By Matthew Delaney
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV.
I’m not big on giving advice about things I have no experience with, but if I was to share some wisdom with parents, I’d tell them that the seedy showbiz of progressive politics is as much of a threat to their kid as drugs, gangs, and unprotected sex.
Quintez Brown is the latest child star to fall prey to this industry. The 21-year-old activist nearly assassinated Louisville mayoral hopeful Caig Greenberg at his campaign headquarters last week. Luckily for the candidate and his staff, Brown had poor aim, and the only damage he did was to Greenberg’s sweater. Even luckier, Brown’s a lefty, so a bail fund paid the $100,000 to get him out of jail while awaits the next steps for his attempted murder charge.
Consider that Brown’s severance package from left-wing politics. Beginning at 13, Brown was groomed by this culture when he wrote about how influential Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson was for him. He’d go on to join Black Lives Matter, become a newspaper columnist, shake hands with Barack Obama, and be hailed as brilliant by his Pan-African studies professor and a former U.S. senate candidate. He’s even drifted into black nationalism as an open supporter of the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan.
When he opened fire on Greenberg, he was running to be on Louisville’s metro council. Why wouldn’t he? As a young black man whose father spent time behind bars, his progressive credentials have a texture that the Oberlin-grads who grew up in White Plains can never match. Credentials that had set him up for political stardom.
Brown is, for all intents and purposes, a prototypical child of the left — down to living out the meme that “Real communism hasn’t been tried.” But Brown also shares the prevalence of mental health issues like his fellow progressives do. He went missing for a week last summer until he was found on a bench in Central Park.
That history adds weight to both Brown’s lawyer and the Louisville chapter of Black Lives Matter’s claim that Brown was dealing with a mental health crisis when he attacked Greenberg.
I’m positive Brown could benefit from counseling and maybe even medication. There’s a way to treat his mental health problems. I’m not so sure you can “cure” the heavy influence his progressive peers have on him.
If there’s one thing we know about our friends on the left, it’s that they can be manipulative.
We see that in the media, where ideologues use the legitimacy of their position to craft helpful narratives. We see that in academia, where they create fields of study out of whole cloth to push various forms of Marxism. We’ve seen that in public health during the pandemic, where certain activities are deemed more important than stopping viral spread. Lastly, we’ve seen it in public schools, where basic lessons are infused with Critical Race Theory.
At the macro level, progressives will use any hint of influence they have to serve their own motives. What makes you think they don’t treat people in their personal life similarly?
Color me skeptical. My earlier comment about more mental health problems in lefties comes from a Pew Research study on the topic. Pew covered how neuroticism is a common trait in liberal/Democrats. A separate study found that people with neurotic disorders express their manipulative traits in a “morbid nature” by using tactics like guilt induction, threatening to break up the relationship, and self-mutilation.
Researchers said these traits correlate with Machiavellianism, or the amoral attitude where people do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. Given how progressives shout from on high about how we’re all racist, or that parents are domestic terrorists, I would say that finding has been significantly replicated in the public domain.
It’s hard to know how that works out privately. But let’s follow progressive logic: they’re fighting for deeply important causes for the better of civilization. They’ve shown they’ll do just about anything to achieve those ends, no matter how ruthless, because they’ve created an identity around saving the world. So, we’re supposed to expect they just switch that off when no one’s around and live normal lives?
Maybe they do. If so, then everything they stand for politically is bullshit. If not, then they’re psychos. I’d lean that it’s all for show, but then again, I’ve been around enough progressives to know you never rule out the insanity plea.
This brings me back to Brown. He was raised by a single mother on the wrong side of the tracks in West Louisville. He’s had his share of challenges, which is why he let the progressivism movement wrap its arms around him. It gave him a sense of belonging.
But I suspect he was so warmly embraced because those neurotic Machiavellianists saw promise in Brown, and they were committed to doing whatever it took to cultivate that. From the editors that hired him at the Louisville Courier-Journal to the screeners who let him meet Obama, Brown was going to be a star for their cause until he cracked under the bright lights.
Parents should take note about how close their own kids are to a similar fate. The left is not unique in that it has cornered the market on being radical. There are plenty of fringe right-wingers and others who are equally as crazy. But we all agree those people are crazy and refer to them as much.
Progressive values, meanwhile, trickle down into our everyday lives by way of the institutions they control. They disguise themselves as mainstream, so when your daughter’s therapist suggests they may need to “become” a boy or your son’s teacher tells him he has white male privilege, it’s seen as the new enlightened standard to follow.
What’s really happening is those neurotic Machiavellianists are trying to convert your kids to their political cause. It’s a danger no one will tell you about, but clearly exists. If you need a reminder, just look at what happened to Brown.
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