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This editorial touches on something the right has tended to do that has been bugging me for years, and I could never quite put my finger on it.
anyone who thinks about doing any good becomes a do-gooder, which is baaaad. Doing the right thing is tagged as the left thing, which is the wrong thing.
It all began when folks sensitized to race or gender issues were politically corrected for being "politically correct." Now everything you say, do, or drive gets politicized, polarized and stereotyped.
It points out the fucked-up tendency in this country (and concentrated on the right, by my observation) to view doing the smart thing as bad (calling someone intelligent and meaning it as an insult?!). I don't know how this co-exists with the American puritan love of self-denial that's also prevalent in this country, but I think it has something to do with the fact that we value individuality (which is mis-represented as 'freedom') over plays-well-with-others (creating the false impression that the two are mutually exclusive), which is why you see a lot of people that seem to go out of their way to have something, anything to rebel against just so they can wear the label of 'rebel' and claim not to be one of you sheep after all. This is not to discount people who happen to be genuinely weird and accept/embrace that in themselves, but I also see a tendency to need to be different for no other reason than the need to be different, where popular immediately equals bad regardless of any other merits. Which is of course as stupid as equating popular with good.
anyone who thinks about doing any good becomes a do-gooder, which is baaaad. Doing the right thing is tagged as the left thing, which is the wrong thing.
It all began when folks sensitized to race or gender issues were politically corrected for being "politically correct." Now everything you say, do, or drive gets politicized, polarized and stereotyped.
It points out the fucked-up tendency in this country (and concentrated on the right, by my observation) to view doing the smart thing as bad (calling someone intelligent and meaning it as an insult?!). I don't know how this co-exists with the American puritan love of self-denial that's also prevalent in this country, but I think it has something to do with the fact that we value individuality (which is mis-represented as 'freedom') over plays-well-with-others (creating the false impression that the two are mutually exclusive), which is why you see a lot of people that seem to go out of their way to have something, anything to rebel against just so they can wear the label of 'rebel' and claim not to be one of you sheep after all. This is not to discount people who happen to be genuinely weird and accept/embrace that in themselves, but I also see a tendency to need to be different for no other reason than the need to be different, where popular immediately equals bad regardless of any other merits. Which is of course as stupid as equating popular with good.
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Date: Jul. 12th, 2004 05:43 am (UTC)From: