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'I'm triggered, I'm triggered, I need a safe space'
By Jon Rappoport
Everyone needs a victim-story these days. Don't leave home without one. Or two or three.
Colleges are institutionalizing victimhood.
HeatStreet reports on an innovation: "Brown University last
year turned a room on campus into a safe space by outfitting it with
cookies, coloring books, soft music, pillows and a video of frolicking
puppies, along with trauma counselors, after students complained that a
speaker invited to campus would be too upsetting."
My, my.
Reason.com explains: "At Brown University last fall, for
instance, the prospect of a debate between leftist-feminist Jessica
Valenti and libertarian-feminist (and Reason contributor) Wendy McElroy
was so horrifying to some students...that the creation of a 'safe space'
was necessary."
Sure it was necessary. These college kiddies are fragile.
They can crack like eggs at the slightest provocation. A word here, a
word there, and they require a vacation.
The whole notion of classes is obsolete. No teacher can avoid
triggering students now and then. So send your child to Ooey-Gooey
College, where he can lounge in a marshmallow annex for four years.
Protect him. Keep him safe.
What's the most prestigious college in America? Harvard,
hands down. Let's take a peek at what's going on at the Harvard Law
School, where the best and brightest college graduates in the land
matriculate:
The New Yorker (12/15/14): "Individual [Harvard law] students
often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear
that the material would cause them to perform less well. One teacher I
know was recently asked by a student not to use the word 'violate' in
class-as in 'Does this conduct violate the law?'-because the word was
triggering. Some students have even suggested that rape law should not
be taught because of its potential to cause distress."
Here's what I envision:
One of these newly minted lawyers lands a job with a New York
firm. The firm decides to take on a rape case, pro bono, and defend a
suspect they believe has been wrongly accused. At a meeting, the CEO of
the firm announces: "And we're going to have one of our new attorneys,
the very brilliant Harvard grad, Corky Muffy
Zwicker-Landsman-Feldstein-Ho-Fernandez-Washington in the second chair."
Corky replies: "Sorry, I can't take this one. When they were teaching rape law at Harvard, I was wearing ear plugs."
CEO: "What? Why?"
Corky: "Because the words 'rape' and 'violate' trigger me."
CEO: "Trigger? What do you mean?"
Corky: "I experience a deep, deep emotional disturbance. So I know nothing about rape cases."
CEO: "But what if all young law students followed your example? How would we defend people accused of rape in this country?"
Corky: "I've given the question a great deal of thought. I
think a properly programmed computer could act as defense attorney.
There would be no jury, of course, because they could be triggered, too.
Ditto for the judge. The judge, the prosecutor, and the defense
attorney would all be computers. They would decide the case. Besides, if
a man is on trial for rape, he's guilty. He's a man."
CEO: "You're fired."
Corky: "You can't fire me. I would be triggered by that."
CEO: "You ARE fired."
Corky: "Then I AM triggered. I'm suing you and the firm for damage."
CEO: "If that's where you're going with this, then I'm triggered by you being triggered."
Corky: "Let's take it to a jury and see what they think."
Another young lawyer in the room pipes up: "This whole
conversation is triggering me. Do we have a safe space in the building? I
need to go there right now."
CEO: "A what? A safe space?"
Young lawyer: "Yes. A room with soft music, beds, cookies, videos of kitty cats, trauma counselors, and surrogate mommies."
CEO: "You're fired, too."
Young lawyer: "I'm double triggered."
Corky: "And I'll represent him when he sues this firm. His
wife and son and parents and cousins will be triggered when he tells
them what happened to him here today. They deserve compensation, too."
On a more serious note, how did such an absurd social trend
take hold at Harvard Law School, one of the most prestigious educational
institutions in America?
There are many conspiring factors, but one that should be understood clearly is the promotion of victimhood. This is key.
The young are taught that "being oppressed" is an absolutely
essential element in gaining any sort of legitimacy. Only those groups
who lay claim to such a title are worthy.
Against that background, people who don't have a victim-story readily available are going to have to cook one up.
And so they do.
It becomes fashionable and trendy to insist on being weak and vulnerable.
This "search for identity" implies that oppressors will be found and blamed---beyond any rational basis for doing so.
That deranged strategy fits in quite nicely with the
proposition that no nation should be strong and independent. No nation,
God forbid, should strive for a greater degree of self-sufficiency.
Instead, we should all see ourselves as living in a
terminally interdependent world, a great soup of humanity, in which
every "inequality" must be remedied---and the method for doing so
involves the "higher people" becoming, somehow, the "lower people."
Only through a universal embrace of psychological and
spiritual victimhood can we hope to evolve to the next stage of moral
behavior.
In other words, twist the whole notion of generosity and kindness into a perverted sense of abject helplessness.
Two statements from HG Wells' 1895 novel, The Time Machine,
suggest how eerie, inverted, and hopeless the search for a utopia based
on victimhood is: "...even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude
and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man."
"...security sets a premium on feebleness."
That is where the victim theme leads us.
Back down the road along which we came, in reverse, with our hands in the air, surrendering to fear, pretending it is love.
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