‘Progressive Liberal’ wrestler wants more discourse, less disagreement

Pro Wrestler Daniel Richards has worn the name of the “Progressive Liberal” for three years, ever since Donald Trump was nothing but a presidential candidate.

And now, the fearless fighter wrestles his way through the reddest areas of the country, stirring up emotions both in the wrestling ring and outside of it. In fact, as he told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson, he has made his audiences so mad that people have tried to climb over the rail into the ring, and elderly women have sworn at him.

“This year, especially, it seems to have gotten worse,” he said.

The Progressive Liberal has found these political feelings to be especially heightened with young adults, and even kids. This highlights what he finds to be a dangerous problem for the future generations of Americans — a population of people who just repeat what their parents tell them rather than forming their own political opinions.

“It’s stuff that’s been indoctrinated through their parents because, I mean, children are influenced by their parents,” he said. “We have a long way to go with states in the South, I think, before we have any kind of intellectual revolution, because that kind of ignorance, in my opinion, is passed down from generation to generation.”

The Progressive Liberal does not just grin and bear it, however. He enjoys riling up the audience as much as they enjoy screaming at him, and he plays with them by throwing their own typically conservative buzzwords back at them.

“The buzzword I can use for them is that they’re ‘easily triggered,’ so it doesn’t take a lot to get them all worked up,” he said.

Two years after the fateful 2016 election, he still regularly body-slams people while shouting, “Hillary!” because “we still have a president talking about his 2016 election victory, which he claims is the largest in history, but smart people understand that’s not true.”

Politics are far from a laughing matter for the Progressive Liberal, however. With a passion for the issues, he is genuinely concerned about the amount of vicious political discord in modern America, and hopes that people can get to a place where they can at least peacefully disagree with one another, and at best work together.

This begins with paying attention to a variety of news outlets and opening oneself up from a narrow “bubble.” Richards said that he does not just watch more liberally-biased channels, but also tunes in to FOX News to “hear what the other side is saying.”

“We hear what we want to hear, and when it agrees with us, that’s the source of news or information that we constantly turn to, instead of having more of an open dialogue and civil discourse,” he said.

Change needs to come, first and foremost, from those with the most political power, according to Richards. It is time for members of Congress to start reaching across the aisle to understand one another and compromise, setting an example for ordinary citizens to follow.

“We’re going to have differences of opinion — I mean, people have differences of opinion within their own party,” he said. “But it’s like, ‘How do you work together in spite of those differences, how can you be partisan and ultimately work for the people?’ That should be the idea, but we are far from that as a society, and I think that’s a direct reflection of how we are at the top with our leadership.”

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