The main reason why I hate the Pro[re]gressive Left is simple and it really boils down to this, I'm not weak. I'm Asian-American, Filipino to be specific, so that makes me a minority in the US. I'm not sure what chain of logic leads them to think so, but somehow for the Pro[re]gressive, that means I'm weak.
So how did I get to that conclusion?
More often than not, I'll see some young upper-middle class kid saying they're fighting against racism, sexism and bigotry. So on the surface I ought to be friendly towards them right? I mean after all they claim to be fighting for me.
Well here's the thing... I never asked them to. I never needed them, nor wanted them to "fight" for me. Their "help" was never needed, is not needed, and never will be needed. Combined with age and personal experience, I've been around a bit. I've been to my share of crazy parties, seen my share of drug use and their aftermath, and buried my share of friends.
A little bit of background.
I was born the in early/mid '80s, early enough that I still have memories of the '80s. So I grew up though the '90s, becoming socially aware of things around the mid to late '90s ,and becoming politically aware around the mid '90s and formulating my views in the late '90s and into the early 2000's. Essentially my socio-political views came out of the end of Bill Clinton and into the era of George W Bush's presidency. During all of that I ran with multiple circles of friends, I ran with a circle of video game and anime nerds and at the same time I ran with a circle of crazy party friends. So I had a pretty varied social circle of friends. I'd go from one night hanging out at a 24-hr diner talking to friends about Gundam Wing and how the Tallgeese was the most bad ass of all the Mobile Suits, while the next night I'd be drinking a poorly made cocktail (that was just all alcohol) and spending the night with a wild punk rock chick, who wore black all the time and liked to spin fire on her free time.
These circles of friends I've ran with came from all strata of society, all races and social classes. In short it was a microcosm of assimilation. We had the kids with parents who had money that would host the parties when the parents were away, and the poorer kids who lived in the shady neighborhoods who had the hook ups. No one gave a shit what you were as long as you were cool. The crazy parties I went to had people in our late teens, some of us had just graduated, while others were about to. Then in college there were frat hangouts I had gone to. No one cared about "privilege" or "oppression".
On that note, college was also something completely different back the from what I've been hearing that it's turned into. Many moons ago, I took a class at San Francisco State University that was an objective and academic look at the three big Abrahamic religions. One of my classmates was a practicing Muslim. So when we got to the section of Islam, he was having a hard time stepping out of his faith and analyzing the religion from an outside view, and the idea that the Koran wasn't the perfect word of God but yet another religious/cultural text was a concept that seemed to even scare him. It wasn't till the prof conceded that what we were doing would amount to blasphemy. In a polite and articulate way, the proffessor essentially said that his feelings didn't matter.
But this being 2004, and all of us there having some vague memory of the '80s and a time called the Cold War, and of a scary ass country on the other side of the world called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that jailed people who didn't agree with the government and who had over 100 nuclear missiles aimed at us, no one was offended, no one was crying about their feels, no one ran to the nearest safe space, and no one got fired. Perhaps it was because we all had perspective on what oppression really was.
My classmate persevered in the class, and presumably gained new insight into his faith. He didn't lose his shit, he didn't freak out, didn't accuse the professor of anything and tried to get him fired. He didn't go complain to someone that he was being oppressed, nor did he go
Back in my day, "Bonita Tindle" is something that never could happen. Back then people were much more grounded and it took a lot more than some White guy with dreads to set them off.
During this time period, I easily fell into one of the many forms of Liberal. Conservativism at the time was exemplified by then President George W Bush and his first term administration, with people like John Ashcroft. In other words, my personal liberal views were forged in the era where "Compassionate Conservativism" was at it's height. My views were forged with the last fading memories of the Cold War and stories of the oppressiveness of the Soviet regime, and in the era where factions of Protestant Christianity, factions including the apocalyptic, belief in the Book of Revelations faction of Protestant Christianity, were trying mold society into their own ideal image.
So where does that put me in terms of what's going on today?
Well I see this shit happening all over again. Only this time it's extremist jackasses on the left who are trying to mold society into their own ideal image. I really couldn't say why I didn't turn into a whiny-ass, unable to function in society, crybully. Maybe it was old school parents who didn't buy into the bullshit new-age hippy style of parenting. Maybe it was the fact that for a part of my life I lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation, and shared half the planet with a big brutal oppressor. Maybe those things helped me keep perspective.
I didn't worry about "microaggression", I didn't worry about a "racist White patriarchy", probably because I saw us come out of the Cold War without glowing green and seen us as a society make it past that knife edge period in history. Now why am I constantly bringing up the Cold War. Well, to put it straight, I don't think these 20 year old millennials know what evil is. They weren't there for the Civil Rights movement, they weren't there for the horrors of Vietnam, and they weren't there for the fear of the Cold War.
Many of these millennials were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Though they would be old enough to have memories of 9-11, so maybe that theory is a bit off.
So that's where I came from, a nerdy kid who befriended some people who would go one to become crazy parties, in the backdrop of a transition of the geopolitical order from the old Cold War era to the new era that came, from the Cold War to the War on Terror.
In other words... I seen a lot of shit! Seen a lot of shit, gone though a lot of shit and I'm still standing. Still standing and still plowing forward.
So that said... How did I get to the conclusion that the Progressive Left sees me as weak? Well, not to toot my own horn, but I've got quite a bit of experience behind me. Compare that to the experience that the typical college SJW has. Now, after doing that, what could possibly make any of these SJW types think that someone like me, needs them to fight for them?
Well there are a few things that got me to that conclusion
First their paternalistic, view of minorities, that we seem to need them to protect us and clear the roads for us. They have it in their heads that we need them to, not make society more fair, but instead to make it harder for White people. Essentially, they want to give White people a handicap, implying that minorities are inferior to Whites and need a handicap bonus to compete with them. This first point also ultimately shows their racism. They're trapped in this weird "White guilt" mindset, that everything is White people's fault. Now I'm not going to say that Colonialism in the early 20th Century didn't cause problems but that's a topic for another day. Here's the funny thing though, if White people have the power to cause all these problems, then the existing inverse is that White people have the power to fix all these problems. Heads, it's White Guilt, tails it's the White Savior Complex (by that I mean this idea that White people have the responsibility to fix the social problems of minority communities, and remove the obstacles that minority individuals face because they have the "power and privilege" to do it), two sides of the same racist coin. How is this racist? It's racist in that the premise is that White people need to fix the problem, as opposed to minorities having the power themselves to overcome obstacles and fix the problem ourselves. Look motherfucker, I can overcome my own damn obstacles without you. You are not needed, you never were needed, and you won't ever be needed.
This is also sexist, in that it becomes sexist when you replace "White" with "men". It's essentially the same argument. That we need to give handicap points to one side so they can compete with the other.
Second, well as the old saying goes "who died and made you king?" I can't even begin to get into the level of arrogance that it takes for them to think that they deserve to be given power, so I'm just not going to. Now the reason I take issue with this, is that given my background, vs the background of your average UC Berkley SJW undergrad, what gives them the right to tell society what's what under my name? Subheading A, what makes them think that I need society changed for me to make it? Subheading B, even if I needed society changed for me to make it through, what makes them think they know what changes I need? Hinde mo alam ako!
Third, what makes them think that I need them to be a voice for me? That I need them to be a voice for me in both volume and content? I mean case in point, Democrat Sally Boynton Brown. Look dumbass, I don't need you to shut people down for my benefit. Are you implying that I am so weak that I need YOU as my advocate? That I am so weak that I need a White person to be an advocate for me (what was I saying a little while about about White Savior Complex)?! This is the paternalistic crap I was talking about earlier, that these people seem to think they need to regulate people's individual conduct. They think that because they have "power and privilege" that they have some kind of warped sense Nobelesse Obilge to use that "power and privilege" to bring down the "racist White patriarchy" so minorities like me can make it in this country. As if we didn't have the knowledge and power to do it ourselves.
Given those three factors, the only logical conclusion that can be reached, is that they think racial/ethnic minorities remain in a position of weakness. Such weakness, that someone as naive and fresh faced as them are in a position where they can help us. Maybe it's just me, but this level of arrogance, or this level of delusion, just burns my ass. It perpetuates this concept that minorities are weak and unable to make their own way in this country, which the example of countless successful minorities in this country prove false. In other words, it attempts to brainwash minorities into thinking they're weak and that they need the "White Savior" to clear the way for them, because they can't make it otherwise.
There are other reasons, why I just out right hate the Progressive Left, usually related to their other deranged unhinged views on things, but I'll save that for later. But I did mention the Cold War several times so I will go into that a bit.
The Cold War ended in 1991, Progressive Leftism arguable blew it up into the mainstream with the Gamergate controversy that started in summer of 2014. So people born the year the Cold War ended were already 23 or so years old. In other words, they don't really have a real reference point for what constitutes "oppression". They don't have any real cognitive memory of the Cold War, nor is there any real kind of connection with historical material to the era. I read stuff on the Cold War and for me, it's childhood, for them, it's something that happened a long time ago.
In other words, they don't know what evil is. The horror stories of Communist regimes is too far in proximity to them, so for them "oppression" is now something that makes them emotionally uncomfortable. Something that hurts their feelings.
When I was a kid, probably into 1993 and 1994, we still heard about and learned about the horrors of Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. I went to a private school and we were introduced to history earlier than the public schools were, so we watched a lot of interviews with Communist defectors, and I recall one movie about a family that fled East Berlin into West Berlin on a hot air balloon, so we got to see a depiction of life in East Germany, with the Stazi watching everyone. We heard stories of oppression from people who actually were oppressed, oppressed by some of the most iron fisted regimes in history. But not just that though, there was also a proximity in time when we were learning all this, it either was still happening, or only happened a few years ago. I remember in 1993 or 1994 we watched VHS recordings of the Berlin Wall getting torn down. Then in 1995 we had the Bosnian genocide, we followed that very closely in school.
Now these college millennials haven't really been exposed to the same kind of thing. The Bosnian genocide was something that happened far away, by a regime that couldn't come here and hurt us. Then in 9-11 and the subsequent War on Terror, we saw the Taliban collapse in a matter of days, we saw Saddam's regime collapse in just as short amount of time. We saw the 2011 surge that saw the end of some of the major insurgency actions like in Falluja, and in the same year we saw the end of Osama bin Laden. The War on Terror is no longer on the forefront of public thought. We don't have regular forces boots on the ground against ISIS, so for the general public, it still remains as something far away.
Having not been exposed to these kinds of things, the reasonable assumption is that they don't have a really concrete reference point for what is "evil". Now I'm sure there are other reasons, but the fact they the equate the most minor slight as "aggression", the constant othering of someone who simply has a different political view as "a Nazi" and therefore evil. I mean shit, even segre-goddamn-gration is making a come back. The reasonable conclusion is that they've never experienced actual evil. Because if they had, then they wouldn't be wasting energy on non-sense like "microagression" and "cultural appropriation". It's that or they're really just that weak due to leftist helicopter parents who moved aside all personal obstacles from them and therefore never really had a chance to grow.
Now has things in the US been harder for me because I'm Asian-American? To tell you the truth... I don't know. I really don't and you want to know why? Because most of my life I've been busting my ass to get by, finishing my BA, getting a job, going to law school and finishing my JD, getting a job again, and prepping for the Bar. I've been too busy working hard to make something of myself to really notice, let alone give a damn. You know what I was told as a kid? To work harder. Oh you didn't succeed? It wasn't because of racism or what ever other -ism, it's because you didn't work hard enough. If you want to change things, then go and get into a position of power and change things from there. Some people have it harder than others and that's just life. You can work hard and carve your way to the top and change it from there yourself. Or you can bitch and cry and wait till someone else does it for you.
So there it is, where I came from and why it is only natural that I would find myself in direct opposition to the Progressive Left who claims to be my "ally".
No comments:
Post a Comment