The Joy of Self Righteousness. (It happens on both left and right.)

The attack on "political correctness" is an attack on the self-righteousness of the left.

Garrison Keillor: "No sensuous pleasure can compare to the thrill of righteousness." 

I observe self righteousness on both left and right.  

The self righteousness of the right shows up in aggressive religiosity, it shows up in bigotry against "otherness", and it shows up in the form of people who are confident the government or social benefits they get (i.e. Medicare) are only fair and reasonable while they simultaneously condemn others--shiftless freeloaders--for getting their benefits.   I see it among progressives in the hypocrisy of enjoying the benefits of a market economy and resource extraction while simultaneously condemning and demanding others condemn it, and by condemning the prejudice when they see it in others while simultaneously condemning at the "otherness" of those they condemn.

Self righteousness on the right it is easily found on Fox News.

On the left one can find it among die-hard Bernie supporters, among some environmentalists, and among progressives who want their progressive politicians to "relate to working people" while simultaneously undermining the sources of income of working people as well as the life choices and tastes of "the deplorables."

Facebook chatter within Indivisible and other progressive groups are sprinkled with self righteous condemnation of the impure, the compromising traitors who fail to meet their standards.  The chatter defines compromise as "sell out", not realism or empathy for the viewpoints of others.   They moralize policy choices as good vs. bad.   The attribute bad motives to the people they disagree with.

Click Here for the droll commentary

Garrison Keillor (of the Prairie Home Companion) has a commentary that puts this self-righteousness of the left into perspective.  I recommend it to readers.  It is gentle, self mockery.   Keillor himself has leftist politics, but he understands this element of his fellows.  Self righteousness is widespread and it undermines the political aspirations of the left because it generates backlash.

Keillor

He begins, "No sensuous pleasure can compare to the thrill of righteousness."   He noted the outrage of Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accords:  "People love the chance to get all apocalyptic."

He goes on, observingTrump is "only trying to please the folks who voted for him. They want him to walk into church and moon the clergy. They’ve always wanted to do it themselves but didn’t dare offend their devout neighbors. So they went along, saying the appropriate things about Community and Cooperation and Tolerance and the Value of Education, which made them miserable because they didn’t believe in any of that stuff. They believed in Family Loyalty and outsiders can go to hell. Be a winner. Race to the buffet table and pick all the beef out of the stew and let the others have the celery and onions."

Click on the caption above, a link to the original Washington Post story.

In politics among the self righteous, pretty good is not enough.  Indeed, good but imperfect is worse than dead wrong because it is a kind of heresy within the team and heresy must be excised.   Heresy is more dangerous than opposition.   Heresy can corrupt ones fellows while opposition energizes them.

Thrilled and proud to be photographed. 

A classic case of it was the climate change activists who picketed an event at my home hosted for Jeff Merkley, the junior senator from Oregon.  Objectively he is the second most liberal/environmental member of the Senate;  (Elizabeth Warren is the most liberal and Bernie Sanders is number three.)  Their point was to condemn Merkley because he was supporting election of a Democratic Senator in Colorado, in an effort to gain a Democratic majority, but the protesters considered that candidate, Michael Bennet, to be soft on fracking.  A Democratic senate would help environmentalists, and Bennet was more opposed to fracking than his Republican opponent--but it didn't matter.  The protesters urged event guests not to contribute to Merkley, lest some of the money find its way to Bennet.  

Once the guests arrived to the fundraiser the protesters got into their cars and left.   My point is that they did not walk or ride horses to the event.  They are not Amish, living a 19th century life, totally off the electrical grid.   They drive a Prius, produced by a multinational corporation, Toyota, and it runs on gasoline, produced in part by fracked petroleum and refined and delivered by another multinational corporation.   In their actual lives they compromised in order to live in the real world.   A Prius is a compromise, both with fossil fuel extraction and with globalism and corporatism.  

Their actual lives contradict their politics.  In real life they compromise and make the best of things.   The body language of their lives are not integrated into their politics.  They were proud of themselves.  They were "holding Merkley's feet to the fire."

There is a bright side and value to self-righteous blindness.  It feels good, as Garrison Keillor notes.  It gets young people involved.  It encourages activists.  It fuels political involvement   It encourages strong, absolutist language, and as the world has observed with Donald Trump, there is something appealing about strong, blunt talk, clear decisive condemnation of what one opposes.  And within the political silo the self righteous accuser gets very nice responses, setting up a comfortable feedback loop.    

Makes Trump look reasonable.

Some of the self-righteous will stay pure and will withhold their vote from the "pretty good."  They frustrate the major party candidate, but even then they help to frame the debate in a way that makes the major party candidate look better.   They widen the boundaries of the public debate.  Ted Nugent is a frequent guest on Fox News and he condemned Obama as a mongrel, a piece of shit, and said that he should suck on his machine gun.  Trump looks reasonable and temperate by comparison.  In the face of the fracking opponents, Merkley looks like a centrist.  

In politics people are positioned not just by what they say but by who opposes them and who are more extreme than them.   The self righteous have their uses.