About the only comfort that I could take away from the initial election of B. Whose-Middle Name-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned Obama was a small one – a hope that the election of a man of partial color and relatively cosmopolitan upbringing would at last bury the last lingering shreds of AmeriKKKa-Is-The-Most-Raaaaacist-Evah! Alas – it soon became very clear this was a sad, and forlorn hope. The new intellectually powered Diversity-Inclusion-Equity racism came roaring back like a movie serial killer in a twentieth remake of a Hollywood horror flick franchise. A decent regard for civil rights of black citizens has somehow metastasized into ‘DIE, whitey, DIE’ or at the very least, ‘no well-paying prestigious job for you, pale-male-and-stale.’ Never mind if the beneficiaries of these policies appear far less able to perform to the standards which the job requires … it seems to be the intentions that count. It’s no biggie if the bridge collapses, the aircraft collide on approach, the expensive movie bombs at the box office, or the press secretary babbles nonsense when asked a difficult question. The good intentions of DIE conquer all, even reality.
Conservatism
The Price Paid for DIE
So serial plagiarist and Professional Womyn of Color (Academic Division) Claudine Gay has been turfed from the comfy corner office at Hah-vaard, to the tune of much lamenting from The Usual Suspects. Frankly, I’m long past caring very much about what goes on in the hallowed halls of an increasingly overrated, intellectually debased institute of so-called higher learning. I was never in a position to be an Ivy student/alum, contribute monetarily to an Ivy, or in a position to hire a graduate from one of them, so the matter to me would be moot. Except…
Unfortunately, the ruling class, intellectual elite of this increasingly bedraggled nation have been overimpressed for decades with Hah-vaard and other enormous hedge funds with a finishing school of storied history attached, so willy-nilly, we must pay attention to the place. Apparently, MS Gay achieved her exalted position through the magical combination of possessing a vagina, a melanin-enhanced epidermis, and an expertise at vicious academic infighting, but no great intellectual shakes, literary skills, or any but the most banal insights into the human condition in evidence. Nice work, if you can get it, I suppose. A triumph of the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity industry, or as we like to abbreviate it around here, DIE.
Depth of Disgust
You know, I would be completely, totally, utterly disgusted and disillusioned with the non-reaction of international, professional and academic ‘capital F’ Feminism, in the wake of Hamas’ rape, pillage and kidnapping spree of last October … except that I sussed several decades ago that the same international, ‘capital F’ professional and academic feminists didn’t really give a waffle-fried damn about the lives, ambitions, challenges and condition of ordinary women. I had no illusions to lose about the big-name capital F feminists, not after I came to a certain realization sometime around 1985 or so.
Consequences
So, looking at the actions of pro-Hamas demonstrators on university campuses and in the streets of major blue-tinged cities over the last few weeks, we really don’t have to ask as Dorothy Thompson did, in mid-1941 – who goes Nazi? College students suckled on the sour teat of DIE-addled academicians with delusions of intellectual grandeur, for a certainty, and recent immigrants who have brought their unfortunate old habits of hate with them. Still, when it comes to that first group, it has been amazing and disheartening to observe that sheltered twentysomethings driven to hair-trigger meltdown by the alleged presence of misogyny, the faintest hint of racism, and microaggressions so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye have enthusiastically aligned themselves with genocidal Jew haters from Gaza. Students and academics didn’t even pause for a split second, before cheering on indiscriminate random slaughter, torture, repeated rape so violent that it left pelvic bones broken, burning families alive in their own homes, looting and hostage-taking.
Hood Ornament
In the early ’80s (which now seems to be as long ago as the High Victorian era seemed to be to those looking backwards from the vantage point of the 1920s) acclaimed literary lion Norman Mailer took up the cause of a life-long convict, Jack Abbott by name … and discovered to his dismay that it was easier and safer to champion a violent felon at a considerable distance, than to actually wrangle the man close up. After being out of prison for a matter of weeks Abbott lost his temper and fatally stabbed another man … thereby demonstrating a certain drawback to an intellectual burnishing their public credit by adopting an edgy cause. It was liable to backfire, and make the adoptee appear to be a gullible prat. At about the same time, Tom Wolfe called it ‘radical chic’ and poured erudite derision on Leonard Bernstein for doing much the same with the Black Panther leadership.