“The smug style in American liberalism”

Last updated on: April 22, 2016 at 11:10 am by Dan Peterson

“The smug style in American liberalism” 2016-04-22T11:10:07-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Bill Maher — shown here with Richard Dawkins at the 2009 Atheist Alliance International meeting in Burbank, California — will serve as well as anybody, I suppose, to illustrate something of the attitude that Emmett Rensin seems to have in mind. (Wikimedia Commons)

Wow. Seth Rogers just alerted me to a really interesting (but — be warned! — rather long) essay:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

It’s mostly about politics, of course, as its title suggests. But it’s about politics in the sense that political things are intertwined with religion and culture more broadly:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

And I think it’s spot on.

As I’ve indicated many times, I frequently check in on two or three virulently anti-Mormon message boards. I want to see what’s going on, what’s stirring the hive. And, honestly, I find the level of vitriol on them oddly riveting. I simply can’t imagine behaving as many of these people do, and I’m always curious to see what limits, if any, they might impose on themselves.

Anyway, one of the things that strike me most forcefully about these sites isn’t their disagreement with my religious beliefs or their particular arguments. (On the whole, really, they make few such arguments. Rather, they assume conclusions and share gestures.) It’s their utter disdain not only for Mormonism but for Mormons, who are (daily) depicted as not only wrong but evil, dishonest, completely incapable of reason, possibly insane, anti-science, fat, silly, and terminally uncool. (A minor illustration: There have been several discussions, over the years, of my allegedly plebeian taste in theater, literature, and music. It’s not enough that my religious views are wrong. Apparently, I indulge myself only in low-brow art that’s been approved by the Church and/or is carried at Deseret Book or with “Great Works” that have been safely certified for me to boast about.)

It’s the comprehensive, totalizing, personal hostility of these places that genuinely fascinates me. I’ve said before — and I’ve not been joking when I’ve said it — that I think such sites are valuable for the glimpses they offer into a very interesting social psychology/pathology.

And one of the other things that I notice about them is that, overwhelmingly, the default political ideology is leftist. Not just Hillary Clinton left, but far further over on the political spectrum. And that the fact that the majority of (American) Mormons trend conservative and Republican is, with no supporting argument required, simply yet another indicator of the wrongness — and terminal uncoolness — of Mormonism. Policy disagreements aren’t merely matters of prudential judgment, but indicators of moral depravity, racism, misogyny, fanaticism, stupidity, and hatred of reason.

The dominant viewpoint of such boards (and of one that I follow, in particular) is very self-consciously young, hip, and smug — precisely what Emmett Rensin (himself, I think, politically liberal) describes so very insightfully in his essay.

The essay is long, I know, but I recommend it. (I myself have made similar points on occasion, and have even used the metaphor of an ugly divorce rather as he uses it. But this is a very good, sustained discussion.)

And I particularly recommend it to my left-leaning friends — I have a number of them, incredible as it may seem to some that I have any friends at all — and to the left-leaning atheist/agnostic apostate critics of Mormonism (and of me) who, I know, follow this blog quite carefully and who often comment upon it quite derisively. A few of them, I think, may be fair-minded enough that they might silently benefit from it.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion.

(Robert Burns)

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