Privilege with Prejudice

Originally posted at, https://americaoutloud.com/privilege-with-prejudice/

Source: Associated Press

America is rocked by yet another scandal. The latest one by privileged parents bribing a corruptible college recruiting system. As criminal activity goes, it's pretty hard to top federal racketeering. Yet that is what this latest rendition of American affluenza seems to be. Privilege clearly has no philosophical boundary in America given that most of the accused in this case seem to have liberal tendencies. It raises the question of just how far the elite class in this country is willing to go to achieve their aims by any means necessary.

It is something that should worry every ordinary American. Those of us lowly citizens relegated to watch our betters make decisions on our behalf. We may argue that this is not so to our hearts content on the circus that is social media; but the reality is but the elites are getting away with it.

Next to the story about the scandal over college admission bribery In the Wall Street Journal is a parallel story about the thriving industry of legal manipulations by the elite to place their children into colleges. There are 17,000 college admission assistance service businesses in this country. No! What blows my mind is that WSJ article illustrates that the main thing wrong as far as academia is concerned is that this group of people charged by the federal government did not play by their rules of bribery.

There is something fundamentally wrong about our value system highlighted by cases like this. The days of asking what you can do for your country are no more. it's not even about what your country can do for you. Now, it's about what you can get away with. We idolize those who figure out how to cheat the system.

In the real world, celebrities, major office holders, heads of corporations, and professional athletes are few and far between. Regardless of that status, everyone is still, in the end, an ordinary American.

These days, that's no longer enough to be proud about. Today, if you're not an influencer, you're a nothing. Stepping back and thinking about it, it's a macabre version of China’s social scoring system that seeks to rate how good of a citizen you are in that country. In our system, we seem out to prove who has the biggest of any of the three orifices of our bodies.

And it’s extracting a terrible cost. In an America where emotions are amplified by an electronically enhanced sense of confirmation bias, it has turned us into a mean society. Our funniest jokes are demeaning. Our first reactions are snarky at best, indignant on average, cruel far too often. Trolling is considered a skill to be proud of. We are a nation of spineless keyboard warriors who wouldn't last a minute in a real fight. The loudest among us speak with platitudes of promise for their ideals that go hand in hand with declarations of animus for those with whom they disagree even slightly. Pluralism is dead. Tolerance is weakness. To be American is to self-segregate and demand, “Me first!”

Researchers who study social media point out a category of people whose lives have revolved around creating images of success online that are juxtaposed with clinical depression in the real world because no one can live up to their artificial self-images 100% of the time. Cell phones are the leading cause of PTSD particularly among younger Americans.

Punditry has become an art form not of increasing the clarity of the explanation of topics. Instead, it's become a game to extend the hyperbole of nonsensical arguments as far as possible. Whether it's mainstream media, social media commentary or blogging, the name of the game is justifying one's biases; objectively, really stupid biases.

How else to explain something as bizarre as the latest cool kid phenomenon of changing the boundaries of the discussion around anti-Semitism? I mean really folks; that's just stupid. That's the kind of thing that leads to genocide happening again. In America, the concepts of “Never Again” and “Never Forget” are being evaporated and the so-called Establishment is going along with it like a bunch of permissive parents who will tolerate the worst behaviors of their spoiled brat children. That's not going to stop them from one day taking power and murdering people they don't like.

And increasingly, they seem not to like anyone. The cancer of the deconstructionist academics who invented political correctness to breakdown the rules of American Society, to make it malleable enough to reshape it in the image of the political theories of their preference, have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. No literally! I mean beyond anything they ever thought.

Look at what happened to 1960’s dream of an equal America turning into white women being the newest privileged villain of social justice warfare. Talk about matricide. The equal rights movement was pioneered by white women. This entire phenomenon is best explained by looking at social justice as a bunch of spoiled children becoming unlikable teenage punks.

Like all trendy things, the day of reckoning is coming for all of it. It's certainly come for the people that were just indicted for bribing the college admission system. Conspiracy and racketeering are serious transgressions against society. The consequences are justly harsh. If these people are smart, they will plead guilty early. They will hope the court is lenient. They should serve their time humbly. Ponder the cost of their hubris. After that, they can begin to pick the pieces of their lives up and, hopefully, spend the rest of their lives asking what they can do for their country.

Someday this “dorm kegger” of malformed notions of the narcissistic powerful dictating to the people in the “cheap seats” will coalesce back to the rules of a complex society based on plurality, tolerance and coexistence. The idea that privilege gives you the right to beat people you don't agree with into submission always ends the same way. Wings of wax always melt; feet of clay always crumble.

In America, it's the ordinary people that still matter the most. None of us is more special than another; that’s what makes us special.