Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 2:34pm

Change of Heart

 

 

I think the antics of the crazed left since the election of Trump are costing them supporters.  Case in point, Rod Dreher publishes a letter from a young mother:

I’m a secular/agnostic Californian and longtime reader of your blog. I’ve enjoyed your books beginning with Crunchy Cons, and have valued your insights over the years.

Though you don’t know me, I feel like I know you and your family. And I want to share with you, from the liberal bastion of Northern California, that I am officially tired of the type of people who have surrounded me my entire life. In the wake of Trump’s election, I am experiencing “tribe fatigue.” I’m not tired of The Other, Detestable Tribe. I’m tired of my own.

A bit about me: I am a [deleted] with two young children. My parents were non-religious Democrats, and my ex-Catholic mom loathes organized religion to this day.

So I was raised a secular liberal. My college professors were secular liberals. During my journalism phase, my newspaper colleagues were secular liberals. My law school professors and peers were – in the vast majority – secular liberals. Almost everyone at my corporate law firm was a secular liberal. My California neighbors and friends are secular liberals, as are my colleagues. My mother, siblings, and their spouses are all secular liberals.

By all rights, I should be a member in good standing of their tribe, “liking” their Facebook posts and joining their candlelight vigils against the evil Trump Administration. But November 8 and its aftermath revealed to me that I am just so tired of these people. I can’t be like them, and I don’t want my kids turning into them.

I am tired of their undisguised contempt for tens of millions of Americans, with no effort to temper their response to the election with humility or empathy.

I am tired of their unexamined snobbery and condescension.

I am tired of their name-calling and virtue-signaling as signs of supposedly high intelligence.

I am tired of their trendiness, jumping on every left-liberal bandwagon that comes along (transgender activism, anyone?) and then acting like anyone not on board is an idiot/hater.

I am tired of their shallowness. It’s hard to have a deep conversation with people who are obsessed with moving their kids’ pawns across the board (grades, sports, college, grad school, career) and, in their spare time, entertaining themselves and taking great vacations.

I am tired of their acceptance of vulgarity and sarcastic irreverence as the cultural ocean in which their kids swim. I like pop culture as much as the next person, but people who would never raise their kids on junk food seem to think nothing of letting then wallow in cultural junk, exposed to nothing ennobling, aspirational, or even earnest.

I am tired of watching them raise clueless kids (see above) who go off to college and within months are convinced they live in a rapey, racist patriarchy; “Make America Great Again” is hate speech; and Black Lives Matter agitators are their brothers-in-arms against White Privilege. If my kids are like that at nineteen, I’ll feel I’ve seriously failed them as a parent. Yet the general sentiment seems to be these are good, liberal kids who may have gotten a bit carried away.

I am tired of their lack of interest in any form of serious morality or self-betterment. These are decent, responsible people, many compassionate by temperament. Yet they seem two-dimensional, as if they believe that being a nice, well-socialized person who holds the correct political views is all there is, and there is nothing else to talk about. Isn’t there, though?

I am tired of being bored and exasperated by everybody. I feel like I have read this book a thousand times, and there are no surprises in it. Down with Trump! Trans Lives Matter! Climate deniers are destroying the planet! No cake, we’re gluten-free!

These are good people in a lot of ways. But there has got to be a better tribe.

That leads me to . . . drum roll . . . the Christian Right. It is no small feat, switching tribes. It feels stressful and weird to abandon your tribe for the Detested Other Side.

Since November 8, my husband and I have been taking the kids to church. (He is politically conservative with a religious bent, so no argument there.) I have come this close to buying a giant poster of the American flag for the living room. I may do it still.

Go here to read the rest.  Time again for one of my favorite poems:

 

SAY not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!

Arthur Hugh Clough

 

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Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 5:27am

The most bizarre thing about this the left is melting over someone who is not even a conservative.

Father of Seven
Father of Seven
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 7:16am

Yes, but he is much more conservative than the Northern California echo chamber. He also lead the charge against political correctness. Just maybe this had the effect of causing some on the Left to think about arguments they’d never heard before.

Philip
Philip
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 7:24am

The young mother above and her children are the refugees that we don’t hear about.
Waking from a perpetual nightmare and walking away from a tribe filled with hate of neighbor that isn’t in their camp, contempt for all outside their tribe and apathy for things conservative. I predict that these refugees will grow in number.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 8:30am

Remember, folks, it’s liberal-ISM. It is just like alcohol-ISM. It’s I, Self and Me. That’s what causes alcoholism (“the bottle was only a symptom of our disease” – Bill Wilson in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous), and it is what causes liberalism.

Alphatron Shinyskullus
Alphatron Shinyskullus
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 3:14pm

I had a college friend from San Francisco. He established a law practice there. He was in town once, and my wife and I had dinner with him and his wife. They began talking about overpopulation, and how they think it’s selfish to have children. My wife and I have eight children. They began talking about how abortion is needed to protect the environment from overpopulation. I am a pro-life activist. On Facebook, it got worse. And worse. And worse. He was insulting to everyone outside of San Francisco who had ever been his friend, while insisting he was not. Finally, I cut ties with him. He wasn’t like that when we were in college together. It was sad. He seemed to have a compulsion to show just how great a guy he was by holding all of the right opinions, and denigrating anyone who held a different opinion. He had ZERO insight into how this looked to other people. It reminds me of the society in Brave New World, which looked with disgust at things such as natural childbirth.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 3:38pm

St. Augustine wrote in the fifth century that enemies of the Faith, sinners, et al should be loved in Christian charity because as long as they live they may come to a better mind.
.
Also, as LDQ above notes: liberalism is a pathology.
.

nancyv
nancyv
Friday, December 23, AD 2016 4:39pm

What an enchanting voice to read such a mysterious beautiful poem! Thanks for sharing. This woman’s children will be well schooled.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 4:20am

T Shaw wrote, “St. Augustine wrote in the fifth century that enemies of the Faith, sinners, et al should be loved in Christian charity because as long as they live they may come to a better mind.”

The Doctor of Grace also says, “For the effectiveness of God’s mercy cannot be in the power of man to frustrate, if he will have none of it. If God wills to have mercy on men, he can call them in a way that is suited to them, so that they will be moved to understand and to follow. It is true, therefore, that many are called but few chosen. Those are chosen who are effectually [congruenter] called. Those who are not effectually called and do not obey their calling are not chosen, for although they were called they did not follow.” [To Simplician 2:13]

Timothy Reed
Timothy Reed
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 6:18am

My impression of libelism ( oh, you meant LIBERALism ) is summed up in a picture of that great scholar, Timothy O’Leary. He’s squinting off in the distance, with one hand shading his eyes.
And the caption reads, “I wonder if I can make it to there, from here ?”
Maybe they’re on a noble ( Nobel ) quest like Star Trek. Only the “Final Frontier” could be
Canada, or, Venezuela.
Timothy R.

Timothy Reed
Timothy Reed
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 6:58am

O’Leary might have been the originator of the awesome and mystical New Age quote,
“No matter where you go, there you are”. Gives me chills.
Timothy R

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 1:54pm

I hope she’s strong enough to keep at it. If you’re not use to it, social pressure is insanely hard to resist.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 7:08pm

For several years here in the San Franpsycho Baytheist Area, I had a license-plate holder I had brought up from Arizona, “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. My son–in-law was USMC 1st Light Armored Recon, participated in the first wave assault on Baghdad and also helped clean out Fallujah. I was quite proud of it. The plate had migrated in time to Mrs. Phoenix’ car.
..
However, it is now relegated to an honorable place in the garage: why? A few months back, she was disembarking from her car when a man, possibly in his 40’s, saw it and verbally assailed her, a-la-crazed-lefty-on-Jet-Blue-flight-vs-Ivanka-Trump, in very tony Saratoga, screaming, at her and pointing at it, “What’s that supposed to mean? Why d’ya have that?”–He was an anti-Bush, anti-war, deranged lefty, as he proceeded to make evident. (Oh, how I wish I had been there, but.. Besides these types run crying were somebody to give them a boo-boo.) “He was really brave to assail a chubby lady in her middle years,” was Mrs. Phoenix’ comment.
..
After this near-confrontation (it actually was the 2nd of its type ), the license-plate – holder with the obviously incendiary message, went to the garage wall of honor. Not worth dealing with the loon-left here.
..
Peace on earth.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 7:27pm

🙁 Sounds like the spiritual brother of the guy who went from complementing my (admittedly adorable) baby girl to accusing me of wishing his death and destroying the world when he saw that there were *three* car seats in the back of my van. (And one booster, but I don’t think he could see that. And he couldn’t tell I was pregnant, either.)

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 7:50pm

Steve Phoenix, if I meet a person like that, then one of the two of us will not be walking away. I am done with these godless leftists. Dear Lord Jesus, please grant to your unworthy servant the courage of your man of honor Caleb who at 85 years of age was ready to drive the Anakim out from the land!
.
Joshua 14
.
6 Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal; and Caleb the son of Jephun′neh the Ken′izzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Ka′desh-bar′nea concerning you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Ka′desh-bar′nea to spy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. 8 But my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. 9 And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children for ever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ 10 And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness; and now, lo, I am this day eighty-five years old. 11 I am still as strong to this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war, and for going and coming. 12 So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day; for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities: it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out as the Lord said.”
.
13 Then Joshua blessed him; and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephun′neh for an inheritance. 14 So Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephun′neh the Ken′izzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. 15 Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kir′iath-ar′ba;[a] this Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim. And the land had rest from war.

Timothy Reed
Timothy Reed
Saturday, December 24, AD 2016 8:32pm

I voluntarily enlisted eight days after graduating from Rex Mundi HS. I couldn’t wait because someone(s) had murdered my hero, John F. Kennedy. the news Media was predicting that we would soon catch up with the killer(s) and kick butt. And I wanted to get my licks in !
Well, I wound up being gone for four long years. The last three years of that time I was stationed with an MP unit in Germany. I was homesick and missed my Family. I missed my Hometown too !
When I finally arrived at our small Airport, I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and step, once more on friendly soil ! I took one step into the Terminal and some dirtbag ran up to me and spit on my uniform ! Welcome home.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Monday, December 26, AD 2016 10:14am

It is a strange grace to have returned to the San Franpsychopath Baytheist Area about 5 years ago for work and family reasons, having been gone to Arizona about 20 years, to witness the “progressive” drift of the society, just like the California seismic plate and the San Andreas fault, drifting further and further left, further and further out to sea. ( But for the grace of God and the traditional Catholic Faith, which I badly drifted from by my 20’s, there go I. ) These people have no mooring, and the very darkest of spirits loves a vacuum.

Some here are almost irretrievably self-deluded (the first victim of lying is yourself, of course). There are many good and devoted people still here of course. But they cant speak up, or they lose their job, they (by the loon-left, who once bitterly complained of John Kerry’s quite-legitimate “Swift-Boating”) will get “Facebooked” (Disgracebooked), and they often too have family to care for. I also care for my disabled brother as well, and that keeps me in check; also it isn’t fair to make Mrs. Phoenix, who was shaken by the sheer bitter viciousness of the verbal attack, the 2nd of its kind occasioned by little more than a license-plate holder, suffer along with me.

After all, I know of one lefty-loon who walked up to a Jesuit priest in the Haight-Asbury a few years ago, and stuck a knife in the back of his head, outside St. Agnes Church where he was greeting people. Yeah, that didn’t make the news. He miraculously recovered, but he has never been the same.

A strange grace, you say? Well, it is always good to see what the deranged left is up to, and it helps to therefore be ahead of the curve. The “Sanctuary Cities”, the public nudity (be very careful where you drive in SF: check ahead), the decades-old, laissez-faire, total ignoring of violations of law and code (that is what occasioned the Oakland Warehouse fire a few weeks ago, where 33 people died: gee, with great mayors in Oakland’s past like crack-addict Ron Dellums, toke-smoking now-gov Jerry Brown, and ultra-leftist Jean Kwan, how could anything go wrong witht that leadership and enforcement of law?), and now the movement to secede from the Union—the same people who went nuts over Texas’ and Gov. Rick Perry’s threats to secede a few years ago, isn’t it precious?

We have our escape already planned in a few years. I still have a house in Arizona and will probably buy another in gun-loving Utah or Wyoming. But I will still maintain a foothold, here to watch. And watch California, the new Atlantis, sink into the waves of the angry Pacific. Keep lots of Jiffy-Pop ready.

Timothy Reed
Timothy Reed
Monday, December 26, AD 2016 1:10pm

Maybe we could chip in and get all of the Liberals in Wash.DC one of those Medic-Alert
necklaces. Only theirs’ would say, “Help! I’m having a lucid moment. And I can’t find my
stash !”
Timothy R.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, December 27, AD 2016 10:33am

Atheism is unconstitutional, patently violating our First Amendment. The atheist must be tolerated as a deathbed convert. Aldous Huxley, cold blooded atheist, author of Brave New World had his normal Christian character hang himself in a cold-blooded act at the end of the book. Huxley died the same day JFK was assassinated and no one knew he was gone for ten years. Brave New World was Huxley’s wish for us.

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