Unhinged Comment of the Day

With apologies for the profanity

The comments here aren’t always unhinged. Most of them are quite wonderful and soothe an aching heart. But every so often, a buzzy bee finds its way through the perimeter:

Whatever it is about Substack’s interface, the comments tend to be usually fairly well thought through, even when they are not well-intentioned. The ones from the Left usually come dripping with condescension and pity. Many of them, especially those who decide to comment here, see themselves as superior to the rest of the country overall, but to Trump supporters especially.

I guess I should say, at best, they see them with condensation and pity. At worst, they want gulags. I think they might even be amendable to firing squads at this point—the downside of utopia building.

Today’s unhinged comment comes from someone who is the son of someone I used to know in the land of Hillary supporters on Facebook. It’s a vibe. A cult onto itself. The “I’m With Her” gang. They were very loving and supportive when I was Team Hillary. Then, when I could not stand alongside them in their unending, pathological hatred of the other side, they behaved like I was leaving a cult.

Their despair at my leaving would eventually turn to disgust, shunning, and finally, which brings us to today’s comment, vengeance. I point it out because, for whatever reason, this person is fascinated with vicious verbal attacks at me. He’s done this publicly on Facebook, or so I hear. I do not use the app anymore.

I get where he’s coming from because he belongs to a world where people like him no longer have any importance or power - a white male. They only matter if they’re “good allies” or standing on the corner of the street chanting SHAME SHAME SHAME!

He, like so many of them, must exert control where they can, and that means hunting down thought criminals at every turn. But especially those who used to be in compliance with the ideology of the inner party.

That rage has to go somewhere. What else can they do when whipped up into a frenzy with Two Minutes of Hate? They have no choice but to be good soldiers for the Left and police the non-compliant. He’s living in 1984 he just doesn’t realize it.

It’s especially delicious that I’m female because now he can break all of the rules of his side. He can unleash all of his pent-up misogyny because I am living proof that dissent exists somewhere. Ordinarily, he’d be called a sexist. They’d be forced to defend me because I was a female. I could use it, too, as a way to worm out of an argument with him. I could simply call him a misogynist or abusive (he is likely both), and that would mean I played a more powerful card than the one he has. So it’s hard to get really mad at someone in his situation.

Whether he belongs to a marginalized group or not, I do not know. But I do know that as a white male unless you are compliant — oh look them, the Jimmy Kimmel and the Stephen Colbert - how sad it all has become. If they’re not literally castrating their young males, they’re doing it in some other way.

To have a license to spew vitriol is a delicious and rare privilege on the Left. They love slut-shaming Lauren Boebert. They love calling Marjorie Taylor-Green stupid. They loved posting nude photos of Melania, breaking all of the rules of the Left now that they’ve been given the green light.

You see this a lot on Twitter, all of these well-meaning white liberals who have strict rules about criticizing any Black people, tearing into Clarence Thomas or Candace Owens. How dare they, you know, step out of line.

If only I were like all of the women he knows! If only I was well-behaved and never pointed out the hypocrisy on the other side. If only I were COMPLIANT.

So this comment is interesting because he’s channeling Will Smith, who said, right before slapping Chris Rock across the face, “Get my wife’s name out of your f*cking mouth.” So there is a small bit of simmering violence in it. He’s also claiming Orwell for himself while spewing invective at me every so often when it all becomes too much for him, and he needs a release valve.

Orwell belongs to us, he bleats.

Ah, but there you would be wrong, oh young thought policeman. Orwell is probably the only person who could adequately call out the hypocrisy of the Left because he lived it himself. 1984 isn’t only about a liberal utopia, there are shades of fascism in there too. Though, now, even fascism is all on the Left. They just don’t understand what the word means.

Orwell was not unlike J. Robert Oppenheimer, who romanticized socialism and Communism for their benefit (Civil rights, equality) but then became disillusioned when they saw what they turned into (Totalitarian dystopias).

This is why there is that beautiful speech in 1984 about Newspeak. These aren’t Nazis he’s writing about, even if he obviously hated them.

“Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Sounds a little like preferred pronouns, no?

The first time I realized that things were leaning toward totalitarianism was when I was still in the cult of the Left and read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time. As I read it I kept thinking, this sounds a lot more like what has happened on the Left. They see themselves as the more oppressed side when they have all the power in reality.

Now, I could go into a long rant about how much I love the book, 1984, even if I don’t agree with much of what Orwell wrote about otherwise. But it’s never wise to defend yourself against people like this. After half of my life online, I have learned at least that much: never defend, always go on offense.

I hope you enjoyed the Unhinged Comment of the Day.