Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Conservative intersectionality

Intersectionality is a concept used almost exclusively as a bludgeon by postmodernist social justice jacobins but it actually is a useful and interesting concept, if difficult to manage. In the hands of the postmodernist social justice jacobins, intersectionality is about establishing the relative victimhood status of an individual based on class, race, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender.

What follows is a non-postmodernist use of the concept. Jonah Goldberg is a conservative writer. He therefore has at least two "identities"; conservative and journalist. He also has a third identity - he is a Never Trumper.

The tensions that arise from this intersection of his identities are forefronted in You Idiot Reporters Are Making It Worse by Jonah Goldberg.
Now, I get that most journalists are liberal, even if they deny it. I understand that most think they’re just seeking the truth. But, dear champions of the Fourth Estate, you might take just a moment to understand that you need to be fair to the other side of the argument even if you disagree with it.

You might also consider why millions of people love it when Trump says you are the enemy of the people: It’s because of how you are behaving right now. You’re letting the mask slip in Nielsen-monitored 15-minute blocks of virtue-signaling partisanship. You’re burning credibility at such a rate, you won’t have enough to get back to base when this is all over.

Yes, Donald Trump has done the country a disservice by how he talks about the press. But so have you, because you have made it so easy for him — and you’re making it worse right now.
He is a Republican journalist in a world where most journalists are Democrats.

He is a conservative Never Trumper in a world where most conservatives are Trump supporters.

He is a journalist in a world where most people are not journalists.

He has, in intersectionality terms, hit a trifecta. Despised by most people for being a journalist in a world where journalists are held in low regard. Despised by journalists because he is a Republican. And despised by Republicans for being a Never Trumper.

Whether you view him as a paragon of principle or the lowest of the low, regardless, intersectionally he is the most isolated of reviled minorities. And in the postmodernist pantheon, he is a white male to boot. Ranking so high in victimhood status ought, in postmodernist philosophy, to make him the king of victims. However, since postmodernism is a cult of hatred, his superior victimhood status is negated because he is a Classical Liberal, an enemy of Postmodernism.

What a tangled web. And you can sympathize with the tragedy of his situation. His Classical Liberal analysis is spot on. He rejects Trump and yet Trump is made stronger by the very anger and actions of Goldberg's fellow journalists. And his diagnosis is correct. All journalists have to do is their traditional job of purveying the facts. If they did that, much energy would be subtracted from Trump's sails. But their ideological hatred stops them from doing the rational thing.

As someone has said; All they have to do to win is not be crazy and they can't even do that.

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