EVOLUTION AT WOKE

The primordial soup out of which these 'Social Justice Worriers[sic]' and their slimy ilk crawled, becomes muddier and muddier:

As to what type of show is being staged, let’s look at the dynamics. Forty or so middle-class students, including beneficiaries of DePauw’s policy of racial favouritism in hiring and admissions, decry the “burden” of being brown-skinned at said university, while holding up signs that read, “DePauw = unsafe,” “Don’t kill me,” and “Our situation is intolerable.” If you dare to disagree with the protesters, denunciation seems inevitable, most likely involving accusations of “white privilege,” and possibly racism. If you sit quietly and try to ignore the protest, then, it turns out, you’re on “the side of the oppressor.” And if you signal your approval of the protest – say, by applauding it – then this too is offensive, an insult to the protesters’ heroic struggle.

 Taken at face value, the “social justice” howler monkeys seem difficult to console. Even if you agree with them, they will complain about it. Apparently, those whose event was selfishly interrupted are expected to welcome the protesters’ disdain for everyone present. Specifically, by pretending to feel bad for an absurd made-up reason - i.e., by agreeing that the university is a dangerous and oppressive environment for brown-skinned devotees of “social justice.” Expressions of compliance are demanded, but may only take the form approved by the protesters. (No clapping is allowed, only standing “in solidarity,” for however long is necessary, while remaining mute.) Any other response – from applause to indifference – will be deemed a hostile act and mark you as an enemy. It therefore seems unlikely that such people could be kept happy for any length of time, even assuming one were sufficiently credulous to attempt it.

 However, if you think of the above as a kind of bad-faith theatre, an exercise in in-group positioning, it becomes a little more comprehensible. The object, it seems, is to whine and scold, and to indulge in emotional browbeating, thereby asserting dominance over others. The more improbable the grievance, and the more numerous the hoops through which one has to jump, the sweeter the game is, for a certain kind of person. And as this theatre of victimhood is the basis of the protesters’ status and self-importance, and the thing that excuses all that lovely scolding, it must continue indefinitely. It is, therefore, pointless to engage with such people on their own terms, as if you could ever find some mutual accommodation short of perpetual deference and self-abasement, or as if you could change their minds, or make them less obnoxious.

 The only question is which party is the more wretched and degenerate. The vain little scolds who claim to be oppressed at a university where tuition fees are a mere $50,000 a year, or the cowed and pretentious dupes who applaud their own scolding. [David Thompson]