Blazer-and-Ascot Tyranny
A great friend, Guy Green of Brainerd, Minnesota — connoisseur of fine golf clubs, tireless gadfly to progressives, and former host of the most principled conservative talk radio program around (which is why most of my readers will not have heard of it, fame generally being reserved for those who, when the choice is necessary, put profit over principle) — sent those of us lucky enough to be his friends a terrific summary of the current state of American progressivism. His philippic highlighted one Duncan Lloyd, caught on a surveillance camera participating in an act of vandalism, specifically the spray-painting of “F— Trump” on the wall of a supermarket. (Why do this in the parking lot of Fresh Market? Did the vandals expect Trump to be popping by in the morning on a milk run?)
What makes the story interesting is not that a progressive should think damaging private property is meaningful political dialogue — what else is progressivism, in practice, but a systematized assault on private property masked as political theory? No, what is fascinating is the outfit Lloyd is wearing in the surveillance video — a blue blazer and ascot, accessorized with a glass of wine.
Progressives, by which I mean the leaders of the movement and their administrative henchmen, rather than the rank and file dupes who vote for them, are history’s blazer-and-ascot vandals. How quaint of Duncan Lloyd to be so literal-minded about it. Even more quaint when you discover his job. As Guy puts it:
In our metastasized government, in our thuggish government unions, in media and academia, they are the ones who write, and gleefully, with partisan gusto, enforce the thousands of pages of laws, regulations and unfunded mandates that have been shoved up our [bums — my friend Guy tends to get a wee bit Shakespearean when he talks about progressives] for the last sixty years.
Take the creepy little fop – the one sporting the ascot, smug swagger and ‘straight from Central Casting’ glass of white wine – in this remarkable vandalism video out of Philadelphia.
His real job is enforcing those myriad laws. He is an Assistant City Attorney. Isn’t that special?
To which I can only say, seriously, who wears an ascot and blazer these days? He should have been vandalizing yachts. And if that getup wasn’t affectation enough, he carries a glass of wine, just to prove to all onlookers, I suppose, that he’s the sort of man who drinks wine. I’m the sort of man who wears long underwear in winter, but I don’t carry a pair around with me to signal the fact. What pretentious dimwits progressives are. Always the cigarette held just so, the serious look with eyes aimed just slightly off camera, the salon-perfected “unkempt” hairstyle. Grow up and get out of your father’s cufflinks box, for God’s sake! Oh, wait, that would mean…be a man, which just isn’t done at (or in) the best parties these days.
Holy Hannah, the Western world is actually run by these people! By millions of Duncan Lloyds. By people more concerned with how they look to the audience in their minds than with the justice of what they do. By people who earnestly persuade each other that the rest of us are not good enough to be allowed to make our own moral decisions, but who wouldn’t give up their BMWs to save their own children. By — to borrow a modern sage’s language — creepy little fops.
For a more thorough account of the real meaning and practice of progressivism, see Progressivism 101.
