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Recent comments at Salon.com

Concerning black childrearing: Brittney Cooper discussed last year at Salon that if every parent was guilty of child abuse for spanking their kids, if this was a jail-able offence, then pretty much all Southern black parents could be sent to prison for how they raise their kids, because pretty much all of them spank. She wrote that they thought this was simply good parenting... they were disciplining them, for two reasons: it meant they weren't as likely to see the world as something to just grab and own, like white kids ostensibly were/are, and it meant they weren't as likely to be attacked by white bigots: they themselves curtailed their kids, so those who would do so viscously -- without any intent of love -- wouldn't feel as much a need to do it for them. She wrote it was done for loving reasons, that is. This said, she felt it nevertheless created a desire for revenge on the part of the beaten kids, and for this reason had to be abandoned. She concluded that overall, Southern black parents are doing terrible things to their kids. 
Joan Walsh reacted to this article by focusing on how commendable these parents were, doing such a terribly hard thing because they knew it would ultimately spare their kids. She reacted by ascribing black parents not as flawed, but as astonishingly heroic... as actually super-parents. Whereas she would probably accord that every other parent who spanks is probably attacking the child because they've projected their own flaws into them... doing so because they themselves are insane, "mad," maladjusted, because it is black parents being discussed her mind frisks her off to the opposite, and we're dealing with endlessly heroic super-resisters. All evidence, even the most distressing and counter, will be bent to fit so one's psychic equilibrium isn't lost. 
This is what I mean when I argue that some progressives still feel a need to romanticize... have not evolved to the point that maybe perhaps their children will get. You don't need to make heroes out of those who have been traditionally victimized, yet this is still the powerful inclination. All people, all parents, are not everywhere the same: progressives show this in how they characterize the white working class -- what they do, particularly regressive and bad. It is getting near the point where the effort to mop up a traditionally-picked-on people's misbehaviour as just part of the human condition, or as a widespread flaw, or whatnot, reflects instantly... draws attention, seems conspicuous. Someone cannot stand to see something exposed to the light of day. 
The way people parent is not a matter of choice. It is pretty much determined by how you were raised. The same thing goes for level of empathy -- if you had abused parents, your very brain will lack the capacity for empathy that better-raised children possess, as they neglect you: it will be underdeveloped. The Left's reaction suggests to me that though they might know this, somehow at a deeper level they don't believe it -- some people are just bad. Thus they take attention away from specific instances like this because they're afraid, not just of growing rightwing prejudice but because if they themselves focus too hard, some very prejudicial thinking will emerge -- jesus christ guys, take care of your kids! -- and their brains will contort, twist-hard, come loose and discombobulate, and ultimately go down in catastrophe.  
The Left we have is not however the most evolved one we will ever know. It took groups that the more regressive members of their society tended to not be able to see absent their own projections, and rather than simply strip away their delusions and see a world finally projection-free -- as it really is, as it were -- they did feel a psychic need for romanticization. They got far, but couldn't go the whole way. And they are vulnerable to being targeted as keeping people as "pets" -- "you" have to be the way I've represented you, as it helps maintain MY equilibrium. This tendency, this powerful inclination, has gotten white feminists in trouble with their non-white feminist peers, in recent times. Don't manage us into your preferable form, thank you. 
Steven Pinker's influential "Better Angels of Our Nature" argued that people have become far less violent over time. Effectively he posits all anthropological tribes as being akin to early "man," who were the most violent people ever (read his discussion of native indians: he basically says that the colonizers in many instances described them, described their level of savagery, right). If the Left that would police people into understanding that the only group you are allowed to wantonly discriminate against are Catholics and the white working class, was firmly in control, he'd have gone nowhere with this book, but instead it's on Bill Gate's favorite 10 reading list, and was Zuckerberg's first selection for his Facebook book club: it's made inroads; it's near mainstream. 
It is people like this, and as well liberals like Dawkins and McEwan, who are accusing other Leftists as being unconsciously more moved to see the world a specific way, one satisfying to their psychological needs, than to understand the world simply as it is, that suggest to me that other members of the Left need to start exploring how they might in fact be taking pleasure in romanticization... and also in diverting attention away when they get a whiff of something discontenant to the factuality of their own worldview and focusing instead on society's even more self-deluded souls. Because otherwise they might find themselves rather instantly being shown up by people they thought would also be with them -- fellow liberals -- as being hopelessly detached from the facts, and made irrelevant, even though even in their somewhat self-deluded form they're still about the most psychologically evolved people around -- still the best tools around, for our world to do the most good.  
Anncaroline The media... the liberal professional class have required a group they can rage at and portray as intrinsically dangerous -- the white working class, and everything they represent. This doesn't mean that when the media starts doing what you want that it'll be mostly about it becoming less biased, but rather mostly about them becoming in sync with what the American people are getting prepared for if they vote in Trump. I felt this when Facebook agreed it would no longer be suppressing conservative news on its newsfeed (it denies ever doing this, but this sort of thing was not only something you could get away with but actually were encouraged to do, for it being preferred in our era that you treat conservatives wantonly... with casual disregard). This isn't progress but rather people we might have hoped would remain saneish in our era starting to feel more pure in rejecting their previous identity as being individually distinguished from the dissolving American mob. 
Pillbeam The deciding factor may be immune to media influence. What Trump represents is an end to progress. He's a stop sign in way of an even more progressive America. This will seem holy to people who believe Americans have become too independent, too transgressive, too spoiled, too disloyal to their ancient birth mother country. 
These will be people who had parents who so needed their own children for their own psychic equilibrium they threatened them with loss of favour, with loss of love, when they self-actualized too much. So when society evolves too much -- when students are being "uppity," when women are being "uppity," when those previously prejudiced against start pushing back and gaining respect -- these people see a society that has lost all favour, and every effort will be made to cripple it at the knees... to put in a strong man who'll think of the Nation (i.e. mother) first, and help will people back into less individuated, less self-actualized, less selfish and accomplished form. 
I think the press is less powerful than you think. If it was entirely united in portraying him as the end of civilization as we know it, people who understand and like Trump would in their inner mental theatres portray him in the dog-loving, child-hugging form. Certainly they'd like this image to be manifested all-over in the media as well, but if not available -- for the media remaining sane -- they'd settle for this. 
This isn't top-down but a bottom-up phenomena. It's not Trump but large segments of the American people, who share his desire to stop progress and become loyal Americans again by worshipping their motherland and targeting those thought to be snubbing their noses to it. If Trump suddenly dropped out, these sections would try and intimidate Hillary into becoming Trumpish. 
What the media shows us is here is not so much their power, but what they unconsciously want for America. How they behave here is showing us how many people we thought were with us, are going to remain with us, or suddenly start -- like David Brooks -- longing for big loves again, like patriotic, self-sacrificial love of country. These kinds of people are "the Volk" who first demonstrated their love of a resurrected great Germania, and then purged "pollutants" so they could feel pure. 
Tristero1 They're masochists, preparing for later grand revenge. The professional liberal class was going to portrayed as great abandoners regardless. 
This said, we haven't yet seen a societal group that is completely absent of a need for some group they can spit on and disparage. So even though many progressives are at some level aware that societal bigots have surely come out of abusive families, it often doesn't seem to factor much in how they treat them: they're dealing with those who've known little love, who've been cruelly abused, but such is their need for some category of people to hate they just can't pull back and make evident their disgust... and even pleasure at seeing them rendered powerless and scrambling. 
They're healthier people, and perhaps their children will be those without any need for some category of people to rage at -- as they themselves never experienced any of this in their own childhood -- but they're not there yet. 
corporatephd Emporium Hitler wasn't Hitler ... until he was, is what I was getting at. He even downplayed the anti-Jewish bit for awhile. I think he is mostly going to be at encouraging a kind of fusion with the country, kind of like Hitler encouraged people to fuse into a greater Germania, as first order of business. If he targets people right away, I don't think he's going to seem evidently petty in his targets, for they'll be those many Americans want targeted as well. 
So while perhaps individuals who crossed him might be targeted, what Americans will mostly notice and applaud will be his targeting of progressives -- you know, the students who fight for trigger warnings, feminists who rail against perennially sexist men and seem "uppity": that is, our most evolved.
I'll vote for Clinton, because I think it's important to keep alive the cosmopolitanism that's associated with her. 
mswales Emporium Borders, for one -- the wall. This will be felt by many who vote for him as a kind of protective armouring, so the country, and they themselves, don't feel like they're so perennially vulnerable. 
"There can be no doubt that a man who is mostly drawn to the White House to settle petty grievances will abuse the power the presidency affords him to go after anyone he believes has laughed at or disrespected him."

That's the current line on the liberal professional class. According to the likes of Thomas Frank and Andrew Sullivan, liberals used their ascension over the last few decades, in part, to humiliate the white working class, members of whom may have been imagined as once having chastised them as nerds. 
This article will surprise no one. He's going to eviscerate anyone who humiliated him (though who they are really are just people he's introjected his early childhood bullies onto). What might surprise is just how much of a nationalist he turns out, that is, not someone who got a job he really didn't want but which is especially useful to destroy people and also to build even bigger monuments to himself, but which afterwards is kinda a bore. But rather someone really committed to his version of making America great again. 
There's a strange sense that he is perhaps best defined not as a narcissist or a perpetrator, but as someone in service to the grand ol' U.S.A, who only after he puts this together, will his eyes focus on revenge... he might even be sorta agreeable at the start, readily sidestepping critics who want to pin him as petty.
Trickster 1008 Why particularly his father? Few of us have our fathers anywhere near as much around as our mothers. 

kobayashi PoodlePlay Aunt Messy I agree. And the reason it is unacknowledged is because it means targeting -- our conscious awareness cannot be fooled -- our own parents, mother and father, in their own abuse. Once we've done so, we forgo any chance we might yet claim their love. So instead, we stifle discussion, and somewhere in our heads our parental alters take notice and give us the thumbs up. 

Bella N. Mattheus I don't think this descriptor, however redundant, is going to be sufficient, though. If he gets in, it'll prove pretty quickly that it isn't going to be all about him. Don't think he'll be building further monuments to himself everywhere. Rather, he'll be a nationalist. The great God won't be himself but some archaic version of the united states, our mother country, that has ostensibly been forgotten amidst our self-centred, craven, individualistic modern times. It'll be as like with Hitler and mostly in the first stage be about us, all together, the good folk, "the volk," and the country we've ostensibly forsaken but which might yet be redeemed through our self-sacrifice. 
kobayashi Emporium Same related phenomena -- retreat from sophisticated cosmopolitanism; retreat into parochialism. 
JJAliceGrace Well, if he's only TRYING to be alpha, some people are cooperating in making him such: such everywhere is the news of his dominating his 17 (!!!) establishment opponents. If he is an enormous rage monster, is he's got any kind of visage that resembles this -- hairy orange orangutang will do -- then it's trouble for us if enough of the U.S. wants big things smashed... And as if those relishing the Hulk preferred he'd mastered the sophisticated tone to also wine and dine ambassadors with ease, and with splendid, whip-smart sophistry. (Mind you, Hitler wanted to annihilate eastern "proles" but mostly simply wanted to impress the haughty French and Brits, so perhaps here too, lack of articulacy -- evident sloth manners and stupidity -- might bite.)
Dog Almighty Good to hear "Trump" is going to be limited to the U.S. One has heard ugly rumours that nationalism was slowly becoming the norm in Europe as well... you know, Austria, Germany, Brexit. 
Liberals have for the longest time been unable to acknowledge that they too possess -- though, yes, to a much lesser extent than do conservatives -- a need for some societal group they can wantonly discriminate against and humiliate, a group into which they can project unwanted aspects of themselves they might want to punish. Thus in this piece every woman who might of been abused by Clinton, can feel the hopelessness of their finding redress in being categorized as part of the redneck swamp, civilization has been seeking justified total escape from. What business is your discombobulated psyche doing outside the cleansing whirlpool justifiably dispatching of its existence?
But this is beginning to change, and not because the left is evolving and ceasing to hate anyone (only hurt people hurt people), but because many of the left are regressing and wanting to bond into what Joe Klein calls, a nostalgic state, a nationalistic homeland. And so for instance an environment is being created by the likes of Thomas Frank and Andrew Sullivan (and previously by Chris Hedges and even Noam Chomsky) where it is becoming difficult to detach the awareness that those who are being disparaged -- the swamp dwellers -- by liberals, are also those who've been suffering most. Progressives who then use the old rhetoric once used to cast a humiliating sort of invisibility upon selected out group's hurts (white working class), seem absurdly callous, as if just mostly wanting to further rejoice in the pain of people they find disgusting, as Marcotte kind of does here. 
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