patrick.net

Onvacation says

richwicks says

But I'm not a conservative.

Perhaps you're a libertarian?

Or is it one of those "The only true religion is mine" parties.

No. Classifications are used to pigeonhole you. It's a way to enforce a conformity that can be controlled.

No ideology works. What's even worse is if you assign yourself to a group which has a constantly changing ideology. The "left" was strictly anti-war and freedom of speech just 30 years ago.

In a libertarian system there's this crazy idea of "natural law" you "can't violates somebody's rights" - well who the fuck is going to stop me? If you're a business competitor and I calculate it's to my long term benefit to have you murdered - who is going to stop me? There's no police in a libertarian system.

The truth is EVERY system is a libertarian system, just like every economic system is an Austrian economic system. They aren't really systems, they are the basic foundations of law and economic systems. In Austrian economics, it may be illegal to have a black market - who cares? There will still be an economic need. In a communist system it might be illegal to murder a political opponent, but if there's enough incentive and low enough risk, it's going to be done anyhow. Same as in a republic, or a dictatorship.

I've seen Left-wingers go Right wing, but I've never seen the reverse except in rare cases when someone leaves oppressive religion and swings the pendulum too far the other way.

Patrick says

So our first small step toward doubt is easy: we simply allow ourselves to suspect that the institutions which progressives trust are fallible in the same way.

Patrick says

To be a progressive, you have to have trust, because you believe that your worldview accurately reflects the real world—

In other words the religion of progressivism has many true believers.

And there are also true believers of various progressive sects such as the anthropomorphic climate change Cult, Covidianism, the origin of life and the entire universe through “natural” processes cult, humanism, communism and so many other progressive faiths. They have been fooled into believing lies and half truths. It’s not hard to fool people when you mix in a little truth with a lie.

What is hard, yea perhaps the hardest thing, is convincing those who have been fooled that they have been fooled.

porkchopexpress says

I've seen Left-wingers go Right wing, but I've never seen the reverse except in rare cases when someone leaves oppressive religion and swings the pendulum too far the other way.

I’ve only seen Republican to Dem, never a true conservative to liberal.

From Lenny Dykstra's feed:
https://twitter.com/LennyDykstra/status/1449938997174734851



He said "Except for maybe Noah"

FuckTheMainstreamMedia says

I’ve only seen Republican to Dem, never a true conservative to liberal.

Republican to Democrat is like, I dunno, moving from wrong to incorrect.

HunterTits says

Patrick says

to drive down wages for the benefit of the oligarchy.

Someone should tell Joe that. Because he's trying to raise wages by paying ppl to not work or work as much.

Lol, good point.

I wonder when the business owners are going to get tired of Biden driving up wages.

richwicks says

Onvacation says

richwicks says

But I'm not a conservative.

Perhaps you're a libertarian?

Or is it one of those "The only true religion is mine" parties.

No. Classifications are used to pigeonhole you. It's a way to enforce a conformity that can be controlled.

No ideology works. What's even worse is if you assign yourself to a group which has a constantly changing ideology. The "left" was strictly anti-war and freedom of speech just 30 years ago.

In a libertarian system there's this crazy idea of "natural law" you "can't violates somebody's rights" - well who the fuck is going to stop me? If you're a business competitor and I calculate it's to my long term benefit to have you murdered - who is going to stop me? There's no police in a libertarian system.

The truth is EVERY system...

If you want to run for an office you usually have choose a party, but rarely independents make it as well. There's nothing wrong with aligning yourself with a party, it's a platform that is closest to you and that gives people a chance to get closer to you fast, and of course it's a big source of funding. That doesn't mean you have to toe the party line, as long as you follow your conscience and speak truth you're good. When the party starts trying to corrupt you too hard, you leave.

mell says

There's nothing wrong with aligning yourself with a party

Yes there is.

You're endorsing EVERYTHING the party does. I don't want anybody to ever think I approve of all the senseless stupid wars that Bush started. I don't want to anybody to think I approve of any of the senseless murders Obama did. I don't want people to think I approve of LGBTQ crap in schools, or what is (laughably) called "progressivism".

Both parties are horrible. I only joined the Republican party to cast a primary vote for Ron Paul, then they cancelled the vote when he was going to win in 2008.

Both parties are scum.

richwicks says

You're endorsing EVERYTHING the party does.

This does seem to be true.

I looked into signing up to become a Republican precinct captain or whatever it is, and what put me off it was the demand that I support every Republican candidate for office, every time.

Loyalty should be to principles and not to parties.

Patrick says

richwicks says

You're endorsing EVERYTHING the party does.

This does seem to be true.

I looked into signing up to become a Republican precinct captain or whatever it is, and what put me off it was the demand that I support every Republican candidate for office, every time.

Loyalty should be to principles and not to parties.

This is not true. They can demand whatever they want, you're only beholden to your conscience and the Constitution. I agree that both parties are suboptimal, but the Republican party is light-years better than the leftoids right now, even if you account for all the rings, there are plenty, say 100 of ok or even decent politicians in that party. The dems may have a handful. For example Youngkin is infinitely better than McAuliffe, I can say that without being a fan of youngkin.

mell says

I agree that both parties are suboptimal, but the Republican party is light-years better than the leftoids right now, even if you account for all the rings, there are plenty, say 100 of ok or even decent politicians in that party.

They will just have another purge.

It's not hard to look better when your competition is horrific.

The Democratic party looked decent after George W. Bush lied us into a war in Iraq. Obama would have been the next fucking FDR if he just passed medicare for all, ended these goddamned wars (like he promised to), and dumped a bunch of money into education and infrastructure.

Instead, he was just George W. Bush in blackface after a diction class.

If the Democratic party just did SOMETHING useful in Obomba's 8 miserable years, they would have run the country for the next 2 decades.

There's no difference between the parties. One plays good cop for a few years, then it reverses. Always they lead you to the impression "well, we would have done what we promised, but the government is just too split!" - ALWAYS they do this.

Trump came in, and tried to do PRECISELY what the Republicans have been claiming (falsely) that they intended to do. It wasn't democrats that prevented the Mexican/US wall from being built, it was Republicans. The Senate and House majority were BOTH Republican in 2016.

There's ONE party. Just 1.

99.9% of the people who are allowed to run, just blindly take orders. Why is Lori Lightfoot such a piece of shit anyhow? Because that's what she's told to be. That's all there is to it.

porkchopexpress says

I've seen Left-wingers go Right wing

Yes, that is called "growing up." When a person leaves behind his adolescent attitude and sees the world through adult eyes.

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/a-progressive-guide-to-ending-the?source=patrick.net

A Progressive Guide to Ending the Coronavirus Pandemic

Toby Rogers

I spend a lot of my time yelling at my former progressive comrades hoping that they will come to their senses. But it also occurs to me that I speak the language and I could just explain how progressives should be responding to this crisis — if they were still progressive. And then they can chose to uphold their purported values or confess that they’ve embraced a new ideology. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I believe that the points below about framing are useful and important.

Background

George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at UC Berkeley, is the intellectual godfather of progressive messaging. Lakoff’s books, Moral Politics, Metaphors We Live By, and Don’t Think of an Elephant are the sacred texts of progressive framing and are read and used by nearly all Democratic political strategists. I took a class in graduate school from Dr. Lakoff and I use his work a lot in designing messaging campaigns.

The guy is a genius who just happens to be wrong about the most important issue in the world right now — the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. We’ll return to that in a moment.

What is framing?

Lakoff’s key insight is that “understanding is inherently metaphorical. We process complex ideas in terms of other, simpler, more primal experiences (spatial and tactile sensations, pictures, basic family relations).” Choosing the most advantageous metaphor to describe a problem and its solutions is the art of framing.

Four principles of proper framing

1. Every word evokes a frame.

So for example, arguments are often described in terms of war. Choosing that metaphor will lead one to think of attacks and defenses, winners and losers, domination and surrender.

Her criticisms were right on target.
I shot down all of his arguments.
He exploited the vulnerabilities in their defenses.

But there is nothing inherent in arguing that leads us to liken it to war. It’s just a metaphor that people use to understand it. But “imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.” (Metaphors We Live By, p. 5).

2: Words defined within a frame evoke the frame.

In the example above, the words target, shot down, and vulnerabilities all evoke the war metaphor.

3. Negating a frame evokes the frame.

This is the most important rule of all. Every time you try to debunk your opponent’s frame you just end up evoking it which activates the neurological circuits associated with that frame in people’s minds. So it is always better to reframe and go on offense.

4. Evoking a frame reinforces that frame.

“Every frame is realized in the brain by neural circuitry. Every time a neural circuit is activated, it is strengthened.” At the most fundamental level, messaging is an attempt to literally build certain neural pathways in the brain. As Lakoff writes,

Framing is the process of choosing words and phrases to communicate an idea in a way that invokes certain metaphorical associations and rules out others. Frames set the vocabulary and metaphors through which an issue can be comprehended and discussed. By consistently invoking a resonant frame, the framing party sets the terms of the debate, shapes the perceptions of the issue, and provides a narrative for possible solutions.

Two Primary Frames in Politics: Nurturant Parent Model vs. Strict Father Model

Lakoff argues that most of us think metaphorically of the nation as family.

But what kind of family?

Progressives and conservatives think differently:

Progressives tend to invoke a nurturant parent frame.

The nurturant parent model is gender-neutral and envisions a family where both parents are equally responsible for raising the children.

“The assumption is that children are born good and can be made better.

The world can be made a better place, and our job is to work on that.

The parents’ job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others.”

Children develop best through their positive relationships to others. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents, not out of the fear of punishment.

If you empathize with your child, you will provide protection. This comes into politics in many ways. What do you protect your child from? Crime and drugs, certainly. You also protect your child from cars without seat belts, pollution, lead paint, pesticides in food, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. So progressive politics focuses on environmental protection, worker protection, consumer protection, etc. —Don’t Think of An Elephant, p.12.

Okay, cool, let’s apply that to the vaccine debate

This is where it all falls apart. Lakoff is on record as supporting Pharma fascism — because (this is what I see at least) he’s never read a vaccine safety study in his life and has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. But if we lived in a sane world, the progressive response to vaccines would look like this:

✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow felons to perform genetic experiments on their kids.

✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow regulators who are captured by industry to make decisions about their family’s health.

✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow school officials to deprive their children of oxygen and require toxic injections as a conditions of school entry.

✅ Nurturant parents do NOT gaslight other parents for their medical decisions.

✅ Nurturant parents do NOT get their medical information from news sources that are captured by industry.

✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read vaccine safety inserts and vaccine safety studies for themselves.

✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read the Nuremberg Code and understand the reasons why “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to listen to the mothers and fathers of vaccine-injured children and learn from their experience.

✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to engage in critical thinking and unbiased due diligence and have realized that independent doctors understand prevention and treatment of Covid better than captured regulators.

✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to oppose show-me-your-papers and vaccine passports because they do not want their children to grow up in a fascist country.

See that’s not difficult. If progressives were still progressives they would be fighting Pharma fascism with every cell in their body. Some are, but most are not.

The takeaway

Here’s the very real problem and I’m not sure what to do about it — there is no such thing as progressivism anymore. It has evaporated over the last two years. It’s now a memory carried by the elders but it does not exist in the real world anymore. Pharma started pumping out the propaganda and the 24/7/365 fear campaign and progressivism switched instantly to fascism. Adherents of the ideology became robots, embraced censorship and cancel culture, and mindlessly repeat and obey the diktats of Pharma. So I write this article as a bedside whisper to a friend who is in a coma hoping that the remembrance of the old ways might help him to wake up.

richwicks says

I only joined the Republican party to cast a primary vote for Ron Paul, then they cancelled the vote when he was going to win in 2008.

@richwicks, are you able to explain what, exactly, happened to Ron Paul when he was about to win? I've never seen an explanation I understood.

"Progressives tend to invoke a nurturant parent frame.

The nurturant parent model is gender-neutral and envisions a family where both parents are equally responsible for raising the children."

The progressive value baloney farm starts here and goes into the weeds forthwith. The idea of framing segued into the imposition of value judgments that, as usual, appear altruistic but are subversive of gender roles and family. I think they would call this in law assuming facts not in evidence.

The nurturant parent model is NOT gender-neutral. Sex roles and duties need to be clearly specified. Mom is Mom. Dad is Dad. They are not interchangeable neuters.

So, Lakoff is, as one might expect from an academic progressive, a propaganda sleight of hand shill. I wouldn't call it framing, I would call it political re-labeling under penalty of duress i.e. fake altruism disguising the iron hand of mandated reconstruction and revision based on destruction of intuitive value systems.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-rogan-neil-young-risk-being-unreasonable/?source=patrick.net

The young left is becoming even more rigid than the old. David Leonhardt of the New York Times noted that according to Kaiser Family Foundation data, “young Democrats are more worried about getting sick from Covid than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.” He extends too much credit in assuming they actually care about “science.” Science is a process for obtaining and refining information about the natural world. Sensibly applied, it should tell you things like you don’t have to wear masks outdoors, or that children ought to be in school since the risk to them is much lower than to adults. Applied as a civic religion, it leads to huddling into confined plywood boxes on the sidewalks of restaurants so as to avoid the risk of being inside.

Leftists just hate themselves, and extrapolate that to society. Since they are too ugly, inside or out or both, they have to have faith in the Blank Slate, and that Human Nature can be changed by Social Engineering. Thus the frumpy pear-shaped ugly chick might land the hunk, if the hunk can be raised to value knowledge of Teenage Vampire Romance more than T&A or Cooking Skills. Likewise for the Soyboy feminist; the Hot Chick will see his shining lights and his deep understanding of the world gleaned from watching Anime.

Different than modern liberals, though they share kind of an arrogant, hyperrational attitude. Modern Liberals have too much of the Feminine. Leftists are just Toxic fucks.

Traditional liberals are fearful of the stupidity humans can get up to with too much power.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/19/america-is-not-divided-its-being-hijacked/?source=patrick.net

We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left.

Patrick says

We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left.

Exactly!

If all the criminals in power were exposed and prosecuted and the... Never mind. I am too cynical to go any further with this fantasy.

A dear friend (vaxxed and boosted) who is captured by the narrative put it in words, "Why should I give up on the media I have trusted my entire life and listen to some conspiracy theorist on the internet?".

Patrick says

We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left

Patrick,
Talk to educated yet idiot class and you'll think otherwise.

WineHorror1 says

richwicks says

I only joined the Republican party to cast a primary vote for Ron Paul, then they cancelled the vote when he was going to win in 2008.

@richwicks, are you able to explain what, exactly, happened to Ron Paul when he was about to win? I've never seen an explanation I understood.

@WineHorror1 - he was about to win the San Francisco straw poll. I had a terrible dinner that cost $35, listened to Fred Thompson explain why he should be nominated for 30 minutes, and after that, a HORDE of Ron Paul supporters walked in (dinner wasn't mandatory to vote), and the vote was simply cancelled. That was in 2008.

Nothing "happened to Ron Paul", but it was very very clear that in the primaries, the candidates aren't picked by individual supporters. They are picked by the parties.

Ron Paul was well regarded because he was fairly consistent about talking about the disaster of US "interventions". George W. Bush was PROPERLY despised for lying this nation into a war. Paul had run as a libertarian before, he is reasonable, and he's pretty honest for a politician. He dominated all online polls. He was like a proto-Trump.

Trump was wealthy, didn't need to accept bribes, and could tell nearly anybody to go fuck themselves. He seemed like, perhaps, he was so narcissistic, that perhaps, he just wanted to go down in history as somebody that fixed or at least improved the country. There's been nobody like that since Reagan and he didn't have money, and he was shot in his first term. George H. Bush really ran the nation for most of Reagan's term.

We live under a criminal syndicate. That's the reality. Democracy and Republic - that's all bullshit.

in 2008 I was 36. I still had some belief in the system. I was still naive back then. What happened was somewhat shocking to me, but what was really shocking to me is that despite dozens of people recording this, nothing came of it. I saw the aftermath, and it was clear even back then that Google didn't allow free speech, and "viral videos" were selected, and not actually reflecting what people sought out.

Patrick says

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/19/america-is-not-divided-its-being-hijacked/?source=patrick.net

We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left.

Yes, the media has an outsized influence over society.

richwicks says

the candidates aren't picked by individual supporters. They are picked by the parties.

@Richwicks

That brings up a logical question..."How/why, then, was Trump allowed to get the nomination"?

richwicks says

Ron Paul supporters walked in (dinner wasn't mandatory to vote), and the vote was simply cancelled. That was in 2008.

He was redistricted out of his safe R district in TX. R's in TX made it swing district to get rid of him. Strange until you undsrstand that it is uniparty

WineHorror1 says

richwicks says

the candidates aren't picked by individual supporters. They are picked by the parties.

@Richwicks

That brings up a logical question..."How/why, then, was Trump allowed to get the nomination"?

Two possibilities I can think of:

1) he figured out the system AND had backing to go up against it. I don't think it's possible he worked alone in this case.
2) he was controlled opposition.

I'm doubtful with #2 simply because his presidency destroyed the credibility of our propaganda. Our "news" media is now widely regarded for what it actually is, obvious propaganda.

You must know how deeply cynical I am, but I still have some hope for #2.

Bd6r says

richwicks says

Ron Paul supporters walked in (dinner wasn't mandatory to vote), and the vote was simply cancelled. That was in 2008.

He was redistricted out of his safe R district in TX. R's in TX made it swing district to get rid of him. Strange until you understand that it is uniparty

I suspected it back in the mid 1990's, but I was certain of it when Pelosi said that "impeachment is off the table" for George W. Bush. He should have been impeached. Obama should have been as well for creating 2 more wars.

Scum runs our government. None of the conflicts in the last 20 years has benefited the United States and its people in any way. Just a few individuals and companies. Our government creates war to benefit corporations now and it might be logical to consider a corporation as a mafia at this point.

richwicks says

Just a few individuals and companies

Oligarchy
All new is well forgotten old

WineHorror1 says

."How/why, then, was Trump allowed to get the nomination"?

Trump was hired because they thought Hillary could easily defeat him. They tried to run an unknown black man with a racist past but he beat her. They thought a womanizing playboy billionaire who was also old, white, and male would be the ticket to put the first woman in the oval office. They thought wrong.

Onvacation says

WineHorror1 says

."How/why, then, was Trump allowed to get the nomination"?

Trump was hired because they thought Hillary could easily defeat him. They tried to run an unknown black man with a racist past but he beat her. They thought a womanizing playboy billionaire who was also old, white, and male would be the ticket to put the first woman in the oval office. They thought wrong.

Black?

WineHorror1 says

Black?

African American? Negro? Mullato? What race is Obama?

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-rising-role-of-the-agitariat?s=r&source=patrick.net

many have marveled at the speed at which the covidian clamorers have pivoted to war frenzy. it was near instant, like some sort of phase change, a sublimation straight from solid to gas.

but this is no marvel nor is it, in fact, even a state change. it’s just a property of the new class of society that spends its lives in and derives its identity from its constant state of aversive arousal and agitation. this tribe is always and everywhere at war because its identify is rooted not in self but in “against.”

this is the agitariat.

we like to imagine ourselves as people who have ideas. this is a healthy structure. but for many, this is less and less true. many have become their ideas and woven their externalized values so deeply into the marrow and integument of their identities that the two become inseverable. the inherent tendency of social media to devolve into tribes enhances and perhaps even requires this.

i suspect it comes down to simple human drives to be perceived as virtuous (however such is currently defined) and for status (a similarly fluid hierarchy). ...

you have oppressed me, therefore i claim the moral high ground.

in a pinch, alliance with the aggrieved and championing them against others while engaging in performative self-flagellation and the “checking of privilege” will do.




... “i am kind” cuts no ice with those who demand that you demonstrate loyalty to a performative cause. “all lives matter” becomes a heretical utterance, proof that you are racist. this is a weaponized evangelical set of doctrines carried by weaponized evangelical people who must always divide the world into a fight between “us” and “them” in order to preserve personal meaning and coherence. that is the nature of deriving one’s sense of self from oppositional external validation. ...




... a week ago they all claimed to know a child who died of covid. now they all know a brave ukranian who stopped a tank with his bare hands.

last year no sane human would take trump’s bleach-based poison. today you’re a subhuman horror for refusing the beneficence of the “fauci ouchie.” ...

this has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying causes: it’s entirely about status and identity.

this is why they can all flip so instantly from one cause to another. the covid narrative is in tatters. having supported lockdowns and masking and vaccine mandates is increasingly low status. you look like a loser. you look wrong. and that is NOT a pleasing basis for an identity for those who generate their sense of self from their performative political takes. so you jump onto the first high status looking bandwagon that rolls by.

this has several weird, non-intuitive effects.

old causes suddenly vaporize and are gone from all memory. remember when i told you there would soon be a time when you could not find anyone that admitted to having been pro lock down, mask, up, and close the schools? well, this is how that works. the switch flips, the virus is gone, and we have always been at war with russia.

new causes suddenly explode. all this energy has to go somewhere and the need for new identity is acute and so new fights are entered into with the zeal of the freshly converted and the evangelism of those desperate to carve out new space and paper over what they were saying last week.

this adds a certain amount of full blown randomness to predominant social memes. had the ukraine war been this time last year, they probably would not have cared. they were still happily ensconced in branch covidianism. just about no one even noticed when the russians used chemical weapons in syria. there was no call to defend the “brave kurds.” it’s not racism. it’s just that the “jingo” slot was already full. there was no room for the meme. ask the uighurs about that one…

this means there will always be something. there is no climbdown, no cessation. this energy cannot be destroyed or dissipated because the need to put oneself in opposition as an act of self-definition is persistent. something must fill the void. they were all doing the same stuff pre-covid too.

wanna try a fun project? see if you can find anyone on twitter with pronouns in their bio that opposed lockdowns and masking. it’s all the same desire to create an identity suitable for ennobling the desire to bully as civic and personal virtue. it’s all the same people, over and over.

and that means that the clever demagogue can get in front of these issues and, at least to some extent, steer this energy. you dial back the CDC and the states out of political exigency and then immediately replace it with another meme that is fully orthogonal. covid gone. war, front and center. you hide your climb down and draw attention away from the coming news of how pointless and harmful everything you spent the last 2 years imposing was. the economy is not bad because of bad covid policy, it’s from the war! the very people who demanded that you surrender your freedom to invasive technocrats now champion freedom for ukrainians. there is so much tail to wag, it’s not even clear there is a dog in here at all anymore.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/when-victimhood-game-everyone-loses/?source=patrick.net

When victimhood is a game, everyone loses
Give up on a left-wing politics whose purpose is to amplify our differences

March 12, 2022

Black History Month is now over, and we’ve moved on to Women’s History Month. In April, we’ll get the best of both worlds, with Black Women’s History Month. May will be Jewish-American Heritage Month, and then in June the nation will enjoy a blowout celebration of LGBT Pride Month, if the normalization (and commercialization) of the cause in recent years is any indication.

The point of all of this is to serve as an annual national re-ratification of diversity, inclusivity and equity as America’s preeminent causes... Everyone and their racial, sexual and gender identities are to be affirmed; all identities and behaviors are to be celebrated as an essential part of the rich panoply of our national identity. It is meant to appease, honor and even glorify. Everyone, we would think, should be made happy by the never-ending tolerance parties.

But some, apparently, are not. In a March 2 op-ed for the Washington Post, Cole Arthur Riley claims that the end of Black History Month means he can “finally breathe.” The problem, says Riley, is white people (surprise!). Riley explains:

Every year, what is intended to be a time of remembrance and storytelling becomes a month of additional labor — usually with very little notice — for Black people. It becomes a season when we must sell our stories and ideas to sate the appetites of White folk who want to feel as though they’ve done the right thing.

The problem, according to Riley, is that guilt-ridden white people are so zealous in their desire to hear and understand black voices that it becomes overwhelming for black Americans. ...

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah in a June 2020 op-ed complained about the frustrating burden of “distraught white and non-black friends who were overwhelmed with guilt and anxiety” because they might be sub-consciously perpetuating racist norms or power structures. White people simply can’t seem to get it right when it comes to showing the proper honor or deference to their black fellow citizens.

Indeed, for any white American trying to show proper deference or respect for black Americans, during Black History Month or during the other eleven months of the year, it’s a bit like trying to cross a minefield. If one tries to be “colorblind” or signals that he doesn’t care about the color of people’s skin, he perpetuates systemic racism by refusing to recognize and appreciate others’ identity and value. If a person goes out of his way to express interest in trying to understand the black experience in America, this also is problematic, because this could impose unfair burdens on blacks who tire of explaining all of this to ignorant, if well-meaning, whites. Whatever white people choose, they are bound to offend or upset someone. ...

Perhaps it was inevitable that this would happen, given the mainstreaming of “Oppression Olympics,” in which everyone in American society participates in a competition to determine who is the most victimized according to race, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic status or disabilities. Everything, from advertising to sports to literature to entertainment is now influenced by a game that was once largely relegated to liberal activist groups and academic seminars. It is one in which participants are encouraged to discover ever more novel and obscure ways in which they suffer victimization (e.g. microaggressions, unconscious bias) from bigoted, oppressive power structures. By these rules, people win by losing. ...

All of this reinforces victimhood for one group, and encourages one of two responses from the other: a mimicry of victimhood, or even more outlandish attempts at repentance. It has to be this way, or otherwise the contest might actually approach its conclusion. And there are of course political, social and financial reasons why those playing the victimhood game — especially the winners (or do I mean losers?) — aim to keep it going indefinitely.

This won’t end well for anyone. One possible scenario is that all the contestants in the victimhood game will consume each other in a suicidal battle to the bottom, or that those identifying as victims will eventually determine their best option is social and political revolution to end oppression. Another, possibly more beneficial outcome would be for the cost of the Oppression Olympics to become so great that those expected to play the role of penitent victimizer simply won’t put up with the absurdity of it any more — although this could provoke some dramatic protest from ersatz victims that might also cause increased tensions and unrest.

The fact remains that the game by its very nature exhausts its participants. One hopes all sides might eventually acknowledge that perhaps its tiring (and tiresome) qualities are reason enough to just abandon the whole project. I have empathy for people like Riley, Attiah and many other supposed victims, who exist in an endless cycle of tokenist offense and outrage — who would really want to permanently live like this? Does life really feel that terrible for them, whose writings appear in one of the most important and popular media outlets in the country?

Wherever the victimhood game leads, I decided to stop playing a long time ago. The cynical exploitation and performative self-flagellation simply became too obvious and risible. For the sake of our republic, I hope many Americans soon come to the same conclusion.

Exactly. How many people have been deliberately killed in hospitals by withholding ivermectin and steroids and then these killings were used to force deadly jabs in kids and adults? But sure go ahead and virtue signal for the minority of the day and hate everyone else as enablers of inequity. Pathetic lol