Liberal Projection: The Politics of The Purge

The Purge is not a good film. It's totally derivative. It adds nothing original or compelling to the films it copies. And frankly, it just wasn't very interesting. What is interesting, however, is how it twists ideologies to present a false view of conservatism. Sadly, this is all too common with liberals, that they project their own worst traits onto conservatives.

The Purge is a sort of horror movie, sort of politicized action movie which attacks American conservatives basically for being religious Nazis. The story is as follows: America has been taken over by a group called the New Founding Fathers of America. They are a mix of Tea Party types and Religious Right. On the surface, they've turned America into a sort of Stepford. To keep Stepford happy and clean (and white), the New Founding Fathers of American created "the purge." The purge is a single night each year when everyone is allowed to go crazy and kill and rob and rape anyone they want... kind of like Festival in the Star Trek episode "Return of the Archons." This idea, ostensibly, comes from a mix of psychobabble about giving people an outlet and supposed conservative ideology about purity and efficiency and making sure that only the strong, productive, pure people control America. That's why it is loudly implied that the New Founding Fathers want everyone to wipe out the homeless, the undesirables, and minorities. That's the premise.

As the story opens, it's purge night. Ethan Hawke has just sealed up his house behind his security system. Suddenly, a black man appears at his door... blech, a NEGRO! He's being chased by some wholesome rich white kids who dress like Mormons and talk like the Amish with "thou" and "thee" tossed in a lot -- a typical bit of Hollywood anti-Religious stereotyping. Said dirty minority gets into the house because Hawke's kids (particularly his disloyal, liberal daughter) are weak on the whole culling the turds mentality and actually see humans as deserving of rights. Pathetic. Hawke is then put into a hard spot -- turn over the black gentleman to be murdered or the rich kids will kill his family. Doing as all conservatives (and no liberals) would do, he opts to turn over said dirty minority.

Anyway, things don't go right. Soon the rest of Hawke's family have turned away from his button-down, white conservative worldview of culling black people, and they too want to protect this gentleman. Hawke, who clearly lacks true faith in conservatism, decides they are right and refuses. He then fights the kids. But the kids are just the beginning. See, rich conservatives are notoriously greedy and jealous, so Hawke's neighbors are hunting them too. They want to punish Hawke for his success compared to them. Damn conservatives!

Ok, stop. I can't take any more of this. This is bullship. None of this is conservatism... it's liberalism.

I can't think of a single conservative, even on the fringes, who have ever suggested purging society of undesirables. Yet, that has been the history of liberalism. In America, it was liberal justices who endorsed Eugenics. It was liberal presidents like Jefferson who represented slaveholders and engaged in the enslavement of Indians, see e.g. Jackson. It's the conservatives who wanted government to have less power over people. It was FDR who put loyal Americans into camps because they were "undesirables," i.e. Germans, Italians and Japanese. It's inner-city liberals who sent almost every black male in prison today to prison. Civil libertarians have fought all of this, and conservatives who come from libertarian or religious backgrounds have fought every step. And let's not forget that socialists, i.e. slightly fringey liberals, rounded up and purged people in Europe, Russia, China, Cambodia and a dozen other places. Show me a single purge led by a conservative ("liberal" in European parlance) government. And whose supporters are constantly having to apologize for suggesting an end to rule of law, making death threats to conservative candidates, or flooding twitter with rape comments whenever a conservative woman gains prominence?

Moreover, it's fascinating how the real motive behind the purge quickly becomes greed and envy and spite, and how this is attributed to the conservative cause. Spite and greed are antithetical to conservatism, which seeks to leave people alone, but are the very basis of modern liberalism. Riddle me this: which party screams about people taking more than their fair share and rails against "the rich" as a matter of policy? I'll give you a hint, they ain't conservatives.

This is the problem with liberalism. Liberals love to grant themselves a world of good traits they haven't earned (like a deep love of charity none of them ever seem to perform except with other people's money or tolerance, but only for views of which they approve... which ain't tolerance) and they project their own worst traits on the opposition. This is why you can't argue with liberals. If you point out their flaws or the damage they cause, they will simply accuse you of being the real cause of the consequences of their own actions. This film is a classic example of that. Here is a suppose conservative government that acts in ways which fly in the face of conservatism, and the film then uses its made up reality to chastise conservatives. That's crap.

As an aside, the first time I noticed this was actually in a John Carpenter movie. Carpenter is a big time liberal. And in the 1990s, Carpenter decided to remake Escape from New York as Escape From L.A. The movie is a turd, but here's the point. The villain in the film is the President of the United States, who has taken over the country on behalf of the Religious Right. Having done so, he tries to turn the country into a more "moral America." He does this by... banning smoking, alcohol, red meat, guns, profanity, and non-Christian religions. WTF?!

Think about this. To make his right-wing villain, Carpenter assigns him political views that all come from the left. Seriously, which side wants to ban smoking, alcohol, red meat and guns? Which side has passed laws making profanity a hate crime? Which side wants to ban religious expression? Those are all leftist causes and they always have been. Yet, Carpenter recognizes these things are wrong, so he assigns them to conservatives. That's ridiculous.

This is why liberals are so blind to the world. They can't recognize their own behavior, whether good or bad, and instead they simply claim good behaviors they don't perform and disclaim bad behaviors in which they engage, and they compartmentalize it all. I guarantee you that the same John Carpenter who sees a red meat, gun grabbing character as a villain will happy advocate banning both "for the public good" without ever recognizing the inherent contradiction.

This is yet another reason conservatives need to join the culture machine, to start portraying liberals in their real light and break their ability to idealize themselves. In the meantime, we need to call out films like The Purge for wrongly portraying liberalism as conservatism.

Thoughts?