“Should Have” – How Democrats Create Division

“The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” – Terminator 2:  Judgement Day

I had a pet duck once, but he kept getting me up at the quack of dawn.

Probably one of the biggest traps I’ve seen people set for themselves is the trap of “should have.”  Should have means that there is some promotion they should have had.  There was some girl they should have dated, some relationship they should have salvaged.  This “should have” then dominates their life.  Like a short chubby kid trying to climb a greasy wall, they just never get over it.  I should know, I installed a greasy wall to keep short chubby kids off my lawn.  They do try to gnaw their way through.

As I’ve written about regret (Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.) before – that advice stays the same:  learn from the past, but no one has enough time for regretting past actions.  Trading regret for virtue is the best you can do.  It may be unpopular, but some of the best of human traits can come as a direct result of the worst of times that we go through.  While we may not be responsible for every situation we find ourselves in, the way we react to those situations is entirely ours, unless of course you’ve been hypnotized by the used Chinese smartphone you bought on E-Bay® and turned into a communist.  If that’s the case I’d like to ask: what is it like to work at the New York Times™?

I guess my neighbor’s house is zoned as “doorway to hell” – only problem is that Castro keeps climbing out, wanting to bum a cigar.

But “should have” is a peculiar disease that is related to but is in some ways more corrosive than regret.  It infects the victim with an entire alternate universe.  This particular alternate universe is one where the world exists and the promotion was received, the girl was dated, the relationship salvaged.  It’s a beautiful world, but it’s one that doesn’t exist.*

Probably the best view of this “should have” is the current scheme whereby votes are traded for grievances.  Thankfully, when inventing a grievance, facts aren’t important – it’s only the feelings that matter.  Clear thinking due to consistently defined language is actually the enemy.  One example is the term “racist”.

I had occasion to visit a friend that I had known for years.  I caught up with him on a great fall night.  I had promised myself that I wouldn’t bring up politics – I knew that he was on the Left.  For the most part it worked.  We had a pleasant evening.  But then he brought the subject of racism up.

Judging people by their race and sex is wrong!  You white men should get that by now.

I had learned long ago that racism had a fairly specific meaning – it meant that the person felt that one race was superior to another.  Superior how?  Well, for the purpose of this discussion it simply doesn’t matter, because no one uses the word that way anymore.

The general definition of racism at some point changed to this:  “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.”  It is completely different.  One means feeling superior, the other means being a jerk.  As near as I can tell this shift in meaning seemed to occur during Bill Clinton’s time in office, because we couldn’t even agree what “is” meant in the 1990’s.

The beautiful part of either definition is that anyone can be racist – it’s an egalitarian definition.  I’ve seen literature from EVERY race and ethnicity where they make the case that they’re the superior ones.  And, I’ve seen examples of every race being discriminated against due to race.  All of ‘em.  In a sense, either of those definitions of racism is fair.

Fair?  That simply won’t do.

After discussing the definition for about an hour, I finally teased out of my friend the idea that every white person was racist, and that only white people could be racist.  He claimed he was a racist, not because he wanted to be, but he nevertheless was.  Why?  Racism had been redefined in his mind as the systematic oppression of non-white people.  Could a black person be racist?  No, because they weren’t white.  Only white people can be racist.  Chinese?  No.  Hispanic?  No.  Penguins?  No.

Racism had been redefined from an equal opportunity word, to a word that could only be used against white people.  Will Smith, with an estimated net worth of $300 million dollars, was somehow oppressed by the system more than, say, me.  Colin Kaepernick, who almost no one knew or cared if he was black, started his own controversy by kneeling as a result of grievances.  Colin also identifies as a quarterback, but that’s a longer story.  Rodney Harrison (who is black) oppressed Colin when he said, “I’m a black man, and Colin Kaepernick, he’s not black.  He cannot understand what I face and what other young black men and black people or people of color face . . . .”

Oops.

Colin Kaepernick – making Tom Brady the second most hated quarterback in the NFL©.

And academia forms a pipeline for the grievance system.  The Master’s thesis of Jack Merritt, who was stabbed to death on the London Bridge by that recently released Muslim terrorist in England was:  A Critical Analysis of Over-Representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Males Aged 18-21 in the British Prison System.  Well, that thesis aged poorly.

Oops.

Grievances don’t have to be about race.  They can be about your sex, or your orientation.  If INSERT GRIEVANCE CLASS HERE didn’t get the job designing nozzles for whipped cream propelled by nitrous oxide?  It had nothing to do with their 1.93 GPA in ancient Celtic dialects, it’s because they’ve always hated people like GRIEVANCE CLASS MEMBER.

The incomplete list of grievances includes:  “cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.”  This comes from the Wall Street Journal opinion piece “Idea Laundering” in Academia, (LINK, BEHIND PAYWALL) by Peter Boghossian.  These are the things the Left hates.

This list perfectly paints the villain of the Left:  a white, married father in a committed and strong marriage with his wife.  He’s not in favor of rape, but since he’s a male in a marriage he must be guilty of it, since marriage is just using the patriarchy to enforce that horrible male concept:  monogamy.

What is the motive for all of this?  Colin Kaepernick got notoriety while winning a total of one game in the 2016 season.  He’s now sitting on a $20+ million fortune, plus an undisclosed amount of money from his Nike™ contract, reported to be in the millions.  I mean, some people work all year and don’t make a million dollars.

Thankfully we live in a society where academics have no consequences for the real-world application of their ideology.

The student, Jack Merritt stabbed to death on the London Bridge on November 29, 2019?  He was rewarded with a Master’s degree for agreeing with the narrative.  All of the academics that supported this system?  Grants.  Tenure.  Bacon-wrapped shrimp parties where they talk about how inferior the hoi-polloi (you and me) are.  Leftist politicians who fund this mess get votes – and the more grievance they can find, the more likely they’ll get great ‘voter-engagement’ – which translates into more people voting.  Heck, it’s worked on Pop Wilder – after he died he’s been consistently voting Democrat.

We live in, by far, the most prosperous and egalitarian society (the West in general) in the history of mankind.  Every system that government doesn’t meddle in (like education and medical care, and Aesop has already solved those in my favorite post of his – ever – LINK) generally goes down in cost.  But that doesn’t stir up voters.  So, let’s get involved in college education, so we can create more grievances from people who had no business going to college, getting degrees that had no probability of being worth anything.  Sounds like a Sanders voter in the making!

There’s nothing bad about fighting to make the world better.  There’s nothing wrong with making the future a better time for everyone.  But when you get stuck on the way things should be?

Yeah.

*Unless the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct.  If it does, everything happens, which means that there’s a universe where I have hair and have just been re-elected Emperor of Wilder Land, where everything is covered in barbeque sauce, except for the things that require ranch dressing.

FYI – The Civil War Weather Report will be next Monday – there is some data I need that isn’t published until the first Friday of the month.  I do promise a high likelihood of bikini graphs.