Sir Barken Hyena writes:

I’ve been indulging in some pop psychology of the liberals I’ve encountered lately. No need to explain why! It’s quite a spectacle many of them have put on for us, full of sound and fury, but signifying what?

Not exactly nothing, though it is the looming nihilism that is the engine of this process (Ideology, Myth and Reason). I’m hoping to get a sense of their inner struggle, with a view to seeing the end state.

This inner struggle is quite visible on the surface of things, with all the hue and cry. They just really aren’t used to being sent to bed without dinner are they? Yeah, that’s snide, but can anyone describe the Left as having acting with maturity, reservation, statesmanship? It makes you giggle to think of it.

I think everyone has encountered this, and to me there’s an eerie similarity among them. All of the same arguments, the same attitudes, the same emotions, the same accusations, the same perennial half-truths and the not-true-at-alls, the same diversionary fake debating tactics, the same ignorance of all history but most especially, their own. They seem a mass moving in strange synchrony to a silent beat.

Previously, I suggested that Progressivism had become a pure Machiavellian force (Progressivism = Will-To-Power), and I stand by it, but it’s only the leaders who think that way. The rank and file have no trace of this in them, and would be sincerely outraged at the suggestion. If they were to adopt that perspective, they’d abandon their leaders. To be useful they have to be lambs for the slaughter (possibly literally), unquestioning zealots who can be given a scent and will reliably chase until out of breath.

And for that, only engaging the deepest emotions will work. And nothing is deeper than identity. Any human deprived of a sense of identity will flail helplessly until they find somewhere to attach. Anyone who ever had to move schools in the middle of the year as a child knows this. Humans in natural conditions are dead without belonging to a group, so if there’s a void there it induces a profoundly uncomfortable unease.

I myself have struggled mightily with this void, after I left my wife 4 years ago, my world in ruins. I am a lone wolf and not a joiner, so my identity became deeply centered on hers, and with this shorn I was left twisting in the wind. I have never found words to describe the absolute emptiness of the cosmos I faced in the worst of those moments. Remembering it actually brought on chills just now. You couldn’t even call it hell, that’s something you might try to resist. This felt beyond death somehow.

It might be a stretch to connect my experience with what we’re seeing from some liberals, but I don’t think so. Different people form their identities around different things, it might be a relationship, it might be a job, it might be a hobby, or it might be a political cause. And for the more hungry, it’s often this last, because it gives a bigger jolt to the spirit.

And now people like me are all around, pulling the rug out from under their identity with our agitating arguments, memes and relentless bullying. Nope, they don’t like it a bit, and why should they? But there’s a historical necessity at work, the time when our civilization can sustain ideological governance is wrapping up, and that’s exactly what all of this is a part of, on a vast scale, crossing decades and continents, changing forever the lives of millions. They and we have no choice but to face this particular music.

I myself was the one who destroyed my old identity, willingly, but for Progressives its coming to them unasked. I could have told you what was happening to me, but I don’t think it can work like that for them. A natural response to my pop pysch would be “Um, no, we actually think Trump is dangerous and has to go and that’s what all of this is about”. This is false.

This is why none of the political arguments ever make sense, they are quite beside the point of the ideology. The point is to bind people into a community for directed action, this from the perspective of the Machiavellians running the show. From the rank and file perspective, they get an identity that has the elevating sense of doing good works. This used to come more from church, if at all, but God is dead, so other avenues are found.

This is how groups form. But they are organic and so have a lifespan; we’re close to the end of this one’s. What cohesion remains can only be called up with far more effort — and cash! — than before. Only the imagined threat of “NAZIS!!!!” is motivating enough, and the WN complied by providing the Halloween costumes. In years prior, school lunches or day care or a few nuts holed up on a ranch in Texas were enough to bring out the base and push things through.

This a spiritual crisis for the “believers”. The real issue is that so many have silent doubts, in addition to the fear of ostracism. I think evidence of this is the silent or mealy mouthed response to the statue breakers from the moderate rank and file. I have seen very few of them in social media or out on the web actually supporting it. Yes, they won’t denounce it – that means expulsion – but they aren’t really approving it either. Mostly, they are silent or say they can see both sides. But none of them are writing letters to congressman suggesting legislation for it, I wager.

With the wave of “defriendings” that’s happening, using that in a wider sense than just Facebook, we see a simple retreat from the scene of battle. The old magic wand of “You’re a NAZI” isn’t working. They’re hanging up the phone and running away, and curling up in dark rooms across the land, assuming the fetal position.

As the cracks spread from the flagging spirit of the left, this dribble will, at some unknown tipping point, become a flood. And with that, the Left will evaporate. Where will they go? I’m not sure they will have anywhere, anywhere at all to go. Mostly they will simply disperse, atomize back to uncoordinated individuals.

This will signal the end of the era of ideology, and the end of party politics as we’ve known it in the US. And then the field will be left clear for the final Battle of the Oligarchs.

Stay tuned.