Whack A Woke Weekday — The Professor and The Penguin

The quality of discussion between two intelligent people shouldn’t be at playground level name-calling.

Another Thursday afternoon being a Penguin and I get suddenly waylaid by three separate comments on my articles. All by the same person and less than a few minutes apart.

Hark! Is this the world speed reading champion I say to myself? Alas not. I have done my usual trick of pissing someone off. They’ve come to tell me exactly why I’m an awful human.

One of the things I love about being trolled is the creativity that comes along for the ride. Sometimes I don’t mind the abuse as long as I get a giggle. I don’t set out to annoy people but if I do, I often love the creative things they say.

It’s how I learned the phrase ‘Malingering Shitlark’ — which I now try and use in everyday conversation. For that very reason, ‘Whiteboy Gaslighter and the Incels’ needs to be the name of a band. Someone please make this happen.

Meanwhile Chris picked another article of mine and commented again.

This is a development in Chris’ original position which is fine. He’s got a clear idea of who I am and what I represent. He might be right. He might be wrong. It matters far more to him than it does to me.

Some holes I can pick in this argument just off the bat…

1. White dudes occupy some very privileged places in western society — but that’s not true of all white dudes. I cook at a soup kitchen full of white dudes with significantly less privilege than many BIPOC. They aren’t happy with the status quo. Privilege is a complex concept.
2. I’ve never debated the right to equality. I’ve debated the methodology of getting society to a more equal and fair point. I have some views on the confusion between equality and equity (upcoming article alert)
3. Lots of people ‘fighting injustice’ spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with each other. I believe identity politics promotes such an eventuality because it’s a right-wing model pretending to be left-wing. See point two — and my article

Also… ‘Scarecrows through the gaslight’ should be the title of the first album. Which leaves Chris with one last thing to say.

This is the one comment of the three I decided to reply to:

Firstly, I'm British and left-leaning. I also can't vote in American elections so I didn't bring in Trumpery at all. I'm far more aligned with Bernie Sanders than Trump - something that should be evident from even a cursory reading of the article.

Secondly, a summary of your comments thus far can be done like this. "You're clearly a white guy, I'm not even going to bother looking at what you've written because you're clearly a white guy. You don't get to take part in any discussions about anything... because you're clearly a white guy. You're clearly a white guy and that's why you've got nothing interesting to say.... now that I've established you're clearly a white guy, I can get on with creating a world where people aren't judged by the colour of their skin.'

As always, I'm going to politely refrain from either confirming or denying what you've assumed. You might be right, you might be wrong. I don't play identity politics. If you're incapable of engaging in a conversation without focussing on the hypothetical skin colour of your opponent, you've got exactly zero chance of creating a world free from racial prejudice.

However, thanks for all three of your comments fired at me in quick succession. They weren't designed to create discussion but they demonstrate very succinctly the world view rationalists like myself are opposed to.

What do I want both you and I to take away from this?

Firstly I don’t want you to do anything with this information other than enjoy reading it. Chris is entitled to his opinion and I’m okay with him expressing it. I’m a liberal after all and that means letting people say what they want — plus Chris has an excellent turn of phrase.

He hasn’t hurt my feelings and, as always, I give as good as I get. This is something I need to work on… as Pepe Una usually reminds me.

This article is a public admonishment for both myself and Chris. A record of the fallibility of our joint human condition. A lesson writ large featuring his intuitive thinking and my snarky penguin defensiveness.

We are two educated people who should expect more from ourselves and each other. He should know better than to name call and I shouldn’t go from sanguine to Penguin in 0.3 seconds.

Chris’ biog describes him as Professor, raconteur, author of crime novels, fellow International Conflict Resolution Center. I looked him up. The man has an excellent academic record and is clearly a lot smarter than these three comments suggest he is.

I’m not a Professor and I’m definitely not a fellow of the International Conflict Resolution Centre — but I want more than name-calling from someone with that level of academic standing.

If you’re a member of any conflict resolution centre, let alone an international one, then you’ve got important information to contribute about the state of the world. You’ve got models of human behaviour, you’ve got stories, you’ve got a wealth of practical and sociological insight that is invaluable.

Open with that damnit!

Between Chris and I we’ve likely got some awesome combined knowledge and insight to share. I spent this morning training (predominantly black) social workers on how to deal with (predominantly white) angry parents. I spent the morning teaching conflict resolution and still plummeted straight into the hole of defensive thinking and came out swinging.

Chris and I could’ve discussed this shitshow of self-awareness for starters.

We could’ve discussed the merits and pitfalls of socialism. Why I’m pro-Bernie but sceptical of identity politics and why I think it does more harm than good for marginalised communities. He might disagree. He probably does — but then at least we’d be in a conversation and getting somewhere.

We could’ve discussed racism in the wider context of a changing world — the effect of Chinese economic policy on Asian people in the US. We could’ve talked about the psychological ‘othering’ and intuitive thinking that underpins racism and many other ‘isms’ prevalent in the modern world.

I’m going to follow Chris because I think he has the potential to be interesting and I’m very likely to disagree with him in the future. I hope the sequel to ‘The Professor and The Penguin’ is far lengthier and has better content and a better outcome.

I’m disappointed in myself and I’m disappointed in him. Chris and I had infinite, limitless possibilities for a good chat and debate and we couldn’t get our discussion off the damn ground. I blame both of us

Fade to black gazing sadly into the snow-blanketed middle distance. ‘Whiteboy and the Gaslighters’ plays us out. Acoustic version.

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