We really are living in dystopian 1984. Progressives are not liberals. They, in fact, are regressives. They are the ones now calling for segregation by race. They want special ceremonies for so-called “marginalized groups” instead of the inclusive ceremony for all. They call exclusion inclusion by shutting Caucasians out. And when an actual liberal calls out progressives those liberals get thrown under the bus.
To say the piece didn’t go over as he expected is an understatement. Although some liked it, he was stunned by the reaction from people he once considered political allies. “People were like, ‘Fuck you, Frank!’” he says, half-laughing.
Matt Taibbi
What did Thomas Frank say that got his own allies riled up?
This is a party that has courted professional-managerial elites for decades, and now they have succeeded in winning them over, along with most of the wealthy areas where such people live. Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent that’s who they are. More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it.
What all this censorship talk really is, though, is a declaration of defeat – defeat before the Biden administration has really begun. To give up on free speech is to despair of reason itself. (Misinformation, we read in the New York Times, is impervious to critical thinking.) The people simply cannot be persuaded; something more forceful is in order; they must be guided by we, the enlightened; and the first step in such a program is to shut off America’s many burbling fountains of bad takes…
… Let me confess: every time I read one of these stories calling on us to get over free speech or calling on Mark Zuckerberg to press that big red “mute” button on our political opponents, I feel a wave of incredulity sweep over me. Liberals believe in liberty, I tell myself. This can’t really be happening here in the USA.
But, folks, it is happening. And the folly of it all is beyond belief. To say that this will give the right an issue to campaign on is almost too obvious. To point out that it will play straight into the right’s class-based grievance-fantasies requires only a little more sophistication. To say that it is a betrayal of everything we were taught liberalism stood for – a betrayal that we will spend years living down – may be too complex a thought for our punditburo to consider, but it is nevertheless true.
Thomas Frank
Liberals over the last 30 years gave rise to the progressives. Classical liberalism is actually today’s conservatism. Liberals coddled too many into believing that equality of outcomes was possible. When the Millennial generation became adults and realized that the world is not a very nice place they started stamping their feet in a massive spoiled brat hissy fit. That’s what we’re living with today.