An explanation of Thatcher derangement syndrome

Those of us who are old enough to remember successful conservative leaders like Reagan, Churchill, and Menzies, are aware that while they may have been unpopular on the left, the left had the maturity and adulthood to act with the respect and courtesy they themselves would feel entitled to.

The degree of vitriol heaped on Margaret Thatcher since her death has come as a surprise to many people.  While always held in disdain by the neurotic left, none of their antics while she was living has matched the absolute orgy of deranged celebratory temper tantrums that have occurred in the last few days.

Some of these behaviors are the result of the left moving away from its traditional ‘working class’ roots toward its current domination by academics, lawyers, the professional political class, union officials and faux intellectuals.  It still clings to the workers for electoral support but in the new paradigm, they are to toe the line and accept what they are told when spoken down to.

Brendan O’Neill in today’s Aussie has a great analysis of this phenomenon: 

… All the traits in Thatcher that Thatcher-bashers claim to hate can be found in politicians of all persuasion. But it's only Thatcher's name that is said with a sneer; who is described as "evil"; who is said to have "poisoned Britain" and permanently changed the British people's moral make-up through, in the words of The Independent, "implanting the gene of greed in the British soul". Why? 

Because Thatcher-bashing isn't really linked to anything Thatcher did. Rather, it springs from the failures of the Thatcher-bashers, who have transformed Thatcher into an awesomely powerful, mind-controlling villainess as a way of explaining away their own isolation and disarray. 

The ferocious loathing leftists have for Thatcher is directly proportional to the paucity of their influence over people. 

As their intellectual and electoral fortunes declined, and their aloofness increased, so their fantasy of Thatcher as the omnipotent warper of the little people's minds and destroyer of traditions intensified. They project their own failures on to Thatcher and her soul-remoulding superpowers. The word itself, "Thatcher", always said with disdain, has become the Left's catch-all explanation for why it isn't taken seriously by the masses anymore. 

Throughout the 80s, as chunks of Britain's working-class voters abandoned the decrepit Labour Party and annoyed the hell out of the bien pensant classes by being vulgarly materialistic, it became fashionable to argue that these plebs must have been brainwashed by that mistress of might. 

Radical leftists came up with a theory of "authoritarian populism" to describe Thatcher's ability to win working-class support.  They viewed working-class Tory voters not as rational political beings but as cretins who had been mentally kidnapped by the hypnotic Iron Lady. 

They hated the aspirant working classes not only because they turned their back on Labour, but because they rejected the non-materialistic values of their betters in the Left set. They were described as "culturally barren and mildly brutish". …