Fragility connotes vulnerability, and that state of fear generates hatefullness. Look at how the so-called Palestinians and their supporters have been disgracing themselves lately with their overt Jew hatred. Probably a bonding point with many Amercan blacks.
I like watching/reading Glenn and John. But they frequently miss an elephant in the room: Racism is not exclusively white against black. Racism comes from all directions and goes in all directions.
It is telling that, as Glenn and John discuss black people's interpretations of racism and the degree to which it exists in America, they presume that the only racism that needs considering is white racism against blacks. That constitute one HUGE blind spot.
By numbers, cops kill far more whites than blacks. That changes, when you measure by percentages. But in either event, the deaths of whites, either at the hands of cops or of blacks, is essentially ignored. THAT is racist.
Big fan. Watch your clips on YouTube often. You add much needed context and nuance to discussions.
Question for everyone-
Why is it that we have come to labeling- associating emptions or a state of being with race? Emotions and being human are not race based. There might be nuanced reasons for people of different backgrounds to have experiences that provide us with emptions or responses, but is there any evidence that there actually is “white or black fragility”?
The Head of the Joint Chiefs recently testified before congress and made a point that he wanted to understand “white rage.”
I do not believe in “white or black rage.” I don’t think such things exist. I believe that humans can feel rage. I believe there might be some societal reasons for subgroups to have such emptions, but I fundamentally disagree that such emptions can be race based.
It gets on my nerves when this kind of stereotyping occurs. I understand your use of the
“flip side” in some of these debates, such as the use of the term “woke racism.” To fight stereotyping and labeling, you must delve into the terminology that has been generally accepted, I suppose …
But terms like “white fragility” or “white privilege” that connotate negative associations with a racial group are bunk in my opinion. Such terms should be called out for what they are- ridiculous.
Such terminology is nonsense, and I wish it would be relegated into a category of laughable obfuscation where it belongs- but for now we are stuck with it.
Having to subject ourselves to this makes us all a little dumber. But here we are. Stuck in stupid land.
"Having to subject ourselves to this makes us all a little dumber. But here we are." #truth
It's a concept we continue to define in the most nebulous ways. If there was no social or economic advantage associated with it, who would care about "race"?
But damned if the *human* race didn't buy into it, hook, line and sinker.
500+ years and running.
Ironically, the youth give me (some) hope. Even though they talk a lot about race, clearly they are not obsessed with it in their personal lives.
There are plenty of ways people mistreat each other which have nothing to do with racism. At some point, ideally, it will fade into the general background of people’s sharp elbows.
The older 1970's language of racism was, I think, more useful in describing social interactions than the current vocabulary of anti-racism. Those words being bias, prejudice, discrimination.
For example, it is entirely possible that Glen's greeter could have been a racist, but then, they might simply have been intimidated by celebrity, or unaccustomed to interactions with black persons, which is a form of bias, I guess, but not necessarily racist.
It seems to me we humans make judgments about each other all the time based on the available evidence: a haircut, mode of dress, behavioral idiosyncrasies, cultural markers—it is involuntary. We are not all comfortable with all people equally.
Some of it is threat assessment, and some of it is just the gossipy nature of human beings. We check each other out. The attempt to change this is futile, or worse, self-delusion. Fortunately, we don't have to act on our own first impulses.
My own personal experience tells me that things now are much worse that they were ten years ago, and, unscientifically, I blame anti-racism. Usually when you tell someone they have cause for righteous anger—they believe you, their resentment grows. I'm afraid I have noticed recently that the simplest social interactions now can carry a subtext of hostility. I wish it weren't so.
If I had to blame someone, it would be Obama, who set race relations back 30 years. His white mother was a socialist, his white grandmother was a communist, and he was steeped in the culture of class warfare. Today, he's the first ex-president to remain in D.C. and to hold court with current Administration officials. Shameless.
Every time I think about the "hope" candidate, and that ubiquitous poster in 2008, and the profound cynicism of it all—all I remember is how sucked into it I was, how badly I wanted to believe in it. I wonder if he ever wonders about how much damage he did with all us stupid white people.
It was a great poster. After decades we all wanted to believe we were past all this nonsense. Boy, were we wrong. Obama legitimized racial grievance as if it was some undiscovered truth. In a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society, he took sides. He was the President of ALL. Americans, but you’d never know it. Now, he’s the first post-President to remain in D.C. He hangs with the rich and famous, his net worth having exploded. He is a living mockery of those who voted for him.
If you think women and blacks have it bad with "microaggressions"- ask today's Jews (or those from about 80 years ago... if they survived) how it goes forever and ever.
I feel the same way about mansplaining and other sexist microaggressions. Every successful women has stories of being overlooked or underestimated (“Where’s the doctor?” “I’m the doctor.”) but these are blips in otherwise cushy lives. Any other women’s issue you could name (sexual harassment, maternity leave…) is 100x more important.
My mother was a business woman in the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Pretty lonely place if you’re a woman back then. She told us she got chased around the table by men more than once, but her attitude was that you deal with it and move forward rather than whine or complain. She and my dad were dirt poor. I mean zero as in hungry poor. They raised four successful kids, met many famous Americans including 3 Presidents, and brought home hitchhiking servicemen of all races for dinner all the time. My dad was beat up for his ethnicity growing up. He never held a grudge. That’s my example, and that’s my America. What’s yours?
There's a certain personality type found in any profession demanding high standards, the abilty to do research and interpret facts and situations--academia comes to mind. Anyone with a bad case of imposter syndrome (they're smart but always doubting themselves) can slide into feeling like a victim (which is so much easier and so much more ego-inflating than admitting, "I'm a bit of a masochist.") Imagining "they're all against me" is pleasanter than looking into that snakepit of one's own soul.
I wish all sides would get over the victimhood. If there are overt instances of racism or sexism and it has threatened one's life, livelihood or blocked the pursuit of making one's future, then I'll listen.
To be fair, it depends on who you are talking to / listening to. But regardless, I get where John & Glenn are coming from. Most people aren't super-objective in their opinions on any subject, especially the thorniest ones. And politically driven folks in particular are extra-inclined to spin narratives, even when they think they're being objective. It is a tendency that goes beyond race or political persuasion.
But yes, African-Americans (today) often overstate societal problems by way of personal experiences--that is not objectivity. We all have an f'd up story up to tell. But anecdotes don't paint an entire picture.
If you choose to speak with people for more insight about "What it's like to be Black", assess their objectivity first and foremost: Are they well-informed? Honest? Logical? Fair?
This is a prescription that should apply across the board.
Black people I know experience racism and still succeed. There are studies that document discrimination and racism factor into adverse health outcomes. Do you disagree?
But what I was getting at here was the overall picture that some of us--too many of us in my opinion--often paint. As if the depths of racism in the US today are so overwhelming that we need therapy or something close to it.
I am a lot like John McWhorter on this. It's one thing to acknowledge racism. It's another thing to exaggerate its effects on the average Black person. We are not all experiencing the same hell. Some of us are doing great. Some of us experience less racism than I do.
The complaints about racism/racial bias that I see come from real problems. Black voters were intentionally underrepresented in AL, GA, LA, MS, etc. lawsuits were filed. Guidelines were set up by healthcare advocates who noted Black patients with identical illnesses and identical incomes were not receiving equal levels of treatment. I see activists addressing real problems.
I would argue that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Real racism is real racism. At the same time, it is possible to overstate racism with respect to the average African-American.
I think John and I were thinking about, not so much the serious activist type, but the often casual conversations that occur among many Black Americans.
I would argue that the real activists fighting real racism is where the focus needs to be.
Homicides are much lower than the number of homicides that occurred in the 1990s. No one would argue that we should not reduce the number of homicides happening today.
Racism is decreased, but that does not mean that we should not address racism today. A person born in 2000 should care that racism is less now than in the 1930s or the 1960s. They know things are not where they should be today. Similarly, a person would not want to hear that they should relax about crime because the 1990s were worse.
"Racism is deceased, but that does not mean that we should not address racism today."
To be clear, I have never said, hinted, or even thought anything else.
My only point here was that we as a people--again, too many of us in my view--overstate the gravity of racism on our day-to-day individual lives in 2023 America. This of course is a matter of perspective.
I think we both agree that our focus should be on the most critical problems. We obviously disagree about what those problems are.
I remember readng a Shelby Steele book (The Content of Our Character?) in which he recounts sometimes measuring white racism based on whether a white person would avoid touching his hand during a cash transaction. As a white person who was germophobic before germophobia was cool, I was alarmed: in these situations I had always tried to avoid touching anyone -- white, black, or anything else. Mr. Steele would have thought me a racist. What's a neurotic to do? It has been a battle between germophobia and fear of being thought a racist ever since.
Of COURSE racism exists. So what? Some people disparage others as a form of misplaced animosity or cathartic release. To paraphrase recent anti-Israel chants, what do you think human behavior looks like? That’s why data matters - “lived experiences “ is a lazy way of saying “I don’t care what the facts are...”. I have seen tribal and ethnic groups disparage each other in Africa, in the Middle East and in South America. It’s lazy and boring. I’m over it. In the United States, with the exception of substandard Union-controlled inner city public schools, black Americans have opportunities to succeed unparalleled in history, as many un indoctrinated immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa prove year in and year out. The African American community is being played as fools by the Democratic Party and race hucksters. The vast majority of AA’s are for school choice and keeping their communities safe from crime, but they are just patted on the head and told about systemic racism, decolonization and similar nonsense, mostly by white liberals. It’s a con, and I think most of Glenn and John’s readers know it.
I would add all Americans have opportunities to succeed unparalleled in history, and the tendency to overreact comes from all sides. A (white) man I knew talked about how his life was almost destroyed by an accusation of racism by a flight student when he was a flight instructor. Another flight instructor (black) took the student up and also found the student wasn't cut out for flying airplanes. This all happened and was resolved in a matter of about 2 hours. He was still hysterical almost 70 years later.
Is black fragility a uniquely black phenomenon or just one specific expression of a larger, societal fraglility problem? These days, I see a lot of fragility everywhere I look (and along the entire political spectrum). Politicans of both parties whose whole brand is attention seeking tend to lose their minds at the slightest bit of unwanted attention. People on the right coined the term 'snowflake' as a pejorative reference to the whiny people of the left (of which there were and are many), but people on the right do just as much whining. Trying to ban books or drag shows is a kind of right wing fragility. Donald Trump is the biggest whiner in American public life (just listen to any speech of his or read his spcial media posts).
I agree with much of what you say, Michael. But I don’t know many people who care about Drag Shows ( seriously, does anyone care?) except… when they involve children and adolescents. That stuff has NO place in the education of our children. Teach them things that matter ( like STEM classes ) and trust them to figure out their own sexuality without “guidance “ from political bureaucrats.
Drag shows are not my personal thing, but they are first amendment protected free expression and are not generally intended to provide "guidance" to children figuring out their sexuality.
Basically anyone reading this has probably seen, at one time or another, either live or on TV, a man dressed in drag. For the middle aged among us, perhaps it was Dustin Hoffman in the movie 'Tootsie.' I would invite straight folks to consider whether they find this sort of thing to have any impact whatsoever on their sexuality.
It's definitely not unique. There's a certain sense to it, when you look at human behavior in the whole. There is a natural tendency to admire excellence. Succeeding is admirable. Succeeding in the face of adversity, moreso. It's harder, after all. Stoic persistence has been a staple of hero tales since the dawn of civilization. The Odyssey was written over 2500 years ago and all it is is the story of a man who gets kicked repeatedly but gets back up every time, dusts himself off and keeps moving forward. We, as humans, looooove that sort of thing. It captures the potential nobility of the species. It serves as inspiration.
Decades ago, when I was in the Navy, on down time, I would sometimes read about Medal of Honor recipients. One of my favorites involves a Navy chief. His ship was hit by a torpedo, the engine room was taking on water and the oil floating on the water caught fire. He sent the rest of the engine crew out of the room, because he was in charge and the engine was his responsibility. He kept the engine operating, by himself, until he was overcome by smoke inhalation. He was found, brought up to the top deck and revived. At which point, he immediately went back down to the engine room and ran the engine until he passed out AGAIN from smoke inhalation. He was brought up, revived and went back a third time, running the engine until he died from smoke inhalation. But the ship made it safely to port, saving all hands. I'm sorry, but that's a motherfucking HERO. To do what's right, no matter the personal cost, to keep moving no matter what happens, it's one of the few forms of masculinity that hasn't been deemed toxic yet.
We all want to be heroes. I'm not suggesting, of course, that we all want to die to show off our nobility. It's just that we want others to think well of us. To admire us. So maybe, if nobody has noticed our wounds, we try to subtly point them out. And over time, as the world becomes a safer, more comfortable place, there are less obstacles to visibly overcome. Not to be left out, we exaggerate our hurts. We fluff the mountains we've climbed, like a fisherman stretching the truth of just how big that fish REALLY was. Left unchecked, it spirals into the culture we have today, where everyone agrees with the adversity of everyone else, in the charitable hope that everyone else will agree with their own adversity.
To your later point about right wing fragility, you're correct that it's not a left phenomenon. The right is absolutely guilty too. You give poor examples, however. When you say "ban books" it brings to mind The Jungle or The Catcher in the Rye. Florida isn't banning books in that sense. What they're doing is saying that you cannot have sexually explicit literature in schools. The left likes to frame it as anti-LGBTQ, but it's about not presenting pornography to children. That's not me being hyperbolic. From the book "Gender Queer":
I got a new strap-on harness today. I can’t wait to put it on you. I can’t wait to have your cock in my mouth—I’m going to give you the blowjob of your life. Then I want you inside me.
Could anyone really disagree with the idea that text like that is not appropriate for kids? Rather than talk about the specifics of what books are being removed from schools and why, it has a better impact to say "oh, the Republicans are banning books, the evil, censorious, authoritarian bastards!"
Fragility connotes vulnerability, and that state of fear generates hatefullness. Look at how the so-called Palestinians and their supporters have been disgracing themselves lately with their overt Jew hatred. Probably a bonding point with many Amercan blacks.
I like watching/reading Glenn and John. But they frequently miss an elephant in the room: Racism is not exclusively white against black. Racism comes from all directions and goes in all directions.
It is telling that, as Glenn and John discuss black people's interpretations of racism and the degree to which it exists in America, they presume that the only racism that needs considering is white racism against blacks. That constitute one HUGE blind spot.
By numbers, cops kill far more whites than blacks. That changes, when you measure by percentages. But in either event, the deaths of whites, either at the hands of cops or of blacks, is essentially ignored. THAT is racist.
I have a feeling that black guys will kill more black guys than Hamas will kill Israelis this year.
Side note, 100,000 people will die of drug overdoses this year.
Hey Glenn and John.
Big fan. Watch your clips on YouTube often. You add much needed context and nuance to discussions.
Question for everyone-
Why is it that we have come to labeling- associating emptions or a state of being with race? Emotions and being human are not race based. There might be nuanced reasons for people of different backgrounds to have experiences that provide us with emptions or responses, but is there any evidence that there actually is “white or black fragility”?
The Head of the Joint Chiefs recently testified before congress and made a point that he wanted to understand “white rage.”
I do not believe in “white or black rage.” I don’t think such things exist. I believe that humans can feel rage. I believe there might be some societal reasons for subgroups to have such emptions, but I fundamentally disagree that such emptions can be race based.
It gets on my nerves when this kind of stereotyping occurs. I understand your use of the
“flip side” in some of these debates, such as the use of the term “woke racism.” To fight stereotyping and labeling, you must delve into the terminology that has been generally accepted, I suppose …
But terms like “white fragility” or “white privilege” that connotate negative associations with a racial group are bunk in my opinion. Such terms should be called out for what they are- ridiculous.
Such terminology is nonsense, and I wish it would be relegated into a category of laughable obfuscation where it belongs- but for now we are stuck with it.
Having to subject ourselves to this makes us all a little dumber. But here we are. Stuck in stupid land.
"Having to subject ourselves to this makes us all a little dumber. But here we are." #truth
It's a concept we continue to define in the most nebulous ways. If there was no social or economic advantage associated with it, who would care about "race"?
But damned if the *human* race didn't buy into it, hook, line and sinker.
500+ years and running.
Ironically, the youth give me (some) hope. Even though they talk a lot about race, clearly they are not obsessed with it in their personal lives.
There are plenty of ways people mistreat each other which have nothing to do with racism. At some point, ideally, it will fade into the general background of people’s sharp elbows.
Focusing on quotes made in barbershop talk deflects from real problems. Focusing on deflection rather than worthy advocacy is a choice.
The worst sin committed by LBJ. Was robbing blacks of their internal locus of control
Your comments are broad, ambiguous, ignorant, and absurd.
Have a good day
The older 1970's language of racism was, I think, more useful in describing social interactions than the current vocabulary of anti-racism. Those words being bias, prejudice, discrimination.
For example, it is entirely possible that Glen's greeter could have been a racist, but then, they might simply have been intimidated by celebrity, or unaccustomed to interactions with black persons, which is a form of bias, I guess, but not necessarily racist.
It seems to me we humans make judgments about each other all the time based on the available evidence: a haircut, mode of dress, behavioral idiosyncrasies, cultural markers—it is involuntary. We are not all comfortable with all people equally.
Some of it is threat assessment, and some of it is just the gossipy nature of human beings. We check each other out. The attempt to change this is futile, or worse, self-delusion. Fortunately, we don't have to act on our own first impulses.
My own personal experience tells me that things now are much worse that they were ten years ago, and, unscientifically, I blame anti-racism. Usually when you tell someone they have cause for righteous anger—they believe you, their resentment grows. I'm afraid I have noticed recently that the simplest social interactions now can carry a subtext of hostility. I wish it weren't so.
If I had to blame someone, it would be Obama, who set race relations back 30 years. His white mother was a socialist, his white grandmother was a communist, and he was steeped in the culture of class warfare. Today, he's the first ex-president to remain in D.C. and to hold court with current Administration officials. Shameless.
Every time I think about the "hope" candidate, and that ubiquitous poster in 2008, and the profound cynicism of it all—all I remember is how sucked into it I was, how badly I wanted to believe in it. I wonder if he ever wonders about how much damage he did with all us stupid white people.
See my June 8 comment on this subject:
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/tgif-june-8-2023-wildfires-nyc-donald-trump?r=ydu56&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=17106368
It was a great poster. After decades we all wanted to believe we were past all this nonsense. Boy, were we wrong. Obama legitimized racial grievance as if it was some undiscovered truth. In a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society, he took sides. He was the President of ALL. Americans, but you’d never know it. Now, he’s the first post-President to remain in D.C. He hangs with the rich and famous, his net worth having exploded. He is a living mockery of those who voted for him.
If you think women and blacks have it bad with "microaggressions"- ask today's Jews (or those from about 80 years ago... if they survived) how it goes forever and ever.
The inquisition, what a show!
I feel the same way about mansplaining and other sexist microaggressions. Every successful women has stories of being overlooked or underestimated (“Where’s the doctor?” “I’m the doctor.”) but these are blips in otherwise cushy lives. Any other women’s issue you could name (sexual harassment, maternity leave…) is 100x more important.
My mother was a business woman in the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Pretty lonely place if you’re a woman back then. She told us she got chased around the table by men more than once, but her attitude was that you deal with it and move forward rather than whine or complain. She and my dad were dirt poor. I mean zero as in hungry poor. They raised four successful kids, met many famous Americans including 3 Presidents, and brought home hitchhiking servicemen of all races for dinner all the time. My dad was beat up for his ethnicity growing up. He never held a grudge. That’s my example, and that’s my America. What’s yours?
There's a certain personality type found in any profession demanding high standards, the abilty to do research and interpret facts and situations--academia comes to mind. Anyone with a bad case of imposter syndrome (they're smart but always doubting themselves) can slide into feeling like a victim (which is so much easier and so much more ego-inflating than admitting, "I'm a bit of a masochist.") Imagining "they're all against me" is pleasanter than looking into that snakepit of one's own soul.
I wish all sides would get over the victimhood. If there are overt instances of racism or sexism and it has threatened one's life, livelihood or blocked the pursuit of making one's future, then I'll listen.
To be fair, it depends on who you are talking to / listening to. But regardless, I get where John & Glenn are coming from. Most people aren't super-objective in their opinions on any subject, especially the thorniest ones. And politically driven folks in particular are extra-inclined to spin narratives, even when they think they're being objective. It is a tendency that goes beyond race or political persuasion.
But yes, African-Americans (today) often overstate societal problems by way of personal experiences--that is not objectivity. We all have an f'd up story up to tell. But anecdotes don't paint an entire picture.
If you choose to speak with people for more insight about "What it's like to be Black", assess their objectivity first and foremost: Are they well-informed? Honest? Logical? Fair?
This is a prescription that should apply across the board.
Black people I know experience racism and still succeed. There are studies that document discrimination and racism factor into adverse health outcomes. Do you disagree?
"Black people I know experience racism and still succeed."
Same here. Sometimes extraordinarily so.
"There are studies that document discrimination and racism factor into adverse health outcomes."
I am generally aware of that. This TikTok-er MD has an interesting channel that I started following some months back.
https://www.tiktok.com/@joelbervell
But what I was getting at here was the overall picture that some of us--too many of us in my opinion--often paint. As if the depths of racism in the US today are so overwhelming that we need therapy or something close to it.
I am a lot like John McWhorter on this. It's one thing to acknowledge racism. It's another thing to exaggerate its effects on the average Black person. We are not all experiencing the same hell. Some of us are doing great. Some of us experience less racism than I do.
The complaints about racism/racial bias that I see come from real problems. Black voters were intentionally underrepresented in AL, GA, LA, MS, etc. lawsuits were filed. Guidelines were set up by healthcare advocates who noted Black patients with identical illnesses and identical incomes were not receiving equal levels of treatment. I see activists addressing real problems.
I would argue that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Real racism is real racism. At the same time, it is possible to overstate racism with respect to the average African-American.
I think John and I were thinking about, not so much the serious activist type, but the often casual conversations that occur among many Black Americans.
I would argue that the real activists fighting real racism is where the focus needs to be.
Homicides are much lower than the number of homicides that occurred in the 1990s. No one would argue that we should not reduce the number of homicides happening today.
Racism is decreased, but that does not mean that we should not address racism today. A person born in 2000 should care that racism is less now than in the 1930s or the 1960s. They know things are not where they should be today. Similarly, a person would not want to hear that they should relax about crime because the 1990s were worse.
"Racism is deceased, but that does not mean that we should not address racism today."
To be clear, I have never said, hinted, or even thought anything else.
My only point here was that we as a people--again, too many of us in my view--overstate the gravity of racism on our day-to-day individual lives in 2023 America. This of course is a matter of perspective.
I think we both agree that our focus should be on the most critical problems. We obviously disagree about what those problems are.
I remember readng a Shelby Steele book (The Content of Our Character?) in which he recounts sometimes measuring white racism based on whether a white person would avoid touching his hand during a cash transaction. As a white person who was germophobic before germophobia was cool, I was alarmed: in these situations I had always tried to avoid touching anyone -- white, black, or anything else. Mr. Steele would have thought me a racist. What's a neurotic to do? It has been a battle between germophobia and fear of being thought a racist ever since.
The germaphobe could stop worrying about what others think, and unless someone says something to you, you won't know how he or she thinks.
Of COURSE racism exists. So what? Some people disparage others as a form of misplaced animosity or cathartic release. To paraphrase recent anti-Israel chants, what do you think human behavior looks like? That’s why data matters - “lived experiences “ is a lazy way of saying “I don’t care what the facts are...”. I have seen tribal and ethnic groups disparage each other in Africa, in the Middle East and in South America. It’s lazy and boring. I’m over it. In the United States, with the exception of substandard Union-controlled inner city public schools, black Americans have opportunities to succeed unparalleled in history, as many un indoctrinated immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa prove year in and year out. The African American community is being played as fools by the Democratic Party and race hucksters. The vast majority of AA’s are for school choice and keeping their communities safe from crime, but they are just patted on the head and told about systemic racism, decolonization and similar nonsense, mostly by white liberals. It’s a con, and I think most of Glenn and John’s readers know it.
I would add all Americans have opportunities to succeed unparalleled in history, and the tendency to overreact comes from all sides. A (white) man I knew talked about how his life was almost destroyed by an accusation of racism by a flight student when he was a flight instructor. Another flight instructor (black) took the student up and also found the student wasn't cut out for flying airplanes. This all happened and was resolved in a matter of about 2 hours. He was still hysterical almost 70 years later.
Is black fragility a uniquely black phenomenon or just one specific expression of a larger, societal fraglility problem? These days, I see a lot of fragility everywhere I look (and along the entire political spectrum). Politicans of both parties whose whole brand is attention seeking tend to lose their minds at the slightest bit of unwanted attention. People on the right coined the term 'snowflake' as a pejorative reference to the whiny people of the left (of which there were and are many), but people on the right do just as much whining. Trying to ban books or drag shows is a kind of right wing fragility. Donald Trump is the biggest whiner in American public life (just listen to any speech of his or read his spcial media posts).
I agree with much of what you say, Michael. But I don’t know many people who care about Drag Shows ( seriously, does anyone care?) except… when they involve children and adolescents. That stuff has NO place in the education of our children. Teach them things that matter ( like STEM classes ) and trust them to figure out their own sexuality without “guidance “ from political bureaucrats.
Drag shows are not my personal thing, but they are first amendment protected free expression and are not generally intended to provide "guidance" to children figuring out their sexuality.
Basically anyone reading this has probably seen, at one time or another, either live or on TV, a man dressed in drag. For the middle aged among us, perhaps it was Dustin Hoffman in the movie 'Tootsie.' I would invite straight folks to consider whether they find this sort of thing to have any impact whatsoever on their sexuality.
It's definitely not unique. There's a certain sense to it, when you look at human behavior in the whole. There is a natural tendency to admire excellence. Succeeding is admirable. Succeeding in the face of adversity, moreso. It's harder, after all. Stoic persistence has been a staple of hero tales since the dawn of civilization. The Odyssey was written over 2500 years ago and all it is is the story of a man who gets kicked repeatedly but gets back up every time, dusts himself off and keeps moving forward. We, as humans, looooove that sort of thing. It captures the potential nobility of the species. It serves as inspiration.
Decades ago, when I was in the Navy, on down time, I would sometimes read about Medal of Honor recipients. One of my favorites involves a Navy chief. His ship was hit by a torpedo, the engine room was taking on water and the oil floating on the water caught fire. He sent the rest of the engine crew out of the room, because he was in charge and the engine was his responsibility. He kept the engine operating, by himself, until he was overcome by smoke inhalation. He was found, brought up to the top deck and revived. At which point, he immediately went back down to the engine room and ran the engine until he passed out AGAIN from smoke inhalation. He was brought up, revived and went back a third time, running the engine until he died from smoke inhalation. But the ship made it safely to port, saving all hands. I'm sorry, but that's a motherfucking HERO. To do what's right, no matter the personal cost, to keep moving no matter what happens, it's one of the few forms of masculinity that hasn't been deemed toxic yet.
We all want to be heroes. I'm not suggesting, of course, that we all want to die to show off our nobility. It's just that we want others to think well of us. To admire us. So maybe, if nobody has noticed our wounds, we try to subtly point them out. And over time, as the world becomes a safer, more comfortable place, there are less obstacles to visibly overcome. Not to be left out, we exaggerate our hurts. We fluff the mountains we've climbed, like a fisherman stretching the truth of just how big that fish REALLY was. Left unchecked, it spirals into the culture we have today, where everyone agrees with the adversity of everyone else, in the charitable hope that everyone else will agree with their own adversity.
To your later point about right wing fragility, you're correct that it's not a left phenomenon. The right is absolutely guilty too. You give poor examples, however. When you say "ban books" it brings to mind The Jungle or The Catcher in the Rye. Florida isn't banning books in that sense. What they're doing is saying that you cannot have sexually explicit literature in schools. The left likes to frame it as anti-LGBTQ, but it's about not presenting pornography to children. That's not me being hyperbolic. From the book "Gender Queer":
I got a new strap-on harness today. I can’t wait to put it on you. I can’t wait to have your cock in my mouth—I’m going to give you the blowjob of your life. Then I want you inside me.
Could anyone really disagree with the idea that text like that is not appropriate for kids? Rather than talk about the specifics of what books are being removed from schools and why, it has a better impact to say "oh, the Republicans are banning books, the evil, censorious, authoritarian bastards!"
Great comments, Michael.