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April 26, 2005

Emotional meltdown

My thanks to fee simple for guest blogging in my absence. (FS also gets a hat tip here.)

There continues to be an emotional meltdown on the Left following last November's presidential election, another that was stolen by the evil forces of Bush and Rove. According to an article in the Medicine section of the L.A. Times, liberal "activists" are forming a support group to deal with their emotional troubles:

Championing a particular cause or course of action often can be a lonely crusade, but these are particularly tough times for liberal activists.

Red-state dominance in the last election, the war in Iraq, changes in environmental policy and the possibility of a more conservative Supreme Court have left many local activists feeling as blue as the state they live in.

What they need, one longtime activist recently decided, is some therapy — a good old-fashioned support group tailored for the liberal activist in need of emotional rejuvenation.

In February, the Activists' Support Circle was born. The group is the brainchild of L.A. peacenik Jerry Rubin, who said he saw his friends and colleagues hit an emotional low after the tensely fought fall presidential election. To his knowledge, he says, it's the first self-help support group in the country for activists.
I wrote about a similar emotional devastation among left-wing Jews right after the election, and it now seems clear that time does not heal all wounds.

The best part of the L.A. Times article is the contrast drawn with Republicans.
"Fortunately, we haven't had a need for such a thing," says Matthew Knee, a conservative activist and chairman of the Bruin Republicans, an activist organization. "And a support group seems very touchy-feely and un-Republican on its face."
Whoever called the Republican Party the "Daddy Party" and the Democratic Party the "Mommy Party" may have been thinking along these same lines.

(FS commented on this article: "Group hug, but only using the left arm.")