If we lived in a polar world where the two sides agreed on their respective polarity, perhaps life would be simple. But alas, even our polarity is ill-defined. The fault of this lies with… drum roll... the (recently illiberalized) liberals.
Conservatives might often make convenient villains, but they are so very clear in their beliefs - whatever they might be. Pro gun, anti-reproductive rights; pro Jesus, anti Muhammad; pro large flags, anti immigration. One can disagree, disprove, or just find abhorrent their stances or their arguments, but it’s easy enough to map their world view.
For modern liberals, on the other hand, things are not so simple. The complexity lies in the liberals’ propensity for and approach toward cultural discourse.
Pick up an issue of the New York Times (pick up, HAH!), and you might find anywhere between 10-50% of the article titles refer to some cultural subgroup. e.g. “White Suburban Rich Kids Are Increasingly More Stressed By Standardized Testing”, “Black Elderly Are Continually Excluded From Exclusive Nursing Homes Hit Hardest By Covid”, “How To Celebrate Hanukkah If You Are A Quarter Jewish”. On one hand, such articles have the potential to give a more complex view of our current sociological state. On the other hand, any hope for such complexity is shredded to bits by a rule that modern liberals have adopted in their cultural discourse: NEVER NEGATIVE!
I don’t know the history of NEVER NEGATIVE. I suppose social media is to blame: The like button becoming a paragon of communication; reinforced by a mutual disdain for “the Trolls”; further reinforced by the circle jerk of positivity that our post-and-share economy depends on. But regardless, when it comes to liberal cultural discourse, one’s best bet is to either be positive, or to shut the fuck up. The alternative would be to “shame the victims”, be called a “racist”, “sexist”, “chauvinist”, etc.
This shutting up shouldn’t be so hard. Most of us don’t really need to spend our time focusing on negative aspects of things we probably are not experts on.
And it wouldn’t be so hard, if liberals didn’t choose to nearly exclusively focus their energy on cultural discourse. But when headline after headline, and conversation after conversation, are framed as cultural discourse, we find ourselves telling our own brains to “shut the fuck up” way too often .
A cruel system has thus appeared. This system chooses to focus on disparate cultural/ethnic/racial groups. But it disallows any value judgements (even those based in some kind of reasoning and analysis). Because: “who are you to judge?’’ “it is not your place” “you don’t have the shared experience” “power this” “power that” “power power power”. Even calling bullshit (what should be the one, true, inalienable right) can put somebody in precarious territory.
I am not saying that power is not important. But, power is complicated - really, really complicated. Power is relative. It’s inconsistent. It’s mutli-layered. It’s complicated politically, financially, culturally, socially. Complicated, complicated, complicated.
“It’s complicated” usually requires recognition and analysis of some negatives. Responsibilities are too often shared. History can be a dick that way. Unfortunately, NEVER NEGATIVE disallows “it’s complicated”. And consequently, it disallows the cultural groups any and all agency. Because if one can’t have responsibility, one can’t have agency. At least I think this is true, but haven’t thought through all the angles.
The bright side is that there is no longer any space for overt racism(and other isms) in such discourse. The dark side is that the discourse is dishonest, stressful, and dangerous (from an ACLU perspective). Sure, the bright side is really nice...
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