The Left's imagined valor

"Pantsuit Nation" is a popular Facebook group, with 3.2 million members.  Recently, a member received 90,000 positive reactions for the "bravery" of wearing a shirt with "Make Racism Wrong Again" printed on it.

When I commented that this was an act of banal virtue-signaling extremely unlikely to provoke any kind of negative response, I was accused of trolling, misogyny, and mansplaining.  How else could progressives explain my failure to appreciate this brave act of "resistance"?  What passes for political activism today reveals the low esteem in which progressives hold their fellow Americans.  For them, wearing a shirt emblazoned with anodyne words takes actual bravery.  In their minds, for a brief moment, they too are resisting Bull Connor's fire hoses.  To the Facebook social justice warrior, a typical Trump-leaning exurb isn't populated with peaceful fellow countrymen who have different priorities; it's a hive of unhinged racists who are about to pounce on a woman who signals her quiet opposition to racism.

Antifa demonstrators imagine themselves storming the ramparts in their quest to vanquish the looming menace of fascism.  However, instead of courageously battling Nazi brownshirts in the streets, they are often seen intimidating the elderly and assaulting unarmed lone journalists such as Andy Ngo.  Confusing these actions with valor happens if you equate a grandmother and Any Ngo with actual Nazis.

The credulity of many regarding hate crime hoaxes also reveals the low esteem in which the Left holds its fellow Americans.  Stories of nooses found at famously liberal colleges, and minor black actors attacked after being recognized by a roving racist duo in a black Chicago neighborhood, struck most thinking people as unlikely from the start.  However, if you believe that America's liberal colleges and cities are mere islands in a sea of foaming-at-the mouth racists, it's easy to fall for these implausible tales.

Consider the immediate reaction of many in the media — and of the political class — to an unlikely fib about schoolyard bullies forcibly cutting off a 12-year-old's dreadlocks.  Even worse, consider their response to a five-year-old's imaginative slander that an elderly man urinated on him.  This hoax resulted in the arrest of an elderly man.  Such poor judgments can be rushed to only by minds primed to believe the worst in their white countrymen.

Some have said conservatives think liberals are merely wrong, while liberals think conservatives are evil.  If liberals do think conservatives (and Americans more broadly) are evil, we should understand that their delusional worldview which makes them fall for obvious fantasies and confuse acts of banality and violence with acts of valor.

Randy Boudreaux is an attorney in New Orleans and treasurer of the Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee.

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