— And though he does his best to present its illiberal aspects as at least minimally intellectually justifiable — using perverse grievance politics and self-fulfilling prophecies about power relations themselves belied by the outsized wielding of power over discourse the self-styled oppressed and marginalized possess — in the end what is revealed is what I’ve been writing about here consistently since the inception of this site back in 2001, and before that, in academic fora: identity politics can only lead in one direction, and that’s to a kind of police state for speech and thought.
It is totalitarianism masquerading as liberation, and as far as it follows the Marxist critique of free speech, it is anti-American, fundamentally illiberal, and hostile to Enlightenment notions concerning the marketplace of ideas and competing claims to knowledge. It is the act of the self-styled “dispossessed” — who have repositioned themselves as the very control mechanism of discourse they pretend to fight against — congregating into a kind of pseudo-academic goon squad and mental lynching party.
It is, in a word, revolting. Or, if you prefer, pathetic.
I’ve long counseled many on the right who believed solicitousness, deference, and capitulation, at least in practice, to these gambits was a way to mitigate them, that all they were accomplishing in fact was emboldening even more of such behavior, devolving inevitably to the point of ludicrousness — where purported microaggressions are treated as significant breaches of decorum and worthy of shunning, with even the various factions within the left’s identity politics movement eating their own. I mean, patriarchal-racist syllabi? Seriously? The frightened silence some of the erstwhile proponents of controlled speech now engage in is, perhaps, the only real benefit of the radical surrender of free speech as a justifiable ideal.
To combat these occurrences of being surreally assailed as a bigot of some stripe or another, most people choose…well, not to. They fall silent, instead. Slip off the radar. And yet the only real effective way to defeat such nonsense is to point at every naked emperor in his or her (or transitioning) pique of high dudgeon and laugh hardily at the flaccid, drooping bits he/she/they? has chosen to display as socially constructed emblems of their own empowerment, but which in reality are just naked, impotent, barren folds of ugliness.
In short, when you allow these people to define and determine your meaning, you’ve lost.
…Which, sadly, can — in certain scenarios — make innocuous actions like calling your dog, if he happens to be a boy, and someone is around who might take that wrong, an act of racist aggression requiring public contrition.
Or so I’ve heard. But then, I’d have to take a reader poll to know for sure what position to take on the issue.
My advice now, after years of preaching the same thing? Embrace your inner Joshua / WOPR: “the only winning move is not to play.”
(h/t Terry H)
Well, you can choose between two paradigms for interpersonal relationships: “check your privilege” or “love one another.”
Shouldn’t be too hard to suss out the long-term effects of deploying each model.
Beethoven’s choice.
Mandy Marcotte, again in the Emily Litella as toxic bitch role.
All Leftism is toxic. It poisons everything it touches.
Beautiful, C-C-Connie!
I still think the best answer is just to throw their silly, rhetorically null nonsense back in their faces.
“Thanks so much for queersplaining that to us all. It’s nice to have an all-knowing arbiter to tell us what we’re allowed to say or believe.”
“Sure, tell me again what it’s like to be a straight white male. Like you could ever really know the first thing about what it’s like to be me.”
Show no fear, show no mercy, and above all else — show no respect. The only rational response to most of these mewling half-wits is “That’s very interesting, dear. Now go play with your toys while the grownups finish talking.”
above all else — show no respect
Too good not to repeat.
Now embacing my outer j-j-j-j-j-oshua…
brb
*r-r-r-r-r-r-r*
where’s that steely dan fetish, now that we really need him?
*fellow*
If only Connie had had autotune…
…
Plus, free autotune for all the peops!
Left-wing prof is at a loss:
“Soon to be excommunicated” left-wing prof, that is.
Like I said in the post: the one plus to all this is that they’re eating their own. As they must.
So long as we don’t give a shit and don’t listen to the “adults” telling us how “unhelpful” we are for not recognizing the “realities” of a culture run by leftist cant — we do, we just dismiss it — we may just come out looking swell here.
Of course, our betters on “our side” will do all they can to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, particularly if it makes them look “nuanced” or “high-minded” in their own self-serving estimations.
Gosh, that sure does look like your bed. And you and all of your illiberal liberal friends made it all by yourselves, didn’t you? Guess what that means?
di,
I noticed that the prof says this:
And has his comments CLOSED!
Oh, the irony.
This is my kind cannibalism!
Figuratively, I’m watching this and eating popcorn.
Literally, I’m reading it and eating pretzels.
I bought popcorn that, I discovered too late, says not to use the popcorn setting on the microwave.
Damn fascist popcorn.
This has everything to do with the way that no one gave two shits about the owner clearing the halls of lily white losers from TNR.
That’s it and it’s nothing else.
Everyone laughed about their privileged outrage about Foer getting the heave ho and they finally realized they weren’t running jack shit.
Chait has learned nothing other than his place in the new order of things.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he thinks. I was supposed to be the one handing out the discipline.
Leftists do this shit. It’s what they do. The fact they’re too dewy-eyed initially to notice the consequences of their earlier participation in the madness of the crowds doesn’t particularly move me.
Perhaps they can sit in the gulag and pine away for a better revolution what might have been if it wasn’t for these pesky humans always messing up their brilliant schemes.
For a group of people who believe in the magical power of words, incantations, they seem to forget the part about not calling up that which you can’t put down, a lot.
And has his comments CLOSED!
Oh, the irony.
More like a performative, or the prevention of one. He’s just described the feral attacks he’s witnessed and doesn’t see any reason to provide the Westboro SJWs with a forum to obliviously go right ahead and prove his point.
Ad infinitum.
I’m sure they’re giving him plenty of grief in other forums.
Yup. Right there in his own bed.
national soros radio did a blah blah blah thumbsucker on chait’s piece, which is interesting only in that it reveals the npr propaganda whoresluts are feeling a lil defensive
here’s a wee small taste
i.e., everywhere, increasingly
lol
if you failshit americans were prone to coming up with great ideas together in “mixed company” there’d be some fucking evidence by now
“Getting eaten last is still getting eaten.”
#ThingsJonathanChaitJustRealizedButHasntLearnedAnythingFrom
what i like about this construction is that both of these examples involved real actual attacks
on the right the word “attacks” has no meaning anymore
it can mean a real attack like swatting or a terrorist bombing of cartoonists or it can mean a bad movie review of a Clint Eastwood movie or it can mean “someone said something bad about Sarah Palin in an internet comment”
you have to read carefully to see if they’re actually talking about a real attack or just making pretendsies
Substance is what matters, hamster. Those who pretend to sit at the grown-ups table are expected to criticize on substance, with substantive arguments.
Slamming someone just because she reminds you of someone you don’t like isn’t substance.
People haven’t got past tribalism yet, which is why much “political discussion” is just people screaming “my tribe, not your tribe” at each other.
The poor professor is deeply invested in his tribe, and isn’t going to get away from the screaming, because the tribe is all about the screaming.
The problem is, tribes are more powerful than individuals. You either need a tribe that respects individuals (likely temporarily) or you need to be more powerful than the tribe.
Which is why there will probably be a lot of screaming “my tribe,” for an awful long time.
i can’t sit at the grown-up table today Mr. McGehee cause of today is where i just do bulletproof coffee in the morning and fast til early afternoon
and then it’s just black beans for the rest of the day
right now it’s my only day where i really do any kind of particular dietary regimen
anyways you’re not supposed to slam people just cause they remind you of someone – you have to do substantive critiquing on them
but sometimes you don’t have the time or the energy to do substantive critiquing
it’s a real conundrum, and one we’ll probably be discussing far into the future, not unlike the discussion about tribes that Mr. Merovign identifies
“you have to read carefully to see if they’re actually talking about a real attack or just making pretendsies”
You are describing a third grade reading skill.
Determination of context to identify the author’s intended use of a term, be it literal, figurative or some specialized colloquial usage is no mysterious enigma nor cheating, nor a malfunction, nor an excuse for the deployment of hyper-pedantry to automatically dismiss arguments or observations. It’s what separates literature from being descriptive code.
” He said his mom would skin him alive but I doubted she was capable of such barbarism.”
i agree 100% Mr. dinosaur person
That’s when you have to choose between opining anyway, or being taken seriously.
From Around the Blogroll
Via Robert Stacey Stacy McCain’s post, The First Rule of Feminism, I found this gem: I Aborted My Baby – Because it was a Boy Over the past 3 years, I have lost many friends, and several of my own family members have completely cut off communicat…
it’s like when you have to pick from going two different routes – you might pick one route that doesn’t go near anywhere you can buy coffee, which will save you some money sure but what if you really wanted some coffee?
But it my experience you have to just pick and make the best of it Mr. McGehee.
And what the fuck is “RACIST DOUCHE CANOE BEHAVIOUR” anyways?
*in* my experience I mean
Something European, apparently.
When you’re a racial supremacist on a river and you need a shower…why not try the racist douche canoe from Wammo(TM)? It’s like a frisbee or hula hoop only it’s hygenic too.
it’s like a real thing Mr. dinosaur person
even if it sounds like something a 13 year old girl made up
you can buy t-shirts
arguing against leftist “not a very pc thing to say” culture whilst you’re being stalked by fearsome misperception-implanting conservative buzzwords is a special kind of precious
Shit. Leftists themselves appropriated the word liberal because the more true National Socialist American Workers Party abbreviation had undesirable historical connotations.
Meh. Dickbutt is a real thing too. Being a real thing is hardly a seal of quality.