Thursday, July 19, 2007
For the Resentment – or Love – of Authority (Leftist Psychopathology 101)
I don't claim this to be a scientific appraisal but, have you ever noticed that those with the biggest gripes against authoritarian parents or bosses (or “corporations”) are the ones most sympathetic to authoritarian political ideologies and systems?
“...I hate my dad but, like...ah...Che was such a revolutionary!...” Or, “My boss is a bastard but, like...ah...Mao did a lot of good things for the people of China.” “Corporate America is fascist but [an over 40 year long dictatorship in] Cuba is a democratic egalitarian paradise.”
How or why does a hatred for parental authority figures or employers (and a generalized hatred of authority) translate into an adoration of political authority figures who's excess of authority and violence far surpasses that of one's mundane associations? More generally, how can one despise authority but at the same time defend, admire, and virtually worship the most horrid expressions of authoritarianism?
The far left had the nerve to initially coin the phrase “authoritarian personality” (a concoction of the Marxist psychologist Theodor Adorno) as something supposedly distinct to those they disagreed with (people who primarily favor low taxes and minimal government intrusion into individual's lives).
Among the left's grandest fairy tales of PR myth production has been the image of the cruel heartless and authoritarian conservative vs. the peaceful, passive, and all-loving leftist -- the control freak for our own good and the guardian of the great unwashed abstraction they've never actually met.
So, hate all the projections of oppression around you and sing praise to tyrants.
Hate your father and love Fidel Castro...but don't tell us one is a tyrant and another a docile leader of free people on a Caribbean island.
