I Will Never Be A Conservative. It Doesn't Make The Left Any Less Infuriating To Me

 

Having spent so much time and energy infuriated by so much of what the far-left says – particularly on this site -  I’ve had occasion to wonder: am I becoming a conservative as some of my more conservative friends have suggested?

I’ve spent a bit of 2025 on other social media sites, particularly those that refer to pop culture. And I can now state with sincerity: I’m not. I’ve known how they talk about so much of the pop culture world in particular but I think I needed to spend some time in it to know for sure. If being conservative means that I have to spend time with the kind of bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic and racist views of these kinds of people – whether it is deliberately so or casual  - then I know I will never be comfortable in that atmosphere. Just looking at so many of the comments in sites discussing The Last of Us alone make me feel like I need a shower afterwards.

What spending even a short time in the kind of atmosphere that make one yearn for the convivial atmosphere of Fox News has confirmed to me something that I have suspected over the years but needed to witness for myself. The far right and the far left are similar in several critical ways. (Don’t start sending me hate mail yet; though I suspect many of you will stop reading here.)

When it comes to their mindset on social media they are identical in critical areas. The loudest voice takes up all the oxygen. Ninety percent of the commentary is either applauding the speaker’s opinion or calling the worst kind of names to those who dare to offer even a modest cry of dissent. Rational discourse is quickly thwarted in the mentality of the virtual mob. Dissent is met with name calling. There’s no room for a middle ground. It's all or nothing. And one side goes out of its way to blame the other side for everything that is wrong in the world they live in. The differences may seem significant, particularly considering that the far right’s wrath is based in the worst sort of bigotry, but in strictly generic terms there’s more similarity in discussion than there are differences.

Now let’s deal with the critical differences. As horrific and monstrous as the far right attitude can be towards its enemies, at a purely academic level it’s far easier to understand their kinds of theories and rationales than it is the far left’s. The right has a clear target for its vitriol: they know who is responsible for what is wrong and they can clearly identify it. In that sense while I hate everything the right says on these sites and completely disagree with it, I can comprehend it far easily then the left’s.

The left’s grievances, by contrast, are not about an individual or a race, gender of sexual orientation. Their target is ‘the system’. They’ve spent a huge amount of time on this site, in literary journals, even in certain Democratic Party affiliation sites, giving a complex, detailed history of what is wrong with America today. The problem is that they chose to blame…everything. The Republican Party and corporations get the most of the vitriol but they will also blame the Democrats, capitalism, democracy, education, the Founders and in some cases even the people who would seem the ones that are the most left, including AOC and so many of her ilk.

I’ve argued this a few times at this site and will no doubt do so again: the reason the right has managed to gain a permanent hold in so much of the electorate is that they reduce the problem to its simplest level and offer a simple solution: Vote Republican and we will stop the far left agenda. They have also successfully managed, through cable news and other sites, to make the Democratic Party synonymous with the most far left parts of it – something I’m sure the average progressive hears and thinks ‘If only that were true’.

Because the far left has not, despite what you might see on Sean Hannity and Newsmax, not managed to completely co-op the Democratic Party. The far left part of the Democrats as far as I can see, consists of Bernie Sanders (I’ll get back to him) the Squad and a few random Democrats here and there. And that makes me think that so much of the far left’s frequent regurgitation of all of the things that the far right has done to corrupt the electoral process over the last half century is simply a case of them being green with envy.

I am not alone in thinking this. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch Historian, recently published a book called Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making A Difference. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, he asked what accounts for the fact that moral ambition on the right seems to be more ascendant then moral ambition on the left:

“There’s a real lack of ambition among progressives these days. Take the environmental movement. You’ve got so many people who are obsessed with their own footprint…In the best possible scenario, you will have reduced your footprint to zero, and you might as well not have existed – and then death is the highest ideal. Not very ambitious, in my view. The same is true for those who are called ‘woke’. They are accused of going too far. I don’t think they go far enough. They’re mostly obsessed with policing language and they’re very good at going viral. ‘Tax the rich’ and ‘kill the patriarchy’ get you a lot of likes on Instagram but do you achieve anything?

Having spent so much time on social media I know the answer to that question.

He also has a model to mention:

Right wingers…built this huge network of think tanks, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society. I disagree with most of their goals but I’m in awe of that perseverance.”

And that lack of work ethic has always been the left’s biggest problem, then and now. As Bregman points out, building coalitions is essential and the leftists seem unable to understand that. He also argues that winning is a moral duty and the left seems unable to identify what winning is.

A few days ago I made a response to someone who shared a comment on Bernie Sanders. I pointed out that Sanders was not a Democrat, merely caucused with them, and had never gotten any meaningful legislation that bears his name through Congress. I then went through a back and forth with an individual who I won’t name who was very pro-Bernie. I will just highlight the two relevant parts:

Myself: So your qualification for a political leader is not what he accomplishes in Congress or how much he helps his party or his constituents but rather about expanding the conversation…And the fact that none of his legislation got passed, well that’s not his fault because the system is broken anyway.

INDIVIDUAL ONE: What you have him do? Move right so that he can get his legislation passed?

Now I know at a basic level this is not an uncommon attitude among progressive politicians on a historical level: I’ve mentioned it several times in other columns. But it’s rare for me to hear it stated outright by a progressive – who claims to be on the side of virtue and making the world a better place  - say that it is less important to compromise and get legislation that while not all inclusive, would still be helpful to the masses then to compromise one’s principles.

At a certain level the left is intellectually aware that the Republicans are more than willing to destroy the rights of the underprivileged every chance they get and have been doing so when they have the power which is frequently. They also acknowledge Republicans are fine giving nothing to people. It’s still striking to hear that given the chance for less than what you wanted and absolutely nothing, there seem to be progressives who are fine with nothing. No doubt they are the same kind of people who think that one party burning everything down and another party who wants to preserve the status quo are somehow identical – which after the Trump’s first term I would think they would be permanently disabused of. But given their collective attitude during the Biden administration, it seems progressives in their heart to still believe that.

None of this, as Bregman confirmed, has compelled them to do anything about it except make posts on social media, write long columns on sites like this one, and every so often protest a certain cause for the cameras. None of this has worked for them in half a century but they remain convinced that is someone else’s job to solve them. They seem convinced that it is America’s job – not the Democratic Party’s but the entire country – to come around to their point of view.

This is the opposite of how politics works, implies the rest of the country will come to that conclusion without their help, and argues that other forces – most notably the GOP – will play by the same rules. Some on the left are aware of this fact but that has not compelled them to moderate their views, only to take on a tone of either anger, despair or angry despair that the rest of the world will never be smart enough to reach the obvious conclusions they have. That pointed out the flaws in the system are not a step toward fixing it is something they refuse to acknowledge either.

Bregman echoes both the fact that the left remains in their bubbles and the fact of their burn-it-all down culture. This actually gets to the final point which I’m not sure the left realizes. Both sides have an element that wants to burn it all down but only the right has a vision of what they might build up in its place. The right  knows what that world is and will gladly tell you whenever they have a chance. The left, by contrast, still has no idea even in the most vague sense of what they would do after they burnt it all down. They don’t like the world as it is, hate what it was but given a chance to build their own vision for a future they really don’t have one. They will tell you evil triumphs when good does nothing but restating this is what they consider doing something.

As I’ve said before I have the beginnings of an idea for what might be done to move forward after the current administration ends. One critical part of it is to give up on the idea that the left will ever be part of the solution. They want the problems to be solved but show little interesting in doing the work needed to solve those problems. And until they decide to become more active than just the endless series of memes and posts on social media they are no help to anyone – certainly not themselves.