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So, I have once again made the fatuous mistake of trying to converse with hardcore progressives on FB. I honestly tried to be open and fair, which was stupid but seemed to begin well. I probably shouldn't have even touched a thread where an old college friend of mine, who is a very nice and very progressive person, asked people to talk about their feelings now that Trump was about to take over and start hunting lesbians for sport. There was a great deal of feeling unsafe and crying about lost futures and WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE US, and let's just say it went slowly downhill until I got chastised for insensitivity and had the sense to bow out before I got compared to Hitler.
I'm still not totally clear about why people are still acting this catatonically upset two months on. If I am to take these claims at face value, they are feeling and acting about how I would six months after my mother died in a horrible wreck. If Hillary had won, the hardcore conservatives would be forming militias, stockpiling ammo, and doing other demented but arguably sorta constructive things. Their general mentality would be "**** THAT WORTHLESS WHORE WE'LL SHOW HER." These folks are, well, hugging their teddies in the safe space. Why?
The simplest, but most mean-spirited explanation is that this is a manifestation of what the Atlantic last year summed up as "victim culture," wherein Young People These Days compete to be the most oppressed and therefore most entitled to attention and vengeance from an external source of authority or validation, yadda yadda. In other words, it's a kind of play-act. But that would require me to believe that it's all basically insincere. So I'm going to proceed on the assumption that this is sincere, but that these people are not the utter ninnies that would seem to imply.
My most promising theory is that these folks really believe in something like MLK's "moral arc of the universe," wherein it's somehow natural for things to continually get better a little bit at a time, with some minor backsliding to be expected. Hillary was a sequel to Obama, a pinnacle of the Fezzian moral vision where the first woman president succeeds the first black president and rights for everyone get all the way better--basically, they're approaching the liberal-prog singularity. Past the curve in the hockey stick. But then, somehow, a parody of Republicanism so grotesque that even Republicans don't like him swoops in and steals her place. They're upset about their jeopardized gay marriages and abortions and Hamilton performances and stuff, but more than that, they're upset because this upsets their understanding of how the story is supposed to go. The universe is all wrong now. The math isn't adding up anymore. They feel like I feel when human beings do the right thing without profit motive, but much more so. They've attempted to make it right by inventing horse**** about Russian "hacking" or trying to subvert the Electoral College (or just blaming it, like a three million margin on the gilded turd is something to be proud of). I thought it was about Trump himself, but I wonder if it's more like disappointed believers redoing their math from Revelation so the end of the world prediction might not be a total fizzle after all.
Your thoughts? Also, for extra credit, is there an interpretation of the whole "privilege" concept that is not essentially about constructing an inverted status hierarchy and forcing the less crippled *****es to know their place when the big kids are talking?
I'm still not totally clear about why people are still acting this catatonically upset two months on. If I am to take these claims at face value, they are feeling and acting about how I would six months after my mother died in a horrible wreck. If Hillary had won, the hardcore conservatives would be forming militias, stockpiling ammo, and doing other demented but arguably sorta constructive things. Their general mentality would be "**** THAT WORTHLESS WHORE WE'LL SHOW HER." These folks are, well, hugging their teddies in the safe space. Why?
The simplest, but most mean-spirited explanation is that this is a manifestation of what the Atlantic last year summed up as "victim culture," wherein Young People These Days compete to be the most oppressed and therefore most entitled to attention and vengeance from an external source of authority or validation, yadda yadda. In other words, it's a kind of play-act. But that would require me to believe that it's all basically insincere. So I'm going to proceed on the assumption that this is sincere, but that these people are not the utter ninnies that would seem to imply.
My most promising theory is that these folks really believe in something like MLK's "moral arc of the universe," wherein it's somehow natural for things to continually get better a little bit at a time, with some minor backsliding to be expected. Hillary was a sequel to Obama, a pinnacle of the Fezzian moral vision where the first woman president succeeds the first black president and rights for everyone get all the way better--basically, they're approaching the liberal-prog singularity. Past the curve in the hockey stick. But then, somehow, a parody of Republicanism so grotesque that even Republicans don't like him swoops in and steals her place. They're upset about their jeopardized gay marriages and abortions and Hamilton performances and stuff, but more than that, they're upset because this upsets their understanding of how the story is supposed to go. The universe is all wrong now. The math isn't adding up anymore. They feel like I feel when human beings do the right thing without profit motive, but much more so. They've attempted to make it right by inventing horse**** about Russian "hacking" or trying to subvert the Electoral College (or just blaming it, like a three million margin on the gilded turd is something to be proud of). I thought it was about Trump himself, but I wonder if it's more like disappointed believers redoing their math from Revelation so the end of the world prediction might not be a total fizzle after all.
Your thoughts? Also, for extra credit, is there an interpretation of the whole "privilege" concept that is not essentially about constructing an inverted status hierarchy and forcing the less crippled *****es to know their place when the big kids are talking?
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