December, 2015 archive

In a fantastickal leap of bothsiderism, Dick Meyer argues that right-wingers who demand license for bigotry are somehow the same as (insert “whiny” here) college students who wish to be treated without bigotry.

Trumpism and Trumpistas fit a pattern of right-wing populism familiar in our history and Europe’s. They talk like they’re under siege, furious over their diminished security, prospects and status. They see themselves as the real underdogs, the real victims. They aren’t much interested in the sob stories of “less American” groups. They are disgusted by “the system” and in a mood to punish.

Similar fears and social anxieties, I suggest, are driving the current style of student activism.

It is preoccupied with safety and protection, physical but, even more, emotional. It seems more driven by insecurity than idealism. Colleges are asked to issue “trigger warnings” when presenting material that might be upsetting to students — for any imaginable reason. Commonplace words, phrases and behaviors are called out as offensive micro-aggressions even if there is no whiff of malice.

This is a case of trying to claim that hitting someone with a bowling ball is the same as hitting him or her with a ping-pong ball. It’s not. If you doubt me, I’ll happily hit you with my bowling ball upon receipt of a signed, witnessed, and notarized consent form.

The analogy breaks down when one realizes that none of the whiny college students that Meyer decries has yet tried to blow up a mosque or beat up a professor for being.

Granted, there have been a few instances of silliness on campus, but the examples of campus silliness are, frankly, relatively few and decidedly meek, though the Meyers of the world magnify them relentlessly.

Dennis Parker gets much closer to what is actually going on.

Far from being defenses of academic integrity and openness, those who dismiss the students only perpetuate a sad history of refusal to confront the continued existence of discrimination and inequality on campus. Recent articles, such as “The Coddling of the American Mind” in The Atlantic and other media, have described professors and students feeling so afraid that they will offend someone in class that they feel that the school has ceased to be a marketplace of ideas. Undoubtedly, some students are overly sensitive, but to equate this to the hurt and fear experienced by students and faculty called the n-word at their colleges, or feeling that their presence is only reluctantly tolerated as shown by their small numbers and the sense that they don’t belong, belittles the legitimate hurt that has its roots in the country’s long history of deliberate exclusion and subordination.

One more time, those who complain of “political correctness” desire permission to offend with impunity.

Follow the links to read the full articles.

Suspended twits.

As Elon James White is fond of pointing out, sometimes the best thing to say is nothing.