Love It or Leave It

I'm hesitant to start any kind of paragraph with the admission that I'm sensitive. Any way I play that out in my head, see, first I talk vaguely about emotional sensitivity, then I pivot to talking about physical sensitivity--playing up the idea that I have comically misunderstood the division between the two ideas based upon the multiple meanings of the same word--which leads inevitably to a dick joke. Because the most sensitive part of a man's body... you know what, I feel like I've overexplained enough already. We'll just tuck this away for now.

The last thing anybody really needs right now is another middle aged white man talking about sensitivity, in either direction. Either men today aren't sensitive enough to the plight of those around them in positions of lesser privilege* or everyone is so sensitive about everything all the time that it's causing society to collapse in on itself in an effort to accommodate and protect the most easily upset among us. Now, normally of course these two positions have their rhetorical and political champions in their spheres, left and right respectively. The typical left wing position is usually couched in an accusation of blindness, deafness and all other manner of sensory deficit when it comes to basic empathy for other humans, particularly the American ones. The typical right wing position includes the word "snowflake," almost always employed unironically in a lashing, angry demand for a retraction to some slight challenge to their eternal safety of their majoritarian worldview.

Maybe you picked up on the subtle tonal cues as to which of those two approaches best suits me. I admit to having gone full libtard on more than one occasion, very pleased with my condescension and denial of the worth of the competing points of view of other white people who happen to be conservative. I think it should be said that I don't arrive at condescending dismissal lightly or without considerable thought. I used to be a white person living in a trailer park. It's not that those people don't deserve to have their voices heard, it's just that I know from first-hand experience that most of them are fucking stupid.

But does fucking stupid automatically equate to always wrong? Yeah, I guess. I was about to use that self-asked question as a rhetorical device to jump off to my next point about working-class common sense, but as I was typing it I realized: fucking stupid people are wrong a lot, about most everything, including the extent to which they are stupid people.

I really, really wanted this to be about how sometimes I agree with people on the right that we are too sensitive and that things we grimly proclaim to be threats to the American Experiment are just dumb fucking GIFs showing the future president pretending to fight a man who has a CNN logo superimposed on his head. Actual violence against the press, including inciting it in situ, with dangerous crowds of riled-up people banded together to defend unto death** their withering privilege, is an indefensible move by an outright fascist. Alternately, some dumb asshole blobs together a GIF slightly recontextualizing Trump humiliating himself in public by being shitty at pretend fighting, honestly, I have a hard time seeing much of a downside there.

I kicked myself when I realized I didn't see the backlash to the backlash coming, where now the problem is CNN itself. This is the same CNN that neither created the GIF nor distributed it via twitter, as did the sitting president of these United States. But now apparently they're the assholes because the asshole who made it won't stand behind it. Surprise, the people who seriously postulated a Democrat child sex ring in the basement of a pizza place that does not have a basement have decided this change of heart is evidence of blackmail by CNN and I just can't with this jiu-jitsu shit anymore.

How many steps ahead do we have to be in order to get someone to say something stupid is stupid? I think this might be the whole crux of the crisis of American democracy at the moment: nothing is allowed to be lame. Nothing is allowed to be lame because everything is assigned some kind of goddamned provenance, where an idea or a moment is owned by one political faction or subfaction or subsubfaction or message board of a subsubsubfaction, which means, good or ill, it will be defended, even championed.

This also precludes the idea of backing down, or stipulating to any particular point or just sharing a bemused chuckle. It's true of this CNN-WWE GIF, a stakes-free fiasco in all caps. It's also true of Obamacare repeal, where an unnerving swathe of Republicans will work tirelessly to cut the legs out from under millions of needy Americans. Well, all except the ones who need legs cut off like diabetics or military service members because that would constitute a legitimate medical expense, all of which are now going to be off the table. But the entrenchment is rooted in the idea: Obama was a Democrat, so must be opposed. The Affordable Care Act, a Republican idea, was put forward by him, so must be opposed. Even when Obama is months gone and Constitutionally ineligible to ever return, it all must be carried through, because this is how it works now. Resentment will do when all judgement is suspended.

I'm not sure if any of these are left with or right wing positions. I'm certain there are thousands of people who would be willing to tell me.

---

*basically, all other positions

**Always someone else's death, preferably a Muslim