By Noah Rothman
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
‘We need to build a Democratic Party that is
authentic, relatable, earns people’s trust, and wins again,” the new vice
chairman of the Democratic National Committee, David Hogg, wrote recently. That’s a sound enough
prescription. So, what did Hogg propose to do to see his vision through to
fruition?
“We have to stop being cowards — it’s time to be bold,
aggressive, and to fight,” he added. It’s not entirely clear what Hogg meant by
that, what his vision of bold, aggressive fighting looks like, or how his
disposition corrects for the Democratic Party’s current approach to political
messaging. Indeed, his recommendation that the DNC provide “a
tsunami of content” akin to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
recent performance on Instagram Live suggests his tenure at the DNC will yield
more of the same.
But not every insufferable young(ish) activist with a
head of steam about them is so vague. Inexplicably, CBS
News recently devoted a segment to TikTok influencer
Suzanne Lambert, a self-described “Regina George liberal” — a reference to the
most obnoxious and unrelatable character in the 2004 film Mean Girls —
whose wildly novel political shtick is making fun of
Republicans.
“One thing that Regina is really good at, she’s good at
organizing, she’s good at garnering attention, she hits back, she sticks up for
herself, and that’s something that we haven’t seen historically from Democrats
and other liberals,” the activist stressed, betraying her unfamiliarity with
the subject matter on which CBS asked her to opine. Nor is her call to action
especially innovative, although the way she framed her diagnosis was uniquely
antisocial.
“After the election, all the messaging was around how
we’re going to get through this with love and peace and kindness, and, sure,
all those things are true,” Lambert added perfunctorily.
“You’re a little low on the peace and joy part, right?”
CBS host Major Garrett interjected. She agreed, gently criticized Kamala Harris
for favoring joy at the expense of focusing on the flaws associated with her
opponent and his movement (presumably, Lambert missed the “is Trump a fascist?” news cycle), and concurred with
Garrett’s suggestion that “ferocity needs to be met with ferocity.”
“You fight fire with equal exertion of force, and I think
that we need to do that,” Lambert posited. She advised her followers to reject
criticisms of the Left as sneering and judgmental, suggesting that those
critiques were products of unreconstructed misogyny that are rarely directed
toward men. “I want people to feel more comfortable fighting back, and I also
want people to see other people fighting for them,” the influencer concluded.
At the risk of contributing to Lambert’s “engagement” and
“metrics” — ephemera about which the party she is advising already cares far
too much — she deserves the victory lap she’s taking. After all, the Democratic
Party that she insists just isn’t censorious, reproachful, and snobbish enough
seems to have taken her advice to heart. For example, as Democratic
Representative Jasmine Crockett said recently on CNN in defense of DEI initiatives, “The only people
crying are mediocre white boys.” Presumably, deriving joy from the imagined
suffering endured by Americans born into déclassé identities is the kind of
no-holds-barred political combat this country’s “Regina George liberals” want
to see.
Lambert’s product is attractive to the Left because it
flatters them. Her proposition is that the progressive activist class doesn’t
need to change. Rather, they should double down on the qualities that rendered
their conduct toxic in the first place. But Democrats don’t need self-indulgent
lectures on how to be more off-putting. They’ve already got the act down pat.
As poll after poll has shown, significant majorities
of respondents say that they are afraid to speak their minds in mixed company
for fear of inviting real social, reputational, or even legal consequences.
That terror was not propagated by the people who regarded “cancel culture” as a
more vociferous expression of a healthy accountability mechanism. In other
words, that atmosphere of apprehension was cultivated and administered by the
progressive Left.
And we’re not just talking about hot-button subjects with
political valiance. The most mundane of daily human interactions are subjected
to critical deconstructive analysis by the Left’s self-appointed enforcers.
Like what? Like the weather.
“As the political becomes increasingly personal, the line
where polite conversation stops and activism starts has blurred,” the Washington
Post reported in 2022. “Weather is the
newest topic — along with politics, religion, and sex — to avoid at those
awkward Thanksgiving dinners.” Good Democrats could no longer be expected to
engage in small talk because “small talk facilitates denial.” As one activist condescendingly
maintained, “Any conversation can be viewed as an opportunity for a political
intervention,” as if adhering to conservative political philosophy constituted
an act of intolerable self-harm.
As I detailed in my last book, the progressive activist class made a fetish out of
politicizing cultural commodities with the aim of persuading those in their
surroundings to eschew them. The campaign has been unsuccessful in part because
the activist class was attempting to substitute enjoyable undertakings with
carping, scolding, and garment-rending — activities that are objectively less
fulfilling.
Nor can the progressive activist class abide a national
holiday that they do not ruin with their incessant hectoring. Taking off work
to celebrate Christmas is a sign of “Christian privilege,” a celebration of the
“systemic oppression” that is associated with “the context of the dominant
culture.” Halloween is a culturally appropriative abomination in which children
act out their parent’s pathologies. “Thanksgiving Day should be known as
National Land Theft and American Genocide Day,” Huffington Post contributor
Nicole Breedlove snarled. If we weren’t such a fallen people, it would be
rechristened “ThanksTaking” or simply replaced with a “National Day of
Mourning.”
“An increasing number of men are taking up sewing,” the New
York Times reported in 2020. But they’re not
doing so because they enjoy it. Rather, it was a gesture of hostility toward
“traditional gender stereotypes” and an effort to “advocate body acceptance,
radical justice, and more sustainable lifestyles.” The trend didn’t seem to
last, probably because the Times couldn’t identify anything fun about
it. Knitting, too, is problematic, but only when it “or anything else” is kept
“away from ‘political issues’” because that is the mark of “privilege.”
Exercise is similarly racist. “Black people have not only
been excluded from the sport” of jogging, Dr. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela insisted in the pages of the Times.
In addition, “They’ve also been relentlessly depicted as a threat to
legitimate, white joggers.” So, you can’t like that anymore.
What about gardening? Well, that too has “racism baked
into its DNA,” the BBC’s James Wong posited, what with its “fetishization” of words like
“heritage” and “native.” Addled Americans are likely to associate gardening
with the internment of the Japanese during World War II or the exploitation of
migrant labor. It turns out you can’t like that, either.
What about bird-watching? “White people were the ones to
name the birds after other White people,” University of Hawaii ornithology
student Olivia Wang asserted with utmost authority.
Okay, how about motor sport and car culture? “Car culture
didn’t create the toxic masculinity, but it’s certainly used its worst tropes
to its advantage from its start,” Streetsblog USA contributor Kea Wilson admonished her readers.
You shouldn’t even have to ask about the sordid things
you do in the privacy of your own home, like playing video games. “Video games
must also come to terms with the harm they’ve caused,” PC Magazine’s
Jordan Minor hyperventilated. It’s not just the content itself but what Times
contributor Seth Schiesel deemed the “bigotry, social abuse,
sexism, and other toxic behavior” that people engage in outside the scrutiny of
the progressive speech police that the Left cannot abide.
We could go on at length (and I did) cataloguing the extent to which the progressive
activist class and the political party it captured drafted their members into a
losing war against aspects of the culture that are not responsive to the
circumscribed American political process. But it was not a cost-free endeavor.
The imperiousness demanded of anyone who engages in that sort of project may be
intimidating, but it’s not admirable. It makes perfect sense that the public
would slough off the burden progressives had imposed on them once voters demonstrated
that the intimidation factor was illusory.
So, go ahead, Regina. Indulge in the catharsis you find
in the notion that Democrats just weren’t irritating enough for your tastes.
But this is just one of many rearguard actions designed to dissuade
Democrats from ridding themselves of the exclusionary linguistic signifiers and
shibboleths that the median American voter finds both inscrutable and
repellent. No one is rooting harder for Lambert’s success than the GOP.
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