Priviilege

As legitimate protests sometimes morphed into violent riots, we all observed the near-complete abdication of responsibility for public order exhibited by Democrat leadership at the blue-city and blue-state level, the offensive assertion that all police are racists, the calls for the abolition of police protection in urban areas, the takeover of small parts of major cities by leftist extremists (think: CHAZ), and finally, the specious accusation that anyone who might be upset by all of this suffers from "privilege" that invalidates their thinking.

I have also noted that the broader electorate looks at all of this and is appalled—by those who perpetrate it, by those who try to put a positive spin on the rioting, and by Democratic politicians who refuse to condemn any of it. 

And now that vast swaths of the electorate are accused of "privilege" when they quietly feel or express their concern, we may have reached a tipping point. The concern of those who are accused (outrageously) of being "racists" or "white supremacists" will morph into anger, and anger will slowly become quiet outrage. That outrage won't show up in polls. There will be no marches or protests by those who are appalled, but it's there—hidden and waiting, ready to emerge in early November. The result will not be what leftists desire.

Matt Walsh pulls no punches when he writes about who is privileged at the moment:

It seems to me that the greatest privilege on offer in our culture today is the privilege to be utterly immune from the law. This is the privilege exercised by many of the “protesters.” And though some of them are white males, many are not. It is, then, a privilege that is not dispensed based on race, but on ideology. We might call it Leftist Privilege. A person with the “correct” worldview, especially if he is gathered with a group of other correct-thinking people, can do almost anything he wants. The Powers That Be will bend over backwards to accommodate him and meet his demands.

The left's accusation of "privilege" is a bullying tactic, designed to shut down any debate and silence any opinion that doesn't conform to their woke narrative. The bullies tell us that we can't understand the issues because ... privilege. They tell us that our demands for the rule of law are unjust, because ... privilege. They tell us that looting (yeah, I know, it's now deemed a "racist" term) is somehow justified because ... critics suffer from privilege. In fact, every accomplishment at a personal or societal level is negated,  because ... privilege. They become champions of "cancel culture," intimidating those public figures with whom they disagree and at the same time eating their own.

Every level of government tries overly hard to appease the radical woke and their accomplices, to nod approvingly when they make ridiculous or outrageous "demands;" to look the other way when they loot or destroy or become violent. They get a pass because woke thinking leads to social justice—an amorphous term that means anything the woke want it to mean.

It's the Left that is the beneficiary of privilege. Freedom to act out without consequences or responsibility, to defame people or groups with impunity, to distort facts without liability, and to accuse others of thought crimes that would make George Orwell blush. What a privileged world they live in.

UPDATE-1:

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When you consider each instance of woke insanity, cancel culture, and hyper-sensitive political correctness individually, they all seem rather banal. But when you consider them collectively, it's reasonable to expect that pushback is coming. 

The Federalist lists 34 recent instances that censor or "cancel" celebrities, reporters, academics, and others who have violated (often unintentionally) wokeness. People are fired, books are banned, TV shows are removed, history is modified—and our supposed cultural leaders nod in approval:

Battle lines are clearly being drawn, where the radical left has offered Americans a binary choice in a false dichotomy between total submission or unrelenting exile with those opposed to the new woke world order cast out of society as unrepentant racists refusing to atone for past generations’ sins. No justice, no peace. Silence is violence. You’re either with us, or against us. There is no middle ground. Which side of history are you on?

Most of us are on the side that will have no demonstrations, no signs with tiresome slogans, no chanting. 

But ... Pushback. Is. Coming.

UPDATE-2:

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Matt Taibbi is a left-leaning journalist who is anti-Trump, and yet, he's fed up with the woke insanity that has resulted in the cancellation of good and decent people on the Left (and the Right). He writes:

“It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness. The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.”

The rest of us, however, won't "walk to the Razor voluntarily." 

Pushback. Is. Coming.