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m0RT_1 [OP]April 5, 2024

She is polarising, I'm not on board with everything she says, but there are some gems in this interview.

I am very suspicious of this whole pose of guilt,” she says, explaining that it’s usually used by white people to “assert superiority over other white people”...... “Real guilt is a terrible sensation. It is not something that you parade, shame. That is not what these people are experiencing. It’s proud guilt. It’s used to shut people up, to essentially deprive you of your right to free speech".

Things start falling apart because functionality no longer matters; all that matters is ideology. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. You’re watching grand storied universities destroy themselves because they no longer believe in themselves, they don’t believe in the canon they’re supposed to be transferring to the next generation.” The students now have the power, she says. “It was bad enough that the universities had converted into supermarkets, which were offering products. But the administration and faculty are now terrified of their own student bodies.”

Cancel culture, Shriver believes, “is getting worse... there’s nothing moderate about it. It’s aggressive, hostile, angry, deliberately disruptive, vengeful, perhaps vengeful above all... it’s about hunting people’s careers for sport.” The goal, she says, “is to utterly destroy you. And that is the appeal of this stuff – that satisfaction of destroying other people’s lives. And also, in doing so, you don’t have to take any responsibility for being a destructive force. You are the force of righteousness.”

[Deleted]April 5, 2024

I agree. I think there is structural racism in the society I live in and just blatant racism between individuals. Same with sexism. But I think these are both much more complex than dividing people into good guys and bad guys, incapable of nuance or change.

If kids were given a decent education in terms of world history, geography and critical thinking, most would come to their own opinions about global dynamics, with the benefit of diversity and debate that would allow us to actually change society. But of course that would also involve discussion of class and that is the main thing that elites want to avoid.

It’s easy to imagine the mental parity world she describes. At my workplace we are not allowed to use the phrases “white glove treatment” or “blackout period” for example despite these having precisely zero to do with race.

DoomedSibylApril 5, 2024

At my workplace we are not allowed to use the phrases “white glove treatment” or “blackout period” for example despite these having precisely zero to do with race.>

See, now this is the kind of condescension that is emblematic of our current moment. It does nothing, nothing to address racism but jars and divides people while supposedly showing a superiority of perception. It’s not only that it’s all surface and no substance, though that would be bad enough, it’s actively doing the opposite of what it purports.