Thursday, June 11, 2020

The United College Campus Of America

Political Cartoons by Al Goodwyn
Article by Derek Hunter in "Townhall":

It’s an interesting electoral strategy – call every white person a racist and demand they vote for you as a way to absolve themselves of their guilt. That’s what Democrats are doing in 2020. I guess it’s better than running on their record and policy ideas. There used to be a word for dividing everyone by race and demanding different treatment based on that division, but I can’t quite recall it at the moment. Oh, yes, it’s racist. But words no longer mean what they used to, they mean whatever leftists demand they mean, which is turning the whole country into one big college campus.

Dictionary.com defines “racism” as follows:

1 a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
2 a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3 hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

If that sounds pretty sane, that’s because it is. It’s also not the definition anyone in the Democratic Party uses anymore. And it’s not the definition Merriam-Webster is going to use much longer. After receiving a request from a recently graduated college snowflake who was upset that people were pointing out the definition of racism, MW is adding a new definition involving “systemic oppression.” 

If you find a word’s meaning inconvenient, simply ask that it be changed.

Of course, this is normal for life on college campuses – demand action first, find out if it’s true or not later. More often than not, the cause of the outrage turns out to be false. 

But true or false, right or wrong, these quaint concepts no longer matter. Not just on college campuses, but everywhere now. Don’t like your boss? Say they’re bigoted or unfairly harsh and demanding. You don’t need any more proof than that. If your boss is a leftist, they’ll likely commit hara-kiri before you hit send on the email anyway, which will only bolster the case for their dismissal because of cultural appropriation. 

For the past few decades it’s been harder and harder for anyone to speak on college campuses. For conservatives it's nearly impossible, but a growing number of liberals have had their share of violent mob shout-downs too. Stray one inch away from acceptable liberal orthodoxy and you might as well be a Trump, many Democrats have discovered. 

It was all well and good for a while. Sure, you’d get an unfavorable segment on Fox News about your school, but the fervor would fade in a day, replaced by some other outrage. What did it matter? You didn’t go to that school, nor did your kids. 

But now those kids are out in the workforce and they haven’t grown up, they’ve only grown bolder. 

A lifetime of pedestrian existence and accomplishments meant to celebrate being over achieving, of not keeping score and a wall full of participation ribbons treated as victory have created a generation of spoiled, entitled brats. Worse, they’ve not only been told they’re special, they’ve been told they’re victims too. And they believe both.

Rather than being smacked across the face with the cold, dead fish of reality, “woke” companies bow to their demands, bend the knee to their wishes, and destroy anyone who stands in their way.

For many organizations, it’s too late to fix their corporate culture. Accusations are not only treated as fact, they’re almost treated as confessions. “Why did you do this?” has replaced, “Did you do this?” Lost in all of it is, “Does any of this really matter?”

Of course, the answer to the last question, generally, is no, it does not. But when you’re a snowflake, the slightest breath can melt you. 

The Democratic Party has aided and abetted the ideas that have turned so much of our country into one big college campus, without the fun. But Republicans let it happen. Tweeting your disgust over someone being uninvited to speak is literally the least someone could do, yet it’s the most that gets done. As these publicly subsidized factories of the put-upon crank out more professional grievance monsters, lip service isn’t going to be enough.  These political times require someone to have metaphorical content in the front of their underpants, not literal content in the back when it comes to confronting this mob.

It being an election year, and it being the Republican Party we’re talking about, there’s a less than 50-50 chance anyone will effectively stand up and tell these adults that they need to start acting like adults. 

Afraid of being called an “ist” or a “phobe” of some sort, too many people have simply watched as the civil society is being treated like a Target in Minneapolis. There’s a hunger for leaders who will actually lead, particularly when leading is a risk. That’s why you ran for the job in the first place, isn’t it? 

Audio out of Chicago this week showed just how feckless and cowardly elected leaders are when the chips are down. The city’s Aldermen all whined about the destruction of their neighborhoods to the Mayor, who couldn’t care less. None of them led, they all lamented that the Mayor wouldn’t. This “somebody’s got to do something” attitude won the day, and the city burned. 

It’s not unique to Chicago - there just happens to be audio of it there. Democrats were reluctant to speak out because they benefited from the woke mob. Republicans were reluctant to speak out because they thought the woke mob hurt Democrats. Neither is true, and with no one doing anything, the real loser is the country.
 
The woke factories have to be shut down. 

You can’t count on Democrats to stand up, but Republicans need to. Not only fighting, for as long as it takes, to end funding to schools that embrace these witch hunts, but also speaking repeatedly to donors and alumni about cutting them off as well. Hitting them where it hurts is the only way to get their attention; and if some go under in the process, who cares? The country is more important than any institution, especially one dependent upon our tax dollars.

The country is becoming one big college campus, except the fun has been sucked out of it by the joyless, entitled, gang of crybabies who used to contain their whining to the quad now doing exactly what they’ve been trained and encouraged to do in the real world. No one will fully be able to make up for the lifetime of bad parenting and miseducation that led them to this point, but numbers will be able to stop them, and we have the numbers. We just need a leader willing to sound the battle cry before they go from rewriting the dictionary to burning it. As the history of progressives has shown, they start with one book but they quickly move to others, and they never stop there. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2020/06/11/the-united-college-campus-of-america-n2570436