The Left’s continued attack on Sen. Tim Scott goes beyond their normal visceral vituperation into fear and loathing. They fear Scott’s challenge to their designated version of reality. They loathe the apostasy of someone who rejects by his very existence their paradigm of identity-group politics.
On April 28, Sen. Scott gave the customary opposition rebuttal to President Biden’s first speech to a joint session of Congress. Usually these opposition rebuttals are perfunctory and largely ignored. This one was not. Scott hit a nerve with the Left that is still aching (and a home run with everyone else). Understanding their overreaction is necessary for comprehending the alienated nature of the Left.
Scott is the junior senator from South Carolina. Those facts are irrelevant to the Left; had South Carolina’s senior senator, Lindsey Graham, sent the same message, the Left would not have flinched. What is relevant to the Left is that Scott is Black and conservative. For the Left, Scott’s unforgivable sin was to be publicly both. Scott said,
Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor…. America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present…. Race is not a political weapon to settle every issue the way one side wants…. Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams.
In reaction to Scott’s expressing a point of view so divergent from their demanded version of reality, the Left descended into racist vitriol that establishment media did not condemn, but commended, if they did not ignore it.
Following Scott’s speech, “Uncle Tim” trended on Twitter. Tiffany Cross of MSNBC said Scott’s speech would “shame the ancestors and appease the oppressors.” To ensure the offensiveness of her point was not missed, she added that Scott “does not represent any constituency other than the small number of sleepy slow-witted sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome who get elevated to prominence for repeating a false narrative about this country that makes conservative white people feel comfortable.” Jimmy Kimmel attributed Scott’s remarks to his living in a “sensory deprivation egg.”
The first explanation for the Left’s racist overreaction is fear. Blacks are Democrats’ most loyal demographic group. Exit polling from the last election showed 87 percent of Blacks voted for Biden. In comparison, just 65 percent of Hispanics, 61 percent of Asians, and 57 percent of women did so.
Concomitantly, because liberals vote even more heavily for Democrats (89 percent did in 2020), they are in Black communities continuing to vote heavily Democratic. In districts where Blacks are prevalent, this preponderance makes these virtually automatic Democrat seats and allows the Left to focus efforts on competitive seats.
Equally powerful is the leverage Blacks give to the Left’s agenda. This was underscored last year when the Left seized combating racism as cover for advancing proposals they have long espoused. The more racism the Left claims, the more cover they create, and the more of their proposals they can advance.
Sen. Scott’s message understandably strikes fear into a Left averse to seeing either their political power or their political leverage diminished.
Yet the Left’s hysterical histrionics over Sen. Scott’s speech shows there is more than just leftist fear involved. There is also an obvious loathing. Nothing is more repugnant to a belief system than apostasy, and no one is more condemned than the apostate.
The reason the Left sees Scott as an apostate arises from their embrace of identity group politics. The Left insist they alone legitimately define the groups in American society. Having defined the groups, the Left then assign the groups’ political views. To deny the Left’s version of a group’s identity is, in their subjective perception, a denial of the group itself — or at least that is their stance in a denial such as Scott’s. To the Left, Scott is not Black because he denies their definition of that group.
In the 1970s, Hunter S. Thompson wrote the definitive book on the 1960s counterculture failure: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A drug-laced tale, the book produced the “gonzo journalism” genre, and, as its cover proclaimed, it was “a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream.”
Over the last year, America has been subjected to another counterculture failure, this one more prospective than retrospective. The Left have taken us on their savage journey to cut the heart out of the American Dream. In the process they have thrashed America the way Thompson’s Duke destroyed hotel rooms and cars.
Their drug of choice has been an unbridled use of their leftist ideology. The result has been our subjection to their hallucinations: systemic racism, riots as “protests,” “Defund the Police” as “police reform,” income redistribution as social justice, and racism, such as that inflicted on Sen. Scott, as anti-racism. In return, America has received the Left’s fear and loathing, which the Left turn on anyone with the temerity to challenge their hallucinations.
J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987 through 2000.
