{"id":5889,"date":"2017-01-05T16:56:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/05\/what-explains-trump-derangement-syndrome\/"},"modified":"2017-01-05T16:56:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T16:56:00","slug":"what-explains-trump-derangement-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/05\/what-explains-trump-derangement-syndrome\/","title":{"rendered":"What Explains Trump Derangement Syndrome?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds points<\/a> to status anxiety:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Our privileged, college-educated left \u2014 what Joel Kotkin calls the gentry liberals<\/a> \u2014 feels that its preeminent position in American society is under threat. And people care a lot about status.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the people who seem to be lashing out the most are, in fact, just those gentry liberals: academics, entertainers, pundits, low-level tech types, and so on. As journalism professor Mark Grabowski<\/a> reported, another academic texted him on election night: "Oh my God! We will be the ones ostracized if he wins."<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe we shouldn\u2019t \u201costracize\u201d people based on whether their candidate wins, but in a way this professor was right:  A Trump victory is a blow to the status of the people who thought Hillary Clinton was their candidate \u2014 one that they feel even more deeply because gentry liberals, having been raised on the principle that the personal is political, seem to take politics pretty personally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another example that\u2019s been circulating on the Internet comes from YouTube sex-talker Laci Green. When the election was still uncertain, she tweeted: \u201cRegardless of the outcome, we are clearly a *deeply* divided<\/a> and broken country. So much work ahead to mend, heal, and restore the U in USA.\u201d Just a few hours later, when it became clear that Hillary had lost, she changed her tune: \u201cWe are now under total Republican rule<\/a>. Textbook fascism. F____ you, white America. F___ you, you racist, misogynist pieces of s___. G'night.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Reynolds' is part of the explanation.  Another part is that Hillarians and lefties generally are, most of them, secularists.  Religion and its promises are for them purest buncombe.  This is it, baby, and this is all she wrote.  This is as real as it gets.  And yet they are not content to be smiley-faced nihilists with their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night, to paraphrase Nietzsche's Last Man riff.  They want Deep Meaning that transcends the petty particulars of quotidian life. So they seek it in the Political. Not being able to worship something worship-worthy, they succumb to the Idolatry of the Political. They don't realize that the Meaning they seek cannot be found where they seek it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is their inordinate and idolatrous commitment to the Political that explains, in part, why lefties 'lose it' when their candidates lose.<\/span><\/p>\n

TDS really is an amazing syndrome.  There is no counterpart of  it on the Right.  <\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds points to status anxiety: Our privileged, college-educated left \u2014 what Joel Kotkin calls the gentry liberals \u2014 feels that its preeminent position in American society is under threat. And people care a lot about status. What\u2019s more, the people who seem to be lashing out the most are, in fact, just those gentry liberals: academics, … Continue reading “What Explains Trump Derangement Syndrome?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-psychology-and-personality-typology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}