Posted on 05/12/2014 3:52:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
Liberals have a new word for what normal people call “success.” They call it “privilege,” as if a happy, prosperous life is the result of some magic process related to where your great-great-great-grandfather came from.
It’s the latest leftist argument tactic, which means it is a tactic designed to prevent any argument and to beat you into rhetorical submission. Conservatives, don’t play their game.
It’s easy to see that this notion that accomplishment comes not from hard work but from some mysterious force, operating out there in the ether, is essential to liberal thought. To excuse the dole-devouring layabouts who form so much of the Democrat voting base, it is critical that they undermine the achievements of those who support themselves. We can’t have the American people thinking that hard work leads to success; people might start asking why liberal constituencies don’t just work harder instead of demanding more money from those who actually produce something.
This “Check your privilege” meme is the newest trump card du jour on college campuses and in other domains of progressive tyranny. It morphed into existence from the “You racist!” wolf-cry that is now so discredited that it produces little but snickers even among liberal fellow travelers. After all, if everyone is racist – and to the progressives, everyone is except themselves – then no one is really racist. And it’s kind of hard to take seriously being called “racist” by adherents of a political party that made a KKK kleagle its Senate majority leader.
So how do we deal with this idiocy?
The proper response to the privilege gambit is laughter. The super-serious zealots of progressivism hate being laughed at, but there’s really no other appropriate response outside of a stream of obscenities. The privilege game is designed to circumvent arguments based on reason and facts and evidence, so the way to win it is to defeat it on its own terms.
Call: “Check your privilege!”
Response: “What you call ‘privilege’ is just me being better than you.”
They won’t like it. It will make them angry. Good. Because tactics like “Check your privilege” are designed to make us angry, to put us off-balance, to baffle us and suck us down into a rabbit hole of leftist jargon and progressive stupidity.
Don’t follow them. Mock them. Accuse them of adhering to a transphobic cisnormative paradigm and start shrieking “Hate crime!”
Don’t worry about not making sense. They’re college students. They are used to not understanding what people smarter than they are tell them.
Respectful argument should be reserved for those who respect the concept of argument. The sulky sophomores who babble about privilege do not. They only understand power. And we give them power when we give their nonsense the respect we would give a coherent argument.
They deserve only laughter. And to laugh at them, we simply need to refuse to be intimidated.
The plain fact is that what they understand to be “privilege” is really just what regular people understand is a “consequence.” It is a consequence of hard work, of delaying gratification and of sacrifice. No one came and bestowed this country upon us. We built it. Some of us died doing so. If we have privilege, it was earned at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Normandy. It’s not a function of skin tone or the number of vowels in your name; it’s a function of character.
Unlike them, many of us have lived overseas, and often in rather bullet-rich environs. Our life experience consists of more than reading Herbert Marcuse and showing solidarity with oppressed Guatemalan banana pickers by boycotting Chiquita. What we have today in this country is not anything to be ashamed of or to apologize for, but to be proud of.
Their poisonous notion of privilege is really just another way for liberals to pick winners and losers based not upon who has won or lost in the real world, but upon who is useful and not useful to the progressive project at any given moment.
This is why you see young people descended from Holocaust survivors tagged as bearers of “privilege” when their tattooed, emaciated grand-parents landed here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Others who grew up in luxury get to bear the label of “unprivileged” because ten generations ago some relative came from a particular continent.
It’s idiocy. It’s immoral. We need to say so. For too long we’ve put up with this silliness.
What’s particularly amusing when you push back on these clowns is that they are so surprised to experience resistance to their petty fascism. Many of them, being the special snowflakes that they are, have never had anyone express to them the notion that they might be wrong. University administrators are too terrified of these whiny pipsqueaks to correct them. Certainly their helicopter parents never did – Gaia forbid that their little psyches be harmed by confronting them with their foolishness.
For too long we conservatives have played nicely, being good sports about being slandered and returning respect when offered contempt. It didn’t work. It’s time to try something new. And that something new is not taking guff from some 20 year-old gender studies major with a stupid tribal tatt, a sense of entitlement and a big mouth.
What they say is privilege is what we say is a reward for doing more with our lives than waiting for Uncle Sucker to refill our EBT cards. “Privilege” is a result of not being a human sloth, of not doing drugs, of not having kids we can’t afford them, and of not living our lives as a practical exercise in chaos theory.
Check my privilege? I just did, and it’s doing great. If you want some privilege too, maybe you ought to get your sorry behind a job.
Some damn liberal NEVER wants to throw the word “privilege” at me, EVER!
...your argument will have no effect on those in whom the privelege meme has been inculcated...unless you’re black or hispanic, then you will be hoisted upon a pedestal and lauded for doing the very thing that you did to achieve success...but if you happen to be a ‘priveleged’ skin color, then you’ve only ‘legacied’ your way to success, through no effort of your own, good only as fodder for ths basis of these gender study programs the college brainiacs hold so dear...
...then you’ll be reduced to three responses...one, turn the other cheek and watch your frustration with these people grow...two, go online and vent in an echo chamber forum...three, haul off and slug someone who accuses you of privelege...and go through all the attendant legal machinations...
...just the reality of the current maelstrom we’ve created, known as the ‘higher educational system...’
check my privilege??? check your PREMISES...
.unless you’re black or hispanic...
...I need to add female to that little list...
I read a left-wing article recently, I can’t remember by whom, that decried various get-out-of-debt and build wealth schemes as unrealistic. The article said most people can’t spend less than they make, maybe 10% could sacrifice to get out of debt after getting into it, so schemes like Dave Ramsey’s 7 steps was not practical for the rest of us.
Based on such a view, those who get out of debt, then save and invest are “fortunate”, not harder working or smarter. They are “privileged”.
Then the article got into more demands for socialism, like the state acting as the retirement fund provider.
But if you assume people are children, the state has to act like a nanny. If you assume people cannot control themselves, the state has to take away their freedom.
Check my privilege?
Check your baggage.
If there were truly “privilege” in being white,
no one of mixed race would identify as other than white.
I know of no one that does this. All mixed race always identify as minority, because that’s where the true “privilege” in the law resides.
Newspeak.
Code: “you could say you’re hispanic, no one will challenge you, and you’ll get ‘minority’ status that has certain perks. Are you sure you’re not Hispanic?”
I have been known to use native American once or twice, because just about going back to the Mayflower we have had someone over here, so therefore I am native to America.
Never have I left America and never do I plan to. But that is to just be devilish and tweak people. I am white and proud of it.
Let the haters hate.
It’s seriously a problem in law and society, but law in particular, that causes perverse incentives like identifying as a minority when you’re not.
My grandfather arrived in North America almost one hundred years ago with little education and no assets to speak of except the clothes on his back, a letter attesting to his character (which I still have) from the police chief of his home town, and a willingness to work hard and behave responsibly, i.e. the traits necessary for success in our country. Now, after four generations of hard work (sometimes at multiple jobs at the same time) and responsible behavior, his great grandchildren are entering the professions with good jobs. The plight of the poor in this country of whatever color is primarily due not to any “privilege” on the part of those who are not poor but to the comparative unwillingness of the poor to work hard and behave responsibly over multiple generations as my family has done.
The uniqueness of American has been the ability to move up and down social classes.
I would assert that families like yours succeeded
BECAUSE
there were no programs to “help” them.
I just became a supervisor. I never filled this form out when they hired me and so far have been able to avoid it.
The form is called Work Opportunity Tax Credit. Verbatim from the form: "Your Company Name Here, proudly participates in the Employment Initiatives, including the work Opportunity Tax Credit. These initiatives promote the hiring of individuals who meet certain qualifications. An important part of our on-boarding process includes the completion of a brief employee phone screening administered by our partner, First Advantage. The information you provide during the screening is confidential and will only be used for the purpose of our company's hiring initiatives. This guide provides the necessary information for you to complete the screening process. Please write your information on the upper left portion of this form and follow the steps below. Thank You advance for your participation".
Then you have to call, using the business phone and follow the prompts. You must enter your SSN. Then you must answer a bunch of questions.
Then it states that "If potentially eligible, you will be verbally presented with a statement indicating the information you provided is accurate to the best of your knowledge. In addition you will be transferred to a representative for additional information".
small print: By pressing 1 you will electronically sign and transmit a Form 8850 used to pursue WOTC.
What the Hell? I refuse to give anyone my SSN number without knowing who the hell they are. What or who is eligible for what?
Does anyone know about this?
With one exception: Dad fought in WWII and Korea and so received help through the GI Bill. Other than that you are correct. I cannot recall our family ever being on the dole.
I would say “earn your place”
Hmmm, good one. I wonder if I might start self-identifying as a “Native American”. I was born here, as were the previous two generations of my ancestors. At what point are we said to have been a native of THIS country?!?!
I think I might go with this for a while.
The GI Bill benefited people who already had a hard work and discipline effort. It was not money thrown down a rathole.
My WAG is that this latest propaganda campaign won’t last, nor will the anti-white campaign. It simply is going to come up against the people who fund the left, and just like Occupy finally came up against the people who fund Chuck Shumer this latest racist propaganda campaign will dry up as well.
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