Originally posted by cdtm
I agree with your gripe about mass media, and share your reservations.

But my real disappointment is with social activists limited vision and scope.

For example, if I was a promoter of civil rights, I certainly wouldn't feel an obligation to actively work towards the rights of Native Americans. But I WOULD live under an assumption that many of the people I'm reaching out to are not African American, and thus would be very sensitive to condescendtion of "the other", as I myself am an "other" to those I plead my case for.

It would be hypocritical of me to turn an "other" who happens to not be my "other" into a doormat or a joke.

Yet, that's exactly what activists do. Feminists have no problem looking down their noses at skinny people, while defending obese people. Liberals have no problem mocking someone on grounds other then the very narrow, specific groups they protect.

And I realize many on the left believe in relative terms.. If the media helps us with Nixon, they are our friend. If they are smearing us, they are our enemy. If you punch down at victims, it's bad. If you punch up at privileged, it's fine.

All just a way to rationalize anything that is good or bad for us, on a personal level. Without standards, standards are whatever happens to annoy you in the moment.

That's the ethics of a child, not an adult with a very real concern for other adults.. (Or who plead for other adults to have concern for them and theirs..)

I did not reply to this comment the first time I saw it but I have been wiggling my mind around it for a while. My first gut feeling it's that it all comes down to the belief that the fight for rights is a conflict at its core.

For most social fighters the notion that there are winners and losers in how society works is a given. From that standpoint you'll have people who want to take revenge over "current winners", or to even reverse the winnings so everyone is poorer but somewhat in a closer level to each other. Logic would beg us to look at social change as a non-zero sum game: everybody must win. Since most social interactions are downright inventions very little stops us from making the most exotic solutions works other than making people agree with each other. When people start to get a communitarian mindset they no longer start to work for "everyone" they simply redefine what "everyone" means to fit the small population that they believe to represent.

This is a flaw that you can find in any kind of open democracy, where people are only allowed to be for or against something. Selecting options without an ounce of critical thinking is ridiculous and blurs the value of the choice that is being made. When people think they are fundamentally right sometimes they stop applying critical thinking to their own agendas. Smart and nuanced opinions are not valued in a society where the loudness and indignation are the only kind of revolt.