Thread by @bansisharma

1. Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate

Shelby Steele is one of the most preeminent thinkers of today in my books. This excerpt from him is just about the most insightful commentary on the left I have seen this year.

2. Today’s left lacks worthy menaces to fight. It is driven to find a replacement for racism, some sweeping historical wrongdoing that morally empowers those who oppose it. (Climate change?) Failing this, only hatred is left.

3. 'Hatred is a transformative power. So it has become a weapon of choice. The left has used hate to transform President Trump into a symbol of new racism, not a flawed president but a systemic evil. And he must be opposed as one opposes racism, with a scorched-earth absolutism.'

4. For Martin Luther King Jr., hatred was not necessary as a means to power. The actual details of oppression were enough. Power came to him because he rejected hate as a method of resisting menace. He called on blacks not to be defined by what menaced them.

5. Today, because menace provides moral empowerment, blacks and their ostensible allies indulge in it. Yet the left is still stalked by obsolescence. There is simply not enough menace to service its demands for power.

6. The voices that speak for the left have never been less convincing. It is hard for people to see the menace that drives millionaire football players to kneel before the flag.

7. And then there is the failure of virtually every program the left has ever espoused— welfare, public housing, school busing, affirmative action, diversity programs, and so on.

For the American left today, the indulgence in hate is a death rattle.

The End