My entire family is like this. After 20 years of trying, I've learned there's no reasoning with them. They're convinced that if they're not allowed to use the law or other force to subjugate others, that that's an unfair restriction on their rights. Classic privilege/entitlement behavior, in other words. They genuinely believe themselves to be superior over others, and that their whims should take precedence over the basic rights of lesser people.
People who are used to disproportionate power will always balk at attempts to balance things out. They recognize it--rightly as an attempt to take something away from them. What they do not recognize is that it was never theirs to begin with, because it wasn't honestly earned. (Though they'll often whine about Manifest Destiny and the right of conquest if you bring that up.) All they see, therefore, is that they're losing something they've come to cherish, and thus will, like a child with a snitched toy, complain quite loudly and irrationally about that.
Truly, the only way to fight against this is by working around them--gathering all our diverse groups together to speak with one voice against oppression so our sheer numbers win for us where smaller attempts at reason will always fail. Progressives spend way, way toomich time trying to direct the Swine Chorale. Just like i had to learn to give up that windmill tilting with my family, the rest of the movement needs to give up futile negotiations. If we focus instead on the low-hanging fruit--the merely misinformed, rather than the stubbornly ignorant--we'll have the numbers we need to never have to fear the hell wrought by those who are married to their bigoted matryrdom.
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Date: Thu, Jun. 14th, 2012 08:21 am (UTC)People who are used to disproportionate power will always balk at attempts to balance things out. They recognize it--rightly as an attempt to take something away from them. What they do not recognize is that it was never theirs to begin with, because it wasn't honestly earned. (Though they'll often whine about Manifest Destiny and the right of conquest if you bring that up.) All they see, therefore, is that they're losing something they've come to cherish, and thus will, like a child with a snitched toy, complain quite loudly and irrationally about that.
Truly, the only way to fight against this is by working around them--gathering all our diverse groups together to speak with one voice against oppression so our sheer numbers win for us where smaller attempts at reason will always fail. Progressives spend way, way toomich time trying to direct the Swine Chorale. Just like i had to learn to give up that windmill tilting with my family, the rest of the movement needs to give up futile negotiations. If we focus instead on the low-hanging fruit--the merely misinformed, rather than the stubbornly ignorant--we'll have the numbers we need to never have to fear the hell wrought by those who are married to their bigoted matryrdom.