The Accuser Becomes the Accused

To the Democrat Party, anger is a political commodity.

Most people go through periods in their lives when they struggle for something that, at the time, seems unattainable. We want, we desire, we might even need such a thing, but it always seems to be just out of reach.

That something could be virtually anything – the companionship of a particular person, the membership in a group, it could even be something tangible (like money, a job, or a promotion) or something spiritual, some sort of fulfillment beyond the material world - like love, status, respect or even a relationship with a higher power (i.e., God).

Of course, not everybody gets what they want – that has always been true. What is also true is that not everybody even KNOWS what they want.

Some achieve attainment and move on to the next challenge, some simply give up, but a significant portion of Americans seem to just get stuck in place and rather than changing their approach or selecting a more attainable goal, they just get angry – not at themselves, of course, but at others they see as holding them back.

Now imagine a political ideology based on the last one.

Imagine, if you will, a dimension of sight and sound where one political party constantly tells people the primary reason they are not achieving their wants, needs and desires is not that they are not working hard enough or that they have chosen too high a goal (or one totally incompatible with possibility), it is that other people are stopping them from succeeding. These “stoppers” are racists, bigots, some sort of “phobe” (pick any “protected” identity group) or simply a group that was just put on this earth to stop others from being happy.

One would assume a successful messaging campaign based on the premise that you can’t succeed due to other people would entail people deciding to stop trying and just be angry, wouldn’t one?

And one would probably not be wrong.

So many of the angry masses have been separated into classes and assigned a boogeyman (some boogeymen overlap classes) as the excuse for their lack of socio-economic progress and mobility.

Is it true?

Hard to conceptualize that it is, at least at a national level. It is hard to see there is enough futility to go around to mask the progress of people who ignore the defeatist dirge and just endeavor to persevere. More than that, it is hard to conceptualize how a major political party can be based on such a fatalist viewpoint – or how they can sustain such negativity without imploding under the weight of reality.

Calvin Coolidge famously said:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Silent Cal was on the money.

The irony of this entire situation is that to make people angry about the people who are holding them back, the very people who are telling them about those people must hold those people back.

In fact, the accuser becomes the accused.

Yet another contradiction.

If there is still a question why people are so angry, and why those people seem to be from one side, perhaps this is worth considering.