Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Two Tears In A Bucket

Why am I, a privileged minority living in the West, upset about the Charlie Hebdo killings yet not upset (not as upset?) about 2000 Nigerians dead at the hands of Boko Haram?

Why do I think it's brave to publish a Mohammed cartoon yet I don't endorse the publication of Carlos Latuff's bordering on anti-Semitic cartoons?

Whenever the left is confronted with something that they have to acknowledge, like the anger over the Charlie Hebdo killings, they dismiss it by finding an inconsistency. Conservatives aren't really fiscal hawks because conservatives somewhere aren't fiscal hawks. Conservatives are racist because they saw something racist on Fox News. Mike Harris did a thing, so we will never never never never vote PC. When a conservative somewhere drops the ball, everything every conservative says or has said is forever wrong.

Here's the problem, though: I (and Mike Harris) cannot have completely consistent position on anything, because I'm not a robot. I, like everyone, subdivide humanity into friendlies and threats. What's the bigger threat to me? What's the bigger benefit to me? These are questions that people, including judgy leftists on Twitter, ask themselves.

I would love to have as much empathy for autistic transgender otherkin who use "ze" and "zim" pronouns as I do for people who look like me. Unfortunately, when ISIS says, "I want you dead because you exist," I believe them. When my paycheque shrinks or when my commute time increases because Kathleen Wynne can't manage a province properly, it affects me personally and it makes me less likely to like her and less likely to think about the problems of autistic transgender otherkin besides.

Leftists ascribe this to the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, because doing that is easy. It's much harder to ask themselves if they can separate capitalists from capitalism, and hate one without hating the other in a love the sinner but hate the sin sort of way. If dudes don't think building a building with a one-to-one ratio of male to female bathrooms reinforces sexism, and it is known (if you are a leftist) that this sort of blind spot is unconscious, then it should be a simple exercise in logic to understand that yelling at the dudes is counterproductive, because they don't know what they did. Yet the yelling and the bathing in male tears continues unabated.

Why is this? It is because leftists and right wingers like me are both people, deciding what is most beneficial and what is most threatening to us. Not being particularly good myself with edged weapons or guns, I like to use my writing skills to defend myself against ISIS, or at least make myself believe that I'm doing that, and the leftists are focused on potty parity. The heart wants what it wants. That's the conservative position, and it is totally unacceptable to leftists who are suddenly not OK with differences of opinion when it comes to stuff they're emotionally invested in. That's why they're busy pointing out all of the things that are worse than Charlie Hebdo cartoonists being murdered. In an ideal world they would admit that they just don't care as much about the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists the same way I admit that I find it hard to care that much about some stuff, but.....

The experiments of the left are doomed to fail because it is impossible for anyone to be totally sympathetic to every single random concern out there. We can file this under the heading of "Uncomfortably True Conservative Truths." Being empathetic to the concerns of people you don't know is really, really hard. It requires (as per the leftists) lots and lots of education, and even then you are at risk of making social errors and being destroyed. Wait a second....that sounds like a pretty conservative worldview as well, what with the world being a threatening place and people needing to be on guard about those threats. Dammit.

Hmmmm....right, OK. It has to do with privilege. See, if I point out problems in the Muslim world, I'm criticizing an a underprivileged minority. So who's supposed to fix these problems? Muslims? No, I can't ask Muslims to fix their own problems because that's victim blaming. I and other privileged people need to fix the problems I'm.... not supposed to be pointing out....yeesh...

Now how the hell do I do that? Reassure Muslims that I stand with them and don't condone a backlash against them? No, because when ordinary Australians started the #illridewithyou hashtag after the Sydney cafe attacks, that just perpetuated racism against Muslims because it's patronizing. Well yeah...I'm not a fan of hashtag activism either. How about world leaders and the Pope speaking out against a backlash? Yeah, that's nice....but what about all the other things these people are doing wrong, like marching in a parade with the leaders of oppressive regimes, or not endorsing same sex marriage?!?! So we're back to square one with the good stuff not mattering because of all the other bad stuff. Which kind of makes you question the need to reach out in the first place.....which is something a conservative would say! Not again!!!

Why does everything these people do prove the correctness of the conservative worldview?

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