[August]

I like this guys writing style...

Potemkin Progressivism

By Roger Kimball| June 22, 2017


...there are grounds for thinking that the hysteria on the Left is just so much infantile caterwauling: they did not get the all-day sucker they were promised so they are going to sit down in the middle of the floor and wail and wail and wail. Litigate, too, no doubt, but even that will be conducted in tantrum tones. I think that conclusion is mostly right. And I believe that Trump would be well advised to leave the Democrats in their bawl room, their boudoir (French for “room for pouting in”) while he gets on with the business of running, and improving, the country, which, by the way, he is doing very well.
Still, it is worth noting that the deceiving nature of appearances cuts many ways and is often difficult to parse accurately. For the most part, the actions of the Potemkin progressives are just exhibitions of temperament, whining, childish static that cannot be reasoned with, only pampered and put to bed for a nice long nap.
The tantrum-like behavior is not quite irrational, however. The Democrats really are on an historic losing streak. In 2008, they came to town on a tsunami of hope-’n-change euphoria. But the wrecking ball that was Barack Obama soon brought that illusion crashing down. Now they are like some threatened animal that, largely defenseless, has developed the ability to appear threatening by puffing itself up, changing color, emitting startling sounds, bristling quills, and the like. Zoologists call this activity “deimatic behavior,” after a Greek verb meaning “to frighten.”
Deimatic behavior is all show and no spear: that is, the animal might look or sound or smell threatening, but it is all bluff. Really, it is just a tasty moth, frog, California Democrat, or whatever.
But sometimes the appearance is not deceiving. The animal really does taste bad, is poisonous, or can fight back effectively. Those cases zoologists call aposematic behavior: a warning signal accompanied by retaliatory potential. As one article on the subject explains, “Non-bluffing (aposematic) displays occur in mammals which possess powerful defenses such as spines or stink glands, and which habitually warn off potential predators rather than attempting escape by running.”
This describes some meaningful proportion of the anti-Trump menagerie. And this means that the chief task for those interested in preserving a system in which the results of open, democratic elections are respected will be in effectively discriminating between the harmless, though pathetic, hysteria of the anti-Trump babies and the more toxic exfoliations of their menacing brothers and sisters. The latter will often dress and act the same as the former, but one group is content to shout and cry and whine while the other side is out there bashing people over the head with bicycle locks, smashing up property, abusing the legal system to destroy its political enemies, or gunning down Republican Congressmen while they practice baseball. Distinguishing between the two groups is an element of connoisseurship that it behooves those of us who care for the future of the republic to master.

https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/22/p...progressivism/