I actually prefer the term progressive, and this is how I would refer to myself when asked to explain my leanings in one word, but herein lies the problem of this generalization. Progressiveness isn’t a political party, nor a concise ideology.
Progressives, I had always assumed, are a faction of people who don’t like the bad people for whatever particular reason, and want to stop the bad people from doing more harm.
The bad people are most Republican and also many Democratic representatives of the U.S. government and their dictator friends oversees, the peanut gallery of men in the Supreme Court who oppose the notion of personal freedom and equality (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Scalia), unregulated and subsidized business, banks, and any citizen or group influenced by the promotion of hate to further the grand economic self-interests of these people (itself a vast category which includes a few prominent news networks and a tea party.)
What they’re doing harm to is the environment, the economy, the welfare of several groups of historically disadvantaged people, the education system, the foreign relations of America, our national discourse – pretty much anything you can think of down to postage stamps and culminating with bacon milkshakes.
As a progressive I had always assumed that it was us against them. I might not really care about the desert tortoise, but if you’re on the progressive side of the issue, then I’m on your side.
Not anymore.
The new generation of progressives see this same divide and express it in, what I’ve distilled as, the following mantra:
I am of a distinct group that is extremely important. It is my group vs. Every Other Group. If you don’t agree with what my group says, you are on the wrong side. Of Everything.
They attach themselves to particular issues in an effort to express their personal identity, not because they actually care about the issue.
I have found it ironic that one of the basic characteristics of a progressive individual is acceptance and understanding, yet time after time, these self identified progressives seem more draconian in their beliefs than the most extreme wing of the Republican party – in fact, so-called progressives are the first to demand a person cease their right to free speech.
A major difference between the bad people and progressive people is that the bad people legislate a lot of terrible things all the time, and progressives have to work a lot harder in the hopes of erasing whatever these bad people did, than these bad people had to work to make what they did happen in the first place.
Hence my personal frustration with these Republican types who say things like,
These people in the ghetto really need to get it together.
Yes. Simple mindedness at its finest. These people weren’t getting it together when they were not involved in formulating the rules of this country, enslaved, lynched, not allowed to vote, not allowed to buy homes, not allowed to get jobs, etc., but now, YOU, Republican guy, get to draw that line in the sand, as if you, whose belief system led to their situation, is entitled to magically erase it.
It is very infuriating, but I find the self importance of this new generation of progressives nearly as infuriating. They all seem desperate not to eradicate oppression in general, but to attach themselves to some sort of group which has been oppressed to give themselves a mouthpiece to complain as opposed to taking action. I find it worth mentioning that George W. Bush could in fact find a way, easily, to classify himself as a minority in any given context.
Women want to complain about not being chosen to replace David Letterman, having defied mathematical odds to become he only minority in history to be a majority of the population.
Whether this incessant need to insult, bully, and nitpick is a result of a lack of a clear or plausible course of action, or a reflection of the extreme narcissism I described earlier, I don’t know.
But I know these people love to talk. They love to proclaim how smart they are and how stupid you are if you don’t agree with them. They like to bombard you with esoteric and semantic ridden discourse and tell you you’re a bigot if you don’t use the term cis-gendered when voicing your opinion that it might not be a good idea for a grade school aged child to start taking hormone replacements in preparation for gender reassignment.
They like to physically threaten you, or threaten to have the writing they don’t agree with removed, like they’re the thought police.
It is ironic that these progressives cannot be civil or have a basic discussion with another progressive.
It took me a while to realize that jackasses can go either way. It probably just has to do with where they were born, what they saw on T.V., what their parents thought, etc., but it is often the same stupid person just convincing themselves that they’re something different, regardless of what side they stand on.