Sentiment is taken as a synonym for feeling/emotion and sentimentalism as an excess of emotion. That cannot be so. What is "an excess of emotion?" How much joy is too much? How much grief? Sentiment is a specific type of feeling: it is artificial, contrived; it is detached from reality. It is not a genuine encounter with the Real, but a subjective indulgence. It is a kind of saccharine fantasy, similar to pornography, a counterfeit version of the real thing.
In most forms it is often entertaining and harmless enough. Classic Disney movies are sentimental: the critters that befriend Cinderella and the pots-and-pans that assist Belle. In the 1950s we loved to watch Lassie, the collie who was heroic, wise, affectionate...and entirely sentimental. The inordinate love of pets is sentimental, a transference of (largely maternal) affection by lonely ones in a world of fractured families and communities.
But if sentimentality reaches beyond the domain of childhood entertainment and penetrates a politics, a culture and a religion, you have a problem. It is toxic when it masquerades as idealism, ethics, and piety.
The cultural liberalism of post-1965, along with its political and theological cousins, is best understood as a form of sentimentalism. It is a denial of the Real...the real world as sinful, evil and fallen. It is a feel-good, pollyanna fantasy that "I'm okay and you're okay!" That we are good people. That some of us need therapy. That we need to take power from the arrogant, privileged, wealthy, misogynist, homophobic, racist. conservative white men and everything will be okay.
In 1965, in the aftermath of Vatican II, Catholic practice of confession of sin virtually disappeared. There occurred a nearly total loss of the sense of evil and sin. Much of this is due to the prosperity, affluence, safety and indulgence that the Great Generation, relieved of the Depression and War, splurged on the Boomers, the pampered generation.
Liberalism is, then, an effete, soft, non-virile ethos. It is a kind of a contagion, that spreads culturally, largely anonymously, undermining the classic Christian view of life, by presenting a counterfeit as more kind, enlightened, welcoming, affirming. It specifically undermines masculine virtues of chastity, courage, humility and sobriety. It depletes virility of its integrity and energy by a faux-androgynous-sterile feminism that itself mimics toxic masculinity at its worst.
We would be better off to engage straightforward evil as in Nazism, Communism, and Jihadism. These are transparently evil, but at least they are not sentimental, they deal with evil, they are manly, they engage with the actual structure of a violent, vicious world. Liberalism is like the Commodus character portrayed by Joachim Phoenix in Gladiator. Maximus, played by Russel Crowe, deserved a stronger antagonist. Commodus is effeminate, incestuous towards his sister, cowardly, duplicitous and nauseatingly despicable. Liberalism would have us all become Maximus, unchaste and unmanly.
Let's consider the sentimentalism of liberalism in regard to: racism, homosexuality, and the death penalty.
Black Lives Matter
In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, a flood of anti-racist sentimentality submerged the country. He became an icon of holy innocence, of victimhood, of political purity. The police became the Gestapo. Public protest, in the midst of a pandemic that had required social distancing, became virtuous and violence against small businesses and government became acceptable. An explosion of crime happened in our cities and violated mostly the poor, especially blacks.
This sentimentality presented the Afro-American, especially the black man, as victim, as powerless, as castrated. The white cop as predator, dominant, invincible. It deepened the crisis of masculinity and paternity within the black community. It encouraged an ethos of victimhood, helplessness, resentment, discouragement, frailty, dependence and entitlement. It polarized the nation: setting poor white against poor black.
I spend my days in the black neighborhoods of Jersey City: I saw no support for this movement. People I know are busy working, surviving, raising families, practicing their faith. Support was seen mostly in the signs posted in affluent, suburban, liberal neighborhoods, by our successful, bourgeois elite who are entirely quarantined from real poverty, violence, and hardship. It does not spring from an actual, concrete, face-to-face encounter with those who suffer injustice. Virtue signaling! A kind of a purification ritual practiced by those who subconsciously are guilty about their unfair privilege and are desperate for relief.
Homosexuality
To the saccharine liberal imagination gay love is a lovely thing: monogamous, faithful, adoptive of children, sexually liberated, welcoming and affirming. No psychosis or delusion was ever so comforting, pleasant and fallacious!
Just start with the biological, the empirical. Monkeypox is now considered a societal emergency. 98% of the cases stem from male-to-male sexual intercourse. We don't need vaccines! We need all active homosexuals to abstain for one month. The epidemic will disappear. During that month, no one will die of the abstinence, the hospitals will not be overrun with abstainers. Everyone will be better off, especially the homosexuals. Fauci and the CDC would NEVER suggest such a thing! It would hurt feelings! It would be shaming! It would be homophobic!
That is not the only organic evidence of pathology and disorder. Gay Bowel Syndrome is the degeneration of the muscles/bone of the anus due to repeated penetration of an area not prepared for such. It is a direct result of the unnatural act of sodomy. Biological realities such as these must be viscerally denied by the sentimentality of liberalism.
What distinguishes the Gay Movement of the 1970s from the previous history of homosexuality is the indulgence, narcissism, and histrionic indignation characteristic of the broader liberal, Boomer generation. No "life and let live" or "don't ask, don't tell" will suffice! The righteous, raging demand is for attention, approval, and "pride": parades, rainbows, month-long celebrations.
Cultural and religious liberalism gushes with sentimentality for the LGBTQ agenda. "All are welcome here"banners hang on Church doors. These, like the BLM lawn signs, are another self-deceiving absolution for the bourgeois conscience awash in cohabitation, pornography, adultery, and a laundry list of disorders.
Capital Punishment
The repugnance for the death penalty is not the fruit of contemplation of suffering/evil in light of the Crucifixion. It is a sentiment of disgust, a sense of human dignity, from a viewpoint that is secular and forgetful of deep evil. The sentimental naivete includes:
-A confidence that modern prisons are able to provide protection from predators. In the real world prisons are often rife with violence: most men fear prison because they will be raped; gangs operate even across the nation; even guards are sometimes not safe.
-Deterrence is dismissed out of hand. Yet, we know of cases where criminals decided against murder because of the death penalty. Let's assume that a state like Texas executes 10 annually. If we found that between 5 and 15 murders, rapes or child molestations were deterred, would the tradeoff be worth it? I would think so!
-Retribution is misunderstood as revenge and not even considered. The two are polar opposites: the one a form of hatred and resentment; the other an act of justice, sober and truthful. There are crimes that deserve death. Imagine Putin were tried after this war. Does he deserve, in justice, death? I think so. Imagine a gang that serially molests, tortures and kills innocent women and children! Do they deserve, not in resentment but in justice, death? I think so. We will all face retribution at death: some in heaven, some in hell, many in purgatory. But the sentimental, insipid liberal imagination has a romanticized mercy, devoid of wrath/justice/truth, welcoming everyone into heaven. I don't think so!
-There are predators so dangerous they cannot be left in the general prison population. They must be secluded. But solitary confinement is itself a form of emotional torture for many. Might it not be more merciful to put such out of their agony with a swift execution? It is worth considering.
Conclusion
Cultural liberalism, like Maximus, is not a worthy antagonist. It is saccharine, effete, feeble, unchaste. It is sentimental. It has permeated the elite levels of our society. It is even widely influential in our Church. How do we engage it? We do not.
We do well to disengage. We do well to engage with the real Christ... in his manly, harsh, sober, heroic, steadfast, chaste, just, realistic, truthful love.
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