The Great Liberal Death Wish Enters a New Phase

“The Great Liberal Death Wish” is Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous theme, which appeared in various iterations over the years. Here’s one version, from which we can extract the essence:

I began to get the feeling that a liberal view of life was not what I’d supposed it to be—a creative movement which would shape the future—but rather a sort of death wish. . . It’s difficult to convey to you what a shock this [recognition of the bankruptcy of liberalism] was, realizing that what I had supposed to be the new brotherly way of life my father and his cronies had imagined long before, was simply on examination an appalling tyranny, in which the only thing that mattered, the only reality, was power. . .

The thing that impressed me, and the thing that touched off my awareness of the great liberal death wish, my sense that western man was, as it were, sleep-walking into his own ruin, was the extraordinary performance of the liberal intelligentsia, who, in those days, flocked to Moscow like pilgrims to Mecca. . .

It was from that moment that I began to get the feeling that a liberal view of life was not what I’d supposed it to be—a creative movement which would shape the future—but rather a sort of death wish. How otherwise could you explain how people, in their own country ardent for equality, bitter opponents of capital punishment and all for more humane treatment of people in prison, supporters, in fact, of every good cause, should in the USSR prostrate themselves before a regime ruled over brutally and oppressively and arbitrarily by a privileged party oligarchy? I still ponder over the mystery of how men displaying critical intelligence in other fields could be so astonishingly deluded.

This thesis comes to mind in watching the hysterical reaction—and outright lying—by the left in reaction to Georgia’s revision to its election laws, which, it must be pointed out, replicate many of the same election management features in Democratic-run states such as New York and Maryland. Even the New York Times concludes that this is mostly much ado about nothing, while the Washington Post gave (P)resident Biden four Pinocchios for lying about the bill.

It’s one thing for the partisan left to lie about the bill in order to serve the imperative of gaining and keeping power by any means necessary. What’s baseball’s excuse? Or Delta Air Lines? (By the way, shouldn’t Delta follow the example of major league baseball and boycott Georgia by ceasing or reducing flights into and out of Georgia? What that? Cheap grace you say?)

Turns out there are some real costs to baseball’s cheap virtue-signaling, as the Daily Wire reports:

The Georgia county that was set to host the 2020 Major League Baseball All Star Game said over the weekend that it will lose more than $100 million after the league pulled the game and draft out of the state — a decision that comes after Democrats made a number of  false claims about the state’s new election law and signaled they would support the league boycotting the state. . .

The Atlanta Braves released a statement following the league’s announcement, saying that they did not support the decision and that they were “saddened that fans will not be able to see this event in our city.”

Punch line: Cobb County voted for Biden. And this is the thanks they get. Atlanta used to boast it is “the city too busy to hate,” but for the activist left that controls the Democratic Party, you’re never too busy to hate Atlanta, and inflicting economic pain on your own voters is a perfect example of the Great Liberal Death Wish in action.

Postscript: I’ve been wondering whether CNN’s egregious Jim Acosta is in the witness protection program or something as we see so little of him lately, and also wondering how soon he and others like him would admit they secretly miss Trump. We’re not even to Day 100 of the Biden Era, and here he is, as predicted:

CNN’s Jim Acosta said reporters are experiencing “post-Trump stress disorder” following the former president’s exodus from the White House.

You need to read this statement backward to understand what’s really going on (besides ratings that are cratering. . .)

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