Is the Phrase Make Liberals Cry Again Trademarked
Andrew Yang crying at a entrada upshot.
This is an historic period of tears in America. Our politicians cry. Our judges cry. Our TV commentators weep. Supporters of losing presidential candidates cry. Supporters of winning presidential candidates weep. Americans love to tell the world about their gushing sentimentality. They tweet about the crying jags their victories have sent them on. They write newspaper editorials about the tear-gasms a politician gave them. It is a subject for moral boasting.
At the very aforementioned fourth dimension it is a subject for shaming. Those who weep are weak, Americans too believe, and this hardy nation of pioneers and entrepreneurs recoils in disgust from their infantilism. Videos of Democrats weeping sadly on ballot night 2016 became extremely pop on YouTube in the months after that contest was over; what made them so delectable to conservatives was the sight of well-bred, higher-educated idealists beingness so bluntly thwarted in their ambitions. 'Liberal tears' inevitably became i of the great symbols of the Trump years: the president himself joked virtually the tears of 2016 at rallies; 'Brand Liberals Cry Again' was a slogan commonly seen on Trump re-election flags and signs; and there is even a brand of firearm accessories named after the meme ('I Lube My Rifles with Liberal Tears').
Laughing at losers
Characteristically, liberals themselves reacted to this wave of mocking cruelty past theorising it and determining that it reveals some larger personality deficiency on the function of conservatives. '"Brand them cry" turns the phrase specifically into a narrative of power,' instructed columnist Monica Hesse in the Washington Post on November 5. 'It is about potent people humiliating the people they see as weak, for the fun of it and considering they can.'
Which is a curious accusation to see in a newspaper that is endemic by the richest homo in the earth... uttered in defence of a political party that, far from beingness weak, just outraised and outspent those cruel Republicans past many, many millions.
More to the point: 10 days afterwards Hesse'south column ran, the front page of the Washington Post featured a cartoon showing Donald Trump as a big baby throwing a tantrum over his own loss to Joe Biden. The Post did this, in blithe contradiction of its own columnist, because laughing at the misfortunes of the other side is a satisfying and a fully bipartisan pastime. Back in 2012, for example, the Internet was briefly entranced by a website called 'White People Mourning [Mitt] Romney', which invited viewers to chuckle at pictures of sad Republicans watching their and then-champion lose to Barack Obama on ballot night.
In truth, both Republicans and Democrats like to laugh at losers and, when it suits them, people on both sides also take the tears of the righteous to be tangible manifestations of authentic political sentiment — hard evidence of philosophical righteousness. In his public appearances, for example, President Trump used to regale audiences with a tale almost a delegation of working-class men (alternately coal miners or steelworkers) who attested to his presidential awesomeness by crying in his presence.
But those Republican weepings were equally goose egg compared to the cataract of happy tears that the nation's press painstakingly documented in the aftermath of Trump's downfall. In the New York Times, for case, Tv set star Padma Lakshmi told of feeling a mysterious internal heat that 'burst out of me in tears I could not control' when she learned of Kamala Harris existence elected vice-president — and and then related how she 'cried again' when she watched Harris's unremarkable victory speech communication. (She was moved in this profound mode, she adamant, because Harris 'offers many blackness and brown girls and women a sense of belonging'.)
1 favourite way to get the tears of virtue flowing is by contemplating the innocence of childhood from amid the polluted mainstream of U.s.a. politics. The prize hither belongs to the conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh, whose 2018 nomination to the Supreme Court was interrupted by allegations of a long-agone sexual set on — and who responded by (amongst other things) telling how his daughter, 'little Liza, all of ten years former', thought to pray for her dad's accuser. As the nation watched, Kavanaugh reduced himself to piteous blubbering with his own anecdote.
And who can forget the spectacle of poor Van Jones, the former revolutionary become CNN commentator, wrestling with his tears for about two minutes on live TV later on Joe Biden's victory was announced. Jones'due south emotion was understandable — 'It's easier to be a parent this morning time,' he gasps painfully, 'it's easier to tell your kids grapheme matters' — but what is bizarre is the way the camera refuses to cut away as he tries to speak; it is an episode of deliberate, prolonged discomfort brought to you lot by the original corporate news network.
Tears mean sincerity in such situations — truthfulness established by an involuntary action of the trunk itself. No i would cartel to question the authenticity of the crying person's emotion. That is the entire bespeak; that is why the photographic camera zooms in, and the mascara runs, and the Twitter champion feels they merely must tell the world about the long hours of politically inspired crying they have just completed. And that is why, every at present so, Americans need to be reminded of how oftentimes they have been fooled by outward displays of emotion. In the 1980s and 90s, televangelists who cried big, fraudulent, theatrical tears became something of a national shame. Tears were ane of the instruments by which they deceived us. Similarly, Bill Clinton, the most sentimental of our recent presidents, seemed to exist able to turn the plumbing off and on at will. Like parsing the meaning of small words and inventing a '3rd Way', tactical weeping was just another tool in his handbag of tricks.
All of which is to say that American political types cry because crying works. Tears persuade. They pale out one's moral position every bit a victim, unfairly persecuted by the mighty. They establish sincerity; they hint at inner nobility. Hillary Clinton, a woman of a famously steely disposition, has (to my knowledge) only broken downwards once before the cameras of the nation, and it was in reply to the post-obit question, asked to her after a long day of campaigning in 2008: 'How exercise you lot do information technology? ... How do y'all keep upbeat, and and so wonderful?' Veteran Clinton-watchers regard it as one of her finest moments (1).
The imperious Donald Trump is some other who does not cry in public, but he does sulk and complain and pout, even confessing to existence the nation'southward 'most fabled whiner': 'I keep whining and whining until I win,' he once told CNN. He also whines equally he loses. His grievances are bottomless, piteous, without cease. Belatedly into the night he tweets about the media's unfairness to him and the hateful people who are stealing his re-ballot and his ain assistants's flagrant disrespect for his totally righteous viewpoints. This is a tycoon who has literally made his fashion in the world past lament — and in this way he is an verbal reflection of the larger conservative movement, which has contrived to sell its trademark doctrine of survival of the fittest by crying about how those mean liberals try to ruin Christmas and how TV mocks the values of the humble and the God-fearing.
Nosotros never ever get our way
In this sense, tears are really what American politics is about; they are the strongest arguments of them all in our political vocabulary. They make headlines all by themselves. Joe Biden, a well-known sentimentalist, has merely won the presidency on the forcefulness of no thou proposals, merely revulsion against the hated Trump. Republicans, meanwhile, steam straight ahead with their pointless culture wars and their cornball appeals to 'Make America Great Over again'.
Bill Clinton, the nigh sentimental of recent presidents, seemed to turn the plumbing off and on at will. Similar parsing the pregnant of small words and inventing a Third Manner, tactical weeping was just another tool in his bag of tricks
Neither party plans to do much to rein in Wall Street and Silicon Valley or to bring manufacturing back to Pennsylvania and Michigan, but the larger political conversation has become a gratis-for-all of moral allegation in which men carrying set on rifles imagine themselves to be victims, and cocky-appointed investigators patrol the Internet for hints of privilege and disrespectful adjectives. Personal shame and personal grievance are slowly becoming the whole of our politics, then of course we cry. Nosotros cry because we are the noblest of people, we cry because nosotros are the worst of people; we cry considering we are excluded, we cry because we are seen; we weep because we are persecuted, nosotros cry considering we are triumphant, we weep because we never ever e'er become our fashion.
Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz, a veteran of Europe's many catastrophes, once called America the 'sobbing superpower'. In his sardonic poem past that proper noun, Różewicz described the inauguration of President George W Bush-league in 2001. The Bush-league years would be disaster years, only their opening scene was a festival of sentimental display in which the attendees all wept tears of high moral virtue — and then dressed themselves upwardly in formal attire and cowboy boots and sat themselves downward for an episode of globe-form gluttony at a lavish banquet.
From the exterior, it must seem strange to watch the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the earth choose its path by ways of moral scolding and sanctimonious posturing, both positions washed in on millions of litres of high-octane American tears. This must be particularly annoying when you are also enlightened that whatever this country chooses to practice will accept enormous consequences for your nation and your life, and that your tears will count for zip in our royal deliberations. I feel your hurting. Really, I do. I weep.
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Source: https://mondediplo.com/2020/12/03usa-cry