Conservatives Get Mad When Liberals Don't Roll Over And Die

The Nerds Aren't Supposed To Fight Back

Conservatives Believe Liberals Should Bow To Them, Like George McFly To Biff Tannen

The roles in American politics are very clear. Conservatives are the jocks/bullies, who run the entire place and who set the rules for everyone else’s behavior. What they say is what goes, and everybody else must bend to their will.

By contrast, liberals are the nerds. They are always to be meek and timid, always sticklers for the rules and regulations, never violating the norms and most importantly — they are never, ever to challenge the notion that conservatives are the top dogs, the alphas.

Those are the rules, and far too often they are adhered to by Republicans and Democrats and in a not too subtle fashion, enforced by the mainstream media.

But sometimes, far too infrequently, liberals push back a little bit. And it drives the right mad.

Take for instance President Biden referring to “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascist.” If anything, Biden’s criticism was far too mild and narrowly focused. Republicans as a whole have long embraced some of the worst attributes of fascism, and with actions like storming the Capitol, attacking drag performers, and controlling women’s bodies, there’s nothing “semi” about any of it.

And yet, even this was too much assertiveness for the right. Fox News threw a fit about it, attempting to manufacture backlash to Biden by comparing it to Hillary Clinton calling conservative bigots “deplorables” (she was right and too mild then too).

This is Fox, the communications arm of the Republican Party, who spends all 24 hours of their time on air smearing immigrants, Latinos, Blacks, women, Asians, scientists, liberals and whoever the right has put their gunsights on at the moment.

And Fox isn’t alone. The umbrage was echoed by Republican elected officials and even the supposedly “reasonable” anti-Trump Republicans like outgoing Maryland governor Larry Hogan.

The nerds (liberals) were being assertive, and that’s just not fair!

This right-wing crying happened when the Clinton administration was assertive, when Obama wouldn’t bow to McCain and Romney, when Speaker Pelosi rightly ripped up Donald Trump’s State of the Union. Every time a hint of liberal assertiveness has reared its head, the right tries to turn the entire country into a safe space for itself where it can’t publicly be criticized.

The real takeaway here is that conservatism is built on a foundation of glass. Their beliefs largely do not work in the real world. Time and time again, their policy recommendations like cutting taxes for the uber-wealthy and invading the wrong countries based on lies while implementing abhorrent practices like torture, do more harm than good to the country. Too often they have gotten away with these things because liberalism is polite to a fault, too rigid and observant of Robert’s Rules of Orders to call out the right’s inadequacies and shortcomings. Reliant on liberal compliance and submission, the right has no idea what to do when the left doesn’t play their assigned role.

For those of us who believe liberalism should be more aggressive, not just in policy, but in rhetoric, the crying is validating. Not only are liberal policy solutions better, but full throated advocacy of those solutions and mockery of conservative inadequacy just simply works.

When liberals stop being afraid of their own shadows, it is encouraging, and it makes people more assured of the moral imperative in implementing the policy.

Right-wing tears fill our collective cups and they runneth over and taste delicious. Drink up.

— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Twitter @owillis

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