Previous post
Unlike the labels Boomer, GenX, Millennial – meaningless beyond identifying a cohort by circumstance of birth – there is a demographic of people who belong, not by age or color or sex, but by attitude. By one ugly, vicious, sinister attitude.
Get outside the dense urban areas and American politeness, charitableness — heck, downright niceness — has been remarked upon since at least the early 1800’s. From Alexis de Tocqueville to Charles Dickens, the basic hospitality of Americans was evident enough to be remarked upon and to become a stereotype. Of course one can’t have a positive view of ordinary Americans without the usual carping from the self-proclaimed aristocrat class who don’t like the obligation of good manners towards the lower classes and the amoral scolds always ready to plant a flag on Hypocrisy Hill. All miss the point is that the default behavior of niceness in everyday encounters with others helps a society to function.
“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
― Robert Heinlein
The only drawback to being nice is the individual’s tendency to automatically defer to the person who says “You hurt me! I feel offended!” And that tendency has allowed the rise of a raging case of offendeesarcoma: an invasive cancer that targets the structural institutions of functional society. It usually starts in injured or weak areas mimicking legitimate societal repair efforts before spreading to healthy regions.
The Left doggedly, even aggressively, pursues the irrational “right not to be offended”. And it is a race to the bottom between different Leftwing cohorts, and the activists that lead them, in acquiring new targets of offense to be eliminated.
And I think I’ve discovered what – you should excuse the expression – triggers these Leftwing activists’ search and destroy missions like the scent of offal excites hyenas’ into a frenzy.
Happiness.
Whatever you take joy in, be it your family or holiday or reading preference or hobby — If you derive pleasure from it, some Leftist somewhere will hunt it down and declare it problematic, offensive and probably racist to boot.
These little outragenauts not only want you miserable, they want you to apologize for ever having been happy in the first place. Your happiness, they insist, equals the oppression of someone else.
Consider: did this 2021 Super Bowl commercial make you make you smile?
Wipe that smile off your face, you ableist POS. How dare you!
Only you could take inspiration porn like that and make it about abortion.
— Captain Sisko’s Baseball (@SiskoBaseball) February 8, 2021
What the hell does inspiration porn actually mean? As I discovered, it just another happiness-shaming exercise by the Offended Generation to manipulate you into submission. It appears this is old hat – that there are actually people out there within their so-called communities, who thrive on hating everyone outside of it.
“Inspiration porn” is any meme, video or feel-good article that sensationalizes people with disabilities. Browse social media long enough and you’ll inevitably find images of disabled children doing ordinary activities, like coloring or running, usually captioned with the now-infamous Scott Hamilton quote, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”
Don’t look at them, don’t smile at them, certainly don’t show their pictures or share stories of people with disabilities being – you know – happy and successful cuz if that touches your heart …
The disability community rejects depictions like these, because according to activists, their only purpose is to make the non-disabled viewer feel good about themselves.
See? The activists not only know the intent of the writer/photographer/moviemaker, they know your real feelings, you abelist!
Which is downright batguano crazy. No one sane hears the story of Jessica Long and thinks Wow, this makes be happy because at least I have two legs! Why do emotionally healthy people love tales – both true and fictional – of people overcoming adversity?
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
The Offended Generation believes in nothing and your happiness is offensive. If you still love, if you still have reasons to be happy, then rejection of this ideology is worth fighting for.
Resist.
featured image Adobe stock standard license
370H55V says: All true, but you missed the most important point: only SOME people have the right not to be offended, and you and I are not among them.
GWB says: Because we are heretics and infidels to their religion. And their religion will not suffer the infidel to live amongst them (except as slave).
NTSOG says: GWB: “And their religion will not suffer the infidel to live amongst them (except as slave).”
It took me [an autistic] many years to realise why many of the caring, sharing members of the social work/welfare trades could not/would not tolerate me as an equal and very skilled professional and subjected me to ongoing discrimination and even direct personal attacks and defamation. Being autistic I was supposed to be a dependent client, subject to the caring ministrations, and grateful for their efforts. They could not reconcile my competence in many areas [professional work, sport, music, etc.] and also my minimal participation in their social-emotional world with their perception of how an autistic should behave, i.e. be handicapped and dependent. The fact is that I’m different, but don’t need to associate with such emotional leeches.
GWB says: The disability community
Much like putting “social” in front of “justice” makes the justice anything but, so putting “community” after some label defines them as entirely butthurt, activist, “We wanna wallow in our misery and we want to drag you down here with us!” sorts of those people.
their only purpose is to make the non-disabled viewer feel good about themselves
No, I usually feel good about the person depicted. It’s projection to think otherwise.
That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.
Ah yes, one of the many great bits from Tolkien’s works. (There are no sound bite quotes from Tolkien. You have to take a larger chunk. Like eating a banquet, instead of scarfing a bit of hard candy.)
But it brings me to this quote. And note that while this quote talks about war, it isn’t only about war. These sorts of people are ‘miserable creatures’ mentioned:
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. The man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by greater men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
These people think nothing is worth smiling for. Nothing which is worth cheering. Nothing is worth struggle, unless it’s a Maoist struggle session against the bourgeoisie mindset. They will always be miserable (because the gods they worship are gods of misery).
Those who cheer when one overcomes? Those who smile and tear up in joy a bit when someone chooses the harder path? Those who know what it is to truly struggle? We make civilization. We make the world in which the others can live. We encourage success. We reflect light into the world. And those who keep darkness in their hearts? They hate us for it.
Oh, and thank you, Darleen, for bringing that ad to my attention. I am a little prouder today of owning a Toyota.
Hold up just a second.
Let’s talk about “inspiration porn.”
I am not part of the “disabled community.” I am a person with a significant physical disability, but that doesn’t mean that I am more closely related culturally or socially to other people with the vast variety of physical disabilities than I am my neighbors. And therein lies the reason that I find inspiration porn to be really, painfully tedious.
It’s because like all identity politics, all identity socialization, it takes want relatively small (in the universal sense) trait about someone and makes it the only thing that’s important about them.
Perhaps it comes off more condescendingly and more insultingly if you happen to have a physical disability. For the most part, “inspiration porn” focuses on things that any average person could do, even if they don’t, tens of thousands of times a day. The reason that “it’s special” is because it’s done by someone you think less of.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you think less of people with disabilities. You expect less of them. You demand less of them, by and large.
Don’t be ashamed of that. It’s perfectly reasonable. That’s the whole point of the word “disability.”
“Inspiration porn” hinges not on any particular spectacular achievement, but on the idea that it is otherwise unreasonable to expect that such people might achieve something spectacular – or even moderately good. It’s like showing a black man in a business suit working at a mid-level management job and gushing how clean, intelligent, and high achieving he is. It’s getting ridiculous, overwrought praise to someone for an achievement which is barely worth a nod and a thumbs up. It denigrates everyone else and makes you look like a condescending git.
Maybe you get a little more sensitive to it (as in testy, not in more observant) if you, going about your everyday life, court suddenly appearing in someone else’s moment of inspiration porn.
“Oh my God, you’re just so amazing! You just inspiration! I don’t know how you do it!”
“Lady I’m just parking my car and going into by some drugs. It’s Tuesday.”
There’s obviously a difference between praising someone’s legitimately significant accomplishment and noting that they had to go a little bit further to get there and elevating middling accomplishments which are only shocking if you have a truly low opinion of the ability of people with physical disabilities to achieve things. That’s the difference between a legitimate recognition of an achievement and inspiration porn.
Now – go forth and sin no more.
Darleen Click says: I’m talking about the “activists” and their outrage bots who claim Jessica’s story = inspiration porn. This is a woman with 23 Paralympics medals — making her the most medaled athlete in Paralympic history. Obviously the story is NOT one of her getting a spoonful of cereal to her mouth.
And that’s the point. We can legitimately look and see if something is exploitive of its subject or the attitude of any particular viewer is condescending. But that’s not here anymore.
There is no nuance, critical evaluation or thinking here. This is the emotionally crippled, bitter Activist class who hate anyone that looks at someone makes an achievement beyond their expected abilities and finds something good to celebrate there.
You’re making an argument for a debate that doesn’t exist.
GWB says: “Lady I’m just parking my car and going into by some drugs. It’s Tuesday.”
In some ways, I feel the same way when someone thanks me “for my service” as a veteran. I didn’t do anything extraordinary, just my job/what was necessary. But, doing what I did when someone was trying to kill me (not always the enemy)? That’s different. And I’m a bit prouder of those accomplishments.
Being a great swimmer is pretty dang great. Being one who doesn’t have lower legs (which are kinda important in normal swimming) and is also better than your average Bob, well that’s pretty inspiring. For the very reasons Robin H identifies. (And are the same as innumerable stories that aren’t about ‘handicapped’ individuals.)
Robin H says: I’m so confused. Are we supposed to ignore them completely, sort of like being color blind, or are we supposed to celebrate them, like BLM? Or maybe only tell the stories of the handicapped that fail at everything? That would be a fun commercial.
As a completely able bodied person I find the “inspiration porn” to be, well, inspiring. As if, if they can do that why the hell aren’t I doing it? It actually doesn’t make me feel superior, it makes me feel inferior and sometimes we need that to spur us to be better.
Cameron says: You’re supposed to acknowledge that they are there but not look at them or interact with them but you can’t ignore them either. And if you refuse to notice that they are disabled that’s just as hateful as noticing the disability in the first place.
Hope that helps.
Robin H says: Thanks! Clear a mud!
NTSOG says: Robin if you fell and broke a leg so that you had to use crutches you would be [short-term] handicapped. It would be reasonable for others to make certain allowances in how they treated you due to your state of limited mobility. Making those allowances would not be to denigrate or diminish you as a person, but out of care and respect for your safety and welfare. And that’s where it should stop. I used to work with a highly irreverent man who was blind due to an accident. He had no self-pity. I would say things like “See here Charlie!” or use other common sayings like “I’m as blind as a bat”, but others became wound up in their pity and probably the fear many have at the thought of losing their own sight and changed their normal spoken language avoiding references to seeing and sight. That didn’t help Charlie at all. Similarly I’ve been in schools where frustrated teaching staff have come into staff rooms after teaching complex autistic children and remarked that they are ‘catching’ autism. I would jokingly tell them to come and sit next to me so I, being autistic, would appear relatively ‘normal’ next to them. Unfortunately there are people, seeking attention and validation as CARING, who seek to define people who are different by that difference alone so as to build their own public status.
See and treat the person and their honest efforts and determination, not the impairment or difference. Do not pity people who are different. I for one loathe people who seek to pity me because I’m autistic.
GWB says: Treat them as a PERSON. Created by God, broken by sin and life in various ways, but all the same in that we are all broken HUMANs.
12 Comments