Why the Left Finds Satisfaction in Shame

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

 

As he groped for a rationale to justify Luigi Mangione’s psychotic act of human sacrifice, Senator Bernie Sanders settled on the notion that premeditated murder, while a crime, was a logical response to America’s fundamental brokenness.

 

“I condemn it wholeheartedly,” the senator offered perfunctorily. And yet, he seemed to think that there were some bright sides to the slaughter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. At least “online,” Sanders observed, the killing “did show” that “many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies.” And why shouldn’t they be? The health insurance racket makes “huge profits” while denying care to those in desperate need. “It is broken,” he added. “It is cruel.”

 

But that’s not all. We have “a system that’s broken” in its entirety. “The campaign-finance system is broken, the health care system is broken, the housing system is broken, the education system is broken,” Sanders continued. “It is broken.”

 

Among sophisticates and trendsetters on the left, Sanders’s outlook isn’t especially controversial. The left-of-center commentariat seems to find little to love in the American system as it is currently constituted.

 

The health insurance regime isn’t just inefficient and convoluted; it’s “evil.” The justice system isn’t just imperfect; it’s an “illegitimate” edifice that exists to “subjugate” the public. The electoral and political framework enshrined in the Constitution isn’t just dysfunctional; it “enables tyranny.” The rapacious capitalist enterprise that undergirds America’s financial system isn’t just devoid of empathy; it’s “racist.” Meritocracy is a “myth.” The “brutal ruling class” enjoys your “suffering.” If you are struggling with some unfortunate fate, “that’s only because America already wants you dead.”

 

If you’ve imbibed from this cup of misery, you would not have much reverence for the United States. And because so many Democrats partake in this bacchanal of myopic self-pity, they don’t.

 

“A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are ‘extremely’ (41%) or ‘very’ (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020,” Gallup reported this week. The top-line numbers mask the source of this decline: Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. “Democrats are mostly responsible for the drop in U.S. pride this year, with 36% saying they are extremely or very proud, down from 62% a year ago,” the poll found.

 

That precipitous drop could be attributed to an obnoxious but consistent partisan response bias — a reaction to Donald Trump’s election victory and little more. But Democratic patriotism has been in decline for longer than that.

 

In 2020, Democratic pride in the country scraped the bottom of the barrel, but it recovered by 20 points following Joe Biden’s election. And yet, Democratic pride in America never achieved Obama-era levels, and it settled back into the low 50s for the remainder of Biden’s presidency. By contrast — and distinct from their outlook on the economy or the “track” the country is following — Republicans’ pride in America seems pre-political. It waxes and wanes, but roughly 85 to 99 percent of self-identified Republicans remain proud of the United States regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. Even when the GOP was being bombarded with cynicism about the state of their country from the MAGA movement’s leading lights, its voters never lost their pride in their country.

 

For years, Americans who gravitate toward the left have been assured by those they trust that America is comprehensively defective. Moreover, the tools that could once be trusted to right its doomed trajectory are no longer equal to the task. It’s little wonder that those who immerse themselves in this disconsolate subculture are unhappy and self-report “poor” mental health. What is there to be happy about? According to them, it’s the mentally serene and unruffled who have truly lost their grip on reality.

 

Conservatives, who report higher levels of satisfaction and mental stability, are understandably confounded by this outlook: to them, it seems predicated on unfounded assumptions, and it’s immiserating. So, why do so many on the left succumb to it? I submit that there is a gratifying exclusivity in being in a club whose members believe they have decoded their environment. They see themselves as uniquely perceptive, even if they perceive only tragedy and injustice.

 

As I wrote in my last book:

 

If you are so worldly and astute that you can see the hideous hidden workings of the world, you’re a member of an exclusive club. And once you get a taste of that comprehensive vision — a theory of everything that reveals to you the secret, seedy underbelly of society — it can become intoxicating. Those who are attracted to this psychological orientation are likely to find that its applications are limitless. And when they apply it to just about everything, they find that just about everything is a problem.

 

There is, therefore, self-satisfaction to be had in the left’s diffident shame over being born into the exploitative American social compact. That explains the cottage industry that has sprouted around the effort to reinforce the left’s chagrin, as well as the many Democratic politicians who cater to it.

 

Republicans can extract political advantage from this. Misery loves company, but it doesn’t attract much of it. And yet the GOP won’t be in power forever. When Democrats reclaim control of the government, its levers will be seized by an iteration of the party that has little love for the country as it is. That ingratitude may yet express itself in self-destructive ways.

 

The current crop of Democratic leaders who delude themselves into thinking they can harness this sentiment — dismissing the more likely prospect that it will consume them, too, when some talented demagogue with even less concern for respectability and civic decency comes along — would do well to counter the misconceptions fueling this malaise while they still have an audience. Rather than attempt to “reclaim the flag” every other election cycle, they should drape their movement in banners and bunting. If the Democratic rank and file come to believe that modern America isn’t worth preserving, Democratic elites, too, will find themselves in the refuse pile.