Yesterday’s gun rally in Richmond Virginia was a great success, at least as a public relations item. You can tell that by the relative lack of interest by the Left. Nothing about the event fit into their narratives, so it had to be ignored. Fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism. In this case, they wanted to see white supremacists dressed in Klan robes and Nazi regalia, terrorizing poor black bodies, while Antifa battled them in the streets. None of that happened.

The question that never gets mentioned in all of this is exactly why the newly ascendant radicals in Richmond are attacking gun owners. If you look at what they are proposing, none of it has much practical value. All the talk of confiscation is belied by the actual bills they are producing. One limits handgun purchases to one per month. Another bans private sales of regulated firearms. One vindictively targets the NRA shooting range in Northern Virginia. These have no practical purpose.

The answer here lies in understanding how American Progressive’s view society and their role in it. Contrary to popular opinion, the people behind this stuff are not communist, motivated by Karl Marx. They are not controlled by hand-rubbing lizard people living in a secret volcano. They are not triumphant browns. The people pushing this stuff are white people. There are a few Jews and browns tossed in, but the main body of the Left is still white and formerly Protestant.

The white American Progressive has always imagined society as a fully enclosed community, that is judged as a whole. A popular slogan among them is that “society is judged by how it treats it weakest members.” This is an explicit expression of communal judgement, which is the traveling partner of communal salvation. The white Progressive looks at society as an organism that moves forward as a whole. If some parts lag behind, the whole thing slows to a halt.

Further, the white Progressive believes in the unitary reformer. That is, the reformer is not just focused on one area of society, but the whole of society. Even if their efforts are in one area, those efforts support the whole community. A reform effort that does not promise to move the whole of society forward is of no interest. For white Progressive reformers, society is the flock and they are the shepherds. Anything that threatens their effort to guard and guide the flock must be eliminated.

It is this spatial understanding of the world that helps explain these largely symbolic attacks on the Second Amendment. In the hive mind of the white Progressive, people who own guns are outside the domain of the righteous. Therefore, they must be marginalized from society. Much in the same way they anathematized smoking, white Progressives seek to make owning a gun disqualifying. Symbolically, these measures are aimed at putting gun rights outside the whole of society.

This territorial thinking is why Charlottesville remains an important symbol for white Progressives and why Richmond will be erased from their memory. In the former, the righteous chased the threat to the flock from the field. The physical place of society was literally reclaimed by the good guys. Richmond, in contrast, was when the dark forces of society were permitted to operated unmolested. The bad guys did not win. The shepherds were forced to hide their flocks.

There is another aspect to this. White Progressives are aroused by the thought of the Charlottesville riots, because the radical mind needs violence in the same way the body needs food. While many white Progressives reformers are sincere, if deranged, others are in it for the blood. They need to terrorize and attack the enemy. In the same way the bully needs to terrorize the nerd in order to be a bully, the white radical needs the enemy of the cause in order to maintain his identity.

Therein lies the other reason why Richmond will be forgotten, while Charlottesville will be a regular story in the 2020 election. It was there that the need to terrorize the enemy of the flock was fully actualized. They not only chased the evil doers from the field; they drew blood and they had a sacrifice. Notice they always remember the fat women, who died, but not the cops. That’s because she was a blood sacrifice to the cause, while the cops that died were just collateral damage.

This is how to understand these pointless gun grabbing efforts, as well as many other Progressive fads we see today. In Virginia, these proposals are like the winning side erecting a trophy on the field of battle. The good whites have recaptured the heart of the Confederacy, the home of the bad whites. They did not eliminate the enemy, however, as they are still out there in the counties that refused to support the Progressive reformers. The fight must continue.

This is why facts and reason have no effect on white Progressives. They see themselves as defenders of the innocent against the attacks of those who seek to destroy the whole by corrupting the weak. Against such delusions, facts and reason are wholly ineffectual. Appeals to their humanity, on the other hand, are infuriating, as it calls into the question the point of their existence. It is why they are most vulnerable to moral arguments. It cuts to their sense of identity.

Of course, the Left is not just white Progressives. There are other parts, but their motivations are different and mostly modifiers to the whole. These other groups operate from ethnocentric motives. Blacks want free stuff and easy access to white people, while Jews want what is best for Jews. The newly arrived non-whites want a short path to the material assets of the white majority. The bulk of the Left, however, are white Progressives, who provide the power and authority.

The thermal exhaust port of the Progressive death star is their sense of moral purpose, not factual accuracy or even the relationships between the tribes of the Left. The white Progressive sees contrary facts and internal divisions as challenges the righteous shepherd must overcome. Call into question the moral standing of the white Progressive and the very center of the Left begins to collapse. Self-righteous certainty of purpose is the main tent pole that holds Progressivism together.

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