When even liberals have begun noticing how insufferable their side has become, you know things have gotten bad for them to a severe degree.
The Washington Post ran a column last week by Brian Broome, a man who has literally said he hates Christmas. And even for him, his liberal friends have gone too far in their gross bitterness.
“In the liberal circles in which I mostly travel, it is nothing short of blasphemy to speak a positive word about any conservative for any reason,” wrote Broome. “Many of my friends can’t even bear to hear their names mentioned. I was reminded of this when in conversation with a friend I mentioned my approval of Rep. Liz Cheney’s performance during the Jan. 6 hearings.”
Broome said his friend reacted with “shock, hurt and outrage” that anyone would say a positive thing to him about a person who doesn’t share every single one of his political beliefs.
Is anyone surprised by this? Liberals have been exhibiting this kind of intolerant, anti-social behavior for years now, though it has gotten dramatically worse, as I explained in my new book “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”
Broome’s only problem is that he then tried to both-sides the matter, asserting that conservatives and Republicans are just as bad. “[T]hey hate liberals with an almost otherworldly passion,” he said. “They like to put bumper stickers on their cars and trucks calling Joe Biden a communist; they have convinced themselves that the blue cities and states they despise are hellscapes of crime and desolation.”
Well, yeah. Bumper stickers that say “Let’s Go, Brandon” or its more explicit counterpart are really just symbols of solidarity among voters who know that the national news media are corrupt and scammy. That’s how they mock it. As for how they describe blue cities, it’s a point of fact that they’ve become dirty, crime-ridden tent towns. I live in D.C. I know.
Yet it’s not right-wingers who attest to having a visceral dislike for others who have a different opinion. It’s liberals who do that.
The American Perspectives Survey, conducted in May 2021 by the Survey Center on American Life, found Democrats and liberals were more likely to say they have ended friendships because of political disagreement. Among Republicans, 10 percent said they had done so. It was double for Democrats. In terms of ideology, 28 percent of liberals said they had ended friendships over political disagreements. Only 10 percent of conservatives said the same.
An NBC poll from September 2018 found just over 35 percent of Democrats said they would be uncomfortable, at least to some degree, having close Republican friends. Only 21 percent of Republicans said the same of Democrats. By contrast, 44 percent of Republicans said they would be “very comfortable” with a close friend who was a Democrat. Only 26 percent of Democrats would say the same for Republicans.
In July 2017, a separate Pew survey showed that 35 percent of Democrats said the previous year’s election put a strain on their relationships with friends who they knew voted for Trump. Only 13 percent of Republicans said the same about friends who voted for Clinton.
Sure, there are conservatives out there who would rather not associate with liberals. But can you blame them anymore?
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Source: The Federalist
