So too, this is what Trump Derangement Syndrome has done to the Left in this country. It began in 2016 when he won the presidency over Hillary Clinton, who was somehow supposed to win. After that, the single-minded focus of opposition became to grind him and his presidency into the ground and oppose everything about him, including his supporters and even the system that brought him to office.
The bitter irony here is that the Left has become the very thing they warned against. They said that Trump was an authoritarian and brutal, a financial racketeer who lived off manipulation. They warned that he would use his personality cult to impose a quasi dictatorship.
And here we are six years later and what do we see of the Left in this country? Especially during the COVID crisis, they embraced censorship, authoritarianism, imposition on bodily autonomy, and attacks on the freedom of association. For a time, the word freedom itself became a bad word to them. People who were merely trying to get schools open or the freedom to run a small business became the object of their loathing, even to the point that the Left began to label as fascist those who wanted freedom.
Someone coming of age right now would never have any idea that the Left once had some central principles that revolve around themes of freedom. They were free speech, bodily autonomy, peace, small business over large, the poor and middle class over the rich, freedom of expression and art, and opposition to ruling-class manipulation of the system on behalf of the privileged instead of the common good. They were deeply suspicious of the national-security state, corporate elites, and arbitrary uses of executive power. They were against corruption in government.
They were once for human rights and against segregation based on medical compliance. Probably today, no one under the age of 25 would believe this but trust me: these used to be central principles of the Left.
Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by anticausal
