Leftists are growing increasingly pessimistic about the political direction of America, which means a “neo-fascist future” is right around the corner again. On the Daily Kos, Ray Pensador explained Tuesday his theory on “Why Rick Perry Is Likely to Win the Presidency in 2012.”
Liberals, he complained, think that merely exposing and criticizing “statements and actions of the crazy, loony right...is somehow enough to convince others about the wrongness of these things.” That’s totally wrong, writes Pensador, because America is a deeply sadistic pile of Puritans that live about five minutes away from our deepest historical atrocities:
This activity springs from the faulty assumption widely shared by the Left, that our perception of reality based on logic, reason, science, empirical evidence, and willingness to compromise, is an attitude widely shared by society at large. This attitude, at the end, will be one of the main reasons the country continued its march toward a neo-fascist future under the total control of corporations and religious fundamentalists.
The great satirist, comedian, and social commentator Bill Maher has touched on this subject, pointing out that "a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government or explain what the Bill of Rights is; 24 percent cannot name the country America fought in the revolutionary war; nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators; 18 percent believe that the sun revolves around the earth." And only 39 percent believe in evolution...
Pensador complained the average liberal has an underdeveloped sense of empathy because "the majority of them live comfortable middle- or upper-middle class lives, and other influences like the seemingly omniscient propagandist effect of the corporate-owned media." If the corporate media were so powerful, how did Obama get elected again? But wait, here's the long version of how America's sadistic puritan majority cannot be trusted:
Have you ever seen those pictures of hundreds (sometime thousands) of people smiling, celebrating, posing to be photographed, at the site of a lynching? In historical terms those things happened "yesterday." Only a few decades ago.
There is a strong legacy of puritanism in the American culture. There is a strong legacy of atrocities, of the enslavement and extermination of millions of people, of the appropriation of other people's land and property, of cruelty, of unimaginable greed.
Yes, this could be said about many other countries, and it takes generations for a country to cleanse itself from those abominations, but again, as a country we are very young, and many of those atrocities happened only a few decades ago.
And therefore that cultural legacy has not gone away completely.
Today, in 2011, there are millions and millions of people in the United States that harbor a deep-seeded hate for what they consider to be minorities, immigrants, and for people who advocate for concepts of social justice and equality for all.
These people hold a twisted sense of piety that revolves around the concept that God will bless His followers with richness and good fortune, and will punish the sinner with poverty, disease, and despair.
They see the concept of equality and justice, and compassion, as advocated by Liberals and Progressives, as interference with God's will.
In that sense, there is a certain proclivity towards sadism. There is a certain satisfaction is seeing the suffering of those who they consider unworthy, lazy, sinful. In their eyes, and again, richness and prosperity are the results of piety, and poverty and suffering, the result of debauchery.
So in their twisted minds they tend to see the very wealthy almost as demi-gods. Hence their adoration of the rich. They aspire to one day be like the super rich, and even thought they know it's very difficult, they like it like that because it should not be easy to get to that level of demi-god, of abundant blessings.
That's the sadistic part. They themselves believe they have it in them to get there and they will do it purportedly with their own effort, sturdiness, and work and grit. An therefore, everybody else should try to do it the same way. That's the puritanical influence in the collective psyche.
This whole article underscores why it's comical that the followers of that "great social commentator" Bill Maher are somehow so much smarter than the Palin backers. Brainier liberals surely back away from bilge like this.
Earlier from Pensador: Only We Liberals Ara Sane, and Believe in Freedom, Justice, Science and Evidence
