"There's an agenda behind this discussion!" is kind of trite, innit? I intend that as a very broad criticism with parameters well outside this thread, but these last three pages specifically.
There's always an agenda behind most discussions, but one would hope we don't need to go around
reacting to it all day. I may play a cynical internet commentator on TV, but I spent a lot of my youth going on training retreats, leadership conferences and all kinds of awareness raising activities. All of them had dubious sponsors, some highly questionable interpersonal dynamics at play, and very definite monoculture agendas behind them. They were also pretty interesting experiences, because they were social experiments full of interesting people.
Look, once you're dedicated -- any of you -- dedicated to this whole Learning Shit proposition, it's just going to keep distancing you from your peers, your friends, your family, and ultimately your culture. That constant cognitive dissonance is going grind you into chicken tenders if you don't find outlets for it. If you're going to sit down and watch this whole Kali Yuga Spectacle every day, learn to enjoy it.
Angry White People, for instance. Sure, it's fashionable to adopt a safely critical distance from the cracker working class and mock their exertions (
like so) while reciting the incantations listing why they deserve their hilarious fate. And sure, that can be pretty damn irritating if you happen to belong to, have kin within the orbit of, or live surrounded by that particular demographic, burdening you with the human side of these satisfied thinkpieces. But those are both pretty shallow takes, right?
After all, Angry White People are hardly anything new, even within the confined lens of Critical Race Theory, proponents of which would be quick to point out "White" itself is a recent
construction, an amalgamation of diverse ethnic groups. (Which explains why Octoberfest, Novygod and St. Patrick's day celebrations all look so different.) Despite the inherent payoffs of their White Privilege, worker drones of any nation get squeezed hard at regular intervals. Our current boil here in the United States is nothing new, it's not even new here in the United States.
We're 20 fucking years past NAFTA. When I was growing up, the "Angry White People" were all those
idiots who supported Ross Perot, a moronic Texas cracker who talked funny and took the
ridiculous approach of spending his own money to speak directly to the American people like they were intelligent adults who understood their economic self-interest was at stake. Luckily, those Angry White People were soundly defeated by the CIA and instead, America got their First Black President: a white guy from Arkansas.
Today, shit, I'm generations deep in Angry White People, because their unemployed angry asses had
kids who I grew up with, kids who inevitably inherited all kinds of pathologies and are today Angry White People in their own right. With kids.
Were the bread lines in Moscow full of Angry White People?
Do those fuckers count? I've always liked them, the Russians (and Armenians and Ukrainians) were some of the nicest, most outgoing dorm students at my fancy private school. They also had the benefit of actual military training, so they were great fun in fights. Perhaps Communism does something on the DNA level, though...Lysenko Osmosis.
Were Dublin's decades of Troubles the wages of Angry White People, one wonders? Were those Boer lunatics
more or
less Angry after Apartheid finally ended? Were Scargill's Mineworkers part of this AWP action? What about PATCO in 1981 after Reagan handed them their own asses on national television?
And what about all those Bernie Sanders supporters? They don't
smile very much. Their rage is almost palpable when they start talking about rich people, or go off on scary rants about black people who support Clinton. It's a climate that's going to lead impressionable young people to take extreme action, especially if their aging Savior doesn't manage to secure the nomination.
Not to get all "meta" with this, but are Angry White People even the real problem?
Aren't happy white people the real monster here? Self-satisfied, well-fed, fully-employed, highly-educated, tax-paying white people, out here just decimating the third world
every weekday? Isn't the real threat to a peaceful, Full Communism future for all humankind hiding in plain sight? The 5 am yoga classes? The RV rentals getting "tricked out" for Burning Man? The highways full of commuters in nice sedans every morning? The soft pale kids in sociology classes, learning about Angry White People?
