If there is one thing we can take from the scourge of “microaggressions”, (a word that does not appear in most spell-checkers,) which is currently sweeping universities across the Western world, it is this:
The people it is hurting the most, in the immediate term, are old-school “progressives” who for years fostered the seeds of Marxism in universities, played useful idiot for genocidal communist regimes, or whichever murderous dictator happened to be opposing the US, and generally made things very difficult for anybody expressing views which did not toe the old socialist line.
Sure, the last conservatives are being run out of the campus, and cultural libertarians may well be self-censoring, but that was more or less a fait accompli.
What we are seeing now is a classic leftist purge, just without the blood. It is the sort of thing which can only occur when the left have complete domination of an arena, let’s take, for example, the USSR in the 1930’s.. The “new gang” take over, reinterpret the rule book and enforce it mercilessly.
Germaine Greer spoke sense for the first time in decades a few weeks ago, after falling victim to the new PC thugs. So what. I have no pity for the bitch who cursed Steve Irwin on his death bed. Let her find out what it is like to be a Menshevik.
As another example, the sort of people, generally speaking, who used to revel in asking people where they’re from, are the sort who do it audaciously, publicly, to demonstrate how cosmopolitan and open minded they are. It used to be a way of entrenching multiculturalism, too – by reminding everyone that everyone else is from somewhere else. Now this formerly peak act of political correctness has been turned into a cardinal sin, I can’t help but smirk, despite its Orwellianism.
Enjoy it while it lasts, I say. Dose up on schadenfreude, safe in the knowledge that the new batch of lefties who rise to take the positions of those they have ruthlessly deposed are even dumber than the last batch.
For them, spare your pity, and show concern where it is actually needed – with the ridiculous redefinition of rape laws, and the mandating of verbal consent, “progressives” are turning law abiding university-aged men into criminals.
For us, in the long run, however, watch out. Left wing ideas have a way of dissimulating from the university into the real world, in pretty much the same manner as last season’s fashion reaches the bargain bin.
Allow Miranda Priestly, the master of the microaggression and anti-hero of The Devil Wears Prada, to explain:
This “stuff”? Oh, ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic “casual corner” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of “stuff.”
As with clothing fashion, so with intellectual fashion. So enjoy the blood letting on the left. It may be the last laugh we get.