How the Left Became so Intolerant

An answer to a letter.

A reader wrote me to ask for my thoughts:

I read your article last night and listened to the audio today while doing some chores and as usual it provoked a whole variety of thoughts. The one I wanted to convey to you with this letter is the change I've seen on the Left which still baffles me.

Just so you know, I'm a kid of the 1970s, and I grew up in Santa Cruz County, California...even back then, it was probably the most liberal county in the entire U.S. of A. I grew up among hippies and Hell's Angels; in the 70s there were a lot of "60s residue" as we called it in my hometown (Boulder Creek, up in the Santa Cruz Mountains) and down in Santa Cruz itself.

But the thing about all these aging hippies was they were fun people and incredibly tolerant! Most were really cool to hang with, and would talk about anything with anyone. It was a really non-judgemental environment....which had its downsides in tolerating drug use and some really bad behavior (Skip Spence of Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane used to live on my road and would try to molest little girls until he was finally arrested; there was a local biker who used to cook his own LSD and would walk around offering acid-laced sugar cubes in Wonder Bread bag to anyone who wanted). The whole thing really was to tolerate, don't harsh anyone's buzz, and live and let live.

The left today seems more like the Republicans back then...uptight, never friendly, always frowning, always walking around with an air of implicit disapproval of everyone else. There no sense of taking it easy (remember Mr. Natural? "Easy Does It" and "Keep On Trucking"?). They're no fun, and they're people who you just don't want to be around.

Obviously, you write a lot about what happened, so I won't go into it in detail, but listening to your podcast today, I remembered an event that, in retrospect, may have been when the change started. Do you remember Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife before he became vice-president, and her crusade to ban minors from purchasing music with explicit lyrics? Her Parents Music Resource Center formed an alliance between Democrats and Republicans on "social issues" and was the beginning of the end for the "tolerant Left." It was when the Establishment began to unite on social issues, not just economic and foreign policy issues.

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong but you look at that group, the later triangulation of Bill Clinton towards the right on so many issues, and it seems like it began way long before we realize it.

Anyway, I'd like to know what you think if you have the time.

The intolerance I see on the Left now is unlike anything I've ever lived through. The Republicans when I was growing up weren't like what the Left is today. It is difficult for those of us who come from the Left to understand.

We couldn't be moral puritans in the 1990s because Bill Clinton was getting blow jobs in the Oval Office, and the Conservatives were impeaching him over it. We were the side that could not defend “character” and insisted upon pivoting to “the issues.” That flipped with Trump.

True, Tipper Gore was trying to purge obscenity from song lyrics. She was more like a centrist or moderate, though. I am not sure that’s quite how we arrived where we are now. It is rooted in defining ourselves for the first time as the “good people doing good things” side, which we never were before.

In the past, goodness was tied to Christianity, which was tied to traditionalism, and was something we on the Left always pushed back against. Well, not anymore.

We were a lost generation, full of hopelessness and despair. The mental health revolution meant we had fixed ourselves. Then, we had to fix our country. We were already headed toward “goodness” before Obama won in 2008, but his influence brought us all together in common purpose as “good” progressives.

Everything we did always had to reflect our goodness: what we bought, how we spoke, what we wore, whom we dated, where our kids went to school, what our kids ate, whether our kids were well-behaved and happy, etc.

Over time, that “goodness” was transposed into identity as we began ranking people by gender and skin color because that had to fix our past as well as our present and our future. Then it became if you were not white or LGBTQIA+, you were “good” — as long as you were also ideologically compliant. If you were white or hetero, you were only “good” on a conditional basis.

Once you define your group by “goodness,” anyone who breaks the rules—of language and behavior—is now, by definition, “bad.” With the panopticon the internet became, we had a way of making examples of the “bad” people so everyone knew the rules suddenly.

Our utopia became a dystopia when Trump won. All of that “cancel culture” was just a way to show people what would happen to them if they didn’t follow the rules or were somehow deemed “bad.” Once you are designated “bad,” you are disposable.

Unfortunately, with Obama’s rise coinciding with society migrating online, most of America’s cultural and political power was caught up in the same ideological puritanism, or else they were too afraid to confront it. And look at the mess we’re in now with ESG and DEI—all in the name of “goodness.”

Why do they still feel so justified to demonize and dehumanize a whole group of people just because they voted for Trump?

It’s for two reasons:

The first, it’s all they know. Their lives for almost ten years have been defined by the mass delusion that they are living in an occupied country. How to even begin to break out of that? They won’t do what I did - get to know that world. So, they’ll be caught in this feedback loop of fear and hysteria.

The second reason is power. They do not want to lose on key issues that matter to them. The Old Left would have been concerned about climate change or gun control. The New Left is concerned about transgender kids and abortion. To them, these are life-or-death issues.

As in:

What you hear in their rage and their anger is entitlement. They fixed themselves, their children, their country, their past, their present, their future, and now, here you are to destroy ALL OF IT.

They believe they are in power, so back off, get out, and go away.

The internet amplifies the craziest people, just as it does on the other side. They’re only shown the worst of MAGA, and the more they see of it, the more hysterical they become.

But you have to wonder, why aren’t the people on the MAGA side hysterical? Even while Biden was in power, they were the same easy laid back “Keep on Truckin’” types we all remember from the Old Left.

Americans are built to be free.

We don’t do well when we’re ordered into compliance and conformity. To many in this country, Trump’s rise was like finally lancing a painful boil. It had to be done, and it felt so good. He tapped into that wild spirit of Americans who believe they have a right to say whatever the hell they damn well please.

I have been waiting for the mass hysteria to end for almost ten years, but look at them. It’s worse now than it’s ever been.

This is why they have killed art and destroyed movies, comedy, and journalism - because they are locked inside a bubble, a doomsday bunker. How can anything survive that? This TikTok user put it well:

Like you, I miss the Old Left.

I miss people being able to talk honestly and “at ease.” I hate that they are afraid of every word that comes out of their mouths lest they seen as “bad.”

I know that being free in my mind was more important to me than just about anything else. The end of 1984 always resonated for that reason. Winston Smith will give up everything, but if you take his freedom of thought, you might as well put a bullet in his brain.

I sometimes watch this scene from the movie Hair and marvel at what the Old Left used to be like. Treat Williams plays an unemployed hippie, a counterculture draft-dodging Leftist. But anyone watching it today might conclude that he was MAGA. They’re not the uptight, violent, screeching side. They’re the side that dances on tables.

Hope that answers it.