Lena Dunham, Proud Liberal

Lena Dunham is currently riding high as the Creator / Writer / Executive Producer / Actress of “Girls“, an HBO series that is a candid take on the experiences of young women in their 20s in New York. In this aspect, I am thrilled for her success: I love a great writer above much else, and her show is savvy, smart, and funny. I am also personally amazed by anyone who can even approach Woody Allen territory, which involves the very special ability to write so many complex characters and then orchestrate an ensemble of actors into bringing them to life, while starring in the show oneself.

Purveyor of Liberal philosophy

Unfortunately Ms. Dunham is a righteous Liberal, a label she’d no doubt proudly embrace if presented with it. We know this from her overt support of Barack Obama, on whose behalf she filmed a video encouraging young people to vote by sharing the revelation that “My first time was with Obama” (as in voting for the first time).

So what drives Lena Dunham in her political philosophy? Clearly women’s issues (judging from her Obama promo), and as I’ve said in many other essays, I believe Republicans who are pro-life should just get on with it and embrace pro-choice because 53% of the American electorate is increasingly focused on only this one issue even though it is not under threat. But would that be enough to turn young Lena on to the occasional Republican candidate?

No.

Why is this? Because Liberal philosophy is rooted in something deeper than in just the Pro-Choice stance. It is rooted in entitlement: the belief that others owe us just about everything, and that if we in our lives are not full-up on what we “deserve”, then the government should take from everyone else and right this moral wrong.

On this basis, Lena is the quintessential Liberal, as was revealed inadvertently in her interview last year on “Fresh Air“, the NPR show hosted by Terry Gross. I chuckled while driving the other morning when this interview was re-broadcast because these two Great Liberals were destroying their own political ideology entirely without realizing it.

The interview starts off with a clip from Dunham’s HBO show in which her parents are informing her that they’d like her to move out of the house (she’s 23 and living at home) and get on with her own (responsible) adult life.  Terry Gross begins the interview:

Terry Gross: We just heard the opening scene, from episode one, and you know, like, your character gets off to such a kind of, um, almost unlikable start, you know she sounds so entitled, like “No, you’re my parents, you owe it to me to support me…”

Lena: You feel like the next words out of her mouth are going to be “I didn’t ask to be born,” [laughs]  She doesn’t say it, but it is implied.

TG: There’s this sense of entitlement, and also the sense that she wants to be treated as a child, but also wants to be treated as an adult.

I could not have summed up the Liberal mindset any better than these two Liberals have done here.

Sense of entitlement. <— “I’M OWED, JUST BECAUSE I EXIST!”

Wanting to be treated as a child, but also wanting to be treated as an adult. <— “TREAT ME LIKE AN ADULT YET INDULGE MY INFANTILE NEEDINESS – I LOVE HAVING IT BOTH WAYS!”

You owe it to me to support me…<— “I’M OWED, JUST BECAUSE I EXIST!”

And finally: unlikable. <— and this in Terry Gross’s own words; she finds the mindset “unlikable”, and yet is likely oblivious to it in the Liberals all around her.

The Liberal sense of entitlement, in all its infantile “FEED ME” aggression (and make no mistake about this: the Liberal’s clutching of his neighbor’s property is not polite), is the single greatest threat to the United States at this point in its inevitable decline. It is no wonder that Barack Obama is their champion, as he has made it his life’s work to reduce America to a zero-sum game of fascist redistribution of wealth. He has campaigned successfully — and openly — with this message, and won two elections, and so he is the perfect embodiment of his time.

And so Lena Dunham has unintentionally encapsulated the current battle for America’s soul:

• On the one side are Liberals / “Children” (a blend of infantile and adolescent) who would have our society collectively “move back in with our parents” — aka the Federal Government — with the notion that we will all be “taken care of”;
• On the other side are Conservatives / “Parents” who have to pay for it all, who know that we as a nation are broke, and who believe that the “23 year olds” must live and behave as functioning and productive adults.

For anyone who would protest this essay by pointing out that Ms. Dunham is a hard-working woman and not personally picking the pockets of her fellow citizens, I would offer that the Liberal mindset does not always translate into a personal lack of agency — there are millions of hard-working Obama supporters. But these same people nonetheless seek the yoke of government for the rest of us, believing in utopian fantasies that only bring hell on earth. Are they blind to the consequences because they know they will be exempt from most of the pain in a patronage society, in which the pretty people and artists who entertain the king are able to curry favor with the regime? Or is it because they are ignorant of history?

Yes, it’s all very “unlikable”, and I enjoy it when Liberals can admit it without realizing they are burying their own malignant world-view.

About these ads