Life on Facebook
August 5, 2013
KARL D. writes:
I have been on Facebook for the last several years, something which is both a blessing and a curse. It has allowed me to re-connect with people from my past which is a good thing. But on the downside it has allowed me to re-connect with people from my past. I was never a liberal, but I was more of a centrist in my late teens and early 20s.
Some of the people with whom I have resumed contact are ex-girlfriends or female friends. I was lucky insofar that many breakups with past girlfriends were never ugly, and we managed to remain friends.
All of these women were liberal when I knew them some twenty odd years ago, and are now even more liberal. One thing that is very popular on Facebook is the linking of stories from political websites and blogs. Especially among liberals. As Casey Ann stated in your previous piece about her trip to Paris, liberals just naturally assume that everyone around them is a liberal. Most of these blog links on Facebook are simply hateful, full of vitriol, and make conservatives out to be nothing short of blood-thirsty Nazis! Usually I simply let these things pass without commenting on them. It’s just not worth the effort to argue with idiocy of that nature. But once and awhile I see something so egregious I simply cannot hold my tongue anymore. What then follows by these female posters is pitifully common. Some slight recognition of my position, followed by the question “You’re really a conservative?” — followed by sarcastic digs and then ultimately the big kiss off. When I say “kiss off” I don’t mean being cut off entirely. But communication (as it were) practically ceases to exist and you are banished to the outer void.
This happens so frequently with liberal women as opposed to liberal men that it is almost a statistical certainty. Another common denominator with these gals I have noticed is their marital status. They are almost all single, childless or divorced. They are in their mid to late 40s, and they are all surrounded by and obsessed with dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. I have written before about the replacement of children and husbands with dogs by middle-aged liberal career women, but that is another story entirely. I don’t know what point I am trying to make with this, only that it is an interesting pattern and almost has a psychological component to it. I think psychology plays a very important role in understanding and combatting liberalism. Something myself and the late Lawrence Auster seemed to disagree about on certain levels.
— Comments —
Natassia writes:
I definitely grinned when I read this post. My husband recently told me that he had to “clean out” his Facebook friends list after the latest same-sex “marriage” debacle.
Anyone who posted the pink and red equality meme for gay marriage was dropped from his friends list. He is nauseated by it all.
And Karl is exactly right. The most staunchly liberal women, in general, are middle-aged, divorced or single, and usually have no children. But they have their beloved pets. And the ones in their thirties are STILL posting their status updates while at the local bar at 2 a.m. and taking provocative photos of themselves, even the ones who have children at home. I actually feel embarrassed for them because all they really want is for a man to fall madly in love with them, and none ever do.
Jane S. writes:
Karl writes:
I think psychology plays a very important role in understanding and combatting liberalism. Something myself and the late Lawrence Auster seemed to disagree about on certain levels.
An academic who specializes in the field of organizational psychology has written that the psychological basis for political correctness is narcissism.
I found it very interesting. It made sense. Everyone starts out life a narcissist, believing themselves to be the center of a benign universe that exists only to serve their needs.
Political correctness means the repudiation of the role of the father and his works. Its unconscious premise is that we could all have fusion with the mother if we could only get him out of the picture. Directly and indirectly, this outlook involves the rejection of objective self-consciousness and, along with that, the idea of objective external reality, which is rooted in it, and the symbolic, through which it is represented.
A normal mature person is meant to outgrow the narcissistic phase of their development, but liberals never do. The problem is, a narcissist has no way of making sense of external reality and the existence of others. Liberalism gives them an organizing principle. You’ll never get them to let go of it. They descend into chaos.
According to Professor Schwartz, to fully understand political correctness, it must be seen as a form of hysteria. He uses the term hysteria in the psychoanalytic sense, (see la belle indifference). The hysterical person says things purely for dramatic effect, with no regards whatsoever for the truth.
For the politically correct, truth is a matter of aesthetics, rather than of correspondence with reality. This is why politically correct journalists can make the most outrageous and destructive statement without a particle of evidence, and without any diminution in their sense of certainty arising from the absence of evidence.
Laura writes:
There are basic psychological incentives to embrace liberalism, but liberalism is primarily a set of ideas about existence. It’s a disorder of both the mind and the ego.
Casey Ann writes:
Karl writes:
As Casey Ann stated in your previous piece about her trip to Paris, liberals just naturally assume that everyone around them is a liberal.
While it’s true that they make this assumption, it also seems to be the case that Leftists are so convinced of their intellectual superiority (which may actually be a defense mechanism against sincerely addressing the opposing argument without emotionalism/hedonism) that they shun any conservative bent as ipso facto unworthy of consideration. There is a small distinction, and it’s a handy tool for them.
Some months ago, I accompanied the members of the philosophy club at my university to a philosophy conference in San Antonio. For the most part, we simply read the titles of the presentations, chose whichever one appealed to us most at the hour, and then attended them passively. I went into one alone, “In Defense of ‘Pure’ Legal Moralism,” to find myself among hip, elitist white men. The presentation was only slightly interesting, particularly when he noted the inconsistency of preaching “animal rights” and other moral claims while simultaneously insisting that moral beliefs stay out of the legal sphere, but I’ll never forget the remark the presenter so casually made once discussion began. Whatever idea he was specifically branching out from couldn’t have been important enough for me to remember, but only his audacity in something to this effect — “Of course, we’re assuming the person is progressive or at least a liberal.” He said this in such a snide way so that it appeared self-evident that to be on the Right is to be nothing short of insane, or perhaps brainwashed into a mentally vegetative state. Even if another Rightist were in the room, there is no defense he could have made to a statement so lacking in substance. It’s basically an ad hominem that works to stifle any objection for fear of ostracization. One couldn’t even participate in the discussion as a whole unless one accepted about a dozen unspoken premises.
Just think, these little comments, which someone (Chesterton?) called a subtle, new form of persecution, are happening in academia all the time! It’s no wonder that intellectual conservatives don’t have much of a presence there. No human wants to be ostracized. Now that I think more about where the true conservative’s heart lies — in the countryside — it makes much more sense that he would move away from the trifle debate and meaningless rhetoric in Leftist circles. We will have more impact in the home, raising faithful children, and in prayer to God than anywhere else, whether on the ugly Internet or at a pointless conference.
Laura writes:
There are times when one should put aside the fear of ostracism and openly object. And there are times when debate is fruitless.
Facebook is a perfect landmark for a liberal culture, a monument to the frivolity and superficiality of what, in such a culture, passes for relationship. The idea of someone having three hundred friends, for example. That’s worse than silly, it’s an out-and-out mockery of genuine friendship. These are “friends” that have been reduced to mere Internet links that even at that are never used except for rank self-promotion or idle voyeurism. And how appropriate that the word “use” would come so naturally in connection with a Facebook “friend,” for it is not an improvement in human relationship, but rather encourages cynicism and crassness about it.
It should also bother us to reflect on a related fact, and that is how easily Facebook facilitates the radical egalitarian vision of relationship; we’re all one big cyber-commune, no relationship is anymore important than any other, all are equally valid, equally estimable, equally interchangeable, even the sexual ones. We shouldn’t be surprised at how many liberals there are on Facebook. The two are natural companions. The liberals love Facebook friendship for the same reason they love “tolerance” — for them, it too is only virtual, requiring neither effort nor sacrifice.
Paul writes:
First, I am interested that Facebook allows one to interact with past loves or even current relatives, as I would like in an appropriate way. Maybe I will subscribe. It is risky in other ways, but I would love the somewhat miraculous opportunity to talk with others that will always have a place in my heart. I did not realize it was so influential. I never had a breakup that would cause bad feelings, so I don’t fear vitriol.
Second, although Oedipal complexes might indeed play a partial role with all of us, as Freud theorized, the complex has been downgraded in the psychiatric community. It is now a heuristic device, a rule of thumb. Thus, I don’t think Oedipal arguments are important when discussing the motivations of liberals. The motives are too varied to discover.
Hard truth, bravery, and effort are the weapons to combat liberalism.
