We are constantly hearing shrieking and caterwauling from conservatives, Republicans and right-wingers who have managed to convince themselves that they are being unfairly “oppressed,” “victimized,” and “persecuted” by the “violent left,” who are being just SO unfair in calling them racist, cruel, authoritarian and even fascistic. In their mythology of eternal victimhood, this is supposed to be proof of how “intolerant” and “bigoted” liberals and progressives are, seemingly because they are “unable to tolerate other points of view that don’t fit their own.”
Yeah…..see….here’s what never seems to remotely cross their minds. Does it EVER, even for a SECOND, occur to any of these perpetually aggrieved victimhood-adddicts that maybe, just maybe, we say these things about them in response to their actual BEHAVIOR?
Does it ever occur to them that we call out their statements as racist because they are, in fact, trafficking in rhetoric that actually IS racially inflammatory? That they are advocating and voting for policies that empirically, materially ARE racially targeted? That they are motivating their voting base with tropes and cliches that ARE racially charged? That their policies materially DO disenfranchise nonwhites? Does it ever occur to any of these people that there is a REASON they get called racist?
And have they ever, over the past thirty years of coarsening, increasingly toxic political discourse, stepped back and listened to their own words when they talk about other people? Do they really not hear themselves when they say the most filthy, dehumanizing, abjectly cruel things about entire groups of people? Do they really not understand that constantly working to legally disenfranchise racial, sexual and religious minorities and constantly call into question their civil liberties, their autonomy, their human dignity, their very AMERICANness——is legitimately a cruel, horrible way to behave toward other human beings?
Okay, see—-here’s the rub.
We are constantly hearing shrieking and caterwauling from conservatives, Republicans and right-wingers who have managed to convince themselves that they are being unfairly “oppressed,” “victimized,” and “persecuted” by the “violent left,” who are being just SO unfair in calling them racist, cruel, authoritarian and even fascistic. In their mythology of eternal victimhood, this is supposed to be proof of how “intolerant” and “bigoted” liberals and progressives are, seemingly because they are “unable to tolerate other points of view that don’t fit their own.”
Yeah…..see….here’s what never seems to remotely cross their minds. Does it EVER, even for a SECOND, occur to any of these perpetually aggrieved victimhood-adddicts that maybe, just maybe, we say these things about them in response to their actual BEHAVIOR?
Does it ever occur to them that we call out their statements as racist because they are, in fact, trafficking in rhetoric that actually IS racially inflammatory? That they are advocating and voting for policies that empirically, materially ARE racially targeted? That they are motivating their voting base with tropes and cliches that ARE racially charged? That their policies materially DO disenfranchise nonwhites? Does it ever occur to any of these people that there is a REASON they get called racist?
And have they ever, over the past thirty years of coarsening, increasingly toxic political discourse, stepped back and listened to their own words when they talk about other people? Do they really not hear themselves when they say the most filthy, dehumanizing, abjectly cruel things about entire groups of people? Do they really not understand that constantly working to legally disenfranchise racial, sexual and religious minorities and constantly call into question their civil liberties, their autonomy, their human dignity, their very AMERICANness——is legitimately a cruel, horrible way to behave toward other human beings?