I’ve been looking at the insanity of the Democrats and self-styled progressives (there is so much of it on display) from the signs in front yards proclaiming they believe in science – as though science necessitated belief – to the signs in expensive neighborhoods proclaiming that they welcome illegals as their neighbors. I’ve been seeing graying women with t-shirts proclaiming they’re resisting, watched colleges and universities fly their flag at half mast, and banged my head gently against the dashboard at cars with bumper stickers proudly proclaiming the driver a member of the resistance. I’ve heard women proclaim they’re marching for lost rights, though no one can answer me on what rights they lost.
Oh, yeah, I’ve also been informed, loudly, in public spaces, that liberals are afraid to speak their mind and that the awful dictator, Trump, has chilled their speech.
And then on my blog, someone put this entire behavior in perspective for me.
In my community, that is, among science fiction and fantasy writers, readers and fans, there is an activity called LARPing, aka Live Action Role Playing. If you think about it as the thing children used to do while playing cowboys and Indians (or in my case Robin Hood versus the Sheriff), you won’t be far wrong.
Except adults use props and costumes, and when it’s a big LARP game at a big convention, people will wear truly fancy costumes, including some with mechanized wings.
And in case you wonder, no, I’ve never played one of those, because the stuff I can do inside my head is much more fun than running around pretending to be someone else. Though at the conventions, it could be argued I often play a science fiction writer. Not that I’m not one, but it’s not how I interact outside of cons.
Anyway, the commenter on my blog said: “These people are oppression LARPing.” And it all became crystal clear.
I mean, we know that the left does not and has not, ever, so far as I can tell, stood up to real tyrants. They not only slavishly lick the boots of every communist dictator, worship the cursed corpse of Che, slaver all over the writings of mass murderers like Mao, but they’re too timid to say that North Korea is a shi*hole, or to call out the Muslims on their aggression. They are against all religion, except the one which might kill them. So that gets mind-numbing appeasement.
Meanwhile, they walk around proclaiming they’re resisting, and keep talking about how their free speech is being curtailed.
It makes perfect sense if you realize these people have watched a lot of movies and view themselves as the brave Frenchmen standing up to Hitler, or even the Rebel Alliance standing up to the empire. In their minds, as they walk around with symbolic genitalia on their heads, they’re Frodo standing up to the ultimate evil.
And if you’re giving the sinal salute – with thumb and finger on either side of your nose, and your head inclined – you feel as I do, and as anyone expects you to.
The thing is that children – and LARPers – don’t play at things that are real to them. I’m fairly sure children in the frontier, during the long war between Amerindians and settlers didn’t play cowboys and Indians. It was far too real to them. And part of what made Robin Hood and the Sheriff enjoyable was, of course, that I (okay, sue me, I was always Robin Hood. Look, it was an all-girls school) could be caught, beaten, thrown in “jail” (it was actually a space behind the oak on the playground) and then when the bell rang, we’d dust ourselves off and go back to sums and spelling.
It’s the same thing. The left is playing at being oppressed and being brave resisters because they know they aren’t. They know they’re not in any way threatened, even if they’d probably rather die than admit it to themselves. They know they can go around sloganeering and screaming and calling a freely elected president a tyrant and the equivalent of Hitler, and no one will do anything. People won’t even be rude to them. They certainly won’t be as rude to them as they’d be to anyone who so much as dares to express a conservative opinion in liberal circles.
What they get out of it is an unwarranted good opinion of themselves, and the mistaken idea that everyone who sees their “bravery” admires them.
They do not realize that their LARPing is endangering a duly elected government, or, ultimately, our form of government. Nor do they realize that the people emboldened and made stronger by their posturing are tyrants in waiting, wishing to grow the power of government so they, personally, can control all.
We who do realize it, though, and who realize the essentially infantile nature of their game, need to start opposing it. We need to start asking them what rights they think they lost. We need to laugh in their faces when they’re LOUDLY proclaiming they are afraid to speak. We need to ask what they think science is that it needs their “belief.” We need to start pointing out to them that they are, in fact, children playing at being brave, and not very well at that. We need to make them at least as embarrassed to act out in public as a conservative in liberal circles. Otherwise, they continue thinking that everyone admires their “bravery” and posturing. And they’ll do more of it, enabling malefactors domestic and foreign.
Unless they can be brought to reality, their play is going to hurt all of us.
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