Responses to the Democratic debacle across the internet show that important lessons will be slow in learning for the center left. Typical might be comments like this:
I live in liberal land where the Mayor of LA and the Governor have already come out said they will enforce no fascist Presidential orders and my Senator just submitted a bill to ban the electoral college. I make enough that I'll greatly benefit from Trumps tax cut even if he ditches the Head of Household single parent deduction. Unless the secret police catch me making out with a drag queen, I'm pretty much safe. My kid is safe. I'm not being marginalized.
That's kinda the definition of privilege.
I think it's important to look at things like this and ask ourselves what could
have been done differently so that there would have been a different result.
Because, and I frankly don't give a toss what anyone says about muh white male
privilege - the outcome of this election was a fucking disaster. For all
kinds of people. Not just gays. Not just blacks. Not just
Latinos. Not just Muslims. Not just women. Not just LGBT
people. Not just the poor. Not just the working class. Not
just the middle class. Not just anybody who makes less than 500K/year.
All kinds of people.
When I look at the paragraph I just wrote, it occurs to me that a LOT of people would be vastly better off without a GOP presidency and a GOP congress than with them. More people than for whom the reverse would be true. So my question is: how did we get here?
We got here when the working class white males were smugly dismissed with "angry dudes" and "privilege." When an unemployed father in the rust belt was lectured for his "privilege" by a fucking 150K/year tenured black woman's studies professor in some shitty rag like the HuffPost.
We got here when BLM types attacked "white feminism" or crashed Gay Pride Parades, making other people's struggles all about them and bandying about accusations of "racism" and "privilege" for no other reason than that they know damn well it shames and silences people. Or it used to.
We got here when our news-feeds were innundated with crap like "Cis/het black males are the white people of black people"
We got here when Halloween costumes became "Cultural Appropriation" and equated with slavery and genocide.
We got here when compliments and civil greetings of women by men became stalking, harassment and rape culture.
We got here when white cisgender gay men were banished from campus LGBTQ groups for not being marginalized enough.
We got here when supporters of a presidential candidate who would have given the entire country universal health care, free college and a $15 minimum wage, if he could, were smugly dismissed as "Bernie Bro's" because they felt that real tangible economic benefits that would really help the most vulnerable were better things to base a voting decision on than some feminist blogger's vagina or African ancestors.
We got here when we were asked to ignore Clinton's abyssmal record of supporting regressive neoliberal legislation going all the way back to her husband's presidency.
None of the above are solid reasons for voting for Donald Trump. But they are valid reasons for NOT voting for Democrats either. And that was all Trump needed.
When I look at the paragraph I just wrote, it occurs to me that a LOT of people would be vastly better off without a GOP presidency and a GOP congress than with them. More people than for whom the reverse would be true. So my question is: how did we get here?
We got here when the working class white males were smugly dismissed with "angry dudes" and "privilege." When an unemployed father in the rust belt was lectured for his "privilege" by a fucking 150K/year tenured black woman's studies professor in some shitty rag like the HuffPost.
We got here when BLM types attacked "white feminism" or crashed Gay Pride Parades, making other people's struggles all about them and bandying about accusations of "racism" and "privilege" for no other reason than that they know damn well it shames and silences people. Or it used to.
We got here when our news-feeds were innundated with crap like "Cis/het black males are the white people of black people"
We got here when Halloween costumes became "Cultural Appropriation" and equated with slavery and genocide.
We got here when compliments and civil greetings of women by men became stalking, harassment and rape culture.
We got here when white cisgender gay men were banished from campus LGBTQ groups for not being marginalized enough.
We got here when supporters of a presidential candidate who would have given the entire country universal health care, free college and a $15 minimum wage, if he could, were smugly dismissed as "Bernie Bro's" because they felt that real tangible economic benefits that would really help the most vulnerable were better things to base a voting decision on than some feminist blogger's vagina or African ancestors.
We got here when we were asked to ignore Clinton's abyssmal record of supporting regressive neoliberal legislation going all the way back to her husband's presidency.
None of the above are solid reasons for voting for Donald Trump. But they are valid reasons for NOT voting for Democrats either. And that was all Trump needed.
Now obviously, I'm not the cry-in type. But I'm also not the one being marginalized. My partner is a pretty big Hillary supporter, both vocally and financially, and she's scared. She's scared about women's rights. Minorities are scared. Gay people are scared.
I hope the hysteria turns out to have been unwarranted and Trump turns out to
be more of a Nixonian moderate than /pol/ on 4chan in the White House. I
am sorry about your partner, [name redacted], and I hope that women's rights, minority
rights and gay rights come out of this unscathed. I don't mean to pick a
fight with you, or anyone, and I wish harm on none.
Problem is, plenty of harm was wished on me. Not by any of you personally, but by those who dismissed any disagreement with them as "angry white dudes", "privilege", "white/mansplaining" , "#killallwhitemen", etc. Now I know full well that none of the above have any actual teeth and pale in comparison to real oppression suffered by people of differing identities over the years. But then again, trigger warnings, safe spaces, misgendering and microaggressions also pale in comparison to real oppression suffered over the years too.
The problem was the smugness, the double standards, the glaring lack of self awareness, the hypocrisy, the sick competitive victimhood, the empty virtue signalling, the utter and complete lack of policy substance, the censorious mindset, the puritanism, the anti-heterosexualism, the manipulativeness, the flagrant weaponization of grievance, the arrogance and the entitlement masquerading as social justice - a bastardization of language that would make George Orwell cringe were he alive to see it. It's about recognizing your need for allies, and treating those allies with respect instead of spitting in their faces all the time because "privilege" or because "old white dudes" and then wondering why they abandon you in the crucial hour.
Come 2020, we'll be much more likely to get different results if the attitude is SOLIDARITY instead of "check your privilege." If the attitude is "an injury to one is an injury to all" instead of "I drink white male tears." What a farce! You're all going to learn the hard way that the people who drink white male tears do so out of crystal goblets. They're on Wall Street. In the Pentagon. In the State Department. In the offices of defense industry lobbyists. They're not on tumblr or buzzfeed. And they drink white female tears too. And black tears. And gay tears. And the drinking's looking to be pretty good for the next four years.
If you want to make the left great again, come check out places like this, view videos like this and read articles like this. Just for examples. There's hundreds more like them. But until then ...
On Nov. 8, 2016, the SJWs of America had their Red Wedding. And guess what?
Problem is, plenty of harm was wished on me. Not by any of you personally, but by those who dismissed any disagreement with them as "angry white dudes", "privilege", "white/mansplaining" , "#killallwhitemen", etc. Now I know full well that none of the above have any actual teeth and pale in comparison to real oppression suffered by people of differing identities over the years. But then again, trigger warnings, safe spaces, misgendering and microaggressions also pale in comparison to real oppression suffered over the years too.
The problem was the smugness, the double standards, the glaring lack of self awareness, the hypocrisy, the sick competitive victimhood, the empty virtue signalling, the utter and complete lack of policy substance, the censorious mindset, the puritanism, the anti-heterosexualism, the manipulativeness, the flagrant weaponization of grievance, the arrogance and the entitlement masquerading as social justice - a bastardization of language that would make George Orwell cringe were he alive to see it. It's about recognizing your need for allies, and treating those allies with respect instead of spitting in their faces all the time because "privilege" or because "old white dudes" and then wondering why they abandon you in the crucial hour.
Come 2020, we'll be much more likely to get different results if the attitude is SOLIDARITY instead of "check your privilege." If the attitude is "an injury to one is an injury to all" instead of "I drink white male tears." What a farce! You're all going to learn the hard way that the people who drink white male tears do so out of crystal goblets. They're on Wall Street. In the Pentagon. In the State Department. In the offices of defense industry lobbyists. They're not on tumblr or buzzfeed. And they drink white female tears too. And black tears. And gay tears. And the drinking's looking to be pretty good for the next four years.
If you want to make the left great again, come check out places like this, view videos like this and read articles like this. Just for examples. There's hundreds more like them. But until then ...
On Nov. 8, 2016, the SJWs of America had their Red Wedding. And guess what?
THE BERNIE BRO'S SEND THEIR REGARDS!
Pretty sweet article, hits all the check marks in the boxes... you've just won a new subscriber!
ReplyDeleteAwesome stuff.
ReplyDelete