Blackmoor Vituperative

There is a trend among people I consider the “good guys” to declare intent irrelevant, and elevate someone’s feelings above all. If someone feels hurt, or insulted, or afraid, it doesn’t matter what actually happened or what was actually said — all that matters is how the “victim” feels.

I have a huge problem with this.

Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows this to be a fact: not every complaint is valid.

Be very careful of what you type on a keyboard. There is no such thing as an innocent gaffe, and what may be considered ordinary banter today could be considered unforgivable heresy tomorrow.

I am grateful that I am inconsequential enough that my words and deeds have not been subjected to motivated public scrutiny. I have not always been as enlightened or even-tempered as I would like to be.

Fun fact! My first online nickname, back in the 1980s, was “heretic”. (There wasn’t a “world wide web” back then, but there was an Internet.)

“White privilege“.

“Male privilege“.

“Straight privilege“.

It bugs me so much that the word “privilege” is used in this context. “Privilege” is something that not everyone has, and that not everyone should have. But everyone should be able to travel without fear of being stopped for no reason. Everyone should be able to live day to day without fearing for their lives if a police officer notices them. Everyone should have their accomplishments respected and accepted without questioning if they had actually earned them. Everyone should be able to go through their lives without experiencing a constant barrage of insults or “jokes” aimed at their ancestry, or gender, or sexual proclivities, or skin color.

Using “privilege” to describe these benefits says that they should be taken away, which is the exact opposite of what ought to happen. These are not privileges — they are what everyone ought to have.

The argument for this terminology is that it points out that a person belonging to group X (males, straight people, “white” people, whatever) has some benefit that those in other groups do not have, a fact of which some (perhaps most) in group X are unaware. (Although how any straight, white, American male could possibly be oblivious to their status relative to other groups is a mystery to me.)

But given the standard response when the phrase “_____ privilege” is used, this terminology fails to convey that. The response is typically, “I am ____ , and I don’t have any special privilege!” And that response is correct — they don’t have any special privileges. What they do have is the ordinary way life should be for everyone, but isn’t.

So what would be better? “Respect”? “Dignity”? “Liberty”?

Personally, I think discourse on this topic would be improved if the focus were less on what group X has, and more on the gap between what group X has and what other groups have. There is a phrase already in common parlance: “income inequality”. I think we need a focus on “dignity inequality”, or “liberty inequality” — the emphasis being not to take it away from people who have it, but to make sure that everyone has it.

To be clear (because someone will read this far and yet still somehow fail to understand this), I am not saying that the disparity does not exist. I think you’d have to be willfully ignorant or just plain despicable to claim that (and many ignorant and/or despicable people do — Google “myth of white privilege” if you want your love of humanity severely tested). I am saying that if we, people of good will, are to come together and eliminate that disparity in treatment, describing it as a “privilege” makes that work more difficult.

No one is young and beautiful forever. As Carrie Fisher said, “Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They’re the temporary happy byproducts of time and/or DNA.”

On the bright side, age has made me a much better person than I was 30 years ago. I wouldn’t trade that for being young and pretty again… but I would think about it.

“The human race is a remarkable creature, one with great potential, and I hope that ‘Star Trek’ has helped to show us what we can be if we believe in ourselves and our abilities.”
— Gene Roddenberry

I realized yesterday that I don’t want to move to somewhere I have already lived. I think of that as moving backward. It occurs to me that this is not how most people think.

Also, I would really like to move somewhere not populated by ignorant bigots and ruled by a death cult.

For most of my life, I have been a steadfast supporter of “free speech” — the principle that anyone should be allowed to say anything, as long as they do not cause physical harm to another person. By “allowed”, I mean legally allowed, which is not the same thing as being socially acceptable. I have opposed laws against “hate speech”, for example, even though I think that in everyday conversation, such remarks should be condemned by others who hear them.

The problem is that we have somehow become a society that does not recognize the vast gulf between “socially acceptable” behaviour and “legally permitted behaviour“. Americans have accepted the premise that anything legally permissible is also acceptable.

I’m not sure how this happened. I suspect that it is a result of our attempts to legislate against things which have been considered socially unacceptable (the American war against drug users being the most obvious example). If socially unacceptable behaviour is against the law, but ruthlessly harassing someone for being female isn’t against the law, it must be okay, yes?

Whenever challenged on their obnoxious behaviour, the worst examples of human garbage proclaim they are simply exercising their right to “free speech”. The cry of “free speech” has accompanied the rise of “talk radio” in the 1980s (which is little more than Nazi propaganda masquerading as news), the spread of white male supremacist asshat movements like “gamerhate” and “sad/rabid puppies“, culminating with the election of a vulgar narcissist as President of the United States.

How have Americans come to value vulgarity above civility and factuality? I think it is because we have placed too much emphasis on our “right to free speech”, regardless of context, content, or factual basis. It has become a sort of idol, which we worship by saying — and defending the right to say — the most egregiously offensive things possible. That is bad enough. What concerns me more is that we have entire media empires spreading fiction as though it’s news, and huge portions of the population are rejecting facts and embracing the most ludicrous of falsehoods.

Frankly, I think it’s too late to fix it. The avalanche of lies has started, and it’s too late to stop it. We elevated “free speech” to a religion, and we are paying the price.

But I have a suggestion for the survivors of the next revolution, when they begin writing the next set of sacrosanct documents by which they will chart their destinies:

Limit “freedom of speech”. Prohibit the promotion of discredited scientific theories and outright falsehoods, and give serious thought to prohibiting language that encourages the victimization of any category of people. Somehow, make it clear that there is no need to “tolerate intolerance”. Tolerance is not a moral absolute: it is a peace treaty.

Maybe if the next civilization extols civility, factual accuracy, and scientific inquiry, rather than “free speech” and “freedom of religion”, they can avoid our mistakes.

It’s really hard to “promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate” when what you used to love (Star Wars, Star Trek, Mystery Science Theater 3000, mainstream superhero comics, etc.) has been turned into crap by people squeezing every last dime they can out of it.

sigh… But I’m trying. I really am.

This is a public service message (mainly for myself, as I try to be a better person).

When someone¹ posts, “Here is something I like!”, there are five acceptable responses. I will list them here.

1) “Tell me more about this thing you like!”
2) “Did you know this fun² fact about the thing you like?”
3) “I like that, too!”
4) “The thing you like reminds me of this other thing, which I like!”
5) (silence)

Now you know.

1)  “Someone” means “Someone who is not a full-blown Nazi, sexist scumbag, or overt racist.”
2) “Fun” means actually fun — not mean, snide, derogatory, or judgemental.

Tipping is bullshit. American “tipping” has created a whole class of beggars. People who work on my car work just as hard as the people who bring me food, but they’re not dependent on the kindness of strangers to pay their damned bills. And how much my mechanics get paid doesn’t depend on the cost of the part I have them install, or whether they’re young and cute.

I tip well, because I can (this was not always so), but I would much prefer that businesses actually pay their employees to do the job they were hired to do, so that the price I am quoted when I place my order is the price I actually pay.

“Tipping” should be abolished. It’s unfair to the people who pay, and it’s insulting and unfair to the people who receive.

But with the current political trends in this country, I suspect that most Americans will be depending on “tips” to survive before too long.