Revisiting the Cause-ist Labeling Bat

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this, but it’s becoming a real issue again.

For those of you who haven’t read it before, I once did this entire schtick about the “cause-ist labeling bat”.   The “Cause-ist Labeling Bat" meaning that big, thick metal studded baseball bat that we use to marginalize and silence people we don’t want to hear.   It’s like a rubber stamp – but it beats the ink into you permanently.   And generally leaves you broken, unemployed, and permanently damaged goods. 

Don’t want to hear someone disagree about Black Lives Matter rhetoric?  
       *WHACK*   They’re a racist.

Don’t like someone’s preference for cis-gender? 
       *WHACK*  They’re homo and trans-phobic.

Irritated that someone voted Trump? 
       *WHACK*   They’re alt-right white supremacists. 

Pissed off that guy is dating a white chick instead of you? 
       *WHACK*  He’s a race traitor and a sellout.

Disagree with the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline? 
       *WHACK*  You’re anti-Native American.

Think that Police offers and Law Enforcement should be honored?
       *WHACK*  You’re a bigot.

You get the point, right?

We’ve effectively killed all concepts of open, intelligent disagreement by hanging The Bat over everyone’s heads like the Sword of Damocles.   It has reached the point where there are policies (and in some places, laws) forbidding the polite discussion of anything of any real consequence in the work place,, and even in some public venues.   

There are public companies and government agencies where a co-worker can have another fired for speaking an opinion aloud that “disrupts their workplace harmony” (ie, it upsets their special little snowflake digestion).   I’ve watched it happen three times in the last month – people suspended with intent to dismiss for speaking disagreeing personal opinions!   Two of those people weren’t even expressing them on company time- they were at a social event after hours.

(Not that those types of laws and policies have stopped the “right thinking” parties from loudly having their opinions – the laws and policies are mainly there as extra weighted studs for The Bat).  

White Male voices are rapidly becoming an endangered phenomenon in public, except when they carefully mouth the platitudes given to them by someone else – and ignore their own opinions.   Heaven forfend that they should want to discuss issues affect them as white males in America, or disagree with the prevailing opinion that they represent all the evils of the universe.  

Women dissenting with modern third wave feminism have found themselves ostracized and attacked (verbally and, for Christs’s sake, physically!) over their dissention.   Ironically, feminism has always taken issue with females who preferred traditional gender roles by choice rather than by circumstance – but the modern wave of feminists have become experts with The Bat and repeatedly show a willingness to use it on their own gender!

And don’t think I’m going to leave the conservatives out of this.   While they undeniably get less use out of the Bats in their own closets – they too have been going swinging lately.   Trump antagonists are now “liberal snowflakes”.  Alt-right extremists have started swinging back against the groups that originally labeled them, with racist slurs carved into Bats of their own.   While groups like Rebel media try to remain balanced sources of off-brand non-mainstream media, others have taken to the far fields of the right, swinging away with their own Bats.   (Breitbart I love you, but you sometimes go a little too far, without Milo’s tongue-in-cheek style to say “I’m just being a provocateur”.)

What happened to the America I grew up in?

What happened to arguing, and standing your ground?    Where did the respect for your fellow American go?   

I remember back in my college days that you could still disagree with people.  I disagreed quite a bit, but I still respected the courage people showed in arguing with me.   I’m not exactly a tiny guy – I clock in at 6’5 and 250lbs, and have since college.   Arguing with me, win or lose, took a kind of courage I respected.  And I made it a point to listen to what they had to say, because I knew that even though I was (I used to think) right, they still had the right to be heard.

But now arguments are over before they even start.   When I disagree, my argument isn’t even heard.  Before the words are out of my mouth, I’m (wrongly) race-identified as “white” so that I can be called a racist.   Then I'm mis-typed as straight, so that I can be a homophobe.  My marriage to a woman makes me a transphobic anti-poly monogamist.  My religion makes me a “zealot”.  Having a job makes me “economically privileged”.   Having a penis makes me “male privileged” and a “sexual predator”.  Being “white seeming” gives me a “racial perception advantage”. 

And for the entire argument – nothing I actually say gets heard.

This is the America we live in now.  Which Bat you can use to hit someone means more than what you actually have to say.   Who can hit first, with the biggest Bat, wins the argument.  

I have to tell you – 1984’s America is starting to look a lot more sunny than the America of 2016.