Disclaimer

By accessing this blog, you agree to the following terms:

Nothing you see here is intended or offered as legal advice. The author is not an attorney. These posts have been written for educational and information purposes only. They are not legal advice or professional legal counsel. Transmission of the information is not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, a lawyer-client relationship between this blog, the author, or the publisher, and you or any other user. Subscribers and readers should not act, or fail to act, upon this information without seeking professional counsel.

This is not a safe space. I reserve the right to write things you may agree or disagree with, like or dislike, over which you may feel uncomfortable or angry, or which you may find offensive. I also don't speak for anyone but myself. These are my observations and opinions. Don't attribute them to any group or person whose name isn't listed as an author of a post on this blog.

Reading past this point is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the above terms.

"Privilege" as a cattle prod

The aim of the "privilege" dialogue as employed by ideologues of victim politics is to make perceived disadvantage the norm. There are two intended immediate effects of this. First, to impose upon anyone treated as disadvantaged a sense of disenfranchised resentment against those who are not similarly disadvantaged, and second to impose upon anyone perceived as not disadvantaged a sense of something like survivor's guilt; discomfort at the sense of having it better than anyone else, even though the individual without a disadvantage is not the cause of anyone else's disadvantage. This is done by treating the state of not being disadvantaged as an undeserved benefit to the individual, which therefore constitutes an act of cheating those among the group pushed to become resentful. In this, the state of not being disadvantaged becomes perceived as something the group targeted for control has taken away from the group pushed to become resentful, allowing the ideologues to label the group targeted for control "oppressors."    
 
The purpose of this is to alter the human response to any existing circumstance of disadvantage by replacing the impulse to assist those perceived as disadvantaged in elevating themselves with the impulse to punish the advantaged ("privileged") by some means of reduction under the assumption that diminishing the advantaged will elevate the disadvantaged. This is to create a perceived justification for the ideologue's group to infringe upon areas normally considered human rights, when dealing with those labeled "privileged," giving the ideologue group the ability to wield some level of social and political control over any group to whom they can apply that label.

This becomes more of a challenge for the ideologue group if the disadvantage attributed to the group pushed to become resentful is not or cannot be treated  as universally present, severe, and impacting, while universally absent in the group targeted for control.

This is why, when conditions which "privilege" counting ideologues label as disadvantages exist across both of the target groups, "privilege" counters attempt to emphasize or exaggerate the suffering of the group pushed to become resentful, and diminish the perception of the presence, severity, and/or impact on the group they're attempting to justify controlling, even when evidence is presented that contradicts the ideologues' claims.

This includes demonstrating offense at discussion of disadvantage suffered by the group targeted for control, especially in circumstances where that disadvantage might place that group at a higher level of perceived victim status than the group pushed to become resentful.

This leads to completely irrational proclamations by members of the ideologue group, such as claims that a given disadvantage is not an adverse condition when experienced by anyone of the group targeted for control, that an attitude identified as hateful isn't hateful when it's directed at the group targeted for control, or that the suffering of those within the group pushed to become resentful cancels out any suffering experienced by the group targeted for control.

This behavior encompasses the steps of a dehumanization campaign. The group targeted for control is named as a group, defamed by painting them as not subject to the disadvantages attributed to the group pushed to become resentful, blamed for benefiting from not being subject to those disadvantages, shamed over the suffering of those who are subject to those disadvantages, tamed by the imposition of guilt over the disparity between their own experiences and the experiences of others, and reigned over by the ideologue group's careful maintenance of public perception of them as wrongfully content, and the imposition of law and policy which places controls on them for the perceived benefit of the group targeted to become resentful.

No comments:

With one click... help hungry and homeless veterans. The Veterans Site.




















google-site-verification: googlefdd91f1288e37cb4.html