Showing posts with label Bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bullying. Show all posts

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Social Justice Warfare

This past week I came across the following comment.  The source was declared to be unknown, or I would credit the author.  However, it encapsulates every stray thought I have ever had on the subject...putting them together in a way that seems remarkably powerful.  As I said, I would honor the writer if I knew who he or she was...and if I should ever get that information, I will edit this to provide the proper honor.  I hope you appreciate this as much as I did:



“We are fighting to end hate, to unite as one and love each other. We are fighting to be treated right without discrimination and for everyone to have equal opportunities.”

Nonsense. You have no quantifiable metrics for injustice, so you have no victory conditions (for a very simplified example, when blacks hold X% of all engineering jobs and are only Y% of all prisoners, racism is ended). That would be fine by itself, but you believe in fighting injustice with injustice (gays have historically been denied gay marriage? let’s get random CEOs fired for opinions they held six years ago). You don’t seek converts, you seek to punish and bully – straight white males who disagree with you must be purged and publicly humiliated. Even the jihadists will spare you if you convert; no apology or future correction will satisfy a SJW.

I could forgive that too if you weren’t all hypocrites and liars. Your treatment of women and minority dissenters is appalling; if they don’t want you acting on their behalf, that’s their choice, not “internalized patriarchy” or whatever. You rob them of moral agency. When called out for these behaviors (as you always insist on calling out others), you lie. You strawman your opponents (criticized a woman? misogynist!), you group them with the worst (you’re a gamer? you’re as bad as the anonymous rape threateners!) and when confronted with your own flaws, you restate them less threateningly (motte and bailey argument). You phrase all arguments as Kafka traps (disagreeing with your assertion that we are evil is taken as proof that we’re evil). You publish manipulated and misleading statistics, and then lambast anyone who questions them.

You insist on vigilante justice against random acts of the week for your two-minute hate. Why is it the NFL’s business to punish domestic violence? And, if it is their business, why isn’t Hope Solo receiving the same attention from your side?

Then you claim to be arguing for equality, but you’ve taken the idea of racism (hatred based on skin color is bad) and replaced it with a new concept where only one race can be guilty of racism. You excuse racial prejudice and hatred based on what I’ve already explained are arbitrary, unmeasured states of being. Your solution for the unequal treatment of whites and blacks is to hold whites to a higher standard. Your side lobbied the FBI to redefine rape so more women victims would be counted, but also so that “made to penetrate” does not count, leaving male victims in the cold. Because of male privilege, apparently.

Historically ignorant SJWs think whites hold collective guilt for the awful things our ancestors have done. But they don’t care about the unspeakable atrocities by other races. The only difference between whites and others was that whites had the social and technological prowess to do evil efficiently; Africans, Asians, Indians, and everyone else practiced genocide and slavery, they were just less adept at doing it right. Given the means, they would have done the same. But nope, only whites are guilty; Arab oppression of blacks and Caucasians never happened, not to us, nope.

I’ve been lucky enough to grow up in America, so this shit is new to me. But I’m descended from puritans, and I know my history; I know how they treated dissent. I also know how commies treated dissent; I grew up next door to a grizzled old Russian who barely avoided the gulag by smuggling himself out of the country. I know what you petty tyrants have turned into every time you gained enough power.

Worst of all, you turn the very principles of freedom against us. We tolerate you because we believe in free speech and civil discourse, not bullying and violence. But that means we have to watch you advocate against that very freedom. We don’t believe in ruining a stranger’s professional life over an opinion, but that means that we can’t punish your actions.

We believe that the rightness of our actions should speak for itself. You believe in bullying, even as you claim to love the oppressed.

Funny how the evil and all-powerful patriarchy has seen fit to act according to SJW whims for all of recent memory, punishing those they hate and protecting those they love. Funny how the evil oppressor males have to speak anonymously, while the SJWs fighting the power can use their real names and get mainstream media coverage for fun and profit. How when a million straight white male nerds get bullied, no one cares, but the minute one gay person hangs himself, suddenly bullying matters – and the solution, of course, is more bullying, but by the “right” people.

That’s the arrogant core of it. You do the same evil, in the same pattern, as so many before you, because mob justice, punishing dissent, and repression of others is just fine and dandy so long as the “right” people are doing it to the “wrong” people.


All I ever asked was to be left alone.
                                                                                                      "Anonymous"

Sunday, January 25, 2015

What promotes bullying and polarization?

So many people have commented to me that America seems to be so much more polarized and violent than what they remember.  And that coincides with my impression.  So...why is that?

On reflection, there are many candidates...and I strongly suspect that no one of them are the sole basis, nor do I think my list is complete, but I would argue that if we take them all together we will have a pretty good idea of some major influences that work to tear us apart as a nation.

Has anyone else noticed how violent the ads on tv are these days?  Notice how medicine attacks germs, stuff like mucus is killed by whatever medicine prevents it, how bugs aren't prevented, but killed in their tracks?  Everything is not only the best to solve your problem, but seemingly needs to kill the behavior that it is intended to prevent.  And it happens more than ever before.  Think it is an influence on behavior?  Or just a reflection?  Think about it.

How about political correctness?  It stifles a clear expression of what you believe and, more importantly, feel.  Emotions that are squashed and forced to be held in lead to higher stress levels and tend ultimately to show up in physical action...and that is violence.

At the same time, it prevents responding in kind when you are verbally insulted, attacked or disrespected.  Notice how often when someone is bullied in school and reacts by attacking the bullier, it is the person who acted to protect him or herself from the bullying is the one who is punished?  Apparently the bullier is the one protected.  Why?  Again the questions: an influence on behavior, albeit deferred?  And a sign that bullying is a protected activity, despite words to the contrary?  After all, actions speak so much louder than words.

And how about the prevalent attitude that no one should suffer consequences of their actions?  When I was growing up I was taught that all actions had consequences...good,...and bad.  I learned civilized behavior from my parents.  But I learned them from the words and direction...and I learned them from consequences of not acting "civilized."  Lying was punished...immediately.  It wasn't cute to tell "stories" and it wasn't laughed at just because it was inventive...it was punished.  Fighting was allowed if it was to defend you or your relatives honor should that be disrespected.  Fighting just because you wanted something someone else had was not allowed and was punished.  Bad language (and unlike today it included all swear words and scatological references) was punished immediately and the punishment usually included improving your vocabulary, the argument being that if one had an adequate vocabulary to describe your feelings, one needn't employ swearing.

And as to shoplifting and any other law-breaking, like vandalism and other inappropriate acts, it almost never required the attention of the law.  Why? Because the law could never know like my parents how to reach my very soul and the punishment of my parents was personal and left me with immense guild; a punishment by the "state" would never have been so effective.

When in today's America have any of seen true consequences delivered to anyone as not only a punishment but as a natural order of things?  Doesn't occur much today.  Is this absence contributory?

Our teachers are tasked with teaching.  Yet both administration and parents often act as if teachers are only to be "praisers" of children, approving everything they do, passing out passing grades as a matter or right, and never interfering with children's social lives even during class time...and if they dare interfere and the child physically attacks the teacher, it is the teachers' fault.  Does this sound like civilized behavior, much less justice, to you?  Doesn't make much sense to me.  Teachers are not always blameless, but I think that they could accuse most administrations and parents of fraud in the inducement; what they got isn't what they were promised.

I don't have the expertise to define what is cause and effect here, but it is hard to look at all these tendencies so prevalent today and not think that civilized behavior is not of high priority in the minds of today's citizens.  Narcissism is the practice of today, with parents choosing to accept government benefits that will have to be paid by their as-yet-unborn heirs, and even to the point of meeting their own desires while ignoring the needs of actual children.  How sad!  How ugly!  And how profoundly disappointing to those of us who must witness it and not have the power to effect any meaningful change.