The Toxicity in Social Justice

Everybody’s a victim, but who’s the BIGGEST victim?

Social Justice is draining. It’s mentally, emotionally, physically draining. At first, the seed issues were really important for change, but over time, it’s been bastardized into this blizzard of hypersensitivity and attention-seeking. It’s like being surrounded by entitled, needy children all the damn time.

To make it even worse, the entitlement also polices how you respond and will cancel you out if it’s not just right.

“No, I said the banana ice cream, made with soy milk, extra whip, sugar-free! I can’t eat whole milk ice cream because I’m a special butterfly! Get it right!”

*Throws bowl at wall.*

That’s how it feels sometimes.

Because everything is a big deal and everything is offensive somehow someway, even those who mean well become skittish and scared and shut off. I mean, who can keep up? It’s the epitome of changing the game constantly.

It leads to this sense of super high strung, high tension and high anxiety climate that boils over at the slightest provocation. Making everything a big deal also makes it so that nothing is a big deal. It takes the attention away from things that really do need our attention.

It’s like that frazzled mom in the grocery store with the screaming, spoiled twins who are used to getting all the attention and can’t be pleased. Meanwhile, there’s the traumatized, less-favored older sibling tugging on mom’s shirt, trying to alert her to the fact that the store is on fire. She doesn’t notice though because she’s too distracted by Lefty and Righty. Society is that mother. The extreme and super loud Left and Right are the twins. Everyone else is that sibling.

The Right says that the Left eats their own. And you know what? They’re not wrong. We love to cancel our own for even the slightest perceived transgression. We’ve taken political correctness to a whole new level.

Look, some people do deserve to be canceled. Their long list of shitty behavior is inexcusable, but the mob mentality, the piling on to crush out people who make a small faux pas or have opinions that differ from yours is bullying. It’s so incredibly toxic and not to mention hypocritical. Even as we preach anti-bullying, cancel culture thrives so verdantly on both sides.

On the left, we call it cancel culture. On the right, we call it hate. Bottom line, it’s still bullying and it’s destructive.

I am a Bernie Progressive. I value independent thought and analysis, but lately, I’ve been disillusioned by the inhumanity of the extremism around me and the hypocrisy of some of the most vocal and the denial of obvious and evident truth. It’s literally right in front of your face, but you pretend not to see it because it doesn’t fit in with your narrative. In psychology, they’d tell you that you have a personality problem.

The social justice environment on both ends has a narcissism and entitlement issue. Or maybe, that’s just Americans. We want what we want and we want it now no matter who we step on.

But I’ll tell you what. Without humility and humbleness, we’re never going to resolve anything. Without lowering our egos to see others, we’ll continue to stay divided.

I was going to write an article called “America, you’re stupid and that’s by design” and chronologically list all the social conditioning through the last 80 or so years that have made Americans dumb. It's been decades in the making. Shutting down analytical thought and appreciation for intellectualism and then hyping up consumerism and shallowness to focus on material gains, it’s all designed to breed some bickering, fighting-to-the-top fakeness and it leeches itself into all aspects of society, including Social Justice.

As long as the have-nots are fighting amongst ourselves, we’ll never fight the powers that be. Divide and conquer.

I think this is why I love immigrants. They haven’t been here long enough to be swept up in the stupid. They’re still solely focused on surviving and achieving that American Dream. Family, unity, commitment to one another, community. You’ll find it amongst all immigrant groups.

You might say that you think mainstream Americans have this too, but trust me, it’s not the same. Americans are selfish and individualistic in comparison.

Right now, there is an air of one-upmanship victimhood and of gatekeeping.

“You can’t be a victim because I’m more victim than you so you can’t say this or that because I’m the most victim of all victims.”

It makes me want to put everyone in time out and run away.

There are some real problems in our society. Some very big problems, but all of this bickering, all of the hypocrisy, all of the whining takes the attention away from the work that needs to be done.

I really hate this vapid, mean bully America has become. It literally highlights the worst in us. I’m so tired of it. It is the main reason why I pulled back from writing about race. Maybe it’s just because I’m older now and my mental tolerance for noise is thin. I’ve become that old neighbor who screams at the upstairs neighbors to keep their damn death metal music down.

I just want peace and quiet and some mature, grown-up conversations where people will hear each other out without what-aboutisms and hijacking topics and petty one-upmanship. (And yes, lefties, you guys do it too.) Can we make that happen? There’s enough victimization to go around. There’s no need to fight for it. Each cause has a weird, gropey uncle and a loud, obnoxious aunt. It doesn’t mean that we have to let them take the mic all the damn time.

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