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with few things to actually worry about and with very few responsibilities to other people. Unsurprisingly, folks who live sheltered existences - well-off young people, academics, politicians, media figures, celebrities - discover and manufacture oppression everywhere when there is none or are easily duped into believing in fanciful tales of woe. Many speculate it is out of guilt. I suspect that's true.

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I just couldn't identify a particular group to which I could classify you with the others.

Then again, you also imagine that I'm a Trump supporter.

"Many speculate it is out of guilt. I suspect that's true."

via GIPHY

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If you aren't complaining about inequality, agency, biodiversity, etc., you're probably a loser.

I don't know what it means exactly, but I plan on complaining about it several times tomorrow.

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One man's complaining is another man's agency, I suppose.

Agency.

Now, can I get a "hegemony," too?

I think those folks are seriously misguided and tone deaf, but the idealism is laudable. We live in society where we can actually feed everyone and provide them healthcare. We done a great job at equality and heterogeneity. The liberal push to be inclusive of those on the margins of even that admirably open society is impressive.

The problem is the methodology. They are trying to push people too far too quick, and calling them names when they won't comply. That's a recipe for regression.

I'm sorry. Did I venture astray from the topic? My bad.

Have you ever spoken with the folks you're referencing? Here are some firsthand observations, corroborated many times over by others who encounter them:

1. They advance these issues insofar as they relate back to themselves and insofar as they themselves are included within whatever oppressed group is at issue.
2. They fixate upon "identity" and "lived experiences." In other words, they fixate upon themselves and imagine that they experience things others do not. I suppose selfism could be and is construed as an ideal in a dysfunctional society, but not in a relatively healthy one.
3. They propagate and celebrate fragility, weakness, intolerance, ignorance. You have these remarkable scenes playing out all the time of truly privileged Americans cursing the very systems and people that placed them in a position to be whining like this in the first place. Then you have folks repeating the chants and mantras we all know about multiculturalism, yet few of these folks could tell you the first thing about most any of the "multitude" of cultures they claim to celebrate. Like most Americans, they don't know anything about history or literature or anything of historical and cultural significance. How can you celebrate and appreciate cultures if you know nothing about them, starting with your own? You'll need to post a lot more evidence to convince me that these deep humanitarians have pushed civilization forward and are trying to push it even further ahead.

You can choose to believe that heterogeneity advances a society, but if solidarity is important, it works against that if we're discussing multiculturalism. The societies with the greatest solidarity are homogenous ones. You really have to be carefully taught not to believe that in order to set aside an obvious observation.

1. The people I've met don't fall into the "nontraditional" categories they support. The gay guys I know vehemently support gay rights, but that is as old as the hills. People defending all the other gender definitions are just good-looking heteros trying to be nice.

2. So your 2 really relies on the fallacy of your 1. People can have opinions about situations that are no their own.

3. The "chanters" are the idealists. The young guys that bang hot chicks, but decry the inequality to those other guys that want to wear dresses, have big boobs, but only want to sleep with really old asian women or hampsters.

Your entire premise presupposes that those demanding equality for odd folk are only the odd folk. I do not think that is true.

They are "oppression fleas." Many label themselves "allies," so that they may also grab a share of the victimhood/grievance pie. You simultaneously have the "Oppression Olympics," where a hierarchy develops of which group of oppressed people is most oppressed. So, for instance, while white women are oppressed, they are far less oppressed than black, lesbian, transgender paraplegic Muslims. Your one way up the victimhood pyramid is by glomming on to one of the higher-ranked groups.

I think I can sum this like this:

1. Fixating on identity and "lived experiences" is a self-absorbed pursuit. It isn't puzzling why these folks are thus so obnoxious.
2 Our subjective experiences are often distorted from reality. This is something folks like you often recognize in "white males" who believe themselves oppressed. Trust me, it happens often with non-white males and their belief in their own oppression and suffering, as well.
3. Fixating on our identities divides rather than unites people.
4. Aside from child abuse victims and victims of human trafficking, no group in this country is "oppressed" by any historical nor any current standards, relative to other societies.
5. Projecting and celebrating fragility, weakness, demanding safety be placed above all else, produces weaker people who, in turn, manufacture oppression and grievances to sustain the angle they've contrived. That's essentially the modern civil rights and the modern feminist movements. They long ago ran out of legitimate discrimination to protest and are left with either trivial "problems" that aren't problems or concocting immense conspiracy theories about cops deliberately targeting black people, or judges, prosecutors, school administrators and teachers conspiring to suspend and expel black students, or men conspiring to pay women less money, implicit bias, white supremacists on the march, et cetera. Is it really any wonder we now get hoaxes exposed on a daily basis from these folks?

They are idealists. I agree with you to the extent that these "idealists" are in danger of sacrificing "the good" in pursuit of "the perfect". I don't agree with you that everyone that supports these causes want to be victims. That's about as sound a theory as the old saw that all Democrats are looking for a handout from the government. Do you really think Conor, Lance or me are looking for handouts from the government? Not all abolitionists were African-American.

I'm not trying to describe the millions of people like you who have some tangential awareness of these activists and assume the best about their intentions. I'm speaking of the folks squarely within this belief system. Are they universally oriented towards self-obsession, authoritarianism and perpetual victimhood? Of course not. I have dear friends who will express sympathies for the folks within this belief system and assume that these activists are, for example, just interested in achieving "equity" for oppressed peoples.

I don't argue that poor people are all looking for handouts. As a matter of fact, I often mention to students and adults like that many of the hardest-working folks I've known have been people who don't make much money. At times, you will hear me comment on the sloth of many of our wealthy folks, actually. I don't think that's a particularly good comparison.

I also don't think the comparison of white abolitionists or white civil rights activists in the past is a good one, either. It appears good superficially, but when you dig in to the belief system of the current crop, you recognize that the current folks have fundamentally different premises from which they operate. I've listed them many times and those dogmas sometimes run 100% counter to the folks from the past you mention.

I think you are mostly right on a lot of this stuff. So, no need to carry further.

But you did touch on a topic I find really interesting. How do we communicate to our young dingbat friends that they are inadvertently pushing the world in the direction completely opposite of their intentions? Some (not all) of the things you list as excesses of the progressive movement do, in fact, alienate some are otherwise sympathetic to these causes. For example, one of Obama's biggest disappointments to me was the degree to which he endorsed the bathroom gender issues. His other biggest was the HHS birth control stuff. It's thos kinds of things that unnecessarily embolden and strengthen the caucus that wants to move us back to 1958.

Treat young adults like adults rather than infantilizing them.

All the stuff Jonathan Haidt discusses:





Here is the organization he started:


Link: https://heterodoxacademy.org/

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We can all agree about obvious things, right? Not only did he express disgust with all of our fighting with each other, he expressed a bit of disdain and almost outrage...as if we don't really know how bad things can get...like we are all acting like children...and almost insulting people who deal with far worse and don't act so badly. His emotion in expressing the point gave me pause.

Witnessed a few glimpses of his Government’s brutality against dissenters.

Polarized US politics is unhealthy, but nothing close to oppression.

bitching and claiming that Orange “at least gives us a chance”. You would think we ruined as a nation in 2016 to hear you guys talk.

Things can get a whole lot worse here.

I always knew we were still better than 3rd world countries. But, I also knew we were squandering it with World War II level (existential crisis level) spending every year during peacetime, while doubling the size of the CFR every few years, increasing the power of the Executive at the expense of the Legislative.... I didn't fear for me. I feared for the America my children and their children would have...less republican (small r), less able to do good having mortgaged its future for silly expenses. Trump is not fixing the spending (mostly because the GOP won't let him). But, Trump is at least making me feel better about SCOTUS, and if you do have some conservatism left in you, you should be happy about that.

There is very little traditional conservatism left in the party of Orange.

I was speaking to your the sky is falling mentality that was on full display for a year.

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He’s a huge borrower, big spender who is also a protectionist, isolationist, and xenophobe. He’s a culture warrior and SCOTUS appointer to keep his base loyal.

To pretend he a conservative is a joke.

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wish to make the country more like the countries that th immigrants are fleeing.

I have no regrets re: Trump. You?

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The further he takes things, the fewer regrets there are to be had.

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