History, Hysteria, and Histrionics
There is unquestionably a little crazy at the root of every revolution. Whether it is in service of good or evil is the real question.
Hysteria is a component of every revolution, even our own that transformed the thirteen colonies into the nation of the United States of America. We know some of the mythology of the American Revolution was created for the purpose of inspiring support within the colonists.
Some academicians have wondered why American colonists seemed to be far more discontented than they ought to have been. One such person is Peter Shaw, professor of English at SUNY-Stony Brook, the author of American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution, noted the colonists were growing prosperous and suffering from no real oppression. He wrote there is something going on with the American Revolution “that does not quite meet the eye”. It seems, he says, “The Revolution cannot be accounted for without assuming that there were powerful unconscious forces at play.”
Normally, I don’t give too much credence to English professors who write about history (Howard Zinn wrote the People’s History of the United States and is a professor of linguistics, not history), but I did read Shaw’s book. While it provokes thought, seems a bit scant of evidence of the “unconscious forces” he alleges were in existence at the time. However, he does say he thinks those forces are, proposing he has “an impression of widespread psychic strain in the period” and that people were very anxious about authority, personal autonomy and repressed hostility toward the English king and monarchy in general.
I get that.
Shaw loses me when he leaves history and ventures into Dr. Phil territory alleging “conscious patriots”, like James Otis, John Adams, Joseph Hawley, and Josiah Quincy, rebelled because they had problems with their fathers – or in the case of Adams, imagined he did, and focused their daddy issues on the governmental leaders of the time.
Even as we recognize the part hysteria and histrionics play in pretty much every revolution, we also know revolutions and revolutionaries come in two flavors – good and evil. Therefore, it would seem legitimate to ask to what end the revolutionary hysteria is directed.
The alleged hysteria of the America Revolution was directed toward a government that represents the people it governs, maximizing individual liberty and respect for individual rights. The Democrat hysteria, based not on supposition or opinion, rather the factual actions taken by Democrats during the Obama administration, the Blue State governors during Covid “pandemic” and the Biden administration, would seem to argue they are going in a different, most certainly illiberal, direction.
This morning, I made the point lefty Twitter/X is evidence the Democrat Party in America is currently being driven by hysteria – their darkest fantasies of Trump as Dictator, Killer of the Internet, the Death of Democracy, the Builder of camps for immigrants and Iron Fisted Demagogue are comical when considered side by side by their witless cheerleading of an incompetent and likely incontinent president. The library of their Twitter/X shrieking evokes the scene in the original Ghostbusters where the intrepid ectoplasmic elimination crew is commanded to “Choose the form of your destructor!”
As Facebook friend Mike Parker commented on that post:
“Evoking mass hysteria is the prime way that dictatorships arise in nations. All actions indicate that this is being perpetrated by the Left, for the Left. One must conclude that it is the Left attempting to cement the power they have stolen over the last years, locking out any challenges to it.”
You must get folks stirred up to get them off their asses and into the streets, that much is true, and it must be a threat to something intensely personal, to home or hearth, to do that; however today’s hysteria is like getting accused of shoplifting a pack of gum by a person convicted of five counts of bank fraud. The left has gone insane. Outside their rabid, pussy hat wearing, conspiracy spinning, Obama protecting, Biden anal rimming, ORANGEMANBAD base, nobody really believes them.
Sure, the character of the accused is under a microscope – as it should be – but the credibility of the accuser is also relevant – these accusers have been slandering and libeling President Trump, absent any evidence, for the better part of eight years. Even their indictments are manufactured. Trump has been called everything from a mentally ill imbecile to a Russian sleeper agent and insurrectionist, which is especially jarring given Biden and his Crime Family’s actions.
It certainly strains credulity when Trump is constantly accused of being a racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic Israel supporting Nazi who has a Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, who is married to a legal immigrant, appoints openly gay people and people of color to important positions and once had a mixed race girlfriend and then years pass without you committing a single act of which you have been accused, people should begin to notice the contradictions between the accusations and your behavior.
It’s not about liking or hating President Trump – it’s just about comparing input to output and determining if the system balances – are the accusations borne out by the actions?
They don’t.
While it seems the Democrats are constantly faced with the perpetual challenge of finding more evidence to support their positions (think Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff), they are truly just faced with overcoming who they are and what they have done.
Craven liars and political opportunists, one and all…at least the ones who aren’t fake Indians, Spartacus impersonators, creepy uncle pervs, committed communists or antisemitic America haters.
One would be quite grounded in being concerned to which end they intend to focus their fomented hysteria.
"He wrote there is something going on with the American Revolution 'that does not quite meet the eye'."
Well, duh. If he were a student of history rather than a professor of English, he just might have heard of and lent some credence to the First Great Awakening, in which Christians (gasp!) sought to follow Christ (gasp!!) and live according to his teachings (gasp!!!), including applying biblical principles (GASP!!!!) to the proper form and implementation of government. Many who are influential in today's movement to call out government abuses and call attention to Constitutional guarantees are consciously working from a Christian worldview, and all that worldview implies. The only way such an approach is 'a little crazy' is in its divergence from cultural norms imposed by the elites.