From John C. Wright’s “Restless Heart of Darkness” Part Two:
The question again arises as to why the Left cannot take ‘Yes’ for an answer. Having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams on the issue of women’s equality, why are they gnawing on their own entrails in orgasms of spite and rage and mewling hatred, and making more demands?
It’s an interesting question, one that’s been asked before: Why is it that aggrieved interest-groups in general – not just feminists – tend to become angrier and more demanding, instead of happier, after their main complaints/demands have been addressed and rectified?
Anyone have any theories?
1. the law of unintended consequences
2. No ability or not willing to understand they got what they wanted and it didn’t improve their lives
These groups get nastier for two reasons:
1 – there’s the obvious one: give a man a fish and you teach him to ask for more fish – or, in this case, give a protest organization what it wants and you teach it to protest (and demand) more.
2 – and the less obvious, but more important one: people who want to rise to the leadership in protest organizations do so by being more aggressive, more demanding, than their predecessors. You don’t get to lead eco-nuts-r-us or we-want-more by saying “ok, we got what we wanted, lets all go home now.”
It is just like all children, spoiled beyond all reason who are hooked on the power of getting their own way. Soon, attaining is so much less important that the power of forcing attainment. They get what they want and suddenly that is not enough. They must test the limits with even more outrageous demands just to see if they can get it. When they do there is a mixture of elation and deflation. Once attained, it is no longer enough.
It is a psychological spiral that must be ended with one thing: NO
There will be railings and knashing of teeth but in the end they are elated they have been stopped and the limits have actually been reached. The left are the most rabid and dangerous examples of this. Society has consistently let them get away with such outrages , bad behaviour, legislative madness run amok and NO one stands up to be the grownup and tell them NO.
We are almost at the point that the inmates run the asylum and the destruction of all is assured. Let them dig their guts and and meanwhile practice the antidote: The word NO.
The same is true for Aboriginals in Canada (in the US they get nothing
and don’t ask for anything), gays, blacks in the US; you name it. Again,
when Communists come to power there will be internal splits, murders,
etc.
Lenin said something to the effect that when conducting a bayonet charge,
if one encountered mush one kept on going whereas if one encountered
steel one pulled back.
Leftists are not like us. The worst are inherently evil and life-hating.
They are dedicated to destruction; first of us, then of themselves.
Naturally, they use the language of peace and justice. Their
meaning is entirely different.
As a general proposition this is well understood, but it is startling to
see it working itself out in specific instances.
Easy! It’s the same with all groups that run under the guise of victimhood:
They are all, first and foremost, aggressors. You can give in to 100% of their demands and they still won’t be satisfied. This is because there’s a huge difference between what they demand and what they actually want…which is total power and control over (at the very least) their target “oppressor” group.
That target group must always be one whose good nature (and guilt) ensures the “victim” aggressors their dominant role.
The act of giving in to demands (even in the veiled form of compromise) is just a kind of stepping-stone affirmation of weakness that emboldens the aggressors to take it up a notch or two.
Next question…
If you’re with your child in Walmart, and that child starts to cry and have a screaming fit in which they want candy and a toy, and then you Give your child a candy and toy for no real other reason than to have them be quiet, stop crying and screaming, that’s worked for them hasn’t it.
They go with what they’ve learned has worked in the past.
If work was required to attain candy and a toy, they’ll do the work, and likely enjoy the candy & toy all the more for having worked to earn it.
If they haven’t been required to work for it, they’ll do it again, and not be happy until they’ve been rewarded in the same fashion. again.
Simple: They’re Malcontents and are never to become ‘the Contented’.
Their life is defined by ‘the Struggle’ and when the struggle is over… so is their life.
Snowbunnie: I think you pretty much nailed it. You, too, Oz.
Because they received legal or other advantages from the government. If they howl louder and longer maybe they will get more. Who knows maybe they can even succeed at establishing a matriarchy.
It’s just human nature to want more if it is within reach.
My theory is that success on one front brings craving for success on other fronts. Have you ever seen activists quit when they’ve reached a goal ? I haven’t. They simply change causes or broaden the original mandate. You can look back to the genesis on any activist group including PETA, Humane society, Green Peace, MADD,the anti smoking lobby,the gun control lobby,the UN,the WHO, the HRC’s,Pride, the Bullying programs, the EPA and on and on and on. They all started out on a single irritant to correct a perceived wrong and when that goal is achieved the mandate broadens to envelope things that were never on the radar when the group was formed. Every victory simply fuels the obsession for more control and regulation. Every newspaper headline on their activities confirms their self importance and that they have the ability to change the direction of where society should be going ,in their opinion. The format never changes. We are too dumb to regulate ourselves so they must do it for us. It always ends when they lose control to that final dictator that’s grateful to all the useful idiots for eliminating freedom and decides to make all activism illegal. Don’t think so ? Check out recent history with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim jong un, Mussolini, Castro, Mugabe and even the United Nations. Many more, but one thing they all had in common is encouraging activism and gift of gab (except Kim Jong Un who inherited his position). Politicians are now driven by activists and bureaucrats feel comfortable at bringing in regulations that were once the domain of elected officials. We are on the same slippery slope of many countries before us and like history has shown, we will make full circle. That’s why they no longer teach history or critical thinking. It might be a impediment to reaching nirvana. Activists never quit.
An identity built around victimhood needs constant fresh injections of oppression to sustain its existence. . . . Their goal is not a tolerant society. It’s not a multiracial society or a post-racial society. It is a society perpetually at war over identity politics. That conflict is what gives them power . . . Paranoid schizophrenics manufacture things to be paranoid about. Identity politics manufactures its own illusory bigotries . . . The schizophrenic Two Americas of liberals are the America that really exists and the hateful cartoon of it that they draw inside their own heads, depict in movies, scrawl into hateful articles and broadcast on television networks . . . The left has dumped millions of Americans into this shadowy world where they have no positive reason for existing; only a negative one of defying some phantom establishment of patriarchy and some nebulous idea of white privilege. Wearing chips on their shoulders they seek to provoke the confrontations that give them meaning and when their anger is met with tolerance, they manufacture intolerance with forged receipts, with accusations of white privilege, with fake hate crimes and phony accusations of racism.
Daniel Greenfield
When the goal, realized or not, is the filling of every valley (by the destruction of every hill), then any undulation is unacceptable. Vanilla, the flavor of the day, er, eternity.
Don’t forget self hate. They wouldn’t be clamoring so much for “change” if they weren’t unhappy to begin with. They hate themselves, they hate thair lives, they hate the world, and most of all they hate anyone else who isn’t as miserable as they are.
My working hypothesis is that all things being equal… given the opportunity, stupid commie bitches will ruin everything every time.
The hunger to hate and destroy is insatiable.
I see it as a kind of mass mental illness that has become so prevalent that it could be argued that being sane is now considered abnormal. We have lost all sense of survival and have become wholly dependant on someone or something else providing all we need to live free of predation or starvation. It is all destined to fail however, as Thatcher was right; eventually you really do run out of other peoples’ money and one day soon we will have tens of millions of sick and starving hoards streaming out of the cities, looking for whatever isn’t nailed down to eat. Assuming they can escape the city without becoming dinner.
So that they stay employed?
Rather than learning to be comfortable in their own lives and skins, they obsess over making all others conform to their reality.
A tiny poisoned void.
Gnawing at the roots of society is what they do, a fear of sunlight, of life, of adulthood, these all feed the modern do-gooder, that “good” existing only in their eyes.
A tax on all do-gooders shall become compulsory.
Each of these needy, self loathing creatures is the new chosen one, in their own eyes.
We need their help.
To refuse them is sinful.
Banishment might cure some of them, the wolves can take care of the rest.
Because they seek absolute power. They seek to instill fear. They wish to be worshiped as a deity. They will embrace any idiocy or commit any incivility if it brings them closer to toppling those who stand in their way. Families, the religious, those who favour small government are especial targets. They are power hungry dopes seeking to enslave those who agree and disagree with them alike, using other people’s money and tools. They are the most offensive people one can ever expect to meet.
Why are they this way? Well, you would have to delve into their atrocious minds to find out, and who wants to do that.
Peterj and Deb hit the nail on the head. I would only add that the very concept of ignoring the individual and only seeing people as member of a group or collective is a basic tenet of communism and therein lies the problem.
The roots are not actually that complication. All progressives, either current or in past history, are utopian. They see the world not as it is but as they imagine it should be. Reality therefore is something dirty, noisy, unpleasant compared to their ideal world. Remember, all utopians are Platonists. And all of them believe in a perfectible world.
Which leads to my second point. Because they are utopian, anything which interferes with their vision is by definition evil. Of course discussions with them are not polite. By driving holes in their gospel, there is no room for the heretic, the unclean. There is only an ideological divide which can never be bridged. Utopians thus like imposed solutions, at least when they are doing the imposing. It leads to another implication; as a utopian, you don’t like discussions much, you like lecturing. The shape of the big picture has already been settled; it’s up to us in the hoi polloi to get in line and do what we’re told.
And my final point is that of course they never declare victory. No cause ever does. As utopians, perfection is never achieved, so they continue to strive for what they deem perfection. And they will continue to demand more and more until there is sufficient pushback to either silence them or bring some realism into their movement. Thus far, there’s been no significant pushback against movements like radical feminism, so their strident demands simply become more extreme.
Peter, I think your analysis is spot on. On thinking back, this is exactly what has happened, one step at a time. When they have success in one control area they begin working on the next step that they already had decided on in advance.
Years ago, in college, I went to hear a speech of a female Northern Irish firebrand, who’d just been elected to parliament. Sorry, I don’t remember her name, but I remember what she said. She said she had been approached by British politicians who asked her what it would take to satisfy her. She said “when you’ve given me one more thing than is possible for you to give me.” Not much to work with there.
It’s called reciprocity. The Police need criminals and law-breaking, otherwise there is no need for the Police.
Self-perceived aggrieved groups, heroically striving against said grievance, cannot let up on their grievance otherwise no money; no self-serving justifications, and, like a child, no public attention!
I agree with the comments on this thread and doubt I have much to add. But perhaps because I like to over-complicate things. I also think there are elements of doubt, lack of confidence and self-hatred. It’s necessary to punish everyone for the fact that those attracted to the ranks of malcontents are NOT happy. I’m sure you have noticed that the entire cadre, almost exception, lack a sense of humor. There is no grace or tolerance or even dignity in the entire passel of fools. To associate with them means wearing a perpetual hairshirt. Woe betide if you should ever admit to being happy or even content.
Bernadette Devlin.
Please … can we be clear on one thing. It is LIBERAL women who are are unhappy. Conservative women are generally happy because they live and love in the REAL world and tent to marry real men.
It used to be said that a christian was a person who lived in the great anxiety that someone, somewhere, may be happy. I suggest this mantle be hung around the necks of the average, homely (seems a common feature of the left) miserable, self-centered squawking crows of the left and all it’s phoniness, stupidity and childishness with which they try to live their lives … on other peoples money. while blaming them for their misery.
The goal is NOT the correction of an injustice. It may have been at one time, but certainly not now.
Many good points above. First, if they’ve “won” then their raison d’etre disappears along with the publicity, the self-righteous fantasies of saving the world, the self-important, holier-than-thou sense of moral superiority, and in many cases — the money. Most “activists” or at least their leadership, are paid by special interest groups to do anything other than put in a decent day’s work making some material or intellectual contribution to their fellow citizens. Activists are paid to demand. Demands met? Add more demands.
At a psychological level many activists are simply abusers, and they behave abusively toward, not only their fellow citizens, but even more so toward members of their own organizations. Try questioning them and the response you’ll get is an angry, very personal attack labeling you as “one of them”. Challenge their leadership and you’ll be targeted viciously and personally. It’s why despite the absurdity of their positions activists in a group are so hell-bent on conforming to each other. It’s the only safe ground. Differ from the others or heaven forbid think for yourself and they’ll rip you apart like hungry hyenas. Settle an issue with an agreed upon set of behaviors and the abuser will soon demand you behave in the diametrically opposite way the next time. It’s not about love; it’s about control. More than anything abusers/activists crave power and control. And any cause will do.
“The question again arises as to why the Left cannot take ‘Yes’ for an answer.”
Every issue with the Left is a tactic or a strategy, not a moral end in itself. The Left does not care about Women’s Rights and never did. They care about putting their opponents on the defensive, by using an important moral issue as a club to beat them with. Winning on women’s rights means nothing to the Left, just the use of the issue to defeat their enemies.
They can’t take “YES!” for an answer because they never ask for what they really want. What they really want is 100% control over every second of everyone’s life, with the absolute power of life and death to enforce that control. North Korea, basically.
If the Left demanded what they -really- want, their intended slaves would simply kill them all without hesitation or remorse, and have a party afterward where they danced in Lefty blood.
Kind of like what happened to famous lefty Benito “Il Duce” Mussolini. He asked for it, he got it. Toyota.
Lefties don’t learn form history. They just re-write it and hope no one will notice.
Because the pathology. People who latch onto grievance mongering bandwagons are ultimately forced to face the fact that their problem was all in their miserable selves. They get what they thought they wanted and realize they are still miserable. So … demand more until there is nothing more to be had.
Of course they won’t, in most cases, have that moment of truth and self awareness.
And so … they dig in and become ever more irrational.
There is a reason why our parents never gave such people the credence of having anything valid to contribute. And so the terms “Nuts” and “Loonies”.
I’m pretty sure the above comments have hit most of the major reasons. Except perhaps one : It’s a great issue to make conservatives look out of touch and neanderthal-like. No matter how many times conservatives get slapped for saying something stupid when trying to counter radical feminists, they keep reusing the same old lines. Eventually one of them talks about magic ovaries that can prevent pregnancy resulting from assaults, or they make extremely derogatory comments that end up offending not just radical feminists but also regular women and men who have good relationships with their wives, mothers and daughters.
It’s a trap guys… learn to avoid it. Prepare for the inevitable and memorize a few diplomatic answers.
Great bunch of comments. Literally every one of the possible answers I had to the question when I wrote the post are reflected above, save for one: I think that there’s a definite psychological element of revenge/payback as well, especially among politicized leftist blacks and feminists.
Giving power and/or making concessions to an aggrieved group who sees another identifiable group as the oppressor/enemy is the social equivalent of arming them, which gives them a feeling that they’re finally in a position to turn the tables and, as bryceman notes, become the aggressors.
I saw this “It’s payback-time!” (or “Now it’s our turn with the paddle!”) attitude in a few of the more strident and implacable feminists I’ve met in my life: They believed that men in general are a singular identity group who must be punished both for their misdeeds and for (putatively) being the ultimate source of the rage these women felt.
In each case, they believed that women who weren’t similarly outraged, and who weren’t revenge-minded, were unenlightened, i.e. “not getting it”, a condition that they blamed on “patriarchy”…which just made them madder.
Interest groups become entrenched. Money, jobs, social status. If the problem is solved, all that goes away. We have no slavery abolition groups any more, because that job’s done.
The money, jobs and status become an end in themselves. It becomes important to these groups that the problem never be solved, so that they can continue to exist.
I think hatred covers that point too.
Anyone who laughs at them must die.
When you loath yourself, truth sears you to the core.
No amount of payback can disguise the realization you are totally F..ed up and miserable.
Always someone else’s fault of course.
As I run out of sympathy for psychopaths, I have come to love the vision of, hug a polar bear TV.
As with the delusional eco-nasties, let us give these haters what they are really asking for.
I am all for setting aside some land for these utopian whiners to practise what they preach.
I think that there’s a definite psychological element of revenge/payback as well… EBD
Exactly; revenge is why no conquest, or victory ever satisfies the various parts of the radical ( anti-liberty ) left – they want those they hate enslaved, and it why ” the issue is never the issue “.
Why else would Alinsky himself be indifferent to the sufferings of the ” have nots” – prostitutes- under the control of an arch-have: his friend he referred to as ” the Professor ” – thug, and enforcer for Al Capone, Frank Nitti- but have an unsleeping and insatiable desire to ” help ” another group of ” have nots ” through his various campaigns of social warfare waged against the middle class?
The asymmetry in Alinsky’s “charitable” impulse suggest that it was hatred of the middle class,, and not an improvement of the poor’s lot that was his true motivation, and fixation. And today, the programs of the radical left do not help the poor for the same reason: their loudly proclaimed claims that they wish to alleviate the condition of the poor is not a goal, but rather just a stalking horse that allows them to better wage war against the decent society they hate.
Yes, it was Bernadette Devlin.
No, that’s a Puritan, or modern day lefty, who threats at night that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Think of the global warming issue. No matter how much the planet cools and their models fail, they stick to the dogma, because their issue isn’t the climate, or the environment, at all. Those are means to an end – control over others and the destruction of the free enterprise system in favour of the five year plan top down non-democratic socialist programs, where everyone, except the activists and new age intelligentsia, end up poorer.
That is why they don’t care how much China and India pollute; that is why they don’t care how many improvements there are in cleaner fossil fuel technologies – no, it must be re-defined as “sustainable.” Think of the pollution/emissions bait and switch – concocted strictly to control you; that is why they don’t care how much the poor get poorer as long as the “rich,” aka the evil middle class Marx never envisioned, get poorer – other than as pawns, useful idiots and bankrollers of the new world order and its inevitable confiscation of wealth and transactions of decline (William Gairdner coined that one not me).
Notice I didn’t use the term “capitalism.” That’s because Marx coined that phrase, so I care not to use it, using the more accurate “free enterprise” and “economic freedom” ideals instead. I care not to have them defined by some ideological term such as the socialist idea of capitalism. Now think about why feminism must remain radical and revolutionary; it’s about control, not freedom – how ironic!
Great comments and insights above, btw.
It’s true that the overwhelming desire for revenge/payback arises from feelings of anger/hatred, but on the other hand one can feel hatred without either taking revenge or feeling a need to take revenge.
Hatred has a lot of manifestations, including some of those listed in the comments above: self-loathing, a refusal to engage in discourse, a deep-seated urge to seek/attain power over others, a desire to provoke confrontations, etc., etc.
Because we let them
And they are winning, day by day and year by year. Just look around.
Wow. That quite a read.
I went to part one… the rabbit hole goes very deep. Some weekend I’ll follow it to its conclusion.. wow.
Some use the term “liberal disease”.
It IS that, and then some.
The left always hears that dog whistle signaling to “Start agitating!” but nobody sends them the signal that “We won! So STFU and move on to our next crusade!”
Socialism is a cancer that just keeps metastasizing, an out-of-control parasite that consumes its host … it ONLY knows growth. It never shrivels and disappears, even after it has won …indeed ESPECIALLY after it has won!
Their goal is not women’s equality or gay rights or any of the usual buzzwords. Their goal is absolute power. And they don’t have it yet.
Wow !!!
45 comments, maybe 46, extolling the benefits of Lefty, Yes We Can, Socialism,
must have struck a nerve..
Very interesting reading the comments. I would add a biblical quote from Paul (if you want to get a feminist or sodomite activist blood pressure spiking just mention him) “If we are men whose hope is in this world only we are men most miserable”. If this existence is all you have to put your hope in then one can get most touchy about ‘protecting’ it. Not all naturalists are extremist but those that are make the religious fundamentalist look like ‘boy scouts’. The environmental extremist/feminist/sexual activist, substitute whatever in the description, has a broad streak of fear motivating them. The core fear is a fear of GOD/Jesus/supreme being as they have made themselves and or the cause their reason for being. Enough sermonizing. For the most part the afore mention posts explains their rationale as well. Don’t forget the effect of a secular education system in the development of this irrationality.
Its because none of these “causes” are actually what the are after. Environment, gay rights abortion or global warming aren’t causes they are tactics! that’s why there is never enough!
Just like everyone else: They are in the Business of being in Business”. Period!
Deb @ 4:59 Feb 11- People living with schizophrenia have more than enough on their plates trying to live with the limitations of their illness and the bigotry they face to be pushing hate.
What you could focus on is the benefit of the continuation of the hate to the vested interests, follow the money, and possibly get outside of your own head. Please consider some counselling. Cheers;