxy is always the CAUSE of defeat). The reflexive need to take shelter in a constructed martyrdom when they don't get their way. The enormous outpouring of Cognitive Dissonance when reality comes into contact with Holy Writ. The worship of a pantheon of non-entities -- saints and politicians, activists and televangelists, lawyers and patriarchs -- is exactly the same.
Oh, some of either stripe will protest to the contrary; they aren't good little, mind-numbed robots spewing the flabby platitudes of make believe. They're all righteous soldiers standing firm for "Right".
Both types will also have a similar sense of palpable fear that seems to motivate them. Life, you see, is a mystery and often frightening. It's all so unpredictable and so unfair.
The leftist turns to her politics because ultimately she fears the fragility and uncertainty of Life, and looks to it as her salvation. She defines "salvation" as a "just reward for breathing" to be paid out in free college, food stamps, universal basic income, Section-8 housing, free medical care, and whatever other words you might use to describe "being absolved of all responsibility from having to care for one's self."
All you have to do is follow the rules -- vote the right way, shout the right slogans, hold the right opinions, never engage a critical thinking skill, and you are mystically rewarded.
The religious idiot also fears the uncertainty and can't fathom the mystery of Life, and instead of turning to government -- which can only allay those fears by taking their money with a backhoe to give back to them with a thimble at some later date -- and instead turns to something just as effective and responsibility-evading: an Invisible Man in the Sky who has all the answers (that he won't share) and who will give you everything you'll ever need (but only after you're dead).
Everything has been pre-ordained; just play your part in this little melodrama, sing the right hymns, put enough money in the collection plate, grovel in fear, and the old guy in the white robe and beard will provide you with a personal cloud and harp.
The alternative, in both cases, is some sort of Netherworld where one is either tortured by the realistic consequences of being a moron (like being hungry and poor), or relentlessly tortured in an unrealistic world of comic book characters armed with pitchforks and fire (which works as a wonderful psychological torture while you're alive).
And then there is the biggest coincidence of all -- although this applies mostly to the Born-Again variety of Christian, in particular -- but to the leftist upon a broader scale.
These are ALL usually the worst people you'll ever meet in your life.
That requires a bit of explanation.
The Leftist is the worst because the Leftist is virtually useless (maybe we could harvest organs from them). They will play no useful role in society, being people who are typically incompetent and with suspect thought processes, work ethics, and morals. Society, in general, has little use for them seeing as how they will do little productive work and usually only turn out to be the champions of things that harm society more than they help. Historically, the left is at the vanguard of euthanasia, abortion, mass murder, a welfare state that demeans and degrades the recipient, grievance industries, broken schools, state control of everything that moves, the deliberate destruction of free thought and personal rights.
The leftist trades personal autonomy for the illusion of security.
The Born-Again variety is the worst because, for many, they were usually drug addicts criminals, wife-beaters, drunks, gamblers, and far worse, before they "found Jesus"(more like the "reverend" hunted them down and took advantage of their guilt and psychological need to belong), which usually turned out to be easier than a 12-step program and cheaper than a psychiatrist, but which is just as psychologically-damaging as whatever afflicted them to begin with. They've merely exchanged one drug (acceptance) for another.
And both believe they have the right to shovel their bullshit at you 24/7.
If I was interested in your politics, I would have asked.
If I cared about your religion, I would have asked.
Why you feel the need to assault me with either, particularly when it isn't necessary, is a mystery.
Actually, no... it isn't.
The reason why you do these things, Christian and Leftard, alike, is because if you couldn't take solace in the belief that you're somehow superior to me, and condescend in appropriate fashion, I might discover that without the Slogans and the Psalms you're not a very interesting person, probably dumber than a goldfish, and incapable of forming an independent thought that isn't conditioned by the need to hide this unpleasant fact.
It is this behavior that I object to the most: the condescension. For a variety of reasons.
First is because I'm smarter than you are. This has been proven by the fact that, on the one hand, you believe Communism is a still good idea after it's been tried and failed dozens of times, and on the other, that you believe in a fairy tale of a perfect spiritual being whose obvious logical fallacies and written contradictions cannot be ignored.
Second, because your response is exactly the same, in tone, intent, and implication. There is essentially no difference between the rabid liberal who vows to send you to the firing squads, and the adenoidal Christian who vows to "pray"for you.
Both are signalling that they'd rather not have to deal with you...because they can't....mostly because you won't descend to their primitive level, raw emotion for one, superstition for the other. Deep-seeded fear of reality for both.
Finally, because every time I hear this dialectic about what a horrible person I must be because I disagree with you, I see what a terrible human being YOU ARE that you can't manage to treat an honest disagreement as anything but an unwarranted, personal affront that somehow makes you a victim and me worthy of the worst your fevered imagination can conjure up -- whether that be the concentration camps you deny ever existed and cancel culture, or a vast pit of fire that none of you has ever seen, but still believes exists.
It would seem you all have more in common than you think.
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