● First, I’ve pointed out over and over how America is moving beyond race and obsession with gender. There is tremendous evidence which suggests that about 2/3 of the public no longer thinks about race as an issue of any sort. And this seems to be true across all races. Similarly, the evidence suggests that only a tiny percentage of people care about feminism or transgender bathrooms or whatever... and they’re all nuts.
● Sure, there are still people who obsess about these things, but they are messed up. This small and ever-shrinking proportion of people see racism or sexism in their own shadows and no one really pays them any attention. Here are some examples of how whacko they are:
● There was an article today whining about Snapchat being racist because its filters lighten faces, enlarge eyes and shrink noses. The whiny black delicates are all atwitter that Snapchat apparently makes your face white!!! OMG! Of course, the fact that it’s actually making faces babyish rather than white escapes them.And so on. The thing that binds all of these fools together is just how miserable their lives are that they spend their time obsessing over pretend outrages. What’s more, the retardedness of these allegations is killing whatever credibility the outrage industry once had.
● There was another article in which black delicates whined that some fashion show in Australia used a Beyonce song they saw as an anthem for “powerful black women” and had only white women marching thereto. How dare you appropriate our racism honkeys!
● There was a war waged against Iggy Azalea, a white rapper from Australia, because she raps with black word choice and inflection. “How dare you act black, honkey!” screamed the delicates.
● Of course, there is Black Lives Matter who think it’s racist to assert that everyone’s life matters. Death to whitey.
● There are white liberal delicates in sports who find criticism of black quarterbacks to be racist.
● There are girly delicates who whine about liberal Hollywood not hiring chicky directors, but won’t hire them, who whine about chicky actresses being jettisoned when they turn old and who can’t stand that they only had careers because they exploited their own looks.
● There are chicky delicates who worry that girls like girls’ toys and that pronouns are oppressing them and that some woman was called ugly online.
● Is it just me or do there not seem to be any gay people involved in the transgender bathroom debate? It seems to be Religious Right v. Delicate Left without a single gay person to be found. Just more proof that the gays have all gone home.
● It amazes me how many people, typically gay, black or female, make false allegations of racism, sexism, rape, etc. The latest involves a gay black pastor who claimed that Whole Food wrote something anti-gay on a cake. Sadly for him, Whole Foods has videotape which shows that he made the whole thing up. It seems that almost every day one of these people claims some racist or sexist word was written on a receipt or tattooed on their ass or whatever, and it’s always proven to be false. Again, this is doing intense damage to the credibility of the rape/race industry.
● There was a police shooting the other day which was the first time I recall seeing body cameras doing their thing. In this case, a woman came at the cop with a meat clever and he was forced to shoot her. The video shows that she attacked him and he responded reasonably. This shoots down the family’s claims of “ism”... no pun intended. I think body cameras will quickly kill off the victimization by cop industry.
● I think Hillary has all but killed what little credibility the feminists and the rape industry had left. There is no way she can stand up there with Bill and talk about women’s issues, yet she tries... which makes it clear the issue is politicized rather than legit.
● BTW, polls show that Hillary only gets 84% of black support, not 97% as Obama got. That’s really bad for her.
I have a point actually. People read political sites and places like the front page of dying Yahoo and they see the idiotic stuff above. Then they assume that this is how the world is. But it’s not. This is an infinitesimally small sliver of the public who are so out of touch with reality that they think their cell phones are racist. These people only disgrace their own causes. Don’t let anyone tell you that they are representative of anything or that their views are influencing the public. They aren’t.
I think it’s time for all of us to take a deep breath, look at the broader world, and stop worrying about the nutty fringe. Let these people fester in their own private hells and let’s focus instead on what really matters.
Thoughts?
26 comments:
This is definitely a nice and refreshing article... It seems like all I see on social media some days is how America is still so ist and phobic. You picked up something that I hadn't quite been able to put my finger on with the transgender bathroom blow-up, too... It really has been mostly the two factions you mentioned; I only saw one comment by an actual LGBT on the subject on Facebook that I recall and even then it seemed kind-of rote - no real passion or fury to it. I missed the Snapchat and a lot of the other articles, though I remember seeing a rather convoluted assertion that the public was actually with Black Lives Matter a little while ago when what you point out says quite the opposite. It's also probably no surprise to you that a lot of the people I see this from are among Bernie's most devout, too.
Curiously, one battleground that I do see the two factions fighting over is modern Christianity. The Religious Right's part in all of this is fairly well known at this point but with a lot of them flipping out over Trump a few people are looking at the opportunity to try to move Christianity left and make the Democrats the new religious party. I'm also seeing quite a few articles and postings accepting leftist grievance narratives as something Christians need to act on in the name of compassion (which, again, seems to be conflated with Bernie support in a fair number of cases). I haven't looked into it enough to know if there's actually a trend here, though I am skeptical - the atheist faction of the Delicate Left seems to still hold a lot of power there, and if the trend is true that's one less reason for me to stick to the church. I'm no fan of the Religious Right and the judgmental church culture they've created in the least - you don't have to be a heavy drinker, serial fornicator with or without kids, prone to other big "traditional" vices, or LGBT for these types to make you miserable, I know that from experience. However, I don't think a shift left in the name of compassion, especially in the grievance field, is going to make things any better. Have you noticed anything along those lines yourself, Andrew?
- Daniel
Daniel, I've seen that too. But the faction of Christians that the Democrats are courting are really oppressive leftist control freaks anyway, and have just been misfiled because the democrats decided to go all anti-morality for a spell. I don't know about the rest of identity politics, but I fully expect the next wave of "feminism" to still come from the left, but they will work to undo the things that earlier feminists achieved. We're already seeing some of it, the " doing man stuff is hard" feminists that are whining for special, that is lower, standards for women. And I would not be surprised at all if so called "Christian Democrats" end up taking point on that.
Somewhat OT, but related to the bathroom issue: It's feminists on the left who promote the stereotype that all men are predators and pedophiles just waiting for an opportunity. So it irks me that the right uses the same argument when getting exercised about bathrooms.
Thanks Daniel!
My main point in writing this article is exactly your reaction. There seems to be such discontent out there that it's easy to assume that the world is falling apart. Everywhere you look, people seem to be complaining about the tiniest of sleights and then it seems to become a national cause. You even sometimes see things like the U of Missouri caving in to the crazy demands of these people and people like Sanders embracing their crap, which makes it seem like the official world is buying this. That makes it seem like the country is falling apart.
BUT when you look more closely, it really is just an editorial decision of the politicized websites, like Yahoo or HuffingtonPost or a handful of activists -- like Beyonce. They seek out these idiots who find something evil in anything and then they write articles about them, backing up their nonsense with a couple of twitter quotes from other permanently aggrieved morons, and they sell it to you in the hopes of pushing leftist ideology by attacking the enemy: white male straight America. It's a bit like listening to Nazi propaganda and assuming they spoke for the American public.
I think the bathroom point is particularly indicative of this. It suddenly struck me the other day that I don't see any gay people involved in this. It's all heterosexual, non-transgender leftists pushing this in the name of transgender people. And they are pushing it without any real basis other than angering the Religious Right, who responded like Pavlov's dogs.
And the more I think about this, all of this stuff is manufactured. That's why black people as a group don't protest or boycott things like Snapchat. The vast majority don't even know they are supposed to be offended. Look at how few even turn out for supposed racist cop killings. It's just this tiny, tiny, tiny group of agitators who are looking for things to hate.
Daniel, On the religion issue, the left would love for the religious right to be the religious left and they keep trying. From what I've seen, here is the history of that.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic church was largely leftist and moving more left all the time with liberation theology. Pope John Paul drove those people out and the church became more middle class in values. At the same time, fundamentalism was growing and, starting in the 1980s, some of their leaders began flirting with Ronald Reagan behind the scenes. In the 1990s, the Religious Right really entered politics with the idea of taking over the GOP. They achieved that. The left responded by attacking them (by attacking Christianity generally) and embracing atheism and gays. Basically, they figured that if they couldn't keep religious voters, they would embrace amoral and immoral voters instead. That turned off religious whites.
In the early 2000s, several religious leaders tried to drift left for reasons I don't fully understand, but which I think were meant to soften the harsh, nasty image the Religious Right got. So they embraced environmentalism and adopted ideas like you are mentioning -- whites are racist, etc. They weren't leftists that I'm aware of, but I think they thought this could defuse the criticism they were taking. It didn't take though.
Then there seems to have been a schism. The Religious Right went hardcore on a crusade against gays. A Religious Left was declared in response to the Religious Right but remains tiny (and largely minority-based) because leftists have become anti-religious by habit. And those who didn't want to be seen as racist and hateful left the Religious Right for these weird "Jesus wants you to have an SUV" churches which don't worry about politics.
Then in 2010, the Tea Party came along and the Religious Right stopped fighting the left and went to war with libertarians. At first, the left kicked back and laughed. But then gay rights started making headway. I think the left saw what I see, which is that gays are walking away. So they started once again pushing to create a Religious Left to replace their lost gay support. But I think they have a problem in that they spent so long attacking religion that they can't sway their own people to accept religion.
So all in all, I think you are correct that there is a push to create a Religious Left by the left to replace gays, but that's fruitless because anti-Christianism is too ingrained on the left. There is also a leftward drift on some issues by the Religious Right in an attempt to soften their harsh image so they can finally win (keep in mind, they own the GOP and still can't even win the primaries -- that is very frustrating for them).
Thoughts?
tryanmax, I think there are two thoughts going on on the left with the trans bathroom thing.
First, the leaders who pushed this... They are heterosexual, non-trans leftists who are horrified that gays walked away from politics within minutes of winning the gay marriage debate. They had hoped that issues like anti-discrimination would keep gays in the fold for decades, but instead they literally left the moment the issue was settled. So the left invented this issue in the hopes that the public would freak out and that this would scare gays back into the political fold.
But the public fooled them by shrugging their shoulders and agreeing almost instantly. That frustrated the left because it wiped out their last best chance to re-politicize gays.
In fact, the only people to take the bait were the Religious Right who only matter in a couple of states which everyone has already disavowed. And frankly, no gay person in San Francisco or New York cares about Mississippi.
So ultimately, the issue failed to do what the left wanted and it just re-affirmed the problem they have.
That said...
Secondly, feminists pushed this issue for the reason above and because they thought it would be a nice kick in the teeth to white males. Basically, they see white males as anti-gay and it makes them all tingly to do something which upsets those evil Neanderthal penisers.
However, like all leftist ideas, they didn't think this through. They had an image in their head: "what if some cute de-machoed boy wants to wear a dress and use the bathroom? If we do this, it will show those evil macho types that males can be neutered and made sensitive!" It never dawned on them that this law could be applied in any other way, such as having a very macho male decide to use the same bathroom as our delicate little feminist womyn. (fyi, this is the same reason the left only cares about cute animals.)
So what happens next is they will encounter this and it won't be a very feminine boy-girl, it will be a macho-man-in-dress and they will go insane. They will call it "rape" to be "watched" by someone like that in the bathroom.
Excellent post, Andrew!
I concur with your analysis. The far left's energy is fed by outrage, which can be effective but only if there are actual grievances and injustices to rally behind.
Most Gays have what they wanted so they are no longer outraged enough to waste their time with far left causes.
Hence this newest outrage manufactured by the left, the transgender bathroom issue.
Ironically, this raises the odds tha more transwomen in particular, will be assaulted or killed.
Of course the far right religious nuts took the bait, but that still isn't enough to push gays into leftist activism...unless trans people are assaulted or killed as a result by religious bigots, who try to paint all trans women as male perverts who are out to rape their women and eat their children.
The evidence n states like Washington, where it is legal for trans women to use female bathrooms shows that this simply is not true, and that has been my experience as well.
Trans women simply want to pee without being assaulted. Believe me, most try to do everything they can to not use public restrooms, but there are times that isn't possible.
Of course, the far left has n problem sacrificing some trans women to spark some new outrage, and the far right religious kooks may eventually help them do that.
That's the only way I can see this gaining any traction, and I hope to God it doesn't happen.
In the meantime, I will certainly avoid going to states like North Carolina and Mississippi.
I also concur that the racism issue has pretty much fizzled out in the U.S.
It's not easy to be outraged all the time, especially when there is essentially nothing to be outraged about.
But the far left idiots and far right morons will always try to manufacture some more outrage. It's the only way they know how to get their acolytes to go along with their BS.
I disagree. Its pretty wild that when two thugs beat up a sleeping homeless guy and then took a piss on him, a guy who could concievably be our next President commended their enthusiasm.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3204702/Boston-brothers-viciously-attack-urinate-homeless-Hispanic-man-inspired-Donald-Trump-responds-saying-passionate-supporters.html
The Boston Globe reports that when Trump was told of the incident, he responded; 'It would be a shame ... I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.'
Also, as I've pointed out before, you only really get controversial police shootings when the system fails to take action. What with cameras being more and more common that is less and less of a problem.
While juries are reluctant to convict cops for mistakes (even mistakes which they cover up with lies) when such incidents come to light police departments will normally cut said incompetents loose.
The case below is an interesting example of just how much one can get away with provided there is an absence of malice. Basically a cop with vision and perhaps mental problems shot an unarmed woman twice and then lied about the circumstances in order to make the shoot clean but walked away a free man after two trials (first was a mistrial).
Don't get me wrong, generally speaking I support cops (I worked for AMW for a few years, shook the hands of hundreds of cops) but I recognize that there are incompetents/bad apples out there who are often ignored until they do something really, really hideous.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/07/fdaniel-willis-not-guilty-fatal-police-shooting-yvette-smith-texas
Yvette Smith was seemingly trying to act as a peacemaker during a dispute between two men that involved a gun. She called 911 about half an hour after midnight on 16 February 2014. When Bastrop County police arrived at the house, at least one of the men was in the front yard and the worst of the disturbance appeared over.
Willis, who is white, saw Smith, a black 47-year-old former caretaker, and ordered her to come outside. As she opened the door he shouted “police!” then fired within about three seconds. She died in the hospital after being shot twice by the deputy, who was using his personal AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
--------------
The sheriff’s initial media release had wrongly claimed that Smith was armed and failed to comply with orders once on the front porch. It read: “After the subjects disregarded all commands to come out, a woman came to the doorway of the residence displaying a firearm. The woman disregarded the deputy’s commands, which resulted in shots being fired by the Bastrop County Deputy and the woman being shot.”
Willis had worked as a deputy in Bastrop for less than a year before the killing. He was fired after being charged with murder. He was previously employed as a jailer in the Austin area. In a 2012 evaluation a supervisor wrote that he needed “more development in handling explosive situations and the utilization of common sense”.
Willis had been rejected for patrol officer jobs by other law enforcement agencies, including the Austin police department, where he failed the psychological exam. Less than two weeks after the shooting and with an investigation ongoing, Terry Pickering, the Bastrop sheriff, told the Austin American-Statesman that some of his staff had tampered with Willis’s training records in order to fix mistakes by getting them properly signed.
I agree that broadly speaking race and gender matter less and less to most people.
Thanks Allena!
Outrage is what sells to the fringes, sadly. So they package it and sell it. But the rest of America really is a much more rational place and generally judges issues fairly and moves on.
And you're absolutely right that outrage only leads to anything with the public if there is something genuine behind it. If people feel that a true wrong was committed, then they want that set right. But when the wrong is something pissy or hypersensitive or basically something you have to want to be outraged about, then the public doesn't want to hear it.
Unfortunately, our media system is set up to focus on those kinds of complaints and then screams, "Look what THEY want and you know they're going to get it if you don't buy my book!!!" It's asinine.
The transgender bathroom issue is a great example of where the public again is rational. Once it's clear that there are these people out there, you are basically forced to decide which bathroom the law should let them use. So various legislatures decided and the public moved on. The end, right? Wrong because both fringes saw this as a chance to grandstand. So what should have been decided quickly and rationally instead becomes the usual circus in political circles.
Anthony, I don't follow your first comment. What are you disagreeing with? I'm not saying the world is perfect, but I think that by and large the public no longer cares about these issues and the people who are left pushing them day to day are really idiosyncratics who are looking to find something to upset them.
That doesn't mean there aren't occasional bad incidents, but they have to be really bad before they motivate the public these days.
Andrew - This is what I have been saying all along. The majority don't really care about any of this stuff and just want to be left alone. It's the noisy fringes who can't shut up and who get the headlines and who have taken over the interweb comment streams. No reasonable person with a reasonable argument or discussion can get a word in edgewise. And the results are the same. It give the impression that EVERYONE is crazy. I liken it to watching a riot on TV. The screen makes it look like the entire world is on fire, when it really is only one block in a vast metropolis.
On another point too, these issues are made to be Yuuuuuge. No one would have really care who used what bathroom. But somehow, Obama figured he would put it front and center by signing an executive order to mandate it. Before that no one cared as long as you looked or dressed like the gender. And he did it just to get the fringes all hot and bothered right on cue for the election cycle. Obama has done this kind of "creating an issue when there really isn't one" for 8 years now.
Though on the bathroom issue, I am now going to storm the men's bathroom when there is a long line to the "ladies"...just fair warning.
On another 'nother note: It appears that Bernie's people are the ones threatening real violence at the convention(s) if they don't get their way with Bernie getting the nomination. Bernie has yet to dial back his "Bern-lievers"...
I do like that people in the entertainment industry are finally pushing back against this PC-minded lunacy. Not that I’ve ever been embarrassed Hall & Oates were my first concert (Big Bam Boom, 1985 at Toledo’s Centennial Hall), but Daryl Hall has risen mightily in my eyes after admonishing Salon for attempting to pigeonhole him as a “blue-eyed soul singer” appropriating black culture, telling them such a label BS since America, the melting-pot America he and so many pre-21st century people grew up in, is his culture. Also loved him casting aspersions on the halls of academia, and the lack of actual thought going on there these days. Gawdamn, I do believe it’s time to turn down the Jesus and Mary Chain for some M-E-T-H-O-D O-F L-O-V-E …
On a related note, noticed Blake Lively’s taking heat from black groups because she had the audacity to refer to herself as someone with an LA face and an Oakland booty. Damn shame when people don’t know how to take a compliment, and would rather bitch and moan instead.
“Be honest, man, I don’t care about the head, I like the butt!”
“I hear ya, baby, loud and clear. Forget the head. Put a bag over it and do your business!”
Andrew,
I was disagreeing on the point that most people don't consider race at any point. If you recognize the phenomena that is Trump (who goes on about Mexicans, blacks, Jews, Arabs, the Chinese and what have you) you have to recognize that for a big chunk of people, worries about others are still a very big thing.
Its amazing to me that a politician can openly condone a beating of a random guy and he is still mainstream. That strikes me as indicative of animosity rather than indifference.
I don't know about the rape industry, but I suspect race as a factor will loom large in politics for the forseeable future. As I've noted before, minorities and women get people on the other side (and sometimes the same side) to show their asses (I'd argue that drawing often disgusting liberal attacks is Palin's big contribution to Republican cause). As per the norm, how an attack is viewed is often strong tied to who the target is.
Ok, I'm going through a news detox right now so if I don't post much, that is why.
Anthony, I didn't mean to imply that people no longer think about race. It is clearly something people think about when it comes up. What I meant was that most Americans don't let it affect their decisions.
In terms of Trump, I don't think his success means that. It does mean that from those engaged in politics, race is still a big deal. But they have been a tiny percentage of the public.
As for the rest of the public, I would again say they are a bit more rational again. I would argue that the public doesn't take Trump's race comments seriously.
Bev, I agree with that completely.
On Bernie, I think it really shows the bias of the media that they went on and on about the civil war in the GOP and a contested convention and how violent Trump's people supposedly were... and they ignore all of the same things from Bernie.
Eric, I thought the Blake Lively thing was hilarious. Once again, a good liberal finds herself attacked for racism for no genuine reason. Maybe some day they will learn... or not.
That more or less confirms what I suspected, Andrew, that this is a misguided push to undo the damage done by the Religious Right that ultimately won't amount to anything. I agree that being Anti-Christian is too ingrained on the left these days as well... I get the impression from a lot of them that being an atheist or agnostic (preferably atheist) is a sign of a clear-thinking intellectual while being Christian is considered being backwards and hateful. I also think you're right about the next wave of feminism, too, Tryanmax. Funny how things change, huh?
- Daniel
Daniel, I see such contempt on the left for Christianity that I think it's essentially impossible for them to create a Religious Left. The only exception is black churches, and I think those only work on the left for two reasons: (1) blacks are ultra loyal to the left and they largely put politics higher than religion on their priorities list, and (2) white liberals are rather prone to "the white man's burden" style thinking and allowing "the noble savages" (i.e. blacks) to maintain their "quaint superstitions" makes liberals feel enlightened/magnanimous.
(And for the record, liberals don't speak that way precisely as they use more acceptable sounding words, but they do express those ideas.
That sounds accurate to me, and interestingly enough the last time I ventured out of the messenger section on Facebook I actually saw some pushback against some of these narratives. The first was the aforementioned Blake Lively quoting Baby Got Back - the closest thing I saw to supporting the whiners' position was more or less "Yeah cultural appropriation is a problem but this is ridiculous." It seems like the whole "cultural appropriation" charge seems to be something really fringe leftists aim at other leftists, come to think of it... Aside from Blake Lively offhand I can remember it being thrown at a British pop singer, Perrie Edwards, for wearing moccasins, JK Rowling for using Native American names for the American school houses in Fantastic Beasts, and a yoga class being shut down at a Canadian college due to complaints about it. When word of this reaches the public, though, they seem to respond with an annoyed "Really? Get over it!"
The other bit of pushback I noticed was when I saw a picture of a high school girl posted of herself in a sleeveless shirt holding up a sign saying the shirt, cropped tops, and other things girls can't wear in her school's dress code aren't distracting to men and invoked rape culture in attacking the code (I can't remember everything on the sign offhand, but that covers the main points, I think). I clicked through to the picture itself out of curiosity, expecting her to get a lot of support, but I was surprised to see a lot of the postings were telling her it was as much preparation for workplace dress codes as anything and a few posts dismissive of the whole rape culture invocation as well. Basically, again, the majority of the people were saying "Get over it!" Interesting, and though it's anecdotal it does reinforce your point.
- Daniel
Daniel, There is a whole group of little delicates who write for Yahoo and worry about clothing. They fret and whine about every gay kid who isn't allowed to cross-dress at prom, every young girl who isn't allowed to dress like a whore, and every "strong" woman who is forced to comply with a dress code: "It's outrageous that anyone should be allowed to tell somebody else how they can dress. Wait a minute! Is that kid wearing a RACIST shirt! Hate crime! Hate crime! They need to stop people from wearing upsetting things!!!!!"
Interestingly, as you observed, people are starting to push back hard on these idiotic things. More often than not, you'll see dozens of comments attacking the idiot with only an occasional whiner mixed in writing how shocked they are that all these evil people are being so hate-crimey to this poor idiot... wah!!!
As an aside, keep in mind that there is a serious economic motive to inventing the "appropriation" claim. If white singers can sound black (Iggy Azalea, Megan Trainor) then that means whites can replace blacks in the music world. Similarly, by introducing an "appropriation" issue, race-baiters make it impossible for the two groups to form a common culture, which allows division to grow, which keeps the Al Sharptons of the world employed.
I haven't seen as much of the other clothes things you've mentioned, though given where I live when school administrators take action against Confederate flag clothing people unsurprisingly get irate. Interesting point on Iggy Azalea and Meghan Trainor, too. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that the delicates didn't come along until after Persona 3, then! A rapper called Lotus Juice did some music for the game (look up Persona 3 Mass Destruction and/or Burn My Dread on YouTube sometime) and he sounds exactly like a lot of black rappers - except he's Japanese!
The whole cultural appropriation thing bothers me for the exact reasons you're saying. America has always been about the blending of cultures and ideas and all this does is stir up anger and division for ridiculous reasons. Then again, the same could be said for everything the delicates are doing.. With this pushback, though, at least there's reason to be hopeful that the delucates' time is running out.
- Daniel
Er, make that Burn My Dread Last Battle Mix. He's not on the original version, which is the game's opening theme.
- Daniel
Daniel, They do it all the time and they are totally hypocritical about it.
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