+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Links: family / facebook / twitter / linkedin / google / instagram / random |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|         _______                 | Grace: "Maybe you have selective amnesia  |
|     ,--'.:::::.`-._             | brought on by shock."                     |
|    /..:::::::::::..\            | Doctor: "Maybe.  I don't remember."       |
|   /..:::::::::_;::::|           | - ENEMY WITHIN                            |
|  || `---'----' _|:::|           |                                           |
|  ||            `;:::|           |                                           |
|  |' ====  ====  |-::|           |                                           |
|  |-( @ )-( @ )--|O):|           |                                           |
|   |  ` |   `    |/::'           |                                           |
|   .    v        |:/   jeremy@   |                                           |
|    |   ___,     ||    malcolm   |                                           |
|     \   --    _/|     .id.au    |                                           |
|      \_____.-'__/-.__           |                                           |
|      _|     _/|::.\.::-._       |                                           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [ ] news     [ ] about    [ ] writing  [*] journal  [ ] images   [ ] guests |
|                                         +--- latest                         |
|                                         |->> archive                        |
|                                         `--- search                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "Lefties" ::                                           [2012-07-21 09:02PM] |
|                                                         mood: Argumentative |
|                                                       music: Airport sounds |
|                                                                             |
| You might think I'd turned into some sort of lefty, the way that I'm now    |
| railing against capitalists, whereas 20 years ago I was doing the same      |
| against communists.  Actually I haven't really changed, it's more that I    |
| tend to be countercultural.  At (my) university, the dominant culture was   |
| extreme left-wing (Marxist, radical feminist and dark-green                 |
| environmentalist), so I responded by writing diatribes against these        |
| ideologies for the student magazines.  Whereas out in the real world it's   |
| too often extreme free market ideologies that prevail, and they can do a    |
| lot more damage than tin-pot student revolutionaries, so now I can be       |
| found pitting my resources against big corporations.                        |
|                                                                             |
| If I was a real lefty, you see, I'd be all against things like cultural     |
| appropriation and discrimination. But no, I'm just someone who cares about  |
| real human problems, more so than the theoretical injustices against which  |
| academics and armchair activists in the West take up arms. So I'm sorry,    |
| but the idea that (actual) minorities are (actually) oppressed by a white   |
| guy dressing up in a red Indian costume for a fancy dress party, or by the  |
| shapes of the "male" and "female" symbols on toilet doors, or a Christian   |
| public radio station refusing to interview a white male atheist for a job   |
| (all true examples - the last is an Australian friend), is a load of        |
| politically correct bollocks. It may not do much harm, but it's such a      |
| misplaced priority.                                                         |
|                                                                             |
| Actual minorities aren't actually concerned by this sort of stuff, you      |
| see; only rich, white university kids are, on their behalf.  I'm no Mother  |
| Teresa, but I've worked on the ground in some of the region's poorest       |
| countries like Laos and Cambodia, and I can tell you that most              |
| left-leaning Australians, who have access to social security, medical care  |
| and a minimum wage, don't have the first idea about the situation of        |
| actual disadvantaged people.  Such people are less interested in            |
| affirmative action or offended by racial jokes, than they are concerned     |
| about meeting their basic needs for nutritious food, clean water, safe      |
| goods and services, decent work, housing, and access to medicines and       |
| knowledge.                                                                  |
|                                                                             |
|                                                          reply (1 comments) |
| << Back                                                                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| page generated in 0.132 seconds                   sadlittlewebjournal 3.2.4 |
| content (c) its respective creator(s)                    web administration |
| valid html 4.01 transitional                                       rss feed |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+