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Fragile sensibilities and the desperate need to have them catered to now appear the number one priority of the pampered, guilt-ridden offspring of the people who found a way to lower them gently into the best universities.
Incoming innocents, entering into such an unsafe space as the first day of school, are increasingly less likely to encounter any requirement for inner strength as they face, for the first time, the perils of the world without maternal protection.
Yearned-for amendments to the facts of life, previously intended to equip a child against the rough and tumble of the "school of life," have been replaced by the notion that refusing to hear anything that might offend one is not a choice, but a right. Why argue with creatures who have an opposing view when you can simply shut them down?
It does not stop there. Delusional gems, designed to flatten the playing field of human existence, keep on coming: Gender differences do not exist; you can change your sex just by saying so. Most men are savage rapists-in-waiting. There is no "debate" on climate change: the result, funded by industry grants, has already been decided. White people should all be ashamed of themselves for having been born with the "wrong" skin. There is no such thing as a nation state. Borders are no longer necessary. Questioning immigration makes you a Nazi. Expressing what you think can ship you to prison -- and so on.
If many on the "progressive" left want to create an upside-down, through-the-looking-glass world where the way to happiness is to expect the world to adapt to one's personal requirements, and sowing confusion and discord within society is their aim, then they are doing a fantastic job of it.
In addition, a seemingly expansive sense of self seems to have been engorged by adopting a group identity over individual freedom of choice. Thus, identity politics, with its emphasis on coercing sympathy and rewarding what often appears a fabricated victimhood, has given way to devaluing, if not ignoring, real victimhood. Identity politics has also possibly caused otherwise sympathetic people to adopt a far more militant position than they otherwise might have taken.
The danger to these throwers of the temper tantrum seems to be that human beings are not all the same. We come from different cultural backgrounds; we hold different views. One view does not always sit happily alongside another. This is true "diversity," and to the Thought Police, a calamity.
The tech giants, big government, the media, and their willing executioners, are trying to push all opposition to the periphery -- to an area they designate as the "far right", which often seems to extend (although they probably do not see it that way) from the slightly-less-than-far-left to Armageddon. This view has resulted in perfectly legitimate individuals, with perfectly reasonable views, being unfairly tarred, feathered, and de-platformed for no good reason -- except the whims and distortions of the Thought Police.
The Silicon Valley tyrants -- Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter – appear heavily implicated in this drive to undermine and enslave their great brainwashed masses. These self-satisfied social justice warriors, hammering away at their keyboards in their Silicon Valley fortresses or their parents' basements, act as sheep dogs, corralling defectors by crying foul. Without words, however, we are left with sticks.
Andrew Ash is based in the United Kingdom.
