That age old progressive trick

 

Note the assumption.  The assumption is that these 'white men' have been threatened by the gains of women and minorities.  Now, is this what these white men have said?  Have they said their complaints are based on feeling so threatened?  Are there any editorials by these white men stating that they feel threatened, which is why they're complaining?  I don't recall ever hearing any white man say he feels threatened by the gains of women or minorities.  Yet note the ease with which this claim is almost on par with John 3:16 in terms of its quotability in the progressive narrative. 

Fact is, preemptive assumption of bad motives and similar character defects has long been a primary weapon for progressives.  You know, a man who questions the feminist juggernaut is merely threatened by women asserting themselves or succeeding.  People who question normalizing non-heterosexual sex are accused of being homophobic bigots.  Men who questioned it were accused of being closet homosexuals themselves.  People concerned about the negative developments in our modern society are told they're only scared about losing their white privilege.  Those who wonder if a Muslim going on a killing spree in the name of Allah could have something to do with his being a Muslim are smacked down as being motivated by Islamophobic bigotry.  The point is, always assume some defect of character or morally problematic motivation for questioning anything to do with leftwing and liberal narratives or activism. 

It reminds of a CNN discussion in 2016.  Wolf Blitzer was the host.  They were discussing the whole Rise of Trump campaign as we headed into the election.  During the debate, one of the token conservatives brought up the rising suicide rates among white men in America.  Without missing a beat, one of the women on the panel simply waved him aside, insisting it's just a factor of whites upset about losing their privilege.  You know, not men who happened to be white actually struggling or suffering or such.  Nope.  Just racists sad to be losing their chance to be racists. She didn't even pretend to care.  I imagined her dismissive attitude went a long way toward showing why Trump was gaining appeal.  

I should mention that this sort of rhetorical claptrap prompted an early step that turned me from my proud days as a self-proclaimed liberal agnostic.  In a winter quarter class in 1988, we were assigned to give a speech before the class touching on a hot button social issue.  I chose an issue that was making waves then, a pushback against Affirmative Action driven by white business contractors losing their bids purely because they were white.  It was my early encounter with the term 'reverse discrimination'.  

As a liberal I supported Affirmative Action, but I also believed that any discrimination because of gender or race was wrong, never caring for the term 'reverse' discrimination.  To me it was just discrimination based on accident of birth, and so wrong.  I said in my speech there was a kernel of truth to the objections and if not acknowledged, it could eventually end up bringing down the whole of Affirmative Action.  

Wow.  You'd think I praised the Holocaust.  One girl even got up and joked she's sitting on the other side of the classroom away from me (to much laughter of course).  The only one who defended me was an older African American woman who said she wouldn't want to think her sex or race was why she got where she wanted to go.  Certainly my very white professor didn't defend me.  Though I got a decent grade (a B of sorts if I recall), she wrote something across the top of my paper that stunned me: "Why are you so afraid of women and minorities?"  I was more than offended, and spent an hour after class arguing with her, eventually asking her if she's so worried about minorities why doesn't she leave her cushy tenured position and give it to a minority?  FWIW, it was then that I first thought of what I've come to call the Left's cherished Proxy Martyrdom - hang your righteousness on causes that only cost other people and never yourself.  I also learned it's the wise student who keeps his mouth shut when he's nothing more than a schmuck student.  Though that lesson was forgotten once I went back to seminary and graduate school some years later.  

Anyhoo, I left there more than a little ticked off and for the first time (but not the last), began to rethink the assumption I had been given in our 80s culture that progressive was the way to be because liberals were always the open minded free thinking ones.  Which blew up in my face that day.  I should point out that the problem wasn't that they said I was factually wrong, or my reasoning was bad, my arguments were poor, or it was a bad speech.  No.  Those I could believe.  It was the accusation that I was - afraid.  Scared you know.  That they negatively judged what motivated my concern with nothing to go by other than I dared think outside of the progressive box.  I chaffed at that then, and have never stopped as I came to realize just how universal this leftwing tactic is.  As the good Ms. Lipman demonstrates all too well with its causal use in that opening sentence of her little rant.  

I'll let others dissect the implication that somehow white men have no business complaining because they are white men, gender and ethnicity being all important for modern liberals in determining who can do what. For me, it was a reminder of a grave moral defect that has defined so much of the progressive discourse.  A defect I've witnessed since I began paying attention on that cold winter day all those years ago.