Its most vivid element is about the left, and one inescapable fact: that a lot of people simply do not like us.
Ok, maybe that’s because you are unlikeable, or your ideas, policies are……could be an interesting lesson to learn?
None of this is meant to imply that most progressive causes are mistaken
Ah, no, not learning lessons yet…..
“A lot of people simply do not like us,” says Mr Harris, scrabbling for some explanation. In yet another self-flattering and wildly dishonest Guardian article.
I mean, it’s almost funny.
Almost?
“Growing chunks of the electorate, in other words, are not who the left think they are.”
More honest version: “Growing chunks of the electorate, in other words, are not who the left want them to be”
The truth hurts. They are starting to understand that when we describe lefties as being stomach acid socialists, we are simply being accurate, not nasty.
People don’t like us because we treat progressiveness as axiomatically the best thing for society and call those who disagree with us thick racist bigots and culture warriors.
It’s obvious from the comments to the article that they havent learnt anything. One comment said that America had forfeited the right to democracry by voting how they had on the 5th.
@BIND – progressives making things progressively worse since 1997
Moqifen,
Yep. The march through the institutions has gone even deeper and now includes private industry through high jacking HR departments.
Most of the endless reasons we have heard over the past five days ring true: inflation, incumbency, a flimsy Democratic campaign, white Americans’ seemingly eternal issues with race,
Yes it’s white people who are obsessed with race, right?
and what one New York Times essayist recently called “a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright”.
People didn’t vote for the P Diddy party because they hate women.
When established parties on the progressive and conservative wings of politics go into an election, in the minds of many people, they represent a much larger set of forces
No shit.
as Trump well knows, there are now large numbers of voters from minorities – and immigrant backgrounds – who largely accept rightwing ideas about immigration. That is partly because modern economies create such a desperate competition for rewards
If 20,000 hungry Haitians turn up in government funded accomodation in your sleepy little Ohio town, it’s the free market that’s to blame.
The result is an agenda often expressed with a judgmental arrogance, and based around behavioural codes – to do with microaggressions, or the correct use of pronouns – that are very hard for people outside highly educated circles to navigate
It’s not “hard to navigate”, it’s disgust.
And the right can therefore make hay, as evidenced by a Trump ad that was crass and cruel, but grimly effective: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Lol.
Nearly 40% of all Americans say they have skipped meals in order to meet their housing payments, and more than 70% admit to living with economic anxiety. A second Trump term, of course, is hardly going to make that any better
Only Net Zero and Infinity Immigration can make America richer, you see.
None of this is meant to imply that most progressive causes are mistaken, or to make any argument for leaning into Trumpism. What the state of politics across the west highlights is more about tone, strategy, empathy, and how to take people with you
Those tiny-minded working class Latinos were tricked into voting for Senor Trump, but thankfully they have a Guardian columnist from Cheshire to explain how their hopes and aspirations are wrong.
@moqifen – the comments are indeed a blast: it’s all down to evil manipulation of the stupid by the rich, misinformation and – of course – Thatcher!
They haven’t learned and they never will.
Marius – I was reading a mainstream left wing site complain that the reason Kamalachameleon lost was because the Democrats have no media support.
Apparently the Republicans have Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk’s X (reeee!) but CNN, ABC, MSNBC, the Daily Show, Colbert, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal don’t exist.
You know, for people who always insist they’re “educated”, these people are dumb fucks.
“many people despise the left”
It’s not dislike, it’s despise – self-centred, arrogant, overpaid, workshy, bigoted (anyone who *starts* an argument with “orange man bad” instead of starting it with facts and concluding “orange man bad” is a bigot), blaming the rest of us for things that we haven’t even done (or 99.9% of us haven’t done, while a substantial %age of the left have), …
Yes we despise the left with good reason
Steve: ’Yes it’s white people who are obsessed with race, right?’
Well, there’s some truth to that, at least. For every campaign about ‘racist (insert here)’ started by SholaMashedPotatoesBingBang there are 20 or 30 initiated by Doris, 42, from Cheshire, retired social worker/lecturer.
To add to the excellent comments already made, re “a lot of people simply do not like us.”
This is using the special form of ‘simply’ (also seen for eg ‘just’) that loosely translates to ‘the argument I’m about to make is entirely designed to match my biases and soothe my cognitive dissonance’
It’s not that we ‘simply’ dislike leftist agendas. It’s that they’re largely counterproductive, intrude into every layer of our existence simultaneously, demand our constant ‘awareness’, and generate a hail-storm of -isms at the mildest critique.
Whenever I follow Steve I feel a bit like a Rembrandt impersonator but you gotta do your best. At least Harris isn’t Murphy….
here is no need to pick only a few of the many explanations of Donald Trump’s political comeback. Most of the endless reasons we have heard over the past five days ring true: inflation, incumbency, a flimsy Democratic campaign, white Americans’ seemingly eternal issues with race
Yes – because of course we hear so much about ‘black privilege’ and ‘black supremacy’ on every mainstream media platform. Is there even a scintilla of self-awareness in the entire progressive caucus? News Flash – you foment racism every day in all these ‘Ethnic Studies’ departments – to take an example, I have openly said to my Alma Mater that any donation I give is entirely dependent on one of the professors who publicly stated ‘White Lives don’t matter’ being removed from that institution’s employ. Their response was to promote her.
Its most vivid element is about the left, and one inescapable fact: that a lot of people simply do not like us.
I must admit I have never found calling people ‘fascist’, ‘toxic’ or ‘deplorable’ a winning tactic in any sphere – but it’s the standard insult meted out to any White, heterosexual, Cis Male in higher education circles.
In the US, it goes some way to explaining why more than 75 million voters just rejected the supposedly progressive option, and chose a convicted criminal and unabashed insurrectionist to oversee their lives.
What I like is the fact that he has to know that the criminal conviction was outlandish at best and at worst actually unjust and as for the insurrectionist talk – perhaps he can explain where 15 million voters have disappeared to between 2020 and 2024 when 11 million extra people have come in over the Rio Grande? – X + 26 million = <0 isn't a formula that makes sense to my limited mind.
Around the world, in fact, the left looks to many voters like a coherent bloc that goes from people who lie in the road and shut down universities to would-be presidents and prime ministers – the only difference between them, as some see it, is that radical activists are honest about their ideas, whereas the people who stand for office try to cover them up.
You often get the comment in ‘progressive’ circles – ‘at least Jeremy Corbyn is honest about his priniciples’. If you said ‘At least Adolf Hitler was honest about his principles’ then I’d imagine most people would look askance (unless it was in the context of a US Ivy league school discussing Israel) – if the principles themselves are evil, ideological purity is hardly a merit badge.
What it highlights is something that many American, British and European people have known for the past 15 years, at least: that the left is now alienating huge chunks of its old base of support
Strangely most people don’t want the five Horsemen of the apocalypse:
– ‘DEI’ – systematic discrimination against White people
– ‘Mass immigration’ – the complete transformation of one’s country and being told that oppostion to it is ‘racist
– ‘Radical Feminism’ = Systematic discrimination against heterosexual men
– ‘Net Zero’ – the complete impoverishment of the Western world on spurious environmental grounds
– ‘Trans rights’ – state sponsored molestation of innocent children
Oddly most people don’t find the brew above appealing.
The result is an agenda often expressed with a judgmental arrogance, and based around behavioural codes – to do with microaggressions, or the correct use of pronouns – that are very hard for people outside highly educated circles to navigate.
I think Steve nails it – it’s disgust, and increasingly anger. Someone who cuts his bollocks off and pretends to be a woman isn’t one. End of story. It isn’t ‘hateful’ or ‘bigoted’ to point that out. Ditto on ‘White privilege’ and other nonsense. The key thing (and this isn’t new – I have books from the 70s bemoaning this, is that the people advancing such ideas have no tolerance for countervailing opinion. You can’t have tolerance if you hold such beliefs because once you allow discussion of them people will understand you are peddling bollocks and only massive cognitive dissonance can maintain it.
Nearly 40% of all Americans say they have skipped meals in order to meet their housing payments, and more than 70% admit to living with economic anxiety. A second Trump term, of course, is hardly going to make that any better: the point is that he was able to successfully pretend that it would.
because of course being systematically discriminated against in the case of Whites and losing Electric power will help you out a lot!!
That then opened the way for something even more jaw-dropping: Trump’s sudden claim to be a great unifier, something implicitly contrasted with progressives’ habit of separating people into demographic islands. It takes an almost evil level of chutzpah to flip from his hate and nastiness to a new message of love for most Americans
Because the BLM and pro Hamas riots were reruns of that Coke Commercial from the early 70s – ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’
None of this is meant to imply that most progressive causes are mistaken, or to make any argument for leaning into Trumpism. What the state of politics across the west highlights is more about tone, strategy, empathy, and how to take people with you while trying to change society
Yes – on X I am always awed by the ability of Trans campaigners (for example) to persuade people of the rectitude of their answer. Their sweet appeals to JK Rowling are ones I hold up as examples of how to win audiences over.
Just look at his picture. How could anyone not like the guy?
“race”: ah yes. I note that the VP-elect household is less white than the VP household. Shameless cunts at the Guardian, ain’t they?
Not sure if you saw Murphy’s take on this- Tim
‘To pretend that people hate Left wing politics when neither Labour nor the Libdems
Can be described as such is absurd’
Apparently Labour, despite being well to the Left of North Korea on many issues is ‘Not Left wing’
Julia – For every campaign about ‘racist (insert here)’ started by SholaMashedPotatoesBingBang
Or as Sir Bobby Robson calls him, ‘Carl Cort’.
VP – Thank you.
it’s disgust, and increasingly anger.
When people hear this crazy Moonspeak about “cis” people, it just pisses them off. Latinos voted for Trump in part because no Juan wants to be called “Latinx”.
The Guardian says That then opened the way for something even more jaw-dropping: Trump’s sudden claim to be a great unifier, something implicitly contrasted with progressives’ habit of separating people into demographic islands. It takes an almost evil level of chutzpah to flip from his hate and nastiness to a new message of love for most Americans
But Trump has always been the great unifier, and he’s always won more black and Hispanic votes than Republicans normally do. (Trump’s secret: asking people to vote for him after listening to their concerns and making a pitch to be their president – madness, I know). Racist Trump was always a fiction, the man is a 1990’s liberal. That’s why he built a big, beautiful tent and filled it with white voters, black voters, Hispanic voters, Jewish voters, Muslim voters…
on X I am always awed by the ability of Trans campaigners (for example) to persuade people of the rectitude of their answer.
Musk buying Twitter made it impossible to silence Trump or bury stories the Democrats don’t want people discussing, this time around.
That’s why the British Labour Party was coordinating with the Democrats to arrest Musk and take his business off him. If Trump hadn’t won, he would have spent the rest of his life in jail and Musk would be treated as an enemy agent.
Seems like God spared Trump for a reason. Because God, peering at Creation through his rent in the fabric of spacetime, is infinitely remote from me, I can only guess at what those reasons might be. But I don’t think they involve tranny pronouns.
Progressivism:
A crap product served up with superciliousness, condescension and moral preening.
What’s not to like?
Is ‘do not like us’ really accurate? It seems . . . insufficient.
“75 million voters just rejected the supposedly progressive option, and chose a convicted criminal and unabashed insurrectionist to oversee their lives.”
I’m sure that some of those 75 million chose Trump precisely because they didn’t want anyone at all to “oversee their lives”.
Paul. The left profoundly believes that peoples’ lives should be overseen. Orwell’s 1984 is a blueprint and not a horror novel. The right supposedly less so, but they can be damn disappointing in actually delivering on it. Also, what person doesn’t run for office without thinking what a perfect world it would be if only everyone did as I tell them? I think all politicians want to oversee your life, but they have different priorities as to where to begin. If what you find is important is further down some pol’s list, that’s who you vote for as it might take awhile before he really starts to annoy you.
Brilliant by both Van the tennis man and Steve – I wouldn’t like to judge the fisk off if one ever came to pass.
“In the US, it goes some way to explaining why more than 75 million voters just rejected the supposedly progressive option, and chose a convicted criminal and unabashed insurrectionist to oversee their lives.”
Or perhaps because they don’t want their lives “overseen”!
But that does not seem to be among the available options in the progressive mind.