THE YEAR OF THE LIBERAL: Lessons in loathing around the world!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2016

Interlude—Trailer parks, bigots and us: What the heck are we the humans secretly actually like?

On the front page of today's New York Times, we receive one gruesome example. It involves the assassination of a fourth-grader, a ten year old boy.

From Kabul, Mashal and Shah did the front-page report. Their report starts like this:

MASHAL AND SHAH (2/3/16): The Afghan government declared Wasil Ahmad a hero for leading a militia’s defense against a Taliban siege last year, parading him in front of cameras in a borrowed police uniform too big for him. On Monday, the Taliban triumphantly announced that they had assassinated him with two bullets to the head.

Wasil Ahmad was 10 years old.

He was gunned down in Tirin Kot city, the capital of southern Oruzgan Province, just a few months after leaving militia life and enrolling in school as a fourth grader.

Wasil’s story is a painful example of how child combatants continue to be a part of life in Afghanistan, both in the ranks of pro-government forces and among the Taliban insurgents.

We the humans are capable of tremendous hatred and loathing. That loathing will be expressed in different ways depending on local norms.

In this country, we rarely assassinate fourth graders. That said, we thought of that front-page report, which we'd already read, when we read a letter about the Iowa caucuses in that same New York Times.

The Times published six letters about the caucuses. This letter sits at the top of the pile:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (2/3/16): It really doesn’t matter that Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses on Monday night. What matters is that the majority of Republican voters in Iowa threw their support to one of two candidates whose main campaign themes are meanspiritedness and bigotry.

Though this week’s talk will be all about Mr. Trump’s loss, it should really be about America’s loss, and about confronting head on the racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia— not to mention callous indifference to poverty and suffering—that have become the calling cards of these politicians, and that are sadly embraced (or, at the very least, overlooked) by far too many Americans.

The writer unloosed his R-, B-, X- and I-bombs as he discussed the values and motives of "far too many Americans," otherwise known as Those People. The writer seems to be discussing "the majority of Republican voters in Iowa."

At the New York Times letters desk, some editor thought this was the first letter you should read in a group of six letters today. Those letters carry this headline:

"Analyzing the Iowa Caucus Results"

The writer was quick to drop his bombs on the heads of a wide range of Others. According to many experts and scholars, this is something we the liberals now increasingly do.

For that reason, these experts are increasingly describing the year just past, 2015, as the journalistic "Year of The Liberal." Some of these scholars even refer to 2015 as the year of liberal loathing.

When they do, they seem to have this phenomenon in mind.

Was 2015 really a year of liberal hatred and loathing? With great reluctance, we'll admit that we can almost see these famous scholars' point.

As another example of the problem, consider the conduct described by Connie Schultz in her new syndicated column, seen here at The National Memo. Schultz, a former Pulitzer winner, complains about this recent language from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“Thanks to Trump, the entire Palin clan is now back in the spotlight they so crave. Come July, Republican National Convention organizers should house the whole dysfunctional family at a trailer park in Ashtabula.”

Schultz starts her column by describing her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, each of whom lived in trailer homes in Ashtabula County. "I wanted you to know a little bit about my grandmothers," she writes, "so that you might better understand my outrage over" that recent column, whose language we've posted above.

We strongly recommend Schultz's beautiful column. As a professional courtesy, she doesn't name the writer who extended the long-running portrait by us the liberals of Them The Others, who we regard as "white trash."

What does any of this have to do with that murdered fourth-grader? Absolutely nothing at all! It's obvious that the motives and values of us the liberals are beyond reproach!

That said:

Yesterday, in Part 8 of this report, we noted the recent comments by Spike Lee, a person we regard as good, decent, funny and smart. Are we the liberals now involved in a culture of hatred and loathing, as so many scholars are saying? For today, we'll simply repost what Lee, a good smart person, was quoted saying in Monday's New York Times:

BUCKLEY (2/1/16): There seems to be no common ground right now. Every time Obama talks about guns, sales spike.

LEE: Or there's a mass shooting. After San Bernardino, they went up.

It's called scare tactics. I don't think anything good comes out of people using fear, whether it be Mussolini or Hitler.

Trump too. What's his motto? ''Make America great again''? Those are code words. It's like, all right, let's put the blacks back in their place where they used to be. You know what, why not go all the way? Let's bomb churches, let's bring back Bull Connor, let's have water cannons, let's have German shepherds. You might as well. They want to rewind the clock. It's not just black folks; women too. Let's rewind when white men were in control.

According to Lee, Those People want to bomb black churches all over again! We're so old that we can remember when four good and decent school-aged girls were killed in one such bombing.

Are we the liberals adopting a culture of liberal hatred and loathing? According to a raft of scholars, this cultural drift is one of the markers which made last year, 2015, the journalistic "Year of the Liberal."

Here at THE HOWLER, we have only two more days to explain this difficult sociological concept. Next Monday, we open a sprawling new pavilion with a whole new type of content.

Spike Lee has always struck us as good, smart, decent, funny, sane. So, we'll guess, is the person who wrote that letter to the New York Times. Also the author of the piece which extending the pleasing imagery of those poor white trash.

That said, the behavior of us the humans is determined, around the world, by what local culture allows. Have we the liberals begun to drift toward a culture of hatred and loathing?

When we hear scholars making that claim, we can almost see their point! Tomorrow, who the heck are those fiendish Trump voters? Also this:

Does the question even make sense?

Tomorrow: Videotape of Trump voters!