Victor Davis Hanson: "The Hysterical Style in American Politics"

Cruelty aficionado Victor Davis Hanson is always interesting.

The post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing "paranoid style" of conspiracy-fed extremism.

But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.

Or, in the immortal words of former President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

He takes us through a review of leftwing hysterias and moral panics, begin with Obama's drive to "fundamentally transform" the US, through the Trump Red Scare, through the predations of #MeToo opportunists.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States during the winter of 2020 prompted an even greater hysteria.

Without scientific evidence, federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were able to persuade the Trump administration to shut down the economy in the country's first national quarantine.

Suddenly, it became a thought crime to question the wisdom of 6-foot social distancing, of mandatory mask-wearing, of the Wuhan virology lab's origin of the COVID-19 virus, or of off-label use of prescription drugs.

Left-wing politicians and celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gavin Newsom to Jane Fonda, all blurted out the political advantages that the lockdowns offered--from recalibrating capitalism and health care to ensuring the 2020 defeat of Trump.

The COVID-19 hysteria magically ended when Biden won the 2020 election. Suddenly, the explanations about the bat or pangolin origins of the virus faded. The damage from the quarantines could no longer be repressed. And herd immunity gradually mitigated the epidemic.

The lockdown caused untold economic chaos, suicides, and health crises.

One result was the 120 days of looting, arson, death, destruction, and violence spawned by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020.

Suddenly, a hysterical lie took hold: American police were waging war against black males.

The details around Floyd's sudden death--he was in the act of committing a felony, resisting arrest, suffering from coronary artery disease and the after-effects of COVID-19, and being high on dangerous drugs--were off limits.

The riot toll reached $2 billion in property damage, more than 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law enforcement officers. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church were torched.

It has been just one hysteria and one irrational, crazed crusade after the next.

One thing: Hanson writes as if this may be a tactic of the left.

I don't believe it's a tactic.

I believe this is real: They are literally insane. They are in the spasms of an untreated 8-year-old nervous breakdown.

I really want someone to analyze the phenomenon of an entire social order having an ongoing nervous breakdown for eight years straight, but never seeking treatment for it, because all of their social peers and political allies -- all other occupants of The Bubble -- tell them that it's not crazy to be crazy 24/7/365, but in fact insanity is the right response to Trump, Covid, and a drug-dealing thug having a heart failure due to the prodigious amounts of fentanyl and amphetamines he had swallowed.

Obviously, it was caused by Trump. But why? Here's my guess. Think about the average Uniparty Bourgeois Bohemian voter. Think about, say, Allahpundit.

All of his life his tribe been in control of politics. Yes, sometimes the faction of the Uniparty he (slightly) favors loses, but when he "loses," someone like Obama who he likes an awful lot takes over. He either gets his first pick or his second pick, and everyone permitted to be president has been vetted and approved by his social class.

But now comes Trump, who definitely has not been vetted and approved, and even worse come Trump's voters, who Allahpundit has been in a not-so-hidden alliance with leftists to keep from ever having a meaningful say in America's politics.

And in a few hours on November 8, 2016, all of the certainty and safety of a system built to champion and perpetuate Upper Middle Class "Elite" Educated special rights and special privileges to rule and order society as they like comes tumbling down.

Suddenly members of what are called "The Protected Class" feel completely Unprotected. They know they've been holding the "uneducated" and non-socially powerful classes down, and suddenly get very, very panicked about what these newly-empowered classes might do in revenge.

And thus: The shrieking. Eight fucking years of degenerate lunatic shrieking and the justification of Nazi-like authoritarian measures to put the "lower classes" down, back down to their low places, where they belong, where they always belonged, before they got uppity and attempted to rise above their natural level.

John Hindraker at Powerline looked through that Scott Rasmussen poll showing that the elites are narcissistic fascists and wonders: Are they simply crazy?

These "elites," so defined, are living in another world than the rest of us. They are extraordinarily loyal to the regime; 84% of them approve of Joe Biden's performance as president. I wouldn't have thought you could get that high an approval rating if you sampled the Democratic National Committee. And 70% of the "elites" trust the government to do the right thing most of the time; that rises to 89% among those who are "the most politically active members of the elite."

These elites even trust journalists: 79% have a favorable opinion of them, as do 84% of the "Ivy League elite."

When it comes to policy, these people are crazy. Forty-seven percent say that America suffers from too much freedom, compared with only 21% who think we have too much government control. Among the Ivy League elite, 55% say America is too free, with only 15% saying we have too much government.

So how do the elites want to limit our excessive freedom? A shocking 77% say they favor the "strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity." That basically means living in a poor, totalitarian state like the USSR. And by 89% to 10%, the Ivy League elites want to see "strict rationing" of these most basic commodities.

These "elites" are fascists. Large majorities want to ban gas stoves (69%), gasoline powered cars (72%), non-essential air travel (55%), SUVs (58%) and air conditioning (53%). The Ivy League elites are even worse: the corresponding numbers are 80% for gas stoves, 81% for gasoline powered cars, 70% for non-essential air travel, 66% for SUVs, and 68% want to ban air conditioning. There is no polite way to put it: they are fascists.

There is more at the link. The people whom Rasmussen has identified are obviously dangerous to our democracy. If they take over, we are finished. More study needs to be done to figure out who, exactly, they are, so we can root them out and negate their influence. In the meantime, some moderate measures probably need to be taken. Like abolishing the Ivy League.

I'd really like to read a book about that. Not a screed like I'd write, but a genuine analysis informed by psychology and the history of moral panics and witch hunts and viral contagion lunacies.

What happens when the entire Ruling Class becomes functionally insane? It's purely rhetorical question -- we're living it. You see it every day.

Soon planes will be falling out of the sky and killing 300 people in one very fell swoop and the Regime will say, "That didn't happen, and it's good that it did."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM

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