October 21, 2020

Big Trouble

This meme posted to Instagram got me in trouble today.

My brother sent me a very stern, fatherly admonishment: “You need to think long and hard about viewing those that disagree with you with these pejorative labels. [. . .] Please think twice before doing this again.”

Yeah, keep quiet. Especially the offensive stuff. I know. Story of my life. How dare I speak the truth. I know. Instagram’s for easy-going content, not politics. Why do I have to ruin everything? You’d think he was my father, based on that reply. What I find so ironic is that the Right screams the loudest, is the most indignant, is the most entitled, is the most willing to employ stereotypes—and they’re the ones who have been in charge for four excruciating years. What would make them happy? And they call the left “snowflakes.”

And seriously, how is this meme inaccurate? If you support ’Rump and think your innocent, you have not thought about it much. Punch your way out of the reality distortion field you call “news,” and have a look around. When did the Right become such poor judges of character? I seem to recall that in 2016, they all hated ’Rump. And seriously, give me one positive quality of the man? What happened to them? Would any of these people hire ’Rump as an employee? Seriously?

Something similar happened a few years ago on Facebook with a former student. I posted a fake trading card about Jesus being a zombie. Something like this one. This student was appalled that I would have the audacity to post something so incendiary. I gat a similar avuncular talking to.

And today, not unrelated, Samuel Paty a teacher in France who showed “his students caricatures of the prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free expression” was decapitated in the street by a religious zealot. How dare he be so provocative?

Do you see a trend here? We have already seen what happens when the how-dare-you crowd gets power: they begin chipping away at the freedoms we have so their delicate sensibilities can remain intact and unchallenged.

To quote Ruth Bader Ginsberg: “I dissent.” And I have remained quiet too long.