globalguerillas | The growing popularity of "check your privilege" and "white
privilege" at Universities and in political debates is interesting.
Why is it interesting? It's not a force for progress or positive
change, it's a form of moral warfare. That means it's not a
constructive remark that improves the debate, rather, it's an attack
that does damage the target. However, it doesn't damage the target
directly. Instead, the damage is done by weakening or breaking the
moral bonds that allow the target to function in a social context.
In other words, the attack disconnects the target from the moral
support of others. You can see that disconnection at work in how groups
within the target group "white privilege" are fleeing from it, rather
than rejecting the concept outright. For example, I've seen "white male
privilege" as a form of attack now. I've also seen "white straight
male privilege" being used. This divisibility of the attack makes it
the neutron bomb of moral warfare. The kind of attack that's
meant to surgically remove a specific target group from the debate
without doing damage to your own group. Fist tap Dale.
10 comments:
interesting. My weekend boss was educated at Harvard, and he also employs this "slippery eel" form of argumentation, which I find hilariously familiar, and easily countered by maintaing a very firm grasp on the choke point of the argument (any of his unrecognized but embedded fallacies). Typically, this results in Harvard boy getting all fucking pissed off like Buckley. I don't think they are actually trained to think logically. I think Harvard trains them to think like lawyers, which is to say, like prestidigitators.
Could there even be a more serene indictment of WASP abrogation of moral and cultural duty than the one delivered by Chomsky in that first little video excerpt?
Chomsky goes straight to the heart of what's gone wrong in the U.S.
In the second video excerpt, Buckley's "you like him because he hates us" is a priceless whine about being held to a moral standard of noblesse oblige http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige
How profoundly far things have fallen since the days in which these discussions were the regular grist in the televised mill..., every Sunday evening I sat with my parents in their den and watched Firing Line. My mother loved to hate her some William F. Buckley.
Chomsky is correct that Buckley would be considered a moderate conservative today, and even one capable of self-reflection, should he have so chosen. (He was, of course, telegenically well studied in his affectations). But he is a far cry from the current denizens of the nation's reptile floor. All thought banished to the limbic system, or, at its worst, just a squirty little stain machine of reaction. Buckley is, for that matter, a far cry from his Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who would have met MY ancestors in a manly full-throated full-on frontal assault. (Or, at least, so we would like to think).
They met Hitler in precisely such an assault using the industrial scale implements at their disposal. Something though has changed very profoundly and they're subdued and they've withdrawn to the extent that soft-headed scion who've only ever just gone through the motions have been allowed to run things off the rails to epic levels never previously observed. Hell, they won't even stand up for themselves in a rhetorical throwdown anymore...,
The other side of that is what Greeks termed "bathos". A gentleman will not be reduced to a mere mechanic. John Adams refused to man the pumps when the ship to England was on sinking. Leave that physical stuff to lower orders. Interestingly, the kid from Princeton who wrote an essay defending his privilege (don't have it hand, but it is buzzing about) seemed to base his entire argument (that, and appeal to emotion) on the fact that his ancestors did all that for him already, and the mantle of virtuous labor therefore rightly rests upon his narrow shoulders. I had no idea the Ivy League no longer stresses organized thought.
Jeez, I don't ever remember seeing Chomsky when he didn't look old.
Or when his game was soooo tight he could just rattle and dispatch a "slippery eel" like that.
GOAT!!! accept no substitutes....,
What did fighting Nazis in Greece have to do with what Chomsky's talking about? Buckley lost me with that dodge. Chomsky slapped him and took his lunch money.
What Chomsky demonstrated in that exchange is what we should all aspire to. Everything else is misdirected and distracted conversation....,
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