Vox Popoli

When even a conservative as hopelessly, haplessly cucky as Rod Dreher is beginning to become indifferent to accusations of racism – although, he still never misses a chance to wag his finger and remind everyone that real racism is very bad – then you know we’re on the verge of a preference cascade. Dreher responds to an email from a reader named Andrew who actually has gone ahead and swallowed it at the American Conservative:

Dear Liberals, Democrats, progressives, leftists: Your use of the word “racist” doesn’t work anymore. We get it. You’re superior. You’re enlightened and we’re not. You care about diversity and we don’t. We only listen to dog whistles. We have given up trying to talk you out of your presumptions, or trying to earn your approval. We no longer consider it worth our while to reassure you that we’re not “that kind” of Republican.


But the fact is, we’re not as stupid as you think we are, and we see right through you. And if there’s one thing Trump has done, he’s given us some backbone to make our voices heard. Of course, that means “expressions of racism” will increase. (OMG!) And every child who behaves like a bully will be blamed on Trump. The fact is, we just won’t care about your freak-outs. Go ahead and caterwaul. You lost, and you deserved to lose.


I cast my vote for Trump reluctantly. Now, I couldn’t be prouder.

Thoughts?

I understand where Andrew is coming from in this e-mail, and I highlight it here to point out that a country in which people do not feel shame over racist thoughts, beliefs, and actions is a morally diminished country. I take Andrew’s point to mean that the left has accused him and people like him of racism for so many things, no matter how trivial, that the accusation doesn’t faze him anymore. I have been saying for some time now that if the alt-right grows in power and influence, it will be because ordinary people get tired of being bullied by these kinds of accusations, and choose to ally with people who might actually be bona fide racists, but who aren’t bothered by the attacks from the left.

I think Trump’s not giving a rip about political correctness was a big factor in his rise. If you’ve been reading me all year, you know that I’ve objected to his vulgarity and coarseness on many occasions. Trump lowers our discourse, and normalizes ways of talking in public that ought not be normalized. Having said that, it is undeniably true that the willingness of many on the left to demonize as bigots (racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, etc.) white people who don’t live up to strict progressive blasphemy codes has called forth contempt for the (necessary and important) taboo against racism itself.

Think of it like this: Prohibition encouraged contempt for the law. If you pass so many “laws” around normal discourse, saying to transgress them makes you an “outlaw” (= bigot), then you should not be surprised when people go full Uncle Chuckie, and cease caring.

And once people stop caring, it rapidly becomes apparent to everyone that the “necessary and important” taboo against racism is neither necessary or important. Remember, the pendulum never stops on a dime; just as the Left turned the taboo against homosexuality into a pseudo-disease, the rise of the Alt-Right will coincide with the taboo against racism transforming into something widely seen as being considerably more deleterious than “homophobia”.

This is an unusually astute article on an important reason that helps explain the rising appeal of the Alt-Right across America from the Federalist.

Privilege theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?

Within the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to think that no matter what they did they would be called racist, because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.

That shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30 years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness, not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a decision that white people have just as much right to think of themselves as a special interest group as anyone else….

Furthermore, the ever-present drumbeat from the Left that every conservative victory is the death throes of bad, old white people who are about to be swept away by waves of brown immigration is making many whites dig in. On a certain level, how can you blame them? They are explicitly being told that their values and way of life are under the sword. How do we expect them to react?

Well, they’re all just in the very early stages of finding out. But we will never negotiate with them again. We will never believe them again. The long, stupid, dishonest detente is over. Let a hundred meme-flowers blossom.