Who the Left Attracts, Part 2

Watching a leftist rally today is frightening. It’s frightening not because of any physical threat (though that threat does exist) but because it so depressingly illustrates an unbridgeable divide between leftists and the rest of society. The screaming and the shrieking. The mob violence. The senseless herd mentality. The rigid Manicheanism. The mental breakdowns. The absolute inability to STFU and listen.

It’s not even about politics anymore. It’s not about which economic system, capitalism or socialism, better serves people. It’s not about equality or liberty, it’s not about negative rights versus positive rights, it’s not about the role of government in our lives.

It’s not about racism or patriarchy, it’s not about saving the planet, it’s not about the marginalized and underprivileged, it’s not about the role of ideology in public education, it’s not about the definition of free speech, and it’s not about the duties of a nation-state toward its own people.

It’s not even about the individualism versus collectivism. The political divide in modern America can now be split into two groups based almost solely on mental stability and the motivations driving their members.

On one side are the vast majority of conservatives, as well as independents, moderate Democrats, and even very liberal Democrats. I would throw Bill Maher and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) into this last category. We probably disagree with them on most political issues, but my exercise in categorization transcends politics to something deeper. Both Maher and Fetterman, I would argue, envision an America where free speech and open discourse are encouraged, not abolished.

The other side seems to consist largely of three distinct but overlapping groups:

The Hedonists

It would also be fair to call them nihilists or militant secularists. To them, the immediate gratification in the Here and Now is paramount. The only purpose they understand is the vulgar pleasures of the senses. The only meaning they derive is that if society is not satisfying their every whim, it must be someone else’s fault.

The Totalitarians

These are the “ringleader” and “organizer” types who mistake a worthless college degree for wisdom. It is arrogance, not crass sensuality, that drives them. Their egos, not their tactility, require massage. They worship their own reason as a god and, much like a god, will not suffer dissent, challenge, or heresy.

The Mentally Ill

As I took pains to point out yesterday, I don’t use the term “mentally ill” as a jest or insult. Mental illness is a serious, underappreciated factor in the lives of millions of innocent Americans. It is also exploited and misused. A child showing signs of gender discomfort from the age of four or five onward might be suffering from gender dysphoria (for which there are treatments that don’t involve enabling). A teenage male who sucks at sports and suddenly “identifies” as a female so he can steal their scholarships and trophies most definitely does not suffer from gender dysphoria. But I argued in my article yesterday that the left exploits other personality traits, indicative of selfish and emotionally immature people, and uses them for its own ends.

My article today focuses on the hedonists. One does not need to be “stupid” to be a hedonist. On the contrary, I’ve no doubt that most members of the Lindsay Clancy Fan Club marching for her “peace” outside the Massachusetts courthouse boast credentials, degrees, and decent salaries. What they do need is both the ability and the willingness to lie to themselves, to engage in the most absurd cognitive dissonance possible, to hold the positions that they do.

Three children were murdered in cold blood at the hands of their own mother? Why, of course the real victims are the legions of marginalized, disenfranchised, underprivileged middle- to upper-class white liberal women living in the safest, richest neighborhoods that civilization has ever built. I doubt even one of the marchers could say the three kids’ names.

Why? Because to the hedonist, children don’t represent happiness, family, or purpose. Children represent an impediment. Children represent an abrupt halt to a 24/7 ME ME ME lifestyle. Children represent burden, unsought sacrifice, and a 1950s caricature of enslaving motherhood.

Make no mistake: the hedonists don’t justify the Clancy murders on the grounds that she was mentally unstable at the time. They’d be fine with the murders regardless of her mental state. To the hedonist, the murder of these children represented a twisted liberation for the murderer to live whatever life she wanted.

This is why the hedonists bristle at the Clintonian assertion that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Instead, they encourage women to “shout their abortions.”

Lest anyone think I’m only picking on the ladies, I’ll remind them that Dan Turner, the father of convicted rapist Brock Turner, penned a letter to the judge requesting leniency for his son for raping an unconscious woman. In the letter, Dan argued that his son shouldn’t be given a lengthy prison sentence all because of “20 minutes of action.”

That’s how Dan Turner described his son raping a woman. Twenty minutes of action.

That is hedonism. Brock wanted to feel good, so he destroyed the life of an innocent woman to do so. And his dad defended his actions.

And as for this new controversy at Cornell, in which a woman is alleging that seven men gang-raped her? And the men are countering, saying it was consensual? And one of the men is countering that he was unconscious at the time of the sexual encounter, making him the rape victim?

As far as I’m concerned, even if all eight people involved gave consent to everything, they’re animals. All eight of them stand at the top 1% of the top 1% of privileged upbringing in all of human history. They literally have the power in their hands to change the world for the better. And instead, they spend their time snorting ketamine, drinking to unconsciousness, and having orgies. Caesar Caligula would be ashamed.

This isn’t civilization. This is hedonism.

This is why the modern gay pride parade is such a raunch fest. I’m old enough to remember when the messaging was more modest, and ran something along the lines of: We are gay, but we don’t want you to think of us as outcasts. We are plumbers, accountants, doctors, soldiers, sons, and daughters just like you. We don’t want to be defined by our sexuality. Nowadays, the message is that they’re defining themselves only by their sexuality, and they love nothing more than to shove your nose in it. Which makes the rest of us wonder whether their newfound hedonistic outlook wasn’t there all along.

     Related: Who the Left Attracts, Part 1

Hedonism is behind any and all drug legalization efforts, especially the most recent (and successful) drive to normalize cannabis. It had nothing to do with back pain. It never did. It has everything to do with the absurd notion that cannabis is necessary to offset the stress in users' lives in 21st-century America, lives that are somehow so much more unbearable than the easygoing, carefree lives of their ancestors who sailed across the ocean in a wooden boat and built this country with their bare hands.

Ditto for efforts to legalize prostitution. It was never about dignifying “sex workers.” It was about institutionalizing cheap, consequence-free sex. It was about pushing the idea that we should view each other as objects to use, not as people to love. OnlyFans. Tinder. They all dehumanize us.

Hedonism is behind demands for “free” health care. Hedonism is behind demands for “free” college. All the squawking about “compassion” and “social justice” is just a smokescreen. Hedonism claims it is your responsibility to make me comfortable.

Hedonism claims that anything impeding the immediate gratification of your most vulgar sensual desires is evidence of “fascism” or “oppression” or whatever new term is tossed around with zero comprehension of what it actually means.

College debt? Send that bill to someone else. Study for the exam? Hell no, let’s get inebriated and roll around in a pile like pigs in a sty. Feeling frisky tonight? You have the “right” to sex, even if you take it by force. Noisy kids making you pine for those long-lost nights of box wine and charcuterie parties? Strangle them in your basement and people will call you a hero.

Hedonism is the release of our worst impulses, made possible when people forsake God. And their “freedom” makes them so much easier to control.

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