There is a longstanding cultural trope, one which I embrace wholeheartedly, that says we tend to dress in a manner and style reflecting the time of our lives in which we were happiest. I am convinced that this can be applied to more than just our clothing, but to a mindset, a belief system, as well.
As an old man, I have come to accept the fact that social culture transforms itself far more rapidly and, yes, radically, than I am entirely comfortable with. We frequently stick with shit, holding on to a notion often beyond it’s societally imposed expiration date. What often appears like a shift of a political, moral, ethical or spiritual stance is, just as often, a paradigm shift that leaves one standing in place while a societal tectonic shift moves culture under foot.
In such a regard, I frequently find that, just as I’ve come to buy into a cultural notion, or, for that matter, reject such a notion out of hand, that notion abruptly absents itself from the conversation, leaving behind what is often no more than the faintest glimmer of memory.
“Where the fuck did that fucking idea that I found so fucking idiotic fucking disappear to?”
In sum, in the lightning round of modern life—where the scores can really change!—much of what seemed at first glance likely to be ever present, a universally inviolable fact of experience, a god damned given, seems to have vanished from the board, often before dissection can be completed, and, in and of itself, discarded.
“Cultural appropriation.” “Lock her up!” “Micro-aggressions.” “Snowflake.” “Safe spaces.” “Libtards.” “People who menstruate.”
The list can go on, ad nauseum.
As ever, nostalgia is goodstalgia, right?
Thus, just when it feels safe to securely identify with a slogan, a buzzword, a meme, something comes along to shove it out of the cultural way and take its place.
I mean, as one example, it seems like only yesterday, there we were, expected to accept that “Problematic!” and/or “Controversial!” were descriptors, understood by a vast swathe of unlearned shitheads as bereft of life experience as can be imagined by even the least imaginative of the species, as immutable absolutes, when suddenly, without warning, these firmly held secular appropriations of “Blasphemy!” and/or “Sacrilege!” slipped into the ether faster than when “Hep” transmuted into “Hip.”
And, to briefly digress, as I often do, the current and ongoing mainstreaming of Jew loathing, the three pronged attack from left, right and intifada, which might very well complete the Final Solution, has picked up a lot of the slack of all those slogans cosplaying political points of view and action for that sad sack pack of nitwits rushing to mistake attention for affection.
In a society—I hesitate to use the word culture, which might seem to grant such murderous bullshit some unintended legitimacy—with so little for these casually homicidal loathsome shitstains to agree on, in lieu of actually taking responsibility for one’s own societal/cultural/personal fuck ups, Jews have once again been deemed scapegoats du jour, giving this unholy trio a reason to reach hands across the table in what will certainly be a temporary but convenient agreement; with internecine bloodshed to follow.
Which is another story for another day.
Promise.
Meanwhile, I’m here to reanimate one of those memes, one of those now (at least for the moment) thankfully rearview mirrored mindsets; specifically, that presumptive statement of moral acuity, that unassailable platform of (self) righteous indignation, the taking of offense.
As I have frequently indicated, I can’t for the fucking life of me conceive of anything that actually offends me, in any traditional definition of the experience, culturally, socially, or, whatever; good or bad taste are such situationally relativist ideas as to carry no water for me.
That said, my feelings are easily hurt. I have a list of weak spots, buttons to be pushed, that will send me into a blue funk for days. None of these are any of your fucking business, of course.
To be clear, hurt feelings and taking offense are two distinctly separate and different issues for me.
For me.
Now, it took me an awfully long time to understand why some of you out there seemed incapable or uninterested in keeping these notions apart. That, to be honest, grossly understates the discomfiting reality. For far too many, hurt feelings, and taking offense, are a married couple with nothing really in common but mutual shared resentments—spouses who were made for each other.
And then came clarity.
Not any kind of startling moment of illuminating clarity, not some bolt of enlightenment, but more a series of tumblers falling into place to make a once locked room open and available. And that first tumbler dropped in the aftermath of the early days of the ongoing war in the Middle East.
This inkling of an understanding of what seemed two unassailably different notions finding common ground derived from the discomfiting number of privileged and comfortable western Jews using the familiar, “As a Jew…” opener to decry the gall of Israel in defending itself.
This convenient choice of ignoring first, the fact that the war as it was being fought was a response, a defense against a brutal attack; and second, and most pertinent to me, the lightspeed metastasizing of terrorism enacted in American cities by Muslims against Americans, with no more connection to that war than Judaism, left me forlorn and adrift.
Nothing I have said is in any way about Israel, except for those who make it about Israel in order to justify their once latent Jew hate in the west, in manifestations running the gamut from verbal abuse to murder, in societies separate and distinct from that brutal conflict.
The smug presumptuousness of this “As a Jew…” bullshit left me agape. Who the fuck died and left these “…As a…” sorts—often referred to as “Bagel Jews—” as a spokesperson for Jews in general, and me, Jew as I am, in particular?
And then—and to be fair, not immediately, it took a while—I recognized in this self identification the language of modern identitarianism, and the narcissistic assumption that “If I feel this way, everyone I know does, or certainly should, if you are of value as a person. And, if you don’t, you should die, maybe tasting your own blood.”
This presumption of a moral high ground has been a highlight of what has become the modern American, you should pardon the expression, left. And this manifestation of moral acuity has become a transcendent part of the contemporary progressive lexicon and playbook.
This frankly ludicrous presumption of universal representation, of “speaking as a…” in the mistaken conflation of something one might find abhorrent—informed by the fiendish insistence that your reaction is both the only moral choice, and a choice shared by all who are noble and good—with hurt feelings, thus making the personal the political, informed that tsunami of the taking of offense which shut down so fucking many potentially interesting ideas out of anxiety and fear of the witch drowning mob.
To be clear, I speak solely for myself. I am not here to change any minds. I invest a certain energy in reminding myself daily that what you think of me is none of my business. This is not easy, but it is profoundly rewarding.
I am perfectly happy to be agreed with. Casual disagreement doesn’t bother me, particularly. Disagreement of the angry sort, expressed argumentatively, I can accommodate.
Once this slides into name calling, slanderous lies or libelous accusations, fuck right off.
I have grown accustomed to being libeled and slandered. I will not be baited into engaging with such surreal and ridiculous nonsense by liars and fools.
Today.
That said, I believe it takes a certain sort of ass wild narcissism to presume that one speaks for a segment of culture or society, as it now seems clear to me so many of those playing the “I’m offended(and you should be too!)” card have done and continue to do, to no fucking good, other than the usual “likes“ from a fatuously credulous base.
I have to think even so occasionally ridiculous a modern figure as Lena Dunham knew it was a joke when her character on GIRLS referred to herself as “…the voice of a generation.”
At least, I hope so.
As ever, I remain,
Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.
