Within our privileged, cosseted circles we have gotten used to not only thinking that we are right, but that we are obviously so. By putting down “straight white men” with gleeful impunity, we gave poor white voters everything to apologize for, and nothing to believe in…. Nowhere has this benevolent but ultimately self-defeating myopia been more pronounced than on college campuses. We have dismissed our conservative peers in the classroom and taunted them on social media all while refusing to seriously engage their views. We have taken hard questions like affirmative action and abortion entirely off the
We have taken hard questions like affirmative action and abortion entirely off the table as if we had already provided an answer that should be immediately convincing to all. We have refused to consider a diversity of viewpoints on what constitutes “diversity.”… We have resolutely resisted paying more than lip service to socioeconomic inequality, rural alienation, and shifting patterns of exclusion while still purporting to speak on behalf of all marginalized people. — Artemis Seaford in “The American Interest.”
Seaford’s article is inadvertently humorous in its plea for the self-righteous to be just a bit less self-righteous. Especially intriguing is this comment of hers:
“Our [sic] demand that they [Trump voters] simply put universal values above their own perceived self-interest was a step too far, and their refusal to comply does not automatically make them racists.”
Really? I see nothing universal about the ideological policing, support for restrictions on free speech, fear-mongering, vilification of opponents and ceaseless identity politics (which of course values only some identities) that is manifest not only on college campuses generally, but also in much of the press.
Seaford is eager to strike a note of sweet reason while still demonstrating that she’s a legitimate member of “our” [anti-Trump] side. Is she to be congratulated for having noticed that
“diversity” isn’t very diverse politically? The point has been made for years by people who didn’t feel the need to also demonstrate their PC credentials.
A pretty obvious question but I will ask anyway. Imagine not a college campus but a radio receiver. If you knew that your receiver was biased –much more sensitive to signals at say 1 MHz and higher– would you not want to know the bias, and correct for it?
Why are people so afraid of competing viewpoints that they (quite willfully) ignore or suppress them?
No.
They just don’t get it.
The Progressive Left lost the election in stunning fashion NOT because the Professional Victimologists ignored (and thereby excluded) yet another category of so-called “marginalized people”…but because those ‘marginalized’ people themselves rejected (and continue to reject) the entirety of the Marginalization Narrative. They don’t see themselves as ‘victims’ requiring their own safe space at an ever-expanding Public Trough (whose hungers were missed when the ‘free lunches’ were distributed) — rather they believe the Trough itself should be, if not eliminated at least significantly restricted. Red Staters define themselves not as victimiized dupes sacrificed to the evils of Capitalism, Colonialism, Sexism, Racism, et al, but as citizens – whose rights are established by the Constitution…and whose lives are built by dint of their own efforts and not the State’s.
Most of all the Post-Electoral-Whining misses completely the degree to which 60M Americans are sick to death of the leftist elitism which drips from the Progressive Agenda (and the socialist ‘understanding’ which drives that agenda). Ms. Seaford explains (with unintentional irony): “Our demand that they (those who voted for Trump) simply put universal values above their own perceived self-interest was a step too far, and their refusal to comply does not automatically make them racists.”
To be clear – to have voted for Trump does not AUTOMATICALLY make one a racist (most probably, but not automatically)…though it clearly is a benighted & selfish vote, motivated entirely by intolerant, self-interest… and obviously in absolute opposition to the saintly vote for Universal Values (which, of course, would set the stage for a 2nd Coming…a Secular Heaven on Earth of Diversity, Inclusion, Multiculturalism, & Globalism). Can I get a Hallelujah?!
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Or perhaps we should simply buy what Ms. Seaford is so avidly selling: that the election’s loss is not the fault of “the god that (always) fails”, rather it is the “flawed electoral system, a compromised candidate, and the resurgence of nationalistic intolerance around the world”…with just a hint of acknowledgement that elitist condescension (and an inability to be as inclusive of all victimhoods as possible) might have played a small role.
Small comfort, I suppose, in the olive branch she gingerly extends to all those selfishly intolerant, unthinking racists who won the election: “We can disagree with our conservative colleagues without discriminating against them!”
How nice of her to say so!
There is nothing:”benevolent ” about the left’s treatment of those who disagree with them, since to disagree with them is an admission of evil. That this writer can’t see that makes me think that his delusion remains intact and unchanged. He still thinks he is right, just that he didn’t explain himself clearly enough to the groundlings.
But that ship has sailed. And sunk.