Forget the possibility of being absolved
The phrase "courage to be yourself" takes on a whole new meaning in this dark moment
Not all have lost their jobs - yet. Drew Brees, the person on the list who opted to humiliate himself by negating his original position, will be fine. He’s been drawing a hefty NFL salary and endorsement fees for years, and no doubt gets wise investment council. But Klein’s been getting death threats and is now under police guard. Where is Napear, for decades a beloved figure, supposed to go in a sports world now thoroughly infected with the notion of collective guilt? What major daily is going to pick up Wischnowski in a journalistic atmosphere in which titling a column by an architecture writer “Buildings Matter, Too” is considered beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse?
It doesn’t help to be a leftist mayor making empty gestures of solidarity with the radicals taking over part of your city, such as calling their “autonomous zone” a “block party,” as Seattle - ahem - “chief executive” Jennie Durkan has discovered. The radicals will scream for your resignation anyway, and your police department will accurately perceive that you are not the least bit in control of the situation.
This is the visage of collective-guilt rage in its full ferocity.
We left the level of diversity councils, implicit-bias workshops, hate-speech codes and safe spaces, to say nothing of the level on which we look at actual statistics for various demographics on the giving and receiving ends of use of force by police, and have a grasp of reality with the breadth to still acknowledge that blacks often get pulled over or questioned by cops with no probable cause a long time ago.
There seems to be no one with the courage to give a shove back in the other direction on the Overton Window regarding our First Amendment rights.
Do you really think Donald Trump and his cult could muster the intellectual rigor or moral clarity to effectively stand up for those whose careers are being ruined? Beyond “getting tough” in the streets and trying to boost employment numbers, they don’t have any understanding of the depth of our cultural rot, how long it’s been advancing, and its roots and antecedents.
Individual sovereignty, and the mutual respect between sovereign individuals that accords them the respect of holding them accountable for the conditions of their lives, is being stomped into oblivion in real time.
To speak of a circumscribed range of expression for all but those anointed with victim status is to bring on charges of “white fragility,” the next phase of shame for anyone in a particular demographic, regardless of what goes on in any particular person’s head or heart, after “privilege.” There’s no getting absolved after having demonstrated some sufficient degree of self-flagellation, so forget trying.
For anyone so positioned in post-American society, the only two choices are to conduct oneself as an authentic individual, replete with all the complexities, fallibility and nobility that individual human beings actually have, or to say to the warlords of the new order, “You’re right, I’ve been your oppressor, and deserve to have you deal with me accordingly.”