How often I see or hear comments & remarks that are no more than cut and paste affirmations of the unthought-out rhetoric of those desperately seeking to avoid seeming both stupid or bad. Usually in response to a question, sometimes just a plain old fact or bit if science. The question goes unanswered, the fact is dissed as cis, heteronormative, transphobic, racist, islamaphobic. And this the response even when highlighting massive distortions of reason & logic. On occasion I've responded with gibberish which soundly confuses. I.e am I smarter? Do I know something they don't? Especially if I preface my nonsense with ah ha - of course. An example: By recontextualising meaning within an intersectional framework where pluralities subvert epistemological reasoning, we decentre etymology into coded queerness to reveal the site of contested resistance.
It's a wicked, yet revealing, game. Let me loose in a debate with Butler. I'd fry her brain!
I think there are a few things which explain this phenomenon, such as a bent towards wishful-thinking or having drunk a bit too-much of the blank-slate kool-aid, but I totally agree with you here. A lot these mildly-intellectual middle-class folks base their identify on being 'progessive' and 'holding the right opinion'. I think your 'idiot complex' really gets to the heart of it. People might be able to see flaws in some argument, but have not the words/research/evidence to argue the other side. It would make them feel like an idiot to try and argue the other side, but get slapped down. Arguing the other side would also put them in "Team Conservative" and they reallllllly don't want that. It's just easier to find out what the fashionable opinion of the intellectual elite is, and parrot it. You can't get into trouble doing that.
Have you read Rob Henderson's essay on Luxury Beliefs? This explains a lot of what is going on for me as well.
Anyway, thanks! I'm losing so much sleep about what is going on around me (I'm an elementary school teacher and the "non-binary" girls are spreading). It helps to read something like this that at least explains some of why my principal seems to what to celebrate this insanity.
How often I see or hear comments & remarks that are no more than cut and paste affirmations of the unthought-out rhetoric of those desperately seeking to avoid seeming both stupid or bad. Usually in response to a question, sometimes just a plain old fact or bit if science. The question goes unanswered, the fact is dissed as cis, heteronormative, transphobic, racist, islamaphobic. And this the response even when highlighting massive distortions of reason & logic. On occasion I've responded with gibberish which soundly confuses. I.e am I smarter? Do I know something they don't? Especially if I preface my nonsense with ah ha - of course. An example: By recontextualising meaning within an intersectional framework where pluralities subvert epistemological reasoning, we decentre etymology into coded queerness to reveal the site of contested resistance.
It's a wicked, yet revealing, game. Let me loose in a debate with Butler. I'd fry her brain!
I think there are a few things which explain this phenomenon, such as a bent towards wishful-thinking or having drunk a bit too-much of the blank-slate kool-aid, but I totally agree with you here. A lot these mildly-intellectual middle-class folks base their identify on being 'progessive' and 'holding the right opinion'. I think your 'idiot complex' really gets to the heart of it. People might be able to see flaws in some argument, but have not the words/research/evidence to argue the other side. It would make them feel like an idiot to try and argue the other side, but get slapped down. Arguing the other side would also put them in "Team Conservative" and they reallllllly don't want that. It's just easier to find out what the fashionable opinion of the intellectual elite is, and parrot it. You can't get into trouble doing that.
Have you read Rob Henderson's essay on Luxury Beliefs? This explains a lot of what is going on for me as well.
Anyway, thanks! I'm losing so much sleep about what is going on around me (I'm an elementary school teacher and the "non-binary" girls are spreading). It helps to read something like this that at least explains some of why my principal seems to what to celebrate this insanity.