Terrified of the Future

When I was a baby, my father beat me.  Not once, but consistently.  From my second week of life onwards, he spanked, struck, and terrorized me.  The echoes of those thrashings remain.  They have formed the subtext of my existence, periodically emerging in the form of anxiety attacks.

My father, however, was not a bad man.  He was actually a very moral man, who loved me deeply.  Never did he intend to hurt me; nonetheless, almost daily, that is exactly what he did.

As an adult, I have marveled at how small and defenseless neonates are.  Their sins are at worst nominal, while their ability to protect themselves is nil.  How then could a decent human being have visited so much pain on my infant self?  Why didn’t my Dad see what he was doing?

The answer—and it took me nearly a lifetime to realize it—was that he was terrified.  He career had not gone as he hoped.  Neither had his marriage.  Now, in me, his eldest child, he had a responsibility that he was not sure he was prepared to handle.  On top of this, World War II had begun and he did not know how it would affect him.

Why do I bring this up?  Because only now do I realize the degree to which terror can interfere with our rationality.  Terrified people often do things that they would never contemplate were they in control of themselves.  Their heads are so filled with fear that there is room for little else.

I was reminded of this when my sister, who lives in New Jersey, informed me of the political attitudes of her liberal friends.  They are all Jews who somehow believe that Donald Trump is about to start a pogrom.  They are firmly convinced he is a dedicated anti-Semite.

Mind you, Trump surrounds himself with Jewish advisors.  More tellingly, his beloved daughter married a Jew and converted to her husband’s religion.  For heaven’s sake, Trump has Jewish grandchildren whom he also loves dearly.  He is even friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister.

How does this make him anti-Jewish?  What has he done to make people believe he would attack them?  The answer is that they are liberal and he is now perceived as a conservative fiend.

Liberals are horrified by Trump.  They suffer from what has been called the “Trump derangement syndrome.”   They, therefore, on little or no evidence, accuse him of colluding with the Russians, obstructing justice, and engaging in racism.  He is supposedly a fascist—and, oh yes, crazy.

None of this makes sense, especially the ferocity and constancy of the assault.  But then I remembered my father and the cause of their belligerence became obvious.  Liberals too are terrified.  They too are so frightened that they cannot think clearly.  As a result, they do not realize the implications of their out-of-control hostility.

What are liberals afraid of?  This may sound peculiar, but they are petrified by the future.  Until recently, progressives were convinced they had a corner on the prediction business.  They absolutely knew that a quasi-communist society, in which the government ensured that everyone was equal, was inevitable.

But then the Obama administration ended in disarray and Hillary lost the election to a dimwitted clown.  This was not supposed to happen.  Liberalism was destined to march triumphantly to eternal glory.

Liberals will not admit it, but Obamacare did not work.  Nor did their stimulus plan rescue our economy or strategic patience bring peace to a troubled planet.  Hope and change thus failed to deliver on its lofty ambitions.

After this came Hillary’s lack of an agenda.  She was not inspirational—partly because of her character flaws, but partly because her ideas were warmed over platitudes.  The fact is that liberals have not had a new idea in over a century.

Liberals have plainly lost their way.  They haven’t brought forth stimulating counter-proposals to Trump’s because they don’t have any.  Where they once assumed they had a monopoly on the future, because their predictions egregiously failed, so has their confidence.

In their state of panic, liberals are now flailing about.  They are attacking in every direction in order to hide their distress.  Unsure of what is to come, they blame everyone else—particularly conservatives.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University