‘My Fellow Liberals, I’m Tired Of You’

Letter from a Liberal to her Liberal friends:

I was raised a secular liberal. My college professors were secular liberals. During my journalism phase, my newspaper colleagues were secular liberals. My law school professors and peers were – in the vast majority – secular liberals. Almost everyone at my corporate law firm was a secular liberal. My California neighbors and friends are secular liberals, as are my fellow government lawyers. My mother, siblings, and their spouses are all secular liberals. 

By all rights, I should be a member in good standing of their tribe, "liking" their Facebook posts and joining their candlelight vigils against the evil Trump Administration. But November 8 and its aftermath revealed to me that I am just so tired of these people. I can't be like them, and I don't want my kids turning into them. 

I am tired of their undisguised contempt for tens of millions of Americans, with no effort to temper their response to the election with humility or empathy. 

I am tired of their unexamined snobbery and condescension. 

I am tired of their name-calling and virtue-signaling as signs of supposedly high intelligence. 

I am tired of their trendiness, jumping on every left-liberal bandwagon that comes along (transgender activism, anyone?) and then acting like anyone not on board is an idiot/hater. 

I am tired of their shallowness. It’s hard to have a deep conversation with people who are obsessed with moving their kids’ pawns across the board (grades, sports, college, grad school, career) and, in their spare time, entertaining themselves and taking great vacations. 

I am tired of their acceptance of vulgarity and sarcastic irreverence as the cultural ocean in which their kids swim. I like pop culture as much as the next person, but people who would never raise their kids on junk food seem to think nothing of letting then wallow in cultural junk, exposed to nothing ennobling, aspirational, or even earnest. 

I am tired of watching them raise clueless kids (see above) who go off to college and within months are convinced they live in a rapey, racist patriarchy; "Make America Great Again" is hate speech; and Black Lives Matter agitators are their brothers-in-arms against White Privilege. If my kids are like that at nineteen, I'll feel I've seriously failed them as a parent. Yet the general sentiment seems to be these are good, liberal kids who may have gotten a bit carried away. 

I am tired of their lack of interest in any form of serious morality or self-betterment. These are decent, responsible people, many compassionate by temperament. Yet they seem two-dimensional, as if they believe that being a nice, well-socialized person who holds the correct political views is all there is, and there is nothing else to talk about. Isn’t there, though? 

I am tired of being bored and exasperated by everybody. I feel like I have read this book a thousand times, and there are no surprises in it. Down with Trump! Trans Lives Matter! Climate deniers are destroying the planet! No cake, we're gluten-free! 

These are good people in a lot of ways. But there has got to be a better tribe. 

That leads me to . . . drum roll . . . the Christian Right. It is no small feat, switching tribes. It feels stressful and weird to abandon your tribe for the Detested Other Side.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

 I read this and think, "This was me, 15 years ago."

The impetus behind my metamorphosis was 9/11, and it's aftermath, when my Liberal friends and family told me America deserved it.

All I can say to this woman is, "Good luck with the Christian Right." They have come to suck as much as Liberals. At least that is true from my vantage point here in Southern California.