It has taken a long time, and a metric fuckload of provocation for me to get to this point.
I have, at long last, utterly and I think permanently lost patience with so-called liberals or self-styled progressives who conflate class standing with intelligence. (Let’s leave the problem of conflating “intelligent” with “agrees with me” for another day.)
This offensive hypocrisy takes a number of forms. It can manifest as regional chauvinism (usually directed against the southeast, but often the midwest or intermountain region, and occasionally against California), education-level elitism, or urbanites dissing ruralites.
Sometimes, as was the case with that Blue State Secession bullshit last year – a surprisingly stupid idea that refuses to die, though these days anyone with any sense has abandoned it, which at least makes it a useful marker of liberal twitdom – you get all three of those forms wrapped into a tidy package, not unlike the tidy packages I discard every morning after walking Zeke.
I’ve been very patient with such crap. No longer. To borrow a notion from a bit of recent fuss over sexism in the blog world: if you spout that kind of garbage, you are no ally of mine. Until you change your attitude, you can no longer assume I’ve got your back.
Oh, and here’s a couple ways to not only out yourself as an elitist but to win special “fuck off, hypocrite” points in the process:
- bash people of a poorer class than you after making a name for yourself objecting to slurs against women or racial minorities or other disempowered groups;
- do any or all of the above on the Internet with a “handle” that has an obvious reference to your degree in it.